by Brian Lumley
“What?” Thibor was astonished, his gasp cutting the Vlad short. “I’m sorry, my Prince, but you—no power?”
Vladimir Svyatoslavich shook his head. “You don’t understand,” he said. “Of course I have power. Kiev has power. But all so extended as to be almost expended! Should I recall an army to deal with one unruly princeling? And in so doing let the Pechenegi come up again? Should I form up an army from farmers and officials and peasants, all unskilled in battle? And if I did, what then? An army could not bring this Ferenczy out of his castle if he did not wish to leave it. Even an army could not destroy him, his defences are so strong! What? They are the mountain passes themselves, the gorges, the avalanches! With a handful of fierce, faithful retainers, he could hold back any army I muster almost indefinitely. Oh, if I had two thousand men to spare, then I might possibly starve him with a siege, but at what expense? On the other hand, what an army cannot achieve might just be possible—for one brave and clever and loyal man …”
“Are you saying you want this Ferenczy taken from his castle and brought to you in Kiev?”
“Too late for that, Thibor. He has shown how he ‘respects’ me. How then should I respect him? No, I want him dead! His lands then fall to me, his castle on the heights, his household and serfs. And his death will be an example to others who might think to stand apart.”
“Then you don’t want his thumbs but his head!” Thibor’s chuckle was throaty, without humour.
“I want his head, his heart, and his standard. And I want to burn all three on a bonfire right here in Kiev!”
“His standard? He has a symbol, then, this Ferenczy? Might I enquire the nature of this blazon?”
“By all means,” said the prince, his grey eyes suddenly thoughtful. He lowered his voice, cast about in the dusk for a moment, as if to be doubly sure that no one heard. “His mark is the homed head of a devil, with a forked tongue that drips gouts of blood …”
Blood!
Gouts of blood soaking into the black earth.
The sun had touched the horizon and was burning red there like … like a great gout of blood. Soon the earth would swallow it up. The old Thing in the ground trembled again; its husk of leather and bone slowly cracked open like a desiccated sponge to receive the earth’s tribute, the blood that soaked through leaf-mould and roots and black, centuried soil down to where the thousand-year-old Thibor-creature lay in his shallow grave.
Subconsciously Thibor sensed the seeping blood and knew, in the way all dreamers “know,” that it was only part of the dream. It would be a different matter when the sun had set and the seepage actually touched him, but for now he ignored it, returned to that time at the turn of the tenth century when he’d been merely human and had gone up into the Khorvaty on a mission of murder …
They had travelled as trappers, Thibor and his seven, as Wallachians who followed the Carpathian curve on a trek designed to get them deep into the northern forests by the onset of winter. In fact they had simply come from Kiev through Kolomyya and so to the mountains, but they’d taken all the paraphernalia of the trapper with them, to substantiate their story. It had taken them three weeks of steady riding to reach the place in the very lee of the sheer mountains, (a “village,” consisting of a handful of stone houses built into the hillside, half-a-dozen semi-permanent cabins, and a smattering of gypsy tents of cured skins with the fur inside) which the current incumbents called Moupho Aide Ferenc Yaborov, a mouthful they invariably shortened to Ferenc, which they made to sound like “Ferengi.” It meant “Place of the Old One,” or “of the Old Ferengi,” and the gypsies spoke of it in lowered tones and with a deal of respect.
There were maybe a hundred men there, some thirty women and as many children. Half of the men were trappers passing through, or prospective settlers uprooted by Pechenegi raids, on their way to find homes further north. Many of the latter group had their families with them. The remainder were either peasant inhabitants of Ferengi Yaborov, or gypsies come here to winter it out. They’d been coming since time immemorial, apparently, for “the old devil” who was Boyar here was good to them and turned none away. Indeed, in times of hardship he’d even been known to supply his wandering occasional tenants with food from his own larder and wine from his cellars.
