Ancient blood (warhammer)

by Robert Earl

  Still, if her people needed medicine then medicine they would get. None would know by what grisly craft she manufactured her salves and medicines. They would assume that they were no more than the herbs, and the perfume the crone used to mask the smell of the other ingredients.

  Maria shifted the weight of her satchel again, and slowed as she approached the circled wagons of her caravan. Malfi had taken to setting his own guard, as well as the ones he had to provide for the perimeter, and she didn’t want to waste any time on him. Luckily, the man was huddled over his fire as closely as a hen sitting on an egg. His face was bent over the glow of burning peat and his arms were wrapped around it. Maria hardly even had to tiptoe to pass him unseen.

  When she was back in her wagon, she dropped the satchel onto the floor with a damp thud, lit a lantern, and lit a small stove to start boiling water. She had a long night ahead of her.

  She was bent over the pot, muttering to herself within the sanctity of her wagon, when the hairs suddenly pricked up on the back of her scrawny old neck. She whipped around, a knife in her hand, and then hissed with relief when she saw that it was only Chera.

  “Poppet,” she said, “what are you doing sneaking up like that?”

  “I’m too nervous about tomorrow to sleep,” Chera told her, no apology in her voice. She was staring at the grisly mess of entrails that Maria had been mixing into her potion.

  “What are you making, Maria?” she asked, the accusation in her voice all the more irritating because it had the right to be there.

  “Oh, just some medicine.”

  Chera’s face hardened, her eyes turning cold.

  “Those are human organs, aren’t they?”

  Maria grunted and turned away, but Chera was not to be so easily dismissed.

  “They are, aren’t they?” she said. “I recognise them.”

  Maria sighed and shrugged her bony shoulders. It was probably as well that the girl found out, anyway. She would have to make her own concoctions in the years ahead.

  “Yes, my love. Yes, they are.”

  Chera sat down uninvited on Maria’s bed, and gazed at the heap of revolting ingredients.

  Maria considered lying to soften the blow, but the time for that was over. After all, Chera would be a married woman tomorrow. It was time for her to start facing the realities of the world.

  So, instead of lying, Maria told her exactly which ingredients her art depended on.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “True love is as blind as a true musician is deaf.”

  – Strigany saying Brock shifted and savoured the smells of cooking that were wafting from the cooking fires into the amphitheatre. Roasting meat and baking cakes and the smell of hot mead thickened the air, the food from this evening feast ready for when the council ended.

  It was just the way that Brock and Petru Engel had planned it. The Kazarkhan’s best friends in a difficult council were the empty bellies of his opponents. After all, it was the Kazarkhan who decided how long the debate would continue. It was the Kazarkhan who decided when it would end, too, and as the last of the petrus filed into their seats he nodded to the elder who would call the meeting to order.

  The most ancient of petrus raised his hands, his liver-spotted fingers as steady as eagle’s claws.

  “My family,” he intoned, in a voice impossibly deep for such a frail chest, “soon we will feast, and give thanks to Ushoran for our victory, but first, it falls to us to discuss a matter of great urgency. Will you listen to your Kazarkhan as he explains it to us?”

  There was a chorus of assent, more muted than the cheers that had accompanied Brock’s elevation to Kazarkhan, but still loud enough to make the hairs rise on the back of his neck. The elder stepped back, eyes unreadable beneath his thick brows, and Brock stepped forward into the torchlight that lit the dusk. He studied the crowd for a moment and thought of what he had to say.

  Suddenly, he realised what was unusual about today’s gathering. The petrus, instead of jealously guarding the relatively uncrowded benches of their own stand, had spread out among the rest of the gathered people. Their black uniforms were scattered among the embroidered finery of the rest of the Strigany, like dark stars in a bright sky.

  Brock cleared his throat, took a deep breath, and spoke.

  “My brothers,” he began, “the last year has brought us many hardships, and many tragedies. We have been driven from our trade routes, hounded, murdered and pushed to the very brink of destruction. However, we are Strigany, and when we are pushed, we push back.”

