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Lashbuna - 1000, during the Reconquista.
Bertrand couldn't understand what they were doing here. Well he did.
He and the Knights of Lazarus, alongside so many other holy orders are trying to take the peninsula back from the Moors. Then they will take Jerusalem.
"Are you going to try again?" Matthieu asked with a smirk, watching him leave.
"Try what?" Bertrand said.
"Elia's daughter. Careful, she may take your head."
"Her or Elia?"
"Either one of them."
"Then she would contend with the Knights of Lazarus."
"She already has, which is why we got pushed out of Jerusalem." The young vampire pointed out gruffly.
Matthew had a problem with all these female vampires and humans who fought in these skirmishes. Bertrand, at one point did too. But Matthieu was young.
Bertrand had worshipped at Athena's temple, who he believed granted him strength and wisdom in war. He'd met the legendary Amazons, long ago and was lucky to survive.
Yes, he would call the Moors strange, but they were immortals. If anything, they were stranger.
"You are a Frenchman in a Moor city." Matthieu warned, "She's beautiful, but is she worth it?"
Bertrand grinned, "Most definitely."
Miriam sniffed an orange and smiled at the vendor.
"I will take the whole basket, thank you." The man smiled at her. Perhaps it was flirtatious, most men did smile at her in that manner.
She knew he was watching. A foolish European vampire who had become attached to her when he and the de Clermonts arrived.
At first, she wanted to kill him. Now, she wasn't so sure. Whenever she saw him, strange feelings would stir within her, and it was getting harder to ignore them.
"May I help you?" She asked.
"Yes. Marry me." Bertrand said. The only thing he had said to her since meeting her at Philippe de Clermont's attempt at reconciliation.
She looked to him with barely concealed surprise. He spoke her language. Many of them didn't.
"No." Miriam replied, yet again.
"What do you want from me?" Bertrand said.
"To live my people alone." Miriam replied, "To leave our land, our religion."
Bertrand clicked his tongue, "I can't do that. But I would like to walk with you."
"Fine." Miriam replied.
"You believe this war pointless?" Bertrand observed after a while.
That was the only demand she made. For them, the other Templars to leave them alone.
"Most wars are pointless."
She had lived for centuries. These Europeans, with their new-found 'elightenment' revealed by a God she knew didn't exist. It was all an excuse for them gain land, pillage and take back what they believed belonged to them.
The Romans had done it, under the names of Mars and Jupiter. These Templars were no different.
"I would hope not to come upon you on a battlefield, my lady." Bertrand replied.
"Why? You believe women should be at home?"
"No. Because you'd kill me." Bertrand said, certainty in his tone.
"I don't want to." Miriam admitted. His face lit up when she said that.
"I need to go."
"Same time tomorrow?" Bertrand asked before swaggering off.
"Myriam!" Elia's gentle voice came from inside their family palace, "You are late. Your father was ready to send out a search party.
"I'm home. And I'm fine."
"You ran into one of the de Clermont's Templars again, didn't you? The blonde one?" Of course, she could smell it.
"I just went for a walk in the market. He was there." Miriam defended, handing her mother the basket of fruit.
The older vampire smiled and stroked her daughter's cheek. Her soft but steely girl, who had more war than those boys would ever hope too. She was falling in love in perhaps the most inconvenient time.
"If you are meant to love him, you shouldn't be afraid to, my dear."
Miriam stiffened at her words. She hadn't admitted the pull she felt towards Bertrand. She couldn't. They were on opposite sides and it seemed they always would be.
"I want them gone." Miriam said, "If I can convince him to leave, then that's all I will say to him."