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Day Five: Night

 

As the carriage bumped slowly along the road, there was a temporary silence among its three occupants. The soldier Vonhof had dropped into a fitful half-sleep, his head wagging slowly back and forth with a hint of grotesquerie.

Commissioner Claudius Stadelmeier looked over at his companion, his eyes glinting in the dying sunlight. Father Ante Rezać looked back, his face carefully blank.

"You know, if I had left you back there," said the politician, "your murder would have provided me with an excellent casus belli. 'Heathen Slavs butcher Churchman,' et cetera. The problem with that was--as she said--it's likely there'd have been no finding your body."

"Your Christian charity is truly commendable, Herr Kommissar," replied the priest dryly.

Stadelmeier laughed. "You say you want to get gone? By the time I'm done with you, my man, nobody'll be able to find you without a dowsing-stick."

knez Velimir and Stana were interrupted in their walk by a boy dashing madly up the stony way before the village. "Gospodja! Gospodja!" he shouted. "Go to the church right away!"

The noblewoman drew a deep breath. "Slavica?"

"Dunno. dede Grgur just says come." Then he was off, shouting to someone else in the rising wind.

The dusk-wrapped square presented a different aspect now than in the afternoon. Stana could see hustle and bustle, but all of a common purpose. Noise there was, as earlier, but none that was not necessary to that purpose.

After a week of mystery and trepidation, the hill-men finally had a task that they understood well. That it was ultimately a hopeless fight was not of immediate concern. It was a fight, and that sufficed.

The Orthodox church was again busy, but this time the visitors were all male and much better armed. "Come in, knez Velimir, gospodja," said Marko Vuletić, catching sight of them and brandishing a rifle.

Inside, the ceremonial candle-stands had been arranged in a line, their flickering throwing an uncanny shadow-dance around the scene. A rough line of men led up to the altar.

Brother Grgur was standing waist-deep in a hole in the floor near the ikonostasis , his vest unbuttoned and sleeves rolled up, calling names and passing rifles or pistols to the men who stepped up.

"Where did all these guns come from?" asked Stana. "I knew there were some stashed in here, but this--"

"Oh, no, there's a couple of hundred--Grgur has the exact count," replied the new chieftain. "All given to the cause by good friends in Russia for the 1877 war, all straight from the factory then. When the war was over--why get rid of them?" he shrugged. "So we oiled and stored them up against a rainy day. I helped load them in myself. Grgur was there, and old Father Bogdan Karadenić, of course, and Vuk Vuletić and a few others. Some of them have traces of factory packing-grease on them even now. True, they're not recoil-operated, magazine-fed repeaters, but they beat the hell out of muzzle-loaders."

"The knez and gospodja," someone called, and the sacristan straightened up, reaching out for a box passed in from the sanctuary.

"Gospodja," Grgur said, wiping his hands on an altar-cloth. "If you're expecting news of Slavica, I'm sorry. I have none. But I do have something that your husband left for you for such an event as this." He extended something wrapped in an oily silk cloth, and she took it, unwrapping it gingerly.

Inside lay a flat, odd-looking handgun with a rectangular box jutting down in front of the trigger housing.

"Holy saints," breathed the knez , "I saw one of these once. A Mauser fully automatic pistol with a twenty-round clip." Several heads turned and necks craned in to look at the deadly toy, and whispers of explanation ran around as Stana turned it over awkwardly and suddenly ejected the clip from the magazine well.

"Sorry there's no holster, shoulder-stock, or spare clip," said Grgur. "That's all there was, gospodja. You can stop by the sacristy and get some nine-millimetre short rounds for it. Štojan!" he called. "Štojan, where are you?"

"Can you work it?" asked Nikifor Djurić, not without a trace of envy.

For an answer, Stana held up the weapon, yanking back the action with her slender fingers, locking it back and examining the receiver, looking into the chamber and at the firing-pin for a moment. Then she eased the action forward and let the hammer fall and then tucked the weapon in her belt. "Yes," she said, and started toward the sacristy, where Velimir watched as she was given twenty rounds of ammunition out of a box.

“And one for the chamber,” she told the man, then turning to the side door to leave.

"Where are you going now, gospodja?" asked Velimir Ivancić quietly on the steps outside.

"I want to get my house and family back," she said, tossing her wind-loosened hair out of her eyes. “That land can never be theirs anyway.” She turned again, but the knez plucked her sleeve.

“One moment, gospodja. Why do you say that?”

