Dark Ages Clan Novel Ventrue: Book 12 of the Dark Ages Clan Novel Saga

by Matthew McFarland

  “I am a stranger to these lands, and to yours, in many ways. My home is France and my sire is many miles away. If Václav and Thomas are accompanying me, then neither of them will be hurt, but I can ask for hospitality in ways that won’t seem threatening to this fiend.”

  Jürgen nodded. “Go, then. Tell Václav that you are to speak for me and he is to offer only his name and his lineage, and only if asked.” He hardly needed to mention that Thomas, as a ghoul, shouldn’t speak at all if he valued his life. Rosamund stepped forward and Jürgen kissed her cheek. She turned and opened the door of the wagon. Outside, moonlight turned the snow a strange blue-white color.

  Rosamund stepped down from the wagon. “My lady!” Jürgen called after her. She turned. “Do not let the prince touch you.”

  She nodded, and ran off into the snow.

  Chapter Twelve

  Long hours had passed since Jürgen had watched Rosamund run across the frozen ground towards Václav and Thomas. The sun would rise soon; two hours at most, Jürgen guessed. No word from the runner, from his childe or from his lady.

  Jürgen was angry enough that his Beast wasn’t even bothering to exacerbate the situation. He paced outside of his wagon, sword in hand, face set in a vicious snarl. “How strong could this prince possibly be? On the very edge of Tzimisce territory? I’ll take his fief, his head and his blood!” The other knights and servants stood well away from Jürgen, even the other Cainites. Any vampire was capable of losing himself to the Beast if his anger built too far, and despite his usually iron-clad control, Jürgen was no exception.

  Only Wiftet the Simple stood by his lord, cradling his shivering dog in his arms. The Malkavian fool’s usually colorful garb was obscured almost completely by his winter clothing, and he seemed decidedly out of his element, so far from the stone walls of Magdeburg. “My lord?”

  “What?” snarled Jürgen. The dog cringed and whined.

  “Oh, oh, ssh. There, there, Albion. The lord didn’t mean it, he’s only upset because he’s not the lord of this domain.”

  Jürgen turned to face his fool, and decided that the little man had until the next gust of wind to say something amusing.

  “After all,” Wiftet continued to his dog, “the lord kept a man waiting for nearly this long just before we left. And then there was the time that the emissary from Mithras’s court fell into the jaws of his own Beast at the merest mention that the people of his homeland were wild-haired men who copulate with sheep, and did Jürgen respond with any behavior inappropriate to the lord of the domain?” Wiftet held the dog up for it to lick his face. “No, he didn’t! He broke all four of the messenger’s limbs and imprisoned him for a fortnight. For just a fortnight!” Wiftet placed the dog under his shirts and regarded Jürgen again. “I’m sorry, my lord? What were we saying?”

  Jürgen chuckled just as a gust of frigid air swirled the snow around his fool’s feet. “Wiftet, you are truly an inspiration to all those who survive solely on God’s sufferance.”

  “An inspiration to all the world? Oh, you are too kind, my lord.”

  Jürgen turned his gaze towards the fort. Not only was this delay intolerable, it was dangerous on a number of levels. If the sun rose and he had no word from Rosamund, he would have to ask his men to bring the wagons into the fort and then perhaps sprint—in daylight!—to wherever they might find her. As unpalatable as that thought was, the option was to wait for nightfall in his wagon as he had during many a long day on the Nemen river, and he was far too close to hostile forces for that. If Rosamund had already come to some harm (which would mean that her knight and Václav were already dead), he would have to exact revenge on the entire place, which would cost him time and probably mean that the Voivodate would send troops and monsters after him. He wasn’t here for them this time, (although conflict with the Tzimisce was, of course, inevitable), and had no desire to fight them before discovering what kind of opposition he might still face from the Livonian Gangrel. Alexander had died fighting one of them, after all, and although Jürgen had sent scouts into the forests, no incident had yet occurred. His knights had accompanied Jervais on the Tremere’s quest to destroy the Telyavs, of course, but at present the pagan inhabitants of the Baltic seemed reticent. Surely Jürgen wasn’t so fearsome to them?

