“One doesn't kill a vampyr,” Czcibor corrected him. “They are already dead. They can be destroyed, but they cannot be killed. To answer your question, I have destroyed fifteen of the creatures to date, the last of these in Wormditt a few months past.”
The headman stroked his graying mustache, weighing Czcibor's claim. “We hired a man who said he could help us when these troubles began, you know. He was a Hungarian, a sellsword knight who said he knew all about vampyr. He took our money and rode away laughing. I can still hear him laughing at us.”
“I have already been paid by the people of Swinka,” Czcibor said. “There's no reason to fear that I'll steal from you.”
“No, there isn't,” Lukasz agreed. “But you might do us even greater hurt.” Before Czcibor could react, the headman drew a pistol out from under the papers piled on the table. “Lay your sword over with the other treasure the vampyr has left us. Don't think I can't hit you with this. Since its last owner left it with us, I have become an excellent shot.”
Czcibor slowly unbuckled his swordbelt and set it down atop the pile of chests and sacks closest to him. “Your fiendish master has paid you well. It is a shame you're too miserly to profit from your spoils.”
“This isn't about plunder,” Lukasz declared. “It is about survival. After the knight betrayed us, we saw no choice but to reach an accord with Wera. We promised to bring her victims if she would spare our village. At first she was content with sheep and pigs, but soon she came to demand human offerings.” Tears glistened in the headman's eyes. “Don't you understand, if we didn't give her someone, then she would come for us?”
“I can stop her,” Czcibor said. “All I need is to know more about her. Know where her lair is.”
Lukasz laughed, a sound bitter and forsaken. “She's found some hole in Starybogow. If you searched the ruins a hundred years you'd never find her. And that's allowing she doesn't move to a new grave each night. No, the only way is to appease her until God, in His mercy, sees fit to lift this plague from us.”
“Perhaps God sent me to do just that,” Czcibor said. “I don't boast when I tell you that I've faced these monsters before. I don't lie when I tell you I've destroyed vampyr in the past.”
“But can you promise that you will prevail?” Lukasz demanded, shaking the pistol at his prisoner. “Is there any guarantee that you will triumph? If you die, we would be left to Wera's vengeance. She would know we sent you to destroy her. She would prey upon us with even greater abandon than before and this time there would be no appeasing her.” He shook his head. “No, I cannot risk such a doom falling upon my people. We must hold to the pact we've made with Wera.”
“A pact with the Devil isn't an easy thing to break,” Czcibor warned. “But if you would save your soul, it must be done.”
“It isn't souls I'm trying to save, it's lives,” Lukasz said. There was a knock at the door and four stout peasants entered the cramped room. The headman pointed at Czcibor. “Bind him with ropes and take him into Execution Square in the city. Prick his arm with a knife and then leave him.” He looked apologetically at Czcibor. “The smell of blood will bring Wera to you once the sun is down. I'm sorry, but this is for the good of my people.”
Czcibor fixed the headman with a steely look. “Necessity has birthed darker evils than greed ever did. Remember that there will be a reckoning one day.”
“But it won't be today,” Lukasz declared as he motioned his men to bind the krsnik.
*****
The cold of the stones he was lying on was leeching the warmth from Czcibor's body. It was some hours since the peasants had left him in Execution Square and the sun was fast fading from the sky. The gathering darkness managed the impossible, rendering a still more sinister aspect to the shattered buildings that fronted the square. The scaffold, charred by fire and cracked by earthquake, leaned across the plaza at an impossible angle, the arm of the gibbet thrusting itself at the sky as though to threaten the moon and stars. The broken remnants of the thirteen steps that had borne so many to their doom lay strewn about the platform in a nimbus of scorched wood.
It had been difficult for the krsnik to wait for the onset of darkness. While the sun was still in the sky there had been the risk that Lukasz might repent the villainy he'd plotted. He'd felt the regret and guilt pounding through the headman's heart when he'd been ushered into the treasure room. The people of Krynka weren't trying to profit from the vampyr’s depredations – they were simply trying to escape them. With that in mind, there was a chance the villagers might come back to release him. Czcibor wanted to give them that chance for penance. Otherwise they would find no forgiveness from their neighbors and their liege lord once the nature of their perfidy came to light.
