Chapter 103 - The Battle with the Elders part 2

Aioa's face floated in my mind as I slipped through the dark avenues. I kept seeing her eyes-- the way they bulged from their sockets when Bhulloch's servant yanked her head back and cut her throat. The shock and betrayal in them. I'd asked for her freedom in return for my assistance, but the Chief Elder had misunderstood. The chieftain thought I was literally asking for her life … and bent eagerly to the task. She thought I was a willing accomplice. That I'd called for her sacrifice. Her final horror-struck expression was etched forever in my immortal memory now.

I moved through the thoroughfares, slipping from shadow to shadow—an outlandish sight, I'm sure. A tall naked savage, white skin glowing in the moonbeams, moving too fast, too lightly to be human. My eyes engulfed the eldritch light, amber coals in the black hollows beneath my brow.

I avoided the dancing glow of the torches. When sentries passed my way, I slipped silently around the corner of a hut, or ducked behind a tree or bush or low stone wall.

Most of the village's denizens were sleeping, but here and there a lodge was lively. I peeked through a crack in the wall and watched slave women dancing for a group of swaying drunkards. I spied on revelers and love-makers and gamblers. In one large hut, naked men covered in lard were wrestling inside a ring as others cheered them on. In another, a brutal man was whipping the naked back of an emaciated servant.

The servant cowered and begged for mercy, crying out each time the lash fell. His back was striped and bloody, but his pleading won him no respite.

This culture thoroughly confused and disgusted me. I could not fathom its dynamics. Why did the slaves not rise up against their brutal masters? Why did this bloodied servant not take a weapon and put it in his master's belly? There were plenty of them at hand.

And I still had not found the lairs of the elders.

Frustrated, I paused to gather my thoughts. Squatting beside a shrub, I asked myself: Where would such men place their dwellings? It would be in a central location—one that afforded both comfort and security. The Elders would vie for prominence, esteem. They would own grand lodges. Dwellings large enough to house their servants, to secret their ill-gotten possessions, to lord their position of power over the other inhabitants of this country.

The central plaza, of course. Somewhere near there.

I rose and scuttled toward the center of the village. The concentric stone walls of the courtyard come into view, deserted at this hour of the night. Beyond that, perched upon a low prominence were several broad and well-maintained huts.

They were too large to be called huts, actually. They were, in size, more similar to the halls of the Viking people, a true miracle of modern architecture by the standards of that primitive era. Three broad lodgings, crowded close together, built of timber and thatch and stone, and decorated with hanging plants and great mammoth tusks that were inscribed with ornate imagery.

They were guarded, of course. A quartet of grim-looking men stood watch at the perimeter of the elders' lodges, armed with spears.

I circled around, staying in the shadows, moving in a low-to-the-ground crouch. I slipped behind a tree, then flitted behind the timber posts of another animal enclosure.

But no--! This was no animal enclosure. I smelled human blood, human sweat, the high rich stink of human excrement. Rising a little, I peered toward the far end of the pen and saw a small group of slaves, huddled together beneath a primitive lean-to, wrapped in stinking hides.

The sight of the emaciated humans fueled my anger. My mind flashed on the image of Neanderthals, lying stiff and dead in my maker's charnel pit. My lips split back from my fangs in furious indignation.

One of the sentries had wandered a little too far into the shadows. He was leaning on the shaft of his spear, his back to me, preparing perhaps to steal a little nap.

When I saw the opportunity, I struck.

I blurred through the unlit rear grounds, coming up behind the delinquent guard and clapping my palm across his mouth. Before he could react, I curled the fingers of my other hand into his neck and pulled out his throat.

I dragged him further around the corner so that his corpse would be well out of sight and lowered his still twitching body to the ground. Taking a moment to lick my bloodied fingers– I couldn't help myself, it smelled so good!—I slipped quietly toward an opening in the wall of one of the Elder lodges. As silent as a spirit, I peeked inside, pushing the plaited hanging to the side with my fingers.

The dwelling was impressively large, with a multitude of furs and low, simple furnishings sprawled across the oiled dirt floor. Many of the room's occupants were sleeping, but there was an old man sitting near the fire, smoking a long and ornately carved pipe. The wizened elder named Y'vort. He was rocking slightly, humming a song under his breath.

