Vampire Khan

by Dan Davis

  The Mongols edged closer. A small group dismounted and strutted toward me, spreading out as they approached. At least two clutched bows but they did not shoot at me.

  “What are you blathering about?” I said over my shoulder. I assumed he meant our father’s father. “The old lord de Ferrers was long dead when we were sired.”

  “The old Lord de Ferrers was not our father’s true father.” William laughed. “Our true grandfather lives, and he is thousands of years old, Richard. Thousands! The things he has seen. The power that he has. You would learn a lot from him, brother, if you would but go to him.”

  Before I could respond, eight of the Mongols moved quickly to surround and then attack me. Spear thrusts to keep me pinned against the portcullis, while others darted in with their swords.

  I was too angry to fight intelligently. I cut down two of them and wounded three more before they retreated. But I took a hard blow on the helm, which hurt terribly and I had irrevocably bent my sword blade so I picked up one dropped by an attacker. The Mongols did not retreat far, and many more of them pushed their way closer inside the tunnel. Behind them, more still seemed to come from the road to block out the light and fill the tunnel with their stench. I wondered whether any of my company had survived. I wondered if I had sacrificed the life of Eva for nothing. William was so close but he may as well have been on the other side of the Earth for all the good it did me.

  And I was growing ever more certain that I could not fight my way clear of so many. Dozens of Mongols now, many mounted, many with bows, spread themselves around me and prepared to attack once again.

  I was going to die in that tunnel, and I would die alone, and without honour. Dishonoured and unremembered.

  “Here they come again, brother,” William said.

  “Waiting to see me die?” I said over my shoulder, bitterly.

  “I would prefer it if you lived,” he said.

  The Mongols rushed me again, coming in a group of ten. A full arban, ten men who lived and fought together as one. They fought well, but they had never trained to fight just one man all at the same time, and they had never faced any man like me. When one grappled me, I threw him into another. I grabbed a spear swung at my head, ripped it from the wielder’s grasp, flipped it and stabbed it through the bones of his face before he had time to flinch. Again, they fled from me before I could bring them all down.

  “You are rather good, Richard,” William said, pointing at his own cheek. “Though, you took a wound there.”

  I felt my face and my fingers slipped into a gash beneath my left eye. As is often the way with wounds, I could not recall any specific blow that might have caused it.

  “It is nothing,” I said, as the hot blood welled down to my neck.

  “Perhaps you might try drinking the blood of these next fellows?” William said. “You may find it helps, you know?”

  And more came at me. I pushed out into them and kept moving along the portcullis, keeping my back to it so that they could not fully surround me.

  I was tired. My arms seemed to move slowly and I missed a spear strike and it punched me high on the chest, causing me to miss a cut aimed at a Mongol neck. The interruption of my timing caused my defence to fall apart and I was struck on the head and arms and then a rain of blows knocked me hard against the portcullis. Mongol soldiers fought mostly in silence but they were now shouting and the roar of voices filled the tunnel, filled my head as the pain of their attacks thundered in my head. With horror, I realised I had fallen to one knee, and the fear drove me up to my feet again and I threw them off from me, lying about me with a sword in one hand and a broken spear in the other.

  When they retreated, I fell against the portcullis, sucking air into my lungs and shaking all over.

  Blood ran into my eyes and I felt the sharp-cold pain of a cut on my forehead somewhere.

  I dropped the spear and raised my left hand to my face but there was something wrong with my trembling arm. A gash on my wrist pumped blood over my hand and down to the floor in a thick stream. The mail at my left shoulder was torn open and a wound beneath gaped, shining black in the darkness.

  A fallen Mongol at my feet groaned and crawled away. I took a step to him and stamped down on his neck to immobilise him, then stabbed my blade through the side of his neck. I had to be quick while the others argued about who would attack me next. No doubt they were enjoying the fight, otherwise they would have finished me with a storm of arrows. The injured man groaned as I dropped my sword and pulled the man up by his filthy coat with one hand and held him while I sunk my teeth into the wound on his neck where his blood spurted.

