had forgotten the prime rule of the Wamphyri: do not be seen to be too different. Be strong, but not overpowering. Be lustful, but not a legendary satyr. Command respect, but not devotion. And above all do nothing to cause your peers, or those who have the power to consider themselves your superiors, to become afraid of you.
But I had been burned by Greek fire and it had merely infuriated me. And rapacious? For every man I had killed I had taken a woman, as many as thirty in a day and a night! My Szgany looked to me as a sort of god — or devil. And finally… finally, of course, the Crusaders proper had come to fear me. More than all matters of ‘conscience', more than all the murder and rape and blasphemies they had committed, my deeds had given them bad dreams.
Aye, and they were sore in need of a scapegoat.
I believe that even without Innocent's pious protestations and hand-flutterings and cries of horror, still I would have been persecuted. Anyway, this was the way of it. The Pope had been enraged by the sack of Zara, at first delighted by Constantinople, then aghast when he heard of the atrocities. He now washed his hands of the Crusade in its entirety. Far from helping true Christian soldiers in their fight against Islam, it seemed its only aim had been to conquer Christian territories. And as for the blasphemies and generally atrocious behaviour of the Crusaders in Constantinople's holy places.
I say again: they needed a scapegoat, and no need to look too far for one. A certain ‘bloodthirsty mercenary recruited in Zara' would fit the bill nicely. In secret communiques Innocent had ordered that those directly responsible for ‘gross acts of excessive and unnatural cruelty' must gain ‘neither glory nor rich rewards nor lands' for their barbarism. Their names should no more be spoken by good men and true but ‘struck forever out of the records'. All such great sinners were to be offered ‘neither respect nor high regard', for by their acts they had shown that they were ‘worthy only of contempt'. Hah! It was more than excommunication — it was a death warrant!
Excommunication… I had taken the Cross in Zara as a matter of expediency. It meant nothing. A cross is a symbol, nothing more. Soon, however, I would come to hate that symbol.
We had a large house on the outskirts of the sacked city, my Szgany and I. It had been a palace or some such, was now filled with wine and loot and prostitutes. The other mercenary groups had turned over their plunder to their Crusader masters for the prearranged split, but I had not. For we had not yet been paid! Perhaps I was in error there. Certainly our loot was an extra incentive for Crusader treachery.
They came at night, which was their mistake. I am — or was — Wamphyri; night was my element. Some vampire premonition had warned me that all was not well. I was awake and on the prowl when the attack came. I roused up my men and they set to. But it was no good; we were heavily outnumbered and, taken by surprise, my men were still half-asleep. When the place began to burn I saw that I couldn't win. Even if I beat off all of these Crusaders, they formed only a fraction of the total body. They had probably diced with ten other equal parties for the privilege of killing and robbing me. Also, if they had guessed what I was — and the fire suggested that they had — quite obviously my situation was untenable.
I took gold and a great many gemstones and fled into the darkness. On my way I carried off one of my attackers with me. He was a Frenchman, only a lad, and I made a quick end of it, for I had not time to tarry. Before he died, though, he told me what it was all about. From that day to this I have loathed the cross and all who wear it, or live in its shadow or under its influence.
Of my Szgany, not a man of them survived to follow me out of that place; but I later learned that two captives had been taken for questioning. As it was I stood off and watched the blaze from afar. And since the inferno was ringed about by Crusaders, I could only suppose that they assumed I had died in the flames. So be it — I would not disillusion them.
And now I was alone and a long way from home. Well, hadn't I desired to see the world?
Now, I have said I was a long way from home. In miles on the ground this statement is seen to be far from accurate. But where indeed was my home? I could hardly return to Hungary, not for some little time. Wallachia was no place for me, and my old castle in the Khorvaty, looking down on Russia, was in ruins. What, then, was I to do? Where to go? Ah, but the world is a wide place!
To detail my adventures from that time forward would take too long. I shall merely outline my deeds and travels, and you must forgive or fill in for yourself any great gaps or leaps in time.