She looked at him impatiently. “The old gospodar, Kosta’s great-grandfather, held the Vučedol not from the Turkish vizier, but in fee tributary from the vladika , Saint Peter Njegoš himself.”

“So?”

“My husband, the gospodar Andrija Savić, never bothered to pay the annual tribute to the chamberlain in Cetinje.”

“Joj ,” breathed the man. “So it legally reverted back to the successor of the original grantor.”

“Very good, Velimir,” she finished. “Prince Nikola of Montenegro.”

"God go with you, gospodja," said Velimir, and with a brief brilliant terrible smile Stana turned on her heel and was gone.

"Hold it!" shot out the voice from the shadowy scrub by the roadside. "Who's there?"

"Knock it off, Miloš," replied 'Young Sava' Leskanić. "It's the tooth fairy, who’d’ you think?"

"You have to be careful." said the young farmer, lowering his rifle and standing up against the rocks. "dede Veljko's orders, you know."

"I know. He's alright." Then Sava quickly recounted the afternoon's events.

"You think the Schwabes might come this way?" asked Miloš excitedly.

"We've got to cover all the roads. Where's Janko and his lot?"

"Late, of course," said Miloš, lounging professionally.

"Well, they don't need you at the village. dede says you're to take up an ambush position on the spur by the turn-off to Ivo's place, east and west. If the Schwabes stick together headed south, as it looks, they'll all wind up in Vikoč. But that Schwabe Oberst is a crafty bastard who knows the country well, and if he decides to double back along the old road after leaving the river, he'll have to come by here. Then--boom, got them anyway," finished Sava. "Just make sure you don't shoot up Joro Djurić and Ilija and their lot because they'll be along earlier. So, is that a plan or what?"

"It's good," said Miloš. "But where is Joro going? Is he for a fight?"

"I don't know," said Sava. He balanced this untruth by adding: "dede Veljko will have your ass in a sling if you don't follow his instructions, though, poslušate?"

"I know," said Miloš, momentarily disappointed that someone else was getting to do something different from him. Then he pricked up. "Joj down there!" he shouted. "Janko? Is that you, you malingering son of a cockroAch?!"

"Joj there yourself," called an irritated voice. "Field-Marshal Lord Miloš, I presume."

'Young' Sava watched as his kinsmen met on the stony hilltop track in the raw, windy evening, trading spirited chaff, and felt deeply stirred. He was now taking part, he knew, in a rare modern revival of the old ways; ragged, hungry men turning against a better-armed, more powerful foreign enemy whose reasons for being in their land no one ever seemed to really understand.

'Our good land of Bosnia,' Sava had heard it called in the songs. But, he thought vaguely, it didn't seem all that good to him; karst mountains, scrub brush and hardscrabble tillage whose yield staved off famine only two years out of three--a land whose only reward was allowing one to celebrate another birthday, however miserably. What did these Schwabes want here? What for that matter had the Turks wanted? All the tales of silver and gold treasures seemed very remote and implausible, all, all long dead and departed along with the old heroes and vilas and the nobility and the big-heartedness and the laughter . . . as if there were no longer any place for the old convivial earthly spirits.

'Young' Sava shook his head vigorously. The old stories had him half-living in them on a night like this, he thought wryly, feeling a raindrop hit his cheek.

Kosta Savić tried to shake away the drops running down his face into his scraggly almost-beard, but could not. He tried to draw a deep breath but could not do that either.

"Where am I?" he gasped.

"Oh, somewhere," growled a voice behind him. He whirled around to see his brother Andrija Savić looking at him with ember-like eyes under his bushy eyebrows, the old well-known scar twisting his small cold smile slightly askew.

"You!" groaned Kosta Savić. "What do you want?"

"That's for me to ask you," answered Andrija. "You're the one who came and found me."

"I don't know where we are," said Kosta slowly. "Do you?"

"Let's open 'er up and have a look, shall we?" asked Andrija and turned and threw his considerable weight against a massive door which creaked, moving, letting in fitful swirls of hot, dusty, stinging wind, and little by little revealing yellowish-red light playing upon the domes and mAchicolations of an unspeakably ancient and empty city spreading out around them, backed yet further by bleak rocky ridges and escarpments, fading far, far away into a purplish sky torn by gusts of yellow sand or smoke.

Before them, a massive stair fell away like a mountainside down to a square far below.

"Where--"

"Her home," intoned Andrija, and Kosta Savić did not need to ask who. "Her seat and throne. Not her native place--that is beyond--but her stronghold."

