by Dan Davis
“I know of a mere few wild ones still out there but they have learned to be wary of me and my brothers. They cannot be very many.”
“What about Serban? Did you place him in my service? I was deceived by him and because of my foolishness, he murdered my friend.”
“Serban came here, dying and Ioánnis asked me to save him. I believed he would stay and become one of us but he fled and stayed away, fearing I would have him killed for his betrayal. When you brought him here, he told us what you were, hoping to find favour with us. He wished to know whether he should side with you or with your brother in this war that you are waging. I told Serban to embrace peace, to join his brothers in contemplation of God, and to devote his life to prayer. He cursed me for a fool and said that he would have power and wealth instead.”
“You could have warned me,” I said. “Because you did not, my friend is dead.”
“It is no fault of mine. I can tell you are naïve and trusting and entirely without cunning. In truth, I am surprised you have survived this long. I doubt you will live much longer. Why not come to an understanding with your brother? Make peace and live.”
“As you have chosen peace, Theodore? It is peace that has withered your body. Peace has withered your mind and your soul. Man was not meant to live in peace. Only through struggle and conflict and war can we find our fulfilment and live as we are meant to.”
Theodore smiled as I spoke. “My father and my brothers spoke as you do. They all died.”
“I see now it is your fear of death that has made you this way. Death is not failure. To give up is failure. All of you here, this brotherhood, it is failure. It is contemptible. While you sit here in contemplation, Constantinople fell to the barbarians. If you had fought, if your monks were soldiers, perhaps it would yet stand. You are nothing but a coward.”
“The difference between you and I is that I once thought as you do.” Theodore sneered. “My time is almost up, oh great soldier. Ask your questions.”
I sighed and looked out of the window, thinking on what might help me to know. “I have met immortals in my life, strigoi, who themselves turned mortals by their blood. These men so turned became like savages, filled always with a madness for blood. Their skin would blister and burn in the sun. We named them revenants, for they resembled creatures from stories told in England that went by such a name. Do you know about these creatures?”
Theodore scowled. “These are moroi. They are abominations. They bring nothing but destruction and chaos and so we do not allow such creatures to live.”
“Oh? When have you seen them made?”
“Ah, many strigoi grow lonely in their isolation. They make a companion out of lust or love. Sometimes the moroi turns on their creator and kills them. A moroi is always mad. My brothers and my strigoi have always done their duty and killed all moroi that are made. We hear of their madness and murders and track down and kill the abomination. This you must do always.”
“So just as I kill strigoi, you kill moroi but you believe only I am at fault.”
Theodore’s brow knitted over his sightless eyes. “Your ignorance is vile, cousin. A strigoi keeps his soul. He may lose it through his actions, just as any man, but a moroi is nothing but a man made into a beast. A beast in the likeness of a man. Like a wild beast, it acts without thought. And like a wild beast, it must be slain to protect the people. It is our duty, vampir and strigoi alike, to do so. My brothers have cleansed them from the world for centuries and they will continue to do so after I am gone, until they themselves dwindle into nothing.”
“There was an old woman up near Poenari who told me her village was almost destroyed by two strigoi. She sent me to Snagov. She said her husband went away for a long time and returned to her as a strigoi, for a while. Do you know about this?”
Theodore frowned. “Petru, yes. It was not long ago. Forty years, perhaps. Two of my brothers fled and it took Ioánnis and the others days to find them. Weeks, perhaps, weeks of murder and violence against the peasants. When they found them, they were bleeding Petru. Once, in his youth, Ioánnis was a desperately violent man and he unleashed that violence on our rogue brothers. Petru was almost dead when they brought him to me. He took his oaths. But he did not stay more than a few years.”
“You let him go? Why?”
“He was quiet. He lived with his wife, for a time, supping on her blood. Then he went away and found some way to feed without causing trouble. Or he was killed, or he murdered himself. I should never have made him, and I should never have made Serban. Saving a man’s life is not reason enough to make him strigoi. But my sentimentality and my weakness in the face of my brothers’ compassion is the least of my sins. They take pity on others far more than I ever could but I find myself indulging their compassion, as a father indulges a son who brings home a wounded animal.”
I nodded at the graveyard outside. “Your monks took Serban, Radu and Vlad from the battlefield and buried them here?”
“They buried Serban here, yes.”
I was confused. “Where did the abbot take Dracula’s body?”
Thedore smirked. “His body?”
I sighed. “The Turks took Dracula’s head but the monks were seen removing his body from the battlefield. So where is his grave? His tomb?”