North was out of the question; likewise west; I headed east. It was 1204. Need I remind you of a singular emergence in Mongolia just two years later? Of course not, his name was Temujin — later Genghis Khan! With a party of Uighurs I joined him and helped subdue and unite the last of the rowdy Mongol tribes, until all Mongolia was finally united. I proved myself a capable warlord and he showed me some respect. With some small effort I was able to change my features until I looked the part; that is to say I willed my vampire flesh into a new mould. The Khan knew that I was not a Mongol, of course, but at least I was acceptable. And later he would have many mercenaries in his command, so that my participation was in no way a rare thing.
I was with him against the Chin, when we penetrated the Great Wall, and after his death I was there to see the total obliteration of the Chin Empire. I passed my ‘loyalty' down to Genghis's grandson, Batu. I could have offered my services to other Mongol Khans, but Batu's objective was Europe! It was one thing to return a man alone, but another to go back as a general in a Mongol army!
In the winter of 1237—8, in a lightning campaign, we smashed the Russian principalities. In 1240 we took Kiev by storm and burned it to ashes. From there we struck at Poland and Hungary. Only the death of the Great Khan Ogedei in 1241 saved Europe in its entirety; there were disputes about the succession and the westward campaigns were stalled.
Later, it was time for The Fereng, as I was known, to ‘die' again. I obtained permission to journey to an ambiguous homeland far in the West; my ‘son' would join Hulegu in his push against the Assassins and the Caliphate. As Fereng the Black, Son of The Fereng, under Hulegu, I assisted in the extermination of the Assassins and was there at the fall of Baghdad in 1258. Ah, but a little more than two years later, at Am Jalut in the so-called Holy Land, we were delivered a crushing defeat by the Mamelukes; the turning point for the Mongols had come.
In Russia Mongol rule would continue to the end of the fourteenth century, but ‘rule' implies peace and my taste for war had grown insatiable. I stuck it out forty years more, then parted company with the Mongols and sought action elsewhere.
I fought for Islam! I was now an Ottoman, a Turk! Aha! What it is to be a mercenary, eh? Yes, I became a ghazi, a Moslem Warrior, fighting against the polytheists, and for nearly two centuries my life was one great unending river of blood and death! Under Bayezid, Wallachia became a vassal state which the Turks called Eflak. I could have returned then and sought out Thibor, who had moved with his Szekely into the mountains of Transylvania, but I was busy campaigning elsewhere. By the middle of the fifteenth century my chance had passed me by; the boundaries of the Ottoman state at the accession of Mehemmed II were shrinking. In 1431 Sigismund the Holy Roman Emperor had invested VIad II of Wallachia with the Order of the Dragon — licence to destroy the infidel Turk. And who was VIad's instrument in this ‘holy' work? Who was his war-weapon? Thibor, of course!
Of Thibor's deeds, strangely, I heard with no small measure of pride. He butchered not only the infidel Turk but Hungarians, Germans, and other Christians in their thousands. Ah, he was a true son of his father! If only he had not been disobedient. Alas, (for him) but disobedience to me was not his only failing; like myself at the end of my Crusader adventure, he had not practised the caution of the Wamphyri. He was adored by the Szekely but set himself on a level with his superiors, the Wallachian princes, and his excesses had made him notorious. He was feared throughout the land. In short, he had in every way brought himself into prominence. A vampire may not be prominent, not if he values his longevity.
But Thibor was wild, demented in his cruelties! Vlad the (so called) Impaler, Radu the Handsome, and Mircea the Monk (whose reign was so short) had all tasked him with the protection of Wallachia and the chastisement of its enemies; tasks in which he delighted, at which he excelled. Indeed, the Impaler, one of history's favourite villains, suffers undeservedly: he was cruel, aye, but in fact he has been named for Thibor's deeds! Like my name, Thibor's has been struck, but the stark terror of his deeds will live forever.
Now let me get on. When I had lived too long with the Turks, finally I deserted their cause — which was crumbling, as all causes must in the end — and returned to Wallachia. The time was well chosen. Thibor had gone too far; Mircea had recently acceded to the throne and he feared his demon Voevod mightily. This was the moment I had so long awaited.
Crossing the Danube, I put out Wamphyri thoughts ahead of me. Where were my gypsies now? Did they still
