Much Fall of Blood-ARC

by Mercedes Lackey

  Eberhart raised his eyebrows. "One man?"

  Ahmbien shrugged. "And his escort, naturally. We have found one man in the right place can make a large difference. Of course it would help if that one man carries the word of the legitimacy of a marriage and the support of the Ilkhan."

  "Legitimacy?"

  "The marriage of the elder sister of Batu Khan. It happened in times of war, and without the formality it should perhaps have been accorded. The claim of Gatu to the Khanate rests partially on the shoulders of that uncertainty, and partly on the youth of Kildai."

  It sounded good. That was enough to make Eberhart suspicious.

  "Letters of safe conduct according those who accompany the tarkhan the status of escorts to an envoy, will of course be provided, under the seal of the Ilkhan."

  Eberhart did not raise his eyebrows in surprise. But he wanted to. That was a signal privilege. The Mongols were legendary for the degree of safe-conduct accorded to such emissaries and their escorts.

  * * *

  It was as luxurious a boudoir as Manfred had been able to contrive. She had taught him a great deal, reflected Francesca, and not just about sex or politics. Whether the knowledge of fabrics and cushions was really essential to a man who might one day yet rule the Holy Roman Empire, and definitely would rule the rough Celtic halls of Brittany, could be debated. But Francesca de Chevreuse had no doubts about it being of value. Both politics and sex were enhanced by such things. How many pointless wars were born, accidentally, out of a poor night's sleep or an uncomfortable seat? While dukes, kings and emperors might claim to rule by divine right, that did not appear to protect them from occasional peevishness. She'd gotten to meet several of the great men, first as a courtesan and later as Manfred's leman.

  She bit her lip. Being Manfred's leman had been a comfortable life and an interesting one. She had a great deal of power and influence, even with the emperor himself. It would take very little effort and feminine wile to maintain the status quo. But in a way, this life was a gamble. And she was an intelligent gambler. It was time get out of this particular game, while she was still winning. The emperor might have looked indulgently on his nephew's mistress, even used her as his agent, while she was a transient feature of Manfred's life. But she knew, too well, that the throne would not tolerate her installing herself as the power behind the prince.

  Manfred was changing. Command on Corfu had altered him. He didn't realize it yet, but he was ready to move on.

  She'd seen it before as a courtesan. She recognized the signs now.

  Therefore it was time for her to move on too. Quickly and neatly, retaining the contacts and friendships that she'd established. Alexandria called to her. It was supposed to be a warm, cultured and seductive city. Well, that sounded just like her sort of place. She gave a wicked little chuckle. Besides, the city would need something to counter Eneko Lopez and his companions' piety.

  Manfred came in quietly. For a big man he could move remarkably silently when he chose to. "I thought you might be asleep," he said.

  The solicitousness too was unlike him. Manfred was not inconsiderate, or even particularly self-centered, for a prince of the blood. Erik had seen to that. Manfred could be very considerate—when it occurred to him that his normal way of life might be less than pleasant for someone else. That much she had tried to teach him, along with politics and a less brute force approach to everything.

  "A glass of wine?" he asked pleasantly, running a big hand down her spine.

  Francesca swallowed. She'd dismissed many lovers before. Some of them had been powerful, big, violent men. She'd taken appropriate steps to deal with that sort of problem, and moved on. Anyway, she had no such fears from Manfred. Why then, was she afraid? It suddenly came to her. Yes, he was powerful and influential. But she was afraid of hurting him. That was not something that had ever bothered her before. She'd spent a long time with Manfred, though, longer than with any other lover. Long enough to know that he too had his soft spots, and where they were.

  "I thought you were still in church," she said.

  "The bishop got tired of me. He threw me out." Manfred smiled. "The church loves me . . . and loves me to leave when I sing."

  He walked across the room and poured out two goblets of wine. "The truth is that I had a feeling I should come up and bid you farewell."

  She gaped at him.

  "I didn't want you to go without at least saying goodbye."

  Her eyes narrowed. "Eneko?"

