A Sharpness on the Neck d-9

by Fred Saberhagen

  Our struggle had been a prolonged one, and not much of the night was left. I had no choice but to retreat at once, and in man-form—never mind that I was still oozing, dripping blood, leaving a trail that would be child's play to follow. I would have to cover as much ground as I could before the dawn, then take whatever chance Fate offered. I tried to bind up my most heavily dripping wound, where someone's spear had gone skewering deep into my side, but soon I abandoned the attempt as hopeless. One arm was almost useless, and my usable hand was shaking uncontrollably.

  I could certainly be thankful now, with my berserker combat frenzy ebbing, that I had not been foolish enough to attempt a pursuit of my surviving attacker.

  Similarly I had to abandon the idea of improvising some kind of sunshade to protect my head and face when dawn, overtook me, as it seemed it inevitably must. My eyes in particular would be at risk, but there was nothing to be done about that now.

  Slowly I called up a mental map of the entire province, trying to decide which was my nearest earth, which the least likely for the enemy to have discovered.

  The mental image of the map as it took shape was scarcely reassuring. There was only one real possibility of survival, a sanctuary in the cellar of an antique farmhouse, which unfortunately lay more than a few miles from my present location. To reach it before dawn in my present condition would to say the least present a considerable challenge.

  Doggedly I let go my hold upon the branch and began to walk; and only as I did so, provoking in myself gray tendencies to faint, did I begin seriously to doubt whether I would make it as far as my sanctuary.

  Feeling as clumsy and vulnerable as any breather, I trudged on. I was possessed of one tiny advantage, in that I was heading west, the dawn at my back and still perhaps two hours behind me.

  Fortunately the sense of being still pursued grew no stronger, no more immediate. I knew in my bones that I was too weak to stand and fight again, even if next time I should not be so badly outnumbered. The slow draining of blood and vitality inexorably took its toll. A single determined breather with a wooden club or spear could probably have finished me when I began to flee the dawn. But of course I would make an effort, if it came to that.

  More than once on that terrible trek I heard a howl in the distance, the sound carrying from miles away, and wondered if my enemies were using hounds to hunt me down. Ordinarily I might have been able to turn the hunters' own dogs against them, even at a distance.

  I had managed to slow my blood loss to a trickle, then to stop it almost completely. Alas, that "almost" was likely to prove fatal. My increasing weakness was binding all my powers ever more closely to me, diminishing their range.

  Dragging myself from the support of one tree or fence-post to the next, I at one point considered trying to rest in some cave where a group of vagrants had taken shelter. But I quickly rejected the idea. If I could enter the cave without an invitation, the more dangerous of my pursuers would be able to do the same.

  Hunted through the darkness before dawn, aware to the minute, almost to the second, of the approaching sunrise that was almost certain to prove fatal, I considered taking shelter in someone's mausoleum. But again I would be helpless if any of Radu's people overtook me there.

  When in ordinary health, I might easily enough have passed a day and night and a second day above ground, given reasonable shelter from direct sun. But in my wounded condition, the healing power of my native earth had become a grim necessity. At last, with dawn relentlessly about to break and only one possibility of help within a hundred miles, I limped, wounded and bleeding, toward the dwelling which, cold calculation informed me, represented my last chance.

  It would not have surprised me in the least to find this last hope denied me, my earth defiled, or rendered useless by being kept under watch.

  The last quarter of a mile took me almost half an hour to cover.

  It would not have surprised me at all to discover, in any of these last breathless minutes before sunrise, Radu's smiling face looming out of the early morning mists ahead. My brother might have somehow learned all my secret sanctuaries. Certainly Radu would want to be in at my death if he possibly could, would give almost anything for the chance to observe my pangs of dissolution, and taunt me on my way. Perhaps at the end he would have dragged me into a tree's shade so that the killing power of sunlight should not have its way with me too swiftly. But no Radu appeared. The fugitive's last chance was not yet quite foreclosed.

  And now the little farmhouse on its hill had come in sight. But there had been an ominous change—an enlargement of fairly recent vintage—in the building since I had seen it last.

  Long ago indeed, in fact as far back as the early seventeenth century, I had foresightedly established, in the building which had then occupied this ground, one of a small number of emergency spare earths. But now very little of that original old stone structure still remained, and what was left of it had been enlarged upon, incorporated into what was now a much larger manor. Some might have called it a chateau.

  Sometime during the decades since my last visit, a new generation of breathers had made the place their own and taken up their residence inside. One or two of them at least were in there now. If I listened I could hear their voices. They were a man and woman talking freely to each other, conversing in good humor, if not necessarily in the way of lovers; I could hear their careless laughter, and their four breathing lungs.

  From my throat there issued, without any conscious intention on my part, a horrible growling, too low a sound for any breather at the distance of the manor house to have detected it.

  There was no way that the Prince of Wallachia was going to be able to force his way into that or any other house against the will of those who sheltered there. No way today to claim his shelter unmolested. Not that my honor, in any case, would have allowed me to take on the role of thief and brigand, stealing from the innocent.

