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Content: That first night was incredible.
I could fly. On the ground,
I moved like a deer. I had killed one Inca and I meant to kill them all. That night, I was still mostly a man among men.
Loyal to Pizarro. I actually
ran the message I had died with to the artillery emplacement on the opposite
hill. Even war was slow then -- the
message was still timely. The cañoneros gave me pisco, the local
drink -- after women, the first thing soldiers find in any country -- which I
swallowed. I didn't get drunk.
I felt sick. Their jokes
weren't right, their laughter sounded foreign.
I sat at their fire, seething with my secret.
I walked away as if to piss in the bushes, and left -- I flew back to my own companions and found the same
experience there. They didn't see
the change, greeted me as one whose life they had feared lost, called me Torreon
as always -- a play on my name, the bull, the tower -- they said I was a lucky
bull, that women favored me because of my sad eyes. It was true enough.
Among the type of woman who can be had, I took whatever I wanted.
And even, once or twice, a virgin of a not-so-good family.
But all of that was nothing, after the night before.
The embrace of my master washed away the thought of any other woman, any
other kiss. There is no heat in the mortal body like a vampire's kiss,
and hers -- the sensation of her blood
running into my cold limbs, swelling my tired heart, igniting my senses... I sat at the fire of my friends with a terrible
strangeness growing in me. The
alcohol in my body was sickening, and woke my other hunger.
When they lay to sleep, I went hunting for the first time-- It is one thing to hunt a man as a soldier, to kill, to win a war, to leave a battlefield with a victory for your nation, your house, your King and your God. It is something else entirely to float above the trees in the night, the barest shadow under the stars, and hunt for men to drink their lives away. To be as elemental as a cloud, as fierce and absolute as a tiger -- and in the end, more sated than any mortal man can ever be-- I found a group of sleeping Inca warriors, more of
Atahuallpa's troops. I killed and
drank three; the rest I simply destroyed, the way one crushes and scatters a
nest of freshly hatched vipers with the foot. I killed and drank again just
before dawn, an Inca scout sleeping alone in the woods.
Saturated as I was with this new hunger and its senses, I could hear
hearts for miles around me, not yet knowing to distinguish what was man, what
animal, what bird. I dug into the
ground for a second day as this mortal music quickened around me. The third night, when I came to the campfire, the
questions started. "Where were
you all day, Vachon? Ay, we tried
to tell the capitán you had deserted..." this was a joke, that came
with a slap on the back, "but he said, no Torreon must have a girl in the
woods...." I was stupid, I
said I'd been with Amado's fusileros all day. My best friend -- a friend we all admired for his principles, his
courage, and his quick wit, a man so devout we called him Celo, zealot -- said
"No, Torreon, you were not." He
waited to say it privately: "Torreon, are you committing treason?"
It was beginning to happen, the soldiers selling information to the
Incas. He pushed me hard,
challenging me, and the beast rose to defend itself; my teeth were in his neck
before I knew. The shock of it stopped me from killing him.
To this day I am grateful Juan Domingo Martin y de Xerez did not die at
my hand. He stood before me, half-drained,
groggy, uncomprehending. "Celo,
you have seen a ghost," I told him, then thought of something better.
"Javier Vachon died in the grip of a black leopard, and you only
barely escaped -- Vachon tore the leopard from your neck, and it destroyed
him." It suited my humor to
die a hero, not a suspected traitor, and he would have an excuse for his throat. Pushing him gently down to sit on the ground, I kissed
his forehead once as in those days we kissed the beloved dead, telling him,
"Celo, now you are very sleepy. The
last thing you saw was the leopard dragging Vachon into the trees. Vaya con Dios, Celo."
I had learned the first lesson of the distance I must keep from mortals.
And then the hunger rose to sweep away the sentimentalism, and its
passion called me into the sky to listen for more Inca hearts. That was the very last of my life as a man. ~ Return to "Forever Knight" ~ ~ Return to Apache's Archive ~
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