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Part Two

 

A soul whose raging tempests wildly rise, whither shall she send her meditations? She rages, and is like a flame of fire, whose smoke constantly ascends. This time her meditations are like a wheel that turns around on the earth and the multitudes thereof, or like the seas wherein the earth's foundations were fastened: How canst thou be so strong and filled with courage, that thou disdainest a place upon the stars? From the path of wisdom turn thou away thy heart; the world shall then smooth thy path for thee.

                                                                                                        --Ibn Gabirol, A Vow

 

Day Four: Night

 

"So," said Vathely, looking from Slavin to Stadelmeier as he joined them in the colonel's cell. "What next, gentlemen?"

"The funerals tomorrow," said the Commissioner. "You had all that put out to the men?"

"Just now, at formation."

"You picked out a good detail for the ceremony, Janos," said Slavin, smoothing out a crumpled piece of paper on his knee and peering at it through his spectacles. "Sergeant von Essen, NCOIC, Sergeant Deutscher, Corporal Becker, Felder, Dommering--who'd you find to replace Dommering on the guard roster?"

"Svoboda volunteered, sir."

"Good. Ferencz, Kessler . . . Voss?"

"Voss asked me, sir. I checked with Sergeant Deutscher and apparently Hird and Voss had got better acquainted recently. Something to do with Voss being a distant relative of Hird's sister-in-law."

"Really? That reminds me--I'll have to write up a condolence note to Hird's family. Have we got his paybook with the address in it?"

"I'm sure we do, sir. Schwetje would know."

"Have to wait 'til we get back to Fotcha, anyway," interjected Stadelmeier. "I don't guess they have mail service here."

In the brief silence the rattle of mess tins filtered through from the great room.

"Suppertime," remarked the politician. "Not a second too soon, either."

"Life in the field, sir," said Slavin.

"Eh?"

"Officers eating last, sir."

"Speak for yourself," grunted Stadelmeier. "I'm a civilian. Your guest, of course."

"Of course. I take it, Janos, those men'll be looking sharp tomorrow?"

"Notified them myself, sir," said the hussar.

"Good. We'll have to be turned out ourselves. I don't suppose you have your dress uniform along?"

Vathely snorted. "Out here?"

"Neither do I--"

"You'll just have to brush up your extra jodhpurs, then," said Stadelmeier curtly. "I think we'll have a little inspection beforehand. Noon, you say it'll start?"

"I think we'd better be there at eleven, sir."

"All right. We'll line them up at, oh, ten-fifteen. Sabres and carbines."

"Both weapons, sir? That's not quite regulation. Which manual of arms would they do?"

"That's a point," admitted the Commissioner. "Carbines, then. Dammit, I know it's not quite proper for cavalrymen, but I'm not having my men out there unarmed, no matter how friendly this Gräfin of yours seems to be."

"Very well, sir," said Slavin. "Any thoughts as to our next line of action?"

"Ja, I'll lay it out for you," said the official, shifting on his camp stool, and at that moment there was a tapping on the doorframe. "Yes?"

Schwetje's face showed. "Gentlemen, some supper?"

"Bring it on," commanded Stadelmeier. "What've you got?"

"Meat pies with baked potatoes, sir. Sergeant Schaab got that big stone oven fired up. You'll have to wait 'til tomorrow for chicken."

"Fine, fine." Each officer wiped out his mess kit and the aide-de-camp held the tray while Stadelmeier, then Vathely, then Slavin helped themselves.

"What's in the dispatch-case?" asked the colonel, noticing the leather bag slung over Schwetje's shoulder.

For an answer the man sat down the tray and pulled a bottle out of the bag. "Wine from the Banovina, the best around, or so I'm told."

As Slavin used a multiplex knife to open the bottle, Stadelmeier addressed the aide-de-camp: "You've been a corporal how long?"

"Two and a half years come April, sir."

The politician said, "Quite a while, isn't that, Herr Oberst? Can't we see about fixing that?"

"Very possibly," said the lancer, easing the cork out. "Thank you, Schwetje. That'll be all for now, unless you've got a strawberry mousse tucked in your saddlebag."

"No such luck, sir. But there'll be some coffee later on."

"Good. Half an hour or so. Thanks again."

"No problem, sir," he said, and went out.

"Remarkable fellow, that," commented Stadelmeier, cutting into the pie. "Wherever'd you pick him up, Fedor?"

"He used to be a hotel waiter in Constance. From Rotterdam, I believe, originally. Got involved with a young lady guest--wouldn't have been found out, either, but that one of the maids got jealous."

"Really?"

"H'm. I saw he could take care of himself very well in the field, so I figured I might as well have him around to take care of me while he was at it. Fine man. As long as I keep an eye on him, that is."

"Why?"

"Oh," said Slavin, trying to think up some eccentricity that would keep Stadelmeier from appropriating his aide-de-camp, "every now and then I catch him borrowing my Swedish razor, or an extra set of trousers. Once he put my silver inkwell up to a Jew for fifteen marks card money. I didn't miss it, but I found out afterward."

"Likes cards, does he?"

"Yes, sir, I'm afraid he does like them--better than he does at them, sir. He loses small sums, or breaks even. Wins hardly ever but that doesn't seem to stop him."

"Huh. If he wants to be a career man, you'd better break him of those cards," commented the politician. "Gambling's one career, the army's another. Despite all the romantic folderol you read in novels, the two don't mix."

"No, sir."

"Now, where were we? Ach, ja, for tomorrow. Now look. Everyone, but everyone, is going to be here then, right?"

"Pretty much, sir," said Slavin, pouring another cup of wine all round.

"Then the killers will be around, too. It's up to us to keep our eyes open."

"I don't quite follow, sir," said Vathely. "The killers are hardly likely to give themselves away."

"Someone's going to know," rejoined Stadelmeier, gesturing with his fork. "That gospodja said they might cooperate, and we've got to be ready. The ball's in her court on that one."

Slavin pulled out his gold foil packet and shook out a cigarette. "Recall, gentlemen, that we are considered foreigners not so much because of our uniforms, or even our language, as by our putative religion."

"What's that mean?"

Slavin struck a wax vesta on the wall, cupping his hands out of habit, and after a puff resumed:

"The Roman Catholic community--witness the priest--are likely to regard us as fellow-countrymen sooner than they would their Moslem or even Orthodox neighbours. There is a chance, if the killers are Catholic--Croatian, that is-- that they might even come to us for protection, or advice. If they are, and do, it will be tomorrow, or day after at latest."

"Is that possible?" asked Stadelmeier.

"Used to happen under the Turks quite often. A Moslem believer accused of a crime by Christians would seek, and get, help from the authorities, solely on religious grounds. You hear all Moslems called Turks but most of them are no more Turkish than you are. Roman Catholics would probably be called Austrians, or Hungarians, if there weren't a closer Catholic nation, to wit Croatia. So native Catholics are called Croats. German-speaking Catholics are usually called Schwabes, because of all the South German miners who used to work the copper and tin veins in the Šumadija, four or five hundred years ago."

"So, when someone says 'a Serb,' he really means an Orthodox, rather than someone from Serbia," said Vathely slowly.

"Right. You hear talk about Serbian terrorists in Bosnia, but most of them have never so much as seen Serbia. They are Orthodox Christians from Bosnia. But because Bosnians are Moslem--like Turks--they're called not Bosnians, but Bosnian Serbs, or Serbs for short."

"Doesn't seem to make a hell of a lot of sense," commented the Commissioner.

"Why not, sir? Doesn't His Imperial Majesty, Franz Josef, count all German-speakers in the Empire as Austrians, and non-German-speakers as Hungarians? Doesn't Kaiser Wilhelm count all German-speakers in Russian Poland as Germans, and Polish-speakers as Russians? We use language to distinguish, they use religion. Don't see, myself, that one way's better than the other."

"But see here, sir," said Vathely, gesturing. "What's the difference between Serbs and Montenegrins, then? Montenegrins are Orthodox, too, aren't they?"

"Yes," murmured Stadelmeier. "Damn good question."

"There's a good answer," said the lancer. "There isn't any difference. The Serbs, all nine million of them, claim that they themselves are really all Montenegrins, or descendants of them. The Montenegrins, all one-and-a-half million of them, are prone to agree."

"That's daft," said Vathely.

"Not really. You know from your history lessons that Montenegro was the only Christian enclave to survive the Turkish invasions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Tsar Peter the Great recognized them in 1715, and in 1799 their vladika, Prince-Bishop Peter the First, obtained a firman from the Sublime Porte acknowledging their past, present, and future independence.

“So they've never really been beaten, you see, and so if the Serbs all claim to really be Montenegrins it means that they were never really beaten either, which they actually were--and badly, too--from Kosovo Polje in 1389 to the fall of the Despot Juraj Branković at Smederevo in 1459."

"How the devil d'you know all this, Fedor?" demanded the Commissioner, as Vathely excused himself and went out. "Sometimes I think you're turning into one of them."

Slavin smiled sardonically as he crushed out his cigarette. "Hardly. But when you mix with them like I have, learn the lingo, you realize it's not all ancient history to them. Ask any child in the village old enough to dress himself and he could sing to you for an hour about Knez Lazar and Kraljević Marko, the heroes of Kosovo, of Juraj Branković, and the vladika Peter-- Saint Peter Njegoš to you--all the old battles and duels. He'd sing it because they don't just tell it. It has to be sung, like that fellow with the little lap-fiddle does who was sitting out in the square. He probably has two or three million words worth of history in his head, and when they hear it they pay as much attention as you or I would to a War Office telegram."

"Odd," said Stadelmeier. "Incredible. What are you supposed to do with people like that?"

"Well, with all due respect, the Turks worked on that one for five hundred years, and they weren't known for being too fussy. Now they're gone, and we're here."

"I think I'll retire," commented the Commissioner. "I'll only lose half my pension." Then he let out a bark of laughter.

"In a way, you've a unique opportunity," said the colonel, and drained the last of his wine. "The next man after you will have to cope with your mess. No one left anything behind for you."

"Except five hundred years' worth of Turks."

"Well, do be careful, sir. I've been knocking about here five years already, and unless I get lucky suddenly I'm likely to have to work with your successor."

"H'm. When's your thirty years up?"

"I'm only twenty years in now. Not due to retire 'til . . . oh, 1918."

"That's right, I keep forgetting you're only, what, forty-two? You look like hell, Fedor. You could pass for sixty, you know that?"

"I guess," said the lancer, lighting another cigarette. "I was hoping that the Herr Rittmeister and his lot could handle some of my business, but it looks like you've got them busy doing other things."

"Busy doing nothing. You've got new men mostly, new but good stuff, and you're whipping them into shape--"

"--The ones that are still alive, that is."

"Dammit, I know, but if something happens to you, I mean a transfer or something, they'll be ready to get your replacement into shape. I didn't ask for those hussars, Baron Burian assigned 'em to me. Probably didn't know what else to do with 'em. I know why Vathely was sent down."

"Well, I don't want to know . . . Hell, Claudius, I'm sorry. More wine?"

"No, thanks. Look, Fedor, what if they promoted you to brevet rank? Brigadier-general?"

