Eric Flint: Much Fall Of Blood

Kari looked reproachfully at Erik as he dropped the two limp bandits. "What did you do that for? It was shaping into a nice little fight."

Erik shook his head at the young Vinlander. Kari's family were sept and kin, at least by Erik's understanding of the duty he owed to Svanhild. Erik therefore owed a duty of care to the boy. He'd not expected that to mean taking care of a tearaway, who, while less inclined to go drinking or whoring than Manfred had been, liked fighting. Kari fitted Jerusalem like a bull-seal fitted a lady's glove.

"If you want to fight there are plenty of knights. And there is me," said Erik.

Kari grinned disarmingly, showing a missing tooth. "The knights fight like knights. And as for you… I like to win sometimes. I thought you were busy watching over the Godar's nephew?"

"He's in church. On his knees. Where you will be shortly. Those men did not want to fight. They wanted to kill and rob you."

Kari shrugged. "Who else could I find? I don't like picking on drunks. You said that that was unsporting."

"One of these days you will also remember that I said picking fights with back-alley murderers would get you killed, you young fool." Erik took him by the ear and led him toward more salubrious parts of the city. With Manfred, Erik had thought that he was hard done by having had to locate all the taverns and brothels in any town. Kari took things to whole new level. He could be looking for a fight anywhere.

Buda, The Kingdom of Hungary

From the topmost ducat-gold curl to the tip of her toes, Countess Elizabeth Bartholdy was the most beautiful and youth-filled damsel any man could ever dream of. She simply had to smile and lower her long sooty eyelashes to have most men agree to do anything she asked of them.

The guard on Prince Vlad of Basarab's elegant prison was made of sterner stuff than most. That was not surprising, of course. You would want such guards for the grandson of the Dragon. But he was still a man. And too slow to react, when she put her hand where no lady would have done.

That instant of hesitation killed him, as the razor-sharp talon-like steel tips to her claws slipped through the cloth far more easily than the proverbial hot knife through butter. There were a few inhuman things that could survive the venom that tipped those nails. No human could.

She sheathed the claws again, as he fell with barely a whimper. There was a slight clatter from his sword. She paused for an instant to enjoy the look on his face. She loved that look of startlement and betrayal. It suited men so well.

Her fingertips were once again without blemish, her nails beautifully manicured. There was a cost to turning your own body into the perfect assassin's killing tool, but Elizabeth had paid that price long ago. Long, long, long ago. More than a century before.

She opened the door to the chambers of the captive duke of Valahia with a smile on her lips. There was something about killing that awoke certain hungers in her. But magic required that she should not use the boy within to satisfy those lusts. He had other value to her. Mindaug had given her a time and place at which he would still have to be alive and, for best effect, virginal. At the time and a place when the shadow ate the moon. And her control of herself was superb. After that, he could be abused and die.

The prince in the tower had not spent long hours mooning out of the windows or singing to passers-by. Heredity had shaped him into a silent man-that and a lack of company, perhaps. Besides, neither were practical options. There were no windows he could see out of.

King Emeric had seen to it that his hostage lacked for nothing-except his liberty, and the freedom to use his mother tongue. The prince had had instruction in several others, Frankish, Greek, Aramaic. He had had tutors for these subjects, of course, Hungarian ones. But other than those and the silent guards, he saw few people, and certainly none of his own age or speaking his own tongue. He had kept the language alive somehow in his memory, reciting the stories and songs of his childhood-silently, under his breath every evening. He had been forbidden to speak or sing them aloud.

He'd done so at first to escape the crushing fear and loneliness of being a small boy taken far from everything he loved and knew, and imprisoned here. And then terrified out of his wits-after being beaten and shown slow death-an act of brutality that as an older, more logical man, he understood had been to ensure that the king of Hungary had a suitably cowed vassal. Instead, his spirit had been shaped by the experience into a secretive but fiercely resistant one. A spirit that sometimes indulged in cruel and wild fantasies of revenge, but more often just longed to be free.

As for sanity… was he mad? Sometimes he wondered.

As prisons went, his apartments had every luxury-except windows. There was a narrow arrow slit high up on the wall above the stair. From a certain angle, he could see the sky through it. Not direct sunlight, but daylight, and sometimes cold breezes wafted in from the outside world, strange in their scents, unfamiliar in their chill.

By the age of twenty he had, to some extent, forgotten the world outside the walls. Not forgotten a desire for it, no, never! But forgotten the details of it. Books, for all that he loved them, were not the same. And Father Tedesco, his most frequent companion, was more inclined to talk of the glories of Heaven, than the glories of the world outside.

Vlad heard someone outside the doors, and wondered if the old priest had come to visit him again.

There was a faint clatter and the door swung gently open.

It wasn't the elderly priest.

It was a vision.

An angel.

Naturally she had come to save him from this hell.

So why was he so afraid?

The Southern Carpathian Mountains

The hills echoed with the howling of the wolves. The slim, dark-complexioned man with the silver earrings did not appear to find that a worrisome thing. He slipped along the ghost of a trail as silently and as sure-footedly as a wolf himself. The full moon shone down casting spiky shadows on the pine-needle covered forest floor. The wyvern was just a slightly more spiky piece of darkness. Spiky darkness with red eyes that glowed like coals. Wyverns could shift their opalescent colors to match their surroundings. Here she did not have to.

"So, old one. The blood moon time is coming. The signs say she will capture him," said the lithe man, looking warily at her.

The wyvern nodded. "She will watch over him carefully. And she has killed many of our kind." It spoke his tongue. That was part of the magic gift of the creature. A small but vital part.

"Blood calls. We must answer. We have a compact to honor. Blood to spill." His teeth flashed briefly at that.

"You are too fond of blood, Angelo."

He shrugged. "It is in my nature. My kind needs to see it flow. Life is just the song of the hunter and the hunted."

"There is more to it than that," said the wyvern.

"Not for us. Prey or predator, all part of the one or the other, and part of the same."

The wyvern was a hunter herself, and understood the wolfish Angelo and his kin better than most. "But which one is the boy? Hunter or the hunted?"

Angelo laughed humorlessly. "We will just have to see, won't we? And she considers all of us prey. Him more so than us."

The old wyvern sighed. "True." She bowed her head. "Strike cleanly."

Angelo drew his blade. It was an old, old knife, handed down from generation to generation. The flakes of razor-edged chert were still sharp. The magic would not allow metals to be used for this deed, the start to the renewing of the compact. It came from a time of stone, tooth and claw. "When have I ever done otherwise, old friend?" he said grimly. "It is the least I can do."