Chapter 290 - Army of the Undead part 2

The lands to the east of the Urals were wildly varied. Flat and densely wooded. Then mountainous. Then frigid steppes. Then desert.

I had never seen a desert so vast, and the sight of all those dunes receding into the distance, a sea of tan-colored waves, motionless and glowing in the moonlight, filled me with awe. It was beautiful, but so very desolate! I imagined I could hear the labored breathing of its denizens as they clung so desperately to life in this arid and sunbaked realm. I could feel their grim determination, and their thirst.

They are like us, the creatures of this barren place, I thought.

I felt as if I had crossed into another world, a world that we vampires belonged to more than the comparative paradise we had so recently forsaken.

That desert is called the Gobi now. We had traveled all the way across Russia, then the steppes of northwestern Mongolia. If we had continued in the direction we were traveling, we would have come to China, and finally North Korea and the Sea of Japan, but we did not continue. The desert seemed too vast and frightening to attempt a crossing. We did not know how big it was, or even if there was an end to it, and there was talk among the Orda that there was no end to it, that we had come to the end of the world, and it was an infinite and motionless sea of sand, and we stood now on the shore of it. Also, Zenzele sensed that our pursuers had given up the chase again, so there was no need for us to keep running.

Finally, gratefully, we could stop.

A month had passed since we abandoned the Urals, and our bodies were shriveled to the bone again. We looked like wizened mummies, skin drawn tight across the contours of our skulls, eyes sunken, fangs jutting from the lipless slits of our mouths. We turned north at the edge of the Gobi, heading toward a range of low mountains. There we found a large cave, and after we had rested, our small tribe of blood drinkers ranged out to look for sustenance.

Goro, who had rejoined us three days after quitting the Urals, departed with the Orda. He had not found his own people while he was apart from us, not so much as a trace of them, and he was quick losing hope that there were any Neanderthals left at all. "I fear my race has passed from the world of the living," he had said on his return.

His sadness was a palpable thing. I could see that it weighed upon him-- to be the last of his kind-- and how could it not? It is a terrible thing to outlive your own people. I think that despair would have crushed his spirit utterly if not for Morgruss. Morgruss's fangs had come in from his lower jaw, like tusks, a feature that was unique to vampires of Neanderthal stock. The Orda were not Neanderthal, but some ancestor of Morgruss must have been a Fat Hand. Because of this, Goro bonded with the humorless hunter during our flight across Russia, and went with him that night when they departed to seek nourishment.

Eris stayed with us.

The two-spirited creature had transformed in ways other than just the obvious. The living blood had made the hermaphrodite a true immortal—a powerful Eternal—and in that changing had released him from his tribesmen's subjugation. Since the night that he was made into a blood god, he had gradually but very resolutely set himself apart from his former comrades. He resented the way they had used him when they were mortal men. He had accepted his fate at the time, tried to make the best of his circumstances—it was all he'd ever known-- but now he was more powerful than all of his tribesmen combined, and he did not bother to conceal the resentment that had built up in his heart over the years. He no longer tolerated his tribesmen's mockery. He ignored them when they tried to command him, or cursed at them, and just the previous night, when Neolas tried to lie upon him, Eris had thrown the man off.

They had fought briefly but vociferously before Eris overpowered him. "Never again," the exotic blood drinker hissed at his tribesman, gripping him by the neck so tight his fingers sank into the flesh.

Neolas had nodded quickly enough, eyes wide with shock, then slunk sheepishly away to his bedding, muttering under his breath.

Both Zenzele and I found it quite amusing.

Eris was hopelessly infatuated with Zenzele. I might have been jealous, but the hermaphrodite didn't have the proper equipment to make good his obvious desires. His genitals were an incomprehensible jumble to my eyes. I didn't know what to make of all that tangled, furry flesh, and neither did Bhorg.

"I know he wants us to call him a 'he'," Bhorg confided in me, "but I cannot see him as a male or a female. He's just a… thing to me. I have to admit though, I wouldn't mind laying with him just to see what it's like." And then he had elbowed me with an explosion of vulgar laughter.

I had no such curiosity.

I do not like to think that I am or have ever been prejudiced in any way. I have always found beauty in both the male and female forms, but Eris was both and neither at the same time, and I didn't know quite how to act around the creature.

