Knights of the Blood (3 page)

Forcing himself forward, de Beq slowly began to advance toward the door of the mud—walled date shed. It was closed but did not appear to be latched. As the sharif glided to the right, setting his back against the wall, de Beq moved left and put the point of his sword against the top of the door and slowly pushed it open.

Standing outside in the bright sun, the contrast was too stark to see into the dark interior of the shed. De Beq swallowed hard and considered their options. Whoever was inside–if there
was
someone inside–would certainly have the advantage over a man entering. Temporarily blinded while his eyes adjusted from the bright sun outside, an enemy could easily kill him with a knife, sword, or spear. If the enemy had a bow, he could just as easily put an arrow in his throat before he had taken two steps into the room.

They had to go in, though. Drawing a deep breath, still listening for any movement, de Beq flattened himself against the wall in imitation of the sharif and mouthed in Arabic, “On the count of ten.” He shut his eyes tightly then, drawing his sword up against his chest in a guard position, feeling the latent heat of the wall sinking into his back through his armor as he silently counted:
huit ...
neuf ...
dix ...

As he hit ten, de Beq pivoted around the doorjamb and into the shed, Salim following suit, their swords slashing to clear the darkness as they came, eyes only opening when they were out of the glare of the open doorway, backs to the walls on either side. Slivers of light pierced the thatched roof of the shed, and golden dust motes swirled through them, reflecting the sunlight like a million tiny mirrors. A harsh rectangle of brightness fell on the floor in front of the doorway, but the darkness of the rest of the shed was no longer impenetrable. De Beq’s nose told him much about the contents of the shed, even as his eyes began to pick out details.

Several dozen more bodies filled the date shed, piled three—deep along either side wall, all of them stripped naked and bound and slain like the ones by the well. And hanging by their heels from the center rafter were two more, gently swaying back and forth like the pendulums used by infidel wizards to locate wells in the desert. Large brass bowls were set under the two corpses, like those used by the Jews in Jerusalem to catch the blood from the animals their rabbis butchered in the marketplace. The bowls were wiped clean, as were the faces of all the dead ... .

“I told you this was outside your experience,” Salim whispered. “This slaughter was for more purpose than just to kill. The dead have been bled, their blood caught in these bowls for–“

Scraatch.
The sound again, right above their heads.

As both of them looked up, a small black shape plummeted out of the thatch and onto de Beq’s back, locking its fingers onto the edge of the mail at his neck with a grip of iron. The chain mail inhibited de Beq’s frenzied attempt to beat the thing off with either his fist or sword hilt, and despite slamming himself into a wall, it held on, its fingers now digging into his flesh.

De Beq bellowed as the thing on his back started biting at his neck and shoulders, and now Salim, too, was trying to beat it off. It screamed in pain as it broke teeth trying to bite through his mail, and then it found soft flesh again, this time on the side of de Beq’s face.

De Beq batted at it with a mailed hand, then grabbed the thing’s head and squeezed as hard as he could. Infuriated, the thing seized one of de Beg’s fingers and nearly dislocated it as he wrenched away.

“Get outside! Get outside!” Salim commanded, battering at the thing with the hilt of his scimitar and urging de Beq toward the door. “They hate the sunlight! Get out!”

With blood streaming down the side of his face, de Beq staggered out the door and into the bright Syrian sun, Salim right behind him. The thing screamed and twisted, clawing for his eyes, but it did not let go, and the sharif’s sword was useless at such close range.

Approaching exhaustion, de Beq flung himself to the ground, hoping to crush the thing with his own body weight. As the two of them hit the hardpacked earth, the thing shrieked and abandoned ‘its grip on de Beq, scuttling back into the date shed on all fours before de Beq could get a dear look at it.

As de Beq rolled onto his back and shaded his eyes with one hand, gasping for breath, the sharif’s shadow fell across his face.

“In the name of Allah! I had not expected
that!”
He dropped to de Beq’s side and helped the knight to a sitting position.

“And what
was
that?” de Beq demanded, grabbing Salim’s sword—wrist with his free hand and pulling him closer.

