before he recovered fully. I didn't know and cared much less.
Then I hurried through the castle, lighting lamps and candles wherever I found them, illuminating the place as it had not been lit in a hundred years. Perhaps it had never known such light as I now brought into being in it.
There were two entrances: one was across the drawbridge and through the door I'd used when first I arrived here escorted by Faethor's wolves, which I now barred; the other was from a narrow ledge in the cliff at the rear, where a roofed over causeway of doubtful timbers formed a bridge from the ledge to a window in the wall of the second tower. Doubtless this had been the Ferenczy's bolthole, which he'd never had cause to use. But if he could get out that way, so could he get in. I found oil, drenched the planking, set fire to the causeway and stayed long enough to ensure that it was well ablaze.
I paused periodically at other embrasures to gaze out on the night. At first there were only the moon and stars, stray wisps of cloud, the valley, silvered, touched occasionally by fleeting shadows. But as I proceeded with my task of lighting and securing the castle, so I was aware that things were beginning to stir. A wolf howled mournfully afar, then closer, then many wolves. The trees in the gorge were inky now, ominous as the gates to the underworld.
In the first tower I found a barred, bolted room. A treasure house, maybe? I threw back the bolts, lifted the bar, put my shoulder to the door. But the key had been turned in the great lock and removed. I leaned my ear to the oak panels and listened: there was sly movement in there, and… whispering?
Perhaps it was as well the door was locked. Perhaps it had been locked not to keep thieves out but something else.
I climbed to the hall where Faethor had poisoned me, and there found my weapons where I had last seen them. More, I took down from the wall a mighty long-handled axe. Then, armed to the teeth, I returned to the locked room. There I loaded my crossbow and placed it close to hand, stuck my sword point-down in a crack in the floor, ready for grasping, and took both hands to the axe in a huge swing at the door. I succeeded with that blow in caving in a narrow panel, but at the same time I dislodged from its hiding place atop the lintel a rusty iron key.
The key fitted the lock. I was on the point of turning it to enter, when — such a clamouring from the wolves! So loud I could
hear its doomful dinning even down here! Something was afoot.
I left the door unopened, took up my weapons and raced up winding stairs to the upper levels. Wolves howled all around the castle now, but they were loudest at the rear. In a very little while I traced the uproar to the burning causeway, and arrived in time to see the bridge go crashing down, blazing into the back chasm. And there across the gap were Faethor's wolves in a pack, crowding the narrow ledge.
Behind them in the shadow of the cliff… was that the Ferenczy himself? The hairs on my neck stood erect. If it was him, he stood crookedly, like a queer bent shadow. Broken from his fall? I took up my crossbow but when I looked again — gone! Or perhaps he'd never been there. The wolves were real enough, however, and now the leader, a giant of a beast, stood at the rim measuring the gap.
It would be a leap of all of thirty feet, possible only if he had a clear run along the ledge. And even as I thought it, so the lesser wolves made way, shrank back into shadows, left the ledge clear. He ran back, turned, made his loping run and leaped — and mid-flight met my bolt, which sank directly into his heart. Dead, but still snarling his last snarl, he hit the rim of the opening and went tumbling into oblivion. And when I looked up, the rest of the pack had melted away.
But I knew that the Ferenczy would not give up that easily.
I went up onto the battlements, found jars up there full of oil and cauldrons seated on tilting gear. Setting fires in braziers under the cauldrons, I half-filled each one with oil and left them to simmer. And only then did I return to the locked room.
As 1 approached a hand, slender, female, wriggled in the hole in the panelling, tried desperately to reach and take hold of the key in the lock. What? A prisoner? A woman? But then I remembered what old Arvos had said about the Ferenczy's household: ‘Retainers? Serfs? He has none. A woman or two, perhaps, but no men.' Here was a seeming contradiction: if this woman was his servant, why was she locked in? For her safety while there was a stranger in the house? That seemed unlikely in a house like this.
