It was a sleepy group that took to the trail that day, but we had all lived through the night. This alone put the men in better spirits, and we covered much ground.
That night we again sat around the fire. I told the story of The Gazelle King, and The Enchanted Peacock, and The Little Man with No Name, each of them longer and more complicated than the one before. Everyone except the clerk Abdallah contributed something-Abdallah and the shepherd-boy, that is. The chief-clerk said repeatedly that he had never wasted his time on foolishness such as learning stories. We were understandably reluctant to press our self-preservation into such unwilling hands.
The Armenite boy, our guide, sat quietly all the evening and listened to the men yarning away in a tongue that was not his own. When the moon had risen through the treetops, the shadow returned and stood silently outside the clearing. I saw the peasant lad look up. He saw it, I know, but like Ibn Fahad and I, he held his silence.
The next day brought us two catastrophes. As we were striking camp in the morning, happily no fewer than when we had set down the night before, the local lad took the waterskins down to the river that threaded the bottom of the ravine. When a long hour had passed and he had not returned, we went fearfully down to look for him.
He was gone. All but one of the waterskins lay on the streambank. He had filled them first.
The men were panicky. 'The vampyr has taken him!' they cried.
'What does that foul creature need with a waterskin?' pointed out al-Salameh.
'He's right,' I said. 'No, I'm afraid our young friend has merely jumped ship, so to speak. I suppose he thinks his chances of getting back are better if he is alone.'
I wondered… I still wonder… if he made it back. He was not a bad fellow: witness the fact that he took only one waterbag, and left us the rest.
Thus, we found ourselves once more without a guide. Fortunately, I had discussed with him the general direction, and he had told Ibn Fahad and myself of the larger landmarks… but it was nevertheless with sunken hearts that we proceeded.
Later that day, in the early afternoon, the second blow fell.
We were coming up out of the valley, climbing diagonally along the steep side of the ravine. The damned Caucassian fogs had slimed the rocks and turned the ground soggy; the footing was treacherous.
Achmed, the older of the remaining pike-men, had been walking poorly all day. He had bad joints, anyway, he said; and the cold nights had been making them worse.
We had stopped to rest on an outcropping of rock that jutted from the valley wall; and Achmed, the last in line, was just catching up to us when he slipped. He fell heavily onto his side and slid several feet down the muddy slope.
Ibn Fahad jumped up to look for a rope, but before he could get one from the bottom of his pack the other soldier-named Bekir, if memory serves-clambered down the grade to help his comrade.
He got a grip on Achmed's tunic, and was just turning around to catch Ibn Fahad's rope when the leg of the older man buckled beneath him and he fell backward. Bekir, caught off his balance, pitched back as well, his hand caught in the neck of Achmed's tunic, and the two of them rolled end over end down the slope. Before anyone could so much as cry out they had both disappeared over the edge, like a wine jug rolling off a table-top. Just that sudden.
To fall such a distance certainly killed them.
We could not find the bodies, of course… could not even climb back down the ravine to look. Ibn Fahad's remark about burials had taken on a terrible, ironic truth. We could but press on, now a party of five-myself, Ibn Fahad, the under-vizier Walid, Abdallah the clerk, and young Fawn. I doubt that there was a single one of our number who did not wonder which of us would next meet death in that lonesome place.
Ah, by Allah most high, I have never been so sick of the sound of my own voice as I was by the time nine more nights had passed. Ibn Fahad, I know, would say that I have never understood how sick everyone becomes of the sound of my voice-am I correct, old friend? But I was tired of it, tired of talking all night, tired of racking my brain for stories, tired of listening to the cracked voices of Walid and Ibn Fahad, tired to sickness of the damp, gray, oppressive mountains.
All were now aware of the haunting shade that stood outside our fire at night, waiting and listening. Young Fawn, in particular, could hardly hold up his turn at tale-telling, so much did his voice tremble.
Abdallah grew steadily colder and colder, congealing like rendered fat. The thing which followed was no respecter of his cynicism or his mathematics, and would not be banished for all the scorn he could muster. The skinny chief-clerk did not turn out to us, though, to support the story-circle, but sat silently and walked apart. Despite our terrible mutual danger he avoided our company as much as possible.
The tenth night after the loss of Achmed and Bekir we were running out of tales. We had been ground down by our circumstances, and were ourselves become nearly as shadowy as that which we feared.
Walid al-Salameh was droning on about some ancient bit of minor intrigue in the court of the Emperor Darius of Persia. Ibn Fahad leaned toward me, lowering his voice so that neither Abdallah or Fawn-whose expression was one of complete and hopeless despair-could hear.
'Did you notice,' he whispered, 'that our guest has made no appearance tonight?'
