Not that the Telyavs were helpless to defend their grove. Grandfather and Deverra had been conferring for much of the battle, and now the high priestess spoke to several other Telyavs. They then bared their wrists, bit open the veins and formed a ring around one of the largest oaks, clasping hands to form a tight, unbroken circle. As vitae dripped from their wrists onto tree bark, the Telyavs began to chant in a language unfamiliar to Qarakh.
Despite its importance to the Telyavs, the clearing was a small one, not large enough to accommodate fighting on horseback, and almost all of the combatants on both sides had dismounted. The Telyavs’ chanting increased in volume and intensity until finally, throughout the clearing, tree roots burst forth from the ground and coiled like serpents around the knights’ legs. Not all the knights, though—only those who were Cainites. The coils tightened, and their captives were thrown off balance. Some fell, others struggled to remain standing, and still others began to hack at the roots with their swords. Qarakh knew his people had only moments until the vampiric knights cut themselves free, but that was all the time they needed.
He raised his saber and bellowed a command in Livonian. “Kill the bound ones!”
While some of the newer recruits looked around in puzzlement, the rest of his warriors understood and obeyed. Wilhelmina bellowed a war cry, dashed for the nearest struggling knight and decapitated him with a single blow. Arnulf dropped his sword as he shifted into wolf form and leaped for another trapped knight, fangs bared and jaws flecked with foam. Alessandro stepped calmly toward the bound knight nearest him and laid open the Cainite’s throat with a swift, efficient sweep of his blade.
Qarakh felt a moment’s pride in his warriors before surrendering to the urgings of his Beast and rejoining the battle.
It was over all too soon.
Most of the knights—mortal and undead—had been slain, while only a few tribe members and Telyavs had been lost. Several of the Christian knights had fled the clearing, but Wilhelmina and Arnulf were in pursuit. Qarakh was confident their hunt would prove successful.
“But it wasn’t, was it? One knight survived to tell Jürgen what occurred.”
Qarakh did his best to ignore the voice. All around him, Cainites were bent over the corpses of mortal, ghoul and vampire alike, feeding to dispatch the wounded and restore their own strength. Qarakh approved; he despised waste. Deverra and the other Telyav enchanters were among the most ravenous of the feeders, for they had sacrificed a great deal of their own blood to enchant the tree roots.
“They may have helped win a single battle, but the war goes on.”
Qarakh told himself to ignore the voice, but he couldn’t. As if controlled by an outside force, his body turned of its own accord to face the owner of the voice. At his feet lay the corpse of a mortal knight he had killed by skewering through the eye. Qarakh could’ve sworn he’d slain the man in a different part of the clearing. Still, in the thick of battle, it was easy to become confused about details, and really, what did it matter precisely where he’d killed the mortal? The man was dead, wasn’t he?
“You’re a fine one to talk about being dead. You died years ago, but you’re walking around. Why do you find it so difficult to believe that I can still talk?” The voice emanated from the corpse’s mouth, but neither its tongue nor lips moved. And there was something familiar about the voice, something that Qarakh couldn’t quite…
“You came to the aid of the Telyavs, but in so doing you drew attention to yourself and your tribe. And now, a year later, Alexander of Paris has come to Livonia, and he has brought an army with him.”
Qarakh frowned. A year later? Alexander? He lowered his saber and inserted the tip into the corpse’s mouth. “Whatever foul sorcery has granted you speech, I wonder if it shall continue to work after I cut out your tongue.”
“Go ahead.” The voice sounded unconcerned, as if the corpse might have accompanied the words with a shrug if it were still capable of moving its shoulders. “I will simply find another vessel through which to speak.”
Qarakh looked around and saw that no one else in the clearing was moving. Deverra, Alessandro, all the rest… they stood, kneeled or crouched as motionless as the bodies of the dead that littered the field. The clearing was silent, the air itself still and lifeless. Qarakh looked up at the sky and saw that the stars were gone. He sensed they weren’t hidden by sudden cloud cover, but were truly no longer there, had perhaps never been there. All that remained was vast, unbroken, infinite darkness.
He looked back down at the corpse, but it was no longer that of the mortal knight. It was Aajav. He shared the knight’s wounds—the slashed throat and ruined eye—and he was clearly dead, not merely in torpor, but nevertheless it was Aajav, his blood brother and sire, lying on the ground before him.
“You were a fool to pledge oath to the Ventrue. He will turn on you faster than a striking snake.” Though the face was Aajav’s, the voice was not.
Qarakh knew now that it was the same voice it always was: the voice of hunger, rage and endless need. The voice of the Beast.
Qarakh frowned in confusion. He had taken an oath with someone named Alexander? He could almost remember, but how was that possible? It hadn’t happened yet—or had it? If only the damnable Beast would be silent and let him think… The tip of his saber remained inside the corpse’s—inside Aajav’s—mouth, and Qarakh nearly rammed the blade all the way in then, but he resisted. He knew there was little point, for the voice came not from Aajav, but from inside himself, and the only way to silence it would be to greet the dawn and