Thibor, asking about food and drink for himself and the others, was shown a house of timbers set in a stand of pines. It was an inn of sorts, with tiny rooms up in the rafters which could only be reached by rope ladders; the ladders were drawn up when the boarder wished to sleep. Down below there were wooden tables and stools, and at one end of the large room a bar stocked with small kegs of plum brandy and buckets of sweet ale. One wall was built half of stone, where burned a fire in the base of a huge chimney. On the fire was an iron pot of goulash giving out a heavy paprika reek. Onions dangled in bunches from nails in the wall close to the fire; likewise huge coarse-skinned sausages; black bread stood in loaves on the tables, baked in a stone oven to one side of the fire.
A man, his wife and one scruffy son ran the place; gypsies, Thibor guessed, who’d chosen to settle here. They could have done better, he thought, feeling cold in the shadows of the looming rocks, the mountains whose presence could be felt even indoors. It was a gloomy place this, frowning and foreboding.
The Wallach had told his men to speak to no one, but as they put away their gear, ate and drank, spoke in muffled tones to each other, he himself shared a jug of brandy with his host. “Who are you?’” that gnarled old man asked him.
“Do you ask what I have been and where I have been?” Thibor answered. “That’s easier to tell than who I am.”
“Tell it then, if you feel like talking.”
Thibor smiled and sipped brandy. “I was a young boy under the Carpatii. My father was an Ungar who wandered into the borders of the southern steppe to farm—him and his brothers and kin and their families. I’ll be brief: came the Pechenegi, all was uprooted, our settlement destroyed. Since then I’ve wandered, fought the barbarian for payment and what little I could find on his body, done what I could where and whenever. Now I’ll be a trapper. I’ve seen the mountains, the steppe, the forests. Farming’s a hard life and blood-letting makes a man bitter. But in the towns and cities there’s money to be had from furs. You’ve roamed a bit yourself, I’ll vow?”
“Here and there,” the other shrugged, nodded. He was swarthy as smoke-grimed leather, wrinkled as a walnut from extremes of weather, lean as a wolf. Not young by any standards, still his hair was shiny black, his eyes too, and he seemed to have all of his teeth. But he moved his limbs carefully and his hands were very crooked. “I’d be doing it still if my bones hadn’t started to seize up. We had a cart of two wheels wrapped in leather, which we’d break down and carry when the way was rough. Upon the cart we took our house and goods along with us: a big tent with rooms, and cooking pots, and tools. We were—are—Szgany, gypsies, and became Szgany Ferengi when I built this place here.” He craned his neck and looked up, wide-eyed, at one interior wall of the house. It was a look half respectful, half fearful. There was no window but the Wallach knew that the old man stared up at the mountain peaks.
“Szgany Ferengi?” Thibor repeated. “You ally yourself to the Boyar Ferenczy in his castle, then?”
The old gypsy lowered his eyes from the unseen heights, drew back a little, took on a suspicious look. Thibor quickly poured him more of his own brandy. The other remained silent and the Wallach shrugged. “No matter, it’s just that I’ve heard good things of him,” he lied. “My father knew him, once …”
“Indeed!” the old man’s eyes widened.
Thibor nodded. “One cold winter, the Ferenczy gave him shelter in his castle. My father told me, if ever I passed this way, I should go up and remind the Boyar of that time, and thank him on behalf of my father.”
The old man stared at Thibor for long moments. “So, you’ve heard good things of our master, have you? From your father, eh? And you were born under the mountains …”
“Is something strange?” Thibor raised a dark eyebrow.
The other looked him up and down. “You’re a big man,” he said, grudgingly, “and strong, I can tell. Also, you look fierce. A Wallach, eh, whose fathers were Ungars? Well, perhaps you are, perhaps you are.”
“Perhaps I am what?”
“It’s said,” the gypsy whispered, drawing closer, “that the old Ferengi’s true sons always come home to roost. In the end they come here, seek him out—seek out their father! Would you climb up to see him?”
Thibor put on a look of indecision. He shrugged. “I might, if I knew the way. But these cliffs and passes are treacherous.”
“I know the way.”
“You’ve been there?” Thibor tried not to seem too eager.
The old man nodded. “Oh, yes, and I could take you. But would you go alone? The Ferengi’s not one for too many visitors.”