  He handed her the goblet. "He's as mum as an oyster, my dear. You know that."

  "Then how . . .?" She was never at a loss of words. Suddenly, she found them scarce.

  "You said so, a while back. And I've been seeing the signs. I was taught by a selection of women, Francesca. As well as you."

  "You've learned a bit too well," she said wryly. "What do you intend to do about it?"

  "Help with the organization. I've learned over the years that you usually do exactly what you plan to do. And I value you too much, both as a friend and a lover, to stand in your way."

  "It is not fair to play emotional games, Manfred." Her voice was slightly gruff in spite of the superb self-control she prided herself on.

  "Nothing is fair, Francesca. But I'm not good at games. I'd rather hope that I could see you in Alexandria one day, than be stupid enough to try and keep you."

  "You've grown a lot, Prince."

  "I hope not. Getting armor altered is more complicated than you may realize. Now, do I lock the door to keep Erik out for a last few minutes or not?"

  "Oh, I think I can spare you more than a few minutes, and make it last a little longer than that too," said Francesca, lowering her lashes.

  * * *

  Erik Hakkonsen, bodyguard and mentor to Prince Manfred of Brittany, forced the attacker's blade point into the wood of the door behind him. In the process he might just have broken the man's fingers. Erik hit him with pommel of his knife to silence him. The last thing that he wanted was to attract extra attention. Narrow alleys were not his choice of fighting ground. Kari was still fighting with the other two. Erik grabbed both of Kari's opponents by their loose garments and slammed their heads together. Hard.

  Kari looked reproachfully at Erik as he dropped the two limp bandits. "What did you do that for? It was shaping into a nice little fight."

  Erik shook his head at the young Vinlander. Kari's family were sept and kin, at least by Erik's understanding of the duty he owed to Svanhild. Erik therefore owed a duty of care to the boy. He'd not expected that to mean taking care of a tearaway, who, while less inclined to go drinking or whoring than Manfred had been, liked fighting. Kari fitted Jerusalem like a bull-seal fitted a lady's glove.

  "If you want to fight there are plenty of knights. And there is me," said Erik.

  Kari grinned disarmingly, showing a missing tooth. "The knights fight like knights. And as for you . . . I like to win sometimes. I thought you were busy watching over the Godar's nephew?"

  "He's in church. On his knees. Where you will be shortly. Those men did not want to fight. They wanted to kill and rob you."

  Kari shrugged. "Who else could I find? I don't like picking on drunks. You said that that was unsporting."

  "One of these days you will also remember that I said picking fights with back-alley murderers would get you killed, you young fool." Erik took him by the ear and led him toward more salubrious parts of the city. With Manfred, Erik had thought that he was hard done by having had to locate all the taverns and brothels in any town. Kari took things to whole new level. He could be looking for a fight anywhere.

  Buda, The Kingdom of Hungary

  From the topmost ducat-gold curl to the tip of her toes, Countess Elizabeth Bartholdy was the most beautiful and youth-filled damsel any man could ever dream of. She simply had to smile and lower her long sooty eyelashes to have most men agree to do anything she asked of them.

  The guard on Prince Vlad of Basarab's elegant prison was made of sterner stuff
than most. That was not surprising, of course. You would want such guards for the grandson of the Dragon. But he was still a man. And too slow to react, when she put her hand where no lady would have done.

  That instant of hesitation killed him, as the razor-sharp talon-like steel tips to her claws slipped through the cloth far more easily than the proverbial hot knife through butter. There were a few inhuman things that could survive the venom that tipped those nails. No human could.

  She sheathed the claws again, as he fell with barely a whimper. There was a slight clatter from his sword. She paused for an instant to enjoy the look on his face. She loved that look of startlement and betrayal. It suited men so well.

  Her fingertips were once again without blemish, her nails beautifully manicured. There was a cost to turning your own body into the perfect assassin's killing tool, but Elizabeth had paid that price long ago. Long, long, long ago. More than a century before.

