Chapter 387 - The War of the Vampires part 10

Our journey across the vast Russian steppes was a grim one. We were haunted by the souls of the loved ones we had lost. None, I think, more so than Aioa.

Aioa lost contact with her sister when she collapsed, but not before she witnessed, through Irema's eyes, the slaughter of the Tanti. Only a few, she said, had been spared. The rest the Uroborans slayed. She did not know what had been done with the survivors, only that they were taken away. Mothers separated from their children. Husbands from their wives. Brothers from sisters.

Most of the children they killed, including her daughter Meegan.

Her agony was a terrible weight upon my heart. It was soul crushing, for I felt responsible for their deaths. Every single one. But what else could I have done? I could not condemn all mankind for the welfare of so few. Not even my own mortal descendants!

But, ancestors, the pain! I felt I could hardly lift my feet from the ground. I was even afraid to raise my head, for I feared I would see their spirits standing along our path, staring at me in silent reprobation.

"You must not blame yourself," Zenzele said, but it was hard not to convict myself with Aioa walking just a short distance away, sobbing wretchedly while Eris and Sunni tried to comfort her. To know that it was my actions, and no one else's, that had provoked the God King to his murderous reprisal.

I had saved six. And Aioa said some others had been spared, though to what purpose I hardly dared imagine. Knowing Khronos, it would be awful.

Yes, I blamed myself. But I could not see that I'd had any other choice. Their fate was sealed the moment the God King had them.

The plains were seemingly endless, the rolling grasslands as broad as the sky was deep, each a revelation in its own way. Both seemed the physical manifestation of time. Perhaps that is what time is: the friction heat of the movement of physical matter through space. Or perhaps it is only an artifice, a mass delusion that all sentient beings share. Our perception of time seems terribly malleable, does it not? Slowing down and speeding up depending upon our state of mind. Delusions are that way, too, remaking themselves to consume the mind that hosts them. Or maybe it is time that is the constant, and we remake ourselves. In the end, it does not matter. Time passes, and that is all.

On the second night of our march, a light snow fell.

I felt it coming, that mass of cold air. When I arose at dusk, the sky, crisp and clear the night before, had clouded over. The heavens were gray and brooding, and the wind had a little more bite to it. We fed when the blood priests came around with their pots of donated blood-- cold and sticky but oh so delicious!—and then we continued on.

Sometime about the middle of the night, I felt a lightening in the atmosphere, as if some weight had been eased from my shoulders, and then tiny white flakes of snow began to drift down from the heavens.

Zenzele, who was enchanted by snow, turned to me and smiled. Her tightly curled black hair was already dusted with it, and her eyelashes, too. I smiled back, though the sight of snow does not excite me as it arouses her. There was not much snow in the part of Africa where she was born. I, on the other hand, born in the Swabian Alps of Germany, had had my fill of snow about the time the first curly hairs started sprouting from my chest. Still, she looked like a sugar-dusted angel that night, and her simple joy at the sight of the snow distracted me a little from my pain.

On the third night of our march, we encountered an enemy patrol.

Slavers, they were, come down from the north with a catch of hapless mortals. There were nine immortals in their band, and none of them Eternals. They wore elaborate armor and fearsome looking masks. Several of them were on horseback. Their captives numbered a little more than a dozen, and staggered along single file with their wrists and ankles bound to one another.

Judging by the relative good health of the hostages, their village must not lay very far away. They had not been beaten too severely either, so I assumed their people had a treaty with the Uroborans, and these captives were a tribute of some sort, or troublemakers they wished to be relieved of.

Being vampires, the slavers sensed us long before we came near, but they had been out of contact with Uroboros for a while and did not know who we were or the threat we posed to them.

Not until it was too late.

"That one is Oc'soetel," Zenzele said, pointing to their leader. "I recognize the mask. Northern slavers."

The slavers watched us approach, sitting very still upon their black horses. When finally they alarmed, and reined their mounts around to flee, their fate was already sealed. Our army engulfed the retreating slavers like an amoeba devouring a luckless paramecium. They fought back, of course, but none of them were particularly powerful blood drinkers, and only one of them possessed some aberrant power. That one, a stout middle-aged man when he was made, with a thick mane of curly red hair, had the ability to strike blind anyone who met his gaze. He was a big target, though, and our archers brought him down from well outside his range of influence. He screamed at us in defiance as he fell, flesh shriveling and then falling away to dust. Luckily, the effect of his wild talent was short-lived. By daybreak, the two blood drinkers he had blinded with his magic had begun to recover their sight, and by nightfall they were fully healed.

We released the mortal hostages. Only one of them had perished during the assault, struck in the throat by an arrow that had bounced off the armor of one of his captors. I expected a show of gratitude from the slaves, but the man who stepped forward spat in my face.

About three dozen of my soldiers lunged toward the man in outrage, meaning to tear him limb from limb.

I held up a restraining hand.

"You are free men again," I said, wiping the spittle from my face. "We go to Fen'Dagher to make war on the God King. You may join us if you like."

Rubbing his abraded wrists, the leader of the hostages glowered at me. "Dog fucking blood suckers," he snarled. "Why don't you suck my cock instead?"

Chuckling at his profanities—I have always been amused by vulgarity—I waved for our men to withdraw. "Return to your tribe then, if they will have you back," I said. "And tell your chief the God King's raiders will trouble your people no further."

His retort was even more profane.

"His people are called the Vilst," Zenzele said as I strode away. "They have always been… difficult slaves."

"I'm not surprised," I said.

The fourth night of our march passed without incident.

On the fifth night, we found out what Khronos had done to the Tanti.

As I feared, it was not a pleasant thing.