Necroscope - The Lost Years, Vol II Part 18

The Byzantine cavalry charged... and swept them away!

The weather was warm even for mid-December. The dog-Lord's moon-children played the same part in the final battle as they had played at Decimum: leaving Tok's Huns in support of Belisarius's cavalry, they went forward as advance scouts on the eve of battle (during the night, of course), and in the following night ranged far and wide to seek out any survivors who might try to form pockets of resistance- 175.

-While Radu himself sought someone, or something, else. A Ferenczy was here! He could smell him!

Disguised as a Vandal, or a Moor, or whatever, a Ferenczy was or had been here!

Who, why, how? Radu couldn't say. He could have been here for fifty years, or a hundred; he might even have stood off and witnessed the conquest of these parts by the Vandals. But he aring of the battle at Decimum - and perhaps fearing a Roman reconques t - he had co me down from his high place to join in the fighting, or simply to observe and so know the result at first hand.

But which high place? For Radu knew that a Ferenczy - no less than a Drakul, and far more than any dog- Lord - must have his aerie.

Radu had checked charts of the land around. Sure enough, there was a peak mightier than any Starside stack near Zaghounan. Why, from up there, at night - looking east through his vampire's eyes, and employing Wamphyri 'intelligence,' senses more than the usual five - this Ferenczy would have known or even 'seen' the approach and landing of Belisarius's fleet! Be sure he would have known that Radu was part of that fleet!

And cowled against the last rays of sunlight in the evening after the battle while his men ranged abroad, so Radu had scoured the smoking field of combat like some strange, carrion dog. He found some that might have been the Ferenczy's - some that seemed dead but yet moaned, or were full of weird, creeping motion - and showed the men he had taken with him how to deal with them. Hun scavengers were also in the field; perhaps they thought it odd that Radu's escort were beheading and burning dead men, but they said nothing...

Later, Radu went up with a lieutenant and some thralls into the peak near Zaghounan. This rearing knoll was or had been on the very border of Vandal territory, with Berber lands to the west In short it was neutral territory, no-man's-land.

Near the top, they found earthworks and ancient fortifications; and within the mounds and ramps, an aerie.

The place was only recently deserted; there was evidence of an urgent departure. The aerie itself... took the dog-Lord back more than four hundred years, to Starside in a now alien world. It was unmistakable: that ultimate spire of the mountain, like a great fang thrusting for the sky. No windows faced east, just sun- bleached rock; all hollow within and tunnelled beneath, with roots going down into darkness. Radu and his men descended spiralling stone steps. There were vast, echoing chambers down there, and mighty stone vats, all unfinished. This Ferenczy would have bred monsters here - which gave the dog-Lord pause. The time might come when he must breed them, too...

A thrall lookout called down: a cloud of dust was approaching out 176.of the west. It was a par ty of camel-riders, Berbers, heading this way. Radu let them come, and as dusk fell emerged from a jumble of rocks behind them where they climbed a frequently used track. The Berbers had three beautiful black girls trussed like chickens, doubtless for trading with this unknown, fled Ferenczy. Radu traded death for them, but not until he had tortured the Berbers to find out more about the F erenczy. Waldemar Ferrenzig was his name - a German! Well, and so were the Vandals; but they had been here ten or more years before Waldemar. This the Berbers knew from their fathers before them.

So, it seemed that Radu's earlier information (with regard to a Ferenczy having sided 'with' the Vandals) was only partly right Sixty-five years ago - perhaps only a few years before Radu himself had arrived in the Moldavian heights - Hun invaders had driven this Waldemar, this son of Belos Fheropzis (hi mself the son of Nonari 'the Gross' Ferenczy), out of his Moldavian keep. Under the a.s.sumed Germanic name of Ferrenzig, he had been accepted by the Vandals and allowed to settle here. Presumably he was rich, for he'd been able to trade with the Berbers and buy their friends.h.i.+p. But now that the Romans were back he had fled again.