Slavin laughed aloud. "Never. You've got to be in the right place and kiss a lot of asses before you can start wearing that ostrich-plume. Look at me, Claudius. I'm a full colonel, six years' time in grade, doing a captain's job. All because back in 1902 General Varešanin needed a full colonel around to make him look good to the Turks, and they couldn't manage to pry one away from his desk. I was basically a name out of a hat. Sure, a nice sham assignment for a couple of months. Then the boundary agreement finally got signed and old Iron-trousers took the express train back to Vienna and got a couple more medals pinned on him. Me, everyone just forgot about. No orders ever came through."

"No orders? 'Til when?"

Slavin dragged on his cigarette and let the smoke flow languorously from his lean nostrils as he spoke, "'Til never. I've never seen any. Have you?"

"It's my understanding that you have a commission from Vienna, through Sarajevo. Technically, Fedor, you're my equal in grade."

"And so I am. I was appointed, and I'm a real staff-grade officer, full colonel, good as gold. But the boundary commission was shut down in 1903 after the treaty. Except for me, I suppose. Everyone else got orders, but officially I'm still on the staff of the Boundary Commission." He stabbed out the cigarette. "Somewhere, maybe in some mouldy branch of some fantastically obscure Cabinet department, there's probably a file with some orders in it. Possibly my bump up in rank caused my records to get pulled and then lost. I don't know. I assume I still get paid, but I haven't bothered to check in a few years."

"My books show you're assigned to the Ninth Regiment of Lancers. Those are your men. They're Ninth Regiment."

"This whole country round about is Ninth Regiment's AO, has been since the beginning, so my packet was put through their office in 1902. But again I've never seen anything come down. I heard someone got assigned to my old job in Sarajevo. As for the men--you remember a Major Adler?"

"No."

"Look it up. He was supposed to command them, but he never showed. The sergeant-major asked me about that. I was here, I had the rank, so I just took over. Somebody had to."

"That's fantastic, Fedor. I never knew all this."

"You've been busy. I know how it is. I keep dreaming one day this Major Adler will show up, then I can turn the men over to him and maybe set up a little office in Foča upstairs from you. Show up when I feel like it, you know, indulge in some fine Austrian Schlämperei for awhile. I expect sooner or later they'll catch up to me, maybe three or four years. But get promoted? Hell . . ."

"Well, I'll tell you, Fedor, I'll just put in for another officer. I can do that."

"Sure. But that could take a year. Don't rock the boat on my account, Claudius. After all, I'm doing alright. Didn't you just say so?"

"I did that. Weird. I mean, I've heard stories about men like you before. I ought to kindle fires under a few asses."

"If you want to, fine. But you're only a year from retirement yourself."

"All right, Fedor. But if you want me to, just say the word."

"I dunno. It's not too bad. Plenty of fresh air and exercise, get shot at just enough to keep life interesting . . . Ah, hell, Claudius, it's the men that get to me, you know? Especially like Hird and Vonhof. I got kids their age. Somewhere."

The colonel fell silent, and the clatter of the KPs and cooks cleaning up filtered in.

"I know," said the Commissioner at last. "It stinks, Fedor, but what else is there?"

Slavin permitted himself another faint smile. "There aren't too many like you and me left, Herr Kommissar. I don't know how you got into the Imperial service, but I drifted into it as a young misfit. I don't know anything else, and now the Empire is coming apart. Yes, you know it too, Claudius, within my life, probably within yours, it'll be the end. Austria, Hungary, Carniola, and Croatia will all split up, maybe Bohemia, Galicia and Transylvania too, the only question is whether it will take a war to do it. I think it will, and I think it's the Hirds and Deutschers and Vonhofs who'll get killed over it."

"And you?"

"Me, I'm a relic, an old hand-me-down officer who has nothing left to fight for except his pension. No, Claudius, the gods of battle want better sacrifices than me."

"You sound like--"

Stadelmeier was interrupted by a tap at the door. "Sir?"

"Come in, Janos, you don't have to knock. What is it?"

Vathely leaned into the room a little. "You said to let you know, sir--Vonhof's come to."

"Said anything?"

"I told him to wait for you."

"Let's go." Slavin preceded Stadelmeier out.

On the way, Vathely stopped a moment as the other two proceeded. "Thank Marko Vuletitch for me," he told a soldier.

"He's gone already, sir. Said it was the least he could do as a man and a Croat."

Vathely smiled and went on his way.

The damage, both to the house and to Kosta Savić, was less than she had feared. The bloodstains on his shirt had come mostly from someone else; and aside from a deep stain on her Afghan rug and a few pieces of broken crockery there was nothing that couldn't be put right with an hour's work. The dressing on his side had been loosened, but no more blood had appeared there, a good sign.

So, midway through a silent dinner, she could afford to be a little ironical. "Husband," she said, "I'm not too flattered by your choosing my house in which to conduct your business affairs. But if you do so in future you will, one, not break my chinaware over each other's heads, and, two, clean up after yourselves. Do I make myself clear?"

"Perfectly," said the man. "I did point out to him that you wouldn't appreciate his choice of locale, but that was only after he took me by surprise."

"Surprised you? You're slipping a little," she admonished. "Of course, if he did surprise you, and failed to use the chance to insert his weapon upward between the fifth and sixth ribs, or downward over the breastbone, he's slipping a little himself."

"He seemed to be more of a wrestling man--said he was just told to throw a scare into us. I'll admit he caused me momentary concern."

"Scare you?" asked the girl. "Must've been a Schwabe. Anyone around here knows you don't scare."

"He had a chance to kill me, and didn't," said the nobleman grimly. "So although I gave him something to remember me by, I didn't kill him. But I got to thinking, and no one would've expected me to be here alone. Either we'd all have been gone, or only me, with both of you here."

"What do you think?"

"He probably killed the dog to silence it. He might have been looking for you."

"But why?" asked Stana. "Who was it?"

Kosta Savić could read the question about Dragan Vuković in her voice, and he pushed his plate away. "You'll both find out anyway. It was Rezać's man Yusef."

"Yusef? The priest's Turk? What would he want with me?"

"I'll tell both of you now, plainly, because there is danger. There are three possibilities. One, it would mean a big loss of face if either of you were . . . harmed in one way or another. I see you take my meaning. Two, he's known to have quite an appetite for females personally."

"And three?" said Stana, her face hardening.

"Three is the unsayable, the unthinkable." The woman half-rose, and he drove on: "I swear to you, Stana, on my word as a man and a Serb, on our marriage bond, that I would trust my life and honour to you, and in fact I do. You know this. But we are all in a situation where even the unthinkable must be accounted for. And if we were all to die, there are several parties who might sleep better at night. Would you make me name them?"

Stana slowly sat back down. "No." She glanced at the girl and said: "You are right. There are things which cannot be said if we're to survive this business."

"What did you do to the Turk?" asked the girl.

"You'll know, young lady, the next time you see him."

"Marking him is one thing, mutilation another," said Stana. "It doesn't do to shame your enemy too much."

"Another place, maybe another time, I'd have cheerfully killed the pig. But I didn't, because I thought he was after me. If I'd thought then he was after you, I'd have done for him anyway. He knew that, I guess, and I don't doubt he lied to save his skin."

"You were right," she said. "Another killing would blow everything up in our faces now."

"Maybe. Maybe not. I don't know if I did the right thing. But I had to do something."

In the quiet that followed, Stana noticed a tear on the girl's cheek, and as she picked up a handkerchief Slavica said: "Poor Myshka. Why did he have to kill the dog?"

"I don't know," said Kosta Savić.

"He was so old, poor thing."

"Andrija gave him to me just after you were born," said Stana softly. "A tiny puppy, didn't even have his eyes open yet. I had to put milk on a sponge for him to suck on."

"He'd never have bitten anyone," said the girl, with a queer sort of smile. "Why, he was so old, half his teeth were gone anyway . . . how could anyone kill Myshka?"

"He was a good dog," said Kosta Savić. "I don't care what any priest says, I think if there is a heaven there will be a little corner in it for good dogs like Myshka and horses like Jorki and Ratko, or old Vlastimir, my father's dray who kicked a wolf to death."

Again there was silence, and a low indeterminate sigh which was rain falling on the roof.

"I guess I'll bury him before it gets too nasty out," he said, pushing away his chair. “We don’t want anything prowling about after his carcase.”

"Please, let me, Papa," said the girl. "I'd like to, and besides you've done too much today already."

"She's right," said Stana. "You might not make it to the village tomorrow if you don't get a good night's sleep."

"Very well." He looked down at the table. "But put your hooded cloak on, and stay within sight of the house. If you aren't back in half an hour I shall come looking for you."

"Don't worry," said the girl, clasping on her cloak and then stooping to open a trapdoor in the floor that led down to the stable level.

As the trap closed behind her, Kosta Savić leaned back a little, adding a sigh of his own to the falling rain. Stana took one of his hands and said: "It's hard, I know."

"I'll be glad when she's married off. Aie, I'd rather raise ten sons then one daughter."

"Ha! if every husband around here had his way, there'd be no young women have all the babies. Just you remember that."

He had opened his mouth to reply with a witticism when a sudden noise from the cradle cut him off. Stana arose, and he said after her, "How could I forget?"

The soldier was propped up on a folding cot; his neck was swathed in bandages, but his eyes went to the door as Stadelmeier came in, followed by Slavin and Vathely. The politician appropriated the single stool in the room and sat down on it.

"Well, Vonhof," he said, "how're you feeling?"

The man tried for a grin, almost made it. "Not too well yet, Your Excellency. But I'm getting there," he said hoarsely.

"Yeah. Just call me 'sir,' forget all the palace-guard crap. Does it hurt you to talk?"

"Yes, sir, but I can whisper all right."

"Fine, fine. Look, Vonhof, I have a couple of questions for you, and I'd like you to answer as well as you can. You feel up to that?"

“Jawohl,” replied the soldier weakly.

"Good." The Commissioner fumbled for a moment, not quite sure how to begin. "It, ahh . . . has to do with who, or what, attacked you and Hird the other night. We don't really know. Can't figure it out, so to speak. I guess . . . you know about Hird?"

The soldier's face grew pale. "God, sir," he whispered. "God in heaven, I don't need to be told he's dead."

"No. Now look, Vonhof, no one's going to blame anything on you. As far as I'm concerned there was no failing, no dereliction of duty on your part or his, verstehen? You won't be penalized for anything you say to us here, because I need the truth. Everything you recall, nothing more or less, about that night, because we're going to get whoever did this. All right?"

"If you say so, sir."

"Fine. Right. Now, can you tell me plainly just what happened? Start with the time."

Vonhof swallowed once, painfully. "I guess I've had a fever, sir, and been under morphia, been delirious. I'm not sure how to sort out real memories from the other. It's all mixed up, and you won't believe the half of it--"

"We'll sort that part out, but this is a very serious matter, and no one's going to laugh at you. If you think it was men from the moon, then say so. Just tell us everything. What about the time? When did it start?"

"All right, sir. It was getting well into the fourth watch, past two a.m., anyway. We had a bit of a fire going to keep off the chill. I know we're not supposed to, but—“

"That's okay, Vonhof. Don't apologize. Keep going."

"Yes, sir. It's just that that place, sir, with all those dead people around--fairly gave us the creeps, sir. And a fog was coming up, and we had that little fire. Hird was reading the Bible, to keep our spirits up . . ."

"Go on."

