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Day Three: Morning/Afternoon

 

"All right, Hendler, send him in," said Stadelmeier, pushing the breakfast tray to one side.

The orderly admitted a soldier whose leather shoulder-case made him a dispatch-rider; his uniform was clean but showed signs of having travelled in a saddlebag, and Stadelmeier could see that the man needed a haircut. He acknowledged the soldier's salute with a nod.

"What does Slavin have to say?" he demanded.

"I have the report here, Excellency," said the soldier, digging into the dispatch-case and producing a sealed envelope.

"At ease. I'll read that shit later," said Stadelmeier. "I want you to tell me what's going on."

"Well, sir, what happened is this. We were on a patrol down in the Celebiči area yesterday afternoon and came upon a burned-out farm where eight people had been killed. The way they died would turn your stomach, sir. Shot, slashed, ripped apart--"

"I get the idea," said Stadelmeier. "So what?"

"As one of the dead men was the magistrate, the local lawman, Colonel Slavin decided to initiate an investigation."

"Tselebietchi, magistrate. That would be--what's his name?"

"Uglesić, sir."

"That's it. Who did it?"

"No one knows yet, sir. The site was at least a day old when we found it, and no traces were available. We know rifles were used, and knives. But we can't establish a motive for such a crime. No one that we know of would want to kill the man, for it seems he was pretty generally liked and respected."

"A magistrate, eh?"

"Well, not with police powers like the Turkish judges, but more of a village headman. Knez, they call them here, sir. It's an elected office, pretty much the only one in these parts. Really just the local wise man. He has no juridical duties, just hears disputes among the Christian peasants and adjudicates according to tradition."

"Political?"

"The Colonel doesn't think so, sir. There just aren't any politics down there."

"Nonsense. You tell Slavin that if this one goes to the kaimakam in Trebinje, he's in trouble; if it goes to the Vali in Mostar, he's in bad trouble; and if it goes to the vizier in Travnik and the vizier makes a stink to Baron Burian, we're all in bad trouble."

"I will, sir."

"Now, that understood, tell me what Slavin was doing up to the time you left."

"The Herr Oberst left a guard at the site and we went straight back to Celebiči, where we set up a base of operations. He immediately set up a guard roster and a detail to, er, police up the site with the priest, who was sent for. He intends to start the investigation by examining the priest, and as I left Herr Rittmeister Vathely arrived. I gather the Captain is going to help him out for a while."

"Excellent," said Stadelmeier, relishing the idea of the fastidious Vathely having to sort out a pile of severed limbs. "You may go. Tell Slavin what I said before, and also tell him this, from me: he is to find the criminals and bring them in by any necessary means. He is to check out everybody, and I mean everybody. I'm giving him full authority on this one and he will get somebody or I will get him. Understand?"

"Jawohl," said the D.R., snapping to attention.

"That's all. Go downstairs and eat some chow and report back to Hendler for a written dispatch. Dismissed."

Stadelmeier returned the salute and as the door closed behind the soldier he picked up Slavin's note, broke it open, and began to read.

And as he read he began to believe that Slavin had really lost his mind.

The men were obviously under a great deal of stress; several were dead and others had deserted, and Slavin had personally put down an attempt at desertion with a pistol-whipping. Men and horses alike rapidly wearied in the barren karst hills and rocky upland valleys where the inhabitants, if not hostile, often treated them with open contempt. They had nothing that could be taken and seemed to want nothing either. How could one deal with such people on any rational basis? Only in some successful Mussulmen did they find anyone with whom they could communicate; and them only to be told, quite politely, that the country would become Austrian only by an alteration in the very will of Allah.

Constant duty was keeping the men disciplined still; but, Slavin warned, duty could not be maintained for ever, and he recommended that the company be transferred, to a man, at the conclusion of the tour.

Stadelmeier threw the paper down in disgust. It was a hard turn, he knew, but to write such stuff to him made no sense at all.

"I'm afraid, Herr Rittmeister, that you're not to go up to the murder-scene after all," said Slavin. "I have a mission for you here in the village."

"Sir?" said Vathely.

"There is no Orthodox priest here. I am informed that Father Karadenić died some time ago, and that until Belgrade sees fit to send another, the sacristan, a fellow in minor orders called Brother Grgur, does such offices as he can. I am sending a detail with him up the mountain. I have already talked to him. However, the Catholic priest, Father Ante Rezać, has not been seen yet, and you being Catholic yourself might be able to get with him a little better. Besides, I need to head up another patrol. The man have to be kept busy, and there are one or two people up there I want to talk to."

“Does he speak only Croatian?”

“I asked about that, and I’ve heard he speaks German. That’s another reason I’ve having you do it. I’m needed elsewhere.”

"What do you want me to find out?" asked the hussar.

"Nothing in particular, since we haven't got any clues to work on yet. I want you to strike up a conversation, work in some questions, nice and easy, and see what you can pick up about this Uglesić fellow. Find out who the local bigwigs are. No one without some clout would have been able to organize something like that affair. But take it easy; don't try to extract any confessional material, yet anyway."

"Yes, sir."

"You may go." Slavin snapped out a salute and then stood up to see if the wagon had been prepared. "How are we doing, Sergeant Deutscher?" he asked the soldier who looked in.

"Good to go, Herr Oberst," came the reply. "The Orthodox fellow just arrived, and it was him we were waiting on."

"Good. Come with me, Captain. You might as well meet one of the people we will be working with. Thank God he also speaks German so you can hear him yourself." They stepped out of the han into the square, where men and horses were about.

Among them was a white-haired man in a shabby black suit, a curious amalgam of East and West, for he also wore an odd-looking square black hat, embroidered in gold; and his grey beard would have done credit to a Russian patriarch.

"Brother Grgur," said Slavin, "I would like you to meet my second-in-command, Captain Vathely of the Hussars."

"Good morning, Captain," said Brother Grgur. "Pardon me for not shaking hands, but it is not the custom."

"Quite all right, Brother Grgur," said Vathely, bowing slightly. "When in Rome, as I say. I only regret that such an unfortunate occasion causes our meeting."

"So. Yes, indeed," said Grgur. "Very sad. I knew Knez Dabisav Uglesić quite well. We were boys together."

"I'm sorry," said Vathely. "I really can't imagine who would do such a thing."

The old man glanced at him shrewdly. "You have not been here long, then. Most of the men hereabouts are capable of it, if they had the reason." He pulled back part of his coat to reveal a handžal of his own in an ornamented sheath. "Even some of the women," he added.

"I believe it," said Vathely. "But if the knez was as well-respected as I hear, no one would have had the reason."

Grgur sighed. "It is true," he said. "No one carried a blood-grudge against him; but someone insured that there would be no one on his part to continue it except Dragan."

"Who is Dragan?" asked Vathely casually.

"Dragan Vuković? He is the son of Knez Dabisav's cousin--who was a victim, I fear. Dragan married a granddaughter of Jovan Ilić sahibija and lives in Foča with his father-in-law now. I believe they have one son."

"One only?" asked Vathely. "I thought the custom was for five or six."

"And so it would be. But the land hereabouts is poor and the people have nowhere to go, and so to have two or three children is more common. And-- I'm ashamed to say it--I would not put it past some of the wilder folk to expose their baby daughters."

"Leaving them outside to die? I thought that had been abolished in olden days," said Vathely.

"More than one thing, banished in olden days, could take refuge up in those mountains," said Brother Grgur, crossing himself in two-fingered fashion. "Most of the peasants are so hard put to it to survive that they pay scant attention to anything that they think is none of their business."

"I am sorry to hear it," said Vathely. "But I see you must be going; do not let me detain you."

"It was a pleasure," said Brother Grgur. "I trust we shall meet again."

"Indeed," said Vathely. He bowed again and watched the unusual ecclesiastic stump off to the wagon, climb aboard the box beside a guard, and snap the whip smartly. And as the wagon and its escort disappeared up the road in a cloud of dust, Vathely turned and went to see about the village's other churchman.

Stana didn't have to see. She could tell by the way the door closed that it was Kosta. She waited until he pulled out his chair, carefully, leaned on the table, and sat down with a grunt.

"Well?"

"Demjan's all right," said Kosta Savić. "He's staying over at Alija's for a while."

She snapped around. "Oh, Demjan's all right. And what about me? And you baby son? How are we, please?"

"You look all right too,"

She walked over to where he sat impassive, wiping her hands on her apron, walking straight and dead even.

"You've been drinking."

"So what?"

There was something flat and horrible about his eyes, she saw, as he moved them up to meet her stare; moved them the same way a crab or cuttlefish would.

"What is happening to you?" she cried.

"Nothing," he said.

"No. Even a few months ago you would never have done this. You would have ridden through anything to get back to me."

"I couldn't," he said. "I'd have come back."

"Come back in what condition? What have you been up to?"

"Talking to Demjan, and to Alija. Just talking about things."

She took off her apron, folded it, and lay it down on the table. "I know that since Anton was born, I've been very busy with him, but--"

"You're good," he said. "You're very good and you know it."

"That's not what I'm talking about," she said; but something glinted in her thin smile like the edge of a razor blade. "I just don't want you to forget that our son deserves as much of your attention as I do."

"Where is Slavica?" he asked.

"Gone. We fought yesterday and she ran out, I don't know where. I looked for her half the night. Maybe she went to Ivo's."

"Maybe you should have followed her."

"And what would I have done with her if I caught her? Fought her some more? You know I had to fight just to live before I met Andrija. We fought Jovan Ilić to get married. Then I had to fight with Andrija to get him to talk sense about anything at all. I fight Slavica, and Demjan too sometimes. I get so tired of it all . . . And I always had you to lean on. Don't make me fight you, too. Not now."

"Who's fighting?"

"Oh, please . . ." Something seemed to occur to her and she came over and sat very near him, leaning forward to look into his face.

"Do you remember, once, we talked about Andrija and I said he was the only man I've ever been afraid of?"

"Yes."

"I was afraid of him because I never knew what was going through his mind. And now I'm wondering about you . . . but it's worse, because I thought I knew you. Husband, you've got to talk to me. Talk to me, or lose me."

"So it's coming to that?"

"I can't go through what I did with Andrija again. I can't. I swear to you I'll never tell a soul if you just answer my question, yes or no. Do I mean that little to you?"

Kosta Savić looked at her. "You mean everything to me."

"Then only between us: will you admit to me that you killed Dabisav Uglesić?"

"Yes."

She gave a little snort. "'Yes?' Like that? You might at least say it like you meant it."

"There isn't anything to mean. Yes, I killed him. Yes, I killed them all. Yes, I got up this morning. It's all the same thing."

"No, it isn't. Our friend, your father’s pobrat, my only friend for so many years . . . Why?" she cried. "How could you?"

"Stana, my dove, my little pony. What could I tell you that would make any sense to you? Shall I say that asking why puts you outside the bounds of understanding? Shall I say that you should go for knowledge to my honoured stepfather--or to a blind whip-wielding Gypsy--or to Andrija?"

She bowed her head, saying nothing.

"I know that I have hurt you beyond any capacity to repair," he said. "I would be a fool if I apologized, and a liar if I offered to make everything all right again. I do not ask for forgiveness. But remember, always, that I love you, and nothing can ever change that."