I cast my gaze about the room and saw the ancient man's nursemaid, his son, sleeping on a nearby mat. Elder Gant.

I knew it would be a simple thing to slip inside the lodge and dispatch the two men, but I withdrew, allowing the hanging to drop back into place. Sneaking through the dark to the next hut, I peeked through a chink in the wall and spied the elder Ungst mating with a slave girl, his fat bearded face twisted with pleasure. He was thrusting against her brutally, his fingers digging into the flesh of her hips, making her cry out in pain.

The elder Hault must reside in the next dwelling, which was the largest of the three. I wondered where Bhulloch had slept. Maybe with the other two, Y'vort and his son. They were the eldest of the five.

As I started toward Hault's lodge, however, a cry of alarm rose in the night: a man's exclamation of surprise. I twisted around and saw one of the sentries blinking down at his dead fellow's corpse. Before the guard could raise his eyes and find me in the shadows, I leapt toward the bough of a nearby tree. I vanished among the foliage with hardly a rustle and watched as the other sentries came running.

A few seconds later, half a dozen armed men came stumbling from Hault's lodge, babbling and brandishing spears and knives. Elder Hault strode from his dwelling, pulling his cloak about his shoulders. He snapped orders at the disorganized mob in an imperious tone.

The armed men fanned out and began to search for me.

So they were expecting me, I thought. Or they feared my retribution. I wasn't surprised.

I watched as the elder Y'vort tottered out and conferred with Hault. They spoke together in low voices. I craned forward to listen. I was beginning to grasp the language of the Oombai. The sounds had begun to congeal into meaning.

"Fallehn t'horn-- Blood Drinker—e'ei hobphen—tonight!" Hault murmured, his eyes flicking this way and that as he spoke, betraying his nervousness.

Y'vort nodded. "Yes! Yes! T'horn e'ei hemm trod ei'skii! I told you as much."

Suddenly, the Elders jerked their heads in my direction, their bodies stiffening with alarm. For a moment, I saw their eyes drink in the torchlight. Their pupils shone, a dim orange glow.

I froze a little in shock.

The blood they traded for with my vampire brethren--! They must have drunk enough of it to alter them physically! Their senses were sharper than a normal human's senses. I wasn't expecting that.

As they howled for their guards, their gnarled fingers waving in my direction, I launched myself from the tree at them, snarling like a sabre-tooth cat. The tall elder named Hault threw himself to the ground with surprising speed, but ancient Y'vort was not so quick.

I landed a few feet away and seized the old man's head in my hands.

"Call upon your goddess to save you now!" I challenged him.

As he mewled in terror, I twisted his head violently to the side. The moist crunch of bone within the wattled flesh of his neck gave me a thrill of satisfaction.

I let the wrinkled body crumple to my feet.

I expected the old man to be dead when he hit the earth, but the vampire blood he had drunk through the years had fortified him. Not enough to preserve his life. He didn't heal.

For a time he lay twitching on the ground, his head twisted round in an unnatural position, his eyes glaring up at me, filled with hatred and pain. I was momentarily distracted by the grotesque sight. I pulled my gaze away finally, turned to kill Hault, but before I could move to seize him, a spear whooshed through the air toward me, and I was forced to contort my body backwards to elude it.

"Kill it! Kill it!" Hault wailed, lying prone on the ground with his arms covering his head.

The starved men and women in the slave pen were stirring. I heard their frightened murmurs, saw a couple of them peek through the fence rails at the nearby chaos. I wondered if any of them were Aioa's sisters, but I couldn't tell, not by just the eyes.

A dozen warriors were running my direction, streaming from all quarters. Two more spears left their hands and whistled toward me.

I launched myself into the air to avoid them. Landing on the thatched roof of Y'vort's lodge, I ran to the far end—stumbling as the roof sagged beneath my bare feet—and then I leapt toward the central plaza.

I landed in a crouch, looked over my shoulder to make sure there were no projectiles flying toward me from the rear, then I ran.

I'd lost the element of surprise—a minor setback, by my reckoning. Of my enemies, only three remained.

And I would return with the dark to kill them.

Tomorrow night, I promised them silently.