"Can I get some water, sir?" Stadelmeier spoke to the medic, who passed over a wooden canteen and long wax-paper straw, and after a mouthful the soldier closed his eyes and continued: "There was . . . a girl's voice, sir."

"What? A girl? You saw her? Challenged her?"

"It was just a voice, sir, a girl's voice, at first, very small and scared-sounding. Asked who we were, what had happened at the place."

"Are you sure? Didn't see anything?"

"I'm gettin' to it, sir. I heard the voice, and I thought I was dreaming at first, then Hird elbowed me. The voice was in Croatian, and he doesn’t—didn’t speak it. So I knew it wasn't a dream. And she sort of . . . appeared in the fog."

"What's she look like? What was she wearing?"

"Nothing, sir. She was naked."

"Naked?!" exclaimed Stadelmeier, as Slavin and Vathely traded a glance.

"Yes, sir, mother-naked and white as a sheet."

"Are you sure? Would you recognize her?"

"I don't know, sir, maybe. It's not all that clear, but I remember a very pale body, and hair--"

"What colour? Think, man."

"Don't--really recall--it was long, kind of shining in the firelight, y'know how hard it is to make out colours at night, sir. Blonde, I think, very blonde, white if that were possible, but I couldn't say for sure."

"But you say she was a girl? Not a grown woman?"

"She was naked, sir. Definitely a girl, maybe, I dunno, twelve to fourteen. Developed a little, y'know."

"Go on."

"She was thin, shivering--looked like she was half-dead from the cold. Had the shakes, and her eyes were feverish, almost glowing, and she kept asking what's happened in this scared little voice. Of course we gave her a blanket, asked her to sit down. Thought maybe she was a survivor, y'know, of the farm, might have seen something."

"Good, Vonhof, good thinking. Continue."

"Well, sir, she picked up the blanket, kind of disbelieving, like--like she didn't know quite what to do with it. Then I thought she might be a little . . . y'know." He tapped his head twice with a finger, and then took another sip of water.

“ Ja. Then what?"

"Then Hird said to me, low-like, that she might be starving, mightn't have eaten for days. So he got a piece of bread out of his saddlebag and gave it to her."

"All right," said Stadelmeier, filling in the man's pause. "Take your time, Vonhof. No hurry."

"Well, then it happened, sir. He held out the bread and she leaped on him. Fast, sir, faster that I've ever seen anyone move. She was just--on him, that quick. They fought for a second, and she bit into the side of his neck, sir. Didn't just bite him, I mean, but I saw her teeth go right in, like you'd take a big bite out of an apple . . . Jesus God, sir, how he screamed. I never thought a human being could scream like that, like . . . I don't know what, like a damned soul, and blood--blood just shot out of him, sprayed all over her face, and her hair, that shining hair."

"All right, Vonhof. Take it easy. What'd you do then?"

"Well, I was up, sir, had my carbine, but didn't want to shoot in case I hit Hird by mistake. So I hit her in the head with the buttstock, as hard as I could."

"Good, Vonhof, just right."

"No, sir, I tell you, I'm pretty big, and no weakling with it, and I brought that rifle butt down from over my head and hit her squarely on the skull with the iron buttplate. Should've split her head open like a rotten eggplant. At least knocked her out."

"What happened?"

"The butt went thud, and she just turned and looked at me with burning, deadly eyes, that blood all over her, and came right for me, sir. I'd swear that blow would have killed any human being, but didn't even slow her down . . ."

"And then what?"

"Well, sir, I shot her."

"You did?"

"Yes, sir." The soldier was shivering himself now, and his eyes popped open, looking right into Stadelmeier's. "I pumped a couple of rounds into her. Point blank."

"You didn't miss?"

"No, sir, I didn't miss. I saw two holes appear as they went into her. Might as well have used a peashooter for all the good it did. She--it--took two bullets, didn't even flinch. Came right for me."

The hoarse whisper stopped, and there was no sound but the rain, and some water was dripping through a hole in the roof. The medico put a pan under the leak, and the drops fell with a hard metallic ring. The soldier, too, took on some more water.

"All right, Vonhof, well, you're still alive, so something must have happened next. What was it?"

"I don't remember too much after that, sir. She caught me, tried to bite me. What I recall is her breath on my face, all sour and hot--what a smell, sir! Smelt like rot--you know what a dead body smells like after a day or two in the sun."

"Yes," said Stadelmeier, who knew nothing of the sort.

"I fought her--it--off, somehow, and ran. Believe me, sir, I didn't want to leave Hird, but he was done for. I don't know who or what that thing was, and I don't want to know. For the rest of my life I'll see those eyes as she turned to look at me, eyes burning like bale-fire, mad with blood."

There was silence.

"God damn," muttered the Commissioner at last. "I asked for what you remembered. I guess I got both barrels."

"Yes, sir. After that, I kind of recall coming to for a few minutes once or twice somewhere, not here. You know the rest."

"Yeah. A peasant found you in a field, quite some way off. You must have gone four or five kilometres. They said you were delirious."

"I don't doubt it, sir. God . . . I look into my mind and I don't even know what to make of what I see there anymore. I wouldn't swear to the story I told you. I wouldn't swear to anything right about now."

"You'll be all right. The peasant told us about you, Vonhof. Came up and told us. We had no idea where you were. He patched you up right, too. Saved your life, I don't doubt. As it is, Oehring tells us you'll pull through."

"I'd like . . . to thank him. Whoever he is, the peasant, I mean. After I'm up and about, sir."

"Of course, Vonhof. Just take it easy, all right?"

"Whatever you say, sir."

"And Vonhof--not a word to anyone. I don't care if Baron Burian himself orders you to talk, not a word."

"Yes, sir."

"Anyone asks you, tell 'em you don't remember, you were sick, you understand me?"

"Yes, sir."

"That goes for you, too, Oehring. Not a peep to anyone, unless and until I personally authorize."

"A peep about what, sir?"

"That's the spirit. You think Vonhof's injury's a wolf attack, but you're not sure, got it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Sir," whispered the wounded man.

"What is it, Vonhof?"

"You still say you're going to get whoever did this?"

The Commissioner fidgeted. "We're going to have a full investigation."

"If you do find out, sir, please don't tell me. This way, I can kid myself I was sick, seeing things, y'know, a bad dream. But if I ever thought for a moment that I wasn't, I remembered straight and that . . . thing is really out there somewhere . . . I'd never sleep again, sir. I'd go mad."

"Don't worry, Vonhof. Just rest easy for awhile, and soon you'll be on your way home."

"Thank you, sir. Goodnight."

"'Night, Vonhof."

And the Commissioner motioned to Slavin, who was giving the man a cigarette, and to Vathely, and they went out.

The priest Rezać fell back into his chair trembling; his little ritual had gone very long, and for the first time nothing had come of it.

He had read that the power waxes and wanes, but utterly departs only on the brink of damnation. That was only symbolic language, of course.

But symbolic of what?

He let his head roll back, looking at the dim ceiling.

These were hard things to know; the feeling came, sometimes, that they knew him, rather than vice-versa.

A little slice of his soul, a window to the infinite, left open and a breath of its wind blowing in and stirring the drapes.

He contemplated the paradox, that to be human is to be both a lump of flesh, purely animal, yet with an endowment of soul that comes from beyond such a state; and after a time his mind passed into a comforting blankness, comforting in the notion that not all questions had answers, and that therefore no one question had any necessary answer.

The priest was brought back by a sort of shudder that ran through him, and he looked, and saw a face looming right over him, oddly familiar, but none that he could name. It was not her, not Kosta Savić, no, certainly not her husband. But the face knew him; its eyes glittered with deadly wisdom, and its teeth showed in a snarl of hatred--hatred for him.

And he knew fear.

You'd stab me now? he pleaded.

Why shouldn't I?

To which he had no real answer, for he knew that he stood guilty, guilty of . . . something, he knew not what, not his fault, but for which nevertheless he would suffer.

What? Why?

As if in reply, a jolt of pain racked his nose.

He had fallen once, in Ravenna; and then, twenty years ago, he had fallen a second time; to her.

As an ex-Jesuit he well knew what it meant for an apostate to relapse.

He had kept the secret fastidiously for that knowledge, and she for fear of Andrija.

Andrija . . .

If the girl knew, he knew. And he'd kill the pair of them.

That one's for being honest, he heard through the roaring in his head. Now, think some more. Is there any reason why I shouldn't go ahead and kill you, or at least cut your fat ugly prick off . . .?

No, gospodar.

And another shock seized his head, one side, then the other.

Get up.

Through the roaring and the pounding that enfolded him, he somehow staggered to his feet, and ran.

He came to somewhere in a dim twilight, with vague misshapen forms hovering about him.

He lay on wet earth, realizing that something was dripping on him.

He tried to move a hand, and felt it brush smooth cold stone.

So much . . . so long . . .

Drip.

He reached out and took hold of the stone, pulling himself up to lean on it, and then he felt with his fingers the upside-down Cyrillic lettering chiselled into it:

Andrija Savić.

He opened his eyes and looked down on the ground in front of the tombstone, and saw an open empty grave.

No . . .

He felt dizzy, sick.

Drip.

He lay his head down against the wet granite and tried to think.

It occurred to him that it was going to be difficult to kill a man who didn't really exist.

It became night.

He opened his eyes again, and in a faint ray of moonlight he could see the gleam of the knife still in his left hand.

He held it out, and then put it down and touched his nose--or a spongy area with a sharp splinter or two where his nose had been.

And a wet gristly lump, one each, where his ears had been.

This was her doing, he thought, as a cold freezing rage began to mount up in his gut.

And she'd pay for it,pay, before he finally killed her.

He held up his huge brawny arms, streaked with blood and dirt, but they still worked, well enough to snap her spine and crush her skull . . . afterward.

And then he remembered the girl.

And as the priest's body twisted, sweating, in its chair, the figure leaning on the chair's back pushed itself upright; and then Andrija Savić threw back his head and laughed.

"So, what is this Herr Kommissar like?" enquired Kosta Savić.

The candlelight caught a gleam in Stana's black hair as she shook it out and began to comb it. "Straightforward, plainspoken--soldierly, as men say--clever enough but not too clever, and very very concerned about his men. That's how he wanted to strike me, and he largely succeeded, which goes to show that one can be very clever indeed without overdoing it."

"You're not telling me," he needled, "that some sausage-munching Schwabe outwitted you?"

"Hardly," she shot back, making a moue with her lips. "He made very good use of the wits he has, and he has plenty, but it only takes a look at him to see that he's a man of action, a man who expects results from his soldiers, preferably by the rules, but if not, then not."

"If I read you right, then, he's concerned not so much for his troops as for the action he's not getting out of them."

"Quite concerned. It reflects on him, after all."

The nobleman grunted. "Obviously he'll need a scheme, and someone to take the fall. A local, not one of his own men."

"Someone big, but not too big."

"Bigger than Ivo."

Stana's eyes glowed like embers in the candlelight. "What about the Turk?"

Kosta Savić exhaled long and slowly, staring into the little flame as his breath made it dance and flicker for a moment, and then his glance shifted to meet hers. "You're a devil."

"He came here and attacked you. Trying, perhaps, to silence you because you are the sole surviving witness of what took place at Uglesić's?"

"We couldn't prove it. Not if he doesn't admit to having been here."

