Aspasia’s Shadow climbed down belowdecks and tapped something into the command panel.
Vampyr watched his movements carefully. “How do I know you aren’t setting that to kill me? Or put me to sleep forever?”
“You don’t,” Aspasia’s Shadow said. “But the Airlia move very slowly. If you want to scavenge about this world for millennia, waiting for things to change, be my guest. Things will change over time, but slowly. The deep sleep, which I use myself, is a way to ‘speed’ the process. And it keeps you from aging during the time you sleep.”
“Why should you care about what I do?” Vampyr demanded, still holding the bloodstained dagger tightly in his hand.
“It is a game,” Aspasia’s Shadow said. “As I said, you’re just another piece on the board, making things interesting. I may have Aspasia’s memories, but I have lived a long time since they were imprinted on me. I do not necessarily have the same motivations or goals anymore.”
“What is your goal?”
“That is none of your business.” Aspasia’s Shadow waved his hands wide. “There is an entire world out there. Take your hatred and lust into it. Make the world a more interesting place to watch. We will meet again.”
With that, Aspasia’s Shadow sheathed his sword and walked onto the dock, heading toward the soldiers. Vampyr watched him for a few seconds, then looked at the other boat. The bowmen still had their weapons aimed at him. Vampyr untied the rope holding his boat to the dock. The Nile’s current grabbed hold and took him and the boat with it, heading toward the Middle Sea.
CHAPTER 3
The Skeleton Coast: 1450 B.C.
Nekhbet was dead. Nosferatu screamed, the cry echoed back to him by the metal lid just in front of his face. She was just a skeleton lying inside of her tube, her flesh long since consumed by the ages. Her red hair crowned a skull, empty eye sockets leading into an empty cranium. Completely panic-stricken in the confinement and absolute darkness, he flailed his arms, smacking into the sides of the tube.
A dream. A nightmare.
Nosferatu fought to bring his mind and heart under control. He reached for the inner latch and pressed on it. He screamed, this time from pain, as a searing bolt of sunlight poured into the opening. Blindly he reached up and slammed the lid shut, the pain in his eyes unbearable.
Nosferatu waited for darkness, the ache in his eyes slowly fading. While he waited he inventoried his body. He was weak, very weak. It was an effort to lift his hand. Running his fingers over his body, he realized he was little more than skin stretched over bone. He needed to feed. Desperately.
He removed the crown from his head and the leads from his arms and legs. He reached up and pressed the latch, carefully pushing up the lid so only the tiniest of cracks appeared. Blessed darkness. He didn’t have the strength to throw the lid all the way open. He pushed it up enough to slither out of the tube, onto the pebble beach, letting the lid slam shut behind him. He lay there for a few minutes, gathering his strength. It was warm on the pebbles as the heat from the day dissipated upward.
The desolation of the area he had hidden in had kept him safe for all the years he had been in the tube, but it worked against him now. Nosferatu looked about. He saw a bird fly by high overhead, but other than that no sign of life along the shore. He knew he didn’t have the energy to climb the cliff and search farther inland, and given the desolation of the shore, he didn’t suspect farther inland would yield much.
Nosferatu lay on his back listening to the surf and staring up at the stars.
Is this how it would end? He cursed himself for not thinking things through when he entered the tube. But how could he have changed anything? How long had he slept? He’d set the tube for 650 years as best he could read the High Rune figures on the hexagonals — an amount of time he felt was sufficient to check to see if the Airlia still ruled in Egypt.
Nosferatu’s nostrils flared as they caught a whiff of something. He sniffed. Blood. Not human. Not anything he had ever smelled before. But close in some way to human. He turned his head from side to side, trying to determine from which direction the scent came.
The sea.
Nosferatu frowned. Blood in the water. He crawled to the water’s edge. A wave splashed cold water into his face, but he continued until he floated in the ocean. He lifted his head and sniffed. The blood was ahead. Again, not human, but close. Similar.
