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

by Matthew McFarland

  The archbishop stumbled, and then straightened. He is forcing his Beast down, though Jürgen. I cannot allow that, either. If he can think, who knows what unholy sorcery he might produce? He plunged his sword into Nikita’s shoulder and spun the Tzimisce around to face him. He locked eyes with his foe and bared his bloodied fangs, at the same time willing his arm to bleed, to heal.

  This had the desired effect. Nikita howled in hunger and lunged at the Sword-Bearer. Jürgen barely managed to raise his sword in enough time to deflect Nikita’s attack. Gotzon, fortunately, did not falter, but drove his sword into the Tzimisce’s back and pulled downward. Jürgen knew that no Cainite could feel pain while under the Beast’s sway, but he was certain that Nikita felt that wound. He saw a chunk of the archbishop’s rib fly free and land on Sir Thomas’s body.

  Nikita rounded on Gotzon and wrenched the sword from his hands, bending the blade double in the process. Jürgen had never seen his confessor look shocked before, but the Lasombra’s brows furrowed—he, like Jürgen, hadn’t expected such power from Nikita of Sredetz. Nikita didn’t slow in his assault, but lunged like a serpent, seizing Gotzon’s hand and pulling it towards his mouth. His wounds were not healing—Jürgen could see a fist-sized hole on the left side of Nikita’s back where Gotzon had carved away on his ribs.

  Just above his heart.

  Gotzon winced as Nikita clamped down on his hand. He looked to Jürgen for help, but Jürgen was scanning the room again, looking for a torch, a broom—anything made from wood.

  The long furrow on Nikita’s back began to close. Gotzon reached back and punched Nikita in the forehead, but only succeeded in knocking them both back a few feet.

  Jürgen dove across the room to the entrance, meaning to ask his knights to fetch something made of wood, but he stopped. His Beast growled encouragement, but he couldn’t leave this fight, this room, until his foe was vanquished. He looked outside the room and saw the glow of the sun from around the corner, and remembered how insignificant it had seemed before.

  He had made an oath to himself, he realized. If he left the room now, his Beast would leap on that broken oath like a wolf on a spring lamb, and he might well collapse into sleep.

  “Jürgen.” Gotzon’s voice, but it had a waver to it that Jürgen had never heard. His confessor was losing vitae, and could not free his hand from the savage grip. Jürgen turned and prepared to launch himself at Nikita, cursing his luck at having to give up the advantage.

  His foot struck Thomas’s body. He could smell sweat and offal from the poor knight’s corpse, and it reminded him of when Thomas had interrupted him and Rosamund outside Geidas’s domain….

  Jürgen lunged downward and tore open Thomas’s mantle. There, around his neck, was the wooden cross he had seen that night. “Thank you, Thomas,” he whispered, and pulled the cross from its leather string.

  Gotzon had fallen to his knees. Jürgen didn’t know when his confessor had last fed, but did know that he fed only rarely. He wouldn’t have much blood to give to Nikita, but he also wouldn’t survive long under such an assault.

  Jürgen snapped the cross into two jagged pieces and moved behind the archbishop. The wound Gotzon had made was closing rapidly; in another few seconds, it would be gone, and Jürgen would never be able to pierce Nikita’s skin with this tiny chunk of wood. He raised it above his head with both hands and shoved downward, aiming for Nikita’s foul heart.

  Nikita arched his back as Jürgen’s attack landed. Jürgen felt bones give under his fists, but still the archbishop moved. Gotzon, now free, rolled away and staggered to his feet. Nikita tried to round on Jürgen, but stumbled. Jürgen stayed behind him. He could still feel the wooden shard in his hands, but was afraid to withdraw it.

  Nikita started to straighten again. The frenzy was ending.

  Jürgen raised the shard again and brought it down lightning quick. This time, he felt it strike flesh, thick, sinewy flesh.

  The wall of Nikita’s unbeating heart.

  Nikita collapsed forward, the tiny shard of wood already paralyzing him. Jürgen grabbed his shoulders and pulled, dropping him onto his back. Jürgen noticed with fascination that Nikita’s lips were still moving.

  “The Dream is dying,” he said in Greek, and then lay still.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “Doing the Lord’s work, Jürgen?”

