Dark Ages Clan Novel 11꞉ Tremere by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Format: epub
Published: 2013-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

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Chapter Fifteen

If this was, indeed, the village the smith had meant, then he’d spoken true—it was well and thoroughly plundered. Not a soul stirred in the silent half ring of houses. Even whatever had once sat on top of the wooden post at the mouth of the semicircle (a horse’s skull, the Kur guessed) was ripped away.

Jervais noted, however, that although the huts’ deep thatched roofs nearly reached the ground, not a single bundle of straw had been burned. Unusual behavior for pillagers. And many of the bodies littered about—mostly of elderly folk and children who would have been too small to keep up—bore twin teeth marks eerily clean of blood as well as the more familiar gnawings of scavenger animals. Each body was also missing an ear. In the West no one dared leave such obvious unnatural traces anymore. The dead must disappear, as must the killer, unless he liked the idea of being thrown to the vigilants of the Church as a propitiating sacrifice. Vampiric power must be invisible, the vampires themselves never more than rumors and ghosts. The voivodes of the East were traditionally more blatant, but Qarakh’s raiders had to be making even them uneasy.

“They’ll come, ” he said benevolently to Torgeir.

“Maybe. ” The Dane rubbed fitfully at his forearms. If Jervais had been in a computational mood, he might have easily calculated where Torgeir would end up halting his mount as some function of maximum distance from maximum number of corpses.

“Their patrol should run right across our tracks, ” Jervais continued, gesturing. Since they’d certainly had no wish to inform the Telyavs that they were camped less than a night’s ride away, they’d gone out quite some distance before removing Master Antal’s enchanted horseshoes and doubling back northward. Finding this village had been an accident, not at all a happy one for Torgeir. Still, it seemed an appropriate place to wait. “But if they take too long about it, I’ll send up a witch-light. ”

“Perhaps they’ve moved on. You said they were nomads. ”

“Even nomads don’t move constantly. ”

“Unless they’re suspicious. Perhaps we waited too long. ”

“I highly doubt any such luck will be ours. Besides, we needed a few nights to bleach out your robes. ”

“Of course. ”

“Well, you can hardly fault me. Look at you. You’re bound to make an impression. They’ll more likely forbear killing me to please you than the other way ’round. ”

“Or they might decide to regard me as my fellow Christians always have, ” the young magus said icily.

“So long as it’s fear of one sort or another, boy, I’m satisfied. ”

A new scent on the breeze caught at Jervais’s sensitive nostrils. A little later, it was followed by a distant thundering and spots of movement on the horizon. The riders came with uncanny speed. As though of one mind, they ranged out across the plain and circled the village, then drew in toward the Tremere. There were eight of them. Jervais’s horse tried to shy;

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