Now, of course, that chance was gone. No villager would risk being in the ruins after dark, regardless of their arrangement with the vampyr. Even if this creature Wera did display enough restraint to spare them, Starybogow was reputed to be the haunt of all manner of ancient horrors, things drawn back from the frontiers of civilization by the desolation of the city.
Czcibor watched as the last light slipped away. It was time now to draw upon the mystic talents he'd sacrificed so much to learn, the arcane arts that had imperiled his very soul to acquire. Abilities far less passive and subtle than his heightened senses and power to read a man's innermost intentions and emotions. The old craft that was being burned away by the fires of the Inquisition in France and elsewhere - the power men called magic.
The krsnik closed his eyes and worked the fingers of his right hand in a series of scratching gestures. From his lips there hissed a babble of eldritch notes, sounds midway between speech and snarl. He cleared his mind, focusing his thoughts upon one image, pouring his very being into it until the image expanded to consume him utterly.
On the cold stones of Execution Square, in the shadow of the gibbet, Czcibor's bound form began to change. The man's arms became pallid, a growth of white fur exploding across them with blinding speed. His hair fell away from his scalp as more white fur pushed itself up from his skin. His face began to lengthen, mouth and nose stretching outward to merge into a weasel-like muzzle. The krsnik's body began to diminish, shrinking into the folds of his clothing, leaving the still-tied ropes behind as hands and feet became too small to restrain. Soon, the transforming hunter was lost completely within the mass of clothing.
Yet something moved within that heap of seemingly empty clothing. Squirming out from the neck of the shirt, the long lean shape of a ferret emerged. The animal was pure white in color, as though coated in new fallen snow. The ferret rose up onto his hind legs and sniffed at the air with his whiskered face, two gray eyes peering into the growing darkness. Transformed by the ancient magics he'd learned, Czcibor had found it easy to slip free of his bonds. What remained to be seen were if his powers would be a match for the vampyr Wera.
A foul scent, a sickening admixture of old blood and carrion, sent the white ferret scurrying underneath the scaffold. The vampyr was coming.
A grisly cold beat down upon the square as the carrion-reek intensified. A monstrous shadow fell across the stones. The next moment saw the thing herself descend, dropping down upon the ground like some foul scavenger bird. Czcibor could see the shape the vampyr wore, the form of a great bat, black and furless, her limbs withered and drawn close to the bones beneath. The abomination sniffed at the air with her shriveled nose, a pink tongue flickering across the knife-like fangs that protruded from her mouth. Then, using the clawed fingers of her wings to pull her along, the grotesque bat scrabbled toward the pile of empty clothing lying where she'd expected to find a victim.
The vampyr cocked her head to one side in confusion when she found the empty clothes. She reached out with the finger-claws and drew Czcibor's shirt toward her face, sniffing at the raiment. The unfamiliar smell only increased her perplexity, for the scent of a krsnik is not like that of normal men. In her befuddlement, Wera let the batlike shape slip away. The vampyr’s limb
s cracked and creaked as bones twisted and reformed, as wings diminished into skeletal arms and the minuscule feet of a bat lengthened into the longer legs of a woman. Even in a more human shape, the vampyr was ghastly, a desiccated husk in which the only specks of life were the smoldering eyes and the glistening fangs.
Stooping over the clothing, Wera began to inspect each article, trying to learn what sort of man had worn them and how he had been able to slip free. Czcibor, watching from the shadows of the scaffold, had seen enough. He knew which breed of vampir he was faced with, recognized Wera as one of the infernal kudlaks. He could see her crimson eyes grow wide as she smelled the bloodstains on his sleeves. The vampyr’s long, lupine tongue snaked out from between her fangs and licked at the red blot. Then she swung around, a low growl rattling through her gangrel body, her nose twitching as she pulled the smell of Czcibor's blood from the air. Her eyes narrowed to vicious slits as she glared at the scaffold.
Czcibor stepped out from the shadows, no longer wearing the shape of an animal. “Yes, kudlak, I am here,” he snarled at the monster. “Here to put an end to your infamies.”
