“The price of life is death.”
– Strigany aphorism Dannie was alone. The land around him was flat and empty. Not even the most gnarled patch of scrubland broke the endless plain of grey stone. He looked up to find ash falling from the dark sky. It drifted between his feet, and dusted the bodies that lay ready in their coffins around him.
The only sound was a knocking, loud and rhythmic, and, when he turned to the noise, he saw that the source was a black-robed figure. It was stooped beneath its robe, bent over one of the coffins as it hammered the lid closed. As Dannie watched, it finished its work, and started on another.
“Who are you?” he asked.
The figure, still wielding the hammer, didn’t deign to turn. Instead, it pointed with one gnarled finger. Dannie followed the yellow claw, and saw one coffin was empty.
He didn’t need to ask for whom it had been made.
“You awake in there?” a voice asked, and with a terrifying rush of vertigo, Dannie’s dream shattered. He sat bolt upright on the wooden floor, and, in the darkness of the wagon, he struggled to remember where he was.
“Better wake up and get this before it’s gone,” the voice told him, and Dannie realised that, although he had woken, the hammering sound continued. It was somebody knocking on the door of the wagon.
“I’m awake,” he croaked, and then coughed to clear his throat. “Come in.”
“Thanks,” the voice said, and the wagon door opened. Dannie squinted in the wash of sunlight, and saw his guest. The man was perhaps twenty, he guessed. Although he was as thin-faced and wiry as any Strigany, his blue eyes and mop of red hair were unusual for one of their people. Dannie vaguely recognised him from the night before.
“Brought you some food,” the man said, nodding absentmindedly towards the scroll box above the door, and climbing into the wagon.
“Thank you,” Dannie said, and, at the same time he realised how stiff his muscles were, he found that he had an appetite. “Thank you very much. I haven’t eaten for days.”
“Better take it easy then,” the redhead told him, and handed him a wooden platter of food. Dannie’s mouth watered at the sight of it: there was a pot of ale, fresh bread, sweet wrinkled apples, and even a slab of jellied pork.
“Will you join me?” he asked, breaking the bread and smearing a slice of jellied pork onto it.
“No, I’ve eaten. I’ll keep you company, though. My names Mihai.”
“And I’m Dannie,” Dannie said, and offered his hand.
“Yes, I know,” Mihai said as they shook. “I remember you all right.”
“I didn’t know we’d met before,” Dannie said around a mouthful of food. “By the gods, this hits the spot. This pork’s fantastic.”
“Yes, we met years ago. I was only about ten, and you would have been twelve or thirteen. It was when our two caravans joined up to travel through some bandit country.”
“Oh yes, I remember that,” Dannie said, nodding, and taking a bite of one of the apples. It was as sweet as honey, and he washed it down with a swig of ale. “Didn’t we go hunting together or something?”
“No, but you saved my life,” Mihai told him. “I was swimming in a river when the current took me. If you hadn’t galloped down the bank to fish me out, my bones would have ended up in the sea.”
Dannie’s eyes opened in surprise.
“That was you?” he asked, and tore off another piece of bread. “Yes, I do remember now. With that red hair of yours, how could I forget? How you wailed!”
“Well, I was only ten,” Mihai said.
“Yes, of course,” Dannie agreed easily. “You were strong enough to save yourself, though. You’d have made it to the bank eventually. I just wanted to give you a hand.”
“Thank you,” Mihai said. Dannie was about to brush the thanks away, but, when he saw the seriousness on Mihai’s face, he changed his mind. If the man wanted to owe him a debt, well, that might come in handy.
“You are welcome,” he said. “Strigany are all one family. We have to stick together.”
“That we do,” Mihai said. “Hey, after that you can come and see me wrestle a bear if you like.”
“Really?”
“Sort of. I’ve known old Ursus since he was a cub, but we like to put on a good show for the peasants. He can snarl and lumber about something terrible,” Mihai grinned.
Dannie grinned back, his full cheeks making him look like a hamster. Then he remembered his duty, and the grin died.
“Thanks,” he said, “but I need to talk to the petru. We have some business to attend to. Can you tell him I want to speak to him?”
