Dark Ages Clan Novel Ventrue: Book 12 of the Dark Ages Clan Novel Saga

by Matthew McFarland

  The man bit open his own wrist and lowered it to Jürgen’s mouth. Drink, he said.

  Jürgen’s lips opened. The blood would save him. The blood would save him from the cold, from the pain, the blood would bring back his brother.

  Jürgen’s eyes met the man’s. The man’s eyes were blue.

  The man was a fiend. His eyes were blue, like Jürgen’s. Jürgen was staring into his own eyes. Whose eyes was he using?

  Jürgen screamed in rage and leapt for the man’s throat. No longer was he wearing Geidas’s frail, mortal body but his own, fully armored form. He knocked the horseman to the ground, then lashed out in rage. His fist connected with the horse’s neck and the animal fell dead.

  “What kind of coward sires a helpless boy?” Jürgen stared down at the man, whose form seemed to be shrinking. “What kind of Cainite places such a weakling in charge of any domain?” The man’s armor disappeared, and Geidas’s robes faded into view. The man’s eyes changed from blue ice to dead leaves. Jürgen bit his wrist and grabbed Geidas by the back of the neck. “Drink.”

  The snow vanished, and brown leaves began to swirl around them. A savage howl echoed from the woods, and Jürgen glanced upwards. Geidas vanished from under him.

  Jürgen looked around carefully. He was still himself; he had evidently not fallen into another of Geidas’s memories. The forest around him was familiar; the trees were not the same blackened, foreboding things of the eastern forests, but the majestic spires of his homeland. Indeed, in the distance he could see the city of Magdeburg. He began to walk towards it, looking forward to Akuji’s stories and Wiftet’s jests, not to mention—

  A scent of roses came up around him, and he stopped. Without thinking, he grabbed for the cross around his neck and the moon was covered in shadow. The night became black as pitch and the howl he had heard before sounded again, this time joined by several others. Lupines, thought Jürgen, and his Beast spoke up in fear, telling him to run for the city, run until his knights could hear him, he was no match for the wolf-men.

  Jürgen took two steps, and then stopped. He heard panting in the brush, and the trees rustled as though something very large walked between them. He fought the urge to run, for he knew that wolves would chase anyone that fled from them. Instead, he approached.

  Jürgen had never seen a Lupine before, only heard tales of their ferocity. And yet, he knew that the creature he saw as he stepped from the path into the forest was a werewolf. It was an immense, black-furred thing, standing on two legs and towering over Jürgen. It had hands like a man’s but they ended in dagger-like claws, so unlike a wolf’s that any doubt about these creatures’ demonic origins faded from his mind.

  And yet… Jürgen saw a nobility in the beast. It was obviously powerful, and its eyes showed intelligence; this creature had once been a man. It had brown, thoughtful eyes.

  Eyes the color of dead leaves.

  Jürgen took a step back. The werewolf followed him. Jürgen desperately looked to the trees, and found they had turned from the German forests to the cursed place that he had come to conquer. The werewolf raised a claw and snarled; Jürgen stood fast. The creature’s vicious paw flashed downwards with a speed that any Cainite would envy. Jürgen tried to dodge, but the claw caught him across the midsection and sent him sprawling. He crashed against a tree and saw more wolves emerging from the woods, all with the same eyes, all bearing down on him.

  The lead wolf, now less like a man and more like a beast, raced at him on all fours and sprang, and Jürgen reached up and caught it by the throat. He slammed it into the ground, tearing off a strip of its flesh, and was rewarded by a jet of blood against his chest. Such strength in that blood, he thought. If I am to best them all, I’ll need to drink.

  His hand found the cross again, and he forced his gaze up into the wolf’s eyes. “Coward,” he said. “The beasts of the forests are for the low-blooded to control, and yet you attack me in their form like a base Gangrel. Very well.” If this was Geidas’s memory, Jürgen reasoned, it must be a frightening one. Jürgen stood, and the other wolves circled him, snarling. “If they are wolves and men both, then let their man-halves serve me as their wolf-halves serve you. Which do you think is stronger?” With that, Jürgen became the leader, the warlord, the Sword-Bearer, and called out to his new followers.

  And the wolves answered.

