so five hundred years fleeting by, for I was forgetting the glories just as a grandfather forgets his own infancy, until I had forgotten - almost. Until I was forgotten - almost! And what then, when there was nothing left of me but a word in a book, and when the book itself crumbled to dust? Why, then surely I would have no reason to be at all! And perhaps glad of it. And then you came, a mere boy, but a boy whose name... was... Dragosaaaniiii...
As the voice faded so the wind sprang up again, the two merging and dying away together. Dragosani thought of what was to be done and shivered in his bed. But this was his chosen course, this his destiny. And fearing that he had lost the other, he called out urgently:
'Old one, you of the Dragon-banner, of the bat and the dragon and the devil - are you there?'
Where else would I be, Dragosani? the voice seemed to mock. Yes, 1 am here. I quicken in my forsaken place, in this earth which was my life. I thought I was forgotten, but a seed was sown and blossomed, and you remembered and knew me. And by your name, so I knew you, Dragosaaaniiii...
Tell me again!' Dragosani was eager. Tell me how it was. My mother, my father, their coming together. Tell me it.'
Twice you have heard it, the voice in his head sighed. And would you hear it again? Do you hope to seek them out? Then I cannot help you. Their names were of no importance to me; I knew them not, knew nothing of them except the heat of their blood. Aye, and of that I tasted the merest drop, a small pink splash. But afterwards there was that of them in me, and that of me in them - which came out in you. Don't ask after them, Dragosani. I am your father ...
'Would you walk on earth, and breathe, and slake your thirst again, old one? Would you slaughter your enemies and drive them back as before - as your ancestors before you - and this time as your own man, not merely a sellsword to ungrateful Dracul princelings? If you would, then trade with me. Tell me of my parents.'
Sometimes a bargain sounds more like a threat, Drago sani. And would you threaten me? The voice hissed in his head like ice on the strings of an ill-tuned violin. You dare speak to me - you dare remind me - of Vlads, Radus, Draculs and Mirceas? You call me a sellsword? Boy, in the end my so-called 'masters' feared me more than the Turk himself! Which is why they weighed me down in iron and silver and buried me in this secret place, in these same cruciform hills which I had defended with my blood. For them I fought, aye - for the sake of their 'Holy cross', their 'Christianity' - but now I fight to be free of it. Their treachery is my pain, their cross the dagger in my heart!
' A dagger which I can draw for you! Your enemies have come again, old devil, and none to drive them out save you. And there you lie, impotent! The crescent of the Turk is grown into the sickle of another, and what he cannot cut down he hammers flat. I am a Wallach no less than you, whose blood is older than Wallachia itself. Nor will I suffer the invader. Well, and now there's a new invader and our leaders are puppets once more. So how is it to be? Are you content, or would you fight again? The bat, the dragon, the devil - against the hammer and the sickle!'
(A sigh, whispering with the wind in the rafters.) Very well, I will tell you how it was, and how you ... became.
It was... springtime. I could feel it in the soil. The growing time. The year... but what are years to me? A quarter-century ago, anyway.
'It was 1945,' said Dragosani. 'The war would soon be at an end. The Szgany were here, fled into the mountains for their refuge, as they've done right down the centuries. Refugees from the German war machine, they were here in their thousands. And the Transylvanian plateau shielded them, as always. The Germans had been rounding them up - Szgany, Romany, Szekely, Gypsy, call them what you will - all over Europe, for slaughter along with the Jews in the death-camps.