He sat quietly and said no more, watching as she raised her head, and tears began to run down her cheeks.

"What is it?" cried Demjan, raising his scythe. "Who is there?"

"For the love of Christ," came a voice with a German accent, "help me. Help me!"

The young man ran to the tree-line whence he had heard the voice and used the handle of the scythe to beat aside the brush.

"Don't hurt me," pleaded the speaker, a big blonde man in an Austrian lancer’s uniform. He had been handsome, but some attack had scarred him terribly; vicious lacerations covered his neck, face, and hands, bloodying his ripped, dirty jacket and muddy trousers. "My God, my God," he said. "Are you a man? . . . It killed Hird, sir. It killed all of them, all of the dead people--" He looked at Demjan with blue eyes, bright blue crackling with horror and pain. "God, what I have seen. God . . ."

Demjan knelt down. "I will help you," he said. "I am a friend. Let me help you. Would you like something to drink?"

"God in heaven, it leaped on Hird like a panther. How he screamed . . . I had to run. I had to."

Demjan undid his wineskin and put it to the man's lips. "Drink," he ordered, and was obeyed for a mouthful or two.

"Can you get up?" he asked the man. "Can you walk?"

But the Austrian had passed out.

Demjan took him in his arms, staggered upright, and set off toward Alija's house.

Sarai and Mara took the soldier in, saw to him, fed him, and fixed him up in the back room. All the while Alija sat and stared at the window, and after he had helped bandage the man's wounds Demjan, too, sat down, now and then exchanging smiles with Mara as she wrung out a rag or rinsed a pan.

If love was the violent passion that the sevdalinki verses spoke of, he didn't love her. But if it was a strength and a warmth and a consolation that he felt when he was with her, and an impatience to get back when he was not, then he did love her, and very well.

It was more or less understood that he was to marry her, and there were a couple of questions he had for Alija about that.

"Er--Alija . . ."

"Yes, Demjan?"

He caught Mara looking at him again.

"Never mind. Later."

"Very well," said Alija.

The Schwabe no doubt lay heavily on Alija's mind, and Demjan realized that this was going to involve them with the soldiers. He couldn't see how any good could come of it; on the other hand, he knew that Alija and Sarai would not for a moment have considered any other way.

He sighed. It was all very difficult, and not likely to get any easier before the Schwabes were done.

Stana was working on the laundry, working hard and aware that she was not really getting much done. Every moment seemed pointless, a waste of precious energy.

She knew that her conscience was bothering her.

She hung the wet wash up, took off her apron, and then sat down for a minute and loosed her hair. Picking up a comb she began to run it slowly, half-dreamily, through her bluish-black tresses; and as she gazed out the window her eyes seemed to pick up a spark of the brilliant noonday sunlight, where it glowed as if it had become a tiny sun of its own.

The priest Rezać looked up from his desk through the leaded panes of his study window and saw someone enter the sanctuary by the main door. He laid his pen aside, blotted the page he had been writing on, and got up and shrugged on his surplice.

It had been some time since an irregular visitor had come to his little church.

Locking the study door behind him he turned down the hall, out into the portico, and walked around the building in the dusty sunshine.

As he entered the nave it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dimness, the single flickering altar-candle. Even the rays of sunlight pouring through the windows seemed muted in that dark place.

He saw his visitor kneeling at the altar rail as if about to receive the Sacrament; and he wore a hussar’s uniform. Very softly he walked down the aisle and was nearly upon him before the soldier turned, rising and brushing off his knees.

A tall, good-looking young fellow, the priest observed, and an officer. He wondered what such a man was doing in this lost little village.

"I'm sorry, Father," the soldier was saying, "but I saw no one around, and as the sanctuary was open--"

"Quite so," said Rezać. "In accordance with the local custom, I may add. I am Father Ante Rezać. May I help you?"

The officer came to his feet and bowed gracefully, cordially. "Captain Janos Vathely, Imperial Hussars."

“I am honoured. What brings you to our little corner of the world, Herr Rittmeister?"

"I am with the patrol," said Vathely. "Up from Fotcha, making sure the country is in order."

The priest lifted a grey eyebrow. "One of the soldiers working with Herr Kommissar von Stadelmeier, certainly?"

"That's it, Father. I am his attaché."

"I had no news of your arrival. Otherwise I might have done something--"

"We're riding pretty fast, Father. Herr Stadelmeier is a man who likes direct information. So we are collecting it for him."

"I know of Herr von Stadelmeier," said the priest. "I believe he is the sort of commissioner the area needs. Firm."

The young officer smiled. "Firm is one way of putting it, Father. We have another word for him. But I must compliment you on your excellent German."

"I grew up with it as a second language after Croatian," said Rezać. "And I did most of my time at Ravenna in advanced studies in it. So tell me, Herr Rittmeister, what sort of direct information are you finding for Herr von Stadelmeier?"

"I suppose it's all right for me to say this, as it'll be public news anyway; but one of the local headmen up this way was murdered a few days ago, together with his family, in a quite brutal and disgusting manner."

"Indeed?" said the priest. "I'm very sorry to hear it. I assume--?"

"Yes," said Vathely. "All the arrangements have been made. The dead man was Orthodox--named Juglesitch."

"Dear Lord," muttered Rezać, crossing himself in three-fingered fashion. "I knew him very well. It will be a great loss to the village. We have very few men who would be his equal."

"What we don't understand is who might have committed such a crime."

Words ran through Rezać's mind: 'But I don't like it, Father. I don't know what's happening.'

He said: "The blood feud is still practiced in these parts, you know. But I can't really think of anyone who owed Knez Dabisav a grudge. Neither the house of Ilić, nor the Leskanić, nor the Bikanić, nor the Vuković carried anything against him. That is the main reason he was elected knez to start with."

"Those being your clans?" asked the hussar.

"The Serbian ones. We also have a family in minor nobility--gospodar is the title--named Savić, but even they . . . no. It just couldn't be," said Rezać.

"Gospodar," repeated Vathely, stroking his enormous moustaches. "The word has a pretty archaic ring to it."

"They date a very long way back between here and the Raška. But they are few, and in any case I don't think they'd breed with the raia. They are some of the last of the real old military aristocracy, who mostly killed each other off during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and keep to farming as a less hazardous pastime. Except for the title and a few half-forgotten stories you couldn't tell them from the peasants themselves nowadays."

"I'm glad to hear it if they really are farming, and luck to them."

"Oh, yes. The present gospodar is a model farmer, very advanced in his methods, but the last one--his brother--was involved in some killing. But that was years ago."

"Kosta Savitch, his name is?"

"Yes, you know of him?"

"We know enough to get along," replied Vathely suavely. "Tell me a little about this killing."

"There isn't much to it. Andrija Savić, the old gospodar, had some kind of running quarrel with a farmer named Bicanić up the valley. No one knew much about it, but five years ago it turned violent--Heaven alone knows over what, probably a sheep or something--and they killed each other. There was no feud started because Bicanić was an Eastern fellow who settled on land acquired from Turks during the 1877 war and all his family were killed in the fight. Altogether a strange matter, and it kept people more tolerant afterwards."

"What was Kosta Savitch's role? Was he in on that?"

"Good question. He wasn't around then, off doing something else, and only came back later. He married Andrija's widow, adopted the children, added one of his own, and has minded his own business over since."

"Sounds queer to me," remarked Vathely. "No wonder they are dying out."

"Not as you might expect. For one thing, the brothers were separated in youth and hardly knew each other. For another, the widow, Stana, had no other qualified match, and the old tradition prescribes the levirate marriage if there is no other way to protect the woman's--and the family's--honour, particularly if she is still of childbearing age. The child of their own is a bit unusual, but all in all, it is a quite respectably viewed situation, and Kosta Savić would have shirked his duty by doing anything else."

"So that didn't spark off this new killing?"

"Kosta Savić may have--probably did have--his private differences with the knez, and there is still some bad feeling over the Bicanić affair. He must defend his brother's memory, after all. But his family and the Uglesić were prijatelji, meaning that there was a special relationship of honour between them. Petar Bicanić did mortally wound his killer, cancelling out any blood-debt. And both Savić and Uglesić were prijatelji to Jovan Ilić."

"The Ilitch of Fotcha?"

"The very man. He is close on a hundred years old now, you know."

"I know of him. And would this--relationship you speak of to Juglesitch be through a marriage between one of Ilitch's granddaughters and a cousin of the knez's?"

"Exactly. Dragan Vuković is the cousin. Nearly every family around here is related to Jovan Ilić by now, and they really constitute a new clan--the Jovanović."

"I can see I shall have to pay him a visit."

"Good luck, Captain. He can be hard to see, as you probably know. But he does cooperate with the authorities in his own circuitous way."

"Thank you, Father. We shall be wanting to talk to you again, no doubt. Either I or Colonel Slavin will be found at the ruined inn."

"Auf wiedersehen, my son," said the priest. "God bless you."

Vathely crossed himself, said a word or two, turned, and went out by the side door.

Father Ante Rezać did not move. "Yusef," he said.

"Yes, Father?"

"I shall want you to check up on the Herr Rittmeister. And do not neglect to meet Herr Oberst Slavin."

"Now, Father?"

"I think we shall have plenty of time," said Father Ante.

He was obviously full of self-righteous petulance, she saw. Perhaps he had been drinking; at any rate, she had known that this was coming.

"I don't want to know why," he had said. "All I want to know is how. How could you do it to me?"

Stana had looked down at him with pity tugging at her heart; pity and a little impatience.

"I can't do anything to you," she said, "that you haven't already done to yourself. You know things work that way. How many times have you seen some other woman--Dušenka, or Marija, I will mention no last names--and others. Did I ever say a word?"

"No," he admitted. "But that was different. I kept it private. The whole country knows about you and him. People are talking."

"So? Let them talk. What difference does it make?"

"What difference? What about my reputation? What about our son? What do you think will become of him?"

"Don't worry about him. He looks after himself. And as for your precious reputation, it's safe enough. You have Jovan Ilić and the others to defend you. I am the one they are all against, ever since you brought me here. You always did exactly as you pleased. Now I am doing as I please, and when I am gone I won't care what people say."

"I say it is wrong," he said flatly. "What plans I had! What we could have done! . . . I loved you once--God help me, I think I still do, in spite of everything--and so I warn you. Be careful. You are not so high and mighty that I cannot pull you down. I will do it if I have to."

A small cold feeling gripped at her vitals, but she said, "Do what you have to and let the cards fall where they may. I'm not afraid for his sake."

"All right, then," he said with a wolfish smile. "You'd better be sure he loves you as much as you think. Good luck."

And then Andrija Savić turned on his heel and left.

She looked at the comb in her hand, wondering.

Odd, she thought, that she could so vividly recall a conversation upon a subject that had never come up between them.

Stana well knew that her memory, more than most people's, was a tricky thing. She could scarcely recall anything simply by trying to; things just had to come of their own. She was a local legend as an herbalist; confronted with an injury or illness she knew exactly which plants would cure it, yet if asked the properties of a given herb she could not say.

She had been to the church the day before yesterday but could not recollect in any detail what it looked like. Asked to describe it she would have to think of something else before the description came.

