A Sharpness on the Neck d-9

by Fred Saberhagen

  Of course their task was facilitated by the fact that I had given away my talisman, possession of which would have greatly reduced their chances of locating me by magic. But their job was made more difficult by the fact that Radu himself was prudently staying home.

  Later, Constantia told me that as soon as she became aware of this effort, she had tried to warn me but had been unable to locate me in time. Also, according to her account, she had undertaken to organize countermeasures among the vampire population who did not like Radu. But I am afraid that her attempt must have been rather tentative.

  She frankly admitted also that she was terribly afraid of Radu, and to try to ingratiate herself with me harked back to those long-ago days of our first meeting, when I had been a most junior and uncertain vampire and she a breathing gypsy girl.

  I smiled at the memory, and nodded. "As a girl you were delightful, but as a magician you were… shall I say, not among the most effective I have ever met."

  Ever proud of what she considered to be her magical powers, she responded with a gamine's grimace. "I have learned something over the years."

  "No doubt you have. Tell me, Constantia, my little gypsy—what is the great attraction of the truly dead for the seekers of occult power? In cemetery after cemetery I have seen… but never mind."

  Unlike the breathing populace of France, unlike the rest of Europe for that matter, our little community—if that is not too strong a word—had among us no First, Second, and Third Estates. Nobility, clergy, and commoners were all represented in our ranks, and among these disparate components something like a rudimentary democracy had taken shape long before Paine or Jefferson or Franklin made their first political statements—centuries before Marat and Robespierre and their ilk worked fanatically at forging their nation's bondage in the name of Freedom.

  There is an analogy: Aristocrats are to the common people as vampires are to breathers. Both small, exotic groups might be said to live by sucking the blood of the mundane majority. And both offer the masses in return a certain entertainment value, if nothing else.

  There are differences, of course; all analogies limp, as the Germans used to say. Vampires expand their membership by more or less active recruiting; it is much more difficult to pass from serfdom to aristocracy, where membership is jealously guarded.

  After having seen the little girl safely inside her parents' cottage, and having satisfied myself that for the time being the child was as safe as she could be, I moved on through the peaceful night—thirty miles or more, traveling for the remainder of the night—before coming to the hidden earth I had been hoping to find. This sanctuary lay, in the form of a body-sized cavity at a depth of some six feet, under a patch of open ground in a pasture. I had not visited this spot for many years, and alterations in the growth and the very existence of nearby trees made it necessary to rely upon sightings of certain landmark rocks to determine the approximate location.

  I was pleased to find this lair undisturbed, and before dawn could seriously inconvenience me, I sank into the rich French soil to enjoy a thoroughly deserved rest.

  When I lay down, I was no longer garbed as a priest, but in a costume which would probably have caused any chance observer to take me for a hunter or gamekeeper. With the exception of a practical and quite mundane hunting knife, I bore no weapons—I have to this day a chronic dislike of firearms, though as a breathing soldier of the fifteenth century I was no stranger to the operation of the antique matchlocks, which were then the best technology could do.

  It was, and still is, part of my general policy to conceal supplies of clothing, money, and any other vitally important items, wrapped in oilskin, in or near most of my earths. Exactly how many of these hospitable nests I had then, or possess now at the time of writing, is not a subject we are going to discuss. Inspecting these arrangements at least once every few years, and renewing them when circumstances warrant, is part of the housekeeping of every prudent vampire.

  In every year of my life there have been some days when I have behaved prudently—and there are many other days on which I at least like to think that I am doing so.

  And then there are those days when the idea of prudence never enters my mind. I must admit that there are years in which these latter form a definite majority.

  The hunting skills, magical and otherwise, of Radu's people proved keener than I had anticipated. And I had given up my anti-location talisman to small Marie.

  One of Radu's search parties, consisting of three of his breathing associates and two nosferatu, one of the latter a woman, used magic and other means successfully to track me to my temporary lair, arriving there some six or seven hours after the ground had received my grateful body in mist-form. That they succeeded in taking their quarry by surprise was largely a matter of luck.

  Only one of these people—the practically fearless, comparatively youthful vampire whose courage had already been rewarded with a serious injury—had been among the group I met at the deserted chapel in Radu's presence. No member of that gathering, with the doubtful exception of Constantia, had actively come over to my side.

  The leader of this particular search party—the very man I'd dosed with Borgia poison—still suffered from a sore shoulder and a half-useless arm, besides a few more general, systemic side effects. By the time he caught up with me, he had recovered sufficiently to enter the lists again, and was burning for revenge. Not only for the physical hurt, but for having made him look a fool.

  * * *

  Either of my two vampire-enemies who were present could have assumed mist-form to enter my sanctuary without digging, but hunting a dangerous quarry by that method has its own frightful perils; and neither of the nosferatu who had come out against me had quite the stomach for any such tactic.