“Of course,” Mihai said, nodding, and regarding the other man with a strange appraisal. “I’ll send him right along. And don’t forget,” he said, slapping Dannie on the shoulder as he got up to leave, “I owe you one.” That afternoon there had been some more argument, but not much. To Petru Engel’s dismay, Dannie’s claim to have been his petru’s apprentice had proved to be no idle boast. His knowledge of lore and the custom was too thorough to be dismissed, and, when Engel had tried to dampen his thirst for vengeance with a charm, the younger man had waved it away.
Eventually, Petru Engel had given in. The ferocity of his ambition was too strong to be denied, and he had the right. That was the real problem. For all the good it would do him, he had the right.
So it was that, after the cooking fires had burned out, and as the wheel of the stars turned overhead, the petru and his guest stepped out into the night. Both men were cloaked, and although they had a long march ahead of them, they avoided the corral to slip out of the encampment on foot.
The guards on the gate both turned away as they approached, although neither of them could have said quite why, and the guard dogs that ran up to challenge them suddenly changed their minds and, tails between their legs, slunk off into the shadows.
“My master never taught me how to do that,” Dannie murmured when they were far enough away from the guards.
“We all have our talents,” the petru murmured back. The walls of Lerenstein were to their right, but the two men had no business there tonight. Instead, they skirted the town, and angled off over the moonlit fields towards the forest beyond.
Beneath the light of Mannslieb, the forest looked solid and black. As they drew nearer, the ancient trees towered over them, and Dannie felt a twinge of unease. He scolded himself. Compared to what they would be facing tonight, there was little in this darkness to fear.
In fact, Dannie thought, compared to the thing that they would be facing tonight, there was little in this world to fear.
“How many miles will we walk tonight?” he asked the petru, mainly to take his mind off of that thought.
“I’m not sure,” the old man said, “but we will be finished before dawn. Perhaps,” he added, “long before dawn, and forever. It is still not too late to turn back. There are other ways than this. There always are.”
“No,” Dannie said, making the decision quickly, before his fear had the chance to betray him. “I am committed. This is my path.”
“Yes,” the petru sighed as they found the track that cut into the tree line. “I was afraid that you’d say that.”
The two men lapsed into silence as they left the moonlit fields for the blinding darkness of the forest. The track that they followed was riven with deep ruts, and the two men stumbled along it, their way lit only by the blade of moonlight that fell through the gap in the forest canopy.
Now and then, animal cries would float out of the darkness. Some Dannie recognised, others he did not. Once there was a sudden, terrifying shriek of pain from their right, followed by a moment of complete silence. Above them, the silhouettes of owls hunted those of bats who, in turn, hunted moths.
Dannie immersed himself in the sounds of the sleeping forest; anything rather than think about where they were heading. Even so, when the petru suddenly froze, he had no idea why.
Knowing better than to ask, he just froze behind him. His eyes scanned the darkness in vain, and, although he stilled his own breathing in order to hear better, there was nothing but the call of some distant thing that might have been a bird.
Then, from not twelve paces ahead of them, there came the voice.
“Good evening, petru,” it said. “Dannie, I was hoping to find you here.”
“Mihai.” Both men said the name at the same time, and, as Mihai stepped forward, his grin was bright enough to be seen, even in the darkness.
“And Boris.” This voice came from the darkness on their right.
“And Bran,” another added, and the twins emerged like wraiths from the undergrowth.
The petru hissed with exasperation.
“What are you doing here, you young fools?” he snapped at Mihai, who took a step back.
“We came to look after you, petru,” he said. “I know that we weren’t invited, but you’re too valuable to be left unguarded.”
“The day that I need guarding by the likes of you is the day I’ll happily die,” the petru said.
“I can see why,” Boris agreed.
“But think,” his brother added, “how bad we’d feel if you didn’t come back.”
“You’ve always been like a grandfather to all of us,” Mihai agreed, “and the gods know what may lurk in these woods. Or what you will find at your journey’s end.”
“So,” the petru hissed, “eavesdropping.”
Mihai shuffled his feet, and, for once, even the twins seemed lost for words.
“Meddling,” the petru continued, “in the affairs of your elders.”