As for her own life, her memories were good for about twenty-five years back--four or five years before she married Andrija. She could not by any effort recall her childhood or teenage years; in fact, she had no idea how old she was.

On the other hand, she also knew of her reputation for preternatural intelligence, and it was not unfounded.

Among other things she had been credited with the ability to read minds, which strictly speaking was not true; she could not perceive other people's thoughts from beneath a poker face. Yet she could always sense what they were trying to do or say, even if they were lying or could not express themselves properly. And she had powers of concentration that seemed to help her to make herself understood to others.

Yet again she oftentimes encountered what could only be described as other people's memories, or dreams--things which she could not relate to her life as she knew it; places she had never seen, people long dead, how to do things she had never learnt to do, could not do. She had no idea how many languages she spoke: she could not recall a word of Turkish, yet for a fact she and Andrija had often spoken Turkish to each other, and how or where she had acquired the peculiar clipped German she spoke with Kosta and the Schwabes was beyond her.

And when she dreamed, or came under sudden pressure . . . strange, sometimes frightening visions overwhelmed her, visions of places and things utterly unlike anything in her experience: vistas of a vast and bizarre city and somehow familiar people who recurred--priests, warriors, servitors--who always addressed her with deferential respect. There were fragments of languages unheard even in polyglot Bosnia, and rare remembrances of certain men she had loved--husbands--and of children, recognizably her children, so vivid that they left her paralyzed, weeping uncontrollably.

And in her nightmares, sometimes, she journeyed through deserts and jungles, fighting great serpents and gigantic tigers and bears, reliving scenes of apocalyptic horror; skies filled with fire, earth-shattering upheavals and floods that washed away whole cities despite all her powers.

All her powers . . . She did now and then suspect that sealed away within her intractable memory, well-guarded by some facet of her eccentric intelligence, lay unused or long-neglected abilities of unspeakable magnitude.

What they could possibly be, or how to use them, she could not begin to guess; nor, she reflected, would it perhaps be over-wise to enquire into. That suspicion, along with the rest of the aberrant vision-memories, were never things that occupied a great deal of thought--she kept busy, especially with the baby, and notwithstanding the turn of events things seemed to be taking these days she loved Kosta and the children very much; she was happy with their home and status, and she would apparently have all she could handle to preserve them.

Brother Grgur's wagon was halfway across the valley toward Uglesić's farm when he saw the point riders, just arrived there, remount and wheel, spurring their horses in a mad gallop back up the line. He traded glances with Sergeant Deutscher riding beside the wagon; and the NCO dug into his own mount, cantering forward to meet them.

The three of them reined in together, the horses prancing nervously, and the sergeant pointed. One of the riders stooped over in his saddle, giving the reins, and went off at a dash up the column, past the wagon like the wind and off back the way they had come.

The soldier next to Brother Grgur on the box said in Serbian: "I thought I couldn't like this any less. I do now."

"Yes, Svoboda. Something has gone very wrong. We'll soon find out."

The sergeant had ridden ahead, and as the column pulled into the death-stricken farmyard the riders circled around a spot where there were the ashes of a campfire, and Deutscher standing very still, his head uncovered, next to a sprawled body which still wore part of a blue uniform.

Silent to a man, they began to dismount, taking off their pomponed shakos.

Brother Grgur reined the wagon to a halt and climbed down, declining an offered hand. Deutscher looked at him then, with a face like granite.

As the grey-bearded sacristan walked up to him he could see the man was deeply shaken, but the NCO's voice suddenly rang out as if he were on a parade-field.

"Men, Hird is dead. It looks like wolves got him. You can see Vonhof's gear is here, and both weapons." Then he held up a small leather-bound book. "Hird was apparently reading this when he died. Not all of you are religious--I'm not--but Hird was a churchgoer, and I don't think anyone will mind if Brother Grgur says a few words over the body."

Grgur nodded and asked: "His name again?"

"Joachim Hird."

Brother Grgur stepped up, his beard moving a little in the breeze. "Let us pray," he said, and then began to speak in Serbian which the lancer Svoboda translated aloud.

"Heavenly Father, we stand in your sight with the mortal remains of our brother Joachim, and with those of our brother Dabisav Uglesić, and others. But we know that each of them, having shed his earthly body, is with you in Paradise this day. Grant all of them Your eternal peace, as we too trust in Your power and Your Kingdom soon to come. In the name of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen."

There were muttered 'Amens' and the sacristan switched back to German: "If you will repeat in your hearts the words of the General and King, David, in the twenty-second Psalm . . ." He paused while Sergeant Deutscher flipped over the pages of the dead man's Bible and then read:

"The Lord is my shepherd:  I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he 
leadeth me beside still waters.
He restoreth my soul:  he leadeth me in the paths
of righteousness for His name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the 
shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou
art with me; thy rod and thy staff comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence
of mine enemies, thou anointest my head with 
oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the
days of my life, and I will dwell in the house
of the Lord for ever."

There was a moment of silence as Sergeant Deutscher laid a blanket over the body. Then he replaced his headgear. "Becker! Felder!" he barked. "You two mount up. Scout around for traces of Vonhof and the horses, but for God's sake don't go out of sight. Hartlieb! You and Schultz ride back for the village—the Oberst must know of this immediately. Raus!”

The four men went for their horses and he turned to Brother Grgur and asked, "Why did you pray in Serbian?"

The sacristan gazed steadily at the NCO and replied, "Because I do not talk to God in German."

"I guess I can see that." He looked around. "What do you think happened to Vonhof--the other man?"

"If it was wolves, and he went off without his weapon . . ."

"He'd be a goner."

The old man nodded. "But if there was some human agency involved, he might well be alive."

"Taken hostage?"

"Possibly."

"He doesn't have any information. But if it's for ransom we'll get the pigs."

"Good luck," Grgur said.

The Austrian began to pull on his gloves. "When I was a boy at the yeshivah, we were taught that the life of a good man is the same value as all Creation . . . The man that lived here was surely as good as any. Whoever killed him and his family must be such as to destroy the whole world."

Brother Grgur did not say anything.

Kosta Savić had arisen late and let the cow out to pasture. For an hour he had sat quietly in the low fork of an old cypress tree, watching the animal graze, when a movement among the pines brought him to his feet.

"Slavica?"

"Papa!"

She was dirty, her hair streaming down her back festooned with brown pine needles, and her dress was torn in several places.

"Slavica, where have you been? Your mother and I were worried to death!"

"I was so afraid, papa--I thought I'd never see you again. But now I've found you, don't let anything keep us apart. Anything!" She embraced Kosta Savić tightly, so hard his bandage hurt him; and he whispered little words of comfort. At last she looked up into his greyish stubbled face as if finally convinced of his reality. "Did you miss me?" she asked tearfully.

"Of course we did," he said. "Your mother and I both. What on earth happened? Where did you go?"

"Mama didn't tell you anything?"

"No, my doveling. She said that you and she had quarrelled over something, I don't know what, and that you left. But whatever it was is all in the past now. I don't care what it was."

"Is it true, what she said about you and Knez Dabisav?"

"It doesn't matter what she said. People often say things they don't really mean."

"But I can't believe it. She said that you killed him, Papa. For no reason at all. How could such things be?"

"It doesn't matter, Slavica. What she said is something that it's very hard to explain."

"But it's not true, is it?"

Kosta Savić looked down into the girl's anxious eyes and saw for the first time a reflection of the hell that had opened for him.

And he saw that she had read his answer.

Very quietly, still holding him, she began to weep.

"How could you?" she asked at last. "What could it be? I don't know anything anymore. All I know is that I love you."

He was silent; he tightened his hold of her, rocking back and forth a little.

"Isn't that enough?" she asked, gazing up at him.

"It is enough," he said. "I will go to my grave loving you, and your mother. And Demjan, too, even Knez Dabisav. It is hard to understand."

"And my father Andrija?"

"Slavica, my darling, never ask me about him. One day I will explain about him to you. But some things just cannot be talked about. I don't know how else to say it."

"Don't say it, then," she said. "But I didn't want to hear Mother saying things like that about you."

"Don't worry. But where have you been, for heaven's sake?"

"In the woods. I didn't want to stay there, with her, and I was afraid that if I went to Alija or Ivo they would send me back to her. I just couldn't go back."

"Do you want to go back now?"

"I'll go back with you," she said.

They parted, and Kosta Savić went to retrieve the cow, and she went with him.

"I told you once, and I tell you again," he said, "Whatever your mother does for you is out of love. And she loves you enough to make sure you grow up in the way you should."

Slavica did not reply for a moment; but as they were trudging uphill with the cow in tow, she said, "If I were sure of that, I would forgive her."

"Be sure, Slavica."

She was about to reply when something cut her short; she stood very still, listening intently, and soon Kosta Savić heard it too; a sound of many hooves.

A million black memories flooded his mind. He saw Stana desperately seeking some hiding-place, the thunderous knocking on the door followed by the crash of axes, the livestock driven out.

And the torches. Day or night, the torches, and Stana discovered, Anton in her arms, yanked from her closet by grasping, brutal hands, and her screams and vain tears. And still the torches, zigzagging about, dancing, circling as their small fires merged into a greater . . .

"Run," he said to Slavica. "Hide, there's a good girl. Come only when you hear your mother or I call you. Go." Already she was off, disappearing into the bushes.

It was very quiet up near the house.

But he was thankful that Demjan and Slavica, at least, were not there. There was only one thing for him to do.

He squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, grasped the cow's halter more firmly, and walked on.

There were a dozen horses in the yard below the house, and a few Austrian soldiers about. He remembered what Stana had said about them but nevertheless he could not quite still the instinct that thrilled of danger and sudden death. One of the Austrians hailed him.

He said nothing but moved ahead with the cow, who lowed nervously.

When he was within thirty metres the Austrian challenged him again, his hand on his carbine.

"I am Kosta Savić," he said in German. "This is my house, and this is my milk cow."

"Go around the back," said the soldier. He brought his carbine down into both hands.

"I know my own house. And please permit me to stable my cow," replied Kosta, eyeing the rank on the man’s collar, and as the soldier stood aside he led the animal in and shut it up in its stall. Re-emerging, he motioned to the Austrian, and they proceeded around the house to the door. The soldier told him to wait and went in, and Kosta followed.

Inside, the Austrian whirled around. "I told you--"

"This is my house, Herr Gefreiter," said Kosta Savić in a voice of ice, "and you are a guest in it. And have the goodness to remember that you are speaking to a man of noble blood."

"That's enough," said a new voice. "Thank you, Corporal, you may go."

Kosta faced the speaker, a tall big-boned man who wore the insignia of a colonel of lancers. "You must excuse Corporal Maurer, sir. All the men are under quite a bit of stress lately. Permit me to introduce myself: I am Colonel Fedor Slavin, Ninth Imperial Lancers, commanding."

"I am under stress lately myself, Herr Oberst," said Kosta Savić, "ever since I found my house full of Austrian lancers. What do you require, sir?"

"As you probably know, sir, this area is passing under Austrian civil jurisdiction. My unit is assigned to the Commissioner at Foča, and we are merely making a routine patrol to ensure that the countryside is orderly. Since you, gospodar, were recommended to me as one of the region's leading men, I took the liberty of paying a cordial official visit."