  From somewhere there came back to me the image of small Marie, the sound and smell of the child's exhaustion and her terror. Now it was Prince Dracula who had sunk into impotence. If Marie had been at hand, he would have tried to lean his weight on her. Feeling as feeble as any breathing babe, he was going to have to ask for help.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Philip Radcliffe stood on the landing of a curved, stone stair inside the centuries-old farmhouse, close beside the embrasure of a window pierced through the thick stone wall. He was at that moment gripping an antique candleholder in his right hand, holding it close beside the wall, trying to get a good look at the stone surface near the window. The wall at that point was practically featureless, but the young man was frowning lightly, squinting his eyes at the memory of something there.

  Meanwhile his free hand was resting in a brotherly fashion on the shoulder of the young woman who stood beside him. She had been gazing out the window, and now spoke, breaking a brief silence. "It's almost morning."

  Radcliffe and his fair companion had spent part of the preceding evening strolling through the house with lamps and candles, studying certain portraits of his ancestors, in his mother's family, which were still hanging on the walls. Now and again, as here, they discovered only empty places where those remembered pictures had once hung.

  Not that tracing a family tree had been their chief concern. "It seems we've talked the night away." Radcliffe's French was lightly accented, but almost good enough to allow him to pass as a native of this province.

  "With eighteen years to catch up on, it's no wonder we've a lot to say to each other."

  Last night no one had bothered to close any shutters above the ground floor, and now all the windows were open to welcome in the burgeoning light of dawn. The two young people picked up their wineglasses from the broad stone windowsill, touched them together, and once more sipped the excellent wine, from a cellar even older than the house itself. From this window they enjoyed a good view of the impending sunrise, brushing now with light the highest trees of a distant hilltop. The
surrounding country showed a wild character, its narrow, fertile valleys cut apart by wooded hills and ridges. This was a region mostly of small isolated farms, and, as Radcliffe remembered, much ranged by hunters. No one around here was likely to be much surprised by the sound of dogs baying on a trail.

  An acquaintance of the Philip Radcliffe who would be kidnapped in 1996 would have noted a definite physical resemblance between him and this man who shared his name and was his ancestor. But the hair of this earlier Radcliffe was darker, almost black, and he was not as tall as his descendant. Also, the appearance of the Philip Radcliffe who would never see an electric light was made more interesting by a facial scar, the relic of a tavern brawl during his student days in Philadelphia. And by light smallpox scarring.

  Philip frowned, raising his candle again, letting his eyes rove up and down the curve of stone wall that embraced the stair. He was sure he could remember an assortment of old ancestral portraits on this wall. He mentioned the thought to Melanie, and she agreed.

  "And just here…" He had turned away from the window, and his two hands were making parallel gestures at the blank space. "There hung a picture of an old man… my mother's grandfather? I seem to remember her telling me that Melanie Remain, daughter of the local physician, a young woman of striking features, rough hands, greenish eyes, in turn raised her glass to Philip. "But you couldn't have been more than six years old—seven at the most; I think I was only six when your mother took you to America. Oh, how I cried!"

  Melanie's dress was politically correct for these revolutionary times, in that it was several years out of date in styling, worn and fraying at the hem. But that correctness was strictly an accident. She certainly had not the look or manner or speech of a peasant, or of one of the urban sans-culotte women. But whatever her social status under the old regime or the new, her roughened hands showed that she had been no idle lady.

  Last evening she and the American visitor had shared a frugal meal and some excellent wine by candlelight. For the past twelve hours or so, Radcliffe had enormously enjoyed the pleasant company of the young woman he remembered as his childhood sweetheart.

  The game of memory had occupied the couple, off and on, during much of that time.

  "Do you remember…?"

  "Of course. But do you remember…?"

  And they had discovered that their political opinions, along with the other ways in which they viewed the world, were very much alike. Both fiercely supported the recent American revolution—though Melanie had never visited America—and loathed the ancien regime of France, with its rigidity and divine rights of oppression. Melanie's attitude toward the new government in Paris was entirely shaped by the fact that it had arrested her father, who stood in daily danger of losing his head. Radcliffe was sympathetic, and had high hopes that such an obviously terrible mistake could soon be rectified. "From what I remember of your father, he is an unlikely candidate to be involved in political activity."

  "No man less likely, I should think."

  Radcliffe put down his candle, and raised the wineglass he had let stand on the window's broad stone sill. To true liberty."

  "Gladly will I drink to that."

  "And to your father's in particular, and to his health—may they have realized their mistake, and set him free yesterday, or the day before."

  Melanie sipped again. But the expression on her face was not at all optimistic.

  The illumination entering through the windows was still faint; dawn had not yet entirely won the battle for the eastern sky, and they had brought only the single lighted candle with them when they climbed into this miniature tower.

  Yesterday Radcliffe had passed through the doorway of this house for the first time in many years. His destination was Paris, and he was nearing the conclusion of a journey from America that had taken him through England (though that country had now been at war with France for more than a year) and across the Channel on one of the many smugglers' boats, which plied a profitable trade.

