This Immortal

by Roger Joseph Zelazny

  "Better, much better. I think it was just an upset stomach. Don't worry about it."

  "Do you feel good enough to make it to Makrynitsa, on horseback?"

  "No trick at all. It will be easier than walking. I was practically born on horseback. You remember."

  "'Remember'?" asked Dos Santos. "What do you mean by that, Mister Graber? How could Conrad remem-"

  "-Remember his famous Ballads on Horseback," said Red Wig. "What are you leading up to, Conrad?"

  "I'm in charge here, thank you," said I. "I'm giving the orders and I've decided I'll do the vampire-fighting."

  "In a situation like this I think we ought to be a little more democratic about these life and death decisions," she replied. "You were born in this country. No matter how good Phil's memory is, you'll do a better job of getting us from here to there in a hurry. You're not ordering Hasan to die, or abandoning him. He's volunteering."

  "I will kill the Dead Man," said Hasan, "and I will follow after you. I know the ways of hiding myself from men. I will follow your trail."

  "It's my job," I told him.

  "Then, since we cannot agree, leave the decision to the fates," said Hasan. "Toss a coin."

  "Very well. Did they take our money as well as our weapons?"

  "I have some change," said Ellen.

  "Toss a piece into the air."

  She did.

  "Heads," said I, as it fell toward the floor.

  "Tails," she replied.

  "Don't touch it!"

  It was tails, all right. And there was a head on the other side, too.

  "Okay, Hasan, you lucky fellow, you," I said. "You just won a do-it-yourself Hero Kit, complete with a monster. Good luck."

  He shrugged.

  "It was written."

  He sat down then, his back against the wall, extracted a tiny knife from the sole of his left sandal, and began to pare his fingernails. He'd always been a pretty well-groomed killer. I guess cleanliness is next to diablerie, or something like that.

  As the sun sank slowly in the west, Moreby came to us again, bringing with him a contingent of Kourete swordsmen.

  "The time has come," he stated. "Have you decided upon your champion?"

  "Hasan will fight him," I said.

  "Very good. Then come along. Please do not try anything foolish. I should hate to deliver damaged goods at a festival."

  Walking within a circle of blades, we left the shack and moved up the street of the village, passing by the paddock. Eight horses, heads low, stood within. Even in the diminishing light I could see that they were not very good horses. Their flanks were all covered with sores, and they were quite thin. Everyone glanced at them as we went by.

  The village consisted of about thirty shacks, such as the one in which we had been confined. It was a dirt road that we walked on, and it was full of ruts and rubbish. The whole place smelled of sweat and urine and rotten fruit and smoke.

  We went about eighty meters and turned left. It was the end of the street, and we moved along a downhill path into a big, cleared compound. A fat, bald-headed woman with enormous breasts and a face that was a lava field of carcinoma was tending a low and dreadfully suggestive fire at the bottom of a huge barbecue pit. She smiled as we passed by and smacked her lips moistly.

  Great, sharpened stakes lay on the ground about her…

  Up further ahead was a level area of hardpacked bare earth. A huge, vine-infested, tropic-type tree which had adapted itself to our climate stood at the one end of the field, and all about the field's peripheries were rows of eight-foot torches, already waving great lengths of fire like pennants. At the other end was the most elaborate shack of them all. It was about five meters high and ten across the front. It was painted bright red and covered all over with Pennsylvania hex signs. The entire middle section of the front wall was a high, sliding door. Two armed Kouretes stood guard before that door.

  The sun was a tiny piece of orange-rind in the west. Moreby marched us the length of the field toward the tree.

  Eighty to a hundred spectators were seated on the ground on the other side of the torches, on each side of the field.

  Moreby gestured, indicating the red shack.

  "How do you like my home?" he asked.

  "Lovely," said I.

  "I have a roommate, but he sleeps during the day. You're about to meet him."

  We reached the base of the big tree; Moreby left us there, surrounded by his guards. He moved to the center of the field and began addressing the Kouretes in Greek.

