Necroscope IV: Deadspeak

with us, make camp, eat and sleep in the ruins. And how would that be for a story to take back home to America, eh? Anyway, it's up to you.'

They brushed straw from their clothes, climbed into their packs and waved the driver of the cart farewell as he creaked from sight around a bend in the forest track. And then they too got underway. Randy Laverne uncapped a bottle of beer, took a swig and passed it to Vulpe, who used it to wash his mouth out.

'Almost there,' Armstrong sighed, gangling along pace for pace with the sprightly Gogosu. 'And if this place is half of what it's cracked up to be…'

'I'm sure it will be,' said Vulpe, quietly. And he frowned, for in fact he really was sure it would be.

'Well, we'll know soon enough, George,' said Laverne, his short legs hurrying to keep up.

And from some secret cave in the back of Vulpe's mind: Oh, yes. Soon now, my son. Soon now, Gheorrrghe…

At something less than five miles, the last leg of their journey wasn't much at all; in the previous week the Americans had trekked close to twenty times that distance. They got into Halmagiu in the middle of the afternoon, found lodgings for the following night (not for tonight because Gogosu had already talked them into spending it on the mountain), washed up, changed their footwear, and had a snack alfresco on the open wooden balcony of their guesthouse where it overlooked the village's main street.

'What you have to remember,' their guide had told them in an aside as they negotiated the price of their rooms, 'is that these people are peasants. They're not sophisticated like me and used to the ways of foreigners, city-dwellers and other weird types. They're more primitive, suspicious, superstitious! So let me do the talking. You're climbers, that's all. No, not even that, you're… ramblers! And we're not going walking up in the Zarundului but the Metalici.'

'What's the difference?' Vulpe asked him later, when they were eating. 'Between the Zarundului and the Metalici, I mean?'

The old hunter pointed north-west over the rooftops, to a serrated jaw of smoky peaks, gold-rimmed with sunlight. 'Them's the Metalici,' he said. 'The Zarundului are behind us. They're grey… always. Grey-green in the spring, grey-brown in the autumn, grey in the winter. And white, of course. The castle is right up on the tree line, backed up to a cliff. Aye, a cliff at its back and a gorge at its front. A keep, a stronghold. In the old days, one hell of a place to crack!'

'I meant,' Vulpe was patient, 'why shouldn't the locals know we're going there?'

Gogosu wriggled uncomfortably. 'Superstitious, like I said. They call those heights the 'Szgany Mountains', because the travelling folk are so respectful of them. The locals don't go climbing up there themselves, and they probably wouldn't like us doing it, neither.'

'Because of the ruins?'

Again Gogosu wriggled. 'Can't say, don't know, don't much care. But a couple of winters ago when I tried to shoot an old wolf up there… why, these people treated me like a leper! There are foxes in the foothills that raid the farms, but they won't hunt or trap 'em. They're funny that way, that's all. The grandfathers tell ghost stories to keep the young 'uns away, you know? The old wampir in his castle?'

'But they'll see us headed that way, surely?'

'No, for we'll skirt round.'

Vulpe was wary. 'I mean, we're not moving onto government property or something, are we? There isn't a military training area or anything like that up there, is there?'

'Lord, no!' Gogosu was getting annoyed now. 'It's like I said: stupid superstition, that's all. You have to remember: if a young 'un dies up here, and no simple explanation for it, they still put a clove of garlic in his mouth before they nail the lid down on him! Aye, and sometimes they do a lot more than that, too! So leave it be before you get me frightening myself, right?'

Seth Armstrong spoke up: 'I keep hearing this word Szgany. What's it mean?'

Gogosu didn't need an interpreter for that one. He turned to Armstrong and in broken English said, 'In the Germany is 'Zigeuner', da? Here is Szgany. The road-peoples.'