Hah! But it pleased the dog-Lord to believe that the Ferenczy had fled from him, and perhaps on both occasions! And so he was a cowardly, sc.u.mmy Ferenczy, like his ancestors in Starside before him. and more recent forebears in this world. Well, it wasn't over yet; their tracks might cross again, except the next time Radu would have, better luck...

He questioned the terrified girls. They were 'princesses,' they said. Daughters of a nomad Sheik, they had been stolen by the Berbers for ransom or trading. That last, at least, was as Radu had suspected. He kissed all three (merely kissed them), gave them the Berber camels and sent them on their way. Waldemar Ferrenzig would have dealt ill with them; wherefore, contrary to his nature, Radu dealt well with them! Any other time he would have used them, and fed them to his pups...

The dog-Lord would have gone back with Belisarius to Constantinople, to witness the general's triumph. But already rumours were circulating as to his nature. It was ad 534, and the Mediterranean was broad and deep.

Radu determined to be a pirate for a while.

But in Carthage, where the Roman fleet mustered and provisioned prior to setting sail for Byzantium, he learned more of this Waldemar Ferrenzig: A fisherman told him how a s.h.i.+p had sailed by night from Tunis only weeks after the destruction of the Vandal army, and how a 'great dark lord' - the commander of this Numidian vessel - had tried to 177 recruit him as a crew-member. The fisherman had seen charts; he knew his sea lanes; the s.h.i.+p would be heading north for Sardinia, past Corsica and so to the mainland.

So, by now a Ferenczy was back on the Mediterranean's northern seaboard, perhaps heading for those same Molda vian mountains 'b eloved' of his father, Belos, and his grandfather, Nonari the Gross, before him. Or maybe Waldemar had determined to become a pirate, too, in which case Radu might yet come across him during his own voyaging.

And maybe not...

The first night out from Carthage Radu called a mist up out of the sea, a vampire mist like slime against the skins of Belisarius's crews. By the time his mist dispersed the dog-Lord had sailed away, and now he commanded a fleet of ten s.h.i.+ps...

In Radu's memory the past speeded up as if a wind were turning the pages of history; sequences of events became blurred; they began to overlap. He was like a dying man, recounting his life in the moments before true death. That was a thought that disturbed him even in his sleep. For indeed he might well be dying, if the seeds of the plague were still alive in him and working on his vampire flesh. But the pages of history were still turning, and he couldn't ignore them.

... The Vandals were no more, their kingdom destroyed forever. Thus one of the dog-Lord's blood-oaths had been fulfilled at least But again he had had enough of human commanders, and it was time he moved on to other things.

For a hundred and twenty years Radu was a corsair, a seawolf; his standard was a wolfs head against a full moon. Time and time again he replaced his aging s.h.i.+ps with the vessels of traders and their escorts, or vanquished s.h.i.+ps of war sent out to hunt him down. But he lost s.h.i.+ps, too, till finally his ten were down to three.

Then in ad 654, near the island of Rhodes, he was engaged by a fleet of Arab wars.h.i.+ps out of Alexandria.

Two of his vessels went up in smoke and flames; they sank just before nightfall; Radu was left to limp off to Crete to make repairs, and finally on to Sicily. By which time he had known that the Mediterranean was no longer a safe hunting ground. Islam was now a power, and the dog-Lord would do well to look to his future.

But in any case, he had had enough of sea battles. On land it was one thing to engage in hand-to-hand combat -when with a s.h.i.+eld and sword, or tooth and claw, he'd be the equal of any ten normal advers aries - but on the sea it was an entirely differe nt thing. To have your enemy stand off and use his hurling-engines to lob sizzling b.a.l.l.s of fire at you... to stand on a burning 178.deck in the heat and the reek, and feel your s.h.i.+p sinking under you!... What was that for a fair fight? Not that he had ever cared much for fairness...

For a hundred and sixty years Radu was a bandit chief in the mountains of Corsica, from which he raided on the coastal towns and villages. A wolf, he was impossible to track over the rugged terrain -and who would w ant to track him? None who set out after him ever returned! And so he was first in a long line of Corsican outlaws. But the Saracens were still coming; Muslim pirates out of Sicily quickly became a far greater scourge than the dog-Lord; eventually he must move on.

