by Tim Waggoner
“That has already been dealt with,” Qarakh said in a tone that indicated he wished to speak no more about it.
Alessandro looked at his khan for a moment before nodding his acceptance.
Qarakh took another look around the battlefield. The stench of blood and voided mortal waste hung in the air like the residue of agony and fury. Delicious, his Beast said, and Qarakh had to fight to keep from salivating. Too bad we missed all the fun. Then again, Aajav was delicious, too.
“How did the tribe fare?” Qarakh asked.
“Well, my khan,” Alessandro said. “By my count, we’ve slain sixty-seven of the enemy: seventeen Cainites, thirty-one ghouls and nineteen mortals. I estimate the number to be roughly half of their fighting force.”
Despite his sorrow at Aajav’s loss, Qarakh was pleased with this result. It was better than he had hoped for—especially since he hadn’t fought alongside his tribesmen.
“And Alexander?” Qarakh asked.
The Iberian shook his head. “His body has not been found.”
It was possible that the prince had been killed and his body removed by the surviving knights, or even that his body had eroded to ash like Aajav’s, but Qarakh doubted it. Alexander still survived.
“How many warriors did we lose?”
“Only twelve, and that number includes the Telyav Sturla.”
Qarakh sniffed. He wasn’t sorry to hear of that sorcerer’s demise.
“Among the fallen are Eirik Longtooth and Tengael—and Wilhelmina is missing, though there is no reason to presume she has met the Final Death. Knowing her, she pursued the Christians as they retreated.”
“Most likely,” Qarakh agreed. He sensed that Alessandro had something more to tell him and was stalling, reluctant to get to it. Qarakh felt like yelling at the man to spit it out, but he forced himself to wait patiently.
“We also lost Grandfather,” Alessandro said, clearly struggling to keep the sadness out of his voice. The news struck Qarakh like a physical blow.
Grandfather had not only been the tribe’s lorekeeper, he had been its greatest teacher. The elder had instructed countless Gangrel and other vampires on how to find yostoi with the Beast. His teachings had set the landmarks for many travelers on the most primal philosophical road a vampire could follow through the night. Alessandro had made it something of a personal mission to learn all he could of the ways of the Beast, and Grandfather had served as both mentor and role model to him. The death of the ancient Gangrel had no doubt hit the Iberian especially hard.
“It is a great loss,” Qarakh said. “We shall add his name to the list of those to be avenged.”
Alessandro didn’t appear especially comforted, but he nodded anyway. “What are your orders, my khan?”
“Continue to gather our fallen, but make sure that all Cainites return to the camp well before dawn. As much as we might like to honor the dead with a proper funeral pyre, we don’t want to lose anyone else. If that means leaving some of our casualties to be devoured by the sun’s rays, then so be it. Also, post sentries—both ghouls who can keep watch during the day and Gangrel who can inter themselves until the next sunset. Alexander will be stung by this defeat, and he will surely attack again, sooner rather than later. We must be prepared.”
“Yes, my khan.” Alessandro departed to carry out Qarakh’s commands.
After the Iberian had gone, Deverra laid a swollen reddish purple hand on Qarakh’s leg. “I’m so sorry about Aajav,” she said.
Emotions warred in Qarakh: gratitude for Deverra’s sympathy, revulsion at the sight of what she had become, guilt at the knowledge that it was his command that had led to her transformation, and a fury whose source was unclear to him.
“I am weary and must return to my tent and rest. I suggest you do the same.”
A hurt look came into Deverra’s eyes, and she withdrew her hand from his leg. Before she could say anything else, Qarakh turned the gelding around and headed away from the battlefield at a brisk trot.
Deverra watched Qarakh ride off. She knew how Aajav had died—not all the specifics, but she knew enough—and she understood how hard diablerizing his blood brother had been for him. It was just like the stoic Mongol not to want to talk about it.
I’m weary and must return to my tent to rest. I suggest you do the same.