"I think I've been around here somewhere," said Kosta Savić. "Not right here, but here somewhere. Somehow."

Andrija gestured back, inside the insanely vast building. "Come in and see," he replied.

As high as was the top of the narthex area where they had stood, Kosta felt like an insect crawling out from under a rock as they passed inward beyond an interior colonnade and out into the hazy light of the upended abyss beyond.

But it was the distant dot across the acres of flagstone that drew Kosta Savić's attention. Forgetting his brother he began to lope, then to run at full tilt, his footsteps kicking up dust wherever they fell, the sound lost without echo.

He ran and ran, his head beginning to pound, until he saw the low dais and the empty seat which alone adorned it.

He spun round again, sweat streaking his dusty face, his jaw working convulsively, veins in his neck and forehead swelling, and he screamed--a tearing, steel-like wail that made even Andrija's lips tighten.

Colonel Fedor Slavin reined in his mount as the thunder-crash rolled away down the valley. Something more than the weather was making the animal skittish, he thought sourly. Progress was slow in the murky, rain-sodden darkness; the slicker-clad horsemen were dangerously silent, numb, and wet.

They'd be lucky to make Vikoč by ten at this rate.

The lancer urged his horse forward toward the head of the column. Once there, he leaned over toward a dark figure and called: "Sergeant Deutscher!"

"Sir," came the response.

"Any news from the scouts?"

"Road's clear so far, sir. I know what you're thinking."

"If not on the road, then at the next village."

"Not while we've got their man, surely?"

"No thanks to you-know-who," grumbled the officer. "First rule of hostage-taking is, don't. The second rule is, if you do, don't let 'em die on you. Dead hostages are worse than useless. Why try to kill him?"

The NCO's reply was drowned out by a peal of thunder.

"What?" yelled Slavin as the rain's tempo suddenly increased.

"I said, maybe it wasn't him they were trying for. You were right in front of him, remember?"

A dull crack, then another, sounded, and lightning flashed. More crackling, and Slavin reined in hard. "Call a halt!" he shouted. "We're under fire!"

Momentary chaos reigned along the column; small-arms fire tearing off amid falling rock, neighing, shouting, wheeling, all amid rainrushing blackness--every man for himself in a fire-fight. Then signs of discipline appeared. Some men began to make their way up the hillside while others laid down fire for them farther along. Horses came under control, the activity became less frantic, if still vigorous, and the steady clatter of the Austrian Mannlichers asserted itself slowly but insistently.

Kosta Savić opened his eyes, staring into a misty void shot through with uneven blots of yellow iridescence. His body was immobile but partly laid against something.

He realized dully that he was in his brother's arms.

"I think you do know this place," said Andrija. "From your nightmares."

"You lie," mumbled Kosta.

"Don't take her side against me, little brother," cautioned Andrija. "Look out for yourself. You think she's won? Do you? Are you not gospodar as I was? Are you not a Watcher?"

"I haven't . . . her power," whispered Kosta.

"'Course you haven't. * It has you vilas*. It damn well ate you, brother, just like it ate me. That's my secret, you know. I'm not really dead. I had to leave my body because it couldn't support me anymore, but I never passed beyond, either. So I'm not properly dead, but not properly alive, either. You've got her to thank for that situation."

Andrija looked down for a minute, and then looked up again and said: "What about you? Do you yet control for yourself so much as the choice to live or die?"

Kosta Savić was silent.

"Let's get you up," said Andrija. "We've got to go now. Come on, on your feet."

Kosta Savić arose, with a hand from the other, and took several deep breaths. Then he looked at Andrija. "What's your game?" he asked.

"To send her back to whatever nameless hell she came from," came the reply. "And I'm too close now to let you stop me. Not that you ought to. You ought to be helping me."

Kosta eyed Andrija even more carefully. "You say you're close to it. You don't need my help, then. Goodbye." He turned to go.

"Wait!" rang out Andrija's voice harshly.

For an answer, Kosta Savić walked a few paces, whirling once as he went, waving in a gesture of farewell.

The knife flashed and thudded in Andrija's chest.

Then Kosta saw Andrija look down almost quizzically at the haft protruding from next to his lower sternum. He raised his head, his eyes burning, and said evenly: "Brother to brother, Bosnian style. The old-fashioned--I like it." He grasped the knife's handle firmly and with a sudden effort extracted it. Then he made a gesture as if to wipe off the blade, but naturally there was no blood fouling it. So, reversing his grasp, he took a few steps forward and proffered it, pommel-first, to Kosta, holding it by the blade. The latter made no move.