  The crowd growled with approval, and Brock could see the sharp flashes of their vulpine smiles in the shadows.

  “Even though this year was hard, the next year will be worse. Every fool who wants to wear the Emperor’s crown will be upon us, trying to make a name for himself.”

  “Let them come!” a voice cried out, and there was a roar of approval. Brock waited, stony-faced, until it had quietened.

  “You think we will beat them? Yes, so do I. We will beat the first army, probably the second and maybe the third. After that, who will be left to bury our bones and the bones of our children?”

  There was silence, broken only by some muttering.

  “So what will we do?” one of Brock’s friends called out, just as he had been supposed to.

  “We can heed the words of our ancestors,” Brock said simply, “the words that are written on the axles of all of our wagons. We can return to our once and future land, to Mourkain.”

  He didn’t know what reaction he had expected to this announcement-derision, perhaps, uproar, certainly. What he hadn’t expected was the stillness, and the nods of agreement. He paused, nonplussed by the lack of argument, and then carried on.

  “It will be a hard path, but we are used to that,” Brock said. “There will be danger, too, but better danger than the certainty of destruction.”

  Still, there was no reply, just a low murmur of agreement, as soft as wind through a field of corn.

  “There are some who might say,” Brock continued, anticipating an argument that, it seemed, wouldn’t be made, “that Mourkain is no more than a ruin, and so it is. The land, however, is rich, and, although the walls of the city have fallen, the stone of which they were built will remain, cut and ready to be stacked again.”

  He waited, and again there wasn’t a single voice raised in disagreement.

  “Let us vote,” a voice barked out of the silence, and Brock realised that it was the voice of Petru Engel. He hesitated, and then, with a shrug, decided that the old man probably knew what he was talking about.

  “Very well,” Brock said. “Let us vote.”

  The elder, who had been waiting behind him as still as a shadow, stepped back to the front of the stage.

  “The Kazarkhan will lead us to Mourkain,” he said, his voice as heavy as the body at the end of a hangman’s noose. “Will we follow him?”

  As one voice, the Strigany spoke, their answer as spontaneous.

  “Yes,” they cried, one voice, one people.

  Where once that thought would have filled Brock with pride, now it sent some strange anxiety twisting through him. It was the same tingling sensation that he sometimes felt on the battlefield when an arrow was being aimed at him, or when an unseen blow sliced towards him.

  “Very well,” he said, ignoring the feeling, and trying to sound cheerful. “We are decided. Tomorrow we will make what plans need to be made for our new life. For now, for tonight, let us start the feasting, and think of nothing but the blessing that Ushoran has given us in the joy of our children.”

  This time, when the crowd responded, they did so with a rowdy conviction that made their earlier acquiescence all the more unsettling.

  Still, the decision was taken.

  Mourkain awaited them.

  Brock bowed to the elder, and then jumped down off the stage to greet the domnus who had gathered around to speak to him.

  It wasn’t until much, much later that he started
to wonder who, exactly, had made the decision that he and his people would return to Mourkain.

  By that time, of course, it was too late. “So you’re not nervous then?” Mihai asked for the dozenth time that morning. Dannie didn’t say anything. He merely ran his finger around the collar of his tunic. In the rush to leave, he hadn’t had time to get a proper wedding tunic, so this was one of his old ones, quickly washed and freshly mended. Now, as Dannie sat around this fateful morning’s breakfast fire with his friends, the garment felt too heavy, too restrictive.

  “Why should he be nervous?” Boris added, enjoying the sight of Dannie’s anxiety almost as much as Mihai was. “After all, he isn’t the only one getting married today. It isn’t as if all those thousands of people gathered in the amphitheatre are going to be staring at him alone.”

  “Unless,” Bran mused, looking up from the pot of porridge he was stirring, “he does something stupid, like slips on the matting, for instance.”

