#veryan

‘My Inglorious Death’

“Thank you.” Veryan lifted his own glass, took a sip of the blood within.

“My... inglorious death?” He grinned, “no. I don’t mind sharing. It’s a lot funnier in hindsight than it was at the time. I think you have to understand before I go any further, that I was a spoiled, extremely well off, half French and half English brat. I lived between France and England, and France and England were constantly at war. In fact everywhere was constantly at war with everywhere. The conflict that most directly affected me has been come to be known, unimaginatively, I might add, as the Italian wars. We... avoided it. It was not difficult to do. Even should one really end up in the wrong place at the wrong time, it is a little difficult to fail to notice a marauding army, and armies don’t travel particularly swiftly.”

He leaned on the counter, placed his glass down, and put one hand into his hair, resting his head upon it.

“Unless you’re me.” He said, and there was a hint of laughter in his voice. “When we were in France we lived, for the most part, in the south. Our house was not far from Mérindol, and... I should not have been there. I admit, I was mostly there because I knew it would piss Kerr off, and I cannot even remember what it was I was pissed off with him for. He travelled a lot. I sulked a lot. I’m not surprised he did not wish to turn me, I wouldn’t have turned me, either. I could be unbearable.

“The wars may have been religious in nature. The soldiers... were fun. They were religious only when they wished to pray to something to keep them alive. They were probably the most interesting people I spent any time with, and I did. I would ride to Cabrières to the fortified chateaux there, and I would talk to those not on duty. I believe I was hoping to make Kerrith jealous. I doubt I ever succeeded.” Veryan took another sip of blood. “I had been there before when skirmishes broke out. I had flashed my papers, once I had had to bribe a guard, and always I had ridden away. War seemed to me to be something they did. The soldiers, I mean. It was all around me, and yet it never really touched me.” He smiled. “Until this particular day when they came in numbers I could not imagine. They did not care who was fighting, and who was not. In fact, telling them I was of noble blood was, in retrospect, not the brightest of moves.” Veryan shrugged, realised his companion wouldn’t see, and let his smile become audible again, though gradually, as he spoke, it faded.

“They rounded up everyone. Everyone. They rounded us up and they put us against a wall and they shot us. They shot so many of us that their arms were tired drawing back the strings of their bows. That is possibly the only reason I am here now, to tell you this. That, or the man who shot me was simply not paying attention.

"It was two hours before the sun was due to set.”

Veryan took another sip, and the only sign that he felt anything was when the glass tapped almost silently against one of his teeth. “They killed women and children that day. I did not deserve to survive. I played dead, which became easier as it neared, and I lay beneath the cooling bodies, and I waited. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that he would come for me. And I knew that I had finally succeeded in pissing him off.”