"You think he'd admit to being beaten by anyone else?"

He scratched at the stubble on his chin. "I can't figure that fellow."

"What'd you do to him?"

He looked at her a moment longer, his brow furrowing. "It won't work, Stana. It wouldn't be right."

"Right?! Is it right for Ivo to sit in a prison cell, being beaten and kicked? Was it right for you to kill Dabisav Uglesić and Marenka, who were prijatelji, practically family? You must be out of your mind!"

"Stana," he said softly, "do you imagine that I will not pay for what has happened, sooner or later? Do you believe that someday Dragan Vuković will be putting my name on a bullet?"

"Oh, husband . . ."

"My life must be lived, not for its own sake, but for your sake and Dabisav's and the children's, because it could end at any moment. It is now doubly and trebly important that I do only what is right, whatever happens."

A minute passed; she asked, "What can I say to that?"

He took her hand and gave it a squeeze. "It's alright. We'll give 'em a hell of a run for their money, won't we?"

She smiled a little. "You have lost your mind."

"Why do you think they let you see Ivo?"

Stana considered. "Well, why not? They'd only encourage far worse suspicions by keeping me away. It could have been a ploy, I admit, but if they'd wanted to make an example of him they could have done so quite openly and publicly. Nothing to prevent that."

"In other words, I can't look after my people, is that it?" he flared. "Sure, I sent him down to the village riding Ratko, because he came to me for help, scared witless. Some kind of help he got."

"What? Who do you think you are?" she challenged. "Are you Jesus Christ, that everything you do is supposed to enlighten the world? Eh? You're good, husband, but not that good. Ivo's arrest was pure chance, even he recognizes that. How the hell can you keep accidents from happening? Your job as gospodar, in which I help you as any wife would, is to help people, not control them like puppets--"

"That's enough!" he roared, and was about to hit the table when Stana motioned swiftly toward the cradle; and he put his hands down quietly with a sudden chuckle. "I know, I know, the baby's asleep," he said. "What a great fool . . . tell me, wife, could you love a fool?"

For an answer she took his hand, and he turned it over and planted a kiss on hers. She looked back at him, slightly amused, disdainful, and he moved easily from his seat onto the bench next to her.

"If I'm not careful," he quipped, "I'm liable to fall in love with you. Will you marry me, Stana?"

"We're already married," she pointed out.

"Oh. Well, let's get even more married, then," he said, and one of his arms went around her back and up over her other shoulder.

As he pulled her sideways into his arms she gave a little cry, half-afraid the bench would topple, and he smothered it with another, more masterful kiss; and she lay back, wrapping her arms about his neck, awakened, alive.

His other arm went under her thighs, swinging her out, and with a grunt he came to his feet with her, and she came up for breath, her head snapping upright. "Are you sure--?"

"Perfectly," he said, making for the bedroom.

"But Slavica will be back any minute!"

He grinned. "No time to waste, then."

"You really have lost your mind!" she exclaimed, as they passed within.

With the rain soaking his clothes and a persistent drip from the eave above him falling unerringly in his collar, Vathely knocked for what seemed the twentieth time.

He muttered a curse under his breath and was about to turn and leave when the great latch moved and the door opened inward a crack to reveal Father Ante's seamed features, wavering in the light of a guttering candle.

"Captain Vathely, Father. May I come in?"

"Certainly, my son, certainly." The door swung further to admit the hussar and he found himself in the rectory's cavernous entry-hall. Aware that he was dripping on the rug he turned again and saw that the priest was in a dressing-gown and slippers.

"I'm very sorry to disturb you, Father," he began, removing his shako. "Had you retired?"

"Not quite yet. I was about to have a sherry. Will you join me, Herr Rittmeister?"

"No, thank you, Father. I'm afraid I'm still on duty."

"Let us sit down, then," said the priest Rezać, "for whatever business brings you out at this hour must be urgent indeed. Come this way, my son."

He led the way and Vathely asked: "I was wondering, Father, how you keep a place like this warm. It's enormous."

"You don't--not all of it," replied the priest, ushering Vathely into the study. "This complex was a Benedictine monastery some centuries ago--'more than three hundred years ago,' as the locals say to indicate a time before the Turks--and the section we are in used to house travellers before the han was built. In the fifteenth century the order’s presence declined, and by the sixteenth Rome's attention was fully occupied elsewhere. An abbot of that time had these several rooms renovated for himself--and his wife, it's said."

"Interesting."

"Yes. There are other wings, closed off now and falling into ruins. More than once I've thought about having some of it demolished in order to sell the building-stone to finance improvements on the sanctuary . . . but surely I digress. You did not come here on such a night to chat about my living arrangements."

"Well, Father, it's about Vonhof--the other man who was with Hird, the dead man. Vonhof's recovered enough to tell us his story."

"And there is some feature," said Rezać in his soft hoarse voice, "which puzzles you, and you wish to ask me about it."

"In a nutshell." Vathely looked about the dim, close-furnished room, and then at the black rain-swept window as if he expected to see some monstrous countenance there.

The priest, having lit a lamp, now turned it up, bringing his face out of the shadows a little more. "Take your time, my son. Start at the beginning."

"It's a long story, but the crux of it is that they were attacked by some sort of--apparently--supernatural creature."

"He described it?"

"Yes, Father. Do you think--?"

"Please repeat the description to me."

The hussar began to do so, and as he talked he kept an eye on the old man for some reaction; scepticism, disbelief, reassurance.

He saw none of these, and that more than anything else he found unnerving.

Stana came upright suddenly, to what would in other circumstances have been a sitting position.

"Listen!"

"How can you--?"

"Be quiet, Kosta. I'm serious--don't you hear something?"

He waited exactly one second. "No," he said, and pulled her down again.

Slavica walked wearily back toward the house, with a shovel and a lantern she had taken down from next to the stable door.

Standing in the rain, battering at the hard ground and moving some rocks, had rapidly drained most of the emotion from her, as she knew it would.

She knew also, somehow, that it was not right she should feel more care and love for the old dog than for any person she knew, even her parents. But there it was, and she sensed that with the animal's burial she had closed a chapter of her young life.

The house loomed above her now, only a glimmer of light in one of its tiny casements, and she shivered. Not for the first time it seemed a place of menace rather than a refuge; its black bulk made her want to turn about and run back into the night. She thought for a moment, proudly, about how she had never been afraid of the dark as a child. The shadows had always been friendly to her, sheltering, consoling; a place where she need fear nothing.

Come on, she told herself. Only today your mother was asking you pointed questions about who you felt inclined to marry. You're a big girl now. Look at her, who one winter night in the woods wasn't too afraid to stand off a wolf pack, first with the rifle, then with only a torch in one hand and a knife in the other. What would your husband think of you if you wanted to run and hide away from every little noise?

She went into the stable and hung up the lantern on a nail, and as she drew a breath to blow it out a hand clamped over her mouth and another hand rose in front of her, a bloodstained hand holding up a big khindjal in the lamplight.

The girl drove her elbows back, into her assailant's belly, and tried for a shin kick, but the blows seemed to have no effect; the knife moved toward her throat, and as the other hand pulled her back against a chest the knife moved downward, cutting open her cloak, and the knife hand's fingers tore at the fastenings of her dress.

Deep, slow breathing, through the mouth, rasped at her ear.

With a twist she tried to break free but she was rammed against the doorframe and leaned upon while the knife hand came up with a portion of dress and stuffed it into her mouth past the gagging hand. She was spun about roughly by one arm and as she tried to scream she choked.

A face straight from hell, with a filthy bloody mess where the nose should have been, glared down at her, and all she saw in the yellowish eyes was madness.

The knife came up between their faces.

"Try to fight me, girl," he hissed, "try to make noise, and I will do to you what your stepfather did to me. We'll see who would marry you after that, gospodica." The lips parted a little. "Cooperate, give me what I want, and I may let you live unmarked. Do you understand me?"

She nodded, wide-eyed, and as he took her other arm remembered too late that she could have used it to pluck the gag out and get off one hearty shriek.

As she cursed herself she felt a rope go round her wrists and tried to knee him in the crotch, but he slammed her back into the doorframe and whispered: "A little spitfire, are we? Well, we'll see what you can spit up after you get what's coming to you."

With one hand he lifted her off the ground and carried her, kicking and squirming, to the hay-crib, where he let her fall.

He stood over her, one enormous muddy boot on each side, while he unfastened his shirt and pulled it off, and with sick horror she saw each gleaming muscle in his wrestler's torso move as he bent down to feel the mound in his trousers and then pull them slowly open.

He knelt astride her and ripped away the remains of her dress and she could not look at anything but the massive throbbing organ that seemed to uncoil as it came erect, standing out the size of her forearm. He rammed her clenched knees apart with the point of his elbow and pushed them wide so that her pelvis rotated upward; and his ribcage widened them still further as his tongue began to explore her.

Writhing, trying to cry out, choking on the gag, she felt something moving across her stomach and down, and suddenly a sheet of agony cut her in two.

Suns exploded inside her, fire consumed her; the abyss enfolded her, and the world was no more.

Even he, somewhere, was dimly aware that never had any woman brought forth such power from him.

He thought he had come inside her--he had to have--but when he finally withdrew, he found himself coming all over her; belly, thighs, face, breast, in great streams that splattered off into the hay as she moaned, moving slowly.

Half-disbelieving, he turned her over, pulling her to her knees and settling her face in the decaying straw; he smeared the shaft of his member liberally with his own semen and mounted her savagely, as if trying to disembowel her.

Vathely had stopped talking some time before, and the occasional rattle of rain on the window and the ticking of the big clock were the only sounds in the shadowy room.

"Well, Father?" he heard himself asking. "What do you make of it? Fact or fantasy?"

"Both, I would say," said the priest slowly.

"How so?"

"We are here on the edge of Europe's werewolf and vampire country," said Rezać. "For a thousand years these legends have circulated, and are almost as alive today as they were in the Middle Ages. Why do you suppose that Serbia, Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria should be the home of such stories? Why not Denmark, Ireland, or Italy?"

"Well, the Balkans are a primitive area, comparatively speaking, and all the lands you first mentioned were at one time under Turkish domination. 'Five centuries under the Turks,' as the *Herr Oberst *says, explains a lot. And primitive minds turn to legend to explain things they do not understand in other ways."

"True--up to a point. But be careful. Science, too, is far from all-knowing, and the good scientist is the first to admit that. Bad science tends to be the refuge of the so-called 'civilised' mind as much as legend is that of the so-called 'primitive.' In fact, legend can be an extremely effective means of conveying information. And how often do scientists, themselves baffled by something they cannot explain, write it off with a sniff as 'fabrication' or 'superstitious nonsense?' Yet that's not to say that such things don't exist; for if they didn't, they wouldn't need to be explained away."

"Where does that leave us?"

"Since you ask, I think it leaves us somewhere between science and legend, squarely in the realm of what used to be called philosophy. It is the use of the intellect to investigate the unknown, not necessarily in quest of material proof, but of truth--that is, the satisfaction of its own requirements. With regard to your own particular problem, furthermore, it is a textbook account of a vulkodlak attack."

"Vul--kod--lak?" The hussar struggled with the unfamiliar word; "And what is that?"

