by Jackson Lear
“And betray my own kind?”
“How often do they stab each other in the back? If you really have a friend in that castle you can bring them with you. We’re not cruel people. We don’t throw our kin off the side of buildings just because we want their spouse to be available. Everything you’ve ever wanted is on our side.”
She fell quiet for a moment. “I’m not leaving. Neither are you. Do you want to know what the last thing your Alysia and Zara said before being killed? They each said a name. ‘Auron’ was one. Zara, though … she’s had an interesting life. Much more than yours. You know if she had returned to Ispar at least two of the senators would have her killed. Their own husbands as well. You have an expression in Isparian for that, no? Being a prostitute to blackmail someone?”
“Honey trap.”
“That was what Zara did. While the senators were busy she would make friends with their husbands. Sometimes wives as well. Pretending to be someone she wasn’t. You know what secrets are like, don’t you? Like a drug. They couldn’t wait to tell her. Then she betrayed them. And you know what? She still talks to two of them. They are still a thousand miles away but she still talks to them at night. Says she’s sorry.” The vampire’s lips curled into a smile. “She has a son.” She bent her head towards my chest. “I saw your heart thump with surprise. There are people are after her. Important ones. Much more important than anyone you’ve ever met. But I had both Miss Kasera and Zara beheaded. Why? Because I told Elmark’s first mate that he could see his husband again one last time if he killed them for me. So no. I’m not coming with you. Not when you can take revenge against the empire on our behalf.” She growled, an earthy guttural rumble that rose into an ear-splitting shriek.
“Stop that.”
She shrieked a second and third time, stopping only when I held my sword in front of her eyes.
“I said stop.”
A second growl bounced back towards us. A demonic baying, rising and silencing, repeating, coupled with a shriek in their voice as the agony of speaking reached us all. Too close to even make a run for it.
The vampire grinned back at me. “I’ve stopped.”
Chapter Forty-Three
I threw the stretchered vampire to the feet of the panicking vanguard and held my curved sword over her writhing body. “Everyone form a tight circle around us. Mages and archers on the inside, infantry and cavalry on the outer, elder leaves at the ready. Torunn!”
He and the rest of the northerners were hustling towards us, weapons drawn and fright rising through them quickly. “What the fuck?”
“It’s time to pick a side. Us or the vampires.”
“Okay!”
“Us?”
“Korla ... Aye.”
“Then get in here. Northerners in groups of three. All three are going to attack the same target. Vanguard? Time to wake the hell up.”
The troops glanced to Jarmella. Her voice shook with nerves. “Do it.”
Dalo and Benar struggled to get to their feet, argued with everyone around them, and hobbled into position.
“You guys can’t even walk,” said Adalyn.
“No, but I can do something,” said Dalo, as he spun his bow around and nocked an arrow.
We all bunched together, our breath hanging in the air while a shiver swept through us all. The mountain forest cracked and settled, the freezing wind pinching the inside of our ears, the cloud cover thick and the snow falling fast.
The baying started up again, a quiet to seismic grunt, and another, and another. Saskia’s eyes lit up like she was receiving some kind of primal command. Her lips peeled back as she learned to breathe through the corners of her mouth, tasting our scent along the underside of her tongue.
The northerners shifted uneasily in the crunching snow, searching everywhere they could and exposing themselves to a predictable ambush. The vanguard kept their attention locked on one position, each with an overlapping field of sight.
“I hope your chat was worth it,” said Jarmella.
“It was. She no longer has Berik.”
“You’re sure?”
“It’s not a foregone conclusion but she was willing to make a deal for Loken but couldn’t make one when Berik was thrown into the mix.”
“Did you find out where he is or who has him?”
“No, but I’m working on it.”
Saskia bellowed an agonized, guttural caw.
“Odalis, shut her up,” snapped Jarmella.
“Wait. We’re learning how they work.”
“We don’t have the numbers for this.”
“Neither do they. Archers? Target their face. Mages? If anything leaps through the air bring it down in front of the infantry.”
The baying returned. Saskia tried to match it, rising in pitch and shrieks but with feeble strength behind it. Jarmella held her position facing north, every exhale now a nervous jitter.
“Jarmella? That’s not the sword they need to see.”
Jarmella glanced to the vampire sword still sheathed at her waist. “Ewen …”
I hesitated, convinced that Jarmella was about to make a critical blunder in front of the might-is-right northerners.
“Fuck it.” Jarmella drew her second sword and held it out like a well armed mercenary. “Good luck everyone.”
“Kiss me Jessica …” murmured Saskia, this time with a deep grin across her face. “Kiss me before I fall apart.”
“Shut her up,” snapped Jarmella.
“I see one,” whispered Gaynun. “Twenty yards out, hiding behind a tree.”
It was difficult to make out anything with the flutter of snow obscuring our vision, but we gave ourselves away immediately as soon as the northerners turned to see what had caught Gaynun’s attention.
“He’s gone,” whispered Gaynun.
