Necroscope - The Lost Years, Vol II Part 17

Clarke sat up straighten and sighed. 'All right, Ben, 111 tell you. But since you expect straight answers from me, first let me ask you something. Do you really think that if you or I or any one of us should decide to leave the Branch it would be as easy as that? I mean, like snapping your fingers? What, you should be allowed to walk out of here - knowing all we've done, something of what we still might do, and everything we're capable of doing; with all the weird stuff you have seen and still got stuck in your head - and no questions asked?' Trask saw it at once. 'We "fixed" him,' he said, and his jaw jutted a very little. 'How was it done?'

'Ben,' Darcy said, Think it over, will you? Without getting too excited? We're not just talking about an ordinary man or talent here. There are no ordinary talents, not in E-Branch. But we are talking about the most extraordinary talent of all - the Necroscope, Harry Keogh. He can go ... anywhere, instantly! He talks to ... to dead 163 people, for G.o.d's sake! Of which there are a Great Majority who'll do just about a nything for him. And we could just let him walk? Well, maybe we could, but there are others higher up the ladder who couldn't'

'How was it done?' 'Ben,' Darcy was reaching the end of his teth er. Tm the on e who's had to live with it Why can't you leave it at that? Put it this way: this was the soft option...'

For a long moment there was silence, until Trask exploded, 'I don't believe it!' But the trouble was he did, because he of all men knew it was the truth.

'We recruited him, remember? Keenan Gormley recruited him. And if he could do it nicely, then someone else might try to do it nasty. And anyway, it's no big deal,' Darcy felt li ke he was lying, but had no choice. 'Harry's lost nothing, except he just can't talk about it anymore. He can still do his thing, but no one else is ever going to get to know about it.'

And now Trask understood. 'Hypnotism!' he said.

And Darcy nodded. The soft option. But still, and as you yourself pointed out I've worried about it ever since.'

And Trask saw the truth of that, too. 'If s been on your shoulders like a tangible weight'

'An extra weight' Darcy answere d. 'A few extra ou nces on top of the ton or so that's already there.'

'You knew it was wrong - or that it wasn't right - and I sensed it in you. You felt that you'd lied to Harry...'

'... No,' Darcy said. 'But that I hadn't told him the whole truth? Yes.'

The reason I felt it was because it wasn't you. The moment Harry's name entered a conversation, you didn't read quite right'

'All right so I'm guilty!' Darcy snapped. 'And what about you, if or when it's your turn to run the show? Do you think it will be any easier for you? With your talent? Well it won't be. Ifll be h.e.l.l, Ben!'

The other thought about it and said, 'And there's no thing we can do about it? We can't put it right?'

'No ... yes! Not for Harry, no. But for me? You've already done it Ben. A load shared is a burden halved.

Now you'll have to carry it, too. But you'll get used to it And at least well be able to tell ourselves that Harry's still alive!'

For a moment they glared at each other, then gradually relaxe d.

.. and Darcy's interco m came cracklingly alive. 'Sir?'

Darcy thumbed the Duty Officer's b.u.t.ton. Tes?'

'Minister Responsible. Urgent Do you want it on screen?"

'Yes. Thanks.'

A moment later his desk screen came alive, flickered for a second r 164.or two, got angry with itself in a crackle of static, then snapped into sharp focus. It displayed this legend: Origination: MinRes. Destination: Director INTESR Duty Officer INTESE FOR YOUR EYES ONLY! Message follows...

Trask had come round to Darcy's side of the desk. 'I better not look, right?' The way he said it, Darcy felt the edge of sarcasm in his voice. And: 'Oh, don't be f.u.c.king silly!' he snapped.

The message followed: For public consumption (Press, BBC, ITV, etc.) 'A treasure-seeker with a metal-detector has found a World War II bomb in Hyde Park. The area has been secured and all buildings in the immediate vicinity are being vacated...'

Mr Clarke: this isn't as it's made out to be. A man from my office has been fully briefed. He and other experts are on the scene right now. Take some of your best men and get down to Hyde Park. I shall need your first impressions and best opinions.

