Vamphyri!

by Brian Lumley

  The vampire had known that he was finished. With a superhuman effort of will he had commanded Giresci to make a quick end of it. The old way was still the only way. Since Faethor was already staked, Giresci need only behead him. The flames would do the rest, and the ancient monster would burn along with his house.

  The things he experienced in that house of horror stayed with Giresci for the rest of his life. They were what had made him an authority on vampirism. Now Ladislau Giresci was dead along with Faethor, but Still the vampire stood in his debt. Which was why he would give Harry Keogh whatever assistance he could; at least, that was part of the reason. The rest of it was that Keogh was up against Thibor the Wallach.

  It wasn’t yet winter when Harry Keogh homed in on Faethor’s incorporeal thoughts and emerged from the Möbius continuum into the creeper- and bramble-grown ruin which had been the vampire’s final refuge on earth. Indeed, the summer was barely turning to autumn, the trees still green, but the chill Harry felt might have suggested winter to the bones of any ordinary man. Harry was least of all ordinary. He knew it was a chill of the spirit, a wintry blast blowing on the soul. A psychic chill, which is only felt in the presence of a supernatural Power. Faethor Ferenczy had been such, and Harry recognized that fact. But just as surely Faethor, too, knew when he was face to face with a Power.

  The dead speak well of you, Harry, the vampire opened, his mental voice sepulchral. Indeed, they love you! That is hard for one who was never loved to understand. You are not one of them, and yet they love you. Perhaps it is because you too, like them, are without body. The voice took on a grimly humorous note. Why! It might even be said that you are … undead?

  “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about vampires,” Harry answered evenly, “it’s that they love riddles and word games. But I’m not here to play. Still, I’ll answer your questions. Why do the dead love me? Because I bring them hope. Because I intend no harm but only good. Because through me they are something more than memories.”

  In other words, because you are “pure?” The vampire’s words dripped with sarcasm.

  “I was never pure,” said Harry, “but I understand your meaning and I suppose you’re near enough right. Which might also explain why they’ll have nothing to do with you. There’s no life in you, only death. You were dead even in life. You were death! And death walked with you wherever you walked. Don’t compare my condition with undeath—I’m more alive now than you ever were. When I arrived here and before you spoke, I noticed something. Do you know what it was?

  The silence.

  “Exactly. No cock crowing. No birdsong. Even the droning of bees is absent here. The brambles are lush and green but they bear no fruit. Nothing, no one will come near you, not even now. The things of Nature sense your presence. They can’t speak to you like I can, but they know you’re here. And they shun you. Because you were evil. Because even dead, you’re still evil. So don’t sneer at my ‘pureness,’ Faethor. I shall never be alone.”

  And after a moment’s silence, Faethor said thoughtfully, For one who seeks my help, you don’t much hide your feelings …

  “We are poles apart,” Harry told him, “but we do have a mutual enemy.”

  Thibor? Why then have you spent time with him?

  “Thibor is the source of the trouble,” Harry answered. “He is, or was, your enemy, and what he left behind is my enemy. I hoped to learn things from him and was partially successful. Now he’ll tell me no more. You offered help, and here I am to accept your offer. But we don’t have to pretend friendship.”

  Guileless, Faethor said. That is why they love you. But you are right: Thibor was and is my enemy. However much I’ve punished him, I can never punish him enough. So ask what you will of me, and I’ll answer all.

  “Then tell me this,” said Harry, eager once more. “After he hurled you from your castle in flames, what became of you then?”

  I shall be brief, Faethor answered, because I sense that this is only part of what you desire to know. Cast your mind back then, if you will, one thousand years into the past …

  Thibor the Wallach, whom I had called son—to whom I had given my name and banner, and into whose hands I had bequeathed my castle, lands and Wamphyri power—had injured me sorely. More sorely than even he suspected. That cursed ingrate!

  Thrown down from the walls of my castle in flames, I was burned and blinded. Myriad minion bats fluttered to me as I fell, were scorched and died, but dampened the flames not at all. I crashed through trees and shrubs, tumbled in a thousand agonies down the steep side of the gorge, was torn by trees and boulders alike before striking bottom. But my fall was broken in part by the foliage, and I fell in a shallow pool which put out the flames that threatened to melt my Wamphyri flesh.