Radu and his small band stole a s.h.i.+p and sailed north for the land of the Lombards, landed and loped east for Bulgar territories, and down to the Danube which he knew so well- -And at once up into the Carpathians, when he discovered how fierce were the Bulgars! Ah, but the Drakuls had discovered it, too, as the 'myths and legends' of Bulgar grandams at their hearth-fires were wont to confirm: How two hundred years ago, brave ancestors had sought out the obours, the wampyrs in their mountain castles, and hounded them from the land. The obours were blood-sucking creatures who lived on bairns and virgins, and could shape themselves as bats to flee into the night. Though some of them had escaped in this fas.h.i.+on, their thralls ' and odalisques had been discovered in hiding. Hissing like snakes, they had been crucified and burned to ashes. And the castles of the obours had been razed to ruins...

Well, good! But in his heart of hearts Radu knew that the Drakuls themselves were still alive. Their power may have been destroyed -for the moment, at least - but they had survived. For there was a pain in him which would not go away until they had suffered the true death. Preferably at his hand...

When times were quiet he sent out spies to learn the way of things, and as always he stayed alert for word of the worst of his olden enemies, the Ferenczys - for he a.s.sumed that Waldemar would produce offspring. Huh! It would be a further fourteen decades before he heard of him and his again ...

And meanwhile, as ever, the world was in flux...

It seemed no time at all (but in fact was seventy years) before Magyars occupied the fertile western plains.

Since they were hors.e.m.e.n, the dog-Lord felt safe in the mountains...

Safe and bored! But while the Magyars were on the plains Radu would stay in the heights - until sixty years later, when in a dream he saw the next great battle, in which these savage hors.e.m.e.n would suffer their most decisive defeat If it should come to pa.s.s, the plains and horseshoe mountains, and the Danube itself, would be up for the Necroscope: TTu Lost Years - Vol. II 179 taking! And still Radu considered these lands his own, as he had from the beginning.

It was sufficient to send him and his pups north to skirt the plains, then west into Ger many, where they joined Otto the First's forces at Lechfeld in the year 955. Then Radu's oneiromantic dreams were seen to be accurate in every detail. Loaded down with loot, their mounts exhausted, the Magyars were swatted like flies. Offering little or no resistance, their blood mingled with their spilled gold on a steaming field of battle.

And when the fighting was over, their leaders were executed to a man.

Radu and his band were mercenary foot soldiers. Paid off - but remembering other payments, not to mention harshly enforced repayments - he retreated at once back into the east, back to the mountains...

... Where a few years later he learned of a 'great Boyar1 with a castle in the Khorvaty north of Moldavia, a man called 'Valdemar Fuhrenzig!' Now surely this must be that same Waldemar who had fled from the Romans, or from Radu, in Africa; that son of Belos Pheropzis, and grandson of Nonari the Gross' Ferenczy? Aye, and Radu's immemorial enemy - and a blood-oath still outstanding!

But... in the Khorvaty, east of the mountains? A friend of Kievan Russia, then, this 'Valdemar,' with an aerie within its borders? A Boyar, he would have land and men and probably the protection of the Russian Prince.

And what was Radu but a bandit in the hills? And if the dog-Lord had knowledge of this Valdemar, presumably Valdemar had knowledge of him. d.a.m.nation!

There was no putting it off: it was time Radu was on his way again.

Piracy! It had had its good points, and could have again. Anyway, the Saracens were in Radu's debt - a debt of blood - and it was high time he collected. When he learned from travellers how men of Western Christendom (chiefly freebooters out of Pisa and Genoa) were fighting Saracens on what the Arabs now considered their own 'great lake,' in Ligurian and Tyrrenhian waters, the dog-Lord was finally decided and knew what he must do. A further hundred years of sea battles...

... Radu was with the Byzantines when they took back Crete and Cyprus from the Saracens...

... He was a pirate out of Pisa when Corsica, Sardinia and the Balearics fell...

He was rich on Arab gold beyond dreams of avarice, and a legendary sea-wolf ... when, in 1118, fortune went against him and his boat was attacked by the Saracens off Syracuse. Fished from the sea burned, gouged, and half-drowned - taken hostage by the 180.

