Ramah stood in an alley near the city gate, staring at the land beyond the city wall and trying to judge how long it had been since his quarry had left Londinium. Twenty minutes? Thirty? More? A minute can seem like an hour to a man watching and waiting for time to pass, but he felt certain that enough time had gone by to allow Theron and Baella to get far out into the countryside. They should be well beyond the wall by now, and more importantly, out of view of the city’s remaining guards.
Time to get to work.
He strode up to the gate, gaining only a glance from the two guards, and left.
Once outside the city, he walked to a nearby tree and leaned his back against it. Ramah repeated the web psalm, reaching out with the strands of his mental trap, looking for Theron. It required a great deal more effort this time due to the increase in range-for all Ramah knew, Theron could be riding fast on horseback-but he had plenty of blood for the task, he was more worried about the amount of time he had left to work his psalm. With enough time and enough blood, Ramah could cast it over the whole country, if the need arose.
Thankfully, it didn’t. Ramah located Theron easily enough. The former Enforcer stood about two miles to the east, a short distance indeed for a Bachiyr of Ramah’s power, but he was not alone. Ramah had expected to sense Theron’s traveling companion, but instead he found scores of people near the renegade.
They stood around him in a ring of bodies. The net could not differentiate between human and Bachiyr, but Ramah figured the newcomers had to be human. Such a large gathering of vampires in a single place would be so rare as to be unheard of, even for Baella, who reportedly never traveled with more than one or two companions.
Why would Theron be surrounded by so many humans?
Ramah stood by the tree, trying to puzzle out this new development.
He was still standing there when the first flaming missile hit the gate.
24
Taras stumbled from the building just as the first boulder struck. The noise of the impact could be felt as much as heard, and the entire structure shook with the force of the blow. The outer wall vanished into a cloud of dust and shrapnel. Bits of debris rained down on his head, pelting him with shards of wood, pebbles, and dirt. When the world around him went still again, he turned to look at the pile of rubble behind him that had once been a building. I escaped just in time, he thought.
Londinium was under attack.
Fires were everywhere. As he watched, ball after ball of flaming tar flew over the city wall to land with a sickening splat in the middle of Londinium’s mostly wooden structures. The smell of burning pitch hung in the air, mixed with the smells of burning wood and flesh. The few remaining inhabitants of Londinium ran screaming through the streets. Some of them screamed in fear, but many others screamed in pain. He watched as one man swatted futilely at the flames on his arm, desperate to quench the fire. Taras could have told him it was no use; the man’s arm was covered in burning pitch. He could swat it all he wanted and it would only grow hotter. The man ran back into the heart of the city, swatting at his arm and screaming in pain. Taras watched him go, shaking his head. The man was already dead, he just didn’t realize it yet.
Mixed in with the sound of crumbling stone and people dying were the cries of those who wept for the dead. To his right, a woman in brown homespun wailed over the body of a young man who lay in a pool of blood. Half the man’s face was gone, sheared off by whatever calamity had killed him, but enough remained that Taras could see the similar features of mother and son. If she continued to sit in the street, oblivious to the chaos around her, the mother would be dead soon enough, as well. They would not be the last people to die tonight.
He should leave. Now.
He tried to walk away, but his feet would not obey the order. He tripped and fell face first into the street, his legs too weak to hold him. Taras needed blood. Badly. All around him people ran through the city, but none of them would slake his thirst. Some of them moved with a calm sense of purpose, carrying buckets of water or drawing weapons and running into battle, but far more screamed and ran in a blind panic that caused more problems than it solved.
To judge by the frequency of the boulders and pitch, a very large, heavily armed force had the city under siege. Taras, no stranger to battle, guessed there much be as many as twenty or thirty ballistae. A large number to attack such a relatively small city as Londinium. Whoever was behind the attack, they obviously wanted more than mere surrender. This was not a war for conquest, but for destruction. Before the sun rose, Londinium would be nothing but a blackened swath of charred earth, soaked to near saturation with the blood of its inhabitants.
Taras regained his feet, swaying a bit but somehow managing to keep from falling over into the dirt. Blood or no blood, he needed to get out of the city before the attackers sent in the infantry. Once they invaded, they would kill anything that moved, and in his present condition he would be hard pressed to fight them off.
He got his feet under him and staggered away, headed for the area near the western gate. His hovel should be safe for the moment, as it would be out of range of most of the boulders, but that was temporary at best. If he was lucky, he’d find someone to feed on along the way. If not, then at least he wouldn’t care for much longer.
When she rounded a corner about two hundred yards from the Eastern gate of Londinium, she saw Ramah standing beneath the boughs of a tree. His dark form, large by human standards, stood huddled in the shadows on the tree’s trunk. It was probably instinctive for him to seek the darkness. After four thousand years as a vampire, he would prefer it. Baella could relate. She preferred not to be seen, either. But she was better at hiding than Ramah. Through the course of the last four millennia she had seen him often, but he had never seen her, despite the fact that he and his ridiculous Council had hunted her for centuries.
Actually, she amended, he’s seen me many times. He just didn’t know it.
Ramah’s face was tight with concentration. His eyes were closed, his jaw slightly open, and his brow furrowed like a field in early Spring. The shouting and screaming from inside the city did not disturb his efforts, which spoke volumes about the man’s will. Probably in the middle of a web psalm. Just as well, if he was deep into the psalm he wouldn’t notice her. And he would be looking for Theron, in any case.
Baella’s lip curled. Theron was a fool. It had been all too easy to lead the former Enforcer right into the arms of the invading Iceni and Trinovante. Theron’s mind was simple to manipulate. All she had to do was let him think she would allow him to join her, and he was hers. She could probably have done it without touching his mind at all, if she’d cared to try.
But she would never allow a Bachiyr like Theron into her midst. Despite all his power and considerable skill, Theron had one fatal flaw: he was no good on his own. He’d spent centuries following the orders of Herris and the other Councilors, obeying their every whim and working only toward their gains. He remained a faithful, if dangerous, servant to The Father’s laws right up until the Council blamed him for the problems in Israel, which were not truly his fault in any case. Just another example of how the Council of Thirteen gets everything wrong, she thought.
Yet despite the way they treated him in Jerusalem, Theron desperately wanted to be back in the Council’s good graces. She could read that on him as easily as she could read the look of concentration on Ramah’s face. Theron would never be a leader, he would forever be a follower, and Baella wanted no followers.
Ramah, on the other hand, had been leading vampires for centuries. Even before he died, he was the chief of his human village. All his life, he’d given orders and seen them obeyed. The man was born a leader, trained as such, and remained one even four thousand years after he died. In addition, Baella believed Ramah would leave the Council in an instant as long as she presented him with a tempting reason. After centuries of wondering, the time had come to see if she could provide him that reason. But first she had to take Ramah where she wanted him to go, and that would not be easy, especially since she couldn’t let him see her face.