Much Fall of Blood-ARC Read online

The others were adults. And all of the others only wanted to get away. The knight called to his companion—who happened to be Manfred . Manfred too realized the difference. "What's he saying ?"

  "Hungarian gabble, Prince Manfred," said the Knight. "That and the name of Christ. Here. Maernburg. You have some Hungarian. See if you can understand."

  The knight pushed his way over. Knelt in front of the boy who was still clinging like a limpet. Spoke to him. The child, sobbing, spoke. The big Knight picked him up. Held him. "He says that the devil was in there. And then the woman and blond man killed her."

  Manfred looked at Falkenberg.

  "Erik," they said together.

  "We have to get inside there," said Manfred.

  "Knights will lock arms, reverse your blades, ground the tips and we will advance. Singing a glad song to the Lord," ordered Falkenberg. "Take that boy David. You. Maernberg. Guard them."

  "You may need a Mongol speaker, sir," said David. He did not want to go into that chapel. But Von Stael was going, and he knew a squire's place.

  "Then we'll fetch you. Move."

  So David found himself holding a Hungarian peasant brat, with huge, tear-streaked eyes. The kid looked half starved. So David gave him the pasty he'd stolen. The boy looked as if he expected it to turn into a scorpion. But he held it. "Ritter Maernberg. What's eat it in Hungarian?"

  "Eszik." The knight said. "They are shouting something about hell-hounds out there in the halls."

  * * *

  The knights, still singing, moved forward slowly into the chapel, energies crackling and cascading off their armor. It was designed for this. Magic had been the main advantage of Grand Duke's armory against the knights of the Holy Trinity, once. Still, this was very strong magic.

  But so was cold steel.

  * * *

  Erik spotted the coruscating mass pushing through the door.

  All he could see was lightnings.

  "More devilry," said Bortai. She still held his hand.

  Her two chaperons were comforting the former victims—as much by smiles and kindness as by speech, as they did not share any common language. The shaman was busy attempting yet another trance. He'd been deeply upset about how the chapel seemed to affect his abilities. He'd been barely able to use his familiar and a very powerful talisman. Vlad and Dana were talking earnestly. The four other Mongols were testing the barrier, systematically.

  And now a fiery thing of sparks and lightnings was coming in to attack them. Erik wondered just how he could protect them from this, when he suddenly started to laugh. He recognized the shape of the spiked shoulder bosses and the helmets, even when they were dancing with little lightnings.

  "Did I say something funny?" asked Bortai, a dimple appearing.

  "No. That's not another problem. It's the knights trying to rescue us. Look, you can see their feet. "

  "So how do we get to them?"

  They eventually solved the problem by crawling between their legs.

  It was undignified but a lot better than staying in the chapel with the corpses.

  * * *

  The minute he crossed the pentacle threshold of the chapel, Vlad felt it come back. As if he'd been a tree that had had its roots severed. Power and strength flowed back into his limbs.

  "I'm alive again," said Dana, incredulously.

  The circle of steel opened, visors lifted, and they found themselves in a circle of smiling knights. "What the hell have you been up to without me?" demanded Manfred grinning, squeezing Erik's shoulder.

  "Hell is the right word," said Erik. "We've been in the portal of it. We owe our lives and probably our souls to Bortai."

  "To Shaman Kaltegg. He break spell. I just kill devil-woman."

  "We have trouble, Ritters," said someone.

  Manfred groaned. "What is it this time?"

  "Hell hounds, Prince Manfred."

  Vlad stepped forward. Here, back in his strength and power, he'd deal with any hell-hounds.

  And then his sister began to giggle and rushed toward the eyes and teeth and fur at the rim of the candle-light, pushing past the knights.

  Vlad followed, willy-nilly.

  They weren't hell-hounds.

  They were big, bristling gray wolves. And Dana flung herself at the leader of the pack. Wrapped her arms around his neck. "What took you so long, Angelo?" she said thickly.