“Ah,” Theodore smiled. “Our poor former ward Radu was killed in your little skirmish, yes. His body was swiftly exchanged for Vlad Dracula and the men guarding their fallen lord were killed.”
I could barely believe it. “By the monks?”
“They sought to rescue one of their own. They left the body of Radu in Vlad Dracula’s armour so that the people would believe their prince was dead. My brothers returned here with him and he was submerged in the font.”
“The font?”
“The blood font. It required a number of sacrifices to fill it but then Lord Dracula was close to death. He rose stronger than ever and left with my brothers.”
He rose.
“Vlad is alive? Where did they go?”
Theodore smiled. “You will not find them.”
“They can have no more than half a day on me. I will track them.”
I stood and he thrust his hand out to grasp my wrist. His grip was iron. “Why do you wish to slay your family?”
“I wish only to slay my brother and the evil that he spawns with his blood.”
“Vlad Dracula is strigoi. Made by your brother. You will kill him?”
“He has been my ally. My friend, even. I wish for him to help me in slaying William but if he will not then perhaps he must die also.”
“But why?”
“He has done evil. Great evil.”
Theodore tilted his head. “What evil has he done?”
“Killed innocent women and children.”
“Those of his enemies. It is the work of kings. A kingdom cannot be maintained without sacrifice. Indeed, my young cousin, nothing of value can be maintained without it.”
“You speak of peace and yet you have no sympathy for the innocent. Are you a man of God or not?”
“What is a kingdom, Richard? What is a nation? A people?” He paused, expecting an answer.
“It is… a family.”
Theodore made an approving growl in his throat. “Yes, good. And what is a family?”
I sighed. “I do not know.”
“A man, a woman, their sons and daughters, this family is a stone. One stone amongst others just like it forming the foundation of a clan, a tribe, a people, a nation. The family and the nation both are the foundation of order. Outside it is chaos and destruction that will shatter any family or nation that is not united, and which does not protect itself against the chaos. It must be strong and maintain itself at all costs. At all costs. Maintenance of family and nation takes sacrifice. It costs blood. But it must be done or all comes crumbling to dust and ash.”
“Dracula sacrificed a little too much, do you not think? Spent so much blood and yet his people are not safe now, no safer
than they were. What did he achieve with his bloodletting?”
“It is not something one ever achieves. It is something one does. It never ends. Blood sacrifice every day until the end of days. How old are you to not know this? Did you never have a family of your own, Richard?”
“You want me to let Dracula live because he did his best?”
“You must let them all live because they are your family. They are your people.”
“The English are my people.”
“The English would kill you if they knew what you were.”
“Perhaps. But they are my family all the same and I will maintain them through my sacrifice. The strigoi who do not protect Christendom are my enemies.”
“You would kill my sons, though they do that very thing for their own people? They serve the Vlach, the Serbs, Albanians, Bulgars. We bring them wisdom and guidance.”
I could barely believe how wrong he was. “Your people are being overwhelmed by the Turks as we speak. They will be no more if Dracula and your sons do not fight. Perhaps I will not kill them but they must be brought into the fight so that the Turks can be defeated and your people can have peace.”
“This is the crux of it, Richard,” Theodore said. “The fight will never be won. I pray it will never be lost also but it will never end. In my youth, fighting for the Emperor, I thought as you do. But I learned there is no end to these things.”
“You were a Greek. You fought for Rome and lived in Constantinople but because you stopped fighting your great city has fallen to the Turks. So your homeland is conquered by an enemy who wants nothing but the eradication of you and your people and everything you ever achieved and you decide only that it is time now for you to die? You may have once been a warrior but you hid yourself away for so long that you have grown weak not only in body but in your soul. And now you abandon your monks to their fate. You even admit that without you to make more of them as they die off over time, they will dwindle into nothing. You are nothing but a broken old man who has given up.”
“My body is dying. I did not understand until it was too late that I needed to drink the blood of warriors or infants to maintain my strength. Whether I wish to abandon them or not, that is what has happened. They will endure for centuries yet, I hope. And perhaps you might one day help them. If they need more strigoi, you might grant them your blood.”
“No.”
Theodore smiled, sadly. “We shall see. If not you, perhaps your brother would grant his.”
“He has no interest in maintaining this world, Theodore. William is the chaos swirling outside.”
“Perhaps. What will be, will be. It is in God’s hands. But my time is long past. Now, I have answered your questions at length and it is time that you do as you agreed.”
I was sick of him and his weakness. But still, he was family, of sorts. “You are certain you wish to die?”
“It pleases me that you do not wish to kill me, cousin. I pray that you one day feel the same way about all of your family. Now, help me to stand.”
