Chapter 31
Oleg
That fool.
Oleg turned from Tatyana—who had Sándor hovering over her and Ludmila at her side—as he batted away the axe-head Ivan had thrown his way. Now he knew what direction Ivan was coming from.
He turned to stalk toward the source of the attack, his fire devouring the snow around him until he was trudging through bloody, rippling mud.
His brother’s loyalists were losing momentum as the few soldiers in Rudov’s company who had turned on the guests along with Ivan’s clan were cut down by the combined forces of the Kievan Rus and the Poshani. There were shouts of confusion as the majority of Oleg’s empire turned on them.
“What did you tell them, brother?” Oleg shouted into the night. “Did you lie and say that the others would follow their lead?”
As Oleg stalked through the snow, he threw a bolt of fire toward any of the red-coated vampires wearing Truvor’s crest.
“Did you tell them you would be king?”
One by one, the soldiers wearing Truvor’s crest fell, either by fire or axe as those loyal to Oleg sided against them, wrested their weapons away, or trapped them with elemental power.
“Send the next!”
He heard his own voice echoing in his memory as he walked across another field of mud, but something deep in Oleg’s chest had broken open as he watched the scattered shards of his empire gather and unite to fight behind him.
Ivan’s forces were numerous, well-armed, and they were supported by hidden archers in the forest—probably hired from the Bashkiri clan who had attacked Tatyana’s home—and they were working from an immediate advantage as none of the other mortal or immortal guests had been carrying large weapons to a chaugan game.
But Mika’s water vampires had joined Tatyana in raising the snow and ice across the field to blind their attackers.
His brother Lev’s people had melted into the forest to join Lidik and the Hazar. Minute by minute, the archers grew quiet.
Radu and Kezia mustered the Poshani—human and vampire—to guide defenseless guests away from the field.
Oleg might have been at the front of the fight, but he was no longer alone, standing in a muddy courtyard, surrounded by those who either feared or hated him.
He was the knyaz of the Kievan Rus, mated to the terrin of the Poshani people, backed by a druzhina that would die for him and defending a woman who would kill for him.
Oleg saw his brother Rudov as he stalked toward the far side of the field.
Rudov shouted, “Oleg!”
Oleg halted, staring at his brother, wondering if Rudov shared the same ambition as Ivan. Some of Rudov’s men had brought arms to this game. Some of them had plotted with the Muscovites.
His brother’s clan was headstrong, independent, and inscrutable.
Just like their sire.
Oleg stared him down. “You will challenge me, brother?”
Rudov kept his gaze locked on Oleg’s and slowly shook his head. “No, Knyaz.”
“Where is he?”
Rudov pointed to Oleg’s right. “Running away, of course.”
Oleg fell into a snowbank, dousing his fire before he leaped on the back of the horse Rudov held out to him.
He heard Tatyana shout his name in the sudden and profound darkness, but he blocked out the desire to go to his mate.
He wanted Tatyana.
He needed to catch Ivan. He could not let his brother flee and hide.
Ivan must die, and it must be public.
The sturdy horse surged over the snowy field, and Oleg bent over his neck, the ice and snow cutting this shoulders as he pursued the faint outline he could see riding away through the snowstorm.
You send your children to fight your battles, Ivan? You truly are our father’s son.
But Oleg saw a dark mass of wind vampires gather in the distance, hovering over Ivan’s path like a flock of carrion crows, blocking his exit into the forest.
Oleg smiled.
Ivan turned his horse to the right, cutting through a narrow stand of fir trees to hide his path from the Hazar. Luckily, Oleg knew Rudov’s estate as well as Ivan did.
He leaped over a fallen tree and a frozen stream as he cut across rough country, thankful for the steady mount underneath him.
Within minutes he had Ivan in sight again, and this time the vampire was heading straight into a line of Juliya’s people, their red-and-green coats singed and stained with blood.
Ivan turned again, but Lidik’s people were fast to block his escape.
The betrayer turned again, but in each direction he met a company of vampires either loyal to Oleg or wearing the furious expressions of the Poshani.
In the end, Ivan was surrounded by a wide circle of furious immortals, all dressed in bloody and singed wedding attire.
All baring their fangs at the vampire who had tried to kill the king.
Pavel stepped forward from the line of his warriors, reached down, and though the ground was covered in snow and ice, his power was greater. Pavel’s elemental energy pulsed through the field, and the earth beneath Ivan and his horse rumbled and quaked.
The animal screamed and reared up, throwing Ivan from his back before he galloped away.
Then Oleg’s brother was alone on the bloody field of his own making.
Oleg dismounted and walked toward him.
“You think I will surrender?” Ivan turned and lifted his hand, pushing a massive wall of earth toward Oleg. “Though you kill the true line of Truvor the Red, we will never give in!”
The ground beneath Oleg rolled violently. He nearly fell over, but as he steadied himself, an unseen wall of energy came from his right.
An icy whirlwind formed around Ivan, spinning and whipping the snow into violent flurries until Ivan himself was lifted off the ground, twisting in the air, trapped by a vortex of snow and cutting ice.
“Brothers!” Ivan cried out. “You let a foreigner violate our clan?”
Pavel crossed his arms over his chest.
Rudov curled his lip.
Lev was frozen, watching all of them.
And Lazlo stepped forward, blood staining his icy blue coat. “Brothers of Oleg of Gardariki, elders of the Kievan Rus… Do we claim this betrayer?”
Second by second, the column of frozen water crawled up Ivan’s body, wrapping his arms and freezing them as he screamed.
Pavel was the one who spoke first. “I do not know him.”
“I do not know him,” Rudov repeated.