  Gotzon had refused to feed on the monks at first, but blood had won over asceticism. He had taken his fill from one of the brothers and now stood in front of the Sword-Bearer, his face as stoic as ever.

  “I should hope so, Gotzon.”

  “Then why have you not put him to the torch, or taken his head?”

  Jürgen had ordered that Nikita of Sredetz be kept immobile. He had ordered his knights to pound a much larger stake through the archbishop’s heart, and had then collapsed into sleep. Gotzon must have as well, otherwise he probably would have dispatched Nikita himself.

  The Sword-Bearer glanced at his confessor with irritation. “While I don’t wish to seem ungrateful, Gotzon, my decisions in war are my own. When I am certain that this fiend holds no use for me undead, I will kill him, but not before.”

  Gotzon’s expression didn’t change. “You lost a favored knight and a childe in battle with this foe.” He didn’t say and very nearly your confessor as well, but he didn’t need to. “It’s dangerous to leave him like this.”

  Jürgen stood up from the abbot’s desk. “Is there something about Nikita you wish to tell me, Gotzon, or have you said your piece?”

  Gotzon narrowed his eyes at Jürgen, but did not respond for a long moment. Finally, he shook his head. “No, Jürgen. I have nothing to tell you of him.”

  Jürgen sat again. “Very well, then. I’ll hear no more of it.”

  Even Jürgen couldn’t really explain why Nikita was still extant in any form other than ash and war poetry, but he was quite certain that he didn’t want the Archbishop of Nod dead quite yet. Nikita could potentially tell him much of the Cainite Heresy (which should have interested Gotzon as well), to say nothing of the Voivodate and the fiends in general. Really, though, Jürgen felt that not killing him allowed him to savor the hard-won victory even more.

  Or is it, Jürgen thought, that I know I would have lost without Gotzon’s help? That leaving Nikita intact means my victory is incomplete—but I therefore do not owe anything to my confessor for his help? He shook off the thought. Honor was honor, and no true Scion left a debt unpaid. He had thanked Gotzon as much as Gotzon would expect to be thanked, but had no intention of brooking any liberties from the Lasombra.

  The two of them stood there outside the shattered door of the monastery, staring out into the forest. They had heard wolves earlier, and Jürgen wondered inwardly if the howls were born of natural animals.

  “What will you do now, Gotzon?” He didn’t expect his confessor to tell him any of his plans, but he always asked.

  “The Lord’s work, Jürgen.” Gotzon did not move, merely stared out into the snowy woods. “There are still demons here. Witches, and those ignorant pagans who labor under them.”

  Jürgen glanced over at the Lasombra, but Gotzon didn’t budge. “Witches?” He received no response. “Would these be the ‘Telyavs’ that Jervais spoke of? I understood he destroyed them all.”

  Gotzon’s head moved side to side so slightly that it might have been a trick of the light. “You believe a Tremere?”

  “I—”

  “You sin, Jürgen, by keeping him as close as you do.”

  Jürgen ground his teeth. “Should I behead Jervais, then, because he violates God’s law?”

  “Should I follow man’s law rather than God’s, because it is convenient?” Gotzon’s eyes still had not left the trees. “Should I claim domain over a city, plunge it into darkness, and command the kine therein to follow my whims? Should I send out my shadow to collect tribute in souls and libations of sweet blood?”

  Jürgen turned his body to face Gotzon, curiosity vying with r
age in his heart. This was perhaps the most he had ever heard his confessor say at once. “Kindly remember, Gotzon, that you gave me the choice. The Cross or the Crown, yes? I have never regretted my choice.”

  “Even in the face of losing a childe and a loyal knight?”

  Jürgen glanced past Gotzon. He could see several Knights of the Black Cross still attempting to dig graves for those who had fallen in the siege. They had managed to dig one grave—for Thomas—but the hard, frozen earth held its virtue jealously. “I have lost more than—”

  Gotzon turned to face him. “The choice we gave you was a travesty. I know that now, but back then I was as a child pretending to his father’s wisdom. There is no choice—you do God’s work or you burn.” The Lasombra’s eyes deepened, and the murk therein began to move. The lifeless energy of the void began to seep from his eyes like hideous, inky tears, and the moonlight and shadows both fled the area, leaving a nimbus of color and perception that could scarcely be called “light.”