Brian Lumky Saracens, who had learned to respect him - he was held for ransom in Ascalon for five of his longest years.

But who was there to pay for his freedom? No one knew or would accept him; eventually his jailers must weary o f feed ing him and simply dispose of him. Al so, his prison was thought to be inescapable, and in any case he was in no fit state to even try for an escape.

Thus he spent the time healing himself- -Until the Venetian n aval victory of 1123, when in the panic and hysteria of the time he finally broke jail.

Having learned the Muslim tongue, and indeed looking like a long, loping Arab (and thus fearing to approach the Venetian crews where some of their s.h.i.+ps had landed), Radu, a man alone now, took to the deserts and the high ground and made his way north...

... For years he fished the Sea of Galilee...

... He became a 'holy man," a seer who read the future in dreams, in the Monastery on the Great Peak at Talat Musa...

... Eventually the real holy men were no more; Radu had a new lair and by night was leader of a fine pack; while in the daylight, thick monkish robes kept him from the sun...

... For long and long his leech continued to heal him. He had suffered that time off Syracuse, and his convalescence had its ups and downs...

... Time sped by. As ever, the whole world was at war. The Fourth Cr usade came and went, and became part of the past however recent...

Territorial as every Lord of the Wamphyri before him, Radu had 'adopted' Arabia, and 'adapted', as best possible, to its arid climate. With the coming of the Mongols, however, it was time for him to shuck off his ill-fitting monkish robes.

Again the dog-Lord went to war, this time for two reasons. One: the Mongols were a threat; certainly if they succeeded in their expansion, he would be uprooted again. And two: with the extermination of the a.s.sa.s.sins and the fall of Baghdad in 1258, rumour and evil dreams had forewarned of at least one Wamphyri mercenary among the Asiatics fighting for Hulegu. His name- -Was 'Fereng the Black!'

Fereng? Ferenczy, more likely! But who? Waldemar? It seemed unlikely for by Radu's lights he was a coward - if he was still alive! Some blood- or egg-son then? But what matter? He was a Ferenczy, and that was all that mattered! Yet Radu's dreams had hinted of more than one Lord, and in more than one dream he had seen a bat-like figure falling out of the sky towards the field of battle. What, a Drakul? A Ferenczy and a Drakul, together on the side of the Mongols? Well, why not; it had happened before, more than a thousand years ago in 181.

Starside. And then as now the pact had been sealed in order to face down an even greater foe, Shaitan the Unborn. Or ... perhaps this time it was to gang up on a weaker one.

Radu tried to work it out What if this Ferenczy and this Drakul had both been established in the Wallachian mountains, as they were known now? News of Mongol attacks and overwhelming victories in the east would have reached them even as it had reached Radu. And the brilliance - the sheer ruthlessness - of the Mongol cavalry armies would have seemed to ma ke them invincible. Surely the best way to ensure survival must be to join with them, at least until the ti des of war had once more swept by?

Thus (he reasoned) Fereng the Black and this unknown Drakul had themselves reasoned. But he knew they had got it wrong! Radu's oneiromancy had forecast a turning point in Mongol fortunes which would be realized - at Ain Jalut!

In Cairo the Mameluke Sultan was ma.s.sing his well-trained army. Radu joined them near Jerusalem, and in the last days of August 1260 marched north with them on Ain Jalut...

RADU:THERESTOF HIS HISTORY... HIS AWAKENING.

The battle at Ain Jalut! But there are fights and fights - and there are ma.s.sacres. The Sultan, Qutuz, was totally committed. Earlier, receiving a Mongol envoy who demanded his submission, Qutuz had flown into a rage and had the envoy executed. Now he must win, else disembowelling were the least of his torments.

The Mongol forces were split between several fronts many hundreds of miles apart. Their cavalry army riding south on Ain Jalut numbered 'only' ten thousand. Led by Kitbuga, a Christian Turk, it was outnumbered more than ten to one by the Mamelukes. Moreover, the Mamelukes had knowledge of the Mongol advance and of the territory; they set up an ambush in foothills flanking a fertile plain. The plain was an historic invasion route not far from Nazareth; to ensure that the Mongols would come this way, a party of Berbers was deployed on camels to attract their attention and so lure them into the Mameluke trap.