  She opened the door to the chambers of the captive duke of Valahia with a smile on her lips. There was something about killing that awoke certain hungers in her. But magic required that she should not use the boy within to satisfy those lusts. He had other value to her. Mindaug had given her a time and place at which he would still have to be alive and, for best effect, virginal. At the time and a place when the shadow ate the moon. And her control of herself was superb. After that, he could be abused and die.

  * * *

  The prince in the tower had not spent long hours mooning out of the windows or singing to passers-by. Heredity had shaped him into a silent man—that and a lack of company, perhaps. Besides, neither were practical options. There were no windows he could see out of.

  King Emeric had seen to it that his hostage lacked for nothing—except his liberty, and the freedom to use his mother tongue. The prince had had instruction in several others, Frankish, Greek, Aramaic. He had had tutors for these subjects, of course, Hungarian ones. But other than those and the silent guards, he saw few people, and certainly none of his own age or speaking his own tongue. He had kept the language alive somehow in his memory, reciting the stories and songs of his childhood—silently, under his breath every evening. He had been forbidden to speak or sing them aloud.

  He'd done so at first to escape the crushing fear and loneliness of being a small boy taken far from everything he loved and knew, and imprisoned here. And then terrified out of his wits—after being beaten and shown slow death—an act of brutality that as an older, more logical man, he understood had been to ensure that the king of Hungary had a suitably cowed vassal. Instead, his spirit had been shaped by the experience into a secretive but fiercely resistant one. A spirit that sometimes indulged in cruel and wild fantasies of revenge, but more often just longed to be free.

  As for sanity . . . was he mad? Sometimes he wondered.

  As prisons went, his apartments had every luxury—except windows. There was a narrow arrow slit high up on the wall above the stair. From a certain angle, he could see the sky through it. Not direct sunlight, but daylight, and sometimes cold breezes wafted in from the outside world, strange in their scents, unfamiliar in their chill.

  By the age of twenty he had, to some extent, forgotten the world outside the walls. Not forgotten a desire for it, no, never! But forgotten the details of it. Books, for all that he loved them, were not the same. And Father Tedesco, his most frequent companion, was more inclined to talk of the glories of Heaven, than the glories of the world outside.

  Vlad heard someone outside the doors, and wondered if the old priest had come to visit him again.

  There was a faint clatter and the door swung gently open.

  It wasn't the elderly priest.

  It was a vision.

  An angel.

  Naturally she had come to save him from this hell.

  So why was he so afraid?

  The Southern Carpathian Mountains

  The hills echoed with the howling of the wolves. The slim, dark-complexioned man with the silver earrings did not appear to find that a worrisome thing. He slipped along the ghost of a trail as silently and as sure-footedly as a wolf himself. The full moon shone down casting spiky shadows on the pine-needle covered forest floor. The wyvern was just a slightly more spiky piece of darkness. Spiky darkness with red eyes that glowed like coals. Wyverns could shift their opalescent colors to match their surroundings. Here she did not have to.

  "So, old one. The blood moon time is coming. The signs say she will capture him," said the lithe man, looking warily at her.

  The wyvern nodded. "She will watch over him carefully. And she has killed many of our kind." It spoke his tongue. That was part of the magic gift of the creature. A small but vital part.

  "Blood calls. We must answer. We have a compact to honor. Blood to spill." His teeth flashed briefly at that.

  "You are too fond of blood, Angelo."

  He shrugged. "It is in my nature. My kind needs to see it flow. Life is just the song of the hunter and the hunted."

  "There is more to it than that," said the wyvern.

  "Not for us. Prey or predator, all part of the one or the other, and part of the same."

  The wyvern was a hunter herself, and understood the wolfish Angelo and his kin better than most. "But which one is the boy? Hunter or the hunted?"

  Angelo laughed humorlessly. "We will just have to see, won't we? And she considers all of us prey. Him more so than us."

  The old wyvern sighed. "True." She bowed her head. "Strike cleanly."