The sharif’s dark face went still and set, and he looked pointedly at de Beq’s hand on his royal person. Exhaling softly, de Beq gave a nod and released him, gesturing toward the shed with his sword as he caught his breath.

“What was it, Salim? You said this was outside my experience, and you’re absolutely right. Now, what are we dealing with?”

“I shall tell you after we’ve dealt with it,” the sharif said. He rose and headed back toward the shed before de Beq could object, stationing himself to the right of the door as before, then turning to see if de Beq was coming. He was. The door was still open, and at the sharif’s hand signal they eased inside to either side, searching the darkness overhead and keeping their backs to the doorjambs until their eyes adjusted to the dimness again, swords at the ready.

Silence. As de Beq tried to hear beyond his pounding heart, he strained to pick up any sound that would give away the position of the thing that had attacked him. After counting nearly a hundred heartbeats, he started to hear a faint sound from the far end of the shed: a soft sucking sound like a baby nursing.

Hardly daring to breathe, both de Beq and the sharif turned their gaze in that direction. In the heavy dimness of the storage shed, they could just make out a shape that had not been there earlier: almost child—sized, its thin arms locked around the head of one of the hanging corpses, face buried in the deep slash that had opened the dead man’s throat.

“As I feared,” the sharif murmured.

Even that faint sound was enough to alert the creature. Twisting around, it sprang at the two men in a series of bounding leaps. Instinctively, de Beq brought his sword point up in a stop—thrust, impaling the thing on the tip of his blade. It was the size of a child perhaps three years old, and it howled and writhed as the steel blade pierced it through the vitals. Afraid that it might thrash free, de Beq kept the sword pointed toward the ceiling, backing frantically out of the date shed and into the sunlight, Salim anxiously following.

Outside, the thing redoubled its screams and shrieks, convulsing on the blade and wrenching at de Beq’s arm, which already ached with the effort of holding it aloft. With dreadful fascination, he watched as it howled and thrashed, until finally, with an agonized wail and one final spasm, the thing was still.

Slowly allowing himself to breathe again, de Beq cautiously began to lower his sword, intending to rid its blade of the abomination. But as he did so, the creature suddenly arched back into motion and grabbed the blade in both hands, making little grunting sounds as it tried to push itself free.

De Beq swung the sword skyward with a thrusting motion, driving the blade deeper into the creature’s belly. Gasping, the thing doubled over and reached down the blade, reaching for de Beq, pulling itself closer by impaling itself still farther.

Half mesmerized by the thing’s determination, de Beq glanced at Salim in disbelief, then turned toward the sharif, slowly lowering his sword until it was horizontal with the ground. As the thing stretched toward de Beq again, making a mewling sound in its throat and clenching at the air before de Beq with a small, bloody fist, the sharif sprang forward and, with a mighty swipe of his scimitar, cut off the creature’s head.

The head lay blinking in the sand at de Beq’s feet, its mouth moving once or twice as though silently mouthing a final curse of defiance. On the blade of his sword, the body convulsed once more, then went limp. Only at the sharif’s cautious nod did de Beq let his sword arm lower, letting its weight pull the sword down and allowing the impaled body to slide at last from the weapon and onto the sun—parched ground. For a moment de Beq stood frozen to the spot, simply staring at it. Then, almost mechanically, his right arm rose and fell. It took him three cuts to hack the body of the child in two.

“Holy Mother of God.” De Beq’s heart was pounding beneath his mail as he straightened and crossed himself in awe, with his sword still in his fist. “What kind of child was that?”

“That was no child as you or I know them.” Salim was wiping the damascened blade of his scimitar with a green silk scarf. “It was a demon. Hassad created it and left it here to starve.”

Stooping to rub sand on his sword blade, de Beq glanced up at the sharif in bewilderment.

“I don’t understand. What do you mean, he created it? It doesn’t look like a demon to me. It looks like a child.” He rolled the bottom half of the torso over with his boot. “A girl, not more than three years old.”

“Yes, a girl child, but one Hassad decided to dedicate to the evil of blood.” The sharif slowly returned his delicately curved sword to its scabbard.

“Hassad and his men live on the blood of the living, be it the blood of their horses or the blood of men. They are
afreat,
accursed of the Prophet. Their very existence is a blasphemy, and Allah wills that they should wander the earth forever driven by a desire for blood–the blood they need to purify themselves.”