  The warm blood filled my mouth and my belly

  It made me strong, and my wounds felt hot as they began to heal.

  A hail of arrows crashed into me.

  The Mongols had perhaps been horrified by blood drinking, or they were simply done with testing themselves against me and repeatedly failing. All I knew was the storm of a score of arrows, and then a dozen more, hitting my helm, my leg, the portcullis behind me, and many hit the body of the dying man in my hands. I retreated to the portcullis and used the body as a shield, ducked behind it. Arrows stuck in his clothing, others hit his flesh with a wet smack. The force of the arrows pushed me back into the portcullis while I held on to the body, though it shook with the impacts. An arrow stuck in my lower leg, and another hit me in the shoulder, slipping deep into the wound beneath the ripped mail. The pain was exquisite and I wailed and hugged the body to me as my legs failed and I went down. The archers had spread out to either side and peppered me from angles that my meat shield could not defend. My helm was hit again and my skull rang with the pain, my vision clouded with silver-white snow.

  Perhaps I blacked out. Lost my senses, at least. A voice roared at me to get up. The smell of fresh blood filled my nose.

  A mass of Mongols picked their way toward me in a wide arc, swords, and daggers drawn.

  Something was by my head, demanding attention.

  William had pushed his bared forearm through a square gap in the portcullis. He had cut his wrist and blood welled and gushed out of it, covering his hand with glistening, dark blood.

  “Drink!” he roared at me.

  I did not hesitate. I grabbed his arm, sank my teeth into his wrist and sucked the hot blood down.

  It had been sixty years since I had last drunk my brother’s blood. I remembered how it had given me greater strength than any mortal blood. And once again, it was like drinking lightning, like consuming the whirlwind. Shards of ice and fire ran like lightning through my veins, to the tips of my fingers and filled my head with clarity of vision, clarity of thought. Every sense burned and the world became hard-edged and bright like the midday desert sun. Every muscle felt as if it would burst, as if I had grown to twice my size. I felt like a giant, though I knew I was not. A great passion for murder filled every part of me, and I had to kill, had to tear down every man and every building in the city.

  I stood and threw the arrow-filled Mongol body at a man in front of me as if it was no heavier than a stone, knocking the man down and the one behind him. Most of the others froze in shock and I ran into the men, a red mist descending and my sense of self fading. I was all passion and no thought. It seemed as though God or the Devil was in my bones, and I grabbed the men and smashed them with my hands. I drove their heads into the portcullis, into the walls. I threw them up into the ceiling and snapped their necks and crushed their skulls. My fists broke their faces into bloody pulp and I stamped their throats and chests, crushing them underfoot. Though they fled from me, I was faster than the fleetest of them and killed a dozen, and then two dozen, even before they could flee into the light beyond. It was so bright out there that the glare hurt my eyeballs and I shielded my eyes, looking for more men to murder.

  Beyond the escaping Mongols, the sounds of battle filled the air. They were being killed from the rear also, and the great mass of them scattered away from where I stood, cringing a
gainst the walls of the tunnel. They were brave men, but they were right to be afraid of me and I chased them down also, dashing their brains out against the blood-smeared walls while they wailed and screamed and prayed to their barbarian gods.

  The stench of blood was glorious. I drank from the tattered neck of a head that I had ripped from its body, the last of the blood within streaming into my mouth and over my face. But soon there were no more men to kill and, though it yet raged, I felt the bloodlust of William’s blood diminishing.

  Someone was calling my name, a distant sound that echoed through the groans of the men who were dead but did not yet know it.

  A man strode toward me and I turned and seized him, lifting him so that I might bite his throat out and fill myself once more.

  “Richard, stop!”

  A woman.

  Eva cried out and then she was at my side, holding my arm.

  “It is Thomas, Richard,” she cried. “You hold Thomas. He is a friend, Richard. You must let him go.”

  His grimacing face came into focus and I dropped him, pushing him away so that he fell. Eva backed away from me and the fear in her eyes shook me further out of my rage.