“I do not know him.”
“I do not know him.”
Tatyana Vorona, terrin of the Poshani and Oleg’s new bride, stepped forward with the Hazar at her back and Oleg’s druzhina at her side.
Her braids had come loose in the battle, and her hair whipped around her face.
Her embroidered riding coat was stained with blood and ashes, and a line of red dripped down her cheek.
She held a gore-covered axe in her right hand and lifted it in the air.
The world around her went silent.
She looked at Oleg, and her icy blue gaze burned into his. He felt their blood bond light up like a river of fire flowing from his heart to hers.
Isolated and lifted from the earth, Ivan had nothing to fight with. Tatyana had locked him in chains of snow and was stalking toward him with her people behind her and the blood of Ivan’s children spattered across her clothes.
“So she will fight your battles?” Ivan laughed desperately. “O great Knyaz! The humiliation of it. To let a woman not a decade immortal fight your battles so that not even—”
Ice spread over Ivan’s lips, choking out the last words his brother would ever utter from his lying mouth.
Oleg looked at Tatyana, who met his eyes for barely a second before she ran up the snowy ramp, drew back her axe, and cut the betrayer’s head from his body with one bloody stroke.
Ivan’s frost-covered head rolled down the hill, coming to rest at Oleg’s feet, but he kicked it to the side, walked over to Tatyana, and lifted her hand, which still gripped the axe.
Oleg roared, “Knyaginya!”
The vampires of his clan howled their approval with hoarse cries. “Knyaginya!”
The Poshani chanted something that sounded like a war song.
“Tatyana le Tala!” Oleg shouted again, shaking her arm. “Blooded knyaginya of the Kievan Rus!”
Then Oleg wrapped his arm around her waist, lifted her up, and kissed his wife on her bloody mouth.
“How many dead?”
He sat on the wooden bench in the steaming air of his bathing chambers at the palace, staring at the cedar-planked floor as Tatyana poured warm, scented water over his head and combed the remnants of gore from his hair.
She stood in front of him and tilted his chin up to comb through his beard. “Of Ivan’s men, I don’t know yet. But at least a dozen guests.”
He cursed under his breath. “This was my fault. I allowed his cancer to spread because I didn’t want to… I don’t even remember now,” he muttered. “It was the wrong choice. I should have killed him decades ago. Maybe centuries.”
“You didn’t want a bloody power struggle in Moscow,” she said calmly.
“You didn’t want a long, terrible, drawn-out battle that would likely have ensnared hundreds of vampires and humans as one faction fought against the other.
You didn’t want other territories drawn into the aftermath.
You didn’t want any of Ivan’s resentful children to seek revenge in a decade.
Or a century. You didn’t want cycles of this happening over and over again for years. ”
Oleg grunted, and part of him knew she was right.
But in that moment, all he could see was the blood and mud under his own feet. All he could smell was the burning flesh of Ivan’s sons. Vampires who shared his blood.
Tatyana finished combing through his beard and set the tortoiseshell comb on the edge of the cedar shelf.
He had already bathed her and combed through her hair, removing every bit of blood and guts from the golden locks that had been adorned with pearls and citrines at dusk.
“I see the weight resting on your shoulders.” She stood at his side and rubbed scented oil over his shoulders. “You will feel it. You will live with it because you must. But remember that you did not cause this. In the end, this was your brother’s doing. Not yours.”
“I knew he was dangerous and did nothing.” He closed his eyes. “Ludmila could have taken him out a hundred times—”
“Then what?” She sat across from him and leaned forward, tucking the linen towel around her body. “What would have happened?”
Ivan would have been dead.
His sons would have jostled for power.
The long battle she had just described would have been his reality.
“The men who were loyal to Ivan—his little cult of Truvor—were the ones he brought to Saint Petersburg. So the ones he trusted are dead.” Her voice had become the pragmatic bookkeeper again.
“That means those who are left in Moscow are probably—probably—loyal men and women. Meaning you won’t have to fear a repeat of this in a decade or a century.
” She dug her fingers into his thigh. “This battle was painful, but you cut the cancer out.”
Oleg narrowed his eyes. “How do I know?”
“You will trust no one of Ivan’s blood until they prove themselves.” Her voice was clipped and more than a little fatalistic. “If they are worthy of your loyalty, they will understand why, and if they do not?” She gave a grim shrug.
The voice she used… it reminded him a little bit of her mother.
But he was smart enough not to say that.
Oleg looked his wife in the eye. “I knew I was the wisest of vampires to trick you into marrying me.”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Really?”
“Truly. They will write sagas about the wisdom of Oleg, immortal king of the Varangians, who cleverly maneuvered the Poshani princess into marriage and then made her fall in love with him.”
She nodded. “I am so glad that we have turned this conversation around to boosting your ego, which does not need any help.” She spread her arms. “Because it already fills this entire bath chamber like—”
He cut her off by pulling her into his lap and kissing her. Oleg placed his arms firmly around his wife, and when he wanted to let her breathe again, he released her mouth and rested his cheek on her shoulder, inhaling the scent of her skin.
She put her hand on his cheek. “Was I right to kill him?”
“Yes.”
It was not even a question. If there was anything that would cement her reputation among his people and her own, it was the public execution of a betrayer.
And Oleg?
He was certain that rumors of the fiery path he had cut through Ivan’s clan were already being whispered at the edges of his empire.
Not even an arrow through the chest could stop Oleg the Terrible’s fire.
“How many dead?” he asked her again.
“Too many,” she whispered. “It will always be too many, my love. And yet we will go on.”
Because death would be easy.
So they did not choose death.