What a splendid idea. Deverra started walking in the direction of the camp.
Alexander sat at his desk, his great map of Christendom and the lands still unconverted spread out on the surface before him. He looked first at the Christian kingdoms, than at the pagan lands, before placing one hand on each section. Then slowly he curled his fingers and began crumpling the map. Within moments he had wadded it into a ball slightly larger than his fists. He then began to squeeze the wad, compacting it even further with his great strength. Then, when he had squeezed the map down as far as he could, he raised his fists up over his head and brought them crashing down onto his desk, reducing it to kindling. He then stood, opened his hands, and dropped the wad of vellum on top of the pile of splintered wood. Afterward, he stood motionless for a time, staring at the debris that had been his desk, not blinking as cold dark thoughts slithered through his mind.
“Milord?” A voice from outside his tent. It was Rudiger. “May I enter?”
It took Alexander a moment to remember how to make his body speak. “Yes.”
He turned as the German knight entered. Rudiger’s eyes widened when he saw the ruin of broken wood where Alexander’s desk had been, but he wisely didn’t remark upon it. “The camp is secure and sentries have been posted. A full complement of ghoul and mortal knights shall stand guard during the daylight hours.”
“And just how full is that complement after tonight’s grand campaign?”
“Forty-three: twenty-three ghouls, twenty mortals.”
“If I am not mistaken, we began the battle with seventy-three ghoul and mortal knights.”
“We did, milord.”
Alexander noted the commander wasn’t omitting honorifics this time. “And we lost nearly half that many Cainites, did we not?”
“Seventeen, my prince.” Tiny beads of blood-sweat welled forth on Rudiger’s forehead.
“And how many pagans did we send to hell this fine night?”
“I… There was no way to make a clear estimate given all the confusion. But I’d wager that we slew two dozen at most.”
Alexander walked over to Rudiger until he stood toe to toe with the knight. To Rudiger’s credit, he didn’t back away. “Not precisely a glorious victory for the vaunted Teutonic Knights.”
Rudiger’s jaw muscles tensed. “I believe we first went wrong when—” Alexander’s hand shot out and clamped around his throat, choking off his words. The unliving knight was in no danger of fainting, but there were still many other ways Alexander could harm him if he wished. From the look in Rudiger’s eyes, the knight knew it.
“Not ‘we.’ You were in command of the knights on the field. You rode off of your own accord to join the vanguard, and it was you who ordered a retreat without consulting me. We still might have carried the night if it hadn’t been for your inept leadership and cowardice.”
The fear in Rudiger’s eyes changed to anger. He reached up and gripped Alexander’s wrist and tried to pry the prince’s hand from his throat, without success.
Alexander laughed. “You can’t possibly hope to match my power, childe, so don’t bother trying. I should grab one of the sharper pieces of my desk, shove it through your heart and then leave you out in the open to be consumed by the sun. Unfortunately, I have little time to deal with those of your brother-knights who would surely become foolhardy after such a public display. So, as much as I would like to, I will not slay you—”
Relief showed in Rudiger’s eyes.
“—that way. Instead, your knights will learn tomorrow evening that you incurred wounds during the battle—wounds you gallantly hid from them—and that you finally succumbed to your injuries in you
r slumber.”
Rudiger’s eyes were wide with terror. He tried to shake his head, but with Alexander gripping his throat so tightly, he had very little range of movement.
“I suppose you’re thinking that your men will not be taken in by my deception.”
Rudiger attempted a nod.
“Fear not, sir knight. I will make them believe. Now that they have fought one battle against a foe they thought they could defeat easily and suffered significant losses—including that of their beloved commander—they shall be eager to go up against the pagans again. I should have little trouble getting them to believe whatever I want, just so long as I promise them another chance to fight Qarakh’s tribe. And if that is the case, then I no longer have any need for you, do I?”