"Good. Here I am. Once again, I am honoured. Is there anything else?"

"Yes, sir, there is. --Are you having trouble standing?"

"No."

"Excuse me, sir. But a few days ago your neighbour, Knez Dabisav Uglesić, was murdered with his family. Can you tell me anything as to who may have committed the crime, or why?"

"Crime?" said Kosta Savić. "How can it be a crime for a man to die?"

Slavin exchanged glances with is orderly. "The crime, sir, lay in the killing. Not in the dying."

"No man kills another unless he must," said Kosta Savić. "It is a brutal and heartbreaking thing; but so is death in childbirth, or wolves carrying off the goats, or a short harvest. Perhaps it was a crime when the Turks strangled old Milovan Kopitar, but what does justice mean to the Turk or the wolf?"

"We, sir, are sworn to uphold Austrian law, which is now the law of this land. For every killing, the law demands a killer to execute its penalty upon."

"If that must be so," said Kosta Savić, "I am your man. I and none other killed Knez Dabisav Uglesić and his people."

"Indeed? And what reason did you have?" When Kosta did not reply, Slavin's orderly tapped him on the shoulder but the colonel shook his head very slightly and said, "We will take that into consideration, sir. I must say I appreciate your courage and honour."

"Excuse me," said Stana. "Won't you sit down, Colonel? The coffee is ready."

"Thank you," said Slavin. "It may be, sir, as you said. But I do not want to go about arresting people so early. Especially I do not wish to deprive this community of its other leading man now that one of them is dead. I think you know what I mean, sir."

"I believe so," said Kosta Savić. "You strike me as being a peculiarly conscientious solder, Herr Oberst."

"I have been told so," said Colonel Slavin, adding a drop of water to his coffee-cup. "But I have always believed that things should either be done right or not at all. And I may say that that often puts me at odds with the Commissioner. But that is all as it should be, for no balance is maintained without an equilibrium of tensions."

"Quite interesting, I'm sure," said Kosta Savić. "But you did not come here to talk about yourself."

"Excuse me, sir," said Slavin, "but I see every reason to talk about myself. I know more about you than you might think, and you and I will be much deeper in this business before we are through. Should we not try to work together, as reasonable men? By the way, gospodja, this coffee is excellent. Very smooth."

"Thank you," said Stana. "I beat an egg into it. It takes out the bitterness without adding a foreign flavour. Better than cream."

"Much better," said the lancer. "I'll remember your secret."

"Are you married?" asked Stana.

"I have been. I was married thirteen years and had three children. My wife died of fever six years ago."

"I'm sorry," said Stana.

"She was a wonderful woman, gospodja. It was after her death that I decided to accept the offer of a special commission, and sent the children to a boarding-school in Laibach."

"Laibach in Carniola? You mean Ljubljana? You are Slovene, then."

"My mother was Slovene. My father was from the Vojvodina, so you may say I really had no homeland at all," said Slavin. "I had spent years serving in the Italian Tyrol, and when I was posted to Bosnia-Hercegovina it was a shock. I, who had been very Habsburg, very cosmopolitan, was forced to look at the essential Slav nature in the mirror of my soul, and the reflection was Slav to the very core. All my life had been a Habsburg sham, in the way that anything Habsburg is a sham."

Stana was looking at him brightly, her chin cupped in her hands. "Perhaps you should be speaking Serbian to us. Your men might hear of this disloyalty."

"Gospodja, I am very loyal toward my men and my subordinates, for they are human beings and good soldiers, regardless of their uniforms, and they know it. I am loyal toward the Commissioner, even, for the sake of my men. But I cannot be loyal toward the Vienna Apparat. No thinking man can owe loyalty to something that has no right to exist."

"Surely, sir, your conscience must trouble you, then, enforcing the Habsburg administration of a Slavic land."

"It is true, gospodja. But the Habsburg empire has not long to live, and a confrontation with Slav national consciousness is, in my opinion, the healthiest destiny for both Austria and Hungary. And Bosnia too. Mark my words; when old Franz Josef dies, everything will go to pieces. Five years, I say. The world I grew up in will be gone, but we will be none the worse for its loss. Times will not be good, of course. I expect Serbia will go to war with Bulgaria, Austria will fight Italy, and the Russians will probably invade Hungary again. But then this Tsar is Nicholas II, not Nicholas I. Who knows?"

"Russia is as rotten as Austria," said Kosta Savić abruptly.

"True again. But there is a great Russian people. There are Austrians and Hungarians, and Croatians--but there are no 'Austro-Hungarians' excepting a few pitiful specimens like myself. And we few are acutely conscious of the cheat history has played upon us. When the revolution comes, as revolution they will call it, I will probably be living quietly in Laibach or Innsbruck."

"Will you help it, or fight it?" asked Stana.

"Excuse me, gospodja, I will reserve comment upon that point. But it is the question of Bosnia-Hercegovina and Montenegro that interests me the most. Some of the Serbian intelligentsia have spoken of a South Slavic State. The great Bishop Strossmajer expressed interest in it."

"As a means for extending old King Peter’s domination throughout the Balkans I see nothing wrong with it," said Kosta Savić. "The Serbians are nine million. But the Croatians would never submit to it, and at five million strong they'd be hard to convince. Besides, they are too fond of licking Austria's boots. Didn't a Croat army under Jelačić help the Austrians and Russians crush Kossuth's march on Vienna in '48? Isn't the current Ban of Croatia an Austrian count? And what of the Slovenes, and the Bosnian Turks? What of the Montenegrins, and the Albanians? What about Macedonia? How could such a hodgepodge be held together by anything but Serbian power? And if the Serbians did rule us, what would keep them from grinding us into the mud as they did under the Nemanja Empire?"

"All good questions," admitted Slavin. "Yet America has forty-odd states, large and small, and they all get along. Perhaps a capital could be put at some relatively neutral city such as Novi Sad or Ragusa."

"Perhaps, if the Serbs would stand for it," said Kosta Savić glumly. "Miracles sometimes happen. But anyone who has read the lives of Christian saints knows that a miracle usually requires the shedding of holy blood beforehand."

"I had not thought of it that way," said Slavin, "but you are right, gospodar. No doubt we shall be discussing it later. It you will excuse me, we must be off, for I have much yet to do today."

"As do I," said Kosta Savić, rising. "I may see you tomorrow, sir."

"Tomorrow?"

The nobleman's eyebrows went up. "Market-day."

"Of course. A pleasure meeting you too, gospodja."

Stana smiled charmingly. "The pleasure was all mine, I'm sure." Slavin motioned to his orderly, who slipped out to give the departure orders.

"Farewell, then," said Slavin. He turned, replaced his shako, and went out. Kosta and his wife watched the troops form up and ride out.

"What did you tell them before I came?" asked Kosta, still in German.

"Nothing. I just said that you would answer all the questions."

"Gut." He turned, limped over to his chair by the table, and sat down slowly, carefully, as if he meant never to get up again. "I don't like that man. He is too intelligent for his own good. What do your instincts say?"

She smoothed her dress, walking a step at a time toward him. "He is sincere, but I'm not sure he's as disillusioned as he makes out. Yet I think he's a good man."

"Good men can be dangerous, too," said Kosta Savić. "Time will tell."

"His wife is delightful," said Slavin's aide. "She must be a foreigner."

"I thought so, too," said the colonel as they rode at the head of the column. "They are a very unusual pair. You heard her German. Very pure, very distinct. I didn't think anyone had spoken German like that for a hundred years. And him, he sounded absolutely Prussian, spitting out the consonants like a Maxim gun."

"I almost might have thought I was in a Carniolan burgher's house, sir, but phew!--the smell! Nearly knocked me over, sir. 'Course I didn't say anything--"

"What’d’ you expect, Schwetje, when they keep the animals downstairs all winter? I guess they're used to it, though it doesn't seem to be much worse than Austrian factory smoke to me."

"With respect, we'll just differ on that, sir. But do you think he was involved in the killing?"

"I don't doubt either of them could have seen it through. They're both tough customers. But such a situation would be like an Austrian Graf killing the mayor of his Burg. It doesn't add up."

"He admitted to the crime, sir."

"This is a different world, Schwetje. As gospodar, his personal honour extends to cover every commoner in the district. Of course he would admit to it, just as he would take credit for an illegitimate child. But this I am sure of; he knows. And he won't be going anywhere. Trust his honour for that."

"I just don't know, sir. It seems too simple."

"Besides, we can always arrest him later. You are used to Austria, where finding out who did it, and especially why, are hard, and what to do about it is simple. Here it is quite different."

"I see, sir," said Schwetje in a voice that plainly implied he didn't, and Colonel Slavin fell silent.

He knew that he had talked nonsense to the man. Simply being aware of one's own limitations does not impart awareness of what is outside them. Slavin, who rarely deceived himself, knew this well; and also knew that Kosta Savić lay as far outside them as a Chinese mandarin.

Suddenly, he sensed again that near-tangible compounding of perspective that had troubled him as he looked at the bodies in the farmyard. It was indeed possible that Kosta Savić had killed his friends, for some Chinese-mandarin reason utterly beyond his comprehension. But even if such were the case, what could he do about it? Theoretically, the law provided a penalty. But he recalled Kosta's bitter words about justice, reflecting that Kosta himself lay as much outside Austrian law as wolves did outside the Bosnian. And if he was guilty under Austrian law, and Slavin executed that law's penalty upon him, Slavin knew that he would then be no better than the Turks and comitadji who killed each other simply because their respective laws allowed it.

As a result of this murder, then, a man--maybe several men--would die by hanging; not in the name of justice, but in a senseless retribution that had no more to do with justice than a plain lynching.

Slavin felt slightly sick.

"Call Slavica," said Kosta Savić.

"What?"

"Slavica is out there. Call her."

Stana went to the door and called for her daughter several times. Then she said: "You found her?"

"She found me."

"But where was she? What was she doing?"

"She says she ran out into the woods to get away from you."

"She spent all night in the woods? She must have caught cold!" She called again.

"What was it between you? What is it?"

"She is very headstrong," said Stana sadly. "Almost like Andrija used to be."

"I remember him."

"You don't remember how he got in later years. Sometimes I couldn't talk to him at all. He was a sensitive man, but for all his sensitivity he couldn't, or wouldn't, understand a word I said."

"Because of Slavica?"

"She is growing up, husband. She is not the little girl you adopted any more."

"What do you mean?"

"She's turning into a young woman, Kosta."

Kosta Savić sat quietly for a time; then he passed a thin bony hand across his brow. "I knew it, of course," he said. "But I don't know why she's the one I feel sorry for." He leaned forward and pushed himself to his feet, wearily. Stana started forward to help him and he leaned on her arm as far as the door.

"Slavica!" he called. "Come here, please!" Then he leaned on the door frame and said, "We must find her a young man."

"I will think about it," Stana promised.

"We had better do it," he said. "God help us if we leave her to choose for herself."

Slavica appeared in the doorway, glancing from one to the other. "You called for me?"

"Where have you been, Slavica?" exclaimed Stana. "You might have caught your death."

The girl looked at her steadily. "I'll forgive you for what you did. Anyone can lose his temper."

"Slavica!" said Kosta Savić sharply. "You will not patronize your mother!"

"Perhaps I was too hasty," said Stana. "Let us understand each other."