Good luck -MinRes Necroscope: The Lost Yean - Vol. II 165.

?' as a PS 'Good Luck?" Trask murmured. And: "What the h.e.l.l., printed itself under the message: Mr Clarke, in the event that I or any other Minister should be required, the usual Whitehall telephone numbers will not suffice. You may contact me on: Followed by a number. But there was something about the number that Darcy Clarke didn't like. Or if not him, his talent He waited until the screen cleared, punched in the number and queried it. The computer asked him for his security clearance, the first time that had ever happened!

He punched that in, too, and finally got his answ er: An allegedly 'decommissioned' nuclea r bunker in Uxbridge, fifteen miles out of the city.

'Christ!' Darcy gasped, as he felt the short hairs rising on the back of his neck. 'It's clean underpants time again!'

That bad?' Trask's query - his tone of voice - said it all: the other stuff was over and done with and he was Darcy's strong right arm again.

I.

IV.

RADU: HE DREAMS ON Radu dreamed his olden, recurrent but frequently fading dreams of blood. As ever, he strove to restructure and reinstate them in the eye of a memory occasionally filmed over by six centuries of sleep, his undead hibernation. He dreamed of ages past and the life he'd known then, and of the many lives he'd consumed since then. Crimson dreams of his beginnings in a vampire world; of his conversion to something other than a man; of his eventual banishment into a new, entirely different world, and his everlasting and soon to be on- going bloodwar against those who had dared to rape and ruin what little he had loved.

Less than vivid, his dreams, unless they were recounted, reinforced, revisited over and over to bring them into nightmare definition in Radu's yet more nightmarish mind. For these were things that he desired to remember forever. They were his one recourse, his only means of keeping his hatred alive while he waited out his time in a resin tomb, sleeping but not dead.

He recalled names from the swirling mists of a far-distant past: Giorga, Ion, and Lexandru Zirescu; and the Ferenczys, Lagula and Rakhi. In another time and world, the Zirescus had been his direst enemies, and the Ferenczys were Olden Lords of Starside. Now they were all long dead, and Radu relished fond memories of how he had dealt with them ... and thoughts of how he would next deal with any survivor or descendant when once more he was up and abroad in a changed and ever-changing world. For the dog-Lord knew that there were such descendants, definitely...

... Abroad in the world, aye. And indeed, upon a time, he and his various packs, his pups, had been 'abroad'.

Sufficient to start, or certainly to reinforce, legends as old as mankind itself of the werewolf and the vampire - or of both. For Radu Lykan was both -Wamphyri!

167 His dreaming mind went back, back, back... to how it had been in those earliest days of his coming here...

In Starside he had been found guilty of treason. As punishment, Shaitan the Unborn, self-styled High Magistrate of all the Wamph yri, had had Radu and a handful of his retainers - a lieutenant or two and a few thralls - thrown into the so- called h.e.l.l-lands Gate, from which no one ever returned.

It had been like a long, slo w fall into some weird white h.e.l.l, and for a time Radu and the others had thought that this was all there was to it: to drift downward (or sideways, or up? ... the Gate was a strange place!) forever, or until starvation put paid to them and they shrivelled to husks. But that wasn't to be die way of it The real h.e.l.l began where the Gate opened into this world, in a subterranean cavern carved by an underground river. Lit by the glare of the Gate, the cavern's narrow ledges were cold and damp; the river was in flood and rushed through its borehole in a frenzy of black water. Along the course of the river where it left the cave, the walls bottlenecked and there was scarcely a gap between the water and the ceiling.

Black, rushing water: the Wamphyri feared it! Not for any superst.i.tious reason (for contrary to certain myths, they swam as well as any creature); but deprived of air and light, buffetted against stone walls, and crushed by unfathomed depths, how long may a man or even a vampire survive? Flesh softens, fails, and is sloughed away. And when body and brains fall apart, all that remains is naked bone, to be broken up and rounded to pebbles. Perhaps this was the nature of these h.e.l.l-lands.

