Area 51: Nosferatu-8 (19 page)

"What are you doing?" Vampyr demanded. "I am a warrior of the first rank."

Acton stepped forward. "I do not know who—or what—you are. But I saw what you did with those two children in the town. And I—we all—have heard the stories about you. That you do not age. That you never expose yourself to the light of day. That you drink blood, something I now know to be true, having seen it with my own eyes."

"So?" Vampyr spit, the glob landing just in front of the Spartan commander. "I am the most feared warrior in all of Sparta, in all of Greece. What does it matter if I drink blood when we spill gallons every day?"

"There are the matters of honor and the code of a warrior," Acton said.

Vampyr laughed. "Honor? What honor is there in fighting against a city one day, then marching arm in arm

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with the same people you were just fighting against, to fight against some other city or empire? I have seen nothing of honor among you."

"There is the honor of following orders. Of being true to those who are your comrades. You can barely restrain yourself to stay in the shield wall and when we make contact with the enemy line you always break formation and battle on your own. I gave you the position at my side not out of honor, as it should be, but because I did not want to expose anyone else to your recklessness and disregard for your fellow warriors."

"I slay more enemy than any five of you combined," Vampyr boasted, glaring at the knights.

"If it was just about slaying," Acton said, "then butchers would reap many honors."

Vampyr snarled, trying with all his might to rise, but there were numerous ropes wrapped around his body, and all he could achieve was lifting his head.

"You fools. What do you think you're doing? Are you going to kill me?"

"There would be no honor in that," Acton said. "And you have fought for Sparta for as long as any can remember."

"You have no idea what I have done for Sparta," Vampyr shouted. "I was one of the Three Hundred. I stood with Leonidas in the Gates of Fire."

Acton took a step back, startled by these words. "That cannot be. That was many lifetimes ago. No man can be alive from then."

Vampyr said nothing.

"You are not a man, are you?" Acton finally asked. He turned to his left and gestured. A man stepped out of the darkness into the torchlight. An old man with long white hair, leaning heavily on a cane, dressed in a long black robe 159

that was worn and dirty. "It is as you said,' Acton said to the newcomer. "He is not human."

"Who is this?" Vampyr demanded.

"My name is Tyrn," the old man said, speaking Greek with a strange accent. "I have traveled long and far to come here. I am of the Wedjat."

Vampyr was surprised for the first time in many centuries and it showed on his face.

The old man nodded. "You know the word from the ancient tongue and you know what it means."

Vampyr remained silent.

Tyrn looked at Acton. "He has walked the Earth much longer than Sparta has existed. He is one of the Undead. I have read of his kind in the records of my order. They are a blasphemy of mankind."

There was murmuring from the ranks of the knights at these words.

"He lies," Vampyr said.

"He does not lie," Acton said simply. "He said you drink blood and that has long been the rumor in the agoge. I followed you into the town and saw you do exactly that with my own eyes. He says you have lived a very long time. And you yourself said you were at the Battle of Thermopylae, something impossible for any man still alive."

"He must be killed," Tyrn said. "He is an affront to mankind."

"Easy, old man," Acton said, putting a hand on Tyrn's shoulder. "He is a Spartan. He earned that, regardless of where he came from or even what he is."

"Let me go and I will leave Sparta," Vampyr said. "I am done with people's petty squabbles anyway."

Acton held up his xithos. "As you learned in the agoge, a sword has two edges.

Because you earned being

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a Spartan, I will not kill you. But, I cannot allow you to leave being what you are and having learned what we taught you. If you leave Sparta, you must leave behind what Sparta gave you."

"And how do you propose to do that?" Vampyr demanded.

Acton walked up to the field table. He slid his xithos into its scabbard, and then held a hand out to his rear. A knight came walking up with a bloodstained axe in his hands.

"What are you going to do?" Vampyr demanded, straining against the ropes with all his might.

"I am taking back what Sparta has given you as best as I can," Acton said. He raised the axe over his head. It came down in a straight and accurate blow, slicing into Vampyr's right arm midway between wrist and elbow, severing the end of the limb. Vampyr's right hand flopped off the table, the fingers still twitching.