  Stunned, as close to true death as a vampire might come and remain undead, still I put out a call to my faithful gypsies down in the valley. I know you will understand what I mean, Harry Keogh. We share the power to speak with others at a distance. To speak with the mind alone, as we do now. And the Szgany came.

  They took out my body from the still, salving water and cared for it. They carried me west over the mountains into the Hungarian Kingdom. They protected me from jars and jolts, hid me from potential enemies, kept me from the sun’s searing rays. And at last they brought me to a place of rest. Ah! And that was a long rest: for recuperation, for reshaping, a time of enforced retirement.

  I have said Thibor had hurt me. But how he had hurt me! I was sorely damaged. All bones broken: back and neck, skull and limbs. Chest staved in, heart and lungs a mangle. Skin flayed by fire, torn by sharp branches and boulders. Even the vampire in me, which occupied most parts and portions, was battered, torn and scorched. A week in the healing? A month? A year? Nay, an hundred years! A century, in which to dream my dreams of red—or night-black—revenge!

  My long convalescence was spent in an inaccessible mountain retreat, but a place more a cavern than a castle; and all the while my Szgany tended me, and their sons, and their sons. And their daughters, too. Slowly I became whole again; the vampire in me healed itself, and then healed me; Wamphyri, I walked again, practised my arts, made myself wiser, stronger, more terrible than ever before. I went abroad from my aerie, made plans for my life’s adventure as if Thibor’s treachery had been but yesterday and all my wounds no more than a stiffness of the joints.

  And it was a terrible world in which I emerged, with wars everywhere and great suffering, and famines, and pestilence. Terrible, aye, but the very stuff of life to me! For I was Wamphyri …

  I builded me a small castle in the border with Wallachia, almost impregnable, and there set myself up as a Boyar of some means. I led a mixed body of Szgany, Hungarians and local Wallachs, paid them well, housed and fed them, was accepted as a landowner and leader. The Szgany, of course, would have followed me to the ends of the earth—and they did, they did!—not out of love but some strange emotion which is in the wild breast of all the Szgany. Simply say that I was a Power, and that they associated with me. As for my name: I became Stefan Ferrenzig, common enough in those parts. But that was only the first of my names. Thirty years after my full recovery I became the “son” of Stefan, called Peter, and thirty years later Karl, then Grigor. A man must not be seen to live too long, and certainly not for centuries. You understand?

  As for Wallachia: I avoided crossing the border, mainly. For there was one in Wallachia whose strength and cruelty were already renowned: a mysterious mercenary Voevod named Thibor, who commanded a small army for the Wallach princeling, And I did not wish to meet him, who should now be guarding my lands and properties in the Khorvaty! No, I would not meet him now, not yet. Oh, I doubted that he would recognize me, for I was changed beyond measure. But if I saw him I might not be able to contain myself. That could well prove fatal, for in the years of my healing he had been active and was grown strong; indeed, he was in large part the power behind the throne of Wallachia. He had his own Szgany. but well disciplined, and he also c
ommanded the army of a prince; while I merely led an untrained rabble of gypsies and peasants. No, my revenge could wait. What is time to the Wamphyri, eh?

  For a further sixty years I bided my time, contained my activities, was subdued, covert. By now I had access to a worthy force of fighters for payment, fierce mercenaries, and I considered how best to use them. I was tempted to take on Thibor and the Wallachs, but any sort of even fight was not to my liking. I wanted the dog on his knees before me, to do with him as I desired. I did not want a battlefield confrontation, for I had learned at first hand his wiles and his strength. By now he possibly considered me dead; it were best I continued to let him think it; my time would still come.

  But meanwhile I was restless, confined, pent up. Here was I, lusty, strong, something of a power, and I had nowhere to channel my energies. It was time I went further abroad in the roiling world.