Radu had a choice, but not much of one: brave the rushing waters, or stay safe on a ledge or crammed in some crevice till he had no strength to move but got cemented in place by layers of dripstone. And: 'Do as you see fit,' he had told the others with him. This river may run downhill forever... in which case it's goodbye Radu! But somewhere out there is moonlight, which I would feel silvering my neck again - or my ruff if the moon is full!' And with that he had jumped from the ledge and been borne under.

The other Lords and their men had followed suit, likewise Radu's lieutenants and a few thralls; some of whom survived to surface in Dacia near a Roman barter camp on the Danuvius. The year was AD 371, and the moon was indeed full. From which time forward the place would always be known as Radujevac...

That had been a time! (Radu's dreams sped fleet before the eye of his mind). Night-skirmishes with legionnaires along the Danube and in168.

169 the Dacian hamlets; piracy on the merchant shipping; blood-feasts by the light of the full moon. And as for the men of that era: they'd been nai ve as children when first Radu and the others came among them. Their sciences were young, superst.i.tions many, and their blood sweet as any in Sunside in the far vampire world of Radu's origin. But as compared with the Szgany of Sunside: their numbers were vast, then-races diverse, their courage unbelievable and their skills in battle phenomenal!

Still, in the first hundred to two hundred years the werewolf had flourished... and the true vampire! For the dog-Lord Radu was not the only Lord of the Wamphyri banished by Shaitan. Indeed, several great rivals had come through the Gate with him, at or about the same time. Such as Nonari 'the Gross' Ferenczy, and the Drakul brothers, Karl and Egon. In Starside the Drakuls had been Radu's allies against Shaitan; here, they were simply rivals. And as for Nonari: Nonari had made a blood-oath: to wipe out the dog-Lord and every last trace of him for the alleged 'murders'

of his father Lagula and his uncle Rakhi. But in Radu Lykan's eyes these were never murders but the putting right of a great wrong; for Rakhi and Lagula had been members of a foul Szgany gang who had raped his sister Magda of innocence and life. Hah! The Ferenczys were survivors no more -except in Lagula's son, Nonari. But savage as that one's blood vow had been, it was equalled and even surpa.s.sed by Radu's. For him there'd be neither peace nor respite until the very name Ferenczy was forgotten as if it never existed.

Their blood-feud came with them into Earth; it might have been settled there and then, in Dacia on the banks of the Danube. But this was a new world and strange, and survival was ever the first rule of the Wamphyri.

So the Drakuls went up into the stony mountains (later the Carpathians), to find or build their aeries; Nonari fled east from Radu's wrath and took a new name; the dog-Lord crossed the river with his small pack, spread out into the lands around, and eventually became an adventurer and mercenary in a war-torn world.

But while that Cla.s.sical World was vast beyond the dreams of any vampire Lord who had ever been, still it could never be big enough...

Radu's life (and with it the history of a world) pa.s.sed in pageant over the buffed and slippery boards of his memory.

The history of a world. Of wars. And of men.

The Romans. But the Empire was on the wane, at least where the dog-Lord and the others came forth. Aye, for the Goths were coming, who were the merest harbingers of what else was coming! Such wars, such battles, such blood!

But... h.e.l.l-lands? Ah no! It had been more like some Wamphyri heaven... for a time. But already Radu had noted how men reacted to the presence of the Wamphyri: fearfully at first, in a world rife with superst.i.tion - but then they fought back! For while men may suffer their lands to be stolen, their wives seduced away and their children eaten, when finally there is nothing left then there's nothing to lose. Unlike Sunside's Szgany, not all of these men of Earth were farmers or hunter-gatherers. Great armies of warrior tribesmen were sweeping the world, and sweeping all b efore them. And as for fear of the Wamphyri: Frequently these eastern invaders had not even known they went up against vampires; they were merely murdering rich Dacian landowners in tiieir gloomy castles, or hairy halfling creatures in foothill keeps, caverns and lairs. Also, these warrior hordes knew how to destroy their enemies: how a lance or arrow through the heart would kill a man, and how his head on a lance would guarantee that he was dead! Then how to reduce his castle and its contents to ashes, until nothing remained. Such was the way of the barbarian warrior, by no means reserved for the Wamphyri. But did these methods work against the Wamphyri? Be sure they did.