De Beq crouched quietly looking at the sharif. It was true that there were demons and devils. He had discussed this many times with Father Andre, the confessor. They had agreed that demons and imps were almost human, but somehow he had expected scales, and fins, and horns ... not a grime—encrusted three—year—old girl.

“I accept that what you say is probably true–“ de Beq cocked his head to one side “–but my books teach me that demons are the work of the Devil.”

“Ah! Yes, it is so.
Shaitan
controls Hassad, but it is Hassad who poisons his followers with a desire for blood.” The sharif squatted in a meager pool of shade. “That is what he did to this unfortunate child.”

De Beq was staring at the little girl’s severed head. “But why? Why do this?”

“For sport, perhaps. Perhaps because he is evil and delights in torture and pain. For his amusement, he made the child like himself and his men. He set the hunger, but then he left her with no blood to drink. In a few more days, she would have left this place seeking blood and would have been slowly roasted alive under the desert sun.”

De Beq stood up and slowly sheathed his sword.

“Salim, my friend, we must find this Hassad. We must find him and kill him.”

“Alas, that is not for me to do,
el Beq,”
the sharif had replied.
“You
must find him. My men will have no stomach for fighting Hassad and his men after today. There is magic here, evil magic, and my men fear that far more than death in battle. I will send word, if I learn of his whereabouts, but
you
must kill Ibn—al— Hassad ... .”

Nearly a month had passed after the slaughter at the oasis, and during that time de Beq and his men had bided their time at Noire Garde, waiting for word to come concerning the movements of Ibn—al—Hassad. During that time, only one visitor had come to the fortress of the Order of the Sword–a Greek priest called Father Georgilas. He had stayed for three nights, breaking his journey to the Patriarch of Antioch, and during that time he and de Beq held several long talks on the subject of
afreat
and Ibn—al—Hassad.

“Of course I know of such things.” The Greek wiped his greasy hands on a disreputable—looking beard before pouring himself another mug of wine. “As a boy in Greece, I was reared on the island of Santorini, where we had many troubles with the
vrykolakas
and the
vrykolatios.
They are like these
afreat
you speak of.”

He drained half the mug in a single quaff and wiped his sleeve across his drooping moustache before continuing.

“From what you have described of what happened at the oasis, there can be no doubt about it. This Turk you are after–he must be a
vrykolatios
of the most evil kind.”

“A
broucolaques?”
De Beq’s command of Greek was limited, and his phonetic pronunciation of the language twisted many of the words into the Franco—Norman patois common to the knightly class in the Holy Land. “What exactly are these
broucolaques?”

“Vrykolatios,”
Father Georgilas corrected, looking at his empty mug and reaching for the wine jug. “Put most simply, they are the un—dead. They drink human blood and shun the sunlight, and often they leave their graves at night and come out to torment their relatives.”

“Excuse me, holy Father,” de Beq interrupted, “but Ibn—al—Hassad doesn’t live in a grave. He does drink blood, but he moves across the desert and kills Christian and infidel alike, and is not afraid of the sunlight.”

“Ah ha!” roared the priest. “Exactly why I said he was a
vrykolatios
and not a
vrykolakas!
He does not fear the sunlight. He moves about with others of his kind, and from what you tell me of the little child who attacked you, he creates other
vrykolatios
when it pleases him. The vrykolatios feeds on the blood of his enemies, and his enemies are the devout, be they Christian–“ the bearded cleric crossed himself twice “–or heathen Saracen.” In his outburst, Father Georgilas had spilled some of his wine, which he mopped up with the sleeve of his habit and squeezed out over his mug.

“But tell me, Father.” De Beq leaned forward and topped up both their mugs with the sweet Cypriot wine. “How did Hassad become a
vryko– vryko–“

“Vrykolatios,”
the priest supplied. “Holy Church teaches that there are eight ways in which a man may become
vrykolatios.
Those who are buried without the rites of the Church as well as those who commit suicide or die unavenged will surely be so condemned. So, too, will children who were conceived on one of the great Church festivals, as well as those who die unbaptised or apostate.”