He kicked weakly, pushing himself forward. A swell sprayed water into his mouth and he tasted the faintest trace of blood. Indeed not human but mammal. Close enough in his desperate situation. He pressed on.
Nosferatu cried out as something brushed along underneath him. He looked down and saw a long gray form. A dorsal fin passed by his left side. Shark. Yes, they would be drawn to blood too, he realized, remembering dumping the bodies off the boat on the way there. Or had they caused the blood? he wondered. He was closer to the blood. His entire body felt it.
Something bumped into him on the right and he instinctively pushed away before he realized whatever he had hit wasn’t moving. He edged closer. A dolphin. Its belly ripped open. Then he heard it and saw it all around him. The feeding frenzy as sharks tore into a pod of dolphins. The ripping of flesh. The squeals of the dolphins as they fought back and tried to protect their young from the marauders.
Nosferatu didn’t care about the sharks that surrounded him. He pressed forward, holding tight to the corpse. With trembling hands he ripped into the flesh above the water, exposing a vein. Blood seeped out and he fastened his mouth onto it, drinking the trickle.
Something hit his legs but he ignored it, his entire being focused on drawing the blood in. He felt strength slowly spread through his body but the flow came to a halt. Nosferatu let go of the body and turned seaward, toward the worst of the savagery. He saw another corpse and swam to it, repeating the process. A shark took a chunk out of the body he was feeding on and he ignored it. He repeated this four times, growing stronger with each feeding.
The sharks also ignored him, perhaps satisfied with their meal of dolphin, or perhaps knowing on some primordial level that Nosferatu was kin, a hunter like them, drawn to the blood. Or, perhaps, sensing that he was something that they had never encountered and avoiding the unknown.
Nosferatu turned for shore, full of dolphin blood and feeling stronger but ill. He swam to the beach, staggering to his feet. The current along the shore had pressed him northward from where he had launched. He turned south and walked, heading back toward his tube.
Suddenly, he fell to his knees and vomited a mixture of dolphin blood and seawater. He felt woozy, both from the gorging after so long a fast and the difference in blood type. He knew he needed human blood. He was stronger, but could not survive for long like this.
He reached his tube and crawled into it, his stomach protesting, his head pounding. He’d drunk so much to gain so little.
Nosferatu spent the next day in his tube, planning. That evening he exited the tube and climbed the cliff to the top. Looking inland all he saw was rocky desert extending to the horizon. He doubted that anyone lived within hundreds of miles. Could he cross the desert to inhabited land before running out of energy? Nosferatu stood for a long time, peering inland. Then he turned to the sea. He could see for miles along the barren coast in either direction.
At the very least he knew there was life in the water. Enough to keep him alive.
He turned back toward the land, looking to the northeast, his focus drawn that way as if there were a beacon over the horizon. He knew that was where Egypt lay. And Nekhbet waited. Staying alive wasn’t good enough. He had to get stronger so he could travel. He stayed on top of the cliff the entire night and when the first sign of dawn appeared in the east, he climbed down and entered his tube.
The next evening he did the same, but now he simply sat on the cliff, peering first one way, then the other along the coast, waiting. That went on for three complete cycles of the moon.
His patience was rewarded in the fourth month. R
ight after dark, as soon as he reached the top of the cliff, far to the north he spotted a small glowing spot on the shoreline. He knew immediately what it was — a lantern aboard a ship beached for the night. Nosferatu made his way in that direction along the top of the high cliff.
It took over four hours before he was above the light. A wooden ship was drawn up on the shore, the flickering lantern hung on a short mast. The ship was about fifteen feet long, open-topped, with one bench across the center and a long oar extending to each side. At the rear, the handle for the rudder swept inboard. Nosferatu counted three people — two sleeping in the front of the ship and one standing guard next to the mast.
Nosferatu moved south about two hundred yards until he reached a cleft in the rock face. He climbed down to the shore and considered his options. His heart was racing, not so much from the descent, but from the nearness of human blood. He could literally smell the people nearby. He crept closer but paused as the guard woke one of the sleeping figures.