  We had agreed that we would wait until the fight was near its end, whichever way, and the tribesmen all excited and concentrating on the finale, before we made our break. We'd pushed the women into the center of our group, and I managed to get on the left side of a right-handed swordsman, whom I intended to kill quickly. Too bad that we were at the far end of the field. To get to the horses we'd have to fight our way back through the barbecue area.

  "… and then, on that night," Moreby was saying, "did the Dead Man rise up, smiting down this mighty warrior, Hasan, breaking his bones and casting him about this place of feasting. Finally, did he kill this great enemy and drink the blood from his throat and eat of his liver, raw and still smoking in the night air. These things did he do on that night. Mighty is his power."

  "Mighty, oh mighty!" cried the crowd, and someone began beating upon a drum.

  "Now will we call him to life again…"

  The crowd cheered.

  "To life again!"

  "To life again."

  "To life again!"

  "Hail!"

  "Hail!"

  "Sharp white teeth…"

  "Sharp white teeth!"

  "White, white skin…"

  "White, white skin!"

  "Hands which break…"

  "Hands which break!"

  "Mouth which drinks…"

  "Mouth which drinks!"

  "The blood of life!"

  "The blood of life!

  "Great is our tribe!"

  "Great is our tribe!"

  "Great is the Dead Man!"

  "Great is the Dead Man!"

  "Great is the Dead Man!"

  "GREAT IS THE DEAD MAN!"

  They bellowed it, at the last. Throats human, half-human, and inhuman heaved the brief litany like a tidal wave across the field. Our guards, too, were screaming it. Myshtigo was blocking his sensitive ears and there was an expression of agony on his face. My head was ringing too. Dos Santos crossed himself and one of the guards shook his head at him and raised his blade meaningfully. Don shrugged and turned his head back toward the field.

  Moreby walked up to the shack and struck three times upon the sliding door with his wand.

  One of the guards pushed it open for him.

  An immense black catafalque, surrounded by the skulls of men and animals, was set within. It supported an enormous casket made of dark wood and decorated with bright, twisting lines.

  At Moreby's directions, the guards raised the lid.

  For the next twenty minutes he gave hypodermic injections to something within the casket. He kept his movements slow and ritualistic. One of the guards put aside his blade and assisted him. The drummers kept up a steady, slow cadence. The crowd was very silent, very still.

  Then Moreby turned.

  "Now the Dead Man rises," he announced.

  "Rises," responded the crowd.

  "Now he comes forth to accept the sacrifice."

  "Now he comes forth…"

  "Come forth, Dead Man," he called, turning back to the catafalque.

  And he did.

  At great length.

  For he was big.

  Huge, obese.

  Great indeed was the Dead Man.

  Maybe 350 pounds ' worth.

  He sat up in his casket and he looked all about him. He rubbed his chest, his armpits, his neck, his groin. He climbed out of the big box and stood beside the catafalque, dwarfing Moreby.

  He was wearing
only a loincloth and large, goatskin sandals.

  His skin was white, dead white, fishbelly white, moon white… dead white.

  "An albino," said George, and his voice carried the length of the field because it was the only sound in the night.

  Moreby glanced in our direction and smiled. He took the Dead Man's stubby-fingered hand and led him out of the shack and onto the field. The Dead Man shied away from the torchlight. As he advanced, I studied the expression on his face.

  "There is no intelligence in that face," said Red Wig.

  "Can you see his eyes?" asked George, squinting. His glasses had been broken in he fray.

  "Yes; they're pinkish."

  "Does he have epicanthial folds?"

  "Mm… Yeah."

  "Uh-huh. He's a Mongoloid-an idiot, I'll wager-which is why it was so easy for Moreby to do what he's done with him. And look at his teeth! They look filed."

  I did. He was grinning, because he'd seen the colorful top of Red Wig's head. Lots of nice, sharp teeth were exposed.

  "His albinism is the reason behind the nocturnal habits Moreby has imposed. Look! He even flinches at the torchlight! He's ultrasensitive to any sort of actinics."