  Then I heard of a great Crusade by the Franks against the Moslems. The world was two years into its thirteenth Christian century, and even now a fleet was sailing against Zara. Originally the Crusaders had intended to attack Egypt, then the centre of Moslem power, but their armies were heirs to a long hostility towards Byzantium. The old Doge of Venice, who provided their fleet, and who was himself an enemy of Byzantium, had diverted them first to Hungary. Zara, only recently won by the Hungarians, was retaken and sacked by Venetians and Crusaders alike in November 1202; by which time I was on my way to that key city with a select company of my own supporters. The Hungarian King, “my master,” believing I was acting for him against the Crusaders, put no obstacle in my way. When I reached Zara, however, I sold myself into mercenary service and took the Cross, which had been my intention all along.

  It seemed to me that the best way to venture out across the world would be with the Crusaders; but if I had hoped for instant action, then it was a vain hope. The Venetians and Franks had already divided the city’s spoils—they had argued and fought over them, too, but their quarreling was soon over—and now the Doge and Boniface of Montferrat, who led the expedition, decided to winter at Zara.

  Now, the original intention, the prime purpose of this Fourth Crusade, had been of course to destroy the Moslems. But many Crusaders believed that Byzantium had been a traitor to Christendom throughout all the Holy Wars. And suddenly Constantinople was within grasp, or at least within reach, of vengeful Crusader passions. Moreover, Constantinople was rich—wildly rich! Madly rich! The prospect of loot such as Constantinople offered settled the matter. Egypt could wait—the very world could wait—for the target was now the Imperial Capital itself!

  I shall be brief. We set sail for Constantinople in the spring, stopped off at several places to do various things, and late in June arrived before the Imperial Capital. I will assume you know something of history. For months running to years there were objections, moral, religious and political, to the city’s sack; avarice and lust eventually won the day. All schemes of going on from there to fight the infidel were finally abandoned. Pope Innocent III, who had been in large part responsible for calling the Crusade, had already excommunicated the Venetians for sacking Zara; now he was once more aghast, but both news—and intervention—travelled slowly in those days. And in the eyes of the Crusaders Constantinople had become a jewel, their quest’s end, and every man of us lusted after it. Agreement was reached on the division of spoils, and then—

  —Early in April 1204, we commenced the attack! All political scheming and pious talk were put aside at last, for this was why we were here.

  Ah! And how my fierce heart rejoiced. Every fibre of my being thrilled. Gold is one thing, but blood is another. Blood spilled, blood drunk, blood coursing through veins of fire!

  I will tell you what we came up against. First of all, the Greeks had ships on the Golden Horn to keep us from landing below the walls. They fought hard but in vain, though their efforts were not entirely wasted. Greek fire is a terrible thing—it ignites and burns in water! Their catapults hurled it among our ships, and men blazed in the sea itself. I was scalded, my right shoulder, chest and back burned near to the bone. Ah! But I had been burned before, and by an expert. A mere scorching could not keep me out of it. My pain served only to spur me on. For this was my day.

  You might wonder about the sun: how could I, Wamphyri, fight under its searing ray? I wore a flowing black cloak in the fashion of Moslem chiefs, and a helm of leather and iron to guard my head. Also, I fought wherever possible with the sun at my back. When I was not fighting—and believe me there were other things to do as well as fight—then of course I kept out of it. But the Crusaders, when they saw me and my Szgany in battle—ah, they were awed! Ignored hitherto, considered a rabble to bulk out the ranks and go down as fodder to fire and sword, now we were regarded by Frank and Venetian alike as demons, as fighting hell-fiends. How glad they must have been to have us on their side. So I thought …

  But let me not stray. A breach was made in the wall guarding the Blachernae quarter of the city. Simultaneously a fire broke out in the city in that quarter. The defenders were confused; they panicked; we crushed them and poured over them into the mainly empty streets, where the fighting was nothing much to mention.

  For after all, what we were up against? Greeks with all of the wind knocked out of them; an ill-disciplined army, mainly mercenary, still suffering from years of mismanagement. Slav and Pechenegi units which would fight only so long as their chances were good and the payment better; Frankish units whose members were torn, obviously, two ways; the Varangian Guard, a company composed of Danes and Englishmen who knew their Emperor Alexius III for a usurper with merit neither as a fighting man nor as a man of state. What work there was for us was slaughter. Those who were not willing to die at once fled. There was no other choice. In a few hours the Doge and Frankish and Venetian Lords occupied the Great Palace itself.

