I did not know it but the end — my end, the end of glory, of power, of notoriety — was already looming. For I had forgotten the prime rule of the Wamphyri: do not be seen to be too different. Be strong, but not overpowering. Be lustful, but not a legendary satyr. Command respect, but not devotion. And above all do nothing to cause your peers, or those who have the power to consider themselves your superiors, to become afraid of you.
But I had been burned by Greek fire and it had merely infuriated me. And rapacious? For every man I had killed I had taken a woman, as many as thirty in a day and a night! My Szgany looked to me as a sort of god — or devil. And finally . . . finally, of course, the Crusaders proper had come to fear me. More than all matters of ‘conscience’, more than all the murder and rape and blasphemies they had committed, my deeds had given them bad dreams.
Aye, and they were sore in need of a scapegoat.
I believe that even without Innocent’s pious protestations and hand-flutterings and cries of horror, still I would have been persecuted. Anyway, this was the way of it. The Pope had been enraged by the sack of Zara, at first delighted by Constantinople, then aghast when he heard of the atrocities. He now washed his hands of the Crusade in its entirety. Far from helping true Christian soldiers in their fight against Islam, it seemed its only aim had been to conquer Christian territories. And as for the blasphemies and generally atrocious behaviour of the Crusaders in Constantinople’s holy places .
I say again: they needed a scapegoat, and no need to look too far for one. A certain ‘bloodthirsty mercenary recruited in Zara’ would fit the bill nicely. In secret communiqués Innocent had ordered that those directly responsible for ‘gross acts of excessive and unnatural cruelty’ must gain ‘neither glory nor rich rewards nor lands’ for their barbarism. Their names should no more be spoken by good men and true but ‘struck forever out of the records’. All such great sinners were to be offered ‘neither respect nor high regard’, for by their acts they had shown that they were ‘worthy only of contempt’. Hah! It was more than excommunication — it was a death warrant!
Excommunication . . . I had taken the Cross in Zara as a matter of expediency. It meant nothing. A cross is a symbol, nothing more. Soon, however, I would come to hate that symbol.
We had a large house on the outskirts of the sacked city, my Szgany and I. It had been a palace or some such, was now filled with wine and loot and prostitutes. The other mercenary groups had turned over their plunder to their Crusader masters for the prearranged split, but I had not. For we had not yet been paid! Perhaps I was in error there. Certainly our loot was an extra incentive for Crusader treachery.
They came at night, which was their mistake. I am — or was — Wamphyri; night was my element. Some vampire premonition had warned me that all was not well. I was awake and on the prowl when the attack came. I roused up my men and they set to. But it was no good; we were heavily outnumbered and, taken by surprise, my men were still half-asleep. When the place began to burn I saw that I couldn’t win. Even if I beat off all of these Crusaders, they formed only a fraction of the total body. They had probably diced with ten other equal parties for the privilege of killing and robbing me. Also, if they had guessed what I was — and the fire suggested that they had – quite obviously my situation was untenable.
I took gold and a great many gemstones and fled into the darkness. On my way I carried off one of my attackers with me. He was a Frenchman, only a lad, and I made a quick end of it, for I had not time to tarry. Before he died, though, he told me what it was all about. From that day to this I have loathed the cross and all who wear it, or live in its shadow or under its influence.