  Angelo drew his blade. It was an old, old knife, handed down from generation to generation. The flakes of razor-edged chert were still sharp. The magic would not allow metals to be used for this deed, the start to the renewing of the compact. It came from a time of stone, tooth and claw. "When have I ever done otherwise, old friend?" he said grimly. "It is the least I can do."

  Afterwards he gathered the blood, and cradled his burden, cut from the creature's belly. The wyvern was one of the old ones, a creature woven of magics, not designed by nature. There was no other way to get her egg out. The wyvern had to die so that the new ones could be born. And the young wyverns were needed, if the old oath was to be renewed.

  Blood must flow. It was all in the blood.

  The wolves howled as he walked the trail back towards the tents. Angelo howled in reply. By morning they must all be gone. They were not welcome here any more. The local residents did not approve of the gypsies. Angelo found that funny. They were not the recent incomers, traveling people from the south, barely in these lands for a few centuries. They had roved this land for always and always. But the "gypsies" were a good cover. The old ones had adopted some of their ways, just as real gypsies had taken on some of the ways of the pack.

  Well, it should be a year before they came back to this part of their land, in the normal course of events. Of course this year might be different. Angelo stalked out of the woods and slipped past a neat farmstead as silently as he'd come. Somehow, the dogs chained there still barked. It was, he supposed, inevitable that they would know he was near. Dogs did. It was an old kinship, even if they were estranged now.

  Instinctively, Angelo surveyed the property. The hen-coop beckoned, but he had more important things to do than harvest it. The camp must be broken, and that took time; time they could not spare. They must be miles away before dawn. The evil old woman had her creatures too. They would bring her word that the old wyvern was dead. She'd been investigating the subject of the Dragon's blood, and word got around.

  The settled ones deemed this their property and the "gypsies" to be trespassers and something of a nuisance. Amusingly enough, that was just how Angelo and his clan regarded the settlers. A nuisance that was cluttering up part of their ancient hunting range. The settlers were too numerous to eliminate, but the tribe made up for it as well as possible by preying on them, as wise predators do, not too much or too often. That way prey went on being prey, and available.

  * * *

  Gatu Orkhan stared narrow-ey
ed at General Nogay. "I will need more gold. Much more."

  "I have been told that this can be provided," said Nogay. "But gold, Orkhan, is not all we need."

  Nogay knew his master to be a weak reed. A good fighter, true. A general who had used his forces well, carefully pitting them against foes he could beat. But while he might have blood of khans in his veins, he lacked that which made men love him.

  Lithuanian gold from across the northern border, gold landed in secret on the beaches to the east, had helped. But thanks to the legacy of Ulaghchi Khan, the clans—especially the traditionalists such as the powerful Hawk clan—frowned on ostentation, away from feasts and weddings.

  "Yes. We will need more magics," said Gatu, misunderstanding him.

  Nogay contained his sigh. He was no magic worker. No shaman who could move through other realms. He had simply used some simple spells provided by his northern paymaster, Grand Duke Jagiellon. The spells required certain rigid conditions—clear sight of the victim, and items of the victim's essence—hair, nail clippings, skin. He'd killed for his master before, with these tools. And he'd been very careful to make sure that he had some hair from Gatu, and he disposed of his own hair and nail-clippings in the fire.

  PART I

  July, 1540 A.D.

  Chapter 1

  Sitting back in his chair in his office in the Castel a Terra of the Citadel of Corfu, Benito Valdosta raised his eyebrows. "And you want me to come out to your estate for some hunting but not to tell anyone. Guiliano, how stupid do you think I am?"

  Guiliano Lozza had begun to acquire a little layer of comfortable plumpness again that had made the recruits in Venetian Corfiote irregulars call him Loukoumia. Marriage to Thalia, and with a babe on the way, had eased some of the bitter lines that the murder of his wife and child had brought to the face of the former guerilla-captain. Guiliano had turned down offer of the job of Captain-General of the island without a second thought. He was more interested in his olives, his grapes and the possibility of a pack of plump children to spoil. It would be easy for a fool to forget that the Loukoumia was a master swordsman and strategist.