In the darkness, Mihai’s silhouette shrugged.
“We are yours to command, petru,” he said, “although you should know that Dannie here saved my life. I can hardly let him walk into such darkness alone.”
“Such darkness,” the petru mused. “Do you know who it is we seek tonight? Speak plainly, now.”
“I heard some talk whilst I was passing,” Mihai said, “something about an Old Father. I don’t know who this brigand is, but he sounds like a dangerous one, maybe too dangerous to meet alone.”
The petru watched Mihai. Then he started to make a soft, wheezing sound that turned out to be laughter.
“He is even more dangerous than that,” Engel said, “although, young Mihai, I don’t see why your enterprise shouldn’t be rewarded, and your eavesdropping too. You can accompany us, but be warned, you don’t speak, move or breathe unless I tell you to. If you do, and if you survive, I will hurt you afterwards… badly.”
“Yes, petru,” Mihai said, and the twins chorused their agreement.
“Very well then. Let’s get moving.”
The petru led off, and Mihai fell into step besides Dannie, with the twins behind.
“You shouldn’t have come,” Dannie told him, but Mihai just slapped him on the shoulder.
“I told you,” he said, “I owe you one. Anyway, you’re one of us now.”
Dannie wondered at the relief that he felt at those words. It was as though he had dropped a burden that he hadn’t even known he was carrying. He had always been a loner. He had hunted alone ever since he was a boy. His studies with the petru had kept him apart from the others in his caravan too, not that he had minded, but, no matter how alone he had been, he had always known that his caravan had belonged to him as he belonged to it.
He felt the loss again, a whole new type of pain this time, and his resolve stiffened. His face was grim as the forest swallowed them up, and soon there was nothing left of their passage, but for their boot prints and the stooped, snuffling things that were following them. The rock towered over the surrounding forest. It was bright in the moonlight, the stone almost luminous against the black of the sky. Dannie had been able to snatch glimpses of it through gaps in the canopy for the past two hours, but it was only now that his party had reached the withered and barren clearing that surrounded the outcrop, that he could appreciate its true immensity. It towered up into the night as if hungering for the stars that glittered above.
However, it was not up that Dannie was looking, it was down.
“That’s it,” the petru whispered into his ear, gesturing towards the mouth of the tunnel. Against the pale rock, the entrance was as black as a cavity in a tooth, although the rotten smell that issued from it spoke of an even deeper corruption.
“Did the Old Father dig it himself?” Dannie asked, knowing that there was nothing to be gained by stalling, but stalling anyway.
“No,” the petru answered as he opened his satchel. “It looks natural, and it’s near enough to the trading routes and villages to be… to be well stocked.”
“Oh,” Dannie said, and his nose wrinkled as the stink grew worse. For a sudden, treacherous moment, he wished that he’d never embarked upon this path. Then he remembered the people of his caravan, and the charred bones of their remains, and the ash, always that ash.
“I’ll take that,” he said, taking the lantern that the petru had just lit. The yellow light flickered in the breeze. It was barely bright enough to be seen in the moonlight, still less to ward off what lay coiled and stinking in the darkness below.
“Thank you for your help, but from here on I walk alone.”
“No,” Mihai said, “we will come with you.”
“We might as well,” Bran agreed.
“After coming all this way,” his brother added.
“No, he must go alone,” the petru said regretfully. “It is best. Here, I have some things for you.” The petru turned to Dannie, and started rummaging about in the depths of his satchel.
First, he handed Dannie a small wooden box. It took him a moment to recognise it as the scroll box that hung over the lintel of every Strigany wagon.
“Will it help?” he asked.
The petru shrugged. “Who knows, but it can’t hurt. This will help, though.”
He gave him a chalice, and the metal glinted yellow, despite the chill of the moonlight. The Striganies’ eyes glinted along with it.
“The Old Fathers like respect,” the petru said as Dannie took the chalice, “and also neatness.”
With that, he handed Dannie the last of the three items. It was a bone-handled straight razor. Dannie pursed his lips as he took it.
“But listen,” the petru said as he flicked it open and tested the blade against the hem of his tunic, “we can still go back to the caravan. It’s not as though you are the first Strigany to have suffered loss. We can leave this cursed place now, if you choose. It isn’t too late.”