Wera stared at the krsnik for a moment, confused by the man's impertinence, uneasy by the lack of fear she sensed in her intended prey. Then a savage hiss rasped from the vampyr’s throat, bestial rage boiling up from the depths of her undead heart. With the speed of a striking snake, she lunged at Czcibor.
Despite the inhuman swiftness of the vampyr, Czcibor was swifter still. As Wera rushed at him with bared fangs and outstretched claws, the krsnik swung around. From behind his back, clenched in his right hand, a jagged strip of wood torn from the planks of the scaffold was thrust at the attacking kudlak. The sliver raked across Wera's forearm, gouging it from wrist to elbow. The decayed skin was split open and a mist of foul black ichor steamed out from the vampir's wound. Wera leapt back, howling in shock and pain, glaring at the injury that had been visited against her. Hungry eyes looked up from the steaming wound to glare at Czcibor. Her tongue licked across the gash in her arm, her venom sealing the cut and stifling the flow of smoking ichor to a trickle.
Czcibor retreated back toward the scaffold, ducking under the platform and creeping under the gallows. The special enchantments that had been conveyed from his hand into the sliver of wood had been enough to harm the vampyr, but he knew it would take much more to destroy such a fiend. The means to destroy Wera wouldn't be found in the ruins of Starybogow, but rather outside the city's walls. To be victorious, he had to lure her to a battlefield of his choosing. To do that, he had to arouse Wera's rage to a degree where it overwhelmed her caution.
“Yes, blood-worm, you bleed,” Czcibor mocked the vampyr. “How does it feel when your prey can fight back?”
Wera's eyes narrowed, transfixing those of the krsnik. The vampir took a few steps toward the scaffold, always keeping Czcibor's gaze. He could feel her predatory will scratching at the doors of his mind, trying to overwhelm his resistance like a serpent transfixing a bird. Even for him, it was no easy thing to fend away the vampir's hypnosis. When he did, Wera's reaction was immediate and vicious. Charging for the krsnik, Wera's claws raked across his flesh, opening deep gashes across his shoulder and abdomen. Blood splattered across the kudlak.
Again, Wera drew back in shock and pain. Ugly blisters erupted from her decayed flesh, livid sores that marked where Czcibor's blood had splashed onto her. The strict diet and ascetic lifestyle of the krsnik had endowed his blood with properties toxic to the kudlak. As she staggered back, the hunger drained out of the vampir's eyes. She knew now that she couldn't make a meal of Czcibor. She knew now what he was, and that even if she couldn't drink his blood she couldn't allow him to live.
Czcibor clutched at the gash across his belly and hobbled back out toward the square. He'd aroused the kudlak's fury, but would he live long enough to make use of it? Already Wera was prowling toward him again, stalking him like some great cat. The vampyr’s next attack would be more wary than her earlier ones, making her all the more dangerous. Czcibor had to draw the monster away from her hunting grounds.
“You've left your smell on me,” Czcibor told Wera, sliding one of his fingers across the wounds along his belly. “I've got your scent now. I'll be back, when the sun is high and you are helpless in your grave.” Mustering his strength, the krsnik spun around and threw himself out from the shadow of the scaffold. The moment he was again in the open air of the square, his body underwent a swift transformation. Feathers sprouted across his naked body, his feet became slender talons, his arms stretched out into broad wings. An enormous white owl rose into the sky, climbing away from the desolation of the square.
From below, the transformed Czcibor could hear an inhuman screech of rage. A huge black shape flitted upward. Once more wearing the shape of a giant bat, Wera was pursuing her adversary, determined that he shouldn't escape and make good his threat to find her hidden grave.
Czcibor lead the blood bat far across the ruins of Starybogow, the cracked streets and crumbling buildings flowing away beneath them as hunter and hunted sped toward the lands beyond the walls. Though the owl was smaller and swifter than the grotesque form Wera had assumed, Czcibor was weakened by the wounds he'd suffered. Many times weariness threatened him, causing his wings to stiffen and leave him to merely glide above the ruinous city. At such times, the bat would sweep forward, diving down at him with the ferocity of a hawk on the hunt. Only the greater agility of the krsnik's aerial shape saved him from being caught in the bat's claws or knocked from the sky by the vampyr’s leathery wings.