  But beyond any consideration of tactics, beyond any concern he might feel for Rosamund’s safety, every minute he allowed this princeling to leave him, Prince Jürgen of Magdeburg, out in the snow was one more rung that his Beast could climb to taking control. Hand-in-hand with control over his Beast was control over his surroundings, which meant that to submit to this treatment risked his soul as well as his unlife. Wiftet’s point that sometimes the duties of a prince did not allow entirely gracious treatment of visitors helped somewhat, but time was getting short. Jürgen called his lieutenants together and nodded towards the fort. “It was originally my intention that we storm the fort if we were refused entry.” One of the knights—a Cainite called Klaus, whom Jürgen recognized as subscribing to the same ethics as Rosamund—winced at this. Jürgen continued. “I understand that this sort of attack might be unpalatable to some of you, but I’ll ask you to remember two things. First, Lady Rosamund awaits us in that den of fiends, and if this prince is as vicious as some of his clanmates, we would not recognize her lovely face when he had done with her.” This had the desired effect; the knights reached for their swords, and the one who had reacted before bared his fangs in anger. “And second, the Fiefs of the Black Cross will not be treated this way, not even by a prince, not even by a Tzimisce.”

  A shrill whistle from one of the scouts caught Jürgen’s attention. He bid the knights remain where they were and jogged up to the front of the caravan. The scout, a sharp-eyed lad of perhaps fourteen years, stood shivering under a fur cloak. “There,” he stammered. “Something’s coming. Maybe a horse.”

  Jürgen peered into the distance. There was indeed something very large plodding towards them, and someone rode on its back. The gait was wrong, though—it walked like a dog, not a horse, and it stood too high. Jürgen had seen its ilk before, though he’d never seen one meant for riding.

  He clasped the boy on the shoulder. “Round up the other scouts and go to your wagon. Lock the bolt and do not come out until after sunrise.” The boy scampered off to find his fellows, and Jürgen drew his sword and waited for the vozhd to reach him.

  The creature was moving slowly, but Jürgen knew that the massive war-ghouls that the Tzimisce fashioned from the still-living bodies of their victims were only sluggish when they didn’t have to be otherwise. He had seen them in his last campaign into fiend territories, but had never personally fought one. He turned and gave a brief shout for the knights—three of them ran to attend him but the rest scattered around the caravan. Jürgen suspected that the vozhd might be a distraction. It was a superb means of getting attention, after all. He turned his unearthly senses to the woods around the wagons, but heard nothing except his own people taking their positions. Perhaps this is simply a message, he thought. But why in God’s name send a messenger on a vozhd?

  The creature moved as though stuck in a bog, and it took nearly half an hour to walk the remaining distance to Jürgen and his knights. This had the effect of allowing even the mortals, who possessed no way to see except for moonlight, to behold the monster. It stood nearly twelve feet tall at the shoulder and was easily as long as one of the wagons. While Jürgen knew that all such creatures were fashioned from human bodies, piecing together which parts had once been legs and which had once been spines was a challenge—until the creature opened its mouth. At least six human spines had been used to fashion each jaw, and the ribs left intact and sharpened. Jürgen guessed this creature could easily bite a man in two.

  The beast was seamless—the vozhd Jürgen had seen before, he realized, must have been constructed hastily for combat. Those creatures were thrown together and only barely attached with a flap of skin or a length of bone at strategic points, but this mons
ter must have been the product of a master flesh-crafter. The notion of flesh-sculpting as art sickened Jürgen, although he imagined the noxious magic probably replaced poetry among the Tzimisce.

  Jürgen stood firm as the vozhd halted several yards in front of the knights; from behind him he heard one of them begin praying quietly. He took a step forward and the creature bared its teeth. From above, Jürgen heard the rider cluck something in an unfamiliar tongue and the vozhd lowered its head slightly. It sniffed loudly at Jürgen, its nostrils opening with wet cracking sounds, and in a sickening moment of realization, Jürgen saw where the jaws of the human contributors had gone.

  “Lord Jürgen of Magdeburg,” said the rider. Jürgen peered up and saw a middle-aged man in armor, black hair woven into a tight braid. “I am Jovirdas, tysiatskii of this domain and childe of Geidas, the kunigaikstis.”