“Yes,” Dannie said, “it is.”
The five of them stood for a moment, still and unmoving in the moonlight. There didn’t seem anything left to say. They just stood and watched the cave entrance with the terrible fascination of mice watching a cobra.
“Let’s go,” Dannie told himself, and, with a deep swallow, he marched into the eye watering stink of the Old Father’s keep. He took one last glance at his waiting companions as he reached the entrance. Then, he turned and descended into the darkness. For some reason, he had always expected some sign of the old culture in one of the Old Father’s keeps-carvings or tapestries, perhaps, or at the very least some simple architecture of doors or arches, or paving slabs.
In fact, there was none of that here. Only the stench that greased the air provided any clue that this dank underworld was inhabited: that and the filth that had been smeared onto the living rock of the passageway. It wasn’t a dwelling, Dannie realised as he forced himself to carry on putting one foot in front of another, it was a lair.
A sudden draft sent the flame in his lamp flickering, and he paused, frantically twisting the wheel on the oil jar to make the flame burn brighter. Then he stopped. Down here, and all alone, he realised, it didn’t matter how high the flame was. It would never be bright enough.
A sudden impulse to turn and flee seized him. He ignored it, just as he ignored the beating of his heart, and the sweat on his palms, and the nausea that lay coiled within his stomach.
Instead, he thought about his duty, and carried on.
It wasn’t until he stopped at the first junction that he realised that he was not alone. When he paused, the sound of neatly regimented footsteps, which had been keeping pace with his own, carried on for a moment too long, and then suddenly stopped. There had been a strange quality about these footsteps, too, Dannie thought: sort of a clipping that sounded like claws against stone.
He took a deep, shuddering breath, and reminded himself that he was a Strigany, a domnu and a petru, and a loyal subject of the Old Fathers.
Then something touched him on the shoulder. He hissed with terror as he spun around, automatically flipping open the straight razor that he had been carrying.
“It’s all right,” Mihai whispered, “it’s only me.”
Dannie almost laughed with relief, and gripped the other man’s shoulder in greeting. He had never been so happy to see another human being.
“I thought the petru said you had to wait for me outside.”
“No, he changed his mind,” Mihai lied. “Said you might want the company.”
Dannie shrugged. If Petru Engel said that it was all right, then, by all the gods, it was all right.
“Come on then,” he whispered, “but remember, however foul the Old Father looks, he is owed our respect. They all are.”
Mihai nodded, and looked up at a dark smear of something that had been dragged across the ceiling.
“These Old Fathers,” he said, “they aren’t just bandits at all, are they?”
Dannie smiled grimly.
“Just remember,” he said, “respect.”
“Yes, of course,” Mihai whispered back. Then he glanced over Dannie’s shoulder, and said, “Oh gods.”
Even in the lamplight, Dannie could see the blood draining from his friend’s face, and knew that they had found what he had sought.
Or rather, it had found him.
He turned to see the Old Father’s entourage spilling from the passageway ahead, boiling out of the darkness like maggots from a wound. Their smooth skin gleamed as pale as bone beneath the patina of filth that covered them, and their eyes, set within impossibly deep sockets, were as black as onyx.
“Oh gods,” Mihai said again. Dannie ignored him. As the creatures scrabbled nearer, the putrid stink that filled this burrow grew stronger, and he realised that it was the smell of the creatures. They moved in such a huddled mass that there was no counting them, but there must have been dozens in the malnourished swarm.
Dannie knew that they had once been human. At least, that was what the lore said. If they had once been human, they scarcely looked it now. Even though they had retained the bodies of men, any trace of their humanity had long since been scoured away. He could see the lack of it in their dead eyes, their insectile scuttling, the way that they were naked apart from the dirt they were smeared with.
For one vertiginous moment of sheer terror, he thought that he would forget the words of the charm that would turn this chittering horde from predators to escort, but, then he was chanting, fear giving his voice volume, even as it unlocked his memory.