  They leapt upon the Geidas-wolf, tearing at him, pulling the fur from his body and then the flesh. Jürgen stood above him and cut his wrist, and shouted to the hapless abomination beneath him. “Submit, and I shall call them off. Drink.”

  The Geidas-wolf fought its way to its feet and reached for Jürgen’s wrist, desperately, as the wolves worried at his legs and ribs. His face ran like water and became Geidas’s. His lips trembled as he reached for the drops of blood on Jürgen’s hand….

  And then the forest erupted in fire.

  Chapter Twenty

  Geidas’s body burned away in seconds, but Jürgen found himself standing on a island in the midst of a sea of red fire. The ground cracked and shook, and geysers of hot magma erupted from below. Is this a memory? Jürgen thought in horror. It can’t possibly be. When would any Cainite have seen this and not gone mad or been destroyed?

  Jürgen’s armor began to melt. He fell to his knees in pain, and saw the rider coming towards him again, the same figure, the same eyes, riding to him across the lake of fire. He’s coming to make me drink, and how shall I resist this time? Jürgen’s Beast concurred, begging him to drink, to submit, anything was preferable to death in the fires, Gotzon would understand, anything was better than this Hell….

  Gotzon has seen Hell, thought Jürgen. He snapped his head up and saw the man before him, slitting his wrist, ready to offer it to Jürgen and demand that he drink. Jürgen grabbed his cross and remembered.

  The scene faded. The heat dissipated, replace by the cool of Jürgen’s mortal home in spring. Two men sat before him. Gotzon, a quiet figure in black, his eyes black as the Elbe at night, regarded him with a look that bordered on hopeful. Hardestadt, dressed in finery as befit a warrior-prince, stared at him with eyes that…

  Those were not Hardestadt’s eyes. His sire had blue eyes. This man’s eyes were dead leaves.

  Jürgen sat before the men, unsuspecting, a warrior and soldier entertaining distinguished guests.

  “We have not told you our true names or purposes, Lord Jürgen,” said Gotzon. “We are here for your life.” He said it so casually that Jürgen thought he was joking, and chuckled.

  Hardestadt spoke, and his tone made it quite clear that this was a serious discussion. “Lord Jürgen, we are offering you a choice.” He bared his fangs, and Jürgen gasped. “We are not living men, and have not been such in many centuries. At times, beings like ourselves—”

  “The damned,” murmured Gotzon.

  “—wish for childer, and seek out those worthy.”

  Jürgen knew that he should feel afraid. Instead, he puffed up with pride.

  “We are here to offer you eternity to do with as you wish, within certain restrictions. But your choice is this: the cross or the crown?”

  With that, the two Cainites fell silent, and Jürgen stared at them. He remembered that there was once more to this conversation, but it was buried so deeply in his mind that not even Geidas’s probing could recall it.

  Jürgen remembered his words well enough, though.

  “God knows and directs all things, or so I am told. If it is God’s will that I become what you are, then I shall. If God is offering me this choice through you, then I shall make it, and do God’s bidding.”

  Gotzon smiled, just as Jürgen remembered.

  “But I choose the crown. I choose to do God’s work as a soldier, a leader and a king, not as a priest. I cannot convey God’s word, I can only enforce it, and I cannot labor under the strictures that God has seen fit to set for His Church.”

  Hardestadt stood, just as Jürgen remembered, and shot his companion a glance. The sh
adows in the room fled as Gotzon stood, and Jürgen saw the Lasombra’s fist clench. The shadows gathered around his feet, fawning like whipped dogs, and Gotzon turned away from his would-be childe.

  Hardestadt’s fangs met Jürgen’s neck. Jürgen died, his body cold, and Hardestadt pressed his bleeding wrist to Jürgen’s mouth. His eyes—still dead leaves—looked down on Lord Jürgen as he drank.

  Gotzon grabbed Hardestadt and threw him through the wall. Jürgen smiled, and stood.

  Gotzon’s eyes changed from deep black to dead leaves. The shadows fell away and the Lasombra howled in rage.

  “You are an idiot, Geidas,” asserted Jürgen. “You are transparent. You are a child. Now drink.” Jürgen reached to cut his own wrist, but Geidas fled through the ruined wall.