"Yes, mother," said the girl. "I am tired."

"You shall have a wash, something to eat, and then go straight to bed," decreed Stana.

"There must be no divisions between us," said Kosta Savić as Stana sat the girl down and then went to put the kettle on. "You know this is only the beginning with those Austrians. If there are any weaknesses, any cross-purposes among us, we will play right into their hands."

There was silence as the girl went to get out of her dirty dress.

He said: "We must be together."

"To tell the truth, I didn't know what to expect," said Demjan, munching on a slice of cornbread. "I knew the stories, though. So I was prepared for the worst."

"God works in His own ways," said Alija. "Those Austrians didn't seem bad. That officer called me 'sir.'"

"I was rather surprised that you . . . concealed the truth about the Schwabe. What if they had searched?"

"We would all have been arrested. We would probably have been arrested no matter what. Who would believe such a story as yours?"

"I hope you would."

"Of course I do, Demjan. And I am already feeling that we maybe did the wrong thing."

"Strange." Demjan cut a piece of sheep's cheese and handed it to Alija. "Why should they arrest us for an act of kindness?"

Alija gestured toward the sky. "Things weren't always as they are, you know. I was just a bit younger than you when the 1875 rebellion broke out at Nevesinje."

"Did you fight?" asked Demjan.

"Yes. I fought the cursed dahis, and then I fought the Austrians who had invaded to take what they left. That was the beginning of the Austrian military occupation."

“You are a Turk, yet you curse your own people?”

“I am a Bosnian Turk, blood of the blood of this land. I am not of the race of those Greek and Asiatic mercenaries.”

"I understand. But these Austrians say that they are taking over the civil administration of the country now. We will just become part of their empire."

"Insh’allah. It is in God's hands--and the young men's."

"Well, I don't want to fight anybody. I've too much work to do."

"Even if they arrest your stepfather?"

"I don't know. But I don't think he is the sort to let himself get arrested."

"You ought to think about it. It could go badly with him if that soldier recovers his senses--or seems to."

"What would you do?"

"Aie," sighed the farmer. "It is hard. True, I owe a debt to the gospodar. I also have a family. What would happen to them if I went hajduk?"

"I could picture it."

"And if the gospodar Kosta Savić took to the mountains, who would they come after? H'm?"

"Me," said Demjan. "My mother and family."

Alija sat up. "It has bothered me over since the gospodar first visited me yesterday; and forgive me if I seem to meddle, but there is something between you and him. Whatever it is, it's poisoning your relationship and eating away your mutual respect. There is suspicion, and it ought to be cleared up. I don't know what the root of it is, but you are all in danger."

Demjan was silent for a time, picking at the dead grass in the cool bright sunlight; but at last he said, "You are right, Alija. It goes back a very long way."

"How far?"

"I am told that my father, Andrija Savić, was always a rather sullen, withdrawn man. I certainly remember him like that, only more so . . . He had so lost touch with other people that he lost touch with himself. By the time he died, I'm not sure had had any grasp on reality at all."

"So?"

"What am I to believe when I seem to see the same thing happening to his brother? What does it mean?"

"They are brothers, after all."

"But the killings? They say my father killed Petar Bicanić. What if my stepfather--his brother-killed Dabisav Uglesić the knez? And if so, what in God's name can it be?"

"And--are you next?" said Alija very softly.

Demjan said nothing.

"Again, it is hard to say," observed Alija. "It is true that Kosta Savić has been wounded somehow, that he got drunk and talked wildly. But what you are suggesting requires a great deal more proof."

"He sat down in the village with me and told me stories about my father. He's never done that. And--"

Demjan remembered with a shiver what Kosta had said in the darkness: Something is there again . . .

"And what, Demjan?"

"Nothing."

"I find it a bit odd, though, that the talk of what is going on always goes back to Andrija."

"What do you remember of him?"

"He was--could have been--a great man, a hero. Hot-headed, I remember, always ready to defend himself--or anyone else--in a moment. I recall once, he and Hasanović the tinker were drinking, and the latter let fall some boast of having cheated a Cincar fellow in a bargain. 'You're talking about my wife's people,' said Andrija and lifted Hasanović right off the floor and shook him 'til his teeth rattled.

"At that we tried to calm him down, and Joro Djurić said, 'Don't pay any attention, that tinker's a dirty lout anyway.' Then Andrija let go one hand, smashed a bottle, and shoved it into Joro's jacket-front. 'Shut your trap,' he said. 'Don't call my friends names, you swine.' Then he let Hasanović down and bought a round of rahi for everyone."

"That was the end of it?"

"That was it. You could never tell what he was thinking. Only when he spoke, and then it was usually calculated."

"But he freed you."

"Yes, God be thanked. Don't let anyone tell you he was a bad man. I'll always think well of him for that. He had been through a very bad time with your mother, you know, and they got back together just before your sister was born. It was in that time he got that great scar, the one across the whole left side of his face."

"I remember, a little."

"It was after that he freed us. Perhaps he felt thankful to God for Slavica and wanted to do something for his soul. But if anyone knew what made him tick, it would be your mother."

"She doesn't say much either," said Demjan. "And neither of them talk about my grandfather."

"Nikola Savić? He was a good man. He'd be about seventy now if God had spared him."

"My stepfather tells me he fell from a horse."

"Yes, I remember his funeral. Everyone came, and what a feast! Someone made a song about it. Nikola was a hard man, but good."

"Did he wear black clothes?"

"Black? What an idea! No, he wore the embroidered shirt and jacket like everyone else. Very proper in everything he did, very punctual and exact like a German. Paid all his bills on time, even his tribute to Prince Nikola for the farm, which your father forgot. I think your stepfather developed his taste for new-fangled methods from him.”

"My stepfather says he remembers him wearing black."

"That's understandable. There was something very monkish, almost ascetic, about the man. And Kosta was only a small boy when he died."

"What of Nikola's father?"

Alija shook his head. "There you take me further back than I remember. But once--oh, thirty years ago--I heard a guslar sing a ballad that had him in it. It was as we were driving out the dahis and begs, you recall, then. He was singing of the old comitadji who had fought the oppressors, and he mentioned, in the list, 'Malibor Savić the giant,' who would have 'spit them like rabbits.'

"He was a hajduk, then? Can a gospodar be an outlaw?"

"If such were possible, he achieved that. I gather he came to a bad end, as most of them did, but I never heard just what it was, or why Nikola Savić should never speak of him. Most men would be proud to have a hero for a father; but there again, Nikola and I were a generation apart, and my father was just a gazda."

"Would you believe," said Demjan, "that up to now I never even knew his name?"

"Well, perhaps your stepfather has been waiting for you to come of age."

"He claims he doesn't know anything."

"Maybe old Nikola Savić, peace be upon him, never told him. Who knows?"

"I shall have to talk to Jovan Ilić sahibija, I can see."

"If any man living knows, he does. I wish you luck."

"But you see how I can't help feeling that all this business goes back a very long way."

"With your stepfather, you mean?"

"Yes. Something is hounding him. He's getting terribly thin, and half the time he can't talk sense. I believe my mother knows part of it and Jovan Ilić knows the rest. And all since Anton was born. What could three-month-old Anton have to do with men who died years ago?"

"If I could help you, I would," said Alija. "But apparently it is God's will that you undertake the task alone."

"Don't say that!" cried Demjan. "How could it be God's will that my father and uncle both be done to death?"

"I don't know," said Alija. "I just don't know . . . Was that what you were going to ask me about earlier today?"

"No. I don't know. Actually," said the young man, "I just don't feel like talking about it now."

"Ako, ako," said Alija.

Slavin dismounted, handed his reins to Schwetje, and went straight into the han, leaving a tangle of men and horses out in the square.

"Sir--" said a dispatch-rider.

"Later," snapped Slavin, pushing past him. "Vathely!"

"Sir!" said the hussar, coming to attention.

"What's all this Hartlieb is telling me about the murder site?"

"Hird is dead, sir. Vonhof's gone."

"I know that," said Slavin acidly. "What I want to know is what you've been doing about it."

"I was waiting for your authorization to round up a patrol--"

"Waiting," snarled Slavin. "While you've been 'waiting,' Vonhof could have been tortured to death. As far as I'm concerned, we're in a zone of hostilities."

"What do you need me to do, sir?"

"What you should have done already. Send Hartlieb back with six more men. Have everyone clear out as fast as they can, bodies or no bodies. By now the whole detail might have been killed. Or didn't that occur to you? Anyway, I'm making you personally responsible for getting every man back."

"Jawohl, Herr Oberst."

"Beachten Sie schnell. Move." Vathely saluted and was gone. "Now, you." Slavin turned to the D.R. "What is it?"

"From Herr Stadelmeier, sir," said the man, handing over an envelope. Slavin split it lengthwise, tore out the sheets inside, and read them rapidly.

"What the devil is all this?" said Slavin, still reading. "'Complete dossiers' . . . 'Italian and Russian influence in Montenegro' . . . 'no political implications?' Who does he take me for, Sherlock Holmes?"

"His verbal instructions were that he will refuse to assume political responsibility for the consequences of your investigation, sir," said the D.R. tactfully.

"In case of failure," said Slavin. "If I succeed he will no doubt spare me a pat on the back after he picks up the credit for it and gets the medal."

"Something of the sort, sir."

Ja, ja.

"All right," he told the man. "After formation you're off. But don't go out, you hear?"

"Yes, sir."

Slavin put his head out the door. "Schwetje!" he bawled.

"Sir?"

"I want a formation in ten minutes. Every man. Tell the Herr Hauptfeldwebel right now."

"Yes, sir." Schwetje disappeared.

Slavin sat down and mopped his forehead. He wanted a drink. It was going to be tricky, putting the tired men at combat readiness without seeming to initiate a state of hostilities. His success so far had come from a low profile, a contrast to the raiding tactics of other commanders.

Though he was not firing the first shot, he was inviting it. All it would need was a few young hotheads to start something, and with market-day on the morrow, and then an eight-way public funeral . . . He looked at the dispatch again.

You will find the criminals at any cost, and check out everyone on the area, compiling complete dossiers. You are working in a highly sensitive area, and Italian and Russian influence in the State of Montenegro makes it imperative that you work quietly. The murder of a magistrate makes it a political matter in Sarajevo's eyes, but no political implications must be visible in your investigation. You have my full authorization to act as you see fit.

There was more, but Slavin already knew that he had been given enough rope to hang himself.

Yes, he wanted a drink.

"Sir," said Schwetje into the door. "The formation is waiting on you."

Slavin stood up, automatically straightening his uniform, and stepped outside as the sergeant-major called the formation to attention. The men were handed over to him and he looked out over the ranks of soldiers, every young-old face carefully blank. Some needed shaves; most needed haircuts, and every uniform was dirty.

He didn't really know what to say.

"Soldaten," he said, "as you know, we have an incident on our hands. We don't know yet if the magistrate's murder was a private matter or an act of banditry. Hird is dead and Vonhof is missing. It looks like they were attacked by wolves, but we don't know yet. Anyone who says Vonhof is dead is making rumours. If he is alive, we will find him, and because we have suffered casualties, whether by natural or human agency, I am declaring this area a hostile zone, and duty will be assigned as such."