The two switched places, the guard wrapping himself in a blanket and lying under the bench. The newly woken man leaned the sword against the mast and climbed off the boat and walked stiffly toward the cliff. Nosferatu began moving again, closing the gap. The new guard was urinating onto the pebbles when Nosferatu came upon him from behind. His hand clamped over the man’s mouth, stifling any cry, and he wrapped his other arm around the man’s body, pinning his arms to his sides. Nosferatu’s head darted forward, mouth open, and he sank his teeth into the man’s neck, tearing at the flesh.
Blood. Human blood. As the man’s struggles grew weaker, Nosferatu grew stronger from the blood surging into his mouth. He completely drained the man in less than a minute.
Nosferatu slowly let go of the body, lowering it to the ground. He turned toward the boat and considered the two sleeping men. His lust for blood was strong and the urge to take another victim almost made him go forward, but he held back. He needed them. As they would need him.
Nosferatu took the body and threw it over one shoulder. He made his way south. He crammed the body into a split in the cliff wall, covering it with rocks so it couldn’t be seen. Then he went to his tube and covered it completely. He took a piece of cloth and wrapped it around his head, covering his eyes with a double layer. Then he waited for dawn.
When the sun came up, light penetrated the cloth, but it was filtered enough for him to be able to see shapes and forms without pain. The boat did not appear until almost noon. Nosferatu assumed the two survivors had spent the morning searching in vain for their missing comrade. He waved as the boat grew closer and he could see the two sailors arguing, already jittery from the unexplained disappearance of one of their own and having difficulty handling the boat lacking one man. Nosferatu reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of gold coin and waved it, the sun reflecting off the precious metal.
Greed overcame fear and the men drew the boat in closer, calling out in a strange tongue. Nosferatu simply shook the gold, then pointed at himself and the tube, then at their boat, then to the south. There was no mistaking his desire. He pantomimed rowing, and that really got their attention as the boat needed three men to move if the wind failed them, as it often would along this coast — two men on the oars and one on the rudder.
The two sailors brought the boat to a halt about fifty feet from shore, still arguing. Nosferatu waited. Greed and reality won as he suspected it would. The boat came closer to shore and he waded out to it. The sailors were obviously asking him questions but he ignored them, waving a hand in front of where his mouth was and shaking his head. He also pointed at his eyes, then at the sun, shaking his head more vigorously.
Then they pushed the boat back out into the swell, raised the short sail, and began heading south, one of them manning the rudder, the other sitting on the bench next to the left oar. Nosferatu sat next to the right oar, but for now no rowing was needed. Nosferatu’s eyes ached even though the turban wrapped around his head blocked most of the sunlight. He wanted to hide under one of the benches and sleep, but he knew it was too soon, the sailors too jittery, to do this now.
He pretended to sleep that night and the next day spent the time on the middle bench, suffering the sunlight that forced its way through the cloth. Not long after dawn they were becalmed and Nosferatu joined the other sailor in rowing. It was agony but he continued in this way for eight days as they made their way south. During that time he listened to the two sailors talk, picking up words and phrases. He learned they were from a land far to the north, above the opening to the Inner Sea along which Egypt lay, a country which they had never heard of.
They’d been blown far out to sea during a storm. It had taken them over a week to make it back into sight of land and when they tried to make their way north along the west coast of Africa both the current and wind defeated them. They’d then made the difficult decision to go with the flow and head south.
Sketching with a piece of charcoal on the deck, Nosferatu drew for them a rough representation of the continent as he remembered it. He drew a line around the southern tip and up to the north. Lying, he indicated there was a way to sail up the Red Sea and into the Middle Sea on which they had come, not that they needed convincing as they had already given up on going back up the west coast even before they met him.