Andrija smiled his twisted smile, tucking the knife into his own belt. "I'm winning," he said. "She and her brood will lose. You cannot save them. You are doomed along with them if you try."

Kosta Savić said nothing.

"You may go," said Andrija. "No more tricks from me."

"Go . . . how? Where? I still don't know where I am or how I got here."

"You got here under your own steam," replied Andrija, his smile twisting into a leer. "Getting back should be no problem at all. Farewell." He raised a hand and a door slammed shut between them.

Kosta Savić turned and looked out at the bizarre cityscape below. Then, slowly, he began to make his way down the Brobdignagian steps.

Making the top of the rockfall was the work of a few minutes for Sergeant von Essen's regulars, even on a stormy night, and was made easier by the disappearance of the enemy before they got over.

"All of them?" yelled Slavin above the noise of the wind and rain.

"Every one," bellowed Corporal Maurer back. "Some of these shells are still warm!"

"All of them," repeated Slavin through the cracked-open carriage door.

"Well, what’d’ you think?" demanded Stadelmeier.

Slavin spat on the ground. "I think we've got a reception committee waiting for us in Vikoč, and with the way that village is laid out, all those two-story stone houses backed up against the cliffs on either side, an ambush even by a few men is a serious matter."

"So?"

"I'd take the turn-off to the old road and double back around past the Uglesić place. It means a half day extra travelling, but it's safe and takes advantage of our mobility."

"Herr Rittmeister?"

"I agree that if we stop for any length of time we are inviting trouble. However, I do not believe any meaningful resistance will occur in Vikotch. I and my honveds could ride ahead to secure the place if you wish, sir."

"Herr Oberst?"

"I find that unduly dangerous. However, if Captain Vathely wants the glory of battle, he's welcome to it as far as I'm concerned."

"All right, then," said Stadelmeier. "Captain, you ride ahead to Vikotch and take whatever measures are necessary to secure it. We'll follow on and meet you there. Those are my orders. Now, let's go."

"Jawohl," said the hussar; he saluted and was gone, shouting.

The lancer remained a moment more while lightning split the sky again, his gaunt face flashing blue in its momentary illumination as the rain increased to a torrent. "I hope you're right, sir," he said, pulling his cloak about him.

"If I'm not, it's on my head, not yours," shot back the politician.

On yours, thought Slavin, turning, and all those men who die tonight.

In an upper-story room in Ilija Vuletić's house, old Jovan Ilić sat, staring long into the small orange flame of an oil lamp on a table. He was propped up in a chair, wrapped in blankets. This was his way, for he never could sleep lying down. Tonight he could not sleep at all. The sight and sound of men going out to fight had roused far too many ancient memories. And for him, as for all very old people, memories had a way of standing over against--in some cases nearer than--present reality.

Jovan Ilić was no senile fool. Yet he had not lived ninety-seven years without learning that wisdom, too, can age, decay, and die. Very little had changed in the externals since his split with the progeny of Svetozar Savić; slightly improved weaponry, and a different foreign foe.

Still, there was a difference which ran much deeper. He was not sure exactly what it was, beyond the idea that things seemed so much more vicious, petty, and hypocritical now. There always needed to be excuses and personal agendas to make it all small and nasty, and endless pompous justifications for the benefit of nobody in particular. No longer could one fight simply because the fight was there--nowadays that would be considered barbaric and bloodthirsty.

Soon, he supposed sadly, no one would dream of settling a score except by getting lawyers. Luckily, he would not live to see that. No wonder all the songs were about the olden days.

It was as if some great spirit--gods, heroes, saints, call it how you would--had left the earth. He wondered idly what new tenants, if any, had moved into the abodes of the vilas, the fairies.

"No, it's not pretty, I can tell you," said a voice suddenly--a voice that scattered his thoughts like dead leaves before a bitter October gale.

The old man, stung, looked up to see the huge figure of Malibor Savić seated across the table.

"You!" he exclaimed, shaken.

"Aye," rumbled the giant. "It's me, you old fox. Thought your work was done these forty-nine years, didn't you, me lying beneath the Vikoč crossroads where you and my son killed me. That's a deed I'll bet no one sings songs about, at least in your company."

"You're a dream," muttered Jovan Ilić. "You're nothing but a nightmarish figment of my imagination."

"I'm the Great Cham of Tartary," sniggered the other. His yellowish eyes grew round and wide as saucers as he took a breath and blew out the oil lamp.