Indeed they were the only ones that could! The stake, the sword, the fire... And because of the times - times of change, tumult and crisis - the legend and fact of the Wamphyri, of the blood-crazed vampire and werewolf, was almost eradicated. What need for monstrous myths in a world that was in reality a bloodbath? Forty years after Radu's advent the Visigoths had sacked Rome itself! And forty- five years later it had fallen again, to the Vandals; except then Radu had been with the Vandals. For like eve ry vampire Lord before him he was unable to resist blood - certainly not in such copious amounts.

War, to which Radu was drawn like a moth to the flame, and which singed him much the same. Or if not the wars, the commanders he fought under, who were treacherous to a fault. But suck wars to be warred as nothing conceived by even the mightiest of the old Starside Lords! And down all the decades and centuries, the dog-Lord was a b.l.o.o.d.y mercenary washed hither and to by the red tides of conquest. Gifted to some degree in oneiromancy, Radu used his dreams to scry on future battles. By this means he would often know in advance which side to join. Likewise, he stayed alert for portents and signs of those olden enemies who came through the h.e.l.l-lands Gate with him. And time and again he cursed himself that he'd not dealt with them then, when they were at their weakest But then, he had been at his weakest, too.

And naive? Aye, he'd been that To have sold his services to warlords, and think he would actually get paid and accepted as their equal.

170.Gaeseric of the Vandals had been the first to use and misuse him. After the sack of Rome, Radu had made his camp in the Colli Albani twelve miles out of the fallen city. Of course it was necessary to keep his 'men'

from the common soldiery; they were not only mercenaries and guerrillas but moon-children; he knew that fraternization could only lead to discovery, a nd one of the prime tenets of the vampir e was that longevity was synonymous with anonymity. If men should guess what Radu was they would do away with him and his at once! And because of the dog-Lord's preference for night-fighting by the light of the moon, Gaeseric had already dubbed him 'Radu, Hound of Night.' And so it were best that the full extent of his wolfishness remained a secret Be that as it may, still Gaeseric had tricked him, turned on him. For what was he after all but a scurvy, hairy mercenary with a handful of howling berserks, like wolves of war? But the city had fallen now and Radu and his lot had been paid off. And having paid him in gold - having let him take women, wine, and other booty out of the city- ... By now he'd be drunk up in the hills, and all that gold gone to waste.

Or perhaps not.

By means of a lie - an alleged counterattack by a fleet of the Eastern Empire - the dog-Lord's forces were split into two contingents and dispatched to 'defensive positions,' where Vandal ambushes reduced his men to ten out of a hundred and fifty. His women were ravished and slain, his gold stolen, his den in the Colli Albani destroyed. But Radu and his handful had survived to head north for the Appenino heights that stretched the full length of Italia. In a land awash in Vandals, the rugged mountains would be the safest route out.

As for the treacherous Gaeseric: the dog-Lord must add a second blood-oath to his list. And where the Vandals as a race were concerned... from that time forward Radu would always be on the lookout for a way to take his revenge...

Fleeing Italy, Radu took his time; took his much-reduced band back to the Danube, then east through the woods and mountains, and eventually down into familiar Dacian territories. This was barbarian country now, but south of the river the people were mainly Christian. Radu had only one religion: blood! The various faiths and superst.i.tions of locals and invaders alike made little or no difference to him, except it was safer to journey among the Christians.

Finally he headed north again, into the mountains of what would much later become Wallachia. For as in Italy, he believed that in taking the high ground he'd be secure from the tides of war washing Necroscope: The Lost Yean - Vol. II 171 all around. He needed some time to think and formulate his plans.

On his way from Rome to Dacia he had 'acc.u.mulated' monies from Roman citizens fleeing the vandalism, and from small parties of the Vandals themselves still scathing in the land around. And on the Danube there'd been a last handful of Roman travellers and traders. Now, since for the time being the do g-Lo rd had had en ough of war, he decided to put his gold to use.