  Jürgen followed. He knew where Gotzon had gone that night, and the scene hadn’t faded. He followed Gotzon’s fleeing form into darkness, followed it to the tiny shrine on the hill. He found Geidas-Gotzon kneeling before it, still lost in Jürgen’s memories.

  He knelt beside Gotzon. The Lasombra’s impassive face was taking on more of Geidas’s young features every second. The black clothing was fading away to Geidas’s robes, and yet the Tzimisce could only kneel and recite the Lord’s Prayer. “Think of it as a first communion, Geidas,” said Jürgen. He cut his wrist and lifted it to Geidas’s lips.

  This time, it was the sky that answered.

  A lightning bolt lanced down and shattered the cross that they knelt before. The rain began a split second later, so hard that it completely obscured Jürgen’s view of Geidas. Jürgen looked down and found himself on a riverbank. Before him, the dark rider, Geidas’s sire, stood on top of the water. The waves rose up around him, but parted before touching him. Jürgen noted with fascination that even the raindrops moved to avoid him.

  “You cannot win this fight, Jürgen.”

  “No?”

  “I will not let you.”

  “Then you have broken the rules of the duel.” Jürgen took a step towards him, but the rain only drove harder.

  The man nodded. “I have, but my childe has not. He loses no honor. And besides, you won’t remember this after you drink of his blood.”

  “I have no intention of losing,” said Jürgen. “You might act through your childe, but even you cannot break me. I did not come here to return a flesh-crafter’s lapdog.”

  “You came here to steal, Sword-Bearer. You came to here to behold the dust of Alexander of Paris on the forest leaves, to sigh in relief that he won’t be returning. Why didn’t you kill him yourself? Why did you send him to his death? Surely your Tremere lickspittles knew about their stupid Telyav cousins.”

  Jürgen smiled. “But it wasn’t the Telyavs that killed Alexander. I learned as much from Jervais. So what did kill him? I don’t trust you to tell me; you have no respect for honor.”

  The man nodded. “You can’t shame me that way, Sword-Bearer. My ethics lie elsewhere than shame.”

  Jürgen smiled, and shifted his eyes for a split second.

  He saw the room, saw the cups, saw Jovirdas, saw that Geidas’s hands were now at his sides. He saw that the cup of his blood was perhaps a half-inch closer to Geidas. He saw Geidas’s eyes, and bore down again. “Drink,” he said, and he was once again in his opponent’s mind.

  But now, Geidas’s eyes were not his own. Whoever his sire was, the fiend was taking greater control of the childe. If Jürgen was to win the duel, he would have to best them both—and although Geidas might actually be further from Caine than Jürgen, his sire’s assistance more than made up the difference. His Beast, roused into wakefulness by this violation of honor, cried out for blood and domination. Jürgen inwardly promised that it would have its chance.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Jürgen kept his mind moving from one topic to the next, and the scene around him flowed like quicksilver, sluicing across his field of vision and reforming every few seconds. While the effort was exhausting, it was the only way to keep his opponent—opponents, actually—off balance long enough to strike. The cascade of images flowed and ebbed before him, showing him fragments of whatever memories came to mind…

  …learning that Norbert von Xanten, the former Archbishop of Magdeburg, had joined the ranks of the undead under Clan Lasombra and wished to take the city from Jürgen…

  …seeing Rosamund for the first time, presiding over his court at Magdeburg, the beautiful woman bearing a gift for him, how could he have stupid enough to think that the gift was a forgery, to buy into Tremere trickery?…

  …the day so many decades ago when he won his first battle, took his first woman, killed his first man, the scent of blood on his fists and his blade, the screams of the dying, the grim faces of those who walked the battlefield to administer last rites and mercy killings…

  …the night that he killed his first undead opponent, not in battle but in self-defense, the Cainite’s rage loosed on Jürgen for some reason he did not know, nor would ever know, now that the vampire was long dust…

  …the hatred he bore for Vladimir Rustovitch, the sight of the voivode of voivode’s forces emerging from the trees, his reliance on sorcery instead of tactics, and the compromise with Vykos that had…

  …stop.