Forcing himself to greater effort, Czcibor at last found himself soaring past the abandoned walls of Starybogow and over the fallow fields and overgrown pastures beyond. The kudlak was close after him, her rage and anxiety moving Wera to stray far beyond her familiar haunts. Once more she was forced to range over the lands she'd stalked before making her compact with the peasants of Krynka.
The lights of the duplicitous village shone like a beacon in the night. Czcibor flew toward Krynka with such strength as he could coax from his owlish form. In his mind he estimated the distance between the settlement and Swinka. Yes, he decided at last, there had been enough time since the sun's setting. If Dobrogost had followed his orders!
The white owl fell toward the muddy lane that wound its way between the huts. As the bird descended, feathers fell away and wings thickened into muscular arms. It was the feet of a man rather than the talons of an owl that struck the road. The impact of his speedy descent sent Czcibor tumbling through the mud, but as his body lost momentum he turned his fall into a sprawling roll that brought him diving under the overhang of a woodshed.
Diving in pursuit of the krsnik as he tumbled down the street, Wera's claws were grasping for him even as he slid under the roof of the shed. Instead of human flesh the bat's claws sank into the wooden roof. Shrieking in frustration, Wera tore the roof to splinters, her monstrous wings beating furiously as she rose once more into the air.
Czcibor scrambled out from the other side of the shed, his right hand gripping a splinter from the torn roof. Unerringly he hurled the sliver of wood at the hovering bat. It lanced through the vampyr’s leathery wing, producing another burst of mephitic smoke as the kudlak's ichor reacted to the krsnik's enchantment. Howling in pain, Wera dropped from the sky and smashed through the thatch roof of the hut below her.
Screams of terror rose from the hut, but there was nothing Czcibor could do to help the occupants as the enraged vampir turned upon them. The weapons he needed to destroy Wera were locked away in Lukasz's treasure room. Without those, it would be all he could do just to protect himself. Looking away from the doomed hut, he quickly oriented himself and loped off in the direction of the tavern. The wounds across his belly were bleeding again, each halting step he took draining a bit more of his strength. He could see his goal standing off in the distance, but it seemed as far away as Wormditt's castle.
A snarl of bestial wrath caused Czcibor to look back. Wera had
resumed her ghastly, corpse-like form, standing amid the wreckage of the hut's door. Blood was splattered across her mouth and chin, the lifeless body of a peasant dangling from one of her emaciated hands. The kudlak's injuries had faded away, no longer was mist seeping from her cuts or her deathly flesh marred by blisters. The excess of blood upon which she'd feasted within the hut had restored her hideous vitality. Aware now that she could undo whatever hurt Czcibor could inflict on her, the vampyr was doubly eager to fall upon him.
Wera sprang from the threshold of the hut, but as the vampir leaped toward the street her body again shifted its form, stretching out into a long lupine shape. Abominably wasted and thin, it was the semblance of a huge black wolf that rushed down the lane to overtake Czcibor.
Before the vampyr could fall upon him, Czcibor threw himself forward in a sprawling lunge. Like the kudlak, the krsnik's body transformed as he leaped, taking the shape of a white dog. Lithe and supple, the dog ran ahead of his black pursuer, distancing the withered wolf as he fled down the muddy lane. Each bound sent a tremor of pain coursing through Czcibor's canine frame and the gashes that had closed with his transformation were soon ripped open once more, crimson blood seeping across his white fur.
Smell of the krsnik's blood drove Wera into a frenzy. The vampir surged onward in a burst of maddened speed, her jaws snapping at Czcibor's tail. He could feel her undead chill stealing over him, curdling the blood in his veins and making his flesh crawl. The lights of the tavern were only a few dozen yards ahead, but Czcibor knew he wouldn't make it.
Then, from the shadows of an alleyway, a great gray apparition pounced upon the black wolf. A snarling tangle of claws and fangs rolled through the mud, ripping and slashing with savage abandon. A cry of agony rose from the black wolf, steaming mist whistling from her jaw. With a panicked burst of might, she threw aside her attacker and sent it tumbling down the street. The vampir resumed her cadaverous form, clutching at her injured face with a skeletal talon.
City of the Gods - Starybogow Page 14