Before Rudiger could so much as blink, Alexander jerked his wrist. The knight’s neck snapped like a twig caught in a gale. Alexander then reached up with his other hand and in a single smooth motion tore Rudiger’s head from his shoulders. The knight’s body slipped to the ground, vitae gushing up from the neck stump.
Alexander gripped the head by the hair and brought it close to his face. He watched the light slowly fade from Rudiger’s eyes as the Final Death settled upon him. When his gaze was glassy and staring, Alexander dropped the head to the ground beside the body that was already fading into a pile of ash.
He had little time before sunrise. He needed to get digging. He selected a large chunk of wood from the remains of his desk to use as a digging tool and picked a suitable spot. He was surprised to find himself almost cheerful.
As he dug, Alexander hummed a tune that he’d first heard played upon a lyre as a youth in ancient Athens. He couldn’t recall the name of it now, if he’d ever known it, but it was a sprightly, bouncy tune that spoke of high spirits and good times. It was well worth Rudiger’s destruction, as well as those of all the other knights who had fallen in battle this night, to be reminded of that song after so very, very long. He continued humming to himself as he dug
Rudiger’s grave.
Chapter Twenty-One
When Qarakh rose from the ground inside his tent that night, he found Deverra waiting for him. The priestess lay upon the bed that had once been shared by his two human ghouls, Sasha and Pavla. Her robe lay folded next to the bed, and she slept beneath a fur blanket, her red hair spread out around her like the halo of a Christian angel. Her skin was less swollen than the previous night, the color almost normal again. Another night or two and she should be completely recovered.
He gazed down upon her sleeping face, torn between two equally strong urges. He wanted to leave the tent as quietly as he could before she woke. He knew that she had slept here because she had sensed something was wrong and wanted to talk to him about it when he rose. But Qarakh didn’t want to talk to her—or to anyone else—about what had happened last night.
But he also felt an impulse to remove clothing and climb beneath the fur blanket and wrap his arms around her. Their cold Cainite bodies would not warm one another, regardless of how much time they spent in each other’s embrace, nor would they respond to the physical closeness in the same manner as the bodies of mortal men and women. But they would still be together, and that was all that mattered.
Qarakh was still trying to decide what he wanted to do when Deverra opened her eyes. They retained a pinkish tinge from all the equine blood she had ingested the previous night.
“I’m surprised you’re up,” she said. “Usually you sleep later than I do.”
“You were weary after last night.” Due to the infusion of Aajav’s vitae, he felt stronger and more full of energy than ever before. It was obscene that the murder of his brother should leave him feeling so good.
Deverra sat up, not bothering to keep herself covered with the blanket. “I know what happened last night. I’ve worked so many spells on both you and Aajav over the years that I’ve become linked to you both. You’ve taken your brother’s essence into yourself, and it has left you with great sorrow.”
Qarakh did not know what to say to this, so he said nothing.
“I also know that whatever his reasons, Aajav chose to end his life, and he asked you, his brother, to grant him the mercy of oblivion. What you did was an act of love, Qarakh. You must believe that.”
“Do you want to know what I believe? I had time to think as I rode back to the battlefield last night, and more time again as I returned to the camp. I came to understand where Aajav’s error lay. He was unable to give up his mortal life on the steppe, and because of this, he could never accept his existence as a Cainite.”
“He tried to live in yostoi,” Deverra said.
“He did not truly understand yostoi, and neither did I, until last night. Like Aajav, I too believed that the only way to live with what I had become was to attempt to take the best elements of both worlds—mortal and Cainite—and combine them. But all I managed to do was make myself into a walking contradiction: a creature neither fully human nor fully Cainite.”
“You speak from your sorrow. You do not truly mean these words.”
“I do. I am a Mongolian wanderer who pretends to be khan of a tribe bound to the grasslands of Livonia. I am a hunter, yet I keep mortals, watch over and protect them, as if they were sheep and I their shepherd. I pretend to fight the Christians and their civilization, but I keep my own Beast on so tight a leash that it haunts my dreams. And last night both Alexander and I fought as mortal men do—with strategy and carefully planned battle tactics. But such is not the way of the Beast. The way of the Beast is to attack swiftly, matching your strength to your enemy’s, to fight as savagely as you can until one of you is the victor and the other is no more. It is that simple, that pure.”