'It has not escaped me,' I said. 'I hardly think it a good sign, however. If our talk no longer interests the creature, how long can it be until its thoughts return to our other uses?'
'I fear you're right,' he responded, and gave a scratchy, painful chuckle. 'There's a good three or four more days walking, and hard walking at that, until we reach the bottom of these mountains and come once more onto the plain, at which point we might hope the devil-beast would leave us.'
'Ibn Fahad,' I said, shaking my head as I looked across at Fawn's drawn, pale face, 'I fear we shall not manage…'
As if to point up the truth of my fears, Walid here stopped his speech, coughing violently. I gave him to drink of the waterskin, but when he had finished he did not begin anew; he only sat looking darkly, as one lost, out to the forest.
'Good vizier,' I asked, 'can you continue?'
He said nothing, and I quickly spoke in his place, trying to pick up the threads of a tale I had not been attending to. Walid leaned back, exhausted and breathing raggedly. Abdallah clucked his tongue in disgust. If I had not been fearfully occupied, I would have struck the clerk.
Just as I was beginning to find my way, inventing a continuation of the vizier's Darian political meanderings, there came a shock that passed through all of us like a cold wind, and a new shadow appeared at the edge of the clearing. The vampyr had joined us.
Walid moaned and sat up, huddling by the fire. I faltered for a moment but went on. The candle-flame eyes regarded us unblinkingly, and the shadow shook for a moment as if folding great wings.
Suddenly Fawn leaped to his feet, swaying unsteadily. I lost the strands of the story completely and stared up at him in amazement.
'Creature!' he screamed. 'Hell-spawn! Why do you torment us in this way? Why, why, why?'
Ibn Fahad reached up to pull him down, but the young man danced away like a shying horse. His mouth hung open and his eyes were starting from their dark- rimmed sockets.
'You great beast!' he continued to shriek. 'Why do you toy with us? Why do you not just kill me-kill us all, set us free from this terrible, terrible…'
And with that he walked forward-away from the fire, toward the thing that crouched at forest's edge.
'End this now!' Fawn shouted, and fell to his knees only a few strides from the smoldering red eyes, sobbing like a child.
'Stupid boy, get back!' I cried. Before I could get up to pull him back-and I would have, I swear by Allah's name-there was a great rushing noise, and the black shape was gone, the lamps of its stare extinguished. Then, as we pulled the shuddering youth back to the campfire, something rustled in the trees. On the opposite side of the campfire one of the near branches suddenly bobbed beneath the weight of a strange new fruit-a black fruit with red-lit eyes. It made an awful croaking noise.
In our shock it was a few moments before we realized that the deep, rasping sound was speech-and the words were Arabic!
'…It… was… you…' it said, '…who chose… to play the game this way…'
Almost strangest of all, I would swear that this thing had never spoken our language before, never even heard it until we had wandered lost into the mountains. Something of its halting inflections, its strange hesitations, made me guess it had learned our speech from listening all these nights to our campfire stories.
'Demon!' shrilled Abdallah. 'What manner of creature are you?!'
'You know… very well what kind of… thing I am, man. You may none of you know how, or why… but by now, you know what I am.'
'Why… why do you torment us so?!' shouted Fawn, writhing in Ibn Fahad's strong grasp.
'Why does the… serpent kill… a rabbit? The serpent does not… hate. It kills to live, as do I… as do you.'
Abdallah lurched forward a step. 'We do not slaughter our fellow men like this, devil-spawn!'
'C-c-clerk!' the black shape hissed, and dropped down from the tree. 'C-close your foolish mouth! You push me too far!' It bobbed, as if agitated. 'The curse of human ways! Even now you provoke me more than you should, you huffing… insect!
Enough!'
The vampyr seemed to leap upward, and with a great rattling of leaves he scuttled away along the limb of a tall tree. I was fumbling for my sword, but before I could find it the creature spoke again from his high perch.
'The young one asked me why I 'toy' with you. I do not. If I do not kill, I will suffer. More than I suffer already.
'Despite what this clerk says, though, I am not a creature without… without feelings as men have them. Less and less do I wish to destroy you.
'For the first time in a great age I have listened to the sound of human voices that were not screams of fear. I have approached a circle of men without the barking of dogs, and have listened to them talk.
'It has almost been like being a man again.'
'And this is how you show your pleasure?' the under-vizier Walid asked, teeth chattering. 'By k-k-killing us?'
'I am what I am,' said the beast. '… But for all that, you have inspired a certain desire for companionship. It puts me in mind of things that I can barely remember.
'I propose that we make a… bargain,' said the vampyr. 'A… wager?'