  Jürgen took a step back. If Gotzon were to attack him, he was unsure how effectively he could defend himself. “Am I to burn, then, Gotzon? Or will you summon up shadows to take me?”

  Gotzon stopped and shut his eyes, and light and shadow made peace and returned. “After all I have told you, you know nothing,” he said quietly.

  Jürgen’s lips curled into a sneer before he could stop them.

  Ordinarily, Gotzon wouldn’t have bother responding to this, but something was different tonight. “You know nothing,” he repeated. “You know nothing of shadows and fear.”

  Jürgen’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t insult me, Gotzon, and don’t belittle me. The Beast howls within me as it must within you.”

  Gotzon’s eyes glimmered like onyx under candlelight, and the corners of his mouth twitched. It was closer than Jürgen had ever seen him come to smiling. “The Beast, Jürgen? My Beast fled in fear before what I have seen, centuries ago.” He turned back to the forest. “The Beast, that howling thing that drives you on the battlefield to take the blood from every throat, the life from every heart? My Beast is afraid to speak for fear of awakening what dwells beside it within me.”

  Jürgen was silent. He wanted with all his heart to contradict his confessor, to belittle his words with stories of his own terrors and battles with the Beast, but he knew that nothing he had seen could compare.

  “Did you have nightmares as a mortal man, Jürgen? Did you ever awaken from one and fear to move from your bed, because although you knew you were safe, you also knew that the things from your nightmares still waited?”

  Jürgen shifted a bit. “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “I brought my nightmares to life, Jürgen. They wait behind every shadow, in every glass, in every pool, and my reflection no longer blocks my view. You remember the sensation, Jürgen, of dreading to open a door in a nightmare because of what you might find? I know what waits, and the nightmare doesn’t end.

  “You know nothing,” he said, and walked off into the snow.

  Jürgen watched as his confessor vanished into the trees. He heard the howls again and feared for Gotzon’s safety, but he knew better than to act on those fears. Gotzon did as he would, and had been doing so for longer than Jürgen could imagine. If the wolves were to find him tonight, Jürgen could only hope that Gotzon gave them the mercy of a quick death.

  Jürgen turned and walked back into the monastery, mentally cursing himself for his rudeness. He knew now what Gotzon had seen in those shadows centuries ago, what the koldun were capable of doing. Nikita should be Gotzon’s kill, not Jürgen’s. He had ordered Nikita’s body moved to the abbot’s office and stashed under a windowsill. The light never touched the body during the day, but it came within a few short inches; Jürgen hoped that the proximity to the light would keep the archbishop safely in slumber. He knew that, with a stake in his heart, Nikita was paralyzed—but Nikita had surprised him once too often already.

  Two knights guarded the door. Jürgen dismissed them. He entered the room and shut the door behind him. A tiny sliver of moonlight from the window revealed only an oddly shaped lump on the floor; it could have been clothing but for the huge chunk of wood sticking up out of it.

  Jürgen stepped up to it and drew his sword. “I swore I would take your head, Nikita,” he whispered. He brought the sword down on the archbishop’s neck…

  …and stopped a bare inch above it.

  Gotzon had spoken, if indirectly, of following the proper laws regardless of expectations. But what, indeed, was proper here?

  Nikita of Sredetz had many enemies, to be sure. Dispatching him would mean that those enemies would be well-disposed towards Jürgen and the Fiefs of the Black Cross. Or, perhaps those enemies would loathe Jürgen for robbing them of their chances to kill the archbishop? Would destroying Nikita bring retribution down upon Hardestadt in Germany? Upon Rosamund, so close to Jürgen, yet far enough away that he could not protect her? Perhaps even upon her own sire and clan in France… Jürgen sheathed his sword and sat at the abbot’s desk.

  The Tzimisce were not normally supporters of the Cainite Heresy, but they did tend to look after those of their own blood. Destroying Nikita would inflame the blood-war between Ventrue and Tzimisce. It might also cement relations between Tremere and Ventrue….