“Would you not rather kneel?” I asked.
“Help me to the lectern.” I held his bony elbow and supported him as he shuffled across the room. Once beside the lectern he felt for the book that lay upon it. A liturgical gospel book, closed, with a cover of wood and leather inlaid with rubies and shining with gold leaf. Theodore sighed as his fingers brushed the cover. “Make the blow clean, brother. Take my body and bury it well with my head between my feet and with a rod of iron driven through my heart so that I will not rise before God raises me by His hand.” He closed his eyes. “I am ready.”
I felt as though I should say something, offer him something in his last moments. But he wanted only one thing from me and I could see no good reason to deny him it.
His fingers brushed the cover of the book and he smiled, with a prayer on his lips, as my sword cut through his neck. Theodore’s blood sprayed across the gold cover and his body fell while his head rolled and came to a stop by his chair. The smile still on his lips.
***
As the sun went down on a cold, clear day, we buried him as he wished in the graveyard, overlooking the lake.
There, also, we buried poor Rob. As good a friend and as good a man as any who ever lived. My heart ached to know he was dead and to have died in such ignominy instead of in glory. But then he had lived a long life filled with glory on the battlefield and nothing, not even an inglorious death, could take that away from him. Sir Robert Hawthorn had saved my life more times than I could count and he had given his hand when he killed the lunatic immortal Joan of Arc, saving an innocent young woman and captive children by his actions. Off the battlefield, he had been my constant friend and I could barely believe he would be at my side no longer. In his mortal life, he had fathered and raised children and been a faithful husband to his wife, leaving them prosperous, secure, and respected, which is the most honourable duty a man can fulfil. The world was a worse place now that he was dead but he left it a better one because he had lived.
“It is a good place,” I said over his grave.
“He should be buried in English soil,” Walt said. “Ain’t right that he is here. Ain’t right that he died here, amongst these people. They are mad. They are hopeless. He should have been fighting for England.”
“You are right, Walt,” I said. “You are right.”
“Still some food in the kitchens,” Eva said. “Sleep here and go after William at first light?”
I nodded, looking at the wooden crosses we had pushed into the earth.
“Why not go after Dracula first?” Stephen suggested.
“We will not find him,” Eva said. “This is his land.”
“I am inclined to leave him and the monks alone,” I said. “For now, at least. Not only are they a distraction from William, they are doing no harm and may be doing good.”
“William, then,” Stephen said. “Who has either returned to Sultan Mehmed or fled elsewhere.”
“Probably burrowed into the mud,” Walt said, “like the worm he is. Don’t really expect to find him, do we?”
None of us answered for a time. We watched the sun sink beyond the hills and almost at once the air grew colder.
“Wherever he has gone, we will pursue him.”
Walt was right, of course. William slithered away and abandoned all he had worked for.
Sultan Mehmed had grown tired of Zaganos Pasha and instead turned his attention elsewhere. In the years that followed, he conquered the Mamluks of Egypt and the Turks, known as the Ottoman Empire, dominated the entire region for another four hundred years until its eventual collapse.
Mehmed’s sons and grandsons would conquer in all directions. They pushed Christendom back all the way to the gates of Vienna, first in 1529 and then for the last time in 1683, which was the point that the tide finally began to turn.
Every Christian kingdom in the Balkans fell to them, from Serbia to Albania and even much of Hungary, these places were subject to direct Ottoman rule. It was only Wallachia, Transylvania, and Moldavia that remained as vassal states with their own rulers.
I am certain that Vlad Dracula and his strigoi monks were to thank for that, and they continued to watch over their people for generations. It would be centuries before I saw Dracula again.
William fled to Greece and from there to Italy. We followed his trail for a long time but we could never corner him and after many years had to admit defeat. Having lost William’s trail, I returned to England once more. So much had changed in our absence and yet it was a delight to return home, to be surrounded everywhere by my own people.
In my long absence, the Plantagenets had been overthrown and England had a new king, a miserable sod named Henry VII. Stephen and Eva wormed themselves into the machinations of the new lords during the reign of his son, Henry VIII while I fought in a handful of minor wars. We recruited men, I made some into immortals and built the Order of the White Dagger for the day when William emerged once more.
> That day would come during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Unbeknownst to us, William ingratiated himself at the courts of Spain and worked to create an army of immortals large enough and powerful enough to conquer England for ever.
It would be my greatest challenge yet.
A vampire armada.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Richard of Ashbury will return in Vampire Armada ~ the Immortal Knight Chronicles Book 7. Coming 2019
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BOOKS BY DAN DAVIS
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