The Queen of Wolves

by Douglas Clegg

  “When? Next year?” I asked.

  “Many years. But a short time in...in your existence.”

  “When you are dead, will it heal on its own? Will the plagues that have ravaged this world also fade? Will the frozen seas thaw?”

  She closed her eyes. “Our son would see life. Does that mean nothing to you?”

  “What of my other children? My friends? Our tribe? We would hide for years and let them suffer? What of the darkness that will come to the earth if you are wrong? Your child will be enslaved to such priests as the Myrrydanai.”

  “You do not understand her power. She needs you there, for she draws power from you. Do you not understand? She draws her own breath from yours. If we fight her—we are lost.”

  I touched her shoulder gently and looked into her eyes, as if trying to find the Pythoness who had once shown no fear.

  “You will extinguish,” she said.

  I turned away from her.

  “We need to raise an army,” I said. “Tonight. Soon, for they will not resurrect fully for three nights. I need at least a hundred warriors with us. I will not abandon those I have promised to rescue.”

  6

  We reached the mountain ledge that overlooked the battlefield. The roar of the warriors was like the howling of jackals on the hunt. I saw the trails marked by the rising dust where they had retreated, and another line of men had advanced. Siege engines burned along the dusky plain. Huge gouges had been taken out of the fortress’s heavy walls from the trebuchet’s onslaught. Fires were lit among the tents and town at the shore. The Saracens sent showers of burning arrows down into the Crusaders’ midst, while the soldiers of my country rattled their shields and threw spears at the enemy who had come on horseback from towns beyond the fortress to slice sword and ax into the invaders’ flesh.

  “Do not take great risks,” I told Pythia. “Be cautious. Only approach those who have fallen. If a man draws his weapon, leave him. But find as many strong men as you can, and make them vow to serve us before you give the Sacred Kiss. Not all will take the oath, but many will. These men love war.”

  7

  The constant sounds of horn and hew and the endless battle cries arose like calls from Death herself. The dust rose along the darkling plain as a thousand men or more raced toward the walls of the battered citadel.

  Thirteen horsemen led the most recent charge—knights of England—and behind them, those servant-soldiers who had dedicated their lives to the recapture of Jerusalem, to the hands of Heaven itself, and to the spoils of war promised by their masters. A storm of arrows flew from their outer flanks, many of them breaching the sand-colored walls, while the sky seemed to rain with fire as their enemy—the Saracens, as my people had called them—poured oil and lobbed burning bundles over the towers upon the aggressor below. Their allies had drawn off the invaders at the north and south, and were driving them back to the sea, a journey of many miles.

  The spears raised, the battering ram held high as shielded men ran with it to the chaste gates of the Saracen stronghold. Horses keened terrible sounds as they were struck down, and many knights fell as arrows and great stones from the walls themselves rained down on them. The fury of the soldiers quickened, and I could sense the white-hot fire in their hearts as the swords clashed and horns blew.

  A new Saracen army of thirty or more came around from the north on horseback to attack those who laid siege to their city. Mortal courage was great that night, and the slaughter seemed equal to both sides. A standard-bearer led the charge to the city gates, and the remaining siege machines were run by dozens of men pushing them hard into position, even while their enemies shot arrows into their midst and hacked at those who guarded them.

  Fires brightened the city walls, and from these heights, burning logs dropped down upon the soldiers below who had begun ramming the gate to the city. A man caught fire and ran through the midst of the others, his final cries fading as he fell to the earth.

  The siege engines groaned as they released their cargo—great fallen slabs and burning bundles, some of them clearing the high wall, others slamming into the stone and falling down upon the soldiers whose army had sent the missives.

  I saw the great leader of the Crusaders—a man in a muddied white robe beneath which a white tunic carried the long cross of crimson. His shield took much battering as he drove his horse against the tide of the oncoming Saracen. His dark horse, shot with arrows, still pushed through the slashing of sword and spear and ax, and did not fall.

  The general on horseback—a prince, no doubt—slammed his shield against the heads of some men, while thrusting his blade into others. Those closest to him, on foot and on horse, proved themselves brave and able men as they fought the impossible odds of this terrible fight.

  Many went down to the earth, their limbs shorn from their bodies; many retreated, deserting the others. But there were those whose swords glimmered like stars in the night, who raised torch and weapon against the Saracen lord whose army poured forth from the broken gates, pushing back the invaders. Fires had broken out from the siege engines, and many boys and men lost their lives to an idea of conquest that would bring no victory.

  8

  Pythia turned to me, excitement in her tone. “Do you smell it? Ah, blood, it is so wonderful. The flow is sweet, and smells of springtime. Hundreds lie there in death throes!”

  How could I be so enthralled by such a creature? The moments of warmth and affection we shared in private did not seem to have changed her love for the blood sport. Yet I would be a hypocrite not to understand this, for the scent of fresh mortal blood brought a thrill beneath my skin, as well; yet her unabashed excitement filled me with dread for our tribe. Blood was good, and it truly was sweet. While I could cling to my mortal memories, in which I would be repelled by such thoughts, the raw animal of vampyre in me longed for the taste of newly torn flesh and its liquid bounty.