I said: “Torunn? Tell your friends to stop looking in the same direction.”
“They don’t want to be ambushed.”
“Then they’re going to want someone looking the other way.”
He translated. Some of them grunted. Glanced over their shoulder.
“Short one to the east,” whispered Menrihk. “Wait, two of them. They look like kids.”
“They might be young and adorable but if they make a move towards us we’re going to obliterate them. There’s too many of us to attack all at once so they’re going to test our defenses and tire us out. Some will run towards us and back again while another will try to pick us off when we aren’t looking.”
“You can’t stay here all night,” whispered Saskia.
The snow blew all around us, making it impossible to see where the rest of the bastards were.
“One of the adults is back,” whispered Gaynun.
I yanked Saskia’s hair and pulled her head up. “Where are they?”
She hissed back at me. “I don’t know.”
“Sure you do. These are your kind and you can see in the dark.”
“Give me blood and I will.”
One of the northerners muttered behind me. “Three more this way,” whispered Torunn.
I pressed my sapphire wrap against Saskia’s cheek, causing her to squirm and pull away. “Which one’s the leader?”
“Not you.”
“Which one of them is the leader?” I brushed my wrap up against her ear, allowing the sizzle of her skin to scream through her.
“Okay okay okay!”
I held her hair tight in my grip. “Which one?”
Saskia glanced in every direction, looking in between sets of legs and bodies. “That one. The blond one.”
“Male or female?”
“Female.”
“Prove that she’s their leader.”
“She’s waving them all into position. A flick of a finger. Nothing more. Two of the young vampires look like they’re her twin daughters. She’s only looking at us. Everyone else keeps checking in with her.”
“Thank you. Which of Agnarr’s people are here to kill us?”
> A couple of the northerners glanced over their shoulder.
“I don’t know,” spat Saskia.
“Menrihk? Translate my question so they understand.”
Menrihk did his best and certainly got an interesting reaction from most of the northerners. Some spun and shouted back at me, right up until I pointed Saskia’s fangs at them.
“Which of them are now more nervous and enraged than before?”
Saskia seethed, glaring at the backs of each northerner as she read their auras. Gods know what it actually looked like but truth be told I had always been curious to see if it was a colored halo surrounding their body or if someone like Saskia was simply reading each and every breath. She motioned to a group of tight-knit raiders. “Those three.”
The same three Jarmella, Gaynun, and Menrihk had spotted whispering to each other when I sat with them the previous night. The threesome turned around, their weapons angled towards me.
Odalis practically jumped out of his skin at the rushing vampire. “Back! Back! Get back!”
The first vampire leapt forward, skidded in the snow, leapt back. Two more behind us landed ten feet away. Two arrows shot into the darkness, missing both targets as the vampires dodged them with ease.
“Don’t loose an arrow unless you’re sure you’re going to hit something.”
The three angrier northerners held their axes towards my face, practically growling from behind their beards.
I glared back at them. “You three can leave whenever you like.”
Stassa whispered the translation. It seemed as though the fellas weren’t all that keen on leaving just yet.
“There!” shouted Menrihk.
Another vampire darted forward. Three more raced in from the opposite side before all four of them slipped back into the darkness. Their chuckling lingered from behind the trees.
“Jarmella, Adalyn, can either of you see the blond female?”
“There’s too much snow,” said Jarmella.
“Right, everyone! Stay in this formation. We’re moving north ten paces. Jarmella and Adalyn, if either of you get sight on blondie, make her head explode. Three. Two. One!”
Everyone shifted, creeping north in a loose stagger.
“Down!”
And doing quite badly at it, if I’m honest. It took another ten seconds for everyone to regroup and fix themselves into a decent position.
The vampires retreated back, matching us pace for pace.
The three northerners turned back towards me, their weapons low but far from lowered. “He’s saying you’re full of shit,” said Stassa.
“Let him know that we heard him and his friends talking last night around the fire. They weren’t as quiet as they think they were.”
Stassa passed it on. A moment of recognition fell upon one of the guys in the back while the two to his side squinted a little more, trying to hold a straight face but failing.
Saskia grinned at the foremost one, who sported a scraggly beard and was wearing a woolen cap. She rasped in the northern language, one that was foreign even to her. She certainly garbled enough of the words as she repeated the taunt phonetically without understanding what any of it meant.
Scraggly Beard leaned back, his face turning ash white. The rest of the northerners shifted towards him, dumbfounded.
“She said he killed his brother when he was sixteen,” whispered Menrihk.
“How?”
Saskia spoke again. More heads turned. Scraggly Beard snapped with what was surely a, “Lie!”
“He put bits of broken glass into his brother’s drink.”
Saskia spoke again.
“Every day for a month. Until the infection killed him.”
“Why?”
Saskia grinned at her victim.
“Because his brother caught him …” Menrihk hesitated before plowing through. “…jerking off in front of Ailsa’s window and he threatened to tell her.”
Scraggly Beard staggered backward in horrified shock. Lifted his sword towards Saskia. Spat at her. “Demon witch.”