His fascination was Zenzele had also begun to grow wearisome.

He followed her constantly, worse than her wolf Vehnfear, but unlike the vampire wolf, he tended to monopolize her attention. They were always talking in low voices, their heads ducked toward one another, snickering and stealing glances at the rest of us. They were like giggly sisters. When we lay down to sleep, there was either an indignant wolf or a clinging Eris to roust from Zenzele's side, and sometimes both. When I wanted some time with Zenzele alone, Eris tried to tag along. I didn't consider him a rival, but I'd be lying if I said he didn't annoy me. He was like a jealous little brother… or sister.

Worse, Zenzele encouraged this behavior. She had always had a soft spot for strays and wounded animals, and Eris was a bit of both—not unlike myself, now that I think about it.

But I'm rambling again, aren't I? And I do not have that luxury. Soon we will come to the land of my birth, and my journey, both literal and figurative, shall come to its end.

Let us get on with it then.

So, we found a cave at the edge of the Gobi. It was large and dry and comfortable, although there was a crevice nearby that tended to whistle when the wind blew from the desert in the south. Mortal men had occupied the cave sometime in the recent past. There were cave paintings, mostly handprints and stylized animals. Stone circles and cinders marked the placement of several abandoned hearths. We found broken spear tips and animal bones and small bright stones with holes drilled through them for jewelry. The typical leavings of an abandoned mortal settlement.

Goro and the Orda departed as soon as we had settled upon our temporary shelter, and we left shortly after. They headed north, moving deeper into the mountains. We decided to go in the opposite direction. We went to hunt the desert.

We did not venture too far into that wasteland. It was still too new and strange to us. I had seen wastes like it before, of course, but none so broad and barren. We all tried with our vampire senses to find the end of it. Zenzele claimed she could sense a great green country on the other side of it, with winding rivers and jagged mountains and multitudes of living men, but that country was far beyond the reach of my senses.

I squatted down to take the sand into my fist, and watched with a pensive expression as it poured between my fingers. I won't bore you with the trite clichés that passed through my mind. I was exhausted, and I was missing my mortal Tanti descendants, and my immortal child Ilio. I loved them, and I wondered where they were, and how they had fared in my absence. I worried for their safety. Had Ilio convinced them to flee their settlement by the lake, as I had instructed him when Zenzele took me captive? I prayed he had, and that the Tanti had removed themselves to safety. Time, like the sands of the Gobi, was passing so quickly through my grasp. I could not hold onto it. I could not stop its movement.

And I said I would not bore you with trite clichés!

Vehnfear went loping away across a dune, tongue flapping from the side of his snout. The dune collapsed beneath the beast, slithering down to the foot of the mound with a dry shirring sound. He floundered a little in the sliding sand, then rounded the top and vanished, barking excitedly.

"There are people here in this dry land," Zenzele said. "I can feel them in my mind. Small groups of nomads. Men, women and children, sleeping in tents."

"What do they eat and drink?" I asked, scowling across the dunes. I watched Vehnfear climb the next hump of sand and vanish again.

"There are pools of water, and green vegetation, but only small patches here and there." She blinked her eyes and glanced at me. "Shall we feed on these mortals? There is a small band of them not too far away. We should be able to make it back to the cave before daylight."

I was reluctant to say yes, but I had scanned the environs for any native creatures we might feed upon, and had sensed nothing of any appreciable size. Snakes. Rabbits. Mice. Birds. Nothing large enough to revivify our withered bodies. And I was so hungry! The bloodthirst was a sizzling fire in my guts. It had gone dormant when we were fleeing from Khronos's hunters, but now that we were safe, the hunger had come over me with a vengeance. I was in torment, and my companions were no better off. I could see it in their eyes. Their desperate misery.

"I suppose," I said. "But only the sick and elderly."

I know it seems cruel, but we were in agony, and it is our nature. The predator must thin the herd. Our prey would actually benefit from it as a group—or so I tried to convince myself—though really, among humans, even the sick and elderly can contribute to the welfare of the whole. We are not wildebeest.

Still, it was enough, along with the sizzling hunger, to silence the voice of my conscience for a little while.

We set off across the dunes in search of those mortal nomads.