He had barely completed the first verse before the Old Father’s entourage was upon him. Their sharp tongues darted out to taste the sweat on the back of the Strigany’s hands, and, although some showed their splintered fangs, none used them. Instead, they listened to his voice, twitching and whining like beaten dogs as they pressed around the two humans, pawing at them, even as they grovelled down.
Dannie repeated the charm until the things that huddled around him were all bent in submission. Then he stopped and waited, half expecting the starving predators that surrounded him to attack. When they didn’t, he spoke.
“Now, in the name of our lord,” he told them, his voice echoing into the labyrinth beyond, “I charge you to lead us to him so that we may make obeisance.”
The first of them, each vertebra of its spine visible beneath its anaemic skin, turned and led away. The others followed it, some of them greedily pinching the humans as they squeezed passed. Dannie’s face wrinkled with revulsion as he felt their tangled bodies pressing against him, but, even so, he allowed himself to be swept along with the tide of movement.
“Come on,” he said, making sure that Mihai was behind him, “let them lead us.”
“So they aren’t just bandits,” Mihai mumbled to himself as he let the stinking swarm press him forward.
Dannie, however, was too concerned about their guides to answer him. Even though the charm had worked, some of the Old Father’s entourage were finding their hunger too much to bear. The appetite that the smell of fresh meat had kindled within their malnourished frames was hard to contain, and soon their whines of frustration at being denied had given way to a purposeful silence. They slavered as they slunk along, eyes flitting greedily amongst the packed mass of each other’s bodies.
Dannie, sensing what this change of mood entailed, watched in horrified fascination. It wasn’t long until, amongst the shadow play of lamplight through their slinking bodies, he saw that a victim had been selected. It was a limping thing, one leg a twisted mess of shattered bone and pink scar tissue, and, as soon as Dannie saw the space opening up around it, he knew that it was doomed.
The creature knew it too. As some of its fellows paused in their march to encircle it, it put its back to the wall, and bared its teeth.
Dannie, still being jostled forward by the rush of the creatures, caught one last glimpse of the victim as its fellows leapt upon it. It disappeared between their writhing bodies, and its squeal was cut off by the tearing of their teeth. Dannie could hear the sounds of snapping and slurping and tearing as it was devoured.
“Nice friends you and the petru keep,” Mihai said, his voice carefully neutral.
“That we all keep,” Dannie replied. “These things are the xholas from our stories, the ghouls.”
Before he could say anything else, the walls on either side of him opened into a deep cavern, and his guides rushed away from him, skittering away from the lamplight and into the darkness.
Dannie stopped and looked down as something crunched beneath his boots. He found himself standing on a tangle of splintered bones. They were gnawed and brittle, and as deep as leaves that drifted in autumn. He supposed that they were animal bones.
No, he admitted to himself. No, he didn’t suppose that they were animal bones. He hoped that they were.
“Watch your step,” he whispered to Mihai, and started to edge his way forward. The Old Father’s entourage had gone to ground amongst the grisly remains of their nest, but he could still make out the blur of their waiting bodies, and the glitter of their watching eyes.
“Where now?” Mihai asked.
“Just follow me,” Dannie told him, his voice calm. “I think that we’re… we’re…”
He trailed off as, with another step, the lamp light revealed the Old Father. It sat above them, hunched forward on a throne of bones that had been lashed together with dark-stained rags.
Although it had the same translucent skin as its retainers, the only bones visible beneath the Old Father’s hide were those that sharpened its face into a confusion of misshapen angles. The rest of its twisted frame bulged with lumps of muscle. Even its claws showed an unnatural health. They gleamed like seasoned ivory as they twitched beneath the lamp light.
Dannie looked into the black marbles of its eyes, and every thought in his head froze. By the time he had dragged his eyes away, he found that he was kneeling down amongst the shattered bones of his lord’s feasting.
He glanced back to find Mihai standing transfixed.
“Kneel,” he whispered, and pulled at his trouser leg. As Mihai obliged, Dannie could hear the rattling dice of his teeth chattering.
He turned back to the Old Father. Not daring to meet the thing’s gaze, he looked at its chest, instead. It was as wide as his mare’s, although the ribcage beneath had obviously been shattered and badly reset over the centuries.
