The Resurgence
Chapter 10: The Gate
She stumbled over the cobblestones, the old shawl around her shoulders covering a torn dressing gown. Galvira shuddered against the cold, though the night air was not particularly frigid. It was the fear clawing at her throat that gave the night longer teeth. Teeth, good gods, how she feared teeth, especially those flashing fangs that glittered against candlelight.
The creatures were not so vigilant in their watch, likely still in celebration over their bloody victory the day before.
Gods, Alaric—she had seen him cut down and heard the snap of something never supposed to break. Then the talons had grabbed her up, hauling her against an armored chest where a wretched heart beat for stolen blood. She rubbed her throat, forcing the weepy knot to unwind. Tears would do nothing anymore.
The vampire had dragged her to a room but had never ordered her to stay. He merely left, and she waited, cowering like a kicked dog. There was nothing sharp either, though her foggy memory only recalled shivering on the bed, nauseous and cold. When he returned…tears stung her eyes, but her teeth gnawed at her lip until they faded.
The vampire—he had not given a name—had not killed her. But then she had given him no reason to.
Women in Nosgoth generally had two mentalities. Some raged to fight, to hit and scream until there was no more air to breathe. Of course a vampire could overpower any kind of refusal, but it would not be a song freely given, and there was some honor in that.
Others protested certain death. Give in. Go away inside—do nothing and lessen injury. That way, there was a chance of survival, of escaping and exacting vengeance. Honor could be restored. If life was not placed higher, how could humanity survive? Some survive by yielding. Her mother stressed that.
Galvira had yielded, lying there as the vampire threw himself upon her. Biting back screams, prying her eyes shut, forcing her mind elsewhere. It was a rough coupling but she survived and he left again.
When it was quiet she crept out, finding no one to stop her. Human slaves had given her a passing glance. Shame filled her when she first thought to beg for help, then remembered they were the caitiffs who served her captors. Traitors, all of them.
Alaric had shown her a map of Nachtholm once. He refused to go to bed until he understood the city's defenses, so she had kissed his neck and looked over his shoulder. Nachtholm had two gates on opposite walls.
Guards stood at the first gate, but none watched the other gate, the same one Alaric's men had battered. She had no idea if she could even move such a gate but she had to see. Slaves sometimes moved through the streets and so she stole their hurried gait and downcast eyes.
It loomed in front of her, broken and impassable. The frame buckled and sagged. Hinges jutted like broken bones. Galvira's throat tightened at the sight. She moved closer. The wood and metal were rough against her hands but gave no handholds. There was a gap between the gate and frame—had she still been a child, perhaps she could have squeezed through.
"Galvira?"
The voice was a whisper, startled and pleading. Impossible to mistake. She should never have heard it again. But here it was, and nothing could hold back her tears.
A hand went through the gap between frame and gate, taking hers with knuckles skinned raw. He had a lantern at his feet and the flickering light caught his eyes as wide and bloodshot. His forehead was darkened with a bruise.
"You fell," she whispered.
His smile was anguished. "I did. My arm's broken. Most of my men are dead. Sandulf will have me flayed. But I'm alive, as are you."
She looked at him, separated by such a small, impassable barrier. "How did this happen?"
When he spoke, she heard the pain from his injuries. "I didn't expect them to follow us. They hadn't ever before. Those two bastards who arrived must have taken command." He licked at a dark cut across his lip, bearing more weight than he had ever known. "I'm sorry."
A consoling reply could not seem to form in her throat.
"Are you hurt?" he asked.
Of all the questions he could ask. But she would not hurt him more. "No, not in any lasting way." He could not see her other hand, and the twin punctures above her wrist.
They had known each other long before marriage, through summers and winters and peace and blood, though peace was a chimera in Nosgoth. He saw plainly through her answer, and his eyes narrowed in rage.
"I will kill them all. The moment I storm this city—"
"Another attack? You haven't an army anymore."
"No, but those left are more vengeful than ever. I will find a way, if I have to dig under the walls themselves." His thoughts sputtered as his voice worked to follow. "You..you're inside. Something can come of this."
But Galvira was hardly listening. Instead she heard the sound of boots, a deft, inhuman stride coming closer. More than one. Fear clamped on her throat once more, but not only for herself.
"Hush!" she hissed. "They're coming. Get out of here!"
His bruised face twisted in horror, but not for his own fate.
"Oh gods—"
She pressed a hand to his mouth to silence him. He had sense enough to cover the lantern. She guessed he had come to the gate for the same reason as she, and they both found it immovable.
"Is that your doxy?" The voice was coming closer.
"Leave now." Her voice was as low as she could make it.
He sounded utterly broken. "Galvira…"
"Goodbye, Alaric."
With cruelty she backed away, and with every bit of selflessness in her she turned and approached the two vampires.
"I am here, my lord." She bowed her neck.