"It is a Serbian word for a monster which preys upon flesh by night, and can be understood as 'werewolf' or 'vampire' but is really more elastic than that. Let us consider the man's story. The thing did attack them, with the purpose of eating flesh and drinking blood, and if he did not exaggerate is impervious to normal weapons. Let us allow for some hyperbole and say that his blow did glance off the creature's head, and his bullets did not penetrate vital areas, if they struck at all. What would your guess be?"

"That it was some sort of deranged person--insane."

"And that, rather over-simplified, is the point of my theory. The vulkodlak legend must have some basis in fact to be so widespread. I think that among other bases there must be some rare form of derangement, presently unknown to science, which strikes its sufferers in such way as to bring out the bestial instincts. It may be tied to nutritional deficiency or some other factor which makes it especially prevalent in the Balkans."

"There is reason in that," commented Vathely.

"And there may be other causes. You mentioned the Turkish yoke, which not only retarded the development of civilisation here, but may well have set up a cultural viewpoint in which this sort of behaviour became a marginalized response to the barbarities committed upon the people, or a curse inflicted by Divine agency for their failure to stand up to the Turks. Certainly, the Turkish period has something to do with it."

"I would like to find out some more about this," said the officer.

"Would you, indeed," said the priest, leaning forward. "Then permit me, Herr Rittmeister, to extend you an invitation. Tonight, in a few hours, Brother Grgur the sacristan and I shall be investigating an alleged case. As a more or less disinterested observer your presence might be most helpful."

"How long--"

"Two or three hours, no more, here in the village, and you need not stay for the duration."

"And you have some very definite grounds for believing this to be a genuine case?"

"I certainly do," murmured the priest.

"Could this--person be our assailant? A woman?"

"I doubt it. This case is--was--a man."

"'Was?'"

"Yes, it is a disinterment. This man supposedly died five years ago."

"He has been seen since?"

"Let us say . . . that he seems to be about and around."

"And who was the man?"

"His name was Andrija Savić."

Vathely could no more than stare at the priest for the space of a full minute.

Rezać bent further forward in his English armchair, clasping his hands, and the wrinkles of his face seemed to deepen and multiply; and Vathely watched their complex interplay on his face as he asked, "What does that name mean to you, my son?"

But Vathely did not hear him; all he could hear was the cry of a night bird, and the stamping of horses, and the guidon-bearer saying: I thought I saw something for a minute, but I didn't. Did you, Kevar?

“I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “I’ll take that sherry, Father.”

The priest wordlessly poured one and pushed it over.

"Tell me, Father," said the officer. "Did you go out last night, late, walking up the mountain?"

"I did not, my son. I retired at nine and slept quite soundly all night. Why do you ask?"

"I . . . oh, nothing. Colonel Slavin simply told me to ask you."

"Nothing happened last night that I ought to know about?"

"No, Father. A--er, man thought he saw you. But it must have been someone else."

The priest said something in reply, but again the hussar did not hear.

Rezać had given him the reply he'd expected. Like everyone else, once or twice before he'd 'seen things,' but he had always been able to put them down to fatigue, eyestrain, tricks of the senses; and they had quietly faded into the background of life along with a myriad of other tiny incidents that go to make up a span of years.

What was there to a day? How many routine or random things contributed to its passing? A smoked cigarette, a dropped fork, a letter written, with four words crossed out; a nick on his face as he shaved, usually at the same place on the side of his neck; a swatted fly, a guardmounting, a dull spot--or lack thereof--on a man's boot, an oil spot on his trousers; a pen running out of ink, or not, a cinched saddle-girth, a changed mind, a forgotten idea, a misunderstood word; a momentary illusion, that he had seen this priest walking up a gully.

What made the rest different from the last?

He recalled thinking vaguely of it as a sign. And what was that? No more, surely, than a cipher representing some deeper meaning, inaccessible to the workaday consciousness but nevertheless germane to the vast mental underworld which linked him to the rest of the human race.

But what?

Why this?

What had he to do with this priest, or with a dead man named Andrija Savitch of whom he had barely heard?

Common sense told him to get up, turn around, and walk out. He had done his duty, but for one final question.

"Father?"

"Yes, my son?"

"Given the fact that the . . . vul . . ."

"Vulkodlak--"

"--thank you, vul-kod-lak, incident I told you about involved a female, what do you think are the chances of identifying her?"

"I don't know of any recent cases involving women. This may be a first manifestation, in which case it may take a very long time for me to identify her, if I can at all. Of course, I will do what I can, but I can't promise you anything. These matters are very delicate, as you might well imagine."

"Can you suggest any measures the troops should take?"

Rezać smiled. "If you mean crosses and cloves of garlic, well, carry them if they make you feel better. Keep perimeters tight, guards within sight of each other, you know--take the same precautions as you would against any other enemy."

"Is there anything we could do to help identify this girl?"

"The last thing I want to do, my son, is set up an inquisition. However, there are other sources of information: old baba Milica, the midwife, and the gospodja, Stana Malević. The gospodja has a decidedly uncanny reputation, and I'm sure many people would not hesitate to say that she herself would be the one."

"Really? I've met her twice now myself, and she doesn't strike me as being crazy, or a witch. Though she is a very remarkable woman. Tell me, Father, do you know how she came to speak such good German?"

The priest's eyes narrowed. "I did not know she spoke German," he said quietly. "In all the years I've known her I've never heard her speak anything but Croatian and Romany."

"I assure you, Father, she speaks excellent German, quite as well as you or I. She had a very long conversation with the Herr Kommissar, touching on many issues, and she handled the language like a native--an educated native."

"Indeed? I trust the talk was amicable."

"Yes, she promised their full cooperation on our investigation on the matter of the sentries, although she cavilled at our involvement in the case of the knez. As good as said it wasn't any of our business."

"Very interesting," said Rezać. "She could hardly be our vulkodlak, though, unless she were utterly sure that she wouldn't be found out."

"Could that be? A bluff?"

"M'm. There are those who believe she did Andrija Savić to death, and that Kosta Savić stands to share his fate. And my porter, Yusef, disappeared this morning."

Vathely sat up. "What? Why didn't you tell us?"

"I thought at first he'd gone off on some business of his own. But it is long past time he should have returned."

"Do you suspect foul play?"

Rezać refolded his hands. "One hardly knows what to expect these days. I have always been a little nervous because he is an ethnic Turk, and liable to be hated for that. And religiously he is a Catholic . . . but he has always been able to take care of himself up 'til now."

"I'll bring the matter to the Colonel's attention, if you wish," offered Vathely. "We'll keep an eye out for him."

"He may be all right. I wouldn't really start to worry 'til morning."

"Any idea where he may have gone?"

"No."

"Odd, that," commented the officer, and drained his glass. "But you have no special reason to suspect the gospodja or her husband."

"Most violence seems to centre around him, but as he is a war leader that is somewhat natural," observed Rezać.

"Well, I assure you that in the morning we shall check up on it."

"Thank you, my son. Now, if you will excuse me, it will be time to go in a while, and I have a few things to do. Are you with us?"

Now, thought Vathely. Now I politely refuse, step out of this weirdness, and get back to military business.

"I'm with you, Father," he said.

"Very good. Please make yourself at home; I will be just a few minutes," said the priest, and went out.

When at long last Yusef had spent himself upon the girl, he laid back for a few moments, and then sat up and used the rest of her dress to mop himself off. So long had she seemed unconscious that he did not make out the few whispered words that came from her.

He bent over her, wondering.

"I said," she breathed, "do it again." And her eyes opened, and in them was a light that he could not bear.

He reached for his knife and had it in his hand when something creaked and thudded softly in the stable behind him.

Yusef twisted round. A dark form had dropped through a trap door.

"Too late, gospodar," said the big man, getting to he feet and pulling up his trousers.

Kosta Savić stepped into the lantern-light, shirtless, the scar on his flank an ugly purplish-black against his pale skin, and snatched the whip down from the wall. "Too late, son of a pig? Not for you to die."

The Turk leaped, his khindjal gleaming; Kosta Savić slipped under the blow but caught the knife across a shoulder-blade. Yusef turned about but the nobleman had somersaulted and now sent the whip slashing overhanded, then underhanded, stinging Yusef's stomach.

"Papa--"

"Keep down, girl," he barked, moving as Yusef picked up a metal-tined pitchfork. He threw the whip again but the Turk parried. The stroke tangled in the fork and as Kosta Savić instinctively yanked back Yusef added a thrust; only a quick dodge saved the older man from being skewered. But the leather came free and with a wide stroke Yusef was caught round one knee, and a hard pull brought him down.

A knife-stroke and the Turk would have been done for, but Kosta had no knife, and so Yusef rolled over, drawing him closer--he dared not let go--and all he could do was kick the Turk's mutilated face once and jump clear of the arcing blade.

A foot showed through the trapdoor, and Stana's voice cried: "Kosta!"

"Wife, stay out!" he yelled and heaved on the whip; but Yusef was under the pitchfork now and using it like a club struck him on the neck, knocking him back.

He spat out an oath and pulled. The whip came free as Yusef rolled again, onto his knees. He coiled the whip back as Yusef lanced the fork at him, rising; deflecting it with his arm he stepped in and kicked the Turk squarely under the chin.

Yusef staggered but did not fall, and Kosta Savić grabbed a bottle from a shelf and shattered it against a stall gate, spilling liquid everywhere but giving him a thrusting weapon. With his other hand he sent the whip at the Turk's head while Yusef swung the fork, still off-balance. The fork stopped the whip but as Yusef moved he upset the lantern which fell, splintering. Kosta Savić back-swung as Yusef turned the fork over; and the straw near the lantern burst into flames.

"Come on, gospodar," snarled the Turk. "Kill me quick, now."

The nobleman tossed the hair out of his eyes and sent the whip low, yelling: "Girl, get out of here!" and coming out of the back-lash to curve it wide toward Yusef's back.

Slavica moved; that drew Yusef's glance as he stepped back, and both men saw the firelight playing across Stana in the doorway, and on the large carving knife in her hand.

The Turk turned his fork on the girl but the whip coiled round one of his arms and upset him, and stepping inside Kosta Savić used the bottleneck to open a vicious wound in his opponent's belly. Yusef roared--as the horses began to neigh and shrill nervously, and the cow lowed--and threw his momentum into a kick which crushed the nobleman's scarred side.

"Now!" he called, falling to his knees, but Slavica was in the way and Stana had to pull her out; Kosta Savić staggered to his feet as Yusef barrelled out the door and slammed it shut.

Stana and Slavica were both knocked over as Yusef charged into them. As the woman got up she saw the Turk using the fork to wedge the door closed and then he turned to face her, knife at the ready.

She closed on him warily, expecting a slash attack, and when it came deflected it with the carving knife, striking under as her arm went wide and leaving a six-inch gash up his chest. He used a knee to her crotch which moved her back and her hand came up, slicing into the back of his thigh.

He stabbed from the side but she let herself keep falling back and her blade whipped across the inside of his forearm. She took a second step back and Yusef gasped: "You're better than he is!"

The stable door flew open with a crash; the Turk saw Stana glance to it by reflex and lunged--she turned the blow but not fast enough to prevent his blade's tip scoring across her breast and collarbone. Her leg shot out, curling behind one of his, and for one instant she came up against him, locked face to face.

"Husband, the stable!" she called. "I'll take care of him!"