  Jürgen had never heard the terms before, but based on the tone of the man’s voice as he said them, he assumed that “tysiatskii” was roughly analogous to a lieutenant or sheriff. The second term obviously meant “prince.” Jürgen waited for the tysiatskii to finish.

  “You are welcome to enter our domain, but your people must sleep in their wagons. Our men will ensure that the mortals of this place do not disturb you. You need not fear; all are loyal to us.”

  “Of that, I have no doubt,” answered Jürgen. Many Tzimisce, especially in smaller settlements, ruled their mortal herds openly rather than skulking in the shadows. While pulling strings from behind the scenes and working through puppets was an interesting challenge, Jürgen still envied the fiends their freedom. Of course, they were also much more visible in times of turmoil.

  The tysiatskii continued. “You will be given quarters along with your childe and your consort.” Jürgen wondered what Rosamund had told them; it certainly wasn’t in her character to lie, so the prince must have assumed her to be a consort. Or perhaps this tysiatskii was simply trying to anger him by insinuating that the Cainite acting as a diplomat was nothing but a bedmate to the Sword-Bearer. He decided not to waste anger on this minion.

  “Very well, tysiatskii Jovirdas. Lead on.” The beast turned, and led the wagons into the fort.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jürgen slept fitfully that day. He had not believed, when he was shown to a rather dank bedchamber, that he was in any real danger, but that was because he assumed his host to be a Scion. But what if the kunigaikstis follows one of the lesser roads, or is ruled completely by his Beast? Such a Cainite would have no qualms about slaughtering us in our beds. He awoke at sunset none the worse for the day, however, and found a servant waiting outside his door when he’d dressed.

  “Is the prince ready to attend us?” Jürgen didn’t bother looking at the servant, merely followed him out of the room into the cold. The servant didn’t answer, but gave Jürgen a look that indicated he did not understand. Jürgen shook his head in disgust. His treatment the night before had been shameful enough, but sending a guide who didn’t understand a visitor’s language was inexcusable.

  Jürgen saw Rosamund and Václav nearby, being led by another slack-faced peasant. He imagined that Geidas was in the habit of dominating his subjects’ minds so thoroughly that little remained of their own personalities. He began to walk towards his childe, but his guide stepped in front of him as if to block his way. He batted the man aside with his left fist and kept walking—he could not brook such insolence from a page, not if he ever wished to face himself again. Václav began to take a step towards his sire, and was similarly blocked. He refrained from knocking the man aside, probably for Rosamund’s sake.

  “Good evening, sire,” said Václav.

  “Is it? Not as far as I’ve seen,” muttered Jürgen. “Have you seen anyone else?”

  Václav nodded. “Everyone else is still in the wagons. The same guards that were posted when I was shown to a room were still there in the morning. I don’t think that they’d moved.”

  “Prince Geidas certainly commands his subjects’ loyalty,” Rosamund remarked. Jürgen’s guide joined them, blood dripping down his face from where Jürgen’s mailed fist had cut him, and the three Cainites followed their guides towards a malformed stone structure.

  “This is slavery, not loyalty,” said Václav. While of the same line as Jürgen, he had mastered only the most rudimentary gifts of mind control.

  “I suppose a Cainite who can reshape a servant’s flesh at whim might be less inclined to appreciate the usefulness of an unsullied mortal servant,” whispered Rosamund. “But it’s eerie, nonetheless.”

  Jürgen guessed that she hadn’t seen the vozhd.

  The servants led them to the door of the structure. From inside, Jürgen could hear a fire crackling and movement that indicated at least seven people. One of the servants knocked at the door and then opened it, but did not enter. He stood at the threshold and spoke in the same strange tongue that Jovirdas had used the night before. His voice was flat and gray—had Jürgen not been listening, the voice would have faded into the noise of the fire and voices from elsewhere in the fort.

  The voice that answered it, however, was quite the opposite. “Enter, Prince Jürgen of Magdeburg. Enter, Václav, childe of Jürgen. Enter, fair Rosamund of Islington.” Geidas’s German was accented so thickly that Jürgen barely recognized the name of his own city, let alone Rosamund’s. The kunigaikstis’s voice was nasal and biting. It reminded Jürgen of creaking floorboards. As he and his companions entered, the room, he was reminded of the night in Magdeburg that he’d met Rosamund for the first time. There, in his own court, surrounded by visitors and making ready to announce his campaign to extend his lands east of the Elbe, he’d felt completely in control, the epitome of the Scion and warrior he’d wanted to be. It hadn’t lasted the night.

