“That’s if there is a devil,”
Aden
says, slightly mollified but still shaken.
“Can you doubt it once you have seen his children?”
“I have seen monsters I never thought to see tonight, it is true,” the mutant speaks slowly, “but I have seen no proof of angels or devils.”
“You may yet,” the Pilgrim answers with equal solemnity “for we go to find the very Gates of Heaven.”
“I never said that I would join you,”
Aden
protests. “If anything this,” he gestures at the fallen bodies, “tells me I should start walking in the opposite direction to wherever you are headed.”
“Then why aren’t you already walking?”
“If I had any sense I would be but I don’t much like the idea of going back the way we just came. I’m heading west and so are you, it makes sense to travel together, at least until I heal up a bit and can replace my horse. I know you saved my life in town but don’t imagine that’s enough to make me a part of any of this.”
“I didn’t save your life in order for you to come with us, whatever you may think.” Sam answers firmly, “and I do not want to make you a part of this, someone else already has.”
“Who would that be then?”
“Yorick.”
“Did you overhear that too? Or are you also
labouring
under the delusion that I know this man?”
“Yorick is not a man,
Aden
, he is one of these, only far older and more powerful and he wants you to accompany us. I am sure he will be less than pleased if you decline.” Sam stops to let the weight of his words sink in.
“Did he send you then? How do you know all this?”
“I am not Yorick’s creature,
Aden
,” Sam answers, “but even so I would like you to come with us. You will understand when I explain what Yorick actually is, he is unique even among the Strigoi in that he bears the Devil’s most wretched blessing.”
“And what is that? Why get so mysterious about it all now?”
Aden
asks stubbornly, refusing to be drawn by the Pilgrim’s ominous statements. “All my life I’ve heard priests and Inquisitors talk like this, about this or that evil, none of you can ever seem to just come out with it and say what you are trying to say. It’s all veiled threats and promises, if there is something I should know about this Yorick that will change my mind, then let’s have it, otherwise I’m taking my own advice and walking out of here. It will take more than a few vampires to make me just accept all this madness. Besides why would I want to find a gate to heaven?”
Aden
asks, the eye in his forehead widening to make his point, “did it ever occur to you that if there is a god, he allowed me to be born like this into a world where they will rip even your sex from you, rather than risk their daughters bearing your corruption.”
Aden
stops, brought up by the leash he had long ago put on his own emotions.
“I am only reluctant to discuss these matters in the woods, in the dark; there are many things you need to know and this is not the place to tell you. Come with us to the cabin and get some sleep and I shall explain things in the morning, when we are less likely to be overheard.”
Aden
glances around sharply. “I thought you said that there were no more of these things around.”
“Those who oppose us do not necessarily need to be close to hear us, but they will be weakened by morning, when I will explain what I can. Please, what harm will it do you to sleep under a roof for a night?”
As Sam predicted the cabins are empty of the vampire’s human retainers by the time they reach them.
A fire still burns in the hearth set in the largest cabin’s one stone wall, both Lillian and
Aden
make for its warmth almost immediately, leaving Sam to stable the horses. In spite of
Aden
’s misgivings Sam is not afraid of their mounts being attacked by vengeful servants in the night, his senses tell him that the vampire’s retainers are nowhere near and it is unlikely that they would think of turning round to confront their master’s slayers anytime soon. Sam knows from bitter experience what it is to lose a
vampiric
patron, how the years that passed like a vague dream slowly crystallize into an unfamiliar reality and then the terrible price of stolen seasons must be paid. The servants were running scared and by the time they found courage to consider doing anything else they would be scattered and no more capable of action than a
skorn
addict deprived of his pipe for too long.
Lillian watches the Pilgrim at his task through the window until her eyes begin to ache with fatigue. She keeps expecting Sam to join them but whether it is the accusing eyes of the mutant in his seat by the fire or just the manic energy that seems to fill him, he does not join them in the cabin.
At last she looks back at
Aden
and says, gently “Go to sleep. He said he would explain in the morning.”
The mutant turns tired eyes on her.
“How can you be so calm? You didn’t even seem angry that he risked us like that.”
“He did not see it as a real risk or he would not have done it.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because, for all you think he’s mad and perhaps he is, he would never willingly put my life in danger.”
“Why? You said you were not friends, what are you to him? He’s just like any other Crusader, he’d watch you die in his cause and call it God’s will.”
“It’s simple really,” Lillian answers in a voice that sounds distant, even to her, “he cannot afford to risk me,
I
am the key to his Gate.”
Chapter 12:
“Of
Yorick
and Time”
The sun is well up when Aden drags open his eyelids; pain and stiffness slowly suffuse his body as he returns to full consciousness and realizes that he has made the mistake of spending the night in a hard wooden chair.
“I thought you might feel out of sorts this morning,” Sam responds to the mutant’s groan, “I would have tried to move you from the chair, but I didn’t want to disturb your sleep; ‘sides the mood you were in last night I couldn’t be sure I wouldn’t get a bullet in the gut for my trouble.”
“And you would have deserved it too!”
Aden
growls, enough of the shock of last night’s attack has warn off, so that he is not entirely serious when he says it.
“There’s something warm in the kettle if you feel up to it,” Sam indicates the battered tin jug placed to one side of the low fire to keep its contents warm.