'Ain Jalut,' the Egyptian commander of Radu's group told them where they hid in the evening-shadowed hills looking down on the plain. ' "The Spring of Goliath." Goliath was a giant of a man, a warrior who was brought down by a stripling boy. This time we reverse the process. This time we are the mighty, and the stripling -in the shape of these Mongols - is the pagan enemy of the faith. But this time he shall not prevail.'

The trap worked. Where the valley narrowed between steep hillsides, the Berbers dismounted behind ditches and old earthworks, turned and defended themselves with bows and long spears. Meanwhile the Mamelukes came swarming down out of the foothills and engaged the Mongols from the flanks, and a reserve group of cavalry and infantry as strong as the entire Mongol force came sweeping from behind the hills to cut off any retreat Radu and his 'monks,' despite that they were on foot in the lower 183 foothills, were among the first to engage the milling Mongol army; which was work they might have been born for! To hack and hew among that melee of reeling, astonished fles.h.!.+ The raging, the shouting and screaming! The blood of hamstrung horses and skewered men! The scarlet deluge erupting into the green valley, to turn it red...

The last r ays of the sun were striking the western mountains as the Mon gol army fell before the Mameluke onslaught. In the twilight before the night, when the sunlight had faded entirely, Kitbuga's screams were his last when he was captured and quartered. After that- -No birds sang over that field of blood, only a cloud of kites on high, biding their time, and wolves (but true wolves) in the hills, waiting. Which was when Radu and his party went among the fallen. It was the same as in Africa that time; Radu knew what he was looking for, and wasted no time. His men found life in bodies where there should be no life, and stilled it with fire and steel. And aye, there were a good many thralls - even a lieutenant or two - among the 'dead'. Then, a strange thing, though not so strange to the dog-Lord. In a gulley between steep-sided spurs of the hills on the northern flank, a pocket of mist... where no mist should be! He sent out a vampire probe, his mentalism, into the mist and felt its texture, the way it clung - and knew it for what it was... The sun was down now. Radu took two lieutenants, two pups, with him into the gulley, into the heart of the mist, and found it already thinning. But sensing a fierce presence, he climbed a rock above the level of the vampire mist and looked up. There on the sheer wall of the cliff, moving like a lizard towards the high rim, a manlike figure. Except, adhering to the naked rock in that weird fas.h.i.+on, this was no ordinary man.

Wamphyri!

But who? Not a Drakul, surely? For since the sun was down a Drakul would have transformed himself for flight A Ferenczy then -'Fereng the Black' - fleeing the consequences of a lost cause. Cowardly, treacherous sp.a.w.n of Nonari the Gross! Treacherous, aye, like all of them before him. Then, in the next moment 'Radu!' a lieutenant called to him, cautiously out of the thinning mist. The dog-Lord had been on the point of hurling a question after the climber: WHO? A question the Ferenczy would not have been able to resist; it would have surprised him, and Radu would have read the answer writ large in the confusion of his mind, doubtless confirming his suspicion. Cursing, because that time was past and the stranger had vanished over the rim, Radu got down from the rock and loped to his men gathered near the foot of the cliff. 'What is it?'

he barked - then stood in stark amaze, for it was Brian Lurnley

184.

185.

obvious what it was. Treacherous," he'd called the fleeing Ferenczy, and now the full extent of that treachery could be seen.

A body - a 'man', all bloodied and broken, but not dead lay in a cl.u.s.ter of rocks, where tomorrow's sun must doubtless find him... if Radu had not found him first. And the dog-Lord knew him, remembered him at a glance, of course - Karl Drakul! An original Starside Lord no less than Radu himself. But less than Radu now, certainly.

He lay in an ungainly tangle, sprawled on his back like a spider struck by a stone.