  Jürgen shook his head in disgust. Relationships between my clan and the sorcerers? He had suffered Jervais in Magdeburg badly; one of the few things he agreed with the Tzimisce in general upon was that the Tremere were untrustworthy and should never be allowed any measure of true authority. Killing Nikita would drive a wedge between the Black Cross and any Cainite power who had ever allied with the Tzimisce, and that list was longer than Jürgen cared to consider.

  Another blood-war, he thought. Such an undertaking, if his power here were certain, would be much to his liking. But it wasn’t—establishing himself as Cainite lord of these lands would require months, if not years, of study, effort and war against any native forces in the savage forests. Killing Nikita would simply draw too many enemies. But then, what to do with him? Allowing Gotzon to destroy him was another possibility, but one that he would rather consider in a larger city. In Magdeburg, word would spread quickly that someone had killed a prisoner without Jürgen’s consent, but here in God’s nowhere, that distinction wouldn’t be made.

  Jürgen stared down at his captive. Nikita’s face was set in the same pained scowl it had taken on when Jürgen had driven the shard of wood into his heart. And yet, the face looked somehow different, as thought the lips had curled upwards an infinitesimal fraction of an inch….

  Jürgen looked away. I cannot kill him, and I cannot keep him here. His Beast whimpered in fear and reminded Jürgen what Nikita had done to his wrists. The Beast urged him to kill the Tzimisce, burn him, set him out for the sun, take his blood, something, anything, just make sure that the nightmare that was Nikita never troubled them again. Jürgen refused, and buried the fear.

  I can use him. I can send him as a message to an enemy, someone who would fear to awaken him but know what it means that I delivered him. Jürgen smiled. The recipient would have to be a Tzimisce; another of Nikita’s clan might well understand what Jürgen had gone through to best the archbishop. But who? It certainly couldn’t be Rustovitch; the so-called voivode of voivodes would take it as a challenge and begin the blood-war that Jürgen wanted to avoid. Visya, through his childe in Bistritz? No, Radu was too obscure a figure, and besides, he wanted that particular branch of the Tzimisce clan to continue its dealings with the Arpad Ventrue. He needed someone intelligent but careful, powerful but not a true power in the War of Princes. He looked down again, but this time his eyes came to rest on the archbishop’s hand. The palm was smooth, flawless, like a child’s, so different from Jürgen’s callused paw. The Tzimisce could make themselves beautiful in moments; other clans were stuck with their mortal shells. He wondered how many Tzimisce he had seen disguised behind veils of flesh.

  He wondered how many Tzimisce diplom
ats stole their visages from beautiful village boys, pretty Eastern lasses, nobility long since dead, their features preserved by undead ingenuity.

  He wondered about this, and then the answer hit him. He knew of the perfect fiend to receive his gift.

  Vykos.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Jürgen, despite his misgivings—or, honestly, fears—about Nikita remaining in the monastery, allowed his knights to finish burial of their brothers before setting them to building a casket for the archbishop. It took a full week for the burials to be complete (owing more to the hard, frozen ground than the number of casualties) and even then they wouldn’t be truly done until a priest could say Mass for the dead.

  Jürgen imagined that one of the monks had been ordained, but rather doubted that he could persuade a prisoner to say a Mass for the knights. They wouldn’t have accepted it, anyway.

  The casket for Nikita took another two weeks to build. The wood of this land was no more yielding than the frozen earth, and the knights refused to leave the monastery after dark without direct orders. Jürgen didn’t blame them. One of the knights—a careful, constant man named Bertolt—was a superb hunter and tracker. He told Jürgen that wolf tracks surrounded the monastery and grew more numerous with each passing dawn.

  Jürgen took this at least partially as good news. At least the wolves were leaving tracks. He couldn’t fool himself, however, into ignoring the probable significance of this development. It was possible that these wolves were natural animals, attracted by the smell of flesh from the corpses interred in the earth around the monastery. Perhaps the scent of burning flesh (for Jürgen had ordered the slain monks burnt, rather than waste the knights’ valuable time and energy burying them) had even attracted them from greater distances. But he had heard tales of the pagan tribes and their Gangrel patrons, of the feral Cainites who stalked these forests, and he knew they could walk as wolves. He also knew that they could enslave normal wolves, and had heard tell that they made pacts with the cursed Lupines, the men who took the skins of wolves and made vows to Satan in exchange for shape-changing power.