The old man choked and fought for breath in the pitch blackness. He heard a scraping noise--the oil lamp being pushed aside--and then felt a big knobbly hand take him by the throat. "Still think I'm made out of rahi fumes?" came the grating question.

"No," gasped Jovan Ilić. "What’d’ you want?"

"First, some light. We've had forty-nine years of darkness between us. Let us see each other again, just for a little while."

A flame sprang up from somewhere, and the lamp was relit. Malibor Savić resembled his grandson Andrija, but his features were craggier and more drawn. His lips were weakened by lost teeth--as Jovan's were--but the resulting lispishness gave his voice a psychotic edge which sorted well with his legendary character.

"What I wanted," said Malibor Savić, looking slightly sideways at Jovan Ilić, "is you alive, up 'til now. Like the man says, dead hostages are worse than useless. For I am very patient; I have held you hostage, in a way, these seven sevens of years."

"Hostage?"

"While you live, I live--in a way. Don't you know how very intimate an act murder is? Someone you've killed is closer than a son, for a son grows up to find his own life. But a murder victim is dead. He has no life to take him away from you. He is closer than a lover--closer, even, than a wife. Yes! the marriage bond is dissolved with death, but the bond of spilt blood begins where marriage leaves off. Murder, my dear Jovan, is a sexual thing. We like to make it last."

"What has this to do with me now?"

Malibor Savić's voice fell in mock disappointment. "What, you, elder of the elders of Bosnia, and you do not know this?" he leaned over the table, his eyes widening again. "Revenge, my old wily fox--revenge, after seven weeks of years. This night, I say, you will pay at last, you and yours, and all yours, you hunted me from Uskub to LaibAch to Bucharest for two decades. Was I not gospodar?!" he thundered, banging the table for emphasis.

"Your bloody work--" began Jovan Ilić.

"As gospodar, bloody work was my family trade, my duty, my station, handed down from generations more ancient than nations. And you, a groom, a servant, presumed to set yourself up in my ancestral place?!"

He paused, his face convulsing with rage; but after a moment he appeared to regain sufficient control to continue. "You never knew--you still do not know--what deep roots you tore out of the earth. You do not know the ruins and voids your murderous treason created, nor what crept in to fill them. My son hid his head in the sand. My grandsons—who had more balls--tried to stem the tide, but it cannot be done. Young Kosta finally understood that this very day, and has given in. Now the ruin is upon all of you. Now it all unravels. Now your bloody work comes to harvest, and I am here to witness the gathering!"

"Damn you to hell!" cried Jovan Ilić.

"You already had a go at that," cut in a cool voice. "So sorry."

Malibor Savić leaped up with an oath, and a flash and crackle of blue sparks sent him staggering. Jovan Ilić closed his eyes while Malibor sagged, groping for his seat, and whispered: "You are right. It is not hell. It is Judgment Day. No other event could bring me together with you two again."

The newcomer moved into the lamplight a little, the wan glow throwing her marble features into deep relief and setting a bone-white gleam on part of her hair. She extended a hand and pushed Malibor's forehead back.

"You," she said to him witheringly, "you and your righteous little snit! I suppose you were going on to claim that you were swordsman to earth's mild gods while they still sat in storièd Carcosa. Eh?"

Malibor Savić said weakly but defiantly; "He owes me for blood. Even you cannot change that."

She lifted her hand, letting his head roll forward. "And you, Jovan--where are your manners? Do not curse your guest."

The old man asked wearily: "Who have you come for, gospodja?"

"The seven weeks of years, as he was saying, is over," she replied. "But he had it wrong. It is time for you both to be set free from your debts."

"Free?" said Malibor Savić suspiciously.

"Free," she replied. “You were patient, but too patient. You let him hold out just a little too long. It is jubilee, the forty-ninth year. So it is written. You are free from your grave, and you, Jovan, are free to leave this life at last."

"Now--" began Jovan Ilić.

"Of course, there will be certain . . . consequences on the other side. You will both at last be called upon to render account for your lives and ancillary existence. But I do not doubt you will face up like men and Serbs."

"You can't do this--" protested Malibor Savić.

“It is already done.” The new arrival threw her head back, lifting both arms; the lamp on the table sputtered, flared, and burst into an unearthly blue-white incandescence that hurt the eyes.

Then all was dark, save for a brief afterglow like a twelve-pointed star which flickered and faded, leaving the old man's body slumped forward in his chair.