For my safety?
An eye peered out at me; I heard a gasp and the hand was withdrawn. Without further pause I turned the key, kicked open the door.
There were two of ‘em, aye. And they'd been handsome enough women in their time.
‘Who… who are you?' One of them approached me with a curious half-smile. ‘Faethor did not tell us that there would be…‘ She floated closer, gazed upon me in open fascination. I stared back. She was wan as a ghost, but there was a fire in her sunken eyes. I looked about the room.
The floor had a covering of local weave; ancient and wormy tapestries hung on the walls; there were couches and a table. But there were no windows, and no light other than the yellow aura from a silver candelabrum on the table. The room was sparse, but sumptuous by comparison with the rest of the place. Safe, too.
The second woman was sprawled somewhat wantonly on one of the couches. She stared sulphurously upon me but I ignored her. The first drifted closer still. Stirring myself, I held her at bay with the point of my sword. ‘Move not at all, lady, or I'll spit you here and now!'
She turned wild in a moment, glowered at me and hissed between her needle teeth; and now the second woman rose like a cat from her couch. They faced me menacingly, but both were wary of my sword.
Then the first one spoke again, her voice hard and cold as ice: ‘What of Faethor? Where is he?'
‘Your master?' I backed out of the door. They were
vampires, obviously. ‘He's gone. You've a new master now — me!'
Without warning, the first one sprang at me. I let her come, then drove the pommel of my sword against the side of her head. She collapsed in my arms and I threw her aside, then yanked shut the door in the face of the second. I barred it, locked it and pocketed the key. Inside the room, the trapped vampire hissed and raged. I picked up her stunned sister, carried her to the dungeon and tossed her inside.
Ehrig came crawling. He had managed somehow to remove the thong from his neck, — which was white and puffy and looked sliced as if by a knife around its entire circumference. Similarly, his head at the back was strangely lumpy, deformed like a freak's or a cretin's. He could hardly speak and his manner was childlike in the way of simpletons. Perhaps I had damaged his brain, and the vampire in him had not yet corrected it.
‘Thibor!' he husked his amazement. ‘My friend, Thibor! The Ferenczy — did you kill him?'
‘Treacherous dog!' I kicked at him. ‘Here, amuse yourself with this.'
He fell upon the woman where she lay moaning. ‘You've forgiven me!' he cried.
‘Not now, not ever!' I answered. ‘I leave her here because she's one too many. Enjoy yourself while you may.' As I barred the door he had already begun to rip his filthy clothes off, hers too.
Now, climbing the spiralling steps, I heard the wolves again. Their song had a triumphant note to it. What now?
Like a madman I raced through the castle. The massive door in the foot of the tower was secure, and the causeway burned down — where would Faethor attempt his next assault? I went to the battlements — only just in time!
The air over the castle was full of tiny bats. I saw them against the moon, flitting in their myriads, their concerted voices shrill and piercing. Was that how the Ferenczy would come: flitting like a great bat, a stretchy blanket of flesh falling out of the night to smother me? I shrank down, gazed fearfully up into the vault of the night sky. But no, surely not; his fall had injured him and he would not yet be ready to tax himself so greatly; there must be some other route with which I was not familiar.
Ignoring the bats, which came down at me in waves, but not so close as to strike or interfere with me, I went to the perimeter wall and looked over. Why I did this I can't say, for it would take more than any mere man to climb walls as sheer as these. Fool that I was — the Ferenczy was no mere man!
And there he was: flat to the wall, making his way agonisingly slowly, like a great lizard, up the stonework. A lizard, aye, for his hands and feet were huge as banquet platters and sucked where they slapped the walls! Horrified to my roots, I stared harder in the dark. He had not yet seen me. He grunted quietly and his huge disc of a hand made a quagmire sound where it left the wall and groped upward. His fingers were long as daggers and webbed between. Hands like that would pull a man's flesh from his bones as if they were plucking a chicken!