  "What about his dietary habits?"

  "Acquired, through imposition. Lots of primitive people bled their cattle. The Kazakhs did it until the twentieth century, and the Todas. You saw the sores on those horses as we passed by the paddock. Blood is nourishing, you know, if you can learn to keep it down-and I'm sure Moreby has regulated the idiot's diet since he was a child. So of course he's a vampire-he was brought up that way."

  "The Dead Man is risen," said Moreby.

  "The Dead Man is risen," agreed the crowd.

  "Great is the Dead Man!"

  "Great is the Dead Man!"

  He dropped the dead-white hand th en and wal ked toward us, leaving the only genuine vampire we knew of grinning in the middle of the field.

  "Great is the Dead Man," he said, grinning himself as he approached us. "Rather magnificent, isn't he?"

  "What have you done to that poor creature?" asked Red Wig.

  "Very little," replied Moreby. "He was born pretty well-equipped."

  "What were those injections you gave him?" inquired George.

  "Oh, I shoot his pain centers full of Novocain before encounters such as this one. His lack of pain responses adds to the image of his invincibility. Also, I've given him a hormone shot. He's been putting on weight recently, and he's grown a bit sluggish. This compensates for it."

  "You talk of him and treat him as though he's a mechanical toy," said Diane.

  "He is. An invincible toy. An invaluable one, also.-You there, Hasan. Are you ready?" he asked.

  "I am," Hasan answered, removing his cloak and his burnoose and handing them to Ellen.

  The big muscles in his shoulders bulged, his fingers flexed lightly, and he moved forward and out of the circle of blades. There was a welt on his left shoulder, several others on his back. The torchlight caught his beard and turned it to blood, and I could not help but remember that night back at the hounfor when he had enacted a strangling, and Mama Julie had said, "Your friend is possessed of Angelsou," and "Angelsou is a deathgod and he only visits with his own."

  "Great is the Warrior, Hasan," announced Moreby, turning away from us.

  "Great is the warrior, Hasan," replied the crowd.

  "His strength is that of many."

  "His strength is that of many," the crowd responded.

  "Greater still is the Dead Man."

  "Greater still is the Dead Man."

  "He breaks his bones and casts him about this place of feasting."

  "He breaks his bones…"

  "He eats his liver."

  "He eats his liver."

  "He drinks the blood from his throat."

  "He drinks the blood from his throat."

  "Mighty is his power."

  "Mighty is his power."

  "Great is the Dead Man!"

  "Great is the Dead Man!"

  "Tonight," said Hasan quietly, "he becomes the Dead Man indeed."

  "Dead Man!" cried Moreby, as Hasan moved forward and stood before him, "I give you this man Hasan in sacrifice!"

  Then Moreby got out of the way and motioned the guards to move us to the far sideline.

  The idiot grinned an even wider grin and reached out slowly toward Hasan.

  "Bismallah," said Hasan, making as if to turn away from him, and bending downward and to the side.

  He picked it off the ground and brought it up and around fast and hard, like a whiplash-a great heel-of-the-hand blow which landed on the left side of the Dead Man's jaw.

  The white, white head moved maybe five inches.

  And he kept on grinning…

  Then both of his short bulky arms came out and caught Hasan beneath the armpits. Hasan seized his shoulders, tracing fine red furrows up his sides as he went, and he drew red beads from the places where his fingers dug into snowcapped muscle.

  The crowd screamed at the sight of the Dead Man's blood. Perhaps the smell of it excited the idiot himself. That, or the screaming.

  Because he raised Hasan two feet off the ground and ran forward with him.

  The big tree got in the way, and Hasan's head sagged as he struck.

  Then the Dead Man crashed into him, stepped back slowly, shook himself, and began to hit him.

  It was a real beating. He flailed at him with his almost grotesquely brief, thick arms.

  Hasan got his hands up in front of his face and he kept his elbows in the pit of his stomach.

  Still, the Dead Man kept striking him on his sides and head. His arms just kept rising and falling.

