“No, but thank you,” said Ragoczy Franciscus. “I do not drink wine.”
“Nor do I,” said Rojeh.
“I will drink more, then,” she said, satisfied, and reached for a stoneware bottle to refill the cup; she managed a tense little chuckle as she poured for herself. “As I was saying, there was this great lord, from a great line, with fine sons to follow him, and a band of loyal warriors to fight with him. All the land held in the long curve of the mountains was his to command, and all the plains behind the mountains bowed to him as well. He built his citadel on the highest crag over a river gorge so that no enemy would dare approach it—remote as any eagle’s nest—and guarded by a splendid line of fifty fortresses leading from far below us to the crest. These fortresses were as grand as any palace in Constantine’s City, and they were so large that they held a thousand warriors and two thousand horses.”
“Was it difficult to build, the citadel?” Rojeh asked. “In such a remote place, it must have been.”
“It took many years and the efforts of powerful old gods to build it, and the toil of ten thousand men, all of whom labored for the glory of it,” she said with relish. “The citadel was as large as a great camp of famous generals, and it boasted buildings three stories high.”
“A formidable place,” said Ragoczy Franciscus with an ironic half-smile.
“A very great place. Warriors flocked there in their thousands, and the thunder of their horses’ hooves made the mountains echo.” She slapped one hand on her knee. “The enemy might have thought there were storms on the peaks, or congregations of demons.”
“Wise, to guard himself so well,” said Ragoczy Franciscus with a fleeting recollection of his father’s face. “He must have been a very provident man.”
“So you would think,” said the old woman.
“Then the lord had protected his citadel as well as any man might,” said Rojeh.
“You could hope it, but it turned out not to be as wise a plan as one would think, for an enormous army from the East heard of this citadel and came at the behest of the lords and the King of the lands in the southeast and across the water to claim it, and all it contained, for themselves. They came in waves, these warriors, and they drove the lord of the citadel back from his fortresses.” She had another drink, this time a large gulp. “One by one the fortresses fell until all the warriors and their lord retreated to the citadel, where it is said all of his soldiers, and their wives and children, pledged to fight to their last breath and asked their gods and devils and angels to stand with them. The old gods rode with his horsemen and his sons against the marauders from the southeast.” She took another sip, a longer one this time. “It is said that the old gods of the lord and the land were killed—but how can anyone kill a god?—and the oldest son of the lord, who had led the fight, was captured by the enemy to be given to the King of the southeast, who had commanded the war, as tribute.” More plum wine went down her throat and she smiled muzzily. “It is a very sad story.”
“Why is it sad, if the warriors and their lord heroically defended the citadel?” Rojeh asked.
“Because all their efforts failed,” she said.
“By might or by treachery?” Ragoczy Franciscus asked.
“It is said that the lord was betrayed by his adviser, who told the opposing leaders many things about the fortress and the citadel, and the enemy was able to attack the citadel,” she said.
“Treachery,” Ragoczy Franciscus mused.
The old woman nodded. “Then the gods and angels and devils deserted the lord and the citadel was besieged and finally it fell. The lord and most of his sons were executed, but some were made slaves of the conquerors, and the oldest was sent far away, to show that the lord of the citadel was wholly vanquished, and to demonstrate to all the world that the citadel on the mountain peaks had fallen. Among the defenders, those who were not captured and enslaved were burned when the citadel was put to the torch. Anyone venturing near the crest may hear their cries today, and they may be led astray by the spirits of the dead, for the ghosts yearn for vengeance. If you go there, you may find yourself surrounded by specters and driven mad by their screams.” She drank down the rest of the plum wine. “I don’t have much left. There were almost no plums these last years. This year there have been only a few.”
“You deserve a cask of plum wine, good woman,” said Ragoczy Franciscus. “That was a most instructive story.”
“Then you will not go to the crag,” she said apprehensively. “You must tell me you will not go to the crag.” In her agitation she almost overturned her jar of wine; she caught it in the nick of time and set it upright. “Tell me you will not go.”