  Something had changed; the memories he saw had changed perspective somewhat. He had not been happy with the compromise of seventeen years ago, which had left him back in Magdeburg with no new territory and Vykos in his “Obertus State” between the Fiefs of the Black Cross and the Voivodate. The memories that he had seen, however, were beyond displeasure. They were fury, they were death and fire.

  He recalled that meeting again, where the terms of the compromise had been sealed. This time he allowed the memory to form, bracing himself for the inevitable mental onslaught as Geidas and his sire tried to force him to drink. He saw the tent again, saw the maps on the table and the dim candlelight, saw the assembled Cainites, Vykos included.

  Somewhere, outside the tent, he felt the rage of the forests. It certainly wasn’t Geidas; the rage was older and far too powerful for that. Jürgen considered for a moment that it might be Rustovitch, that this might be his childe ruling over a petty domain, but the rage didn’t feel like that of his old enemy. Rustovitch, while he probably had no love for Vykos, hated Jürgen even more. The fury that Jürgen felt was directed almost entirely at the Byzantine Tzimisce.

  Jürgen stood in the tent, immersed in memory once again, but this time more aware of his true position. He left the assembled vampires huddled around the map, and walked out into the campground.

  The forests and the camp were as he’d remembered, but there was something different, a tension in the air that he hadn’t felt. Had this Tzimisce been here even then, watching? But if he had, why hadn’t he joined the battle on Rustovitch’s side?

  The answer presented itself as soon as the thought was complete—he was Rustovitch’s enemy as well, or perhaps his rival, just as Julia Antasia was to Hardestadt. No sooner had this realization hit him than the scene faded and Jürgen was left in nothingness.

  In other circumstances, Jürgen might have been worried, even frightened. Now he smiled. “No more secrets left, then?” he said to the darkness. “No more memories to show me? No matter.” Jürgen summoned up his strength, and dove downwards into the murk of the Tzimisce’s mind. He passed by memories that he knew belonged to Geidas, memories of the vozhd, memories of Jovirdas coming to watch over him, visions of scouts telling Geidas that Jürgen was approaching. He ignored them. He dove deeper, past Geidas’s pathetic mortal life, past his Embrace again, past the moment where his sire had first revealed his name….

  …Visya.

  Jürgen had heard the name before, but wasn’t sure exactly why. He continued his dive, focusing his will on Visya, ignoring Geidas. He came to a barrier, a web woven of memories and pure willpower, and tore through it. All traces of Geidas vanished. He was inside Visya’s head, now.

  All Hell loosed its fury against him.
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  The driving rain, the earthquake, the winds and the lake of fire from before were nothing compared to the rage of the Earth that now bombarded Jürgen. He felt his armor, then the skin flayed away by the driving rain, and his exposed sinew seared by white-hot sand. His bones snapped like twigs under a horse’s foot as the mountains came down to meet him. And yet he pressed onward, through the pain, through the winds, looking for the source of this power, the first moment that Visya had beheld it.

  The ground rose and coalesced into a horde of riders, wearing styles of weapons and clothing that Jürgen had never seen. He knew, however, the look in their eyes—the alien, naked hunger of underfed ghouls. This, then, was the land of the Tzimisce before the Ventrue had arrived to civilize it. How ancient, then, was this Visya? Jürgen faltered as the riders bore down on him, and then leapt, seizing two by the throats but dropping them just as quickly. These phantom memories meant nothing. He would know Visya or die trying; there was no other acceptable conclusion.

  None, Lord Jürgen?

  The fury of the storm, the hoof beats of the riders’ steeds, all sound died away. Jürgen was once again floating in nameless darkness.

  “Too afraid to show me even a middling memory, Visya? Who are you?”

  You are in my domain now, warlord. Beware. The darkness stabbed Jürgen like a heated knife. Jürgen fought off the pain; it was merely a memory.

  “I will know you, Visya. I know enough already, but I will know you for what you are before this ends.”

  And if sunrise comes first and the duel remains unresolved?

  Jürgen dove again, forcing his will towards the voice, fighting through a torrent of power. He knew that if the sun rose, the contact between himself and Geidas would break and he would be forced back into his own body and mind… or would he be trapped here, imprisoned in the mind of a fiend for all eternity? The thought was almost enough to make him retreat, to return to Geidas’s mind and finish the duel, but he had come too far already. He would know this Cainite’s identity.