  She pointed to the scene below us, to a clutch of warriors who lay together, victims of arrows shot from the yellow towers.

  Through the dark and smoke, I saw soldiers, and horses—and the knights who had failed in their siege—all lying amidst the wreckage of wagons and shields and swords and spears—many of them gone to the threshold of Death, but some still breathing.

  Among them, the strippers—young boys of eleven or twelve—who skittered among the dead, gathering weapons and armor from those who no longer needed them. Now and then, an arrow would sing through the air, and catch one of the boys as he lifted shield or ax—the Saracens did not wish for the invader to recover weapons for the next onslaught of fighting.

  I did not love watching this carnage, for it reminded me too much of the battles I had fought—watching my own brother be cut down for the vanity of the knights on horseback, many of whom could ride away to their camp when retreat was necessary—but not so for the foot soldiers, who often would be mowed down.

  Pythia stood upon the ledge and stretched her arms up to the sky. “Perhaps I am mortal, but I feel the power of our tribe in me. It has been too long since I have been able to hunt like this!” Her wings spread out, narrower and bonier than mine—they had thinned a bit since mortality had overtaken her flesh. The wings seemed made of fine dark silk, taut against the arch of bone that held them aloft.

  She crouched again as if ready to swoop from the crag into the valley, but glanced back at me. “I want a young one. One like you when you came to me. Beautiful and fierce. I want him to struggle against my jaws. I want to feel that again—that love. That taste.”

  “Go down there now, and you’re dead,” I warned her. “We must wait until they have given up for the night. Only then do we seek the dying from among the bodies. It’s one thing to grab a lone traveler, or a laundress carrying her bundle before dawn. But there, you will surely be slaughtered.”

  Pythia had not quite grasped mortality. To know a vampyre with full powers, with the ability to spread the great dark wings, to grow sharp teeth at the moment when touching
the throat’s flesh, and to bring the greatest of vampyric gifts to the mortal—the Sacred Kiss—and yet, still to be subject to mortal death—this seemed to go against every law of our tribe she had known. She had spent years invincible to harm, and now—the Gorgon Mask upon her face, leaching out her immortal essence—she might be killed. An infection might send her to a slow, painful death. Yet, she still had vampyric energy within her, and she still craved blood, and would only survive upon its flow.

  “Then go grab me the most beautiful youth,” she said, surveying the men far below. Could she see them, individually? For her remaining powers would still be stronger than mine. “A French boy. With yellow hair. A servant-soldier, perhaps, but one with blood upon him from the many he has slain.”

  “Like me,” I said, “When I was in a valley like this one, not more than an hour’s flight from here—fighting to the death.”

  “Like you. Look!” she cried out, pointing into the distance as a rabble of soldiers took down a great Saracen lord and his horse and swarmed over him like locusts after grain.

  I sat upon my haunches along the distant mountains, a demon watching the folly of mortal men. “When you have passed the breath to your intended,” I said, “raise him up and bring him to these caves, for they must be prepared for their first night as vampyre.”

  “I am not new to this.” She grinned at me, and her mask seemed a great blank of flat yellow rock. “I have brought many to our tribe. We will give them a bed within the dark and bring them mortal vessels to drink on their first rising.”

  After several hours, when many fires had died, and many men had fallen; when the horns at the gates sounded, and the Saracens withdrew; when the rallying cries of the Crusaders had gone mute, and the dead outnumbered the living, the remaining knights gathered their soldiers and returned to their camps, leaving behind their dead and those who were left for dead; after all this, with but four hours until sunrise, we leapt from the mountainside, and like the death-birds themselves, circled the dying below.

  9

  Avoiding the strippers who ran about, quietly drawing off armor, lifting shields, grabbing poleaxes, I crouched down among the men whose legs had been torn from them, and those whose faces had been battered in by cudgels and axes, and skulked along the periphery of the dead, listening for the sound of life. As I drew close to a fallen knight, his helmet drawn off his head and most of his armor already stolen, I saw that small bubbles of blood moved from his lips. His own men had left him for dead, and he lay there in mail and a tunic, even his shoes taken from him.

  I tore off a bit of cloth from my shirt and wiped his lips clear of blood. I pressed my head near his mouth and heard steady but troubled breathing.

  “Can you hear me, sir?” I asked him. I did not see a response in his eyes, which stared up at the stars. I took his hand in mine and squeezed. He squeezed back, lightly at first, and then with some strength.

  I brought my lips near his left ear, and whispered, “You are near death. But you may live again, if you desire. If you would become a creature as I am—a vampyre, you would regain your strength, although blood would be your sustenance, and you would be hunted my mortal men. I will save you if you swear an oath of loyalty to me. Squeeze my fingers if you will follow me. Let your hand go limp if you would rather die.”

