Chapter 175 - Zenzele, My Captor part 2

We left the forest behind and started across the plains, headed toward that wavering line of torches. The snow had begun to fall more heavily, the wind blowing fiercely east to west. The great beast that Zenzele rode upon snorted and shivered, its breath coming out of its wide nostrils in puffs of steam, but the woman did not seem bothered by the whorls of cutting ice, despite the fact that her legs and arms were mostly bare. No more than I, walking barefoot at her side. She was a powerful blood drinker. I knew this the way all vampires know the strength of other blood drinkers. It is an instinctive thing. From the moment I saw her, I knew that she was every bit as powerful as I.

Our going was slow in the plains. The snow had bent the high grass into great white humps, and the ground was a soggy morass. If I were free, I would have taken to the heavens, crossing the snowy field in great bounds. But my mistress would not allow it. The animal she rode upon was a mortal creature, and she showed no inclination of abandoning it, though the poor thing was having as much trouble walking in the muck as I.

My captor seemed to have a great affection for her beast. She stroked its thick neck and murmured words of encouragement into its ear, speaking in a tongue I did not know—the language of the T'sukuru, I assumed. When the animal's legs became mired in the mud, she slid down from its back and helped to pull them free.

"I shouldn't have ridden her through all this mud and snow," she said, and then her eyes flashed at me meaningfully, as if to say that this was all my fault.

I suppose it was, if she had ridden to the assistance of the little blood drinker.

"Why don't you give the living blood to this beast, too?" I asked, after we had moved on.

"It kills the horses," she answered. "Only the wolves can be transformed as men are transformed, and then only a few survive. Vehnfear was a gift from our god king. In honor of my service to him."

"So it is called a horse. I have never seen a horse before," I said, stroking the haunch of the beast. It twitched at my touch, snorted in complaint. "I have never seen a person ride an animal in such a manner either. The children in the village where I was born would sometimes play at riding the dogs, but—"

"You talk too much," Zenzele snapped.

I held my tongue.

It was merely my excitement. I had long wondered about others of my kind. What they were like. How they had come to share my fate. What strange powers they might possess. Their myths and social customs. I had planned to seek them out after Ilio struck off on his own, when I tired of living among my mortal kin.

Only they had found me first.

But in truth, I did not feel as though I were defeated. I wanted to be taken to the city of the blood drinkers. I wanted to feel the dust of its streets with my feet, to see its sights, smell its odors, good or bad, harken to the chorus of the creatures who peopled it. Only there would I find the answers to all of my questions. They would know the secret of our beginnings… and perhaps even the method of putting this life to an end, if that was something that I decided again to do.

That was my hope, anyway.

And this woman, to whom I'd sworn myself to servitude… I wanted to know her as well. She was the first female blood drinker I'd met, and what a vampire she was! Fiery. Confident. Regal. Cruel. She was a goddess of death, and I could not help but wonder what it would be like to worship at her altar. I would do it! By her leave, I would commit myself, body and soul, to glorious veneration, despite her harsh nature. To lie down with such a woman…! I would not have to guard my passion as with a mortal woman. Her flesh, every bit as resilient as my own, could withstand the ferocity of my lust, and no doubt respond in like kind.

I felt a stirring in my loins at the thought. It had been four years since the last time I'd made love to a woman, and that was with a mortal. Before that: a seeming eternity. Vampires might not be driven by the physical need for sex as mortal men are driven, but I was still a man, and I still had a man's desires.

A billow of snow and ice stung my cheeks, and I hunkered down and tried to put such trivial thoughts out of my mind. Now was not the time for idle fantasies. We were approaching the column of torches that I had glimpsed from the clearing: the procession of the blood drinkers.

No column now, the phalanx had come together at both ends, forming a circle. The storm was growing more severe, the windblown ice hissing across the plains, flying almost horizontally. If not for the storm's increasing fury, I might have sensed the mortals sooner and would not have been so horrified when I suddenly laid eyes upon them. But I did not sense them, not until we were nearly upon them, and then I could do ought but gape at them in dismay.

There were at least four dozen of them.

They huddled inside the circle of fluttering torches, men and women in tattered garments. They were tied to long wood poles, bound around the neck and wrists by intricately knotted cords. Grouped by sixes and eights, the poles running along the right and left shoulder of each group, they hunched their backs against the scathing wind, their bodies packed closely together. 

Captives of the T'sukuru, being marched to Uroboros.

Moving among the slaves: several unbound mortal men. Perhaps a dozen of them. Brawny, cruel-faced brutes, servants of the blood drinkers no doubt, warmly dressed and tending to the captives. Some of them were throwing furs upon the shivering prisoners. Others distributed food and drink, or worked at erecting shelters alongside their vampire masters. One of the slave-tenders was beating a man with a whip, flogging him across the back and shoulders without mercy.

Anger subsumed my horror. My head began to throb. Slavery infuriated me. What, save greed, gave one man right to claim ownership of another? I had destroyed the Oombai Elders for this very offense, and here I was, confronted by the same outrage! I was sorely tempted to renege on my bargain with the vampire Zenzele. To cast off all pretense of submission and throw myself upon these cursed slavers!

But I was outnumbered. And I had already been defeated by them once. Would the battle go any different if I revolted against them now? And what would they do to the Tanti, to my adopted son Ilio, if I did not honor my bargain with their mistress?

My captor took note of my shock and revulsion. One of her delicately shaped eyebrows rose, and she grinned as if to say, Well, what did you expect?

The other vampires had spotted us and paused at their labors. One of them waved Zenzele over.

"Come, beautiful one," she said, and with a jerk of my leash, she delivered me into the hands of the blood gods.