Yusef smiled at her and brought both elbows down hard on her shoulders; she twisted down and away like a snake, her knife crossing his face, and she went into a cartwheel as he stumbled.

A shower of sparks burst from the doorway with forkfuls of burning straw, and Stana came erect, her back to the fiery rain, the carving knife balanced on the fingers of one outstretched hand. The Turk, dizzy, lacerated, saw her break into an arch half-smile he thought he had seen before.

"Yusef beg--"

"What?"

"You'd better run."

He took a step back, two steps, weakening but not daring to turn, while Stana watched him, poised still as a statue, perhaps listening to the terrified neighing and lowing from the stalls.

His eyes moved slightly aside, measuring a distance, and he put everything he had into a leap for Slavica.

Stana's arm whipped straight out. The carving knife flashed through the air; unbalanced, it did not go true but sunk into his side just above the crest of the pelvic bone; he sprawled out, the handle of the knife protruding slightly up and back from over one hip.

The woman ran over and took Slavica in her arms and was still holding her, letting the tears flow, when Kosta Savić finally came out of the stable and thrust the pitchfork into the ground. He wiped his hands on the seat of his pants and asked, "What happened to the son of a Turkish brood-sow?"

Stana motioned with her head, and the girl turned, recovering herself.

"The fire's out?"

"Yes. I pitched out the burning stuff and smothered the rest with a horse-blanket. Old Ratko nearly kicked his stall to pieces trying to get out, and we all caught a couple of good lungfuls of smoke. It'll be hell trying to get them back in there 'til it's aired out. I’ll have to hobble them and hope for the best."

The three of them approached the unmoving body.

Squatting down, Stana held two fingers to the Turk's neck, then wrenched out her knife and ran it flat across his trousers.

"Is he dead?" asked the girl.

"Not quite. Tell me, daughter, what did he do to you?"

"He . . . he--raped me."

"How long?"

"D-d-don't know. Maybe twenty minutes. Seemed like forever."

"And--?"

"I th-thought I was dying."

"Finish him," hissed Kosta Savić. "Now, Stana."

"No," said the girl firmly. "D-don't touch him." He advanced a step but she came up to him chest to chest; he tried to shove her aside but she resisted with a sudden strength that threw him off balance.

"Do it, Stana," he roared.

The woman stood up. "And then what?" she demanded. "You want to give them the perfect excuse to arrest you?"

"Damn you--!"

"You make me sick," she said acidly. "You and your precious honour, as if that's all you've got. I'm here to tell you you're a family man and you'd best not forget it. I had to tell the Schwabes today that you were at Uglesić's at the time of the killing."

Kosta Savić grew quiet.

"That's all I said. They think you're a witness, that you know who did it, and that I couldn't deny."

"I'm sure you did the right thing," said Kosta Savić soberly.

"You're damn right I did. All you have to do now is keep quiet. But if we start carting corpses down the mountain the whole thing will blow up in our faces, and where will the children and I be then!?"

"Very good. And what, prithee, do you suggest?"

"I suggest patching him up enough to keep him alive for awhile and returning him to the rectory. If Father Ante stands by him they will both be humiliated. If not . . . "

"I like it," murmured the nobleman.

"And what about me?" broke in the girl.

They both turned to her; she had picked up the carving knife and was standing over the body, her wild, tangled hair gleaming silver in the moonlight.

"What, Slavica?" asked Stana. "What do you think?"

"I think," said the girl evenly, "I'd like to cut off his balls and make him swallow them. But as he told me, if this gets out I can forget about any kind of a decent marriage. I could be pregnant tomorrow. Do you, stepfather, really fancy the idea of me having to marry some sway-backed raion? Do you?"

Kosta Savić looked at his wife.

Stana bowed her head, running both hands through her hair; and when the face came up, blue-white in the dim radiance, he took a half-step back in spite of himself.

"If he doesn’t die tonight," she said, "he'll wish to hell he had."

Vathely sat toying with his moustaches for a few moments after the priest had gone, trying to ignore most of what was going through his head.

His thoughts were not behaving as they should.

He got up and paced restlessly round the room. His eye passed over the bookcases with their great crumbling volumes and the big central table, piled high with papers, still more books, and atop those a couple of trays bearing the remains of meals.

Passing the desk, he paused to take in its dusty crazy clutter, and at the edge of the blotting-pad he saw an object which seemed to have no place in a priest's study.

He picked up the golden ovoid on its chain; it was a lady's locket, obviously very old; and someone evidently afflicted with heart-ache had obliterated an inscription. Such an old piece was likely to be an heirloom; who was it? Perhaps the priest's mother?

Turning it over he saw the catch, and easily snicked it open with a long fingernail. He held it up to the lamplight, and blinked.

It was her.

Or was it? It did not look quite like her, but the firmly-sculpted chin, the slanting cheekbones, and the slightly aquiline nose were very like her features.

He peered carefully at the thing, bringing it right up to the lamp and examining it from several angles. It was a tiny mosaic--he had once seen a Rinaldi like it--cunningly worked as to look like a good oil painting.

The tint of the hair was different, but it was hardly within any artist's power to capture the exact violet-black sheen of her own hair as he had seen it.

He looked longer.

And the longer he looked, the less it really resembled her; but the more grew the prickling on his scalp that told him it was her and no one else.

He closed the locket and quickly put it down as if it had grown too hot to touch.

So there was, or had been, something between the priest and the gospodja?

The effacement was not new; only the deeper scratches had not worn down. Whatever it was, then, had been years ago. Yet his continued possession of the thing suggested that he carried a torch for her; it was out, too, and therefore lately looked at.

Doubtless, he thought bitterly, she could have her pick of men. And here the priest was digging up the body of her first husband.

In spite of his feelings or because of them?

And, perhaps, a little jealous of his memories?

He thought back to his interview with Kosta Savić. Now there was a jealous man, and proud. And there was indeed something of nobility in him; more, perhaps, than he knew.

It occurred to him that he could honourably require satisfaction of the man.

He pictured himself duelling Kosta Savić with sabres. For himself Vathely had always cherished the idea of picking up a schläger scar, not too big, of course, but enough to show him as an old-style officer who dwelt above the duelling laws. Damn, but that would set some pretty eyes a-sparkling!

In Austria proper, a duel would get him court-martialled. But here, in this wild frontier land, wouldn't it be possible?

He reflected. For one, the man probably knew nothing of swordsmanship or the rules of duelling. For another, he was a Serb and more than likely prone to settle an affaire d'honneur in the Serb way; by ambush, a cold-blooded shooting, or a knife between the shoulder-blades.

Not very romantic.

But her . . . He recalled her visit to the han, how coolly she'd faced Stadelmeier down, how deftly she'd forced his own blurted interruption down his throat.

She had to be an exile from some civilized land, Italy, most likely. Yes, perhaps she'd been an Italian contessa, and had committed some unspeakable, blasphemous act that had put her beyond the pale.

What could it have been?

Satanism? Human sacrifice? Seducing the Pope?

And as his brain fumbled among the blackest crimes imaginable, he could hardly have realized how closely his ideas were approaching to those of the people he affected to despise.

He picked up a pencil-stub, scrawled a few words on a piece of paper, and left in a hurry.

"You'll want to d-d-dump the b-bathwater," stammered Slavica.

"Leave it," said Stana, taking the towel. "Here, put these on."

The girl took the heavy woollen nightdress, fingering it, looking as it as if she had never seen it before.

"Put it on," urged Stana gently. "You'll catch cold."

Slavica said nothing, did nothing.

Stana stood a moment, then reached for a blanket and halted.

There were two starlike scars on the girl's body, healed over, one on the abdomen and one above the left breast, very like old bullet wounds. She had seen the like on Andrija, and Kosta had one or two.

Yet she had seen the girl naked three days since, and they had not been there.

Stana picked up the blanket and as she went to put it around the girl Slavica began to shudder violently, not from cold.

"What is the matter?" Stana asked her.

"I--I'm j--j--j--just afraid . . ."

"Of what? You're safe here now."

"I--I--I d--d--d--d--d—don’t knnnnow."

"Who shot you?" Stana asked.

The girl's gaze focused at last, and she turned it on her mother.

"Who was it?" Stana probed. "They shall pay, I swear to you. Even if it was Schwabes."

Slavica continued to tremble; her face went totally blank.

"It is time for you to go to bed now," Stana directed. "Go and sleep. I will be here."

Slavica made no move, and so Stana covered her with another blanket, prepared to let nature take its course.

And for a long time, before her eyes finally closed, Slavica wept.

The wind was rising as the priest Rezać arrived at the burial-ground, though the rain, luckily, had largely ceased. He saw the ridge vaguely outlined against the cloudy night sky, and the rays of a shuttered lantern lifted once, twice; it was Brother Grgur the sacristan waiting for him.

"Merhaba, Grgur," greeted the priest. "You've not been long, I trust?"

"Not long," replied the stocky shadow, and metal clinked upon metal. "I have a mattock and a shovel."

"I was not sure, so I'm having some brought," said Rezać. In reply to the sacristan’s silence he continued: "There is an Austrian officer coming with one of his men to help. At my invitation."

The sacristan thrust his spade into the ground with a sudden crunch. "Schwabes, Reverend Father?" he growled.

"Nothing official--purely a personal interest--"

"Personal?! Since when does any Schwabe have any* personal* affair anywhere in this country?"

"It's this officer's men who were lost. He has a right to see this thing."

"What the Schwabes' rights are is beside the point. You stood out there today raving like a lunatic about visions of evil, and accusing Andrija Savić--on whom be peace--and the gospodar Kosta Savić of all sorts of horrible crimes. I'm only here because you promised you'd keep your trap shut--"

"Grgur--"

"--if Andrija proved to be no vulkodlak. Whether he is or no has nothing to do with the Schwabes, who are quite capable of sticking up for themselves, thank you! Let them take care of their own people. We have our hands full with ours."

"Grgur, you surely don't object to witnesses? Why, if I'm wrong? Or do you believe I'm right?"

"Don't treat me like a child," shot back Grgur. "Reverend Father, you gave your word--"

"Good, Grgur, fine. You want out? Go. The Austrians and I will take care of it ourselves."

The moon showed for a moment between two scudding clouds, and Grgur caught his rasping breath and looked up at it. Then he said: "Right. It shouldn't be done at all, and you know that very well. But he was Orthodox, a Serb, so it's my duty to be here even though the whole business stinks. And it'll stink even more tomorrow when I get asked--as I will--why the grave has been opened. There is to be an odbor here tomorrow, if you recall."

"What'll you say, Grgur?"

"What's that to you?" said the sacristan venomously, producing a pistol from under his coat. "You're obviously working on the Schwabes to whip up war in the valley, and if I thought shooting you here and now would prevent it, I'd do it cheerfully."

"But it's not that easy, is it?" asked the priest.

"No, admitted Grgur, looking down at the pistol and then putting it away. "But what you're doing will get you killed. Not by me, maybe not even by the gospodar, but somebody will kill you. Don't you know that?"

"It's not in my hands," said the priest Rezać. "It's in God's hands now."

"God's hands?" cried the sacristan. "Blasphemy! How dare you blame Our Lord for your malignant scheming?!"

"Blame me if you like, Grgur," said the priest hollowly as another lantern approached, making its uncertain way toward them. "Shoot me now or anytime if it will make you feel better. No man can fight God's will."