Vampyr gritted his teeth and glared at Acton, holding back the scream of pain by virtue of the very training Acton was trying to undo. Blood spurted from the stump, pulsing onto the table and ground. The Spartan commander walked around the surgeon's table to the other side. Lifted the axe. And swung it down, severing the left hand at exactly the same point.

Vampyr screamed.

Two surgeons rushed forth, wearing leather gloves to hold red hot irons they had just pulled from a fire. They pressed the glowing metal against the forearm stumps. The smell of burning flesh filled the air, along with Vampyr's screams.

He didn't even notice the Watcher Tyrn gingerly gathering his two severed hands and sprinkling them with black powder from a vial. Both appendages withered away at the touch of the mysterious powder.

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The surgeons cauterized the wounds, then bound tight leather strips around the upper arms, further stemming the flow of blood to the severed limbs. All Vampyr knew was pain, radiating up both arms, into his core, then circling, mixing with his hatred into a black cauldron that would never know peace and solace.

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GREECE: 335 B.C.

For Nosferatu the decision to follow the course of action proposed by Aspasia's Shadow was not a difficult one to make. If he could somehow find more of the Gods, he might be able to get some of their blood and take it back to Nekhbet.

That he was being played by Aspasia's Shadow he had no doubt, but one could always try to change the rules of the game.

Nosferatu had traversed Africa on foot and sailed around it by boat, both astounding feats. But China was a different matter. No one in Greece had ever heard of such a place and Aspasia's Shadow had laughed when Nosferatu had asked where the land lay. "To the east. Far to the east," had been his answer, before letting Nosferatu know it was time for him to leave.

While no one knew where China was, everyone now knew of Macedonia and the boy-king from that province; Nosferatu had a hard time getting anyone to talk of anything else. But the more he heard, the more interested he became in Alexander, son of Philip II, king of Macedonia, and Olympias, a princess of Epirus. Besides what Aspasia's Shadow had said, Nosferatu knew that to go east would be more than a matter of pointing his face in that direction and walking.

The Persian Empire, the most recent conqueror of Egypt, lay that way 163

and it was not fond of strangers passing through. He would need help and it made sense to seek out the most powerful ally available.

Nosferatu was impressed by what he heard. Tutored by Aristotle, who was held in great esteem among the intelligentsia in Athens, Alexander was now king of Macedonia to the north of Greece as a result of the assassination of his father the previous summer. In one short year, surrounded by enemies in his own kingdom and those surrounding him, Alexander had brutally exerted his will, executing any who stood in his way.

His power was so great that a Greek congress of states gathering at Corinth had elected him commander of their latest campaign against the Persians, during which he had attacked to the east as far as the Danube River, a fact that certainly intrigued Nosferatu. While conducting that campaign, Alexander had been brought close to disaster at home when Thebes revolted. Yet he'd returned from defeating the Persians and in one week razed the city of Thebes to the ground and sold its population into slavery, an action that caught the attention of the rest of the Greek states not yet allied with him.

The previous year Alexander had gone after the Persians once more, crossing the Hellespont, the water barrier dividing east and west Anatolia, to the east.

Alexander attacked a superior force of over 40,000 mercenaries and, according to the tales, totally defeated it while losing only 110 men.

Alexander was currently camped across the Hellespont and the rumor was that he was preparing a further expedition to the east against the Persian main army under King Darius III. With a letter of introduction from Aspasia's Shadow, Nosferatu took leave of the city

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of Athens and headed north to link up with Alexander and his army.

Beyond all the legends that were growing up about the boy-king, Nosferatu also knew something none of the Greeks and Macedonians who followed him did: He was a Guide, programmed by Aspasia's Shadow using the Guardian computer inside of Mount Sinai.

It took only the letter from Aspasia's Shadow with the proper code word that had been imprinted in Alexander for Nosferatu to gain access to Alexander's court.