  And he never stopped grinning.

  Finally, Hasan's hands fell and he clutched them before his stomach.

  … And there was blood coming from the corners of his mouth.

  The invincible toy continued its game.

  And then far, far off on the other side of the night, so far that only I could hear it, there came a voice that I recognized.

  It was the great hunting-howl of my hellhound, Bortan.

  Somewhere, he had come upon my trail, and he was coming now, running down the night, leaping like a goat, flowing like a horse or a river, all brindle-colored-and his eyes were glowing coals and his teeth were buzzsaws.

  He never tired of running, my Bortan.

  Such as he are born without fear, given to the hunt, and sealed with death.

  My hellhound was coming, and nothing could halt him in his course.

  But he was far, so far off, on the other side of the night…

  The crowd was screaming. Hasan couldn't take much more of it. Nobody could.

  From the corner of my eye (the brown one) I noticed a tiny gesture of Ellen's.

  It was as though she had thrown something with her right hand…

  Two seconds later it happened.

  I looked away quickly from that point of brilliance that occurred, sizzling, behind the idiot.

  The Dead Man wailed, lost his grip.

  Good old Reg 237.1 (promulgated by me): "Every tour guide and every member of a tour must carry no fewer than three magnesium flares on his person, while traveling."

  Ellen only had two left, that meant. Bless her.

  The idiot had stopped hitting Hasan.

  He tried to kick the flare away. He screamed. He tried to kick the flare away. He covered his eyes. He rolled on the ground.

  Hasan watched, bleeding, panting…

  The flare burnt, the Dead Man screamed…

  Hasan finally moved.

  He reached up and touched one of the thick vines which hung from the tree.

  He tugged at it. It resisted. He pulled harder.

  It came loose.

  His movements were steadier as he twisted an end around each hand.

  The flare sputtered, grew bright again…

  He dropped to his knees beside the Dead Man, and with a quick motion he l
ooped the vine about his throat.

  The flare sputtered again.

  He snapped it tight.

  The Dead Man fought to rise.

  Hasan drew the thing tighter.

  The idiot seized him about the waist.

  The big muscles in the Assassin's shoulders grew into ridges. Perspiration mingled with the blood on his face.

  The Dead Man stood, raising Hasan with him.

  Hasan pulled harder.

  The idiot, his face no longer white, but mottled, and with the veins standing out like cords in his forehead and neck, lifted him up off the ground.

  As I'd lifted the golem did the Dead Man raise Hasan, the vine cutting ever more deeply into his neck as he strained with all his inhuman strength.

  The crowd was wailing and chanting incoherently. The drumming, which had reached a frenzied throb, continued at its peak without letup. And then I heard the howl again, still very far away.

  The flare began to die.

  The Dead Man swayed.

  …Then, as a great spasm racked him, he threw Hasan away from him.

  The vine went slack about his throat as it tore free from Hasan's grip.

  Hasan took ukemi and rolled to his knees. He stayed that way.

  The Dead Man moved toward him.

  Then his pace faltered.

  He began to shake all over. He made a gurgling noise and clutched at his throat. His face grew darker. He staggered to the tree and put forth a hand. He leaned there panting. Soon he was gasping noisily. His hand slipped along the trunk and he dropped to the ground. He picked himself up again, into a half-crouch.

  Hasan arose, and recovered the piece of vine from where it had fallen.

  He advanced upon the idiot.

  This time his grip was unbreakable.

  The Dead Man fell, and he did not rise again.

  It was like turning off a radio which had been playing at full volume:

  Click…

  Big silence then-it had all happened so fast. And tender was the night, yea verily, as I reached out through it and broke the neck of the swordsman at my side and seized his blade. I turned then to my left and split the skull of the next one with it.

  Then, like click again, and full volume back on, but all static this time. The night was torn down through the middle.

  Myshtigo dropped his man with a vicious rabbit-punch and kicked another in the shins. George managed a quick knee to the groin of the one nearest him.