The victory at Antioch was a bitter fruit that turned to ash in the mouths of the Crusaders within forty-eight hours.
History had played a cruel joke on the Soldiers of Christ. On the third of June, 1098, they had broken into the city, slaughtering the garrison and finally tasting the luxury of stone walls and hidden cellars. But by the fifth of June, the hunters had become the prey. Kerbogha, the Atabeg of Mosul, had arrived with a relief army so vast that the white of their tents looked like a fresh snowfall covering the hills surrounding the city.
The Crusaders were trapped. They had conquered a city with no food, and now they were being besieged within the very walls they had fought seven months to breach.
While the Christian princes—Bohemond, Raymond, and Tancred—huddled in the Citadel to discuss their inevitable doom, Sir Alaric of Artois stood on the highest rampart of the Tower of the Two Sisters. He did not look at the sea of Turkish tents with fear. He looked at them with a cold, predatory calculation. To Alaric, Kerbogha's army was not a threat; it was a sprawling, unharvested field of "liquid sun."
The Shadow in the Streets
The atmosphere inside Antioch was a desperate mix of religious delirium and skeletal exhaustion. Men were eating rats, boiled grass, and the leather of their own shields. Yet, amidst this decay, Alaric and his twelve moved like ghosts of iron. They didn't eat. They didn't sleep. Their skin remained the color of unblemished marble, and their eyes held an amber glow that they had to hide beneath deep hoods.
"They are starting to notice," Godfrey whispered, stepping up beside Alaric. The old knight's voice was no longer a human rasp; it was a rhythmic, resonant sound, like the wind moving through a hollow trunk. "The common soldiers see us walking the walls at midnight without a torch. They see that we do not stand in the bread lines. The priests are beginning to whisper about 'demons in the service of the Cross.'"
Alaric turned his head. His movements were fluid, lacking the jerky, tired motion of a mortal man. "Let them whisper. Desperate men will tolerate a demon if it holds the wall. How is the planting?"
"The cisterns near the Gate of Saint Paul are fully claimed," Godfrey reported. "The black vines have taken root in the mortar. Within three days, the water will be... prepared."
The Vilevine was not content to stay in the desert rift. Through Alaric and the Vanguard, it was extending its reach. In the dark, damp places of Antioch—the sewers, the deep wells, and the shaded courtyards of abandoned palaces—small, thorny sprouts of obsidian wood were pushing through the stone. They were fed by the small "tithes" of blood Alaric's men took from the dying and the dead. The city was slowly becoming a secondary heart for the parasite.
The Trial of Faith
As Alaric descended from the tower, he was intercepted by a group of clerics led by a man named Peter Bartholomew, a visionary who claimed to hear the voices of the saints. Peter was gaunt, his eyes wide with the frantic light of a man who was either a prophet or a madman.
"Sir Alaric," Peter called out, his voice shaking. "I have had a vision. Saint Andrew spoke to me in the dark. He said there is a darkness within the city, a rot that wears the shape of men. He said the Holy Lance lies buried beneath the Church of St. Peter, but it is guarded by shadows that drink the light."
Alaric stopped. He looked at the priest, and for a moment, the Bloodlust spiked. He could hear the frantic, thin pulse in Peter's neck. To Alaric, the priest wasn't a man; he was a fragile vessel of warm, vibrating energy.
"Visions are dangerous things in a starving city, Peter," Alaric said, his voice smooth and cold. "They can lead a man to salvation, or they can lead him to a pit."
"And what of you, Sir Knight?" Peter asked, stepping closer. "I see you in the moonlight. You do not pray. You do not eat. Your men move like shadows. The knights say you were the first over the wall, and that no blade could touch you. Is it God's grace that protects you, or something else?"
The Vanguard knights behind Alaric shifted, their hands resting on the pommels of their swords. Baldwin, the youngest, let out a low, vibrating growl that sounded more like a shifting of stone than a human sound.
Alaric raised a hand, silencing his men. He leaned into Peter's personal space. The air around Alaric smelled of pine and copper—a scent that made the priest's pupils dilate with a strange, primal terror.
"I am the sword that keeps the Turk from your throat while you dig for your relics," Alaric whispered. "Be careful, priest. If you find your Lance, pray it is sharp enough to kill the monsters outside. Because the monsters inside are the only ones keeping you alive."