The other vampire let out a snorting laugh. "So Erato is a lord now? My my, pretty thing. Desperate to avoid a stay in the pantry?"
Erato. I will remember that name so that my husband can kill you.
Her captor Erato grinned as well, fangs glittering. "You came to find me, I will assume. My watch is over, dearie, fortunately for us."
If the vampire wondered why she was there, he did not appear to care. It was not as if she could leave the city. He slid an arm around her waist, her head barely reaching his chest. At least he was not the brute who struck down Alaric.
The other vampire regarded them with a stare that had less jest than before.
"You are selfish. Is it impossible to share?"
Oh gods. One is bad enough, but to be passed around…she wanted to fly away, even if her wings would fall off once she was high in the air. But in mewling desperation she pressed closer to the vampire. One hellspawn was better than two.
Survival and honor could never exist side by side. Sandulf said that often. A year before, she would have thought it only another of his cruelties but now she understood. Had Sandulf been here, he would have ordered her to slit her own throat. His niece, brother, and sister had all been turned into vampires—his niece had been killed, by her own son no less, but Isana remained with the Zephonim, along with Ghislain, their brother. That had driven Sandulf half-mad, so Alaric said.
A voice dragged her out of her thoughts.
"She appears to have chosen me." Erato smirked. "But fear not, we captured some fine young men, slender and delicate despite being soldiers."
With a sharp laugh the other vampire departed. Loosening his grip only slightly, the vampire and human started back towards the castle.
Ryszard sauntered down the hall, determined to find a holding with more iron and steel. Nachtholm lacked metal. Horses were lame, arrows needed barbs. The city had no steward but there was a wiry one by the name of Dedwen who had a fondness for figures.
He had no grace in economy or politics, but from time to time he respected the trait in others. No holding could last without ones who battled wealth instead of steel. The only figures Ryszard saw were the vampire Erato and his human prize. His jaw tightened. Too common such a prize became an obsession, with the vampire enthralled by human weakness and mortality. That was how bastards and betrayals were born. But she was a spoil of war, and the only one of her kind here. The wench would not last long.
It was only by chance he passed the room of Alexis. The vampire still lived but not in any condition to be considered living, but for the refusal to fully die. As he passed a voice rasped from the interior.
"Ryszard, join me."
He had died once and had no want of repeating the experience—the voice sounded like the Reaper's. But as he stopped and opened the door, he saw the vampire was no longer writhing in agony. Instead Alexis had moved into the high-backed leather chair by the window. His hands clutched the chair's arms, spindly and weak as death.
"Come in." His voice was that of a lyrical ghost, barely substantial but carrying a faint timbre of its former richness.
"I thought you were mad and raving," Ryszard said as he entered further into the room. It smelled of decay.
The other vampire looked at him with red-splattered eyes, still not focusing. "I have no strength left to summon delusions. In my last moments I am as lucid as I ever was. A pity." He coughed then, though Ryszard suspected it was a dry laugh. "Does Lord Zephon still loathe me?"
Ryszard would never lie in kindness. "He did not want you here any longer."
Alexis's face was ashen. The waist-length hair that Ryszard thought ridiculous to take into battle was a mess of knots and dried blood. Alexis had always spoken, walked, and fought with beauty. An absurd princely beauty more suited for a fairytale than cold reality.
Now his skin looked like corrupted wax, about to drip off at any minute. His razor-sharp cheekbones made his eyes look sunken, eyes that glittered like a mounted deer head.
The vampire sighed, his head creaking back on a fragile neck. "I knew it was a trap. I did not care."
"You put your loyalty to your kin above your loyalty to your commander," Ryszard snapped, the anger years buried finally remembered. "And you plunged ahead against orders."
The latter was the worst of it. His sire was a skilled strategist, but had lost his head when the battlefield looked simply. Zephon punished those who disregarded orders with all the fury he still carried over his own punishment.
"I had to go back for them." Alexis had never begged pardon for that. "How is Taugaral?"
"Your bastard? She survives."
"I did not know she would be saddled with this garrison. I spent years trying to keep her safe."
"Fate impales."
"It should have gone to Sothoth."
Ryszard had no reason to curb the growl in his voice. "He died dragging you away from the Thrones. Gods know how you seduce entire garrisons."
"Is compassion our fatal flaw?"
"Compassion is a fatal weakness."
Alexis coughed, the sound rattling paper. Ryszard continued to glare. Alexis had every chance to beg penance from their sire. What right did he have to righteously suffer upon his pride, when his talent could have furthered the clan?
"It is not your ideas, absurd as they are, that anger him, but your refusal to see his as right," Ryszard said. "You sit in your castle, armored in your ideals, and therefore you see Zephon as wrong. You refused to follow orders. That he cannot forgive."
The other vampire closed his eyes. When he spoke, he sounded wistful.