Here a few stifled groans were heard, but Slavin hammered on. "We will conduct regular patrols with loaded weapons. All contacts are to be regarded as potentially hostile. But you are not, I repeat, not to fire or take the offensive in any manner without a direct order. This is a highly sensitive area, and any unprovoked response could touch off an armed conflict. If such were the case, it is unlikely that reinforcements could reach us from Trnovo in time."

He paused a moment to let this sink in. "Use the greatest caution in dealing with the inhabitants. Take nothing from them, even in trade, and do not communicate with them except as absolutely necessary; and then state nothing that could be interpreted as derogatory. The locals are people who are legendary for their quickness to fight and defend their honour, which none of us fully understands--not even myself, who have been here longer than any of you. They also practice the blood feud, and many are Mussulmen, identifiable by their green sashes. Therefore all remarks about swine, swine's flesh, or alcohol are forbidden. And I'll ruin any man I catch even looking at one of their women.

"Be careful, men. Any false step, any infringement of these instructions, could forfeit your life and those of your comrades. We will not be here more than a week or so, and when we get back to Foča I'll see that each and every one of you gets leave time." He called the formation at attention again, turned the men over to the sergeant-major, and went back inside, not at all in the mood to tackle the stack of paperwork that he knew was waiting for him.

"Well," said Stana, "that's Slavica safely in bed."

"Was she hurt?" asked Kosta Savić.

"Just a few scratches here and there, and a bump on the head. Tired and feverish. She didn't seem to be in any pain, so I let her tuck herself in."

He grimaced. "Just as Anton is better--"

"Nothing that she won't get over by tomorrow morning. She's a strong, healthy girl."

"Is she asleep?"

"No, she's still working on the hot soup. I--" She broke off as a wail worked itself up. "There's Anton again."

Kosta Savić, from his seat, craned his neck toward the cradle. "Is that his hungry cry, or his you-know-what cry?"

"It's more diapers," she said, heading for the hot water.

Kosta Savić arose and limped over to look into the cradle. "Well, you have had Slavica helping you."

"True. Not that anyone was around to help me with her. How'd you like to learn?"

"Me? Change a diaper?"

"Why not?" She returned with a basin, set it down, and unflapped a piece of cloth. Then she lifted the baby out of its cover and lay it on the table.

"I don't know," said Kosta Savić, watching her deft, rapid movements. Then he smiled. "To think, I was once like that."

"Everyone was," said Stana. "Maybe you'll think about it the next time you shoot somebody. Here, hold this."

"It does seem terribly pointless," said Kosta Savić, holding up the ends of the diaper.

"You haven't seen anything," said Stana. "You got Demjan and Slavica already broken-in. Wait until he learns to walk. Then to talk. Try potty-training him, or teaching him how to eat properly and how to sit up straight. Do you have any idea how much work goes into teaching a child to sit up straight?"

"Not really."

"And you know I'm probably doing all this so that twenty years from now, just as he's almost grown up, some bastard can carve him open with a handžal."

"It's true," said Kosta Savić slowly.

"Of course it's true. But do men ever think about it?" Kosta Savić just watched her tie up the fresh diaper and take the child in her arms.

"It's a pity," he said.

"It's woman's work," she said. "You couldn't do it worth a damn."

"Well," he smiled, "I'll shuffle off to something I can handle, like looking at the seed potatoes. I'll be down in the stable."

"Don't fall down the stairs," she said.

He descended to the stable level, took off his coat and put it on top of the kerosene tank, and in a small room partitioned from the rest spent a quiet hour in the potato-bin. Some of the vegetables were dying, withered and blackish; while others were putting out fragile white shoots heading straight for the sunlight admitted through the single narrow window. Here, at least, Kosta Savić reflected, things were as they should be.

He tried to remember the night he had killed Dabisav Uglesić. Pictures came easily enough--the farmhouse in flames, the dancing frantic silhouettes that he had cut down like a child snapping dandelions' heads--but they seemed curiously disassociated from reality, as if he were viewing someone else's memories. Yet witnessing the event would have revolted him; what then should he feel about himself?

He pulled out his handžal and examined the blade. It did not look the less keen for having slain his friends. His hands had not lost their strength; nor had some vengeance from the sky struck him down.

He turned the blade over and it flashed in the late-afternoon sunbeams filtering through chinks in the wall.

Have to fix that, he thought.

He held the weapon up.

Like all men, and some women, he carried one always. This one had been made for him by an Italian cutler in Ragusa and had cost him the price of a draft horse; he had never seen another like it.

Not big, as sheath-knives went, with a blade the length of his hand--some ran nearly twice as large--tempered for toughness and flexibility rather than sharpness--it didn't do to keep a working knife too sharp. Its handle grips were cut from pure amber, and it was balanced for throwing.

He sheathed it with a sigh, straightened up, and went out into the stable. There was plenty to do, but somehow he didn't feel up to it.

The big Turk knocked softly on the study door.

"Yes, Yusef," said the priest.

Yusef pushed the heavy door open; it swung silently on its brass hinges.

"What news?" asked Father Ante Rezać.

"The knez and all his household are dead; I have confirmed it. The Austrians left a two-man guard when they rode away. They went back this morning with Brother Grgur and found one man dead, one missing--perhaps a wolf attack."

"What are they doing?"

"The patrol rode up the mountain and into the Vučedol. The Colonel has put his men at full alert, but with explicit instructions to avoid all provocative behaviour. And he said they will be here for one week."

"Excellent." Father Ante sat back in his oak chair. "Now, tomorrow, either Demjan Savić or Kosta Savić will be at market. I want you to pay close attention to whichever it is. If it is Kosta, observe him closely, for he has received a wound of some sort. I have reason to believe that Knez Dabisav was killed by Kosta Savić, and if so the soldiers are bound up in the matter. If the gospodja comes, so much the better. Strike up a conversation with her--"

"Father," said Yusef, "I do many things for you. But please, do not put me too closely on to them. The gospodar is very quick with the knife, and the gospodja--"

"What about her?"

"Surely, Father, you know that she has the evil eye."

"Rubbish. There is no such thing, and even if there were, wouldn't the power of Our Lord and tokens of the Mother of God and holy Saint George protect you?"

The Turk stirred uneasily. "Yes, Father, but please be careful. I, too, have an immortal soul."

"Which I care for as much as your body. Remember, what would you be without me?"

Yusef bowed his head and said nothing.

"Very well. You will simply observe them and report to me. Every detail, mind you."

"Yes, Father."

"Thank you, Yusef. You may go."

After the door closed, Ante Rezać turned his chair about and considered.

It was not too often that he made contact with his most errant visitor, nor that she bothered to drop by. When they met their talk was, by tacit understanding, of trivialities. For they knew each other well, with better knowledge than came of words; for when she had first come to the valley he had seen into her, and she into him.

Neither of them had been born into this upland wilderness, and he could see that she was of some very different stock, not quite like any he had ever seen. He had met a few people of the Vlakh or Cincar tribe, a primitive, almost timeless race of shepherds whose ways had not appreciably changed since the days of Byzantium; and although he saw certain grounds for comparison, she was no wandering shepherd's daughter. He was sure of it. Curiosity had kept his lips sealed at first, and over the course of twenty years his curiosity had become an inexpressible obsession.

And what, he often wondered, had she seen in him? Had she seen the poor Croat tradesman’s son, reared in the passionate Croat Catholic faith that owed so much political allegiance to Habsburg Austria's Catholics while rivalling Habsburg Spain's in its national symbolism? Had she seen his selection for the Society of Jesus, his short and brilliant career in Rome and Ravenna, cut off by his expulsion for certain rather un-Jesuitical activities, and his consequent appointment to this wild, forsaken mission district? Had she seen how he had languished, cut off from all human contact but the degraded, illiterate Serb and Montenegrin peasantry?

What, exactly, lay behind her Sphinxlike features, her faint dry remote smile?

As he reached into the twilight world of her soul, he found himself in a vast bizarre dreamscape, wandering in dimensions of cold grandeur and hellish beauty. Some utterly alien logic defined the boundaries of possibility, often vague or nonexistent; and that he constantly found his own reflection therein disturbed him profoundly. Even death had its own rules, for here yet lived Andrija Savić, and Kosta Savić too, and figures recognizable only in nightmare or delirium--whether past, present, or future he could not say. And the fact that her force of personality worked her will with uncanny efficiency brought this state of things too close for Father Ante to dismiss them as fancy. Indeed, he often wondered where reality, for her, left off, and the other began--or if she bothered to distinguish them at all.

And then at the time of Andrija Savić's death he had realized that she was the locus of events, not their compass. That she had exerted some immense and subtle influence in the development of Andrija's personality he never doubted; but she could not have made him to go and kill Petar Bicanić. He was far too strong a man. Even less could she have forced the death of Dabisav Uglesić, by anyone's hand, had she even desired the death of her old friend.

And so, insanely, he found himself back at the questions he had begun with, near the point where obsession left off and psychosis began.

Stana had an hour or so left of sunlight after she put the baby back in his cradle, so she picked up her sewing basket and adjusted her chair to the afternoon rays.

And as her fingers picked up the rhythm of the work, she tried to make out a market-day inventory in her head; but her wayward thoughts would not submit to direction. She was aware, somehow, that her feelings about Kosta and the crime he had committed were not as they should be.

She had known nothing about him when they had met, quite literally over Andrija's corpse. But underneath the icy exterior she had seen something in him of the lost, lonely little boy, and had fallen for him in a way very different than she had felt for Andrija.

As they courted, she found that he had led a restless life, soldiering, foresting, and farming by turn; never, it seemed, with any clear purpose or course. But instinct told her that he could make a reliable husband and father, and she had consented to marry him.

And he had indeed made a good husband, as good as he knew how to be. He did everything right; running the farm, helping tenants and neighbours, remembering her and the children with little gifts and surprises--in bed, too, he was excellent. Yet underneath it all, despite his reputation, there lingered the orphan boy, sometimes brash and defiant, then again pleading for affection and tenderness.

Andrija, too, had been sensitive, but instead of ice to defend himself he had developed fire, fuelled by a nature much more reckless and passionate than Kosta's. His inhibited and introspective temperament, however, had turned his passion toward violence, and he too often sought to numb his sensitivity in drunken cruelty. In spite of it all she had loved him, loved him wildly and jealously, and the scar he wore for the last years of his life had borne witness to that; she would have killed any other man for what he had tried to do while she was pregnant with Slavica, and he knew it.

With Kosta there had never been any question of such a thing. He cared for her, needed her in a gentler way, and she had hoped that Anton's birth would set his loneliness at ease, steering their love into more mature channels.

Instead, he began to brood and grow silent, never speaking for days on end except to answer an insistent question. At first she had thought this his new-father's reaction; she had seen the like before. But he had not snapped out of it in three months, and her unspoken fears had become plain to Demjan and Slavica. Every stratagem she had tried on him had come to nought.

Something had grown up inside him, something grim and unsettling that would not let him speak. He had made efforts to talk, once or twice when he came home so drunk that she had had to put her foot down.

And then this.