Thus in the year ad 467, he and the pack wintered down in what would be their lair for the next sixty years: a great cave in the mountains of western Moldavia. He employed refugees from the Moldavian plains, which were still suffering under sporadic attacks from Asiatic warriors on horseback, to make his crag or aerie habitable. And he recruited (in his way) the strongest of these workers for his lieutenants.

And because day by day, year by year, fresh refugees were fleeing the warfare, climbing the mountains, reduced to scavenging in the heights, there was a steady turnover of workers and no lack of ... provisions.

Also, there was never any trickling away of Radu's gold, which he would steal back from anyone foolish enough to attempt desertion. And while work was in progress to make the cavern liveable, he was not remiss in seeing to its defences; he disguised its appearance externally, until it was simply a part of the crags all around.

It took time, even years, before Wolfscrag was finished to Radu's satisfaction, following which he had no more use for his workers from the Moldavian steppe. Or at best - or worst - only one more use...

During all of this time the dog-Lord and his men had gone without their 'comforts': good wine and woman- flesh, which even as mercenaries under entirely human commanders they had come to expect as their right.

No one ever grumbled, however, for Radu was known to deal with complaints in short order. He did understand the problems, though, for he shared them equally with his lieutenants and thralls.

There were now trappers in the mountains; Radu killed or recruited them, and took their women for his own.

And from now on, any who entered that region of the Moldavian heights would suffer the same fate. And now Wolfscrag was more truly a home, or an aerie, for him and his.

Earlier, aware that the Huns had had the run of the steppe for decades and wondering if their supremacy was still holding, Radu had sent scouts east to discover the state of things. Others had been sent west along the twin spurs of the Carpathians, and spies into various makeshift hamlets clinging to the flanks of the mountains not far removed from Wolfscrag.

172.Eventually these scouts returned; the dog-Lord learned how the ramshackle hamlets of Moldavian refugees and the more distant Carpathian villages were ripe for conquest. The people were pacifists, isolationists who had cut themselves off completely from Dacia's war-torn regions and the great battlefields under the mountains.

Radu couldn't say he blamed them, but in any case hi s intentions didn't run to conquest - no t yet, anyway. Or at best a very subtle conquest. Instead he would offer these people his services as a mercenary warrior, a Voevod against who- or whatever might brave these mountains to attack them. And in fifty more years he did just that.

But as well as hard information, his spies and scouts had brought back rumours, too. One of them had heard it that a Ferenczy was in league with the Vandals!

Good luck to him, whoever he was, be it Nonari the Gross - if he yet lived - or an alleged egg-son, one Belos Pheropzis. For if that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Gaeseric dealt as badly with all of his mercenaries as he had dealt with Radu... well, that was at least one Ferenczy that the dog-Lord needn't bother to hunt down ...!

Meanwhile, in the twin spurs of the Western Carpathians, the Drakuls had gained apparently impregnable footholds. Throwing caution to the wind - ignoring their own tenet that longevity is synonymous with anonymity - they ruled openly and by terror. People knew of them , and their wor ks. True vampires, they flew - and slew, and converted - by night Radu had sent spies to seek them out and learn the locations of their aeries; his men never returned. That should have been warning enough of Drakul superiority, but...

Radu was safe in Wolfscrag. Or so he reckoned.

But eventually Drakul incursions into territory that Radu considered his own b ecame too much and he determined to strike back. They ha d many advantages. Masters of metamorphism, they could shape their bodies for flying. Long-established in their places, their aeries were allegedly impregnable.

But they had some disadvantages, too. Children of the night, they could not go out in daylight; every morning must find them safe in their beds of soil out of Starside. And they were very well aware of the dog-Lord's ruthlessness and savagery: that if he did come upon them there would be no bargaining, no quarter, no mercy.

Then on the eve of Radu's strike westward, a fresh rumour, but one that he couldn't possibly ignore. He went down into the steppe, to Bacau where this whisper had origin. And the truth was learned there: How the Emperor Justinian had commissioned a fleet under Belisarius, to strike at the Vandals even across the Mediterranean, in Necroscope: The Lost Yean - Vol. II 173 north Africa and other parts. In short, to take back the Western Empire.