“Incoming!” shouted Odalis.
Three vampires charged in. Skidded. One leapt high overhead. Two arrows flew up, another targeting where the bastard was going to land, but the creature was too quick.
Stassa thumped Scraggly Beard in the back and barked at him.
Two more vampires lunged.
“Jarmella and Adalyn, you’re going to need to get eyes on blondie before they tire us out.”
“It’s snowing really fucking hard!” shouted Jarmella.
“Are you a mage or not? Do something to find her.”
Jarmella needed a moment for it to click. Then with a uniquely quiet whisper she said: “Ready? Three. Two. One.” Jarmella and Adalyn both fired off a spell, enhancing their vision ten fold. Their heads turned quickly to the right, the vampire no doubt jumping back at the incoming attack. The two women’s shouts overlapped, the panic of having to kill something in a split second and needing to use two simultaneous spells taxing them into an instant mana hangover.
A body crumpled into the snow. The shriek from eight vampires told us: one of theirs was down for good. Two of them charged from the east. Three ran in from the north. Leapt … and came crashing down as our mages slammed them into the ground, the infantry skewering them. The vampires slashed back, knocking one man down after the next, a clash of blades against rusted daggers, axes bludgeoning the tops of heads, scrambling from the younger vampires as they tried to escape – only to have every archer in our arsenal loose arrow after arrow into their backs, dropping one with a well placed shot into the back of the skull.
Adalyn recoiled. Dalo spun, his arrow skewering one vampire through its palm, bursting through its wrist as it tried to swipe at the young mage. Adalyn ducked and weaved. The vampire threw one arm against a northern axman, batted him to the side. Two more arrows found their mark in the vampire, both dead center in its chest. Adalyn thrust her sword into its neck, cried out in panic as the vampire flopped on top of her.
Wilbur beheaded another in front of him. Two more vampires lay cleaved and bloodied before the northerners. Two men stepped forward, their hands shielding their eyes, and muttered a spell. A quiet splat sounded in the distance.
The snow fell. Patter from feet ran off into the distance. People keeled over from panic.
We were alone.
Gaynun dropped to his knees, clutching his forearm from where a vampire raked its poison nails across his flesh. Four more northerners collapsed from their wounds, one finding a dagger in his ribs, the others with scratches across their hands and faces.
Stassa held her sword towards Scraggly Beard’s face. Spat a not too hard to understand threat. ‘Leave while you still can.’
Scraggly Beard held his hands up, pleading from one friend to another.
“You killed your own brother?” seemed to be the most common question.
“I fucked up,” came the translation. “I’ve been thinking about it every day since it happened and I wish I could take it back.”
Tempers flared. Accusations flew. Bile spat towards us southerners, that it was our fault this all happened and their lives would’ve been much better if we had never been born. Most of the northerners agreed, yet none of us had encouraged Scraggly Beard to murder his own kin.
Yahnson held his sword towards Scraggly Beard’s face. “Leave.”
The accused glanced my way with death in his eyes. He dropped his mouth open, bracing himself. I pushed Saskia’s face in front of me like a shield. Menrihk fired off the last spell he had prepared, launching Scraggly Beard five feet back and causing the raider to stumble, fall flat on his ass, and struggle to pick himself up. His spell was spent.
He stood. Dusted himself off. And left with nothing but a two day trek down the mountain all by himself.
Jarmella turned to the vampire bodies still primed full of blood. “Drink up. There’s still four of them out there and we need to hustle.”
Cha
pter Forty-Four
Dalo had passed out, having drunk more of the vampire blood than he probably should’ve. His eyeballs flickered underneath his lids. Odalis stumbled and fell completely on his side, stared back at us with half of his face covered in snow, then picked himself back up and set off into a run again. Gaynun gripped his forearm tightly, wincing with every step and sweating through the pain. Soldiers and raiders alike turned in tight groups, running together with our weapons drawn and legs failing.
Ithka spun, released an arrow, cried out. The rest of our able-bodied archers – Ivar, Magnus, Leif, Arvid, Otario and Aedalis – turned at once. Arrows flew. Thuds rang back to us, followed by a low, guttural growl.
“It’s wounded!” shouted Adalyn.
“No shit!” bellowed Magnus.
“Gaynun?” called Jarmella.
“I don’t know.”
“I need you to look!”
“I can’t lift my arm!”
“Menrihk! How many are behind us?”
Saskia mumbled from her stretcher. Gagged. Impossible to figure out. Menrihk did his best to run backwards through the trees and snow while holding a seeing rod to his eyes. “We need to stop!”
Jarmella huffed. “Fine. Everyone to me! Tight circle.”
We formed up, the northerners creating their own loose group to the side of us. I shouted across. “Torunn! Stassa! Get your people over here!” Most hurried over, grateful for the invitation. The rest begrudgingly stepped closer, still on the outside of the defensive circle but close enough to jump within our ranks if we were attacked.