And even as Radu watched, so the unconscious Drakul's naked body commenced a complex metamorphosis. Thick webs of rubbery grey flesh like the hairy, membranous airfoils of a bat - which joined his arms to his trunk down to his thighs, and also formed an elastic *V between his legs - shrank back into him!

And as his pipestem limbs thickened, so his body firmed out and put on a little extra weight And oh, this was Karl all right. The fleshy lips and bald dome of a head; the purple orbits of his deep-sunken eyes; the squat nose, showing only too clearly its convolutions. And in the lolling cave of Karl's mouth, the split tongue of a lying Lord of the Wamphyri. And those teeth, and those hands like a beast's cla ws.

Radu's lieutenants had seen something like this before - i n their master, at that - but never to this extent. One thing to instantly develop the aspect and mannerisms of a great wo lf, but another entirely to emulate a great bat! They drew back a pace, muttered and glanced at each other.

But Radu stepped forward and, snarling, said: 'He was preparing for flight when the other b.a.s.t.a.r.d struck and cut him down. So much for pacts!' And with an oath and a kick he turned Karl Drakul face-down in the bloodied dust Then the worst of it was seen: the sword slash along this undead creature's spine, and the ragged flaps of flesh wrenched aside to expose the knuckles of the spine itself. They were ribbed, warped, notched, those bones, with grooves and small drilled holes where something had clung like an alien organ. Karl's vampire leech, Radu knew - which Fereng the Black had torn out and probably eaten!

'One has escaped,' Radu told his men then. 'I saw him on the cliff face, climbing like a lizard. The pair of them, Drakul and Ferenczy, they came together to side with the Mongols and join the b.l.o.o.d.y butchery. For the h.e.l.l of it? Possibly. To befriend this marauding As iatic sc.u.m, and save their own miserable skins? Probably. Because they knew I was at liberty in the so-called "Holy Land"?... Ah, very likely! But when the battle went against them the y tried to make their escape. The Ferenczy ... maybe he was injured and unable to transform? But he could not bear t he idea of being left behind while the Drakul made a clean getaway! Or perhaps they had argued?

Whichever, while the Drakul was preparing for flight, Fereng the Black cut him down and tore out his leech.

Good, for it saves me the trouble!'

Karl Drakul's s.h.i.+rt, breeches and cloak were nearby. Radu brought them together and piled them on the shuddering shape of an ex-vampire Lord. But when he would have struck fire, Karl's no longer scarlet eyes snapped open. Turning his head this way and that, he saw his predicament. And: 'So,' he gu rgled, his forked tongue flopping in his mouth. 'It is you, Radu. Well, better you than that other dog, the one who brought me to this.'

Time is short,' Radu told him. 'Doubtl ess there'll be an uproar when you burn. The Sultan's troops could find us at any time, and I would not want them to see...'

The Drakul managed a ghas tly sharp-toothed grin. 'Anonymity is synonymous-'

'-With longevity,' Radu nodded. 'But mine, I fear, not yours.'

'WiD you make it - ah!

Ahhh! - quick?' Karl squirmed a very little, then lay still, panting.

'If you'll answer me truly.'

'Ask away, but quickly. I'm a husk, drained... I have no leech... I hold my pain at bay, but not for long. It is quite ... unbearable. My screams, such as they would be, would doubtless attract attention.'

Radu nodded in his grim fas.h.i.+on. 'But if you do scream it will be quicker still. Very well, let's get to it Who is he?'

'Now? Fereng the Black,' Karl answered. 'Before that his name was Faethor. Great-grandson of Nonari the Gross Ferenczy. And ... he's a one to watch out for.'

That seems obvious,' Radu said. 'How many of you remain?'

*Wamphyri?" 'Drakuls. First Drakuls.'

'Myself only.'

'Liar! What of Egon?' Radu looked deep into Karl's eyes, and when he would turn them away grabbed his large fleshy ears to hold his head still. Karl could not resist him: Radu's eyes penetrated into his very mind, even his soul, if he'd had one. And: 'Ah! He lives!" Radu let go Karl's ears, sat back on his haunches. 'But no egg-sons, nor bloodsons - not yet at least Perhaps when he learns of this-'