Thibor appeared to give it some little thought. “I’d want to take two of my friends, at least. In case the way gets rough.”
“Huh! If these old bones can make it, surely yours can! Just two of them?”
“For assistance in the steep places.”
Thibor’s host pursed his lips. “It would cost you a little something. My time and …”
“That’s understood,” the Wallach stopped him.
The gypsy scratched his ear. “What do you know of the old Ferengi? What have you heard of him?”
Thibor saw a chance for knowledge. Getting information out of people such as these was like drawing the teeth of a bear! “I’ve heard he has a great company of men garrisoned with him, and that his castle is a fastness impenetrable. Because of this he swears no fealty, pays no taxes on his lands, for none may collect it.”
“Hah!” The old gypsy laughed out loud, thumped the bar, poured more brandy. “A company of men? Retainers? Serfs? He has none! A woman or two, perhaps, but no men. Only the wolves guard those passes. As for his castle: it hugs the cliff. One way in—for mere men—and the same way out. Unless some unwary fool leans too far from a window …”
As he paused his eyes because suspicious again. “And did your father tell you that the Ferengi had men?”
Thibor’s father had told him nothing, of course. Nor had the Vlad, for that matter. What little he knew was superstitious twaddle he’d had from a fellow at court, a foolish man who didn’t much care for the prince and who in turn was little cared for. Thibor had no time for ghosts: he knew how many men he’d killed, and not a man of them had come back to haunt him.
He decided to take a chance. He’d already learned much of what he wanted to know. “My father said only that the way was steep, and that when he was there, many men were camped in and about the castle.”
The old man stared at him, slowly nodded. “It could be, it could be. The Szgany have often wintered with him.” He came to a decision. “Very well, I will take you up—if he will see you.” He laughed at Thibor’s raised eyebrows, led him out of the house into the quiet of the afternoon. On their way the gypsy took a huge bronze frying pan from its peg.
A weak sun was poised, preparing itself for setting over the grey peaks. The mountains brought an early twilight here, where already the birds were singing their evening songs. “We are in time,” the old man nodded. “And now we must hope that we are seen.”
He pointed steeply upwards at the looming mountains, to where a high, jagged black crest etched itself against the grey of the ultimate peaks. “You see there, where the darkness is deepest?”
Thibor nodded.
“That’s the castle. Now watch.” He polished the bottom of the pan on his sleeve, then turned it towards the sun. Catching the weak rays, he threw them back into the mountains and traced a line of gold up the crags. Fainter and fainter the disc of light flickered with distance, jumping from scree to flat rock face, from fangs to fir clump, from trees back to crumbling shale as it climbed ever higher. And finally it seemed to Thibor that the ray was answered; for when at last the gypsy held the pan stiffly in his gnarled hands, suddenly that dark, angular outcrop he’d pointed out seemed to burst into golden fire! The lance of light was so sudden, so blinding, that the Wallach threw up his hands before his eyes and peered through the bars of his fingers.
“Is that him?” he gasped. “Is it the Boyar himself who answers?”
“The old Ferengi?” The gypsy laughed uproariously. Carefully he propped up the pan on a flat rock, and still the beam of light glanced down from on high. “No, not him. The sun’s no friend of his. Nor any mirror, for that matter!” He laughed again, and then explained. “It’s a mirror, burnished bright, one of several which sit above the rear wall of the keep where it meets the cliff. Now, if our signal is seen, someone will cover the mirror—which merely shoots back our beam—and the light will be snuffed out. Not gradually, as by the sun’s slow descent, but all at once—like that!”
Like a candle snuffed, the beam blinked out, leaving Thibor almost staggering in what seemed a preternatural gloom. He steadied himself. “So, it would seem you’ve established contact,” he said. “Plainly the Boyar has seen that you have something to convey, but how will he know what it is?”
“He will know,” said the gypsy. He grasped Thibor’s arm, stared up into the high passes. A glaze came suddenly over the old man’s eyes and he swayed. Thibor held him up. And:
“There, now he knows,” the old man whispered. The film went from his wide eyes.