“Master,” he said, his voice barely a whisper, “my name is Dannie Ionescu. I am the domnu and petru of caravan Ionescu, and this is my companion Mihai, of the caravan of Brock.”
The Old Father said nothing, merely squirming upon its perch. For all the broken asymmetry of its hunch-backed bulk, the creature moved with the easy grace of a cobra. Dannie glanced down to find that its feet were clawed, too. The talons were as sharply hooked as an osprey’s, and he found himself wondering if the black stuff beneath them was blood.
Then he heard the voice. It was so soothing, so refined, that for a moment he couldn’t believe that it had come from the monstrosity that sat in its own filth before him.
Why are you here?
“I have come here to pay my respects to you, oh master. I have only recently become petru, and, although my training is incomplete, I know of our allegiance to you and your kind.”
He looked up, not quite daring to meet the Old Father’s eyes, but wanting to see the lips that had spoken so sweetly.
And why are you really here? the voice asked, and Dannie realised that, although the Old Father’s lips hadn’t moved, he could hear his words with perfect, poisonous clarity.
“I am here for revenge,” he said simply. “My caravan was murdered. I have come to call upon your magnificence, and to beg that you take the vengeance that I cannot.”
Look at me.
It was not a request, and, even if it had been, Dannie realised as he found himself lifting his head, he wouldn’t have been able to refuse.
He looked into the terrible darkness of the Old Father’s eyes. The void looked back into him.
In an instant, he remembered, not just the horror of what the peasants had done to his caravan, but everything that they had ever done to it: every stone that had been thrown at their wagons, every insult that had been hurled at them, every merchant that had refused to pay, and every bandit and baron that had robbed them.
Suddenly, the Old Father seemed like nothing but a friend, a light in the darkness, the cure for all of his ills.
“I have brought you a gift,” he said and, with no hesitation, he pulled back his sleeve, laid the steel kiss of the razor across his skin, and cut. Blood spurted, black in the darkness, and he caught it within the golden chalice that the petru had given him.
The Old Father’s entourage whimpered with hunger as the smell of the fresh, pulsing blood filled their nostrils, and the bones shifted beneath their feet as they circled in the darkness.
Dannie squeezed his fist so that the blood flowed faster. Then he cut again.
It wasn’t until the goblet was full that he presented it to his lord. Taloned fingers reached out to accept the offering, and the Old Father slurped the liquid down. The sound echoed horribly, and Dannie found himself thinking of the ghoul that he had seen devoured by its own kin. The pain and the shock of his wounding hit him for the first time, and he felt suddenly, dangerously dizzy.
When the Old Father had finished, he tossed the cup behind him.
Go now. I will take your vengeance with as much relish as I have taken your blood.
“Thank you, lord,” Dannie said, and, bowing all the while, he walked backwards away from the creature. The last he saw of it, before the darkness swallowed it back up, was the pink smear of his own blood around the pallid flesh of its mouth. Once out of the cavern Dannie turned and, in the same movement, collapsed. Mihai, although still dazed by the horror of what he had seen, caught the lantern before it smashed. Then he knelt down to wrap his bandanna around the deep, gaping wounds that Dannie had sliced into his arm. When it was tight enough, he slung his friend over one shoulder and hurried away. It seem like a lifetime, before, sweating with a lot more than the effort of carrying his friend, he finally emerged back into the coolness of the night.
The sight of his comrades waiting for him was the sweetest he had ever seen. His face split open in a smile of relief, and, even as he laid Dannie down, he let out a sob of relief. The petru shot him a cold look, and then knelt down to examine Dannie.
“He saw the Old Father, then,” the old man said, as he began work on the wounds in Dannie’s arms.
“Yes,” Mihai said, suddenly feeling a little dizzy himself. “How did you know?”
“His hair,” the petru said as he smeared some ointment onto the wounds.
Mihai’s mouth opened to ask what he meant. Then he saw. In the pale light of the setting moon, he realised, for the first time, that the black mane of Dannie’s hair had turned completely, flawlessly white.
“Well, young man,” the petru told the unconscious patient as he bandaged his arm. “It seems that you are a petru after all.”
With that, Dannie was hoisted up, and the five of them hurried away.