The crime itself did not so shock her. Her turbulent life before Andrija, vestiges of which she still recalled from time to time--and life with him if it came to that--had largely inured her to killing, even to torture, and she herself had acquired certain skills with knife and gun as a matter of survival. But there was a reason. Kosta might not know it himself, but there was a reason, just as Andrija had had a reason, and it must be bound up with the stranger he had become.

She threw her mind back to the night that Andrija had come crawling back to the door in mortal agony; good as dead but for that terrible genius of life that inhered in his blood.

In her mind, she always called it the need.

She had recognized its traces in him when they met; it ran in the blood of the family of these men from generation to generation.

In his last hours she had seen it dominate.

He had moved from cursing himself to cursing his forebears, then his children, then to her, calling God to witness that they were all murderers, even as he; and then he had cried out to her for mercy, imploring her never to remarry.

He had literally to scream the life out of himself, to drive it from the shattered body it clung to with animal desperation.

He had been trying to die, trying with all his remaining strength to depart the world.

She had used every means at her disposal to thwart him.

And after a twenty-four-hour battle he had slipped away from her, and the need had gone away with him.

Or so she had thought.

It had arisen in Andrija when they married. Now, apparently, it had arisen in Kosta. And Demjan? Slavica?

Anton?

She began to feel rather dizzy.

{}

Kosta Savić opened the door, came into the house, and carefully closed it behind him. Then he leaned against the inside and looked at Stana, who sat quietly sewing by the kerosene lamplight.

"Are you ready for dinner yet?" she asked. "It's just us two."

"That sounds good," he said. "What is there?"

"I've got some leftover mutton pie, cornbread, and soup."

"Fine." And as he said that, it occurred to him that he had been taking Stana rather too much for granted lately; she had put up with a lot from him, a lot that even he didn't quite understand. "Thank you."

She smiled a little, looking over her shoulder. "You're welcome."

He sat down, and in a few moments she had the evening's simple dinner on the table. "How are the potatoes?" she asked.

"Doing well. If I didn't think we had one more frost coming I'd put them in the ground tomorrow."

"Ivo came by last night."

"What was on his mind?"

"He wants us to pick up a bale of wire and some sacks of oats for him at market. Of course I told him we would."

"If there's any oats to be had, yes."

"He also told me he had to talk to you about something, but he wouldn't tell me what it was."

"That's odd," he commented. "I can't imagine what it would be."

"Do you think . . ."

He caught her meaning. "No."

"Do you feel like talking to me about it?"

"No, wife. I don't."

"Someday, if you do, I'll try to understand," she promised.

"Good."

There was a space of silence.

"What did you and Slavica fight about?" he asked.

"A female matter."

"A what?"

"I'd rather not talk about it at the table," she said shortly. "Husband, do you think Ivo has something up his sleeve about the Schwabes?"

"No. Why should he?"

"Well, you know how he carries on talking."

"It's all just talk, nothing else."

"Maybe there is someone who doesn't think so."

"Oh? They didn't say anything about it. But that Colonel fellow struck me as being quite a different cut of Schwabe."

"I know you don't want to talk about it," she ventured, "but when you confessed to him, you weren't doing a double bluff, were you? It was sincere."

"Yes."

She said something else, but Kosta did not hear her. Whether or not she believed him any more seemed pointless.

Never before had any act in his life so changed things, within him and without; and everyone he thought he knew had become utter strangers, capable of asking only one question. He wondered whether he were doomed to eternity seeking its answer.

Sunset was casting long jagged shadows across the village square when Vathely held up his hand to halt the column. Dust swirled up and around the unkempt uniforms, cracking boots, and frayed harnesses, sticking to the horses' shining flanks. Schwetje came out past the guards and saluted as Vathely tossed him his reins.

"Good to see you, sir," said the aide. "Any trouble?"

"No," said Vathely. "Everything accounted for."

"The Old Man will be pleased to hear it. He says you're to report straight in."

"Right," said the hussar, dismounting. "Call the formation and then release them, will you, Sergeant Deutscher?"

"Brother Grgur is to report in, too, sir," added the aide-de-camp.

Vathely turned back to face the column's centre, whistled, and gestured; the grey-bearded wagon-driver nodded and started to climb off the box. The hussar walked over to meet him as Schwetje began shouting orders and together they went to the door of the han, and in through the low light-filled doorway.

Inside, a pair of gas lanterns already threw a harsh shadowless illumination that made the old stone-walled taproom look--it occurred to Vathely--like a dungeon; one idea, he had learned, that in fact had not escaped the builders. Slavin, too, getting up from behind his makeshift desk, looked pale, his face even craggier above his loose uniform.

Vathely saluted. "Detail reporting, Herr Oberst."

"Right," said Slavin. "How'd it go?"

"Pretty well, sir. They were just about done by the time we arrived."

"Any further casualties?"

"No, sir. No sign of trouble at all. We didn't even meet anyone on the road."

"You have Hird's body?"

"Yes, sir. It's being put in the back--I've arranged for a two-man honour guard on it."

"Good." Slavin turned to Brother Grgur. "You will be holding the funerals tomorrow?"

"Tradition says tomorrow, but it is market-day. The day after, I think."

"What time?"

"I must speak with Father Ante about that. He will be helping to officiate, as I am not fully ordained, and it is rather an extraordinary affair. However, I would expect the proceedings to begin at noon."

"What does that include?" asked Vathely.

"There will be a church ceremony, followed by a funeral procession," said the sacristan, stroking his beard. "Then the real funeral will take place in the graveyard, and there will be a great feast."

"A feast in the graveyard?" said the hussar incredulously.

"Not just in the graveyard," said Slavin suddenly. "On the very graves themselves. It is a powerfully emotional thing. I witnessed one once. The women shrieked and howled like demons, and I saw tough old gunmen who'd shrug off a severed leg breaking down and shedding deadly silent tears of their own. At that one the family provided food and drink, plenty of both--must have set them back a year's work."

"Yes, it is a vital matter of family pride to provide the best of everything," said Brother Grgur. "A man who has a stingy send-off will shame his descendants for generations. I expect Dragan Vuković will do his best, as Knez Dabisav's sole surviving relative, though he is a member of Jovan Ilić's household, and through his wife he may allow the sahibija to help provide. If the old man takes a hand, the arrangements will be thorough, despite the fact that this isn't a good time of year provision-wise. Many of the poorer families are on starvation diets through late March. And, of course, a new knez must be chosen."

"Who will do that?"

"That is the privilege of the odbor, the village council made up of the starešini. Be assured, it will be a man of experience and sound judgment."

"As long as he has common sense, that is enough," said Slavin. "No man of sense would want to start trouble, and no trouble is all we want."

"You know, voevoda that is not always up to the knez" said the old man with a hint of reproach.

"True. But we can handle a few hotheads. Organized trouble is different."

"Hungry men seldom intrigue, except perhaps to get bread, and I don't believe anyone expects you to be giving that away."

Slavin smiled thinly. "Our men are on half-rations themselves."

"Then it's a good thing you've arrived in time for market-day," said Brother Grgur. "Gentlemen, I wish you well, but I have much work to do if you will excuse me."

"One other thing: may our man be given a burial in the Christian cemetery?"

"He was Roman rite?"

"Roman Catholic, yes."

"I will mention it to Father Ante. I'm sure it will be arranged."

"Then we sha'n't stay you any longer, Brother Grgur," said Slavin, automatically extending his hand, then withdrawing it. "You will notify us of any changes?"

"I or Father Ante."

"Thank you. Good evening, and don't hesitate to ask us for any assistance you may require."

"Auf wiedersehen," said the sacristan. He turned and went out, the worn cloth of his coat gleaming in the lantern-light.

"We must talk, Janos," said Slavin. "Have a seat."

It was deep night, long after moonset. One or two nameless stars shone like bale-fire through the sullen mist; it was silent on the mountain track. On one side the cliff's edge fell away into unseen depths thick with fog, and on the other a broken, twisted rise of black basalt glistened with icy moisture trickling into jagged fissures in the rock.

The girl was running.

Swiftly and surely her body cut the damp chilly air like a blade, like tough supple steel. The ecstasy of running powered her, pumping through her bare limbs and bearing her slender naked torso as on wings, her hair streaming behind. Even had she missed a step, she felt as if she could have run on the fog, coursing on the mist itself. But she kept to the path, never slowing or faltering as it wound toward the summit. And as she reached the opens she heard her name spoken.

She checked and whirled--her name was a command, an invocation, a power.

She looked, and knelt.

The speaker stood tall and whiplash-straight, arrogantly erect, arms crossed as if throwing defiance to all the gods. Yet the figure wore a simple black robe, with a twelve-pointed star on a chain about the collar. Only a part of the face was visible in the shadow thrown by shocks of white hair but in what she saw she read her wierd.

"What would you have of me?" she asked in a low voice.

"Your thoughtless head, with its itching teeth," said the symbol-wearer. "I ought to impale it above Carcosa and let it rot."

"Why? I meant no harm--"

"Meant no harm? You are becoming dangerously infatuated with blood, little one. I have warned you before."

"But there is power in it."

"Power that enslaves. If you chain yourself to blood you will soon be no better than a vampire. I know whereof I speak. I did that for far too long. That is not my desire for you. My desire is for you to be free."

"But what of my hunger? Am I to feed only upon that? I should soon consume myself."

The symbol-wearer's voice grew less imperious. "That fear is an illusion, and the sooner you learn to conquer such illusions the sooner you may begin to use them upon others. For what you feel as hunger is a τέλωσ, a striving; a need. It should drive you to fitter pastimes than blood-sucking. If you allow it to burn hard and bright and brilliant instead of drowning it in blood, it will power you through the lesser arcana to the heights of the mysteries."

"And even to your eminence?"

One of the symbol-wearer's hidden eyes seemed to glint, and the nostrils dilated a little. "By dint of . . . circumstances, I attained to certain mysteries such as were known to few others. And because I alone dared to use them, the others sought to destroy me, insofar as our kind can be destroyed, and came very close to succeeding before their attempt rebounded upon them, in accordance with the laws of the arcana. But, as all powers have a price, so these supreme powers carried a supreme price; one so great that I have decided none other shall ever know. It is indeed not worth the cost."

"That is surely not for you to decide?"

The air of command suddenly returned. "I think it is, inasmuch as I am the only one with ability to communicate them, or if there be another he has passed beyond. But that which lies within your grasp is enough to confer life, and power, and knowledge above anything you can conceive."

"I hear you. I will obey."

The symbol-wearer's hard sensuous lips curved into a smile. "I know you will. Because if you don't I shall throw you to the Dholes. And then you will find out what it is to live for blood."

"You know, Captain, that the principal reason for killings around here is the blood feud. It's practiced with a virulence unknown elsewhere in Europe, even in Crete or Sicily. Why, I don't know. I don't want to know. But I have been studying up on who would like to kill whom."

"And--?"

"I'm hoping you can fill me in on what you learnt from the priest."

"He mentioned the major clans. I'm sure you already know them: Vuletitch, Leskanitch, and the others."

"There are also subsidiary houses. There is the family of Jovan Ilić of Foča, Vuković, Vuletić, Savić, Selimović, Djurić, Osmanović, Leskanić, Kopitar, and--until recently--Uglesić. The Vuletić and Djurić are Catholic; the Selimović and Osmanović Moslem, and the rest Orthodox. No Jews. What it breaks down to is that blood feuds almost never cross religious lines, though differing religionists cheerfully murder each other for their faiths."