However, to work his way into the inner circle of advisers took two years. There were many who did not trust him, a man whom they only saw at night, but Alexander the King was not only programmed to accept him, but learned to appreciate Nosferatu's counsel. Nosferatu knew patience, a trait he found many mortals did not appreciate. Most important, though, were his forays, when he would disappear for weeks at a time, ranging ahead of the army, hiding during the day, and scouting at night, moving like a ghost and seeing what others couldn't. He would return to the king's tent and brief the king and his staff on the terrain and enemy ahead with an accuracy that astounded all.

Nosferatu knew he could travel more quickly on his own, but he stayed with Alexander because he saw great possibilities and because he knew Aspasia's Shadow was right. The king had his sights set high, much higher than any around him realized, except for Nosferatu, to whom he would confide his dreams of conquest late at night. That those dreams had been implanted, Alexander had no clue, nor did Nosferatu see any reason to enlighten him.

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The Persian king, Darius, had retreated to Babylon while Alexander continued to the east and south. Nosferatu cautioned the king that he was leaving his left flank open, but Alexander was more concerned with liberating all the towns along the coast of the Mediterranean and bringing them into the Greek fold. Nosferatu realized that even though Aspasia's Shadow had imprinted a strong desire into Alexander, the young man still retained a large degree of freedom in his decision making. More of the game, Nosferatu mused.

Thus it was that in September of 333, Darius made a bold move from Babylon, marched hard to the west into the rear of the Greek army, and cut Alexander's supply line along the coast. The first notice of this disaster they had was when those hospital cases they'd left behind appeared, wandering up the supply road, their hands amputated, the wounds sealed with pitch, babbling of the mighty Persian army they'd been given a tour of after having their appendages removed.

This was when Nosferatu saw the unique nature of the man, which he had sensed from their first meeting as Aspasia's Shadow obviously had also, expand to take control over an army. Cut off, exhausted from hard marching, drenched by torrential rains, and greatly outnumbered by the Persians to their rear, somehow Alexander managed to infuse his fighters with a sense of optimism.

Alexander personally led the charge against the Persian lines, heading straight for Darius's golden chariot. The Greeks and Macedonians broke through and Darius fled, so frightened that he left his mother, wife, and children behind to be taken hostage.

While his generals urged him to pursue Darius and finish off the Persians once and for all, Nosferatu had

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different advice, given the new state of affairs. Thus, Alexander marched south, capturing Tyre after a siege, then into Gaza to take advantage of the sudden power vacuum in Egypt. In short order, Alexander controlled the entire Mediterranean seacoast from Greece around to Egypt.

The night of the army's triumphant entry into Egypt, Nosferatu went to the Giza Plateau in the darkness. Alexander and his army remained at the mouth of the Nile, where he was to found the city named after him.

There was panic in nearby Cairo over the defeat of the Persians and the lack of any Pharaoh to fill the void. Nosferatu cared nothing for that. He went to the bank of the Nile, to the same hut he had visited so many years before. How better to learn what was new than to ask those whose job it was to watch?

When he kicked the door open, Nosferatu was not surprised to see a wizened old man sitting on a straw mat, whittling away at a stick. The man looked up at the sudden intrusion, but didn't stop whittling.

"You are a Watcher, a Wedjat?" Nosferatu demanded.

"I am of the order," the man affirmed. "I am a Watcher. And I am not involved in your war."

"Your name?"

"Does it matter?"

"No. But your name anyway."

"Kajik."

"Do you know who I am?"

The man's eyes narrowed. "You appear to be a One Who Waits. As I said, I only watch. You have no reason to do me harm."

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Nosferatu laughed. "I am not one of them. My name is Nosferatu."

Kajik nodded, still without any sign of panic or fear. "I have heard of you.

From my father. The Undead one who killed a God. Who came here and took his love away many years ago."

"You do not seem surprised to see me."

"Much has happened in my life," Kajik said. "It would take a lot to surprise me. I have seen the rule of two Pharaohs and three Persian kings. I have had six of my seven sons forced into armies—the army of whoever was ruling at the time—and die in battles against foes whom they had no reason to fight. I have seen my wife die of grief."