  Looking about me, I saw a slaughterhouse. Bodies everywhere, walls and ceiling sprayed with blood and the floor underfoot splashed with it from the disembowelled and dismembered men and horses that filled the tunnel. Someone finished off a dying horse, cutting off the horrendous sound of its suffering.

  My surviving companions, bloodied and battered, stood about the entrance in the light of an orange sunset. Beyond them, Mongols rode hard away from us down the roadway toward the distant middle gatehouse, fleeing the bloody horror. Orus supported a wounded Khutulun. Stephen had somehow survived but was covered in blood and had the mad, blank post-battle stare. Hassan leaned on a spear, without helm and with tattered armour hanging from him. There was no Jalal, Radi or Raka. I remembered that I had seen Abdullah fall and indeed, he was also absent. No doubt lying dead back there on the road with the three Assassins.

  I had abandoned my companions for William.

  Recalling my brother, I turned and ran to the portcullis. William was still on the other side, grinning at me, at the carnage that I waded through. Behind him, small groups of other men drifted toward the portcullis, Mongols or Turkomens, staring at the blood and gore and smashed bodies. Their voices were raised in protest but they stood and did nothing, for now.

  “Why?” I shouted at William. “Why give me your blood?” I grabbed the portcullis and glared through it at him.

  “You are my brother,” he said as if that explained it.

  “I will still kill you,” I said. “I will still hunt you to the ends of the Earth.”

  He took a deep breath. “I wish you would not. For it is to the ends of the Earth that I am going, and I do not believe you will fare well there. Look at what a mess you have made in this city. Go home, Richard.”

  “The ends of the Earth?” I asked. “Where is that? You are fleeing Hulegu, no?”

  “Hulegu and Mongke have other brothers. One of them is Kublai, and he controls the East. He means to conquer all Cathay and he can do it, with my help. There are a hundred cities there the size of Baghdad, and a thousand grander than Paris. If Mongke should fall, Kublai will become the Great Khan, again, with my help.”

  “You will not be able to control him,” I said. “No more than you could Hulegu, nor any of these others who you have given the Gift.”

  He smiled. “I do not wish to control him. I will make myself a prince and do my work in peace. All I need is wealth, I see that now. Wealth, and land. You should return to Christendom, brother, you are not capable of surviving in foreign lands, amongst foreign people. You have too much hatred in your heart.”

  “I will never stop coming for you,” I said. “God desires you dead, and I am His instrument.”

  William sighed. He looked around at the Turkomen who gathered closer to him. No doubt they were wondering who he was and why we were conversing.

  “Is there any chance you would return the favour and let me drink your blood, brother? I would greatly love to feel that power. I would make short work of these men, would I not?”

  “My only regret in seeing you cut down before my eyes,” I said, “will be that it was not my own sword that ended you.”

  He sighed again and spoke rapidly. “A deal, perhaps?” He held up a hand as I began to protest. “I gave my blood and turned at least thirty, serfs and lords, between Nottingham and Acre. Do you want to know who they are, where they are, so that you can hunt them?”

  I hesitated. How could I deal with a devil such as he? I was a fool to even consider it, I knew that much. But how much destruction could thirty immortals do to my homeland? To Christendom as a whole? What deviousness were they working on my people even as we spoke?

  “You can never turn me away from my pursuit of you,” I said.

  “Perhaps I could postpone it?” William said. “All I need is two hundred years, brother.” I laughed with scorn but he continued. “What is such a span to the likes of us?”

  “You could turn a thousand men into immortals in such time,” I said.

  “But no Christians,” he said.

  “You would turn your Cathay armies against Christendom,” I said.

  “Never,” he said. “I swear it.”

  I laughed at his lies.

  “I will tell you where our grandfather lives,” he said.

  That gave me pause. “You are filled with lies.”

  “Never to you, brother.” He tilted his head. “Have you ever known me to tell a lie?”

