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is fanatical; so long as he is given the right motivations he should be biddable enough.”
    “All the more reason he must be watched! He will hate us with the same passion, even hunt us, should he come close enough. He is haunted by his own piety, his own sense of damnation. Such obsession is the great flaw of the living.”
    “And a great strength, if used correctly…I am aware of the difficulties of manipulating the living, Mordiki, none more so, but it is sometimes necessary, particularly when facing an enemy as dangerous and cunning as the Strigoi. The very initiative that makes this one a liability is also what makes him a greater threat to our enemies than any summoning or construct we could make ourselves.”
     
      The thin hum of the voices in the clown’s head goes on, as the two watchers continue their debate but they are drowned out by the notes of his flute as the clown returns his attention to the instrument resting against his teeth and continues his mournful playing. He rarely bothers to listen to his masters’ deliberations, they will give him his orders soon enough and with no choice in whether to follow them or not, the clown can see no reason not to return to his playing. Indeed, only moments later, the urging comes and he sets off at his steady tireless pace, after the single set of horse tracks that lead from the town, leaving a low note echoing on the wind behind him as he wanders back onto the burning sea of sand.
     
    *
     
    It takes a moment for Father Rugan to adjust to the reality of the trees swaying gently in   the small orchard outside his window. The haze of the open desert seems hard to clear from his eyes and for a few slim seconds he could believe that the lush growth around him is only a mirage melting in the oppressive heat of the desert’s Anvil. His hands reach tentatively to his face expecting to touch the pitted smoothness of old bone.   No, he reminds himself he is Father Geoffrey Rugan, Abbot and Confessor to General Leedon and as such, one of the most powerful men in the Union , or so he had been once. Lamentably Maliki was right, his grip on his protégé is slipping now and General Leedon, Protector of the Faith and his once fanatical charge, has grown hungry even, as he’d stopped being lean.
     
    With the Crusade fading in memory, the General had been taking to politics with a speed and skill that made Rugan question just who his other advisors might be. Oh there was no denying the Church for him now, he was still and had always been a true believer, besides too much of his strength lay with the Pilgrims and Crusaders but Leedon had not been as blind as Rugan and his brothers both within the Church and without had hoped. It had become increasingly hard to twist that strong streak of fundamentalism in Leedon to what Rugan saw as desirable ends. Once the boy would never have taken a step without consulting his confessor, now as a man, Leedon had taken his faith into his own hands. Six years ago the Citadel had fallen and the game that had been played out between Necromancer and vampire for centuries had ended. The holy fires of zealotry had consumed the very heart of the leech’s foul creed or so those behind the Crusade had thought. The hell spawn had died by the hundreds that day and yet these days there always seemed to be more, popping up in the remotest corners of the Union, as if the destruction of the Citadel had only served to disperse them, like bees without a nest. Despite their apparent victory, Rugan and his brothers still found their plans subtly thwarted, as far as Rugan was concerned the interference could only come from one source.
     
    Rugan would call that source evil, he had gone to great lengths to reveal the extent of that evil while hiding how much he knew of it. Since the founding of the Union and probably before Necromancer and vampire had been locked in competition, many, on both sides of the conflict, argued about whether the Necromancers had