  Vlad felt—strange. As if this was something he had known, or should know, or had expected without knowing he had expected. And he was not afraid of these wolves. Not at all. They felt—like friends.

  "You are not supposed to know this, girl," said a familiar gypsy voice.

  It sent another jolt of not-memory through him.

  Dana stood up. Stamped her foot. "I'm not stupid, you know. I worked it out long ago."

  "I am," said Vlad, shaking his head, trying to work out how the wolves could be he gypsies or the gypsies wolves . . . .

  "The king of the wolves has a pact with the Prince of the land," growled Angelo. "I see that you broke her enchantments."

  That sounded right. More, it felt right. Things he still didn't understand with his head settled into place around his heart and soul, and Vlad nodded. This was exactly like how he had known in his bone that Dana was his sister. Understanding could come later. "We did. Now we need to round up these servants of hers before they escape. And there are prisoners in her dungeons to be freed."

  "We guard the stable yard already."

  "A rescue, A rescue!" shouted someone in Székely Hungarian. "The prince is surrounded by wolves!"

  Vlad had to do some hasty explaining before anyone could spit a 'gypsy'. It was a good thing that the Székelers were so loyal to him.

  It was busy night—what was left of it. But by morning they had the last of her servants ferreted out—good noses had been a great help help—and penned in the refectory. The building had been searched from cloister to dungeon, and nearly forty young victims found and liberated.

  Vlad did not want to think about the ones they had been too late for.

  But the knights held a requiem mass for them, in the courtyard, at dawn.

  Somehow the strange wolfish dogs had disappeared.

  A caravan of gypsy sleds arrived just after terce, as a group of horrified town elders from Caedonia were being escorted through the secret dungeon.

  Chapter 76

  Vlad was a man torn by conflicting emotions: a terrible sadness and rage, and yet a deep joy.

  He'd lost Rosa. He still had to come to terms with that. She'd said 'no man can own me.' And she was right, now.

  He'd lost faith in someone that he'd thought he could trust. In a world of shifting sands, Elizabeth had been someone he'd trusted and relied on. Some of that, he realized, had been because he'd been enchanted. Then there was his sergeant, Emil. He had to lay that, at least in part, at Elizabeth's door

  And yet he'd found others to trust. A sister he'd never known. Erik. Manfred. The Primore Peter. The Mongol—Vlad realized now that if Elizabeth said they were his foes, the opposite was almost certainly true. And of course his mother.

  She had held him. Held him as if he might be torn from her arms again. It was very lovely . . . but by afternoon he was beginning to understand why Dana had said that she was a bit 'clingy'.

  Above all of that he had enormous desire to go to the southwest. Dana said she too was almost unable to resist walking away from the castle, and heading for a place she knew how to find, without ever having seen it or been there.

  And somehow the wolf-'gypsies' were at the heart of much of it. Vlad decided that he'd better finally get to the bottom of the entire matter. So he went to call on them.

  They greeted him with wary politeness.

  Very wary politeness.

  He stood before them, no longer the bewildered, confused, boy-man who had never used a sword in anger, never ridden or even walked in the free air from the time he had been taken hostage, never been with a woman . . .

  Now h
e was a leader. A Prince. And Princes had rights. "I want answers."

  Angelo turned to Radu and the younger Miu. They looked at each other. Even in human form there was something wolfish about them. "Don't know if we can give you any of those, Drac. The whole point is that you should not know anything."

  He shook his head and looked them in the eyes, sternly. "The point is that I already do. And in talking with Dana, I have found out a lot more."

  The three looked at each other again. Vlad realized that they were talking. Not in the fashion of men, but in the fashion of wolves. There were certain small, subtle signs.

  "She is of an age when it is somewhat harder to deceive about these things," conceded Radu. "Older people will see too, but they will not allow themselves to believe what they see. We do not deceive them. They deceive themselves. And that suits us well. There are rules, Drac. Magic is like that. Even seemingly wild magic."