  Having successfully located their quarry through magical or near-magical sensitivity, they took up tools and weapons with eager, trembling hands, ready to enjoy a triumph but fearing at every moment to provoke and alert the monster underground. By this means they dug and scraped away the first two or three feet of age-packed soil, using tools they had brought with them, or had stolen nearby. Then, unreasonably afraid that their noise and activity would rouse me prematurely from my trance, they tried to impale me with wooden spears, screaming as they thrust down at me through the last two or three feet of earth.

  The remaining layer of soil was hardened by having lain undisturbed for many decades, but it failed to muffle the louder scream of mingled rage and agony, which now went up to them in answer.

  I owe my life to their fear—and to the fact that my potentially strongest opponent still suffered a weakness in one arm. The assault failed by being launched prematurely, before they had dug deeply enough to be sure of my exact position, and too tentative.

  Having thus brutally been made aware of the presence of mine enemies, I dragged myself awake as rapidly as possible. The process occupied only a few seconds, much less than it would have taken ordinarily, but under the circumstances it was still almost fatally slow. Long enough for my enemies, stabbing blindly into the ground in a frenzy of over-confidence, to inflict another wound or two.

  I was struggling, trying to fight back, even before I was fully out of my resting trance. Fortunately no more than two of the ten or more spear thrusts into the dirt had actually struck me. Clawing my way up out of the earth, spurting blood and spitting mud between bared fangs, I cursed my own overconfidence, lack of prudence—call it what you will—that had caused me to underrate my brother's ability to mobilize a force against me and to overrate my own power to terrify and subdue the opposition.

  Wounded, with only one arm fully functional, I erupted savagely in man-form out of the temporary grave, raging and showering loose dirt in all directions.

  Even still half-asleep, before I was completely up out of the earth, I used my hunting knife to good advantage, slashing a breather's Achilles tendon and thus bringing one opponent down.

  Shortly I sustained a belaboring with wooden we
apons which deprived me of this handy knife. But moments later I was gripping in my right hand the fire-hardened point of one spear I had already caught and broken off. With this weapon I quickly disposed of one more of my attackers.

  Exactly what reaction my foes had expected of me when they provoked me to come roaring up out of the earth, I do not know, but evidently not the berserk fury of this counterattack. No mere breathing human possessed a fraction of the speed and strength required to face one of the nosferatu in open combat. I make no idle boast when I assure the reader that, had they not taken me by surprise, no three or four of them would have been able to stand against me for a full minute.

  My strategy was to concentrate my efforts upon one of them—ideally the most dangerous, he of the poisoned arm—and quickly put him out of action or drive him away.

  Knowing the best strategy and being able to achieve it while under multiple attack are not the same thing.

  The small grove echoed with the savage impacts of wooden weapons. One after another, these went splintering away. Blood spattered violently upon the nearby trees, and winged little breathing things, and running things, went clamoring out of our way.

  After making a good beginning to the fight, I was forced to endure a long moment or two in which I could do little more than sit, almost helpless. They might have finished me then with spear-thrusts, but they delayed a little. And that little was too long.

  They stamped and wheeled around me. Fortunately for me not all of them were skilled in personal combat and they got in each other's way, their wooden spears and clubs clattering against each other, saving me from further immediate damage.

  A turning point came when I was able to seize my remaining breather attacker by the ankle, and by main force throw the man off balance.

  I fought my way to a standing position, only to be seized and dragged to the ground again by the desperate effort of my opponents. Kicking viciously at every ankle I could reach, I shattered several bones. In a moment I had again regained my feet.

  My enemies might have chosen to abandon the struggle at that point, but instead were incautious enough to stand their ground and try to finish me off. One factor in their calculations must have been that they still dreaded their master more than me.

  There is a peculiarity of vampire combat that I have seldom heard remarked upon: that one never gasps or pants with exertion. Physical weariness ensues at last, as it must in all living things, but not because of lack of oxygen. One must resort to other means to gauge the weariness of one's opponent, or ally. Even when one is mortally wounded, the voice ordinarily remains full and well-controlled. Only emotion, and not the need to gulp for air, may cause it to break chaotically. When the broken fore-end of my captured wooden spear was broken once again, this time into uselessness, I fought on with my bare hands and, toward the bitter end, with a succession of small logs or fallen branches. Stones, born of the ancient earth but as lifeless as brass or steel, tended to be no more effective than those refined metals.

  At this point, with only three of my original five assailants still on their feet, the breather turned tail and ran away in terror. Evidently the thought of what Radu might do to him was not enough to make him face me any longer.

  One might, in emulation of Samson of the Old Testament, use an animal skull or one of the long bones as an effective weapon. On occasion I have found the skulls of horned cattle to be quite formidable tools of combat against my own kind, but unhappily none were within reach. My own talons and fangs tended to be effective.

  My opponents on that day were neither the least nor the most skillful or brave that I had ever faced. The mere fact that their entire band had not yet broken and fled testified to their basic nerve and competence. They endeavored to get me between them, but I foiled that tactic by getting my back against a tree.

  In a brief pause, before the next stage of our fight began, my nosferatu enemies bragged to me of Radu's cleverness and power, and that they were sure they had chosen the right side in our prolonged conflict. They taunted me with the damage they had already done to me, but I could hear the hollowness of fear in everything they said.