“We will keep to safe roads,” said Ragoczy Franciscus.
“We will be careful if we have to cross the crest,” said Rojeh, trying to soothe her.
“Good, good,” she said. “Yes. Good.”
Rojeh reached for her jar of wine and refilled her cup. “Drink to our safe journey, good woman, and I am sure we will have nothing to fear.”
She gave him a startled stare. “Is that what you want?” Ducking her head, the old woman wrapped her hands around the cup and held it up as if to receive the divine chrism, saying, “Go safely, come safely, and never have cause to fear.” Then she drank down half the contents of the cup quickly and totally, to insure the magic was not wasted.
“A most gracious wish,” said Ragoczy Franciscus as he rose from the floor. “You have told us much of worth, and I am grateful to you.” He knew that leaving her money would insult her, so he took a small jade ornament he had removed from their clothes case and laid it on the ground next to her chair. “To remember us by.”
Her eyes glittered. “Noccu did right in sending you to me,” she said, slurring the last of her words. “I do not often have visitors but my grandchildren, so I am honored to have such fine guests, if only for a short while. You may be sure I will remember you until I am long in my grave.”
“Thank you.” Ragoczy Franciscus reverenced her once more, this time with a flourish.
Rojeh also stood up. “You have been good to receive us.”
She was trying to rise from her chair, without much success. “I have never had two such grand gentlemen as you come into my house before.”
Ragoczy Franciscus extended his hand to her. “Let me help you.”
She took his hand and struggled to her feet. “Too much plum wine,” she muttered.
“Drunk in a good cause,” said Rojeh, helping to steady her.
“The summer is ending,” she said, and put a hand to her eyes. “Soon the winter will return, and the cold will be everywhere again. Terrible cold.”
“Winter comes every year,” said Ragoczy Franciscus. “As does summer.”
“But not as winter has come the last two years,” she said in a tone that would countenance no dispute. “The last two years have been different. Longer. Harsher.” She rubbed her forehead as if trying to stimulate thought. “Wolves have come down from the high mountains and taken hens from their roosts and lambs from the fold. Fields have lain barren from ice. The dead lie unburied.”
“Certainly the years have been colder,” said Ragoczy Franciscus, starting to make his way to the door.
“And the sun darker,” she persisted.
“Yes, that as well,” said Ragoczy Franciscus as he and Rojeh reached the door. “We will speak well of you to others.” He started toward his horse, relieved to hear Rojeh behind him.
They mounted up as the old woman watched them from the door of her house; Rojeh had the mule’s lead and he fell in behind Ragoczy Franciscus as he resumed their long journey up the mountain trails to the rocky crest. The small house was soon lost in the dark and the trees behind them, and they made their way by starlight at first, and moonlight later. When they stopped at the base of a waterfall to permit the horses and mule to drink, Rojeh finally asked, “That story of hers: how much of it was yours?”
“Too much: the people
here have not forgotten. But it is not accurate, either. There were no twenty sons and twenty daughters, nor thousands of warriors; our best fortress was never grand, and there were no more than three fortresses below the citadel, not a line of fifty of them. The battles would have turned out differently if there had been even a third of that number of men, or fortresses. My father’s lands were extensive, but he did not rule all of the Carpathians and the Dacian plain,” he answered. “My father did build the citadel—that much was true—and it was burned with most of the defenders in it. I had already been taken in battle and was the prisoner of the troops sent to attack us. It is most unlucky that so much of the story remains intact.” He stared off into the night. “My father was betrayed, but not as she said: one of his brothers-in-law was promised the leadership of the Erastna—”
“Your people,” said Rojeh.
