The Greyfriar (Vampire Empire, Book 1) by Clay & Susan Griffith;Clay Griffith;Susan Griffith (7 page)

The air was cooling, and Anhalt smelled the sea in the wind. He
glanced down at the drawn face of the young prince, who was asleep nestled in his powerful arms. When he attempted to hoist his pack into a
more comfortable position, the boy's eyes fluttered open and he looked
up groggily at the blood-flecked face of his savior and smiled.

"How do you feel?" Anhalt asked.

"Okay, I guess," the prince replied thickly.

Anhalt pinched the boy's calf between his thumb and forefinger.
"Do you feel this?"

"Feel what?"

The colonel didn't answer.

"Where are we going?" Simon asked.

"I'm taking you to the free city at Marseilles. They'll get word to the
Empire ... to your father."

"Where is the rest of the White Guard?"

How could he tell the boy that most of them were dead? "Some are
here beside you. The others are dealing with the remaining vampires."

Simon narrowed his eyes angrily. "The White Guard will handle
them! They won the Battle of Cape Town!"

Anhalt fumed again at the stupidity of the court sending both heirs
so close to the frontier.

Simon breathed out sharply through his nose. "What will they do to
Adele?"

Anhalt's mouth was a hard slit as he crushed his emotions again.
"Nothing. I'll get her back."

"You will?"

"Yes, Your Highness." The soldier started off again toward Marseilles
over rocky ground. His legs ached, but he forced himself onward. He did
not take his eyes off the path as he muttered, "Or die trying."

Prince Simon felt enormous strength in this man's arms. He had been
carried by servants and tutors, and even once, at the earliest tip of his
memory, by his father, but none of them had radiated this same
unbending support. It was like resting in the saddle of a steady horse or
in the limb of a favorite tree. He heard the comforting squeak of leather
from scabbards and holsters as the soldiers ran. Simon wanted to reach
out and touch Colonel Anhalt's face despite the blood of battle dried hard
on his cheek, but he knew true warriors would not permit such things.

Several farmers, returning to town from their fields and orchards,
some on foot, some riding in an oxcart, spotted the approaching soldiers.
They exchanged confused glances but waved and waited, offering them
room in the cart. Anhalt accepted but kept Simon in his arms.

The farmers offered Anhalt wine. He declined, but handed the bottle
to Simon. The boy turned it up greedily, spilling red liquid down his
chin. It was warm, but good; stronger but not as sweet as the diluted date
palm wine he drank at home. When Anhalt finally pulled the bottle
away, Simon heard the farmers laughing. He sneered at them and prepared to shout a reprimand, but the soldier touched Simon on the face
with his gloved hand, shaking his head once. These were not people who
needed to know royalty rode with them. Soon the farmers stopped
laughing and offered Simon blocks of delicious cheese and some bread.

"Vampires? In force near our city?" The face of Mayor Comblain of Marseilles was red with consternation. "Monsieur le Colonel, are you sure?"

Anhalt nodded with assurance. The councilmen and civic leaders
simmered with concerned murmuring and arguments. They were
dressed in bourgeois finery, top hats, pearl grey spats, most with beards
and great muttonchop sideburns. The opulent Second Empire architecture surrounded them, remnants of a time when humans on the continent had only themselves to fight.

The mayor, an overworked and underqualified official, stood wearily.
He was marked as a leader only by his conspicuous red sash and spray of
flowers on the front of his top hat. He raised his hands for quiet. "Please,
messieurs, please. Let's remain calm. Vampires are not new in this
vicinity. We are prepared. I shall call out the militia immediately." His
ruddy face quivered as he turned to Colonel Anhalt, who sat ramrod
straight in a chair on the dais. "This is most troubling. We haven't had
such a major attack in many years."

The imperial commander raised his hand slightly. As the room quieted, he stood with a painful slowness, purposefully exuding a sense of
calm, a stillness that these people craved. He said in excellent French,
"The vampire army has retreated north. They had a mission, and the
mission is complete. These were not winter raiders. I fully agree that it
would be wise to alert your citizens. And send word to the outlying
towns and villages to be on watch. There may be stragglers in the area
over the next week or two."

"Colonel Anhalt," boomed a voice from the floor, "what was the purpose of these vampires?" The voice belonged to a large and loud prominent trader. The room grew relatively silent out of respect for the mercantile colossus, who stroked his gigantic mustache and tugged on the
gold chain of his watch that emerged with playful impertinence from
the pocket of his silk waistcoat. He ostentatiously twisted small knobs
on his intricate watch, consulting its complex readout.

The soldier waited until everyone had turned their eyes from the large man back to him. Once he had retaken the center of attention and
authority, he said, "They attacked an imperial fleet."

The room erupted in rambunctious dismay. Mayor Comblain
flushed even brighter red, his mouth gaping as if verging on apoplexy.
"They attacked imperials? Openly! How outrageous! How horrible! If
they dare that, what's to stop them from ravaging our city? Is it war
now? Which clan is responsible? Geneva? Paris? What should we do?"

"Colonel," the rotund merchant shouted, "do you know the names
of the ships damaged in the battle?" He owned the vast majority of the
shipping into Marseilles from the imperial depots in Alexandria,
Cyprus, and Malta. The thought that his goods were left scattered
across the countryside by vampires who cared nothing for a man's hard
work terrified him. He clicked over the display on his watch again,
checking the list of his convoys that may have been in the area at the
time.