  Jürgen wondered if Geidas felt a similar sensation of power when the Prince of Magdeburg entered his court.

  Geidas sat on a chair fashioned of wood and what resembled bone. The bone, however, looked as though it had been added to the frame of the chair rather than actually used as a building material; embellishments of white caught the firelight and made the chair seem to glow slightly. Jürgen knew that only very old bone caught light that way, and wondered if he’d been misinformed as to Geidas’s age. His sources had indicated that this Tzimisce was barely a century from his breathing days, but the vozhd and his décor (not to mention his disregard for the rules of hospitality, which indicated that he was powerful enough to ignore them) seemed to belie those claims. The kunigaikstis appeared to be a boy of only twelve years, possibly less, but then Tzimisce could shape their flesh the way a sculptor did clay. His clothes were simple and, Jürgen noted, a bit ragged. Perhaps they have a dearth of tailors here, he mused.

  Jovirdas stood next to his sire, and had Jürgen not met the man the night before, he would have assumed the tysiatskii to be the prince. He stood tall and straight, and wore his armor and sword as though ready to take to battle at any moment. Jürgen peered at the two Cainites—there was a strange feel in the air between them, as though they had a different connection than childe and sire.

  Jürgen had guessed correctly at the door—besides the prince and his sheriff, five other people shared the room. Two were servants, shuffling around the room with the same deadened eyes and demeanor as the ones that had guided Jürgen. The other three were peasants, tied at the hands and feet and laid out on tables like roasted pigs. They moved occasionally, and as Jürgen watched one of them began to mouth the Lord’s Prayer, but no sound escaped his lips.

  “Welcome, Lord Jürgen.” The floorboards had again begun to creak. “This is truly an unexpected delight.” Jürgen frowned. The prince was either mocking him or was having difficulty speaking German. He decided to assume the worst.

  “Kunigaikstis, I cannot imagine that my arrival comes as any surprise, considering that we waited half the night at your gates.” Jovirdas glanced sharply at Jürgen, as though giving him a warning.

  “I attend visitors at m
y own sufferance,” the boy-prince said peevishly. “You would have waited the winter had I known you would be so impertinent.”

  “Well, I am here,” said Jürgen, not wishing to trade insults any longer. “I do not intend to stay long, however. Your domain cannot support the Cainites I bring with me, and we have urgent business east of here.”

  The prince muttered something to Jovirdas, who stepped forward. “The kunigaikstis has heard stories of your brazenness, Lord Jürgen,” he said, “but he is surprised to find that the truth is even worse. You would impose upon our hospitality on your way through our peoples’ lands in order to make war upon them?”

  Jürgen creased his brow. “I did not declare an intention to war.”

  Geidas leaned forward sharply. “No, but von Salza and his knights have certainly made no secret of their intentions. And it is well known that where the Order of the Sword goes, the Sword-Bearer follows.” He smiled, and Jürgen noted that each of his teeth had been sharpened to a fine point. “Apropos, actually.”

  “Then what would you have of me, kunigaikstis? Tribute? Sacrifice?” Jürgen intended to give him no such thing. He reasoned that between himself and Václav they could kill the prince and his childe while Rosamund rallied the other knights, if necessary. “The Teutonic Knights do God’s work in this land, and, yes, I follow. My reasons for doing so are far simpler than you might think.”

  “Enlighten me.” The fiend’s tone was slightly less peevish now.

  “I intend to claim territory in these lands, yes. I have servants among the Knights; when von Salza brings the Savior to the pagans, he must also impose the rule that God intended upon them. The same should be true for these lands at night, when God-fearing men are safely in their homes and those such as we awaken.”

  “These lands are already well-governed, Sword-Bearer, especially at night,” said Jovirdas. Jürgen glanced at him; it was rude for a servant to interrupt when his betters were speaking. Jürgen decided not to answer him.