  "We have to be innocent and willing," she said.

  Vlad had not even noticed that Dana had come to join them.

  The gypsies looked startled.

  "She told us," said Dana. "The old woman, as you called her. She was not too sure what innocent was. I think she'd forgotten."

  The three men grinned. And they were very wolfish.

  Vlad sighed. "Suppose you just tell us what you are. I already know that you are sometimes wolves and sometimes men."

  "And they are not gypsies," said Dana.

  The three grinned again. "We think we can do this. It will be enough for now. We will tell you that. And then, if you are willing, you will come with us to the place of stones."

  "Is that," Vlad pointed, "over there?"

  The wolves nodded. "It draws him," said Angelo.

  "And her," said Miu. "Look."

  Vlad did. He could see her staring intently down the line of his pointing finger, nodding.

  "So what are you?"

  "Wolves."

  "Not gypsies."

  "They are newcomers to our range. From the south. Very convenient," said Radu. "We prefer people think that that is what we are too. We have been as we are now for seven thousand years."

  Vlad shook his head. "Why? People despise the gypsies."

  "Better despised than feared and hunted to extinction. People don't like gypsies, but they don't fear them. They fear men who become wolves, and wolves who become men, although we are even less danger to them than the gypsies. There is an ancient fear. Like us, the gypsies are travelers. We migrate across our lands with the seasons," said Angelo.

  Radu contined. "Wolves cannot co-exist with men. A wolf is stronger than one man, most of the time. Wolves work together to add to that. But there are far more men, and they are more cunning than wolves, and also work together."

  Angelo nodded. "If we fought . . . men would suffer. We are strong and cunning, and work as a pack. But in the end humans would win."

  "But each can live together . . . if each would just give a little. The world can be better, richer place . . . for men and for wolves. Men are settlers. We move. We do much of the trade and much of the movement of information in your land. We deal with less desirable creatures which both men and wolves regard as pests. We take our prey from the land—but we take less, and we do not take men. In turn we have become more like men."

  "We would not give up being wolves, but we would not give up being men either," said Miu

  "We need to hunt and to run," said Radu repeating as if from a litany.

  "But fires and plum dumplings are good things." replied Miu.

  "Each takes something from the other, each gives," said Radu.

  "And tomorrow night . . . it may end. We may become men or we may become wolves. We cannot stay both without it," said Angelo.

  "There must be blood," they said, together.

  Vlad took a deep breath. Looked at his sister . . . the two of them talked wordlessly rather like the wolves did, in tiny movements of the face and eyes. It was a language, Vlad realized, that just the two of them shared, that neither had to learn. The wolves had saved him from Elizabeth's clutches, earlier. Brought him home, to his land, where he had been able to grow strong, to come into his birthright. They had never lied to him. They'd let him deceive himself. He could trust them with his life. He was wary about trusting them with hers.

  She told him that they'd saved her and her mother from Emeric, watched over them . . . there was more. Some of which he almost understood. It involved wings and fire. And a dark lake. They were dangerous. But dangerous did not mean that they could not trust them.

  Brother and sister nodded simultaneously. Still . . . a blood ritual, Elizabeth had said.

  "They're wolves," said Dana, answering his unspoken fear. "They like blood. They see everything in those terms."

  "I only have one question further," said Vlad, knowing that he could not ask the questions he would like to—was his soul in peril? Was this black magic? It was certainly not Christian, not over 7000 years. Yet . . . they had been saved by Bortai and the pagan Shaman, who had found Elizabeth as evil as he had. Would they . . . his mind shied away. His sister was a young virgin. That evil woman had attached some significance to that.

  "We will answer, if we can," said Radu.

  "Why tomorrow, and why there?"

  "Two questions, but we can answer both."

  "It is the place where the first bargain was made with the man of the river-people. It must be renewed, and a period was set on that, a time when the magics needed would be strong. Tomorrow night at midnight is the eclipse of the full moon. It happens in a regular pattern. A pattern known from ancient days."