'Gypsies,' said Vulpe, nodding. 'My kind of people.' He turned and looked back into the dusty yellow interior of the inn's upper levels, looked into the rooms, across the stairwell and out through the rear wall. It was as if his gaze was unrestricted by the matter of the inn. Tilting his head back he 'looked' at the grey, unseen mountains of the Zarundului where they reared just a few miles away, and pictured them frowning back at him.

And thought to himself: Maybe the locals are right and there are places men shouldn't go.

And unheard (except perhaps as an expression of his own will, his own intent, which it was not) a chuckling, secretive, dark and sinister voice answered him: Oh, there are, my son. But you will, Gheorrrghe, you will…

The climb was easy at first. Almost 5.00 p.m. and the sun descending steadily towards the misted valley floor betwen Mount Codrului and the western extremity of the Zarandului range; but Gogosu was confident that they'd reach the ruins before twilight, find a place to camp inside a broken wall, get a fire going, eat and eventually sleep there in the lee of legends.

'I wouldn't do it on my own,' he admitted, picking his way up a stepped ridge towards a chimney in a crumbling buttress of cliff. 'Lord, no! But four of us, hale and hearty? What's to fear?'

Vulpe, the last in line, paused to translate and look around. The others couldn't see it but his expression was puzzled. He seemed to recognize this place. Deja vu? He let his companions draw away from him.

Armstrong, directly behind their guide, asked: 'Well, and what is there to fear?' He reached back to give Laverne a hand where he puffed and panted.

'Only one's own imagination,' said Gogosu, understanding the question from its modulation. 'For it's all too ready to conjure not only warrior-ghosts out of the past but a whole heap of mundane menaces from the present, too! Aye, the mind of man's a powerful force when he's on his own; there's plenty of scope up ahead for wild imaginings, I can tell you. But apart from that… in the winter you might observe the occasional wolf, wandering down here from the northern Carpatii.' His tone of voice contained a careless shrug. 'They're safe enough, the Grey Ones, except in packs.'

The old hunter paused at the base of the chimney, turning to see how the others were progressing where they laboured in his tracks.

But Vulpe had skirted the ridge and was moving along the base of the cliffs to a point where they cut back out of sight around a corner. 'Oh?' the old hunter hailed him. 'And where are you off to, then, Gheorghe?'

The young American looked up and back. His face was pale in the shadow of the cliff and his forehead furrowed in a frown of concentration. 'You're making hard work of it, my friend,' he called out, his voice echoing from crag to crag. 'Why climb when you can walk, eh? There's an old track here that's simplicity itself to follow. The way may be longer but it's faster, too — and a sight kinder to your hands and knees! I'll meet you where your route and mine come together again half-way up.'

'Where our routes — ?' Gogosu was baffled at first, then annoyed and not a little sarcastic. 'Oh, I see!' he yelled. 'And you've been this way before, eh?'

But Vulpe had already turned into the re-entry and out of sight. 'No,' his voice came echoing. 'It's just instinct, I suppose.'

'Huh!' Gogosu snorted. 'Instinct!' But then, as he started in to tackle the chimney, he gave a chuckle. 'Oh, let him go,' he said. 'He'll double back soon enough, when the track runs out and the shadows start to creep. Mark my words, it won't be long before he's seeing wolves in every shrub — and by God, how he'll hurry to catch up then!'

But he was wrong. An hour later when the way was steeper and the light beginning to fail, they reached the broad ledge of a false plateau and found Vulpe stretched out, chewing on a twig, waiting for them. He'd been there some time, it seemed. He nodded when he saw them, said: 'The rest of the way's easy.'

Gogosu scowled and Anderson merely returned Vulpe's nod, but Laverne was hot and angry. Taking a bit of a chance there, weren't you, George?' he growled. 'What if you'd got lost?'

Vulpe seemed surprised by the testiness in his friend's voice. 'Lost? I… I didn't even consider it. Fact is, I seem to be something of a natural at this sort of thing.'

Nothing more was said and they all rested for a few minutes. Then Gogosu stood up. 'Well,' he said, 'half an