Ocean of Blood Read online

  Chapter Eleven

  Night gave way to day and most of the vampires went to rest for a few hours, or tend to their injuries. At sunset they gathered in the huge Hall of Stahrvos Glen for the traditional howling contest. At the signal, every vampire howled loudly and tried to sustain it. The one who held his howl the longest would be afforded the title “of the Howl” for the next twelve years.

  Larten didn’t have a particularly impressive howl and faded from the contest early. But two vampires he knew well were among the last three. One was his old Cub ally, Yebba, who seemed to have grown even larger since Larten last saw him. The other was a less familiar acquaintance, Mika Ver Leth.

  Larten was surprised to see Mika – dressed in black, as always – among the final trio. Normally the successful howlers were bulky and large-lunged, like Yebba, but Mika was of average height, and slender. Yet he was holding his own against the others. Larten cheered on Yebba because of their friendship, but secretly he hoped Mika would take the honors—he had always had a soft spot for an underdog.

  Yebba came to a sudden, choking stop and scowled, disgusted with himself. Mika and the other General carried on for another minute, the cords in their throats strained to the breaking point, tears coursing from their eyes. Mika was in trouble – his voice was wavering – but then the other vampire fainted without warning and it was over.

  A huge cheer went up and Mika was engulfed by Generals eager to toast his name and be the first to challenge him to a fight. Larten bumped into him later that night and hailed him as Mika of the Howl.

  “It sounds strange,” Mika said, managing a rare, thin smile.

  “Were you surprised to win?” Larten asked.

  “No,” Mika said. “I practiced for the last decade. I took singing lessons from a human tenor and he taught me how to extend a note.”

  Larten frowned. “Why? It surely cannot mean that much to you.”

  “It means respect,” Mika said seriously. “I hope to be a Prince one night and I want to be invested sooner rather than later. As trivial as this contest was, it got me noticed, and that’s important.”

  Larten was amused by the ambitious General. Most vampires weren’t political—they didn’t care about power games and moving up the ranks. Mika was more like a human in that respect. But the clan was changing. The world was becoming hostile as mankind bred in ever greater numbers and claimed more territory. Vampires would have to keep an even lower profile than before if they were to survive. That meant taking the clan in a new direction. They would need youthful, imaginative leaders. A hundred years ago Mika wouldn’t have gotten far in his quest to be a Prince, but Larten believed he might prosper in the current climate. He wished Mika luck in his princely pursuit, even though it wasn’t a goal he personally aspired to.

  But Mika wasn’t the only one earning respect at that Council. Although he was unaware of it, Larten had caught the eyes of many of his peers and was beginning to make a name for himself. The clan approved of the way he had faced the one-armed General, and although he’d lost that challenge, he had won most of his subsequent contests, defeating a host of older, more experienced vampires.

  Paris Skyle heard of the youngster’s success and sought out his friend Seba to congratulate him.

  “The credit is not mine,” Seba said with a smile, watching from the sides as Wester struggled with a vampire who had only been blooded within the last couple of years. “Larten is driven by an inner passion. I have helped him, I hope, but he cannot be molded, merely guided.”

  “He could go far, according to the rumors,” Paris murmured.

  Seba sighed. “Is that so important? If he lives a good life and is true to himself, should that not be enough?”

  “My words stung you,” Paris said, surprised. “Forgive me.”

  “You do not need to apologize, Sire,” Seba said. “I have heard others talk highly of Larten, but they have noticed no merits that I had not already seen many years ago, even when I first met him as a child. I have always known that he will climb high, if he chooses to climb.”

  Paris frowned. “You hope that he won’t.”

  Seba pulled a face. “Larten could be a great General, maybe even a Prince. I will be delighted if that is his aim and he achieves it. But I will be just as pleased if he merely wants to lead a clean, honest life. I have no desire to be a mentor of Princes. I simply hope that those I care about are content.”

  “Do you worry about what power will do to him?” Paris asked, recalling a time when he had offered Seba the chance to become a Prince. “Do you think he is not suited to a position of authority?”

  Seba shrugged. “Think it? No. Fear it? Aye. Whether my fears are well founded or not, I cannot say. He is much like I was at that age. Perhaps I see flaws that are not there, reflections of my own weaknesses. Only time will tell. Either way, there is no point worrying about the future. He could break his back tonight and that would be the end of the matter.”

  “The gods give and the gods take away,” Paris agreed.

  Across from them, Wester finally got the better of his opponent and the pair went to drink to each other’s health. Wester was beaming—he didn’t enjoy many victories. Seba was pleased for him. He worried about Wester too, but felt his weaker assistant might find his path sooner than Larten, and take to it with more ease. He suspected Larten didn’t yet understand his true desires, and there was nothing harder than chasing a dream if you didn’t know what it was.

  As if reading his friend’s thoughts, Paris said, “Have you told them your good news?”

  “No. I will wait until after the Ceremony of Conclusion.”

  “Do you think that they will stay with you?”

  “Wester, aye. Larten… I do not know.” Quietly he added, “I hope not.”

  “Come!” Paris boomed, taking his friend’s arm. “I’ve darkened your mood. Let me lighten it again with a glass of wine.”