  “Or forgets his lines,” his brother said, nodding.

  “Or,” said Mihai, not to be outdone, “finds that his bride has decided not to turn up after all.”

  Dannie, who felt like throwing up, pinched the top of his nose between his forefinger and thumb, and decided to change the subject.

  “It will all be over by midday anyway,” he said, “and we will be on our way to Mourkain.”

  “Mourkain,” Mihai said. “I still can’t quite believe it.”

  “What else is there?” Dannie asked. “It isn’t just that the time is right, but what else is left for us? This?”

  He waved vaguely towards the mosquito-ridden bog that stretched away in all directions. His friends stared silently into the fire, lost in their thoughts as they waited for the porridge to boil. Since the battle they had been on ever-shortening rations, and well-cooked porridge made the difference between a day spent hungry and a day spent downright starving, and the journey hadn’t even begun.

  “You’re right,” Boris said. “If we did go back to the Empire, it would be one, long battle. Things were bad enough then.”

  Dannie nodded, although he would happily have faced any battle rather than the terrifying ordeal that lay ahead of him today.

  “Mourkain.” Mihai repeated the name again, rolling it around his tongue as if to get the taste of it. “The petru showed me a map. It’s at the very bottom of the world. Then there are the mountains and the deserts. There are also big white patches that could be anything.”

  “Sounds good,” Boris said, smiling. “Think of all the opportunities there, all the loot!”

  “All the monsters,” Bran said.

  “And the work,” Dannie added.

  “Hearken to you,” Mihai said. “It’s almost as though you aren’t looking forward to it.”

  The twins shrugged in unison, and Dannie still looked thoughtful, even as he started to ladle the porridge into bowls.

  “Things will be very different, certainly,” he said, passing the bowls around.

  “Ah yes,” Mihai said, nodding sagely, “you’ll be a married man.”

  “Unless he makes a mess of repeating his vows,” Boris said.

  “Why would he do that?” Bran asked his brother. “After all, if he has the nerve to get married in front of so many people, why would he go and forget his lines? That hardly ever happens. Although, there was that time in Kleiford. Remember that one? When the father-in-law thought that the groom was taking the rise out of his daughter.”

  “How they fought!” Boris said, nodding at the happy memory.

  “What I meant,” Dannie said, “is that we’ll have to do things differently. The petru says we’ll have to start working the land, and become farmers.”

  “To the hells with that,” Mihai said. “You can paddle about in the mud if you want. I’m going to trade.”

  “With who?” Dannie asked him.

  “Whoever. Anyway, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Just imagine, though, whoever we find, they won’t have done business with Strigany before. They won’t know what hit them.”

  “If there are people to trade with,” Boris muttered, with all the rock-solid assurance of the true pessimist.

  “Then, instead of trade there will be plunder,” Mihai decided.

  The four of them had gone on to debating the difference between growing corn and raising sheep, and they were still arguing, when, amidst the bustle of a thousand wagons being prepared for the journey, the time came for the ceremony. Brock stood on the platform that had been built in the amphitheatre. He was wearing the same embroidered tunic that he had worn on the night when he had become Kazarkhan, and, as if he needed a further reminder of that brutal night, the elder who had officiated at the selection process was also officiating at today’s marriage ceremony.

  Many couples had chosen this festival day to take their vows, and they waited together in the afternoon sunshine. Brock had never seen so many couples married at once, but then, things had changed. The chaos of the flight to the south, and the carnage of the subsequent battle, had melted away much of the polite hesitation and endless calculation that usually preceded a Strigany marriage. It had obviously washed away a lot of the old taboos, too. More than one bride was already fat-bellied, and, although the petrus were forever grumbling about the slipping morality of the younger generation, Brock was glad to see it.

  What better defiance was there to the annihilation they had faced than this evidence of new life? And what better antidote to the hatred that had driven that attempt than this evidence of love?

  Or if not love, he thought wryly, at least something approximating it.