  This modest manor house was in bad condition now, having been largely neglected for more than fifteen years, since shortly after the time that his mother had taken him to the New World.

  Almost all the servants, along with the majority of peasants from the nearby village, had fled the estate years or months ago. Some had run away in terror; some had been caught up in revolutionary fervor, determined to join with the enemies of their former master in attempting to destroy him.

  Last night, sometime around midnight, Philip had sent to bed the two people he had found residing in the house on his arrival: Old Jules, a former servant whom Radcliffe remembered fondly, and Jules's granddaughter, a girl of fourteen or so. It seemed that the chief reason the pair had occupied the place, despite the Revolutionary fever which had swept the countryside, was that they had nowhere else to go. Both Jules and the girl had, as if by some instinct, resumed the role of servants when he had arrived and identified himself. Both were now asleep somewhere in the downstairs rooms, and from time to time Old Jules's snores were faintly audible.

  Since Radcliffe's arrival yesterday the old place had engulfed and enchanted him with a dream-like half-familiarity. He supposed such a reaction was only to be expected, for he had last been here at the age of seven. This stair, like all the rest of the house and the few outbuildings which had survived, was strangely shrunken in size from the images that existed in his memory.

  Almost all of the people he had known here as a child were gone now. Jules had been able to give him detailed reports on some of them. But none of the changes in house, or lands, or other people, were nearly as fascinating as those which had taken place in Philip's childhood companion.

  Melanie Remain had arrived yesterday evening, curious about a report of a stranger at the house, and all through the night the two had sat and strolled about talking. With each passing hour they'd grown more and more enchanted with each other, though they hadn't put that into words as yet.

  Philip's plans had not included any interruption of his travels, and he was now eager to resume his journey to the metropolis as soon as possible. He now thought he had an additional and even more urgent mission to perform when he reached Paris. But even his plans for his journey had changed since yesterday evening. The good news was that Melanie was going to come with him; the bad news was the reason for her journey.

  One of the recurrent themes of their nightlong conversation had been the story of Melanie's recent travels from city to city, seeking out one revolutionary hero or authority after another, pleading with anyone who she thought might possess some influence, to come to the aid of her father. Dr. Remain had been arrested a month ago as a suspect.

  "Suspect in what crime?" Radcliffe had asked in puzzlement when Melanie first tried to explain her father's predicament to him.

  She explained. "Suspect" had now become, in the language of the Revolutionary tribunals, a category of criminal all to itself. The Tribunal in Paris had recently decided to dispense with the ritual of presenting evidence, since everyone knew that the accused were guilty.

  "What madness!"

  "Indeed." She sighed, and her greenish eyes went distant. With her only surviving parent facing the executioner, the intervals in which she could forget, laugh, think of something else, were short.

  In fact, Philip Radcliffe at this moment would almost certainly have been repacking his few belongings preparatory to setting out for Paris if Melanie hadn't shown up last night. Her presence had created a serious disruption of his plans, but in fact he was only vaguely conscious of it.

  Philip and his young visitor had already discussed his mother, who was still alive, across the sea in Martinique. And about his mother's affair with the great Benjamin Franklin. "I stand before you as living proof that that occurred."

  And Melanie, from the happy days of her childhood, vaguely remembered Philip's mother. "She is a gracious lady, and I am glad to hear that she still survives."

  And why his surname was Radcliffe.
/>   Philip, having been in France now for more than a week, had already been challenged several times and forced to defend himself against accusations of spying for the Austrians, or for Pitt, the treacherous prime minister of England, by proclaiming himself the natural son of Benjamin Franklin.

  Franklin had been and still was highly esteemed in France, and Radcliffe had mixed feelings on observing that his father's portrait, usually with fur hat and bifocal spectacles (his own invention), appeared on all manner of objects.

  Philip had already seen the familiar face on snuffboxes and chamber pots.

  The story of Philip's paternity was quite true, and fortunately he had documentation in the form of a worn and dog-eared letter from his father, who had died in Philadelphia in 1790.

  "For all the years he spent here," he remarked to Melanie, "Father never did master French well enough to feel confident writing it, though he could read and understand the spoken word with some facility."

  Radcliffe now pulled from an inside pocket the oilskin packet in which he was carrying this letter, opened it and showed it to his companion.

  She murmured: "I remember…"

  "But I forget, did you ever meet my father? I suppose you might well have done so. My mother's often told me that he visited us here, but I have only the vaguest memories of him here, or none at all."

  "Then I suppose," said Melanie, "that I was too young also."

  "Yes, of course."

  The first meeting with his father that Philip could remember had not taken place until he was half grown. Then, after Franklin's return from Europe in 1785, he had seen the esteemed gentleman more than once in America. Franklin had acknowledged his relationship to young Philip, wished him well, and offered to use his influence to help him obtain legal training, if that was his wish. Philip had interrupted his apprenticeship at law to undertake this journey, and his half-resentful attitude toward the old man had mellowed into a sincere liking.