"I was made before you, but we were never far from each other. You may hate me now but those were good years." His eyes opened and despite their glassy pain, there was focus. "I hurt, terribly so. Nosgoth has nothing more for me. Would you end it?"
"I would not deny you a clean death." Indeed, it was perhaps the only kindness he ever gave.
"Take the papers in this." Alexis gestured, with claws long and cracked from disuse, towards a lectern on a desk. "Perhaps it will provide something useful—a gift in my exile."
"You were never exiled," Ryszard said slowly.
"You know as well as I do the truth of that." With a relieved sigh, Alexis exposed his throat.
As weak as he was, a sword thrust would be enough. "No sense in losing your pretty head."
"Ha," he said as a corpse would. "Taug can have anything of mine that she wants. And don't apologize to Zephon on my behalf. I have no regrets, besides dying. That and saving them. Not because I went back, but that the others died."
"When have I ever apologized for someone?" Have I ever denied a hate? If Ryszard lied, it was with silence.
Alexis gave a fleeting, pained smile, teeth stained dark with his own blood.
He ran the vampire through. Besides a rattling gasp, there was no resistance. Alexis slumped over the sword, his heartbeat a flutter before stopping completely. There was hardly any blood on the blade. After wiping it with a nearby curtain, he sheathed the sword. Proud, idiotic Alexis was no more.
Ryszard could not hate him. He could make a battle uphill sound like a friendly joust. When he laughed during a fight, it was joyous, not dark, and he could remember every brave act of any under his command. Zephon had admired him for a time, until his care crippled him. Until it made him a soft fool who got others killed.
The lectern remained. Ryszard snapped its lock and found the papers within. Tucking them inside his shirt, he left the room. Nachtholm still needed iron.
The saboteur returned, bursting into the tent without announcement. Seated next to the tent's one lantern, Zephon jerked up from Rahab's map.
Frejke went to his knees, panting for breath. The exaggerated show of subservience curbed his irritation somewhat.
"Are we practicing theatrics?" Zephon said crossly.
The spy was shadowed, his rough breathing filling the space. "I found the library, on the second floor."
Zephon nodded, noting he would have to tell his legion to go gently at the second floor. The tangy scent cut off his thoughts.
"Why do you smell so bloody?"
It took Frejke a moment to answer, though his voice was cool and composed.
"One of them saw me," he said. "I don't know how. It was when I found the front doors. But then, one of them saw. I heard it speak—'Ich fordere Sie auf, Baqir.' A—a creature appeared. A horned, red thing. I ran like a tidal wave was after me, forgive me sire."
Zephon's eyes were narrowed. I thought these were the silent monks? Goddamn Rahab.
"It is fine," he offered. "Let arrogant fools like Raziel stay to get their arms bitten off." He tried to reassure him, as the scent of blood grew stronger.
"As I dived for the sewer exit, its claws nicked me. I missed the water by a hand width."
Frejke had found a way into the cathedral, through an old sewer. It was a tunnel with water at the bottom, but Frejke was small and lithe and managed to keep above it, his arms and legs braced on each side of the passage. Zephon liked him. His raw steel never broke.
"You've done all I asked. If you had to, could you draw me a rough design of the interior?"
A pain-laced nod. "I did not see all of it—but a large part, yes."
"And…" Zephon knew it was a severe order. "If you healed some, could you open it from the inside?"
Frejke's eyes widened despite himself, but he never defied an order. His head dipped lower as he coughed a yes.
Zephon saw the blood on the floor. There was more of it, pooling around the vampire like a widening sea.
"You did more than nick yourself."
His eyes could cut through the dark, but the lantern beside him had shadowed the saboteur. He stepped closer to see the vampire's wound.
Perfect. It was as much of a nick as Baldur's halberd was just a poke. It was jagged and wide, starting at Frejke's shoulder blade, ripping through the leather armor, and ending above his hips. No wonder he bowed—it stifled the blood flow, just a little.
He had brought along enough slaves to service him. With enough blood, the little spy should recover just enough to reenter the cathedral. There was no time to starve the priests out. Time spent building a ram could be better used returning his army to Aztiluth.
Zephon called for Lishta.
Within a few moments the healer came through the tent, neck bowed in greeting. Mahogany hair fell well past her shoulders but was kept back in a plait. Her hair had not darkened much when she was turned, an odd occurrence but not a complete rarity.
Lishta's eyes raked over the injured vampire. Frejke regarded her with a trace of alarm. All his vampires did. Lishta's talent in healing was matched only by her skill in torture.
"He needs to be as sound as possible by tomorrow night. Can you do that?"
"What happened to him?" He liked that she never gave a blind answer.
Blood alone could heal most wounds. Lishta made them heal faster. She was already on her knees, running a claw alongside the gash.
"He got nicked," Zephon offered.