“You are wrong, Qarakh.” Crimson tears brimmed at the corners of her pink-hued eyes. “True yostoi means carefully keeping all the aspects of one’s nature in balance: nobility and savagery, hunger and gluttony, necessity and excess. One in yostoi kills out of need and want both. You have successfully balanced these elements, Qarakh, and you have created a place where others can learn to do the same.”
Qarakh shook his head. “All I have created is a mockery—a tribe of predators who play at being herders. I have long been referred to as the Untamed, but that name was not accurate. I was tamed—by myself and by my foolish, childish dream.”
Red tears flowed freely down Deverra’s cheeks. “It is a beautiful dream, and one that I share.”
“It was only a delusion, and one I am well rid of. Starting this night I shall truly live up to the title of the Untamed. I shall embrace my bestial nature, and no one—Cainite, mortal or sorcerer—shall be able to stand against me.”
“You cannot mean this!”
Part of him wanted to agree with her, to tell her that he was speaking out of pain over Aajav’s loss, that perhaps his dream was still worth fighting for. But another part—a darker, hungrier part—said otherwise.
“Make yourself ready,” he said. “Tonight we shall meet Alexander’s army in battle once more. And this time there will be no plans or formations. We shall line up at opposite ends of the battlefield, and then we shall ride at one another and fight until one side is victorious—exactly as we should have done in the first place.”
Qarakh thought that Deverra would argue further with him, but the priestess wiped the tears from her cheeks, making bloody streaks on her flesh, and then nodded.
“As you will, my khan.”
Qarakh nodded once, then left the tent. He needed to speak to Malachite.
After Qarakh had gone, Deverra threw aside the fur blanket and quickly donned her robe. She left the tent and hurried to the nearby stand of trees where the other Telyavs had spent the day.
She knew something about diablerie. After all, she had once belonged to the Tremere, a clan whose very existence was due to the practice. It was more than simply consuming another Cainite’s blood. Diablerie entailed the consumption of the very heart’s blood, the last nugget of essence. Diablerie was to
eat the very soul of another. This conveyed power, yes, but it could also overwhelm the diablerist’s own personality. The initial period of time immediately after diablerie—a few days to a few weeks—was marked by irrationality and impulsiveness as the Cainite struggled to adjust to his newfound strength and to integrate the elements of his victim’s personality into his own. It was an extremely dangerous time, and many did not survive it.
She knew that there was no way she would be able to talk Qarakh out of confronting Alexander one more time, but she was far from helpless. First she would speak with the surviving members of her coven, and then she would make one more journey to the place where she had known all along that she would end up: the Grove of Shadows.
Alexander finished with the red-haired girl and lay her body gently upon his bed. She had been a sweet, gentle creature that had pined for a minstrel that had visited her village when she was but a child. He desired to keep her around for a bit longer so that he might look upon her beautiful face from time to time as he made his plans.
He sat in his chair. The remains of his desk had been cleared away by a ghoul servant. The trunk where Alexander kept his books and scrolls now sat several feet to the left of where it had been—right over the place where Alexander had buried Rudiger.
Breaking the news of the commander’s death to the other knights hadn’t gone quite as well as Alexander had hoped. While they had accepted his lie about how Rudiger had met his end easily enough—thanks to his superior will—they demanded his ashes be handed over to them so Rudiger might be given a proper Christian burial. Alexander had cursed himself for not anticipating this development, and it had taken quite a bit of talking—and even more application of willpower—to convince the knights to allow him to keep Rudiger’s remains “in state” until after they achieved victory over the pagans. Alexander had been ravenous by the time he’d returned to his tent and called out for István to bring him someone suitable—and then he remembered that István was gone.
