Chapter 260 - Blood Gods in Exile part 5

I haven't really told you much about the blood drinker named Bhorg. That's a terrible oversight on my part, and one that shames me.

I shall rectify that immediately.

Bhorg was fiercely loyal to my beloved Zenzele, and, by extension, to myself. He was our constant companion through our long exile in the Eastern Dominions and beyond. Though he would not live to see the end of our war with the God King, he did more to advance our struggle with Khronos than any other immortal. He guarded Zenzele jealously. I think he loved her. And in the end, he died for her. Such sacrifice deserves better than what little space I can devote to him here. Certainly more than minor character status in these rambling memoirs. Unfortunately, I cannot spare him the space that he deserves. My time in this world grows shorter by the hour, and there is still so much I have to tell you. So very, very much.

Just know that he was a noble creature, and though he could be quite brutal at times, and had a great love for combat, he was also good-natured and gentle when he was at peace.

He was a frightful giant, nearly seven feet tall, with a thickly muscled body, gold-hued flesh and coarse hair shorn close to his scalp. He had full lips with broad, square teeth and great fearsome fangs. A large nose and heavy brow jutted out over a broad, bearded face. It was a warrior's face, furrowed by the harsh circumstances of his life, but kindness nested there too, from time to time. In his eyes, his generous smile.

He was, he told me once, from a land at the edge of the God King's Eastern Dominions. I would say modern Turkey or Syria, if I had to venture a guess. He was abducted in his twenty-second year of life by a band of T'sukuru raiders, taken wounded from a battlefield following a skirmish with a neighboring tribe. They marched him to Uroboros, put him to work in the stone quarries at the foot of the Fen'Dagher, where he was to labor for more than a decade. Eventually, a House Mother named Tiss, a grand dame of a vampire who commanded a vast family of powerful blood drinkers, took notice of the giant. Impressed by his size and strength, and by his indefatigable spirit, she took him as a lover. Not long after, she made him an immortal.

But love wanes, especially for creatures like us. It is one of the ironies of our race: that our feelings are so mercurial while our forms are never-changing. Ultimately, he had a falling out with the blood goddess, and took to raiding in the west at the side of my ruthless Zenzele.

He was a great rhinoceros of a man, with reserves of strength I would never know. He alone had the vigor to continue when Zenzele and I collapsed in the Urals. He located a comfortable cave for us to rest in, then returned to the stony shore of the river where we had fallen and carried us to the shelter. He hunted. Made sure that we had fed. He tended to us like we were children. And I felt like a child in his presence, he was so large. His gruffness reminded me of my father.

He was the first of us to make a new blood drinker.

I had sworn, at the foot of Fen'Dagher, to raise an army of vampires to battle Khronos. As Zenzele and I rested from our long flight, Bhorg ranged out looking for food and stumbled upon a small band of mortal nomads.

There were only six of them, these hunters, wandering the steppes just to the west of the Urals. They were lean, hard, desperate men. Their clan had been mammoth hunters in the not so distant past, but the mammoths were all but extinct by then, and their way of life with them. They had neither mates nor offspring. Their children had all starved to death, and the women who hadn't starved had stolen away in the night. Or died of hopelessness.

Bhorg, remembering my words, watched the nomads from a distance. They looked to him to be strong, dauntless men, and so he decided to make them into blood drinkers. He loved Zenzele, and since she loved me, he thought that it would please her if he helped me with my designs.

Once he had decided what to do—feed on the mortals or make them gods like us-- he marched out to the steppes to confront the weary hunters.

Those nomads were people of the Eastern Dominions, and so he reasoned they probably had firsthand experience with the T'sukuru, or had at least heard of the terrible blood gods. Rather than confront the men directly and frighten them away, Bhorg placed himself in their path and waited for them to come to him. He also (he told me later) smeared dirt on his glinting flesh, to conceal his true nature from them as long as possible. They'd definitely run if they knew what he was.

The steppe was a broad flat expanse of land with amber-colored grass and stunted, wind-sculpted trees. It was late in the evening, the light slanting in low from an overcast sky. The nomads saw the giant from a distance and, intrigued by the solitary figure, decided to investigate.

Bhorg planted the head of his massive stone hammer on the ground in front of him, folded his hands over the end of the handle, and waited.

"Who goes there?" the leader of the nomads called when they had come within shouting distance of one another.

"I am called Bhorg!" Bhorg shouted back.

The men consulted one another, then ventured nearer. They held their weapons at the ready, wary of the giant and his unusual behavior.

"Why do you stand there in the middle of the grasslands?" one of the men asked after they'd drawn closer. He was a short, muscular man with narrow, suspicious eyes and long, curly black hair. He was dressed in a parka made of reindeer skin, very similar to the anorak of modern Inuit tribes. He had a thin mustache and beard. "Are you waiting for the mammoth to come to you?" he asked with a smile. "If so, I'm afraid you may be waiting for a long time. We have not seen a mammoth in many moons. Hunger and death, yes, but no mammoth."

"I have no interest in hunting mammoths," Bhorg replied. "I am a hunter of men."

The nomads tightened their grips on their spears, faces hardening.

"You hunt men?" their leader repeated. "To what purpose do you hunt men? For food or for sport?"

"I hunt men to make them into gods," Bhorg answered. "I and my tribe make war on the God King of Uroboros. We need men to help us fight this war."

"We are hunters, not warriors," the other man said. "We have no fight with the God King, so long as his raiders leave our group in peace. And what use would we be in this war you wish to make? The gods of Uroboros would swat us like gnats. Only gods can make war on gods. That is a thing even a child would know."

"Join us and I will make you into gods," Bhorg replied. He smiled then, showing the men his eyeteeth. "This is in my power to do. So tell me: who among you wants to live forever?"