  A clanking noise echoed around the tunnel and William glared at me.

  “Quickly, Richard. Swear you will not follow me to Cathay and I will tell you where to find our ancient grandfather. And I will tell you where my Gifted are.”

  I punched my fist into the portcullis so hard that the entire thing shook and my skin split, leaving blood on the wood. “Agreed. I swear it. But I shall kill you the moment you return to Christendom.”

  He grinned. “Our grandfather is in Swabia. In a forest, living in a cave. The locals live in terror of him.”

  The portcullis shook and shifted up as the chains took the strain. William began backing away.

  “Who did you make immortal?” I shouted.

  “A French lord named Simon de Montfort,” William said, raising his voice and still retreating. “An English knight named Hugh le Despenser. Both of them men after my own heart, you will find.”

  “Who else?” I roared.

  But he turned and ran. He ran through the massing crowd of Turkomen and they made only half-hearted attempts to stop him. He struck down a man or two and sent them flying as he ran. The portcullis shook and began to rise, slowly. So slowly.

  “Richard,” Eva said, at my shoulder. “We must go.” She stared at the massed soldiers on the other side.

  “We can kill them all,” I said, unwilling to let William go without more names.

  “Perhaps,” she said. “But your men are hurt. Exhausted. They need you.”

  I looked at her. She was injured. She had no sword. The others behind me were in a similar poor condition. And there was the stark absence of the men who had already fallen.

  The portcullis shook and rose further, winched up from some mechanism beyond the ceiling. I slammed my hands against it, sensing that I had somehow been bested by my brother once more.

  “We need horses,” I said to my men. “Supplies.”

  “And quickly,” Thomas said. “Before he gets too far.”

  “Quickly, yes,” I said, as we moved away from the tunnel. “But we are not pursuing him.”

  They stared at me.

  “We must retreat from this place,” I said. “Eventually, we shall return to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. We must gather our strength and take our time doing so, waiting until our moment is right. And then we must kill Hulegu at a place of our choosing.”

  “What about
your vile, murdering brother?” Thomas said, raising a shaking finger to point down the tunnel of the gatehouse.

  “He has gone to the East,” I said. “And I will kill him when he returns.”

  “When will that be?” Stephen asked.

  “One day,” I said. They were outraged. Furious, even, and they had every right to be. “We will slaughter the Khan and his men, first.”

  Orus smiled and looked at Khutulun. She nodded. “Hulegu now.”

  None of my people were happy with our failure. My failure. And yet I am certain they were relieved to be leaving that horror of a city.

  Moving as a group, we slipped further through Baghdad toward the gate, avoiding contact with enemies where we could. As night fell, we rounded up a horse for each of us, and a few spares, killing the men guarding them. We wrapped ourselves in Mongol coats and followed Orus and Khutulun through the final gate into the mass of the surrounding army and rode in the moonlight as if we were an arban about an official task. We were challenged only a few times, and Orus shouted responses that satisfied our enemies. It was in our favour that the armies were so disparate, from so many nations and cities, and all expected to see strangers amongst them. Still, I was shocked by the size of the forces that stretched here and there for miles. All come to share in picking clean the monstrous great carcass of the greatest city in the world.

  Then we were free, riding on or parallel to the Damascus road until we turned off to hide out in a village a hundred miles away. There we drank blood from the Saracen villagers and took over their meagre homes while keeping them prisoner. Hassan pointed out that it would be better to kill them outright in case they alerted roving Mongol patrols to our presence but I had seen quite enough murder for the time being. Instead, we ate their goats, mended our gear.

  And we waited.

  Following my abandonment of my companions on the road in Baghdad, I found that the relationship between me and each of them—other than perhaps Orus and Khutulun, who had a barbarian’s immorality—, had changed. There was no denying I had committed a great sin by fleeing from them when they needed me to fight to save them and they would all trust me even less than they had before. The only one I truly cared about was Eva and she did not wish to discuss it, assuring me that it was not important. I knew she was lying but I was happy to accept the falsehood.