Anhalt squeezed his eyes tight out of exhaustion. The stench of
sweat and fear in this chamber was giving him a headache. He again
raised a hand for quiet while the mayor prattled orders to his secretary
about conscripting more men into the militia and enforcing war emergency orders on local manufacturers.

"Please, calm down," Anhalt said. "This was not a merchant convoy."
The merchant took a deep breath of relief, but to his credit maintained a
concerned look on his face as the soldier continued. "The prize the vampires sought was Her Imperial Highness, the princess Adele."

The fearful murmur in the room eroded into confused silence. Some
were overwhelmed by the sadness of a tragedy befalling someone powerful and supposedly privileged. With thoughts of a now bloodless
Princess Adele swirling about the room, several men in the room crossed
themselves. Others sneered at those who did.

Councilmen were trying rapidly to calculate political angles of the
shocking news. Marseilles was not a part of the Equatorian Empire; it was
an independent city-state, so it wasn't the case that they had lost their
own future empress. However, Equatoria was a massive state with a long
reach, and Marseilles relied on imperial trade and sometimes firepower.
Many feared the great Empire was also deceptively fragile. A succession crisis created by the heir's death might precipitate a struggle that could
shatter the Empire and destabilize the entire hemisphere.

Continental city-states such as Marseille had reason to want a generally beneficent Equatoria to remain powerful. For instance, many of
the cities of the French homeland feared the Algerian-based kingdom of
OutreMer, which was ruled by the mad Louis Napoleon IX and controlled by the descendants of Foreign Legionnaires. Marseilles' city
fathers jealously guarded their independence against the fanatical
Legionnaires, who believed they had the true Bourbon king in their suncracked grip, and they counted on the threat of Equatorian power to
keep the Legion behind their Algerian walls.

Even farther south, the major African kingdoms of Bornu and
Katanga had shown signs of expansionism in the last two decades. An
imperial collapse would invite powerful King Msiri of Katanga to seize
the Nile watershed and reopen the bloody wars for the Zambesi gold and
copper fields. And many felt that the Zulu in the Empire's mineral-rich
but fractious Cape Province could easily rebuild an independent military machine and swallow up a weakened Equatoria and much more territory besides.

The mayor said, with a sense of relief, "Well, Emperor Constantine
has a son. So although we grieve for this poor, poor girl, thankfully the
imperial succession hasn't been endangered."

Anhalt said, "The young boy I brought here is the emperor's son."
The council room dissolved tiresomely again into panicked conversations dominated by anger and fear that a vampire force pursuing the
imperial prince would now fall on Marseilles. The colonel said in a
louder voice, "Messieurs, there is nothing to fear. The vampires are not
searching for the boy. But the Empire will be searching when news of
the disaster reaches their borders. If political stability concerns you, it
would be in your interest to avoid a situation where the emperor appears
bereft of heirs. I would ask you, please, to forward my message to the
imperial base on Malta. I need a ship to return Prince Simon to Alexandria. Then I will form an armada immediately to pursue Princess Adele's
captors."

"But surely she is already dead," Mayor Comblain argued.

A tall man in the front blurted out, "We should organize a prayer
vigil across town. Perhaps the archbishop could-"

He was drowned out by groans and derisive catcalls.

The querulous merchant boss bellowed from the floor, "Messieurs, I
propose that we appoint a committee to consider what reward we should
expect from the grateful imperial court for the return of the new heir
apparent. I would happily undertake to chair that committee."

Anhalt pointed at the bloated industrialist. "You will not use this
boy for extortion."

"Who are you to speak to me so? I have the interests of this city at
heart."

"Please! Please!" the mayor said quickly. He extended a quivering
hand toward Anhalt. "We are all grateful many times over for the assistance the Empire has given, not just to our fair city, but to many free
humans across the continent. I am sure that the emperor will shine upon
us for assuring him of the safety of his beloved son. We need not be
gauche."

"We should expect compensation for services rendered." The merchant grinned and patted his girth. "Everyone has to eat, monsieur."
This aroused a chorus of nervous laughter from the room. "I am proud
of my work pulling Marseilles from the dark ages. And you will certainly share in the reward, Colonel, if that is your concern. I am a fair
man and you've earned it."

Anhalt abruptly waded into the stiff-collared crowd. His robotic
motions were frightening in their directness. Men drew back, accompanied by the scraping of chairs. In the back of the room, several beefy
teamsters, much out of place in the neoclassical surroundings, detached
themselves from the wall and sidled forward. The merchant glanced at
them quickly, and they stopped but continued to watch, ready to move.

Anhalt drew up in front of the massive trader, who towered over
him. The soldier was assaulted by the smell of wine wafting off the corpulent man. He knew this man before him, or knew his type. Here in
the council chamber the merchant could speak the most beautiful classical French, but in his office and in the waterfront warehouses of Marseilles he spoke the harsh mercantile Mediterranean patois that had grown up since the vampire revolution had forcibly mixed European,
Levantine, and North African.

The soldier leaned close and whispered, "The boy will be treated
with care and returned to his family as soon as possible. I hold you personally responsible, monsieur. Or would you prefer your ships in imperial ports to be seized and impounded?"

The merchant turned pale, eyes narrowing. But he remained quiet.
The rest of the room had receded from the contest between these two
men. Even the mayor couldn't dredge up further conciliatory things to
say. Anhalt snorted derisively and, without a glance at the two teamsters
who glared at him, strode out the wide doors of the council chamber.