  Even as I spoke these words, I thought of the torments of my existence, and was certain this knight—a man of holy orders, perhaps—would accept his death.

  But I felt his tugging at my hand, and he gripped it so tightly that I winced.

  “I must drink from you first,” I said. “Then I will breathe immortality into your lungs.” Swiftly, I leaned into the wounds at his side and drank of him.

  Afterward, I pressed my mouth over his, and as I did so, he began to fight me, but with little strength left to him. I felt him squirm and try to close his mouth against mine, but the Sacred Kiss was too strong, and he could only yield to it. The burning breath poured down his throat, and as I let him go, his body went limp.

  I lifted the man up, spread my wings again, and rose into the darkness, unseen by the mortals below, save for one stripping boy, who cried out and called, “Devils! Devils!” as he saw me. He went running back to the distant camp, dropping what he had gathered as he went.

  I found many of these dying warriors within the next few hours, and each of them swore loyalty to me. I had not expected so many of them to wish for vampyrism, for I saw none of the advantages of this existence, only its curse and burden. Yet these men gladly wished for eternal youth, and immortal life, over their fear of the touch of death.

  Pythia, too, had brought several corpses to the caves high in the mountain peak. An arrow had singed her shoulder, and I grew worried for her safety—but she told me she felt stronger for the passing of the Sacred Kiss. “I did not think I could carry one of them, but bringing the breath up from my soul, I felt that surge of power I thought I had lost when my immortality passed. Then that resistance. It is as if Death herself is nearby, furious at me for bringing the dying back to this world.”

  We placed the bodies as far back from the cave’s mouth as we could, and although we did not gather one hundred men on that first night, still, I counted nearly fifty before dawn.

  The following night, again, we waited until the last of the battle was through, and again, the Crusaders had been fought back to the sea, leaving their dead and those believed dead along the dusty roads and plain.

  10

  Out of concern for the Saracen arrows, I accompanied Pythia the second night. Eagerly, she went to those who still had breath in them. We found two friends clasping each other’s shoulders as if wishing to enter the next world together. Both still breathed—one had open wounds upon his chest and legs, and the other had been stabbed in the ribs, the broken spear still stuck in his side.

  As she leaned over one of them, whispering of oaths and immortality, I noticed that the pouch hung low at her waist. I reached over and stealthily drew the small globe from it. She did not notice, and I held the orb up, feeling its pulse in my hand.

  It was a living rock, shiny as obsidian.

  Alive, in my hand. A pulse.

  Beyond this pulse, I felt a tingling sensation at my wrist. This shot upward along my arm and elbow, and became a kind of burning along my shoulder as it moved in a lightning bolt toward my throat. I gasped, trying to cry out, but I barely made a sound. I felt the Earth spin around me, as if my mind had been thrown into a whirlwind. I dropped to my knees from nausea and the force of the burning at my throat and along my jaw.

  A strange light that was another blackness—as if a lantern of night itself, cast upon the night—came from the orb. It was as if light were reversed to darkness, yet still illuminating the path of its beam.

  In dark light, I saw strange figures moving among the dead, which had not been there before. These phantoms were robed in white, and at their center was a child, a little girl, with a blindfold upon her face. The women with her guided her among the bodies of the dead. I noticed that each of them held an object that was very much like the orb I also held.

  Suddenly, one of the robed women turned her head and looked directly at me.

  She was a ghostly image against that strange blackness that projected outward from the orb. It was as if I had startled a doe in the woods, for she gave an impression of panic, yet she stood completely still as if she did not understand what threatened her. Her face was a blur, and I could not see features other than the general impression of eyes and mouth.

  She stepped out from among her companions and began to move toward me. She stepped over many bodies, although it was as if she floated upon them. The ghost came to me, her robes like a nun’s habit, but made from fabric of blurred white light.

  “You have something that belongs to me,” she said, her voice calm and sonorous, and were I mortal, I might have fallen into deep sleep from such a lulling tone.

  “Who are you? Are these your sisters who tend the dying a
nd sick? Why do you wander the field of the dead?”

  “You see me?” she asked, and even as she said this, I saw the contours of her eyes and brow and nose and lips more clearly. Her face was an oval of tan, as if she spent long hours in the fields, a laborer. Although she was young, she had a careworn look. Her robe began to show the stains of the blood from those she had tended on the battlefield.

  “What sisterhood are you?”

  One of her companions noticed us talking in that orb light and moved along the paths between the bodies until she reached us.

  “You have something that belongs to us,” the first woman said.

  “This?” I asked, turning the orb in my hand. “This is not yours. We brought it from across the sea.”

  “You’re an undead,” she said with some disgust. “This was stolen from my mistress’s home, long ago.”

  “Your mistress? Who is she?”

  She pointed to the child who, with blindfold on, leaned over and touched a dead man’s forehead as if she knew him.

  “Is the field of battle a place for children to play their games?”