“What?” Thibor was puzzled; he felt troubled. The Szgany were queer folk with little-understood powers. “What do you mean when you say—”
“And now he will answer ‘yes’—or ‘no,’” the gypsy cut him off. Even as he finished speaking there came a single, searing beam of light from the high castle, which in the next moment died away.
“Ah!” the old gypsy sighed. “And his answer is ‘yes,’ he will see you.”
“When?” Thibor accepted the strangeness of it, fought down the eagerness in his voice.
“Now. We set off at once. The mountains are dangerous at night, but he’ll have it no other way. Are you still game?”
“I’ll not disappoint him, now that he’s invited me,” said Thibor.
“Very well. But wrap yourself well, Wallach. It gets cold up there.” The old man fixed him with a brief, bright, penetrating stare. “Aye, cold as death …”
Thibor chose a pair of burly Wallachs to accompany him. Most of his men were out of his old homeland, but he’d personally stood alongside these two in his war with the Pechenegi, and he knew they were fierce fighters. He wanted real men at his back when he went up against this Ferenczy. And it could well be that he’d need them. Arvos, the old gypsy, had said the Boyar had no retainers; who, then, had answered the mirror signal? No, Thibor couldn’t see a rich man living up there all alone with a mere woman or two, fetching and carrying for himself. Old Arvos lied.
In the event that there was only a handful of men up in the mountains with their master … But it was no good speculating, Thibor would have to wait and see what were the odds. If there were many men, however, then he would say that he came as an envoy of Vladimir, to invite the Boyar to the palace in Kiev. It would be in connection with the war against the Pechenegi. Either way, his course was now set: he had a mountain to climb, and at the top a man to kill, depending on conditions.
In those days Thibor had been in a way naive; it had not once crossed his mind that the Vlad had sent him on a suicide mission, from which he was not expected to return to Kiev.
As for the climb: at first the going had been easy, and this despite the fact that the way was unmarked. The track (there was no real track, merely a route which the old gypsy knew by heart) climbed a saddle between foothills to the base of an unscalable cliff, then followed a rising apron of sliding scree to a wide crevice or chimney in the cliff, which elevated steeply through a fissure on to a false plateau beneath a second line of even steeper hills. These hills were wild and wooded, their trees massive and ancient, but b
y now Thibor had seen that indeed there was a path of sorts. It was as if some giant had taken a scythe and cut a straight line through the trees; their wood had doubtless provided much of the village’s timber, and perhaps some of it had been hauled up into the mountains for use in the construction of the castle. That might possibly have been hundreds of years ago, and yet no new trees had grown up to bar the way. Or if they had, then someone had uprooted them to keep the path free.
Whichever, the climb along the track through the rising woods was fairly easy going, and as twilight grew towards night a full moon rose to lend the way its silvery light. Saving their breath for the climbing, the three men and their guide spoke not at all and Thibor was able to turn his mind to what little he’d heard of the Boyar Ferenczy from his foppish court contact.
“The Greeks fear him more than Vladimir does,” that loose-tongue had informed. “In Greek-land they’ve long sought all such out and put them down. They call such as the Ferenczy ‘vrykolax,’ which is the same as the Bulgarian ‘obour’ or ‘mouphour’—or ‘wampir’!”
“I’ve heard of the wampir,” Thibor had answered. “They have the same myth, and the same name for it, in my old country. A peasant superstition. And I’ll tell you something: the men I’ve killed rot in their graves, if indeed they have graves. They certainly don’t bloat there! Or if they do it’s from rotten gasses, not the blood of the living!”
“Nevertheless this Ferenczy is said to be just such a creature,” Thibor’s informant had insisted. “I’ve heard the Greek priests talking: saying how there’s no room in any Christian land for such as that. In Greek-land they put stakes through their hearts and cut off their heads. Or better still, they break them up entirely and burn all the pieces. They believe that even a small part of a wampir can grow whole again in the body of an unwary man. The thing is like a leech, but on the inside! Hence the saying that a wampir has two hearts and two souls—and that the creature may not die until both facets are destroyed.”