In a box in the back of the Austrian cooks' wagon, where she had become stiff and sore, Slavica reflected that there was little purpose in holding back. No one would be letting her out to do what she had to do.

So she urinated on herself where she lay.

Anyone accustomed to observing Colonel Fedor Slavin at the han, and especially the peculiar way he had looked up at people from behind his makeshift desk there, would have been struck by the very similar way that Velimir Ivancić was looking up from that same place now.

"Jovan, any news from your side of town?"

"Not a trace," said Jovan Vuković, shaking rainwater off his cloak. "It's like she's vanished from the surface of the earth."

"Except, as we all know, that's impossible," replied the gaunt chieftain. "She--or at least her body--has got to be somewhere."

A peal of thunder interrupted the conversation.

"Radovan's not back yet," said someone. "God alone knows what he's dug up in that Croatian priest's hive."

"Probably took them some time to get in," replied the knez . "Any news from Janko's men?"

"No."

"What if Janko was too late?" asked someone.

"Then Joro Djurić would just have to do his best further up. Look, don't think this is a real war. For God's sake, man, they have automatic rifles."

A man stuck his head in the door: "Somebody's coming." Within moments, the arrival was ushered in, streaming.

"What news, Aleksa?" asked Velimir, rising.

"We found the priest had left in a big hurry--everything all torn open and strewn around. So his departure wasn't planned. It was damn fast, though, and he packed very light."

"Light enough to take himself, by foot?"

"It's hard to be sure, but that's my guess."

"Any sign of the girl or the Turk?"

"Not of the girl. We found the Turk, or what's left of him. His head's off."

"Off?"

"Gone," explained Aleksa. "Verloren, as the Schwabes say. But there were dressed wounds about the body."

"H'm. Did you secure the building?"

"Posted a guard, like you said."

"All right. Good work. You can go." One by one, as time went on with no fresh news or messengers, the other men left or settled down to doze. Velimir Ivancić leaned well back and stared up at the ceiling, scratching the silver stubble on his throat absently.

"knez Velimir? Begging your pardon."

He looked back down, surprised. "Yes, Ivo?"

Ivo Kopitar swallowed, licked his lips, and said: "This fighting--this fighting we're going on with--it's going to be big, isn't it? I mean, really big."

The new chieftain shrugged. "Only as big as it has to be. That depends largely on them. If you're worried about getting shot--well, that's the worst they can do to you."

"That's true," said Ivo. "I don't know why I asked. Good night."

"Good night, Ivo," said Velimir, a bit irritated. Then he sighed and slumped back in his chair, pulling his cloak up about him as if 24-hour SDO had been bred into his bones.

Sergeant von Essen reined in hard in the darkness and said: "Ay, Felder--did you hear that?"

"What, Sergeant?” asked the slickered horseman behind him.

An approaching rider wheeled in. "Herr Unteroffizier!" the rider bellowed. "Call a halt--possible ambush. The honveds say the road's taken out!"

"How bad?" demanded the NCO.

"They rolled boulders down. One man at a time could get by. It’s one big trap. Don't know what the hell they’re shooting at up there, I haven't heard any enemy ordnance, but there has to be something."

"Who's riding point?"

"Schmidt, sar'n't."

"Get up there with him and the two of you go over on foot and find out what's going on. Go. Felder, call a halt. Jesus Holy Christ, that's all we need." Von Essen reined back and turned and had gone only a few hundred meters when a shout boomed out of the murk.

"Report!"

"Colonel?"

"Ja, what's happening up there, sergeant?"

Von Essen told what he knew.

"Ach," commented the lancer. "Vathely got himself into this, let him get himself out. Probably four peasants with flintlocks from a nearby farm popped off at him and now he's leading the charge of the goddamned Light Brigade. Well, let him hare off to Vikoč or Brod or wherever else he likes. I for one intend to sack out somewhere dry, and to do it before midnight. We're taking the old back way up to the high valley."

"Where would we stay up there?" asked the NCO.

"Savić's farmhouse. We may not be very welcome there, but at least we’ll be out of the rain. And we can bring him back to his own house to die like a man and a Serb. Give the order to pull back."

"But, sir, what about--" Von Essen motioned.

"Screw him!" said the Slavin, exasperated. "You said you took care of it, sergeant, I assume it's taken care of. Now let's do it."

"We're going where?!" shouted the politician out the carriage door. "Are you verrückt?!"

"Vikoč is out, sir, unless you want to leave the vehicles," explained the lancer. "Going back is out, too. This is all you've got. Unless you'd prefer to just stay here indefinitely