“Yes. And the foes were the Cimmerians,” he said slowly, the recollections gathering in him and holding his full attention. “They were the ones who killed me, the Cimmerians, since I would not oblige them and die in battle. Over time, they killed all of us Ragosh-ski, including my uncle who helped them.” Birds were beginning their morning carols, and Ragoczy Franciscus stopped to listen to them. “How good to hear so many songs again. I had feared the birds were gone.”
“How many escaped the flames?” As soon as he said it, Rojeh wished he had not spoken.
“I do not know. I had been taken away from these mountains by the time the Erastna left. But I know all the men of the family were executed one way or another, and most of the women. And all of our gods.” He fell silent again. “As many as could fled westward, away from the enemy.”
“The gods were the ones who made you what you are,” said Rojeh; he wanted to encourage Ragoczy Franciscus to talk, since he so rarely said much about his early years. “Your gods were vampires. Does anyone remember that?”
“If they do, they keep their memories in whispers.”
“Would she know the stories told of you if there are only whispers?”
“I would think she would: she would probably know that I was born at the dark of the year, and that one of them—the gods of my people—met me in the sacred grove at the main fortress, many leagues from here, at the Winter Solstice on the night I turned fourteen, and I drank his blood from his palms, which meant I would become like them when I died. If she knows about the citadel, she surely knows of this, as well.” He lapsed into a brief reverie. “I could not see which one it was, but I always hoped it was God Menisho.” His expression changed, shifting his attention. “I have not spoken his name for centuries.”
“But you have not forgot him,” Rojeh said carefully. “Or any of your forgotten gods.” He waited a moment. “Does it bother you to return here?”
“No,” he said, his dark eyes enigmatic as he looked past the mountains into the past. “It did the first time, for it was all still too fresh, too raw, and I was too engrossed in exacting full suffering from the descendants of those who conquered this place.” He sighed. “I made the memory of my family abhorrent, and deservedly so.”
When he did not continue, Rojeh said, “It was long ago and you are not that man now.”
“Ah, but I still have the capacity, and I forget that at my peril.” Ragoczy Franciscus glanced up at the sky, marking the positions of the stars. “Dawn is coming, and we should move on.”
“Does it pain you to hear the stories about your kind?” Rojeh could not help asking; Ragoczy Franciscus rarely said so much about himself and Rojeh was curious.
Ragoczy Franciscus considered the question. “It did at one time, far less now. This is my native earth, and it has a strength for me that nothing can change, no matter what the legends say.”
Rojeh looked down at the ground. “This place where we stand: is this your native earth?”
“No, not yet,” Ragoczy Franciscus said. “But I can sense its nearness; if we keep going, by morning we will not have to stop for the day and seek shelter from sunlight.” He patted his mare on the neck and prepared to remount. “It is not much farther now.”
They continued up the mountain as the sky in the east began to lighten, finally showing the rubicund promise of dawn, which had been their signal to stop, but now Ragoczy Franciscus kept on, his posture in the saddle straight, showing no trace of fatigue. As they topped the ridge of the mountain’s flank, Rojeh called out, “It is getting light. Should we find shelter?”
“No,” said Ragoczy Franciscus. “We will soon be where we are going.”
“We have not come this way before,” said Rojeh as they continued along the crest.
“No, nor to this place. This is the hardest to reach of all the fortresses. When we have come to this land in times past, we have arrived from the west, not the east, and gone to the main fortress, in the center of my father’s lands, not here at the edge. But this is where it ended, and it is fitting that we are here.”
“If you mean to let this be your ending.” As kindly as Rojeh spoke, he was challenging Ragoczy Franciscus. “You must do it alone.”
For a long moment, Ragoczy Franciscus said nothing. Then he looked up the face of the crags. “If the land still knows me, I will do whatever it requires.”
“I will not help you to die the True Death,” Rojeh warned.
“I did not think you would, old friend.” Ragoczy Franciscus tapped his blue roan with his heel, moving her to the side of a narrow pathway. “The ground is not steady here; keep to the verge.”
“I will.” Rojeh wanted to know how Ragoczy Franciscus could be so certain about the road, but he held his question for the time being. “How far is the citadel?”