"Father Ante said that there had been a record of bad feeling, but no bloodshed, until Andrija Savitch killed Petar Bicanitch."

"But why did the rest of them not retaliate? Because of religious difference? That seems to be an instinctive safety device to prevent religious war at the village level, though that is common enough in the larger region."

"He mentioned that since Andrija Savitch died of the wounds that he had been given, the blood-debt was considered settled."

"That makes sense. As for the others, the Selimović and Osmanović have always more or less got along. But the Djurić exterminated a third Catholic family--the Nastasjević--in the last century. They and the Vuletić seem to be under a truce. Open violence only now takes place within the Orthodox community; Vuković against Leskanić principally."

"So?"

"Shortening all the shades of alliance--which are all critically important--the most likely killer for the Uglesić clan would be a Leskanić or a Kopitar; and the least likely would be a Vuković, a Savić, or a Bicanić, in roughly that order. Therefore, when you ride out on patrol, you will pay especial attention to the Leskanić and Kopitar."

"I? On patrol? But--"

"No. True, troops might be needed here tomorrow to cope with trouble. But the principal danger of that would come from the presence of the troops themselves."

"How can we talk with the headmen separately if they are all here at market?"

"Quite easily. You will leave tonight and catch them in the earliest morning as they take the roads for town. But you won't do any more than ask them a couple of friendly questions. And you'll stay the hell away until tomorrow night." He unfolded a map. "Take the road west and then work roughly clockwise about the village, hitting Bicanić's, here, and then working your way down the valley until you meet the Brod cut-off below Vikoč, here. Then take the main road back. Be sure to take several men who know the language. Any questions?"

"No, sir."

"Good. Reveille will be at three o'clock, chow at half-past. You'll be on the road by four. Good night, Captain."

"Good night, sir."

Vathely went out, suddenly very tired; the nervous energy which had kept him going all day had vanished. He saw to the changing of the guard, and the stables, giving the necessary instructions for the morning, and then he retired to his room.

As he prepared for bed he saw Slavin's light still burning in the orderly room. He began to appreciate for the first time the lancer's difficulty in dealing with men like Stadelmeier, for to even half-understand the native mind, as Slavin did, meant a removal from the strictured life of Habsburg administration and its finely honed hierarchy of manners.

He turned over in his cot, his hips and back aching from the hard ride, and the afternoon's memories returned to him: stony-faced soldiers, half-masked by handkerchiefs, collecting horribly mutilated human bodies like so much trash; the sacristan's face as he recognized some friend and parishioner who had died a death that no human being should; and now and again of a woman, a foreigner, black-haired and black-eyed, riding down the wind on a bay horse.

The girl awoke with a start and looked wildly round the room as if its dim furnishings embodied some unfathomable menace.

She was shaking; the sheets were damp with perspiration.

"Slavica?" came the question. "Are you all right?"

The girl said nothing; she pulled up the coverlet and curled up beneath it, her eyes wide open.

A flickering light came into the room. "Slavica?"

The girl closed her eyes but the covers were pulled back. For unbearable seconds she dared not open them but in spite of herself she let her eyelids fall open and glanced up.

She saw Stana's head, the eyes glinting down at her over high pale cheekbones; the lamplight cast blue shadows across her face, gleaming in her black hair.

The girl whimpered.

"There, Slavica, it's all right. You know I'm here. I'm not going anywhere," she heard, although the black lips did not seem to move.

The girl closed her eyes again, turning her face to the mattress. She heard a rustle, and smelt warm, foul breath on her cheek, and a cool kiss.

She felt Stana straighten up, rearrange the covers over her, and go out. She touched the spot where Stana had kissed her and put her fingers to her tongue. It was salty to the taste.

The kiss had left a smear of blood.

As Kosta Savić descended the outside stairs, he saw the evening star burning in the indigo sky just above the dark treetops. Caught in the eternity of the moment, he stopped and looked at it with the feeling he used to have when he had looked at it as a boy.

Night and day, he and Andrija had been called, and in a way it was true. Andrija had been bigger, stronger, and accustomed to getting his way by intimidation--so much that he had never really learnt how to fight, and at least half the time he took a drubbing. It had to remain for him to perfect the art of intimidation, and if Stana's reminiscences were accurate it had become second nature.

For himself Kosta, the smaller one, had been forced to learn fighting, relying on speed and dirty tricks. To be sure, he had developed a stony, menacing demeanour that usually put off others--especially his size. It didn't always work, but Kosta took care to remember what had done him in if he lost, so that no one was ever able to beat him with the same move twice; and by the time he was twelve or so no one could beat him twice at all.

That led to a reputation that pretty much kept him from having to fight altogether, and so to keep his skills up he had taken to the craft of the knife.

He grinned to himself. Andrija would sooner have died than admit Kosta had taught him all he knew about knifework, but so it had been.

He went slowly down the stairs, feeling a dull throbbing pain in his side with each step, and his mind went back to his father, of whom Demjan had asked.

There were only fragmentary vignettes of Nikola Savić in his mind; a gaunt, forbidding man that he was told he resembled. But he hoped he had none of the old man's sourness--old man indeed, though only thirty-eight when he died--practically his own age now, he realized with a start. And Andrija had been thirty-four.

The old man had had some kind of secret, Kosta was sure. He had once done something that he had to do, was the right thing to do--he could not imagine that man doing any but the right thing--but was somehow so terrible that it had cast a pall over his entire subsequent life.

Had he once done even as Andrija, and now Kosta himself?

Did it matter?

No.

So did Andrija matter?

No.

Who mattered?

Stana and the children. He wasn't even sure that he mattered. The crime, if crime it was, seemed to matter more than he did.

The danger was that it would matter more than his wife and family.

Guilty?

Hell, yes.

Guilty of what? Specifically, what?

At this Kosta Savić ran out of answers.

He looked up at the heavens momentarily, as if imploring them for help; none, seemingly, forthcoming, he turned and made his aching way back up the stairs.

There were few lights burning anywhere within the vast, hulking building that housed General Conrad von Hotzendorf's Vienna bureau; but the General’s own office contained one of these. He looked up from his desk and arose as his orderly officer announced the Foreign Minister, Count Aehrenthal.

"Good evening--or good morning, is it?" said the General as the politician seated himself.

"Morning, I believe," replied Aehrenthal, precise as always. "I know this is all rather unusual, but things are moving."

"Ja," replied the General. "Particularly Bulgarian troops. I'm still trying to put together the details. Do you have something for me?"

"I believe so," said Aehrenthal, producing a stiff paper from inside his frock-coat and tossing it on the desk in front of the Chief of the Imperial General Staff. "Read this."

Hotzendorf snatched up the document and rapidly read it over once, muttered "Damn," and read it over again.

"What do you make of it, Herr General?" asked Aehrenthal.

"A revolution in Turkey?" asked the other. "Quite a lot, if it reads out to what it claims."

"The troop movements occurred this afternoon, and only this evening the Sultan's palace was closed to all access. Ships are moving out of Smyrna and Trebizond, and the garrison of Thessalonica was put on full alert. Some officer called Mustafa Kemal is to make a proclamation from Angora first thing in the morning."

"Have you heard what it's to be?"

"We're expecting him to declare a constitutional republic, leaving Sultan Abdul Hamid in a purely ceremonial position. We also expect him to call elections. You remember what we were saying about Bosnia?"

"It's time?"

"A republican government in Turkey," said Aehrenthal trimly, "will certainly repudiate a large number of treaties and conventions wrung from the sultans. Very high on their list will be the 1878 Berlin treaty--on which our right to be in Bosnia at all ultimately rests--as well as its other provisions regarding Bulgaria, Albania, the Straits, et cetera, et cetera. Even then it was signed only because the alternative, embodied in the 1877 San Stefano treaty, was even worse."

"I know. Himmel! that gave the Russkies and Bulgarians practically everything right up to the Constantinople city limits. Every government in Europe protested against it. But you said they're calling elections?"

"They will certainly do so; if not today, then within a few days."

The General said: "They could call Bosnian elections."

"They certainly could, since they still, technically, have suzerainty over the place--whether or not they abrogate the Berlin treaty. And elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina would create a legitimate national government there, fully capable of taking it independent."

"Damn," murmured Hotzendorf.

"The coup numbers not a few Bosnian and Albanian officers among Kemal's men in Angora. They are fully aware of what they are doing. We could expect Albanian independence to be put in the works almost immediately."

"What about Russia?"

"Ah, the eternal question. Well, I smelt something of all this nearly a month ago. I didn't tell you this the other day, but I met with Foreign Minister Izvolsky at Buchlau a few weeks since. We promised to support opening of the Straits to Russian warships in the event of a Turkish coup. Izvolsky undertook in return to raise no objection to our annexation of Bosnia."

"He can't do that!" protested von Hotzendorf. "His resignation will be demanded the moment this gets out."

"Possibly. He's already lied to King Peter of Serbia twice about it. First he told them he'd extracted a promise from us to pull out what troops we had in the Sandzhak, and then later he denied that there'd been any agreement at all."

"That didn't take him long! Christ, what a mess!"

"I can only guess at the situation in Saint Petersburg," continued Aehrenthal, "since everything off the wire goes through You-know-Whose hands first; but it must be," he finished diplomatically, "very delicate."

"But they don't dare fight!" protested the General. "Not with Germany--"

"You think you've got a mess now?" cut in Aehrenthal icily. "Put yourself in Field Marshal von Schön's place at the head of the German General Staff. Chancellor von Bülow calls you up and asks you to prepare to mobilise troops to help Austria against the Turkish rebels. You are obliged to inform him that the Kaiser does not wish to go to war with his cousin the Czar over a lousy scrap of Balkan dirt for Austria's convenience. Pressed for further explanation, you are forced to own up that, on orders, you secretly financed, trained, and armed these very rebels behind the Chancellor’s back while they were still working for the Sultan--because it was in the Kaiser’s interest to have a modernized Turkish army despite its potential risk to our allies. Now that's a mess."

"I agree," said the General faintly.

"Thank God there's no wire to Cetinje--I don't even want to know what Prince Nicholas of Montenegro makes of all this. I have orders here from the Archduke himself," continued Aehrenthal, producing some more papers. "You'll pardon a few smudges, they were quickly written. The gist of it is that you're to commence mobilisation of two divisions in Galicia, one in Transylvania, and to move one from Laibach up to Sarajevo. Baron Burian will have his orders there. Garrisons in all the localities detailed here will be put on full alert. There will be none of this nonsense about Thessalonica or Uskub. You will push ahead and evacuate all forces from the Sandzhak of Novi Bazar. Serbia will not have their part unless they carve it out of their fellow-Serbs in Montenegro. Bulgaria will stay put, and Izvolsky can go on and hang himself for all I care. Oh, and Conrad?"

"Yes?"

The Foreign Minister arose. "The Archduke has instructed me to inform you that he will have your head if there are any muck-ups."

"What? One village of hot-headed pig farmers could do that!"

Aehrenthal's face--momentarily--looked ghastly white under the glaring light bulb. "I know," he said. "I know."

As he left, an electric buzzer began to grate insistently.

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