  Chapter 77

  There is a circle of stones, not a particularly remarkable circle . . . the rocks are not large or exceptional in any way, except that moss will not grow on them, nor snow lie on them. They are just on the edge of the forest land, with the wild and rocky heath to the north and east, and the river to the west.

  Forest cloaked this land for always, so long ago that it lies in coal measures beneath it. Yet the Les were not the first.

  Water ran here before them, and life stirred in it. But Voda too was not the first.

  Stone, rock from before the very plants, stuck their ancient bones into the sky here. And the stone which is the land has life within it. Creatures of silicon with veins metallic ores, and jeweled eyes . . . are here too. They are not the first either.

  And then there are the creatures of wind and fire, fused by ancient magics. They are not the first either. But they are children of the first.

  They all waited for the alignment. The time when the forces of the sun, the earth and the moon finished their long stately measure and bowed to each other, before starting the next long dance. The choreography of that dance was echoed in the piping of the wolf-king.

  * * *

  Vlad and Dana waited with the wolves. "We are neither one thing nor the other. That is why we get to bring you to the blood-rite."

  There was an inevitability about this, this time and place that he had been drawn, been driven to. This rite that his mind knew nothing about, but his heart somehow recognized. No matter what—this had to be. It had to be done. Or too much would unravel for the mending, and there was something out there, black and horrible, that would make use of that unraveling.

  But . . .a blood rite. If someone was to be sacrificed—

  "If there is any killing . . . or dying. I will do it. Not Dana," said Vlad abruptly.

  "You don't own me, Vlad," said Dana equally abruptly, completely unaware of the effect that her choice of words had on him.

  "No. I don't. But to love someone is to wish to protect them."

  "That's a good start," said Radu. "Come. It begins."

  The moon shone down clear and cold . . . except that something had taken a bloody bite out of it. And strange snaky bat-winged shapes flew across it . . . And circled to land.

  "The wyverns!" said Dana.

  "Hush," said Angelo. They walked forward. The fores
t creaked and swayed. And from the depths strode a tall slim man with long greenish white hair and a beard . . . He was more beard than person. He seemed to shrink as he came forward, until he was a small, stooped man with long thin bare arms and legs, and protuberant eyes.

  From the heath came a giant. A being of oddly shaped stone. In daylight he would have looked like a rock tor or a stony ridge. Now in the moonlight they could see him for what he was.

  And from the water came a woman. Brushing the water from her hair, and the moonlight shining on scales.

  "We have come as we were constrained to."

  The shadow ate the moon, turning it bloody.

  The wolves howled. The forest moved, creaking. The earth groaned. Only the water was silent. There was a pattern to the sound. It was the very tune that Angelo had used to call Vlad.

  "Will you renew the compact?" hissed the wyverns.

  "What is the compact?" asked Vlad and Dana as one.

  "Ah, good. The first condition is met. They are innocent of purpose."

  "Pure of heart."

  "But what is it?" asked Dana.

  "We swear that it is good for the land."

  "But not without pain and price."

  It was hard to tell just from whom the words came. They seemed to come out of the very air itself, and echo around the circle of strange creatures. Vlad's mind knew he should be afraid, or if not afraid, certainly aghast at these beings that were not even out of the stories he had read or been told. Vlad's heart knew better.

  "Then the second question: are you willing, children of man?" Now it was only the two wyverns speaking.

  Dana looked at Vlad, and he at her. The unspoken communication was made, and Vlad was desperately glad to have her there.

  The shadow covered the moon and they were bathed in a bloody light.

  "Yes," said Vlad.

  Dana hesitated a moment longer. "Yes."

  "And you, Faragas, King of the wolves?" asked the wyverns together.

  "Always. It's blood," said Angelo grinning toothily.

  "And you, Leshy, lord of the forest?"

  His voice was like the cracking of branches. "With him, yes."

  "And you, Zem, lord of stone."