  As the brides and grooms filed into the amphitheatre, and lined up next to each other, Brock smiled, thinking back to the pursuits of his younger days. There had been many an adventure before he had found Isolde, his one and only wife. What a woman she had been, and what a tragedy it was that Mihai had never met her.

  The Kazarkhan shook off these morbid thoughts as the musicians struck up, and the couples started the slow, complex dance that marked the beginning of the ceremony. Their feet moved in carefully rehearsed rhythms, and the beat of the tune was first matched, and then drowned out, by the thunderous claps of the audience.

  The Kazarkhan joined in, smacking his palms together with the perfect rhythm. If ever proof was needed that his people were one, it came in festivals like this, where old and young, male and female, and saint and sinner joined together in one, eternal whole.

  Eventually, as the dance slowly came to its conclusion, winding down like the workings of some mechanical timepiece, the elder raised one bony claw. The music stopped and the men and women fell back into line. The elder beckoned the first of them, and Brock saw with the joy of a man who thinks he has spotted a good omen that the first to be married were Dannie and Chera.

  Then, as they stepped forward, Brock caught sight of the ravaged skin of Chera’s face, and he frowned. Realising that others could see him, he smiled instead, and hoped that the surprise at the condition of her skin didn’t show in his eyes as the elder stepped forward to bless them.

  “What are your names?” the old man asked them, looming down from the platform with all the angular severity of a hanging judge.

  “Dannie Hortenza,” Dannie said, goggling up at the elder, and swallowing a lump in his throat that felt as big as a fist.

  “Chera Malfi,” the girl said, clutching at her groom’s hand as if afraid that the ground was about to open beneath her feet.

  “Dannie Hortenza and Chera Malfi are about to be wed,” the elder boomed, to nobody in particular. “Does anybody object?”

  The amphitheatre fell as silent as an auction house when the bidding gets too high. Dannie and Chera turned to smile reassuringly at each other as the elder took the ceremonial knife and chalice that were handed to him.

  Before he could continue, however, a single, shrill voice cut through the silence of the amphitheatre.

  Everybody froze, including the eld
er. Then the voice came again, and all heads turned to see who had spoken. When they saw, nervous laughter rippled around the amphitheatre.

  The raven whose voice they had heard sat perched on one of the railings, looking curiously around at the gathering. It opened its mouth to craw again, but, before it could, somebody threw a boot at it and, with an angry squawk, it fluttered away.

  The elder pursed his lips, shrugged, and then turned back to Dannie and Chera. “For Ushoran’s blessing,” he intoned, and, as the two offered their hands, he expertly whipped the tip of the blade across the pads of their thumbs. It was neatly done, deep enough to draw a few drops of blood, but no deeper, and he held out the chalice to receive their offering.

  “In Ushoran’s name, I pronounce thee man and wife,” he cried, and the deathly silence was replaced by a howl of approval from the assembled Strigany. Brock grinned, as widely as the groom, and, the ceremony complete, stepped forward to slap Dannie on the back, and shake Chera’s hand.

  “My blessing too,” he said.

  As the next couple stepped up to be wed, he was happy to see that, raven or no, Dannie and his bride only had eyes for each other.

  Quite right too, Brock told himself. After all, this superstitious nonsense was nothing but silliness for bored old women.

  Even so, as more ravens gathered to perch on the top of the walls that contained the amphitheatre, he couldn’t help looking nervously up at them from time to time. At first, there were a dozen, and then a score. As proceedings dragged on, the black-clad visitors assembled in their hundreds. They sat around the back wall of the amphitheatre, unseen by most of the people, who were squashed into the seats below.

  Only the petrus seemed to notice them, occasionally flashing furtive glances up towards the birds, as cautiously as debtors who have spotted a bailiff.

  As Brock shook hands with the next couple, he had a sudden feeling of absolute relief that they were leaving this terrible place.

  Whatever awaited them on the road, it couldn’t be worse than what had happened to them in Flintmar.