“Less than half a league. You should be able to see it, at the point of that crag.” He held out his arm to show Rojeh where to look, but nothing had the appearance of a fortress; there was only the forbidding face of rock. “So much to remember.”
“I still cannot see it; it must be the angle of the light,” Rojeh said, feeling he had to justify his lack of recognition.
“No doubt,” said Ragoczy Franciscus. “The citadel is a ruin. It has been a ruin for more than nine hundred years.” He shaded his eyes in the slanting sunlight. “I know where to look, and what was there.”
“Then I must follow you and trust you will lead us aright, as you always have,” Rojeh said lightly, giving the mule’s lead a decisive wrench to keep him moving.
Ragoczy Franciscus’ crack of laughter was colored with chagrin. “You know that is not so, as well as I do. I apologize for all the times I have taken you into danger; this should not be such a time,” he said as he rode on into the morning toward the ruin of the citadel. A short while later he pulled in his horse at the edge of a low, crumbling wall of rough-hewn stones. Growing trees had forced their roots through the ancient stones, leaving cracks and reclaiming the wall as a part of the mountain. Ragoczy Franciscus dismounted and stood still, looking at the space the line of rocks enclosed, and he said to Rojeh, who had ridden up behind him, “Welcome to my father’s citadel.” He laid his hand on the nearest section of broken wall. “When I was a living man, this was three times my height and had an archers’ walkway.” He started along the perimeter of the wall. “The gate is just ahead. We should go in there.”
“Because it is the gate?” Rojeh was puzzled.
“Because it is easier on the horses and the mule,” Ragoczy Franciscus answered, moving more vigorously as he turned past what might have been the base of a tower long ago.
Rojeh got off his horse and took the leads for the stallion and the mule in hand. “I’m surprised he hasn’t balked,” he admitted, meaning the stallion, for the mule had balked often.
“He trusts you; you have given him good care and you do not fight with him,” said Ragoczy Franciscus. “But he could still decide not to do as you tell him.”
“I am aware of that,” said Rojeh, and said what was troubling him. “If anything should happen to the horses, how would we manage to bring your
native earth down from here, if no one will come to this place?”
“We may not leave for a while; we will work something out if we must,” said Ragoczy Franciscus, pointing ahead. “There. You see: the gate.” A wide break in the wall framed by two broad bases. He stepped through the opening, saying, “You are welcome to my father’s citadel.”
Following him into the wide, ill-defined interior of the walls’ outline, Rojeh said, “I am gladdened to be here.”
“And I, and I,” said Ragoczy Franciscus, touching his throat. “It has a power for me, though it is nothing.” He opened the collar of his kandys: where there had been a mulberry-colored weal marking the path of Dukkai’s knife there was now a pale line that was almost visibly fading away.
Rojeh had seen Ragoczy Franciscus’ remarkable restorative powers, but this astonished him. “So quickly.”
“The cut was ready to heal,” said Ragoczy Franciscus, turning slowly in a circle. “I know you cannot tell very much from what is left, but there, in that part of the courtyard, was the stable. It held up to eighty horses, as I recall. There were some paddocks set up outside the stable.” He swung around toward the northwest. “Over there they had the soldiers’ quarters—they were crowded little cells, but the men expected nothing better, and complained no more than most soldiers do.” He stared at a long mound with the suggestion of a roof-line at the far end. “That must have been the soldiers’ dining room.” His next turn left him facing north and the gate. “There were two guard-towers, both three storeys tall. The marshaling yard was where we are standing. And that jumble behind me was my father’s keep.” He faced the south. “Family quarters were there, on the second floor. The main hall was where those two trees are growing. The kitchen was immediately behind the main hall, and the spring that fed all the citadel, and there was a garden behind the keep, and pens for animals.”
Saint-Germain 18: Dark of the Sun: A Novel of the Count Saint-Germain Page 51
