Necroscope II Wamphyri(Vampyri) - By Brian Lumley Page 0,107
what I wanted and that he must help me. Together we tightly bound and gagged the women, dumping them in one corner of the dungeon. Then, though he protested loudly, I also bound and gagged Ehrig and put him with the women. Finally, I cut open the rabbits and threw their crimson carcasses down on the black soil where the flags were torn up.
Then it was a matter of waiting, but not for long. In a little while a tentacle of leprous flesh came to explore the source of the fresh blood; came groping up through the crumbly soil, pushing it aside, and in a trice I took what I wanted. I left Ehrig and the women tied up, barred the door on them, and went up into the base of the tower. Above the dungeon the steps wound about a central stone pillar. I broke up furniture, piled the pieces around this pillar. I scavenged through the castle, breaking furniture wherever I found it and sharing the wood between the towers. Then I poured oil on all the timbers of the battlements, in the hall and rooms where they spanned the gorge, down all the stairwells. At last I was done, and the work had taken me half-way through the morning.
I left the castle with my loot, walked out a little way from it and looked at it again, one last time, then returned and set a fire in the open door and on the drawbridge. And never looking back, I started out to retrace my steps to Moupho Aide Ferenc Yaborov.
At midday I met my five remaining Wallachs come to find me. They saw me coming down the cliff-hugging path and waited for me in the stony depression at its base. 'Hallo, Thibor!' the senior man greeted me when I joined them. He looked beyond me. 'Ehrig and Vasily, they are not with you?'
'They are dead.' I jerked my head towards the peaks. 'Back there.' They looked, saw the column of white smoke reaching like some strange mushroom into the sky. 'The house of the Ferenczy,' I told them, 'which I have burned.'
Then I looked at them more sternly. 'Why did you wait so long before coming to look for me? How long has it been, five, six weeks?'
'Those damned gypsies, the Szgany!' their spokesman growled. 'When we awoke, the morning after the three of you left, the village was all but deserted. Only women and children left. We tried to find out what was happening; no one seemed to know, or they weren't saying. We waited two days, then set out after you. But the missing Szgany menfolk were waiting along the way. Five of us and more than fifty of them. They blocked the way, and they had the advantage of good positions in the rocks.' He shrugged uncomfortably, tried not to look embarrassed. 'Thibor, we'd have been of use to no one dead!'
I nodded, spoke quietly: 'And yet now you have come?'
'Because they are gone.' He shrugged again. 'When they stopped us, we went back down to their so-called "village". Yesterday morning, the women and kids started to drift off in ones and twos, small parties here and there. They wouldn't speak and looked miserable as sin, as if they were in mourning, or something! At sun-up today the place was empty, except for one old grandad chief - a "prince", he calls himself - his crone and a couple of grandchildren. He wasn't saying anything, and anyway he looks half simple. So, I came up the trail alone, sticking close to cover, and discovered that all the men had gone, too. Then I called up these lads to come and look for you. 'Truth to tell, we'd long thought you were a goner!'
'I might well have been,' I answered, 'but I'm not. Here - , I tossed him a small leather sack, 'carry this. And you - , I gave my loot to another, 'you burden yourself with this. It's heavy and I've carried it far enough. As for the job we came to do: it's done. Tonight we stay in the village; tomorrow it's back to Kiev to see a lying, cheating, scheming Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich!'
'Ugh!' The spokesman held out his sack at arm's length. 'There's a creature in here. It moves!'
I chuckled darkly. 'Aye, handle it carefully - and tonight put it in a box, sack and all. But don't sleep with it next to you. .