  The man I had almost killed in the old chapel boasted to me that he personally had tracked down the small peasant girl after all.

  The words came out quite clearly: "She was a tasty morsel." And he licked his lips.

  My reply was also enunciated with precision: "Molesting the child was a serious mistake. I made it clear to you that she was under my protection."

  Having issued that indictment, as it were, I paused, the better to concentrate on the next exchange of blows and thrusts. One as experienced in combat as I was could sense a difference in the air. My confidence that I would survive this encounter was growing fast, and that of my opponents waning with reciprocal speed. "But you have committed an even greater error just now, in telling me what you had done."

  I was far from convinced of my opponent's truthfulness in making such a boast—but whether I believed it or not made no difference in my determination to finish the speaker off.

  In the end I was forced to believe him, for he produced convincing evidence, in the form of the very talisman I had given to the child—and his trembling hand now held it out to me in a dying, taunting gesture. I snatched it away from him before he could fling it out of reach.

  And then, having disposed of his last ally, in my rage I did the very worst that I knew how, in the very limited span of time available, to the pain-nerves in his guilty hand. His shrieks were deafening, but they soon ceased.

  So, it was not by means of magic that he had tracked her down. How he had done so I never learned. But alas, Radu and others might have known the child's village, even her house, before they kidnapped her.

  At least I had regained the talisman, and I hastened to hang it around my neck. Now Radu and whatever force he might raise next would have to pursue their hunt for me by non-magical means alone—which restriction, I thought, would probably not deprive them of success.

  Verily I would have been gasping at that moment, were my body at all dependent upon air. Swaying, I looked about me at death and destruction. The only one of my foes who was still alive was he who had earlier taken to his heels, and was by now a mile away.

  Radu's people had achieved—at considerable cost to themselves—at least one minor victory, freezing me in man-form all through the remainder of the night. Then when I came to consider the matter, I thought that they might have won much more than that; truly it began to seem to me then that my wounds were likely to prove mortal.

  * * *

  My first instinct for survival after the fight, as I clutched at a tree branch for support, was to seek sanctuary by changing form; but I realized in time that my chance of getting through a day in mist-form would be zero instead of only vanishingly small. I could recall how more than one old colleague of mine had perished, changing into mist-form when seriously hurt, and being blown to nothingness by a mere passing breeze.

  I thought that in wolf-form I was not likely to fare much better. A wounded man might obtain help at a farmhouse, might find some place indoors to shelter from the sun. A wounded bat or wolf would certainly not. Aerial flight, and also the speed of a four-legged run, were going to be denied him, at least until he had had some chance to rest and heal.

  Looking at the red ruin around me, I scorned to refresh myself with the blood of any of my breathing attackers. One reason was that doing so might have made it easier for my enemies' magic to follow my trail. Another and perhaps stronger reason was that my pride had soared with the heat of combat, and I assured myself that I was not that hungry.

  Remembering the man who had chosen to run away, I told myself that even in my wounded condition I would have had a good chance of running the coward down. But the effort would surely have completed my own exhaustion, and I thought there was nothing of much importance to be learned from him—from the beginning I had felt no doubt as to who had put the attackers on my trail—s
o I chose rather to concentrate instead upon my own survival.

  It was fortunate that I did so.

  I experienced a well-earned satisfaction at having survived Radu's initial attack. More than that, I congratulated myself upon having won the first skirmish, diminishing the numbers in the force that was now arrayed against me. Still, as I surveyed my prospects for survival with fearless—no, not courageous, that is something else—realism, I thought that they were not good.

  I meditated—quite uselessly, of course—upon the fact that I might have started to recruit an army, or at least a posse, of my own, once I knew that Radu was again above the ground. Perhaps, I thought, I should have done.

  In whatever time and place a nosferatu lives, the willing help of at least one intelligent and understanding breather can be of tremendous benefit. I foresaw that I would seek such aid from someone soon—if I lived long enough. I was not without friends, in France or elsewhere. But calling for help was usually the last alternative I considered when in trouble. Earlier I had vaguely reassured myself with the thought that I had friends—but it was my own fault now that they were none of them on hand.

  Swaying with weakness, and temporarily prohibited by my injuries from changing shape, I made what plans I could.

  My appearance at this time must have been truly ghastly. Never had I less regretted my inability to use a mirror. I had a great lump on my forehead, not to mention a torn flap of skin hanging over one eye. With trembling hand I held the flap in place, until it began, very delicately and tentatively, to heal there.

  Listening, sniffing the breeze, even though I was denied the keener senses of the wolf, I thought I detected certain evidence that more of my enemies, though still miles distant, were gathering, swarming, on my trail.

  Of course it would have been mad, suicidal, for me to go back to sleep in the same earth. If one band of my enemies had found it, the others could do so also. And now the whole area around was trampled, strewn with the debris of combat, flesh and blood, bits of wood and cloth and bone and metal.