  From there they issued their orders: the war- and loot-crazed Crusaders were told that Constantinople was theirs and they had three days in which to complete the city’s sack. They were the victors; there was no crime they could commit. They could do with the capital, its people and possessions whatever they wished. Can you imagine what such orders conveyed?

  For nine hundred years Constantinople had been the centre of Christian civilization, and now for three days it became the sinkhole of hell! The Venetians, who appreciated great works, carried off Grecian masterpieces and other works of art and beauty by the ton, and treasures in precious metals near enough to sink their ships. As for the French, the Flemings and various mercenary Crusaders, including me and mine: they desired only to destroy. And destroy we did!

  However precious, if something could not be carried or hauled away it was reduced to wreckage on the spot. We fuelled our madness from rich wine-cellars, paused only to drink, rape or murder, then returned to the sack. Nothing, no one was spared. No virgin came out of it intact, and few came out alive. If a woman was too old to be stabbed with flesh she was stabbed with steel, and no female was too young. Convents were sacked and nuns used as whores—Christian nuns, mind!

  Men who had not fled but stayed to protect their homes and families were slit up their bellies and left clutching their steaming guts to die in the streets. The city’s gardens and squares were full of its dead inhabitants, mainly women and children. And I, Faethor Ferenczy—known to the Franks as the Black One, or Black Grigor, the Hungarian Devil—I was ever in the thick of it. The thickest of it. For three days I glutted myself as if there were no end to my lust.

  I did not know it but the end—my end, the end of glory, of power, of notoriety—was already looming. For I had forgotten the prime rule of the Wamphyri: do not be seen to be too different. Be strong, but not overpowering. Be lustful, but not a legendary satyr. Command respect, but not devotion. And above all do nothing to cause your peers, or those who have the power to consider themselves your superiors, to become afraid of you.

  But I had been burned by Greek fire and it had merely infuriated me. And rapacious? For every
man I had killed I had taken a woman, as many as thirty in a day and a night! My Szgany looked to me as a sort of god—or devil. And finally … finally, of course, the Crusaders proper had come to fear me. More than all matters of “conscience,” more than all the murder and rape and blasphemies they had committed, my deeds had given them bad dreams.

  Aye, and they were sore in need of a scapegoat.

  I believe that even without Innocent’s pious protestations and hand-flutterings and cries of horror, still I would have been persecuted. Anyway, this was the way of it. The Pope had been enraged by the sack of Zara, at first delighted by Constantinople, then aghast when he heard of the atrocities. He now washed his hands of the crusade in its entirety. Far from helping true Christian soldiers in their fight against Islam, it seemed its only aim had been to conquer Christian territories. And as for the blasphemies and generally atrocious behaviour of the Crusaders in Constantinople’s holy places …

  I say again: they needed a scapegoat, and no need to look too far for one. A certain “bloodthirsty mercenary recruited in Zara” would fit the bill nicely. In secret communiqués Innocent had ordered that those directly responsible for “gross acts of excessive and unnatural cruelty” must gain “neither glory nor rich rewards nor lands” for their barbarism. Their names should no more be spoken by good men and true but “struck forever out of the records.” All such great sinners were to be offered “neither respect nor high regard,” for by their acts they had shown that they were “worthy only of contempt.” Hah! It was more than excommunication—it was a death warrant!

  Excommunication … I had taken the Cross in Zara as a matter of expediency. It meant nothing. A cross is a symbol, nothing more. Soon, however, I would come to hate that symbol.

  We had a large house on the outskirts of the sacked city, my Szgany and I. It had been a palace or some such, was now filled with wine and loot and prostitutes. The other mercenary groups had turned over their plunder to their Crusader masters for the prearranged split, but I had not. For we had not yet been paid! Perhaps I was in error there. Certainly our loot was an extra incentive for Crusader treachery.