"Ako, ako," rejoined Grgur, watching the light. "God's will. If He has written your name on a bullet, it will not vanish tonight." And Rezać spoke out in Hungarian, giving a greeting to the two figures approaching.

"I'm glad you could bring him," Rezać told Vathely, speaking Hungarian as they rested, nodding toward the hole where the soldier and the sacristan were digging.

"Starkmann's a good man," replied the hussar. "Steady, reliable, and no more imagination than a plate of goulash. If he were nervous you’d know you were really and truly on to something weird."

"I hope not," said the priest. "When he was buried, the man in this grave was dead beyond any possibility of doubt, if you apprehend me. We are simply checking the condition of the body."

"But you said this was a case--"

"I said a suspected case. Suspected by the man with the pick there," said the priest, knowing that Grgur, should he be eavesdropping, could not follow their spoken Magyar. "This was his idea, but no one more than he is praying the idea is wrong. As I said, we are verifying a fact, that's all."

"Well," said the hussar, "it's good spook-weather, certainly," and the priest nodded--either in agreement or to Brother Grgur, who was peering up over the edge of the hole.

"That ground's solid, as you could testify." Grgur said in Serbian. "No traffic in and out of there. Quiet as a grave." He smiled mirthlessly in the dark. "You'd stand to lose your wager, wouldn't you--if you'd kept to it?"

"We will see what we'll see," answered the priest.

"Yes, and very soon," said the sacristan, and he'd hardly spoken when the soldier called out, yanking them all round to face the grave; for a moment in the wildly flaring lanternlight he resembled the revenant they were looking for.

A splatter of rain ran through the trees and Kosta Savić cursed and pulled his greatcoat tighter with one hand while keeping the horse's halter in the other.

His body ached in every joint, a half-dozen wounds stung him under his woollen shirt, and his head buzzed with fatigue; and now belike it would rain on him all over again. Yet his job could not be postponed. If he got Yusef back alive, the Turk would be disgraced, and perhaps Rezać with him. If not, the disgrace would rebound upon him and his family.

Of all the Schwabes, he thought, that Herr Oberst Slavin would perhaps understand.

The Schwabes had their Iron Tsar, old Franca Iosif, to rule them with his iron laws--they had great steel factories, whose works made streams of gold to flow for their owners. These mere men of metal; what could they possibly understand of the flower-garlands of Saint George's Eve, or of the Mother of the Rye and her libation, or of Kraljević Marko's wonderful horse--let alone the baffling spiritual forces which coalesced around the curse of a clan-chief?

The wind mounted to a rush, and the mare whickered, trembling a bit under her terrible burden.

True, he had killed his father's pobrat, the knez Dabisav Uglesić. Why . . . he was still not sure, but it had been a monstrous act, and he would pay the price. What business was it of the priest's--or of these Schwabes'?

He lay a steadying hand on the horse's flank as they entered a rocky defile and started to descend. He moved his hand up to feel the Turk's bulk, and slapped it.

"Eh, Turk, what’d’ you say? Still alive, are you?" he muttered. A twitch in some muscle was his only answer.

That Oberst was a decent fellow, he thought. A little too much of a talker, perhaps, but almost a regular Serb inside that blue uniform.

It would be a pity to have to kill him.

Soon three men were looking down five feet of flinty soil to the outline of the coffin's lid; no more could be hewed out in the brief time they had. Brother Grgur handed a pry-bar down to Vathely, who had to stand at one end of the wooden casket while trying to loosen the fastening at the other. But with a few groans heard over the rising gale the bronze nails came loose, and at last, lying on the ground and reaching down with the pick and bar, they were able to lift the lid and turn it back. Brother Grgur and the soldier Starkmann held the lanterns down, and they all looked.

The body of Andrija Savić lay facing them, resplendent in embroidered finery, glittering with golden thread; under his folded arms the wavering light played along the blade of his legendary twenty-pound sabre, and flickered over a face all too familiar to the two churchmen. It had hardened, falling into iron lines drawn tight over the massive bones of the skull. The great scar had folded in, drawing the lip up into a shadow of the well-remembered sneer, and the eyelids lay chillingly open and void, as if to stare even the worms down to defiance.

They looked for a full minute or more, all silent until Vathely murmured, "*Groß Gott *. . . think of him alive."

"He's dead, all right," said Grgur in curt Serbian. "You see, Reverend Father? Gone to whatever frozen circle of Hell would have him." He extended a shovel handle, which clunked solidly against a forearm. "This is no warm, blood-sated night-walker."

"But he is a little too well-preserved, is he not? I think the forces of Nature could do with a bit of a helping hand."

The sacristan slipped a hand inside his jacket and asked in Serbian, "What have you got in mind?"

"Nothing not sanctioned by the holy Orthodox Church," rejoined the priest. "A little holy water, a candle in the lantern, a few words--and a small stake. Just to make sure."

"I've nothing more to say," said Grgur, "but that the gospodar will make sure of you. You know that."

"Well, you just run along and tell him, then, now that the bargain's been broken anyway," said the priest, kneeling down and producing a few things from his cloak. Grgur knelt down beside him, and pushed the covered muzzle of the pistol smartly into the priest's right kidney.

"Yes," Grgur said in German, "let us pray for the soul of the dead man." And as Vathely and Starkmann doffed their caps, Grgur began in Serbian, "Move a muscle, Reverend Father, and you're a dead man. O Lord, our heavenly Father . . . " And during the prayer he did not neglect to pick up Rezać’s stake and tuck it into his own belt.

At the end of the prayer, Rezać said in Serbian, as if adding a blessing, "God help you, Grgur, you'll regret this."

"Proverbs, chapter twenty-six, verse five," replied Grgur. "'Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.'" Then, rising, in German, "Thank you, gentlemen, we need not keep you much longer."

"What's the business with the piece of wood?" enquired Vathely.

"An old Bosnian custom," replied Grgur. "It stands for bad luck."

"Interesting," said Vathely. "And what do you do with it?"

"This," said Grgur, and threw it as far away into the scrub as he could.

Slavin opened his eyes and he, too, listened to the rush of the wind over the crumbling roof of the han.

He had no idea of the time; it seemed as though he had been tossing and turning for hours, listening to Stadelmeier's snoring and an occasional scrape and clink as the guard turned about.

He had always been a seeker. As a youth, his family had been sufficiently well-off to disincline him from work, but not nearly so much as to free him from the necessity of it. This situation had procured him an excellent classical education without affording him the leisure with which alone it could be put to proper use. In these circumstances he could have been a teacher, had his resulting disillusionment not extended within the classroom; or a priest, had it not also extended to God. Hence, after some years of drifting among jobs for which either experience or education unfitted him, and having begun a family--which precipitated a financial squeeze that his wife had never subsequently forgiven or forgotten--he had wound up as an army officer. In this, as before, he had not found a proper place. He did have, however, the company of other men who had likewise found themselves useless for anything else; frequent changes of air and scenery; and a steady paycheck, which would enable his sons to be raised in much the same manner as he himself had been.

This was by no means the first time Slavin had taken stock of his life. He did it often when unable to sleep, not that it served to induce slumber; usually the opposite. This time was usual.

He threw the covers back and sat up on his cot, and after a second he shuddered as the chilly night air penetrated his long underwear as he knew it would. He soaked in the cold for a moment, then rolled gingerly out of the cot and went over and looked out of the narrow casement into the night sky.

The wind had slackened briefly, and in a rift between flying rain-clouds he saw two faint stars.

His lack of illusions extended beyond army duty and God even to include himself. Fully aware that time spent worrying about himself was wasted, and that consequent worry about wasted time only wasted more time, he tried to reach out toward those twin pinpricks of alien light.

He smiled bitterly. Something to believe in; two tiny stars, hardly visible, yet they would outlast him, and the Empire, and human civilisation.

And again a familiar feeling, that if life were so brief and complex, it must have been set up by someone intentionally--by someone with a rather sick sense of humour. Either that, or it came of a chance interplay of electrochemical forces, having no more point to it than an idiot's babbling, or the meeting of parallel lines at infinity. He had discerned this choice as a younger man, and had considered suicide; but, given the first option, he had stuck around with the idea that he might get to the punch line. And if not, given the second, it made no difference anyway; nothing did.

His wife was dead. Sure, there were the children, but they'd do better out of his insurance money. So he'd taken duty in this hostile land, and kept at it long after he could have left, despite what he’d told the Herr Kommissar. Bullets flew and disease was rampant; for him, fate would decide. Certainly he'd buried more men than he could remember.

He had once drawn some consolation from the fact that nobody gave a damn. But as he leaned there in the window, and felt the wind whip about and lash a few raindrops in his face, he realized what an egoist he had been.

What business had he, writing off the world?

And then he thought back again, to a fact he had all but forgotten because no one had ever asked.

He had met Andrija Savić. Once, briefly; but he had met the man.

The survey patrol had been riding out the lines on a bad map section late one dusty afternoon when they had come upon a cloaked horseman sitting quietly on his mount in the turn of a road. Slavin had halted the group, and greeted the man in Serbian.

"Herr Oberst von Slavin, is it?" the rider had asked in German.

"Just Slavin," he'd said. "I may be a Schwabe to you, but I'm no Austrian . . . and you have the advantage of me, sir."

There was a fractional pause. "Where d'you plan on running the boundary?"

Slavin looked hard at the figure, taking in the icy blue eyes, the thunder-scarred countenance, and the magnificent beast it rode. "Wherever it belongs," he said carefully.

The man spit between his teeth. "You talk like a man and a Serb, despite your toy uniform, so I’ll give you some good advice.” The leather creaked as he turned in the saddle. “You’re a bit far west right now. You'll want to ride back to Vikoč tonight, make camp. Tomorrow, head south to the ridge above the Čehotina ravine. Follow that southeast to the snow line above Šuplja Stijena, then south-southwest across the valley to the Tara river and then downstream to Šćepan Polje. That's where it belongs. Anything east of that is held by people who had it from Prince Nikola, and it’ll spare you some future headaches."

"And to whom shall I say we're indebted for this advice?"

"Someone who knows what the hell he's talking about," replied the horseman, nudging his mount's flank. "But if you really do want to get to Foča tonight, you'll have to turn around and then bear left. The road's marked wrong on your map." And with that the stranger had reined out and gone off at a trot.

Slavin reflected. At the time, he figured, Andrija Savić had had less than three months to live. No doubt, as they said, he had been an ill-starred troublemaker, a menace, an Ishmael. Yet he had also been gospodar, and in the real old style, a larger-than-life hero; a two-fisted, hard-headed brawler--not a brooding manslayer like his brother.

The wind came up again, and all at once he shivered and turned away.

A dripping, dishevelled man stood in the doorway.

Slavin peered into the gloom, not quite sure what to do or say, when the man raised his head and looked at him with staring eyes, flat blue eyes as collared by a terrified child.

He saw the flying hair and said, "Gospodar?"

The queer eyes shined like fish scales in the darkness. "I--I . . ."

"Guard!" shouted the colonel.

Boots trampled in the stone-lined corridor, and the officer blinked as a lantern was held up to his vision.

"Sir? What is it, sir?"

Slavin blinked again. "Where--where is he?"

"Where's who, sir?"

