BLOOD AND ROSES
Angela Knight
ONE
The vampire knew how to sit on a horse. He rode with an easy muscularity despite his armor, achieving an effortless rhythm with his huge black stallion. A helm covered his head, red plumes floating in the wind, and gleaming plate mail sheathed his big body, so that he moved with the creak mail sheathed his big body, so that he moved with the creak of leather and the scrape of steel on steel.
He was surrounded by a small troop of mounted men who maintained an alert, professional silence, their armor glinting in the light of the floating spell globes that danced over their heads. As befitted humans riding so close to Varil territory, they rode warily, with hands on sword hilts, crossbows, or spears.
They were still doomed.
Brooding, Amaris watched them ride through the wooded valley below. She and the three with her were shielded by a spell designed to conceal them from human or vampire senses. Their targets had no idea they were being watched.
Feeling her gorge rise in a sick wave, Amaris swallowed hard. The sense of evil surrounding her made her skin creep. I should warn them. I can’t just sit back and watch them all die.
A male hand clamped over Amaris’s knee with a force that made her kneecap creak and the leggy roan mare dance beneath her. “If you betray us,” Tannaz said, serene as a priest, “I will see Marin’s soul feeds the Orb. It will be a very slow death.” He smiled, all chilling charm. “And I will slit your eyelids away and make you watch.”
“Get your hands off me, murderer,” Amaris snarled, as much in fury at herself as her captor.
Another mocking smile flashed white through the visor of his helm. “Is that any way to talk to your beloved father?”
“ ‘Beloved?’ ” She let her loathing fill her eyes. But he was right, damn him. Anything she tried to do for those poor bastards would get Marin killed. She’d sworn to her mother’s ghost to protect her sister, a vow she would not break.
The two Varil raiders who stood to either side produced the grunting hiss that served their kind as laughter. They were massive creatures, bodies roped with muscle under iridescent reptilian scales, eyes glowing orange as coals in the darkness. They smelled like snakes. They wore no armor, and needed none with their thick hides. Clawed hands carried battle axes with blades the size of a warrior’s shield.
It was said they’d once been human. Amaris doubted it.
What in the name of all the gods am I doing here?
Raniero rode in wariness, vampire senses alert for any attack, mystical or otherwise. Though the kingdom’s magical barriers should keep Varilian raiders out, sometimes the vicious bastards got through. And considering the king’s suspicions about Wizard Lord Korban, Raniero was not inclined to take chances.
“Do you think Korban really is working with the Varil?” Gvido asked. The boy rode at an easy trot beside him, his visor up, revealing a rawboned, freckled face in the light from Raniero’s illumination spell.
“I know not,” Raniero told him. “And I will draw no conclusions until I investigate further.”
“But how could any border wizard work with the Varil?” Gvido shook his head in disbelief. “Remember what they did to that village? What was it called, Kessel? Men, women, children—ripped apart and eaten. I have evil dreams about it still.” He had been Raniero’s squire for almost a year now, an earnest sixteen-year-old with a merry smile and a pleasant tenor voice. He wore his long red hair tied back in a queue. His chin was covered by a thin orange scruff he stubbornly refused to shave; he was determined to grow a proper beard.
“Sorcerers,” Olrick grunted from Raniero’s right. A tall, muscular man with an impressive belly, he was a skilled and wily warrior. Yet after twenty years fighting at Raniero’s side, his braided beard and long blond hair were dulling into gray. He would retire soon, and Raniero was not looking forward to it. “All wizards be mad. Years of sniffing potions and playing with spells. ’Tis no wonder their wits fly.”
Raniero lifted a dark brow. “I work spells.” His magic was not as strong as that of the border wizards, but he was no powerless peasant either.
“Ye be a vampire,” Olrick said, unperturbed. “Of course ye be mad.”
Suppressing a smile, Raniero flicked a rude finger at his friend. Olrick brayed his distinctive laugh and replied with a gesture even more obscene.
Raniero’s chuckle faded into a frown as a feeling of waiting evil brushed his vampire senses. He straightened in his saddle and drew rein as he scanned the surrounding hills. Bakur, his black warhorse, danced in unease, as if he, too, sensed a threat. Alerted, Raniero’s men pulled up and peered around.
At first his keen night vision detected nothing but the forested hills that surrounded them, silvered by moonlight and splashed with shadow.
Until something shimmered in a there-not-there flash that told him someone was moving behind a shielding spell. “Draw weapons!” Raniero bellowed, pulling his own great blade from its saddle sheath as he jerked Bakur to face the threat.
The attackers exploded into view—two Varil raiders afoot and one mounted fighter, all three plunging down the hill toward them. Raniero’s gut clenched in dread. Though the odds seemed to favor his party, the reptilian raiders were far stronger than humans—and far more vicious. Ten men were not enough to bring two Varil down.
With a hard jerk of one shoulder, Raniero shrugged his shield off his back and into his left hand, spurring his stallion forward. He had to take the Varil out quickly if his men were to survive. Bakur squealed an equine challenge as he broke into a pounding gallop up the hill.
To Raniero’s startled rage, the two raiders veered away from his charge. Before he could spin his horse after them, the third fighter bore down on him, bellowing a war cry.
Raniero swung his shield up to block the other’s sword as the horses collided with a meaty thud. His enemy’s blade struck the shield so hard Raniero felt the impact to his teeth. The man couldn’t be human, not with such strength.
Another vampire. He’d be no easy kill.
Behind him, one of Raniero’s men screamed, high and thin with agony and fear. The shriek died in a gurgle.
Raniero bared his fangs and swung his sword with all his supernatural strength. His foe caught the blow on his own kite-shaped shield, long sword arcing for Raniero’s head. Raniero ducked and kneed Bakur aside. The two mounts wheeled, slashing at each other with sharp hooves and snapping teeth.
Another death scream. It sounded like Olrick.
Fury and grief sizzling through him, Raniero forced himself to concentrate on his enemy—and prayed he’d finish the bastard off in time to save the rest of his men.
As she’d been ordered, Amaris hung back on the hillside, waiting for Tannaz’s signal. Her vantage point gave her a good view of the fight.
A bit too good, in fact. She really didn’t want to watch what the raiders’ axes were doing to those poor humans, so she focused her attention on the vampires.
Physically, the two were well-matched. Tannaz was a bit taller and thicker through the shoulders, but Raniero made up the difference in speed and agility. He clung to his beast by knees alone as the black warhorse battled Tannaz’s bay destrier.
Tannaz rose in his stirrups to better bring his blade down on his foe’s head. As Raniero blocked with his shield, his charger lunged and sank his teeth into the throat of Tannaz’s bay. The horse threw up his head and reared to escape, blood flying. Tannaz lost his balance, tumbling from the saddle to land on the leafy forest floor with a crunch of armor and bone.
“Ha!” Delighted, Amaris rose in her stirrups for a better view.
But her murdering sire had already rolled to his feet, scuttling away as his bay fled the black’s teeth and hooves. Wheeling the stallion after his foe, Raniero rained relentless blows down on Tannaz, forced the vampire to duck behind his shield and retreat. Steel rang on steel like the steady clang of a blacksmith’s hammer.
Amaris! Curse your eyes, aid me! Her father’s mystical voice bellowed in her mind.
Die and be damned, murderer, Amaris thought back.
If I do not return, Korban will slay Marin.
Amaris’s lips curled back from her teeth.
Raniero used his shield to block the vampire’s attempts to drive his sword into Bakur’s glossy black chest. Spotting an opening, Raniero brought his sword down in a furious overhand blow.
One of his men shrieked in mortal agony, but he didn’t dare look away from his enemy. A flash of white fluttered in his periphrial vision, but Raniero ignored that, too.
So when the beautiful woman suddenly appeared behind his opponent, he almost fell out of the saddle in sheer astonishment.
She was slim as a river reed, dressed in white silk so thin and fine, he could see the shadow of her nipples in the moonlight. Her hair fell around her shoulders in a cascade of dark curls, and her large eyes glowed a luminous green in her fine-boned face, like spring leaves illuminated by the sun.
A tattoo of a rose bloomed on the high rise of her cheek. He recognized the design instantly. What in the Red God’s name was a Blood Rose doing here?
Raniero’s vampire foe spun, spotted the Blood Rose, and leaped for her. Acting on sheer instinct, Raniero swung a leg over Bakur’s side and dove, plowing the vampire into the forest floor before he could grab the girl.
As they hit the ground, Raniero lifted his sword, meaning to end the bastard right there.
He did not see the Blood Rose lift her delicate hands and send a spell blast slamming into his helmeted head.
Blackness descended like a swinging fist.
Tannaz jerked free of the vampire’s dead weight and bounced to his feet, raising his sword as if to cleave his foe’s head off his shoulders.
“Korban wants him alive!” Amaris shouted, readying a stun spell if he did not heed her.
Her father hesitated, spat a curse, and aimed a kick at Raniero’s armored ribs instead. Panting, he gave her a smug, triumphant grin. “Well done, daughter.”
“I was tempted to let him kill you.”
“Vicious little harpy,” Tannaz said, almost fondly. “I shall have to teach you respect.”
She snorted contempt. “Oh, aye—when the Red God takes up needlework.”
Ignoring that, Tannaz looked around at the Varil. The two raiders had settled among Raniero’s fallen men to feed. Amaris refused to follow his gaze. The smell and sound of their feast was enough to make her stomach heave as it was.
“Feh,” he spat. “They’ll not be finished any time soon. We will move on ahead. I would have this one in a cell before your spell wears off.”
She nodded grimly and summoned the horses with a wave of her hand. The spell to bring the vampire’s black destrier under control took a bit more work, but soon the stallion was ambling along beside them, his master hanging bound and bewitched across his saddle.
At least it was over, Amaris comforted herself. She could take Marin and go.
If Korban kept his word . . .