The Vandals! And Radu's old vow unfulfilled! And a Ferenczy among the treacherous sc.u.m at that! Old Gaeseric had gone the way of all or most flesh sixty or more years ago, but the Vandal kingdom remained and at least one Ferenczy!

Well, even after all this time any survivi ng m ember of the Ferenczy dynasty was far and away Radu's direst enemy, sp.a.w.n of the original destroyers of his dearest love in another world, another time, but all of it like yesterday to Radu.

Torn two ways - between attacking the Drakuls, and joinin g Belisarius as a mercenary and an ex pert in Vandal tactics - he returned to Wolfscrag in the heights...

... Only to find that the Drakuls had paid a vi sit in his absence. The place had be en destroyed utterly, and most of his men and women, thralls and lieutenants, with it No choice now but war on the Vandals, for to go against the Drakuls with his remaining handful were madness.

But later... ?

There would always be a later. And Radu, who was ever the opportunist, saw at least one distinct possibility: Join with Belisarius, distinguish himself in the field of battle, eventually return to these desolate heights as Voevod of all Dacia... all with the Emperor's approval! Then see to these d.a.m.ned Drakuls, with an entire legion, perhaps, to back him up.

It was a good, even a grand scheme. And irresistible...

Radu's expert knowledge of the Vandals at war served him well. In Plika on the Black Sea, he broached that very subject to a squat, yellow, scar-faced and slant-eyed Hun condottiere, the son of the son of an Asian invader who had settled the steppe sixty years ago. Commander of a force of two hundred, now Tok Heng had had enough of farming and was returning to his grandfather's trade. But in fact, and as he admitted to Radu where they swilled wine in a tavern, he had never left it His land had been stolen for him by warrior ancestors; the Romans had stolen it back/rom his father, and given it to peasants; Tok had stolen it a third time - with the result that the Romans had put a price on his head. Since he couldn't beat them he'd decided to join them; there was a pardon in it for him and his men - and a promise of citizenship and of land - if he would join Belisarius's force and fight the Vandals in the Mediterranean and Africa. Now he was waiting on ocean transport to take them to Con stantinople.

But Tok was fifty men short of the conti ngent he'd promised to Belisarius's recruiters; perhaps Radu and his lot would care to join forces with him and make up his numbers? Certainly the fact that 174.

Brian Lumtey Radu had knowledge of Vandal battle tactics would be an advantage. The dog-Lord laughed at that He fought under no man's colours but his own. Maybe Tok would care to join him? Or perhaps they could agree on a form of shared leade rship?

No, Tok Heng wouldn't have it But..

It was the time of the full moon; that night Radu converted the Hun and thus became leader of his mercenary band...

As for mixing in with the 'Romans': In Constantinople it was observed how Belisarius's army of fifteen thousand - ten thousand foot soldiers and five thousand cavalry - was composed mainly of mercenaries under condottiere commanders. Of actual Romans... there were a few. This was the best that Justinian's general could muster. And so there was no trouble at all mixing with true Romans, only in finding them! Radu was allotted ten vessels with crews out of a fleet of five hundred, and was obliged to take horses on board, too. But since horses didn't care for him or his, he made sure that his 'command' vessel was kept free of them and that they went with Tok Heng's people, who understood them. Thus a majority of the dog- Lord's original party, survivors of the ma.s.sacre at Wolfscrag, travelled with him.

And Radu looked forward to killing Vandals. Nor was there long to wait...

The best of the Vandal fleet and soldiers were in Sardinia putting down a revolt; thus Belisarius's army was able to disembark without trouble near Sousse. Gelimer the Vandal King mustered what remained of his forces and met Belisarius head-on at a place called Decimum... well-named, for there Gelimer's forces were decimated! The survivors fled into Numidia, and Belisarius marched into Carthage mid-September, ad 533.

Gelimer had not fallen at Decimum. He recalled his troops out of Sardinia, mustered what remained of the Vandals locally, bought the services of Moors, and finally, in mid-December, offered battle on the approach route to Carthage. But weakened by recent losses, and in any case enervated by a century of 'civilization,' the Vandals were no match for Belisarius.