He realized his mouth was open, and closed it. "Nothing . . . Blimenthal, isn't it?"

"Jawohl, Herr Oberst."

"You didn't see anyone, did you, Blimenthal?"

"Nein, Herr Oberst."

"No . . . Good job, Blimenthal. Alert."

"Everything alright, sir?"

"Yes, thanks, Blimenthal. Fine. Carry on." Slavin returned the soldier's salute, and when the man had gone he leaned back against the wall and slid down on his back until he was sitting on the floor with his knees drawn up; and then he wrapped his arms around them and put his head down.

Rain had begun to fall steadily as they hastily filled in the grave. Then the priest Rezać picked up his lantern, the others shouldered their tools, and with the wind snatching at their sodden cloaks they filed quietly out of the graveyard.

They were at the bottom of the hill when Vathely held up his hand and called, "Stop--listen."

Above the wind and rain came an odd sound which became a clash and rattle of metal, and a hoarse shout.

"The rectory," said Rezać, and off they went.

Vathely was first at the gate. He looked about, but saw only the black on black of the great stone wall and heard the dim ironwork shifting slowly in the wind. Then he unshuttered his lantern, and nearly dropped it as a mutilated head leapt into view.

A big man was propped against a gatepost, his bloody face half-muffled by crude bandages. Then a flare of light made the hussar glance to one side, and he saw Kosta Savić lighting up a cigarette in cupped hands.

"You!" gasped Vathely.

"Put away the pistol, Herr Rittmeister," said the nobleman, tossing away the spent vesta. "It is not killing time just yet."

"Who is this man?" demanded Vathely. "Who killed him?"

"Yusef!" cried out Rezać from behind. "Yusef! Captain, who--?"

"Merhaba, Reverend Father," said Kosta Savić dryly. "A bit late to be out a-digging, isn't it?"

The priest held up a flickering lantern. "Gospodar," he said, and then bent over the bloodstained Turk. The soldier Starkmann, then Brother Grgur came up, and the priest turned to face the nobleman. "I assume you have some explanation for this?"

"I believe the explaining is up to you, Reverend Father," drawled Kosta Savić. "He said it was your idea for him to break into my house, attack me, and kill my dog."

"What?"

"I didn't want to kill him outright," explained the nobleman, "until I'd heard your side of it. It'd be no trouble to finish him right off if it turned out he'd lied."

"And if not?"

Kosta Savić scratched his stubbled jaw. "Now, Reverend Father, I just can't picture that."

"If Yusef has committed some serious offence, it should be dealt with in the proper manner, according to the law."

"I agree," agreed the nobleman, and dragged on the cigarette again. "Which is why I'd like to know if it's true that you put him up to it. Did you?"

The priest thought a moment. "I did not. Herr Rittmeister Vathely can vouch for that. But I am responsible for him."

"I figured as much. That is why I did not kill him. But the next time--I will. Verstehen?"

"Ja," said the priest, nettled, "though you'll answer for murder to the authorities."

Kosta Savić spat out the cigarette, stiffening. "Authorities, Reverend Father? You mean this?" He looked Vathely up and down like a schoolmaster measuring one of his charges for the birch. "You think that because a troop of Schwabes rides through town and maybe posts a scrap of paper, you Croat bootlickers are suddenly king of the hill?"

"I assure you--" Vathely started.

"I don't want your assurances," said Kosta Savić poisonously. "What am I, some society lady you're trying to chat up? I am gospodar, and a Serb--my forebears were building an empire and rattling the gates of Constantinople while Rudolf of Hapsburg was still a Tyrolean horse-thief. These are my people, my country, and I tell you that all of us who can walk are fighters--women and children, too--and we aren’t accustomed to being jailed, assaulted, and killed at leisure. D'you understand me, Herr Rittmeister von Vathely?"

"I do," said Vathely quietly. "And we want nothing but peace. Do you imagine, gospodar, my men and I want to die here in your land, a foreign country, far away from our families? No. And I swear to you on my honour as a soldier that we will not rest until all the matters you mentioned are cleared up, and the guilty parties pay the penalty."

There was a space of quiet, while another shower of rain began to fall, and Kosta Savić finally growled, "I know you won't. Neither will we." Then he turned to the priest. "So tell me, Reverend Father, what is it brings you all out a-digging at this unearthly hour?"

"Graves for the dead," said Rezać. "You object?"

Brother Grgur said: "We exhumed Andrija."

"Grgur--!" blurted the priest.

"At last, a straight answer from someone," said Kosta Savić wearily. "Well, I've no objection."

"What?"

"Yes, he was my brother. But he is dead, and the dead are not my department. I have my hands quite full with problems among the living. And now, if you'll excuse me, gentlemen, I think we all have things to do tomorrow. I will bid you good evening."

"We will hear Yusef's side of it," said Rezać, and the nobleman went over and took the reins of his mount, climbing unsteadily into the saddle.

Then he said, "I want you to, Reverend Father. That's why I left his tongue in. Good night." And with that, he flicked the reins.

Brother Grgur walked with Kosta Savić a way.

"The Reverend Father told me this morning and I told Stana, gospodar. But I wanted no part of it."

"I know, Grgur, I know. But Andrija caused enough trouble while he was alive. I can't afford to play politics over his bones."

"Speaking of bones, gospodar, he was very well preserved. Not fresh and bloody, like a vulkodlak--more dried out and mummified, like."

"Whatever . . . I've just got other matters to worry about. You know."

"I know. Good night, gospodar."

"Goodnight, Grgur."

The rain soon passed, but the wind kept Kosta Savić's cloak slowly flapping, partly stuck to the horse's wet hide.

As the animal picked its way up the track, he felt activity in his brain and wondered dully if some new evil was brewing there.

He knew war fever when he smelt it, for that was his business; and he was getting a healthy whiff of it now. A continuation of politics by other means, someone had said--that was a chiller for anyone who knew anything about real politics.

True, his concession had surprised Vathely and the priest--maybe enough to get his point across. And he had returned the Turk alive, so that his blood might be on his own head . . . all this and still, he felt, he was less and less in control of things.

You should have thought of this before you killed Dabisav Uglesić, said some accusing voice.

If I had thought at all, I wouldn't have killed him, would I?

You thought a good deal, little brother. You always were a canny bastard that way--if you'd had an education you'd be downright dangerous. But fortunately for the world at large, you were just the second son of a poor Bosnian squire who could barely write his own name. Getting married and settling down to scratch a living out of the soil, that might be alright for old Andrija, but not for you. That's why you gave me your half of the farm. You didn't want that land. What did you want, Kosta? Did you ever find out?

No.

No. Well . . . you got that land, that poor rocky soil you were too good for, and a wife to boot, and children, and a title, all bang slap at once.

I didn't have much choice, did I?

I don't know, admitted the voice. That one's still got me wondering--how you heard, and why you came back. But you did, and you married Stana, and took over the farm. And I know--believe me, I know--how goddamn complicated things can get among those so-called simple peasants. The job was just lying there, and for whatever reason you picked it up and took it, and now you've realized what it is to have total responsibility.

Yeah--so?

So you coped as best you could for a long time. Keeping the peace wasn't too hard, what with your ice-man attitude and your fighting skill, and Stana to back you up. Maybe you figured that you could disappear after awhile if you didn't like it. But you began to see that Demjan was a goddamned raion, a hick farmer, that he'd never make a gospodar, and that Slavica wasn't afraid of you. So you and Stana decided to have one of your own. Well and fine. But when he was born, that finally did it to you.

What d'you mean?

I mean you, brother, the renowned ice-man--you looked at that little tiny baby and suddenly you were scared shitless.

What? Screw you--scared of what?

That's just it, isn't it? For the first time in your coolly calculated life, you had no idea what you were up against, and that one lurked down in your stomach like a toad. You tried to drink it out, fight it out, but it didn't work because you always had to go back. And then you know that the big gospodar thing you'd built up wasn't worth a tinker's damn because you couldn't face up to your own family. That's when you lost it, and you went out and killed Dabisav Uglesić, our father’s* pobrat, and Marenka, and everybody else in that house. They were prijatelji--it was like killing your own. Which you were doing really. It hurt that badly, just as you needed it to. Except that it’s not working.

No?

No. Feelings of fear, little brother, are not dealt with by getting rid of feelings. There is no doing such a thing, no nepenthe. That is the wisdom of the abyss.

It is true. But it doesn’t mend anything. And I--well, I still have life, and while I do I may just yet turn the tables on you.

Turn the tables? On me? I am a dead man!

Yes, and a remarkably nosy one, too. I am not concerned with why you killed Bicanić; why then this concern of yours over why I killed Uglesić? Cui bono? You were never an altruist, dear brother, and obviously than you have some stake in this business, dead though you be; and that involves my standing condemned as Uglesić's killer.

My family--

Would still have you around if you'd exerted half this new-found concern for them while you were still alive.

You are following me, Kosta, on the high road to hell, and once again they will pay. Don't you care?

Me?! You bastard, you're the one driving Stana to distraction, egging Slavica on to obscene blasphemies, keeping Demjan scared half to death! I'd rip your guts out with my bare hands if I could get hold of you!

It's not me, Kosta--

you goddamned son of a--

Listen, Kosta! It's not me!

What’d’ you mean?

You know Stana. I couldn't begin to do that to her. It's true I have some astral powers, but beside Stana I am nothing--she could blast me into so much psychic static without a wink.

Who then? Or what?

You ask, poor little brother, for introduction to things as far beyond our language to convey as for a field-mouse to calculate the obliquity of the ecliptic. How can I describe alternate realities to you who have no sure grasp upon your own? How to begin to paint the Arcturian Gate by the light of burning battle-cruisers, or the acropolis of Zayana under a moon that shines on no world conceived by astronomers? Of what use would it be to tell of the cosmic wrath that seared the Indus valley full five thousand years ago, or of the great world wars to come? It would do you no good, because you have no eyes to see. You are a Bosnian farmer-fighter, and a greater man in heaven than you know--but you are still trapped in a body and brain. You cannot know these realms, and who and what inhabits them--it is neither granted you, nor expected of you.

And Stana? Does she know?

A sardonic laugh seemed to echo and re-echo inside his head.

Does she know? Great Gods, such blindness! You may have heard, Kosta, stories told of tropical typhoons, that their winds reach such velocities that straws caught up in them can be driven right through wooden planks? That is what Stana is like; she has attained a velocity at which properties change . . . If you only knew who--or what you married! the titanomachies and freezing cosmic abysses she has seen, the oceans of time and skies of suffering--well, even her mind cannot quite bear it all up; yours would pop like a soap-bubble.

You're saying she's more than human?

In total, sober honesty, Kosta, I cannot say; what she is to me is different than what she is to you, and she is so alien from each of us that we can't really tell. On my side, she is known, and respected--though you yourself are not unknown either.

How is this?

The time grows short, little brother, and anyway if I told you it would certainly hinder your understanding without enlightening you one whit. It is a true secret which is the more effectively concealed by the telling. You will come toward it, as I have.

Wait--

See, there is the light of your house, which Stana has lit for you. I think we shall not meet again for very long on such brotherly terms.

Hold on!

Farewell, Kosta. I can't say good-bye.

And with that, Kosta Savić looked up and realized he had reached home; and not for the first time he felt the impulse to turn and ride away.

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