Two cycles of the moon after getting on board the boat, they passed the southern tip of Africa and began making their way northward. Nosferatu pretended to eat the scant food they offered him, but slipped it overboard when they weren’t watching. Nosferatu’s eyes had adjusted slightly to the sun, but he still kept them covered with the cloth. He felt the hunger inside growing. The land grew more lush as they made their way up the coast and one day the sailors proposed stopping to hunt. Nosferatu begged off, letting them go inland with their bows and knives. Once they were out of sight, he also left the boat, taking a different direction.
He had to travel far to find a village, arriving just before dark. He waited until the middle of the night before striking, taking down a warrior who came out to investigate when the dogs barked at Nosferatu’s approach.
Nosferatu came back to the boat just before dawn to find his two comrades with fresh kill and full of fear over his disappearance. He explained nothing, keeping to his silence, even though he understood their language well now.
Thus they continued. He killed and fed on humans five more times before they rounded the horn of Somalia and entered the Red Sea. After such a long sleep and a long journey, even Nosferatu began to become anxious. He was nearing Nekhbet. When he saw the sands of the Arabian Desert to his left, he knew it was time to leave the boat.
He departed one night, leaving the two sailors alive, even though he had the hunger. As he crossed the desert between the Red Sea and the Nile he slept during the day, covering himself with sand to protect his eyes and skin from the sun and moving at night. The third night he fed on a lone Bedouin. The next night he spotted a camp of Bedouins, probably the group from which his earlier victim had wandered.
Nosferatu was stopped by a guard as he approached the cluster of tents. He greeted the guard in the same manner he had all he met that he did not feed on — with a hand raised, holding gold.
The negotiations with the Bedouin chief were fast and simple. Nosferatu hired a half dozen of the desert warriors for a full moon of service. No questions were asked about what tasks were to be fulfilled or destinations. Along with the six desert dwellers and their mounts, he also hired four extra camels. The next evening, right after nightfall, they left the camp and headed west.
On the fifth day the lead Bedouin in his group indicated they were near the Nile.
The moon was three-quarters full as Nosferatu climbed up the steep slope of a large dune and caught his first glimpse of the heart of Egypt since he’d left. He was staggered by what he saw. A massive pyramid built of stone and almost five hundred feet high capped the Giza Plateau. It was flanked by two other pyramids almost as large. In front of the Great Pyramid
, where the Black Sphinx had once lain in a depression, the ground had been covered and there was a similar sphinx made of stone with a painted face. Between the paws of the stone sphinx was a statue that Nosferatu recognized: It was of Horus. A temple had been built in front of the large pyramid, with a long causeway connecting the two. To the north, along the river, there was the glow of a huge city.
The six Bedouins stood behind him, swords in hand, awaiting his commands.
Nosferatu stood still, taking in the changes, particularly the pyramids. There were piles of stone at the base of the Great Pyramid, as if it were not complete, or perhaps, Nosferatu mused, there had once been a facing on it that had been stripped off for some reason. So much change in 650 years. It was quite incredible considering how little change had occurred during his time imprisoned along the Roads of Rostau.
The real issue, though, was who ruled now? The sailors had been able to tell him nothing of Egypt, their home being far to the west along the Inner Sea. They had talked of an island kingdom ruled by a fearsome lord in the Middle Sea but it had meant nothing to Nosferatu.
Even in the deep desert, what happened in Egypt mattered nothing to the Bedouins, who stayed away from the Nile and the rule of law there. To them it was a place to avoid.
Nosferatu could see people on the plateau, even though it was the middle of the night. Soldiers on guard. Priests scurrying about. There were ships moving on the Nile, carrying grain and other cargo.
Nosferatu rode down the far side of the dune and to the Nile, where he spurred his camel into water and crossed over, followed by his small party. On the east bank, Nosferatu skirted the large temple, where armored guards stood watch. He moved to the place he remembered, the secret riverbank entry to the Roads of Rostau.
He was surprised to find that the entryway was submerged, the level of the river obviously having risen over the years. Nosferatu considered the change for a few moments, then made a decision. He needed information before he took precipitous action. He left four of the warriors with the camels, hidden among some massive building blocks. He took the remaining two Bedouins with him farther along the riverbank.
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