  “Wine?” Seba smiled. “I thought we only drank ale at Council.”

  Paris winked. “Ale is fine for younger, less sophisticated palates, but it’s the juice of the grape for veterans like us, aye?”

  “Aye,” Seba chuckled and went to try to drown his worries with the Prince.

  The children of the clan began departing Vampire Mountain a few nights after the Ceremony of Conclusion, once their heads had cleared and they could stand without wobbling. It was an undramatic exodus. Most didn’t even bother to bid their friends farewell, especially the older vampires, since that wasn’t their custom. They simply slipped away, some heading off in specific directions, others wandering wherever their feet took them.

  Larten and Wester helped clear up inside the Halls and tunnels. It was a mammoth task, even more involved than the preparations beforehand. But it was a calmer time and they went about their work in a merry mood. Even Vanez Blane was relaxed now, often stopping to joke with the pair and tell them not to work too hard. He had already forgotten the stressful lead-up to Council and was thinking about offering his services again in the future.

  Seba let the dust settle before summoning his assistants to a meeting in the Hall of Khledon Lurt. Over a bowl of bat broth he told them of his exciting offer.

  “The Princes have asked me to become the quartermaster of Vampire Mountain. I have accepted.”

  Wester had expected the announcement – he had heard rumors during the Festival – but Larten was taken by complete surprise.

  “Quartermaster?” he frowned, pushing his bowl aside. “I thought you did not yearn for power.”

  “I do not want to become a Prince,” Seba corrected him. “Quartermaster is a very different proposition. I will wield no actual authority. In theory I will be responsible only for taking care of supplies and keeping the Halls tidy. But as you know, in reality the quartermaster has a huge say on everything that happens in Vampire Mountain, not just at Council but the rest of the time. Princes and Generals come and go as needs dictate, but the quartermaster is ever present. I will have
the task of approving tutors and guards, determining how and what students are taught. I will have the ears of the Princes – the ear in Paris Skyle’s case – and they will listen carefully to my opinions.”

  “They do that anyway,” Larten said.

  “Perhaps,” Seba smiled. “But it is a different situation now. I cannot command as I could if I became a Prince. But if I live a long time – and the gods seem unwilling to take my soul, even though I am old and weary – I will be able to exert a strong influence for many decades to come. I can be a link between the old ways and the new. I think the clan needs someone like that right now.”

  Seba studied his assistants, awaiting their reactions. As he had suspected, Wester responded enthusiastically. “Congratulations, master. You deserve this and I know you’ll be a credit to the clan.”

  Larten wasn’t sure what to say. He already had an idea what this would mean for him and he was struggling with which path to take now that he had come to an unexpected fork in the road.

  “Aye,” Larten muttered. “Congratulations. May the luck of the vampires be with you.”

  Seba nodded, then said as lightly as he could, “What will the pair of you do now? I do not expect you to stay. I imagine you will want to leave and –”

  “No!” Wester exclaimed. “I’ll stay. I still have much to learn and nobody can teach me better than you.”

  “Are you certain?” Seba asked, ignoring the flattery. “It will be twenty or thirty years before you can become a General. That is a long time for a young vampire to spend caged inside a mountain.”

  “I don’t care,” Wester said stubbornly. “I’m staying. You will too, won’t you, Larten?” There was a faint, desperate edge to Wester’s voice. He was trying to sound casual, but he knew Larten was eager to leave. He didn’t want to be forced to choose between his best friend and his mentor.

  Larten didn’t reply immediately. His brow furrowed as he considered his options. Seba longed to advise Larten to leave, but thought it would be wrong of him to try to influence his uncertain assistant, so he held his tongue.

  “Stay,” Wester hissed. “This place isn’t so bad. You’d have to look for a new master if you left.”

  “There are many who would accept you,” Seba murmured, interceding only to counter the pressure that Wester was exerting. “You made a fine impression at Council and would have your choice of tutors, perhaps even Paris Skyle or another Prince.”

  Larten’s eyes narrowed. The Princes trained only those with great potential, the vampires who might become powerful Generals and replace them further down the line. This was the first indication he’d had that the path to the Hall of Princes might open up to him in the future. Mika Ver Leth would have jumped at such an opportunity, but Larten wasn’t Mika and he didn’t hunger for power. Yet it was tempting….

  Larten glanced at Wester and saw both hope and fear in his blood brother’s eyes. It was ridiculous. The pair were in their sixties. They would have been great-grandfathers with at least one foot in the grave if they hadn’t been blooded. Men of their age should have long outgrown the need for a best friend.

  But they were young as vampires measured such things, and hadn’t been apart since facing Murlough in the ruins of the old house. The pair had gone through much together, blooding, training, running with war packs. Larten would be lonely if they parted, but it would be harder on Wester. In the long run it might be better for him—Wester thought of himself too much as a lesser brother and maybe he needed some time apart from Larten to grow. But in the short term it would hurt.

  Larten tried to distance himself from Wester’s feelings, to decide what he wanted. But it was difficult. He felt – wrongly – that Seba would be disappointed if he left. The old vampire might think that Larten hoped to learn more from another master. He should have known better – Seba had made it clear on many occasions that the time would come when his assistants would need to establish their own lives – but his thoughts were jumbled up.

  Finally Larten sighed and went with the easiest option. “I will stay,” he said glumly.

  Wester cheered and hugged him. Seba smiled, but inside he was troubled. When he retired to his coffin the following morning he lay awake for a long time, plagued by an uneasy feeling, wondering if he should have spoken up rather than let Larten make what he believed to be a potentially damaging call.

  Chapter Twelve

  The next few years were difficult for Larten. Training to be a General was a hard time for any vampire. To start with, he had to master a variety of weapons, even though he would never use most of them. Larten looked forward to his knife and ax lessons but there were others – like the throwing stars Vancha favored, and a spiked, four-headed club – that he loathed. There was no such thing as an easy lesson. He was thrown in at the deep end every time and forced to defend himself in the face of a very real attack by his tutor. Larten spent many weeks nursing broken bones, and was concussed so often that he regularly couldn’t get to sleep because of the ringing in his ears.

  What particularly depressed him was that Wester was making relatively smooth progress. His younger friend suffered a vast array of injuries, the same as every trainee, but nowhere near anything like Larten’s. And it didn’t seem to matter how hard the orange-haired assistant worked—he always came to more grief in his lessons than Wester or the others in their group.

  What Larten didn’t know was that his tutors were working him harder than the rest. It wasn’t a conspiracy but simply the way they operated. When the taskmasters of Vampire Mountain trained someone with above-average ability, they gave him especially grueling tasks.

  Vampires were ruthless. They had no time for weakness and weeded out those who would be of no benefit to the clan. This was widely known. But many of the trainees were unaware that their masters were as harsh with those who had the potential to become leaders. If a tutor thought a student had talent, he pushed the youth to his limit, to either exploit or exhaust his potential. If Larten stayed the course and proved himself worthy of the challenges he was given, he would find himself on the road to success. But if his tutors broke his spirit and he failed, they’d consider the clan well rid of him. More was always asked of those with more to offer.

  Seba had no time to comfort or reassure his struggling assistant. The job of quartermaster was more demanding than he had imagined and his first few years were a hectic period of adjustment. There were so many details he had to stay on top of, from cultivating luminous lichen in tunnels where the glowing moss had died out, to maintaining the stocks of live animals, to ensuring coffins were kept clean for visitors, to dealing with the eerie Guardians of the Blood.

  When Larten was injured and unable to train, he sometimes assisted Seba. It was while helping his master that he came to learn about the Guardians. He had always assumed that the blood in Vampire Mountain was shipped in and stored in vats, but now he found that most of it came from a tribe of humans living in the bowels of the mountain.

  The Guardians were pale, strange creatures. In exchange for their blood, they took care of certain burial details when a vampire died, extracting each corpse’s inner organs and brains, draining its body dry. Many vampires chose to be sent down a mountain stream when they died. If their corpses weren’t fully cleaned out in advance, animals would feast on their poisonous organs and go insane.

  Larten didn’t like the Guardians – they had an aloof air and seldom answered if spoken to – but he wanted to learn as much as he could about the clan and its workings, so he studied them as dispassionately as possible.

  Memorizing facts about the clan was also part of his training. Vampires were expected to familiarize themselves with their history, learn the names of their past leaders, be able to recite the many legends of their gods. Most vampires were illiterate. Books were for humans, not children of the night. Their history was recorded in tales and legends, passed on by word of mouth, and all had to help sustain it. If a disease or war ever wiped out the majority of t
he clan, the few who were left could at least keep their origins, achievements and myths alive.

  Larten learned much about his race. Those were the nights he looked forward to most, when he and the other trainees sat around and listened to their elders wax lyrical about the past or chant ancient songs. He had a keen memory and was able to recount most of what he heard. Wester was even smarter and stored away details that Larten couldn’t retain, but his friend had always been mentally sharper, so Larten didn’t mind lagging behind in that department.

  Wester was most interested in stories about the vampaneze. Many Generals would have happily made no mention of the breakaway group, but the war that had erupted subsequently was a crucial part of their heritage, so they reluctantly discussed the reasons behind the split and what the other night creatures had been doing since then.

  Wester wanted to find out everything he could about the vampaneze, and he never seemed satisfied with what the Generals told him. He began sidetracking vampires in the Halls and tunnels, asking questions and learning more about their foes. He fell in with a group of vampaneze haters. Each of them thought that the purple-skinned traitors should be hunted to extinction. They respected the rule of the Princes – that went without question – but schemed on the sly, keeping abreast of vampaneze movements and activities, in case their leaders ever decided to sanction another war.

  Wester tried to involve Larten with his new network of friends. He invited Larten to meetings and urged him to listen to their tales of vampaneze atrocities. Because Larten thought of Wester as a brother, he met with the disgruntled vampires and listened quietly as they spun wild stories of vampaneze drinking the blood of babies and targeting royals and politicians in human society. According to the rumors, they were establishing contacts around the globe, gathering an army of humans to support them in a strike on Vampire Mountain.