Peter Bartholomew paled and retreated, clutching his wooden cross. He had seen the amber flicker in Alaric's eyes—the light of the Vilevine.
The Skirmish at the Bridge
The following night, Kerbogha launched a probe against the Bridge Gate. It was a test of the Crusaders' resolve. A hundred elite Turkish horsemen, armored in lamellar and silk, galloped toward the gatehouse under a hail of arrows.
The human defenders on the wall were too weak to draw their bows with full force. Their arrows fell short, clattering harmlessly against the stones. The gate was at risk of being burned.
"Now," Alaric commanded.
The Vanguard didn't use the stairs. They vaulted over the battlements, dropping thirty feet to the ground with the heavy, thudding sound of falling timber. They landed in crouched positions, their resin-reinforced skeletons absorbing the impact without a crack.
Alaric led the charge. He didn't carry a shield. He held his longsword in one hand, his other hand open like a claw.
The Turkish cavalry met them with a roar. A horseman lunged with a lance, the point striking Alaric in the shoulder. The wood of the lance shattered. Alaric grabbed the broken shaft, pulled the rider from his saddle with a single, violent jerk, and slammed the man into the stone wall of the gatehouse.
The fight was not a battle; it was a clinical, terrifying demonstration of the Vilevine's power. The twelve knights moved in perfect synchrony, a pack of apex predators. They didn't tire. They didn't feel pain. When a scimitar found a gap in Godfrey's armor, the old knight simply ignored the blade, his amber eyes glowing as he tore the Turk from his horse.
Alaric moved through the center of the skirmish like a dark wind. Every man he killed was a tribute. He felt the psychic tether to the Vilevine grow stronger with every drop of blood spilled. He could feel the "Sap" in his veins pulsing, thickening, making him faster and stronger.
The Turkish survivors retreated in a panic. They had faced the most fanatical crusaders in the world, but they had never faced men who wouldn't die.
The Cost of Immortality
As the Vanguard returned to the safety of the walls, the human soldiers who had watched from above were silent. There was no cheering. There was only a profound, shivering dread. They had seen Alaric take a lance to the chest and keep walking. They had seen his wounds seal with black sap instead of blood.
Alaric retreated to the shadows of a ruined palace that he had claimed as his "Grove." Inside, the walls were already draped in the obsidian vines of the Vilevine. The air here was cool and heavy with the scent of the Mother Tree.
He sat on a stone throne, his head leaning back against the cold rock. The Bloodlust was quiet for now, sated by the skirmish, but the psychological toll was beginning to show. Alaric closed his eyes and tried to remember the face of his wife, Catherine. He tried to remember the smell of baking bread in Artois.
But the memories were fading, being replaced by the vast, alien consciousness of the Tree. He didn't see faces anymore; he saw "vessels." He didn't see a city; he saw "soil."
"Lord," Baldwin said, kneeling before him. The boy's skin was now almost translucent, showing the black, vine-like veins beneath. "The men are hungry. The secondary roots... they need more than the scraps of the dead."
Alaric looked at the young boy. He realized that by "saving" them, he had condemned them to an eternal, agonizing thirst. Without the constant influx of blood, the Vilevine within them would begin to eat their own organs, turning them into petrified statues of wood and bone.
"The army is large, Baldwin," Alaric said, his voice devoid of emotion. "And many are already dying of the famine. We are merely... accelerating the inevitable. Take what is needed from the infirmaries. But do not touch the leaders. Not yet."
"And the priest? Peter Bartholomew?"
Alaric's amber eyes flickered. "Let him dig. If he finds his Lance, it will give the humans hope. And hope makes the blood run sweeter."
The Harvest Moon
The chapter ends with a wide shot of Antioch under the moonlight. On the surface, it is a city of starving, praying humans waiting for a miracle. But beneath the surface, in the cellars and the cisterns, the Vilevine is weaving a cage of iron thorns.
Alaric stands on the balcony, looking toward the distant white tents of Kerbogha. He knows that the Great Battle is coming. He knows that soon, the soil of Antioch will be so saturated with blood that the Vilevine will finally be able to bloom.
He is no longer a knight of the Cross. He is the gardener of a new, darker world.
The First Crusade has reached its most desperate hour, and as the humans prepare to die for their faith, Alaric and his Vanguard prepare to live forever on their sacrifice.