“Not yet,”
Aden
eases himself into a more comfortable position and meets the Pilgrim’s unblinking eyes, “it’s morning and you promised to give me some good reasons for me not walking out of here and never looking back.”
“You want to know about Yorick?”
“That’s an understatement!” Lillian abandons her pretence of sleep. “I’ve been trying to work out who he is and how he got involved in this, all night. I know you said he is a Strigoi but it still doesn’t explain how he knew where the book was, that we would be back or for that matter how did he know that
Aden
would be there? Or that he would get hurt?
“To know the answer to your question, you must first know something more of the Strigoi.
Don’t worry,
Aden
this will not be a theological lecture,” Sam adds hastily, “it is simply important that you understand that not all vampires are cut from the same cloth. Each unfortunate who succumbs to the curse of vampirism, and curse it is make no mistake, is given greater or lesser abilities by the dark powers they serve. The ones you saw last night, for instance, were feral creatures, perfectly suited to their existence here in the woods. They had speed and senses to match any predatory animal, some of them might even have been able to take the shape of such animals.”
“Like Dale,” Lillian murmurs with disgust, struggling to suppress the memory of the undead flesh forcing its way down her throat.
“No, Dale was something different. His sire’s reaction to the rebirth was an abomination and regarded by his fellows as something like a disease, though the extent to which Dale
Sipher
controlled it made it more than that. The hunters you encountered last night would have only been able to shift their form to one other shape, if that, though they were all capable of producing those sharp claws you both saw.”
“And Yorick? How does this answer the questions about him? And why is he interested in me?”
Aden
asks, steering them back to the object of their discussion.
“I can answer the first part of that. As I already said Yorick has been given one of the strangest and most terrible gifts of all his brethren; Yorick is a time
traveller
or rather he is one who travels in time better than the rest of us and there is a difference. For most of us existence extends in a simple line of cause and effect, with many unforeseen outcomes for each decision. Some have even said that when we make a decision we are moving from one possible universe to another and that there are new universes born out of almost every decision. Whether this is true or not, that is the best way of seeing what Yorick does; he sees myriad possibilities in the future, more than any human mind could follow and then he chooses where he wishes to be; you might even say which universe he chooses to exist in.”
“But don’t we all?” Lillian protests, “I mean we all make decisions that take us from one state of affairs to another… those other universes might as well not exist for all they affect us, so how is Yorick a time
traveller
anymore than the rest of us?”
“Because he foresees that a reality will exist or might exist. In this case, he knew that the book would be beneath the floorboards of the Hitching Post Inn and placed himself near by in order to retrieve the book. Further more, he knew that we would come for it, not as a certainty in every universe but a possibility that leads to the existence we now occupy along with Yorick. As far as I understand it and that is not to say that anyone knows all Yorick’s secrets, Yorick saw it all coming and placed himself where he wanted to be in the wide spectrum of possible outcomes. For us there were many things that could have happened between the marshes and
Olstop
or even over the whole course of our lives. For Yorick though there is no such thing as chance, whatever might happen in a thousand other existences, Yorick was always sure of finding us and the book in this. His gift of foresight, combined with his
vampiric
lifespan, allows him to effectively travel through time only appearing, where necessary, to shape the course of events to what he requires. Yorick has been known to wait lifetimes in order to be in the right place, in the right time and whether he is a prophet or merely engineering certain outcomes, nobody has ever been able to tell. One thing is certain, however, he is a master of manipulation and has an uncanny knack for survival.”
“It’s all superstition again,”
Aden
protests, “there’s no way to know what Yorick knows before things happen, he’s just playing on your gullibility, like a fortune teller at a fair. How can you know that he even sees the future?”
“He named you without having met you.”
“Unless he brought me there, I never did find out who my real employer was.”
“I don’t doubt that he did bring you to
Olstop
.
Yorick
will use methods varying from the mundane to macabre in order to manipulate events but let me assure you, if you see things in the long view, as vampires do, then there is no doubting the potency of
Yorick’s
talent; he has just been in the right place at the right time too often for it to be coincidence.
No doubt his ability to foresee future possibilities is how he avoided the fall of the Citadel and numerous other threats. It is how he has always survived but it is also what makes him so dangerous.”
“Why is he any more dangerous than any of the other Strigoi?”
“Because he is even less human and harder to predict than the rest of them, Yorick is like someone who comes awake in a dream, he has no firm connection to whichever reality he finds himself in. Like most Strigoi, he has little sentiment for the living, regarding them as little more than pawns in a greater game.
It’s hard to know whether his involvement will be to our benefit or detriment, because the only thing that is certain is that whatever Yorick does will be for his own ends and have an outcome that we cannot yet see.”
“So why do you think that I should oblige him by going with you?”
Aden
asks, still unable, despite everything, to completely credit the wild tale the Pilgrim is telling.
“One reason might be because you have already said you are heading west anyway and we will all be safer if we travel together, as we originally planned.”
“Not exactly planning when there are bullets whizzing around you.”
Nonetheless it would be the best course for all of us, personally the reason I want you to come with us is because Yorick has the book and apparently wants you along and until we can find a way of getting what we need from him, I have no wish to disappoint him. Looked at another way, it might even be impossible to meet him without you, since he will only appear somewhere where all the factors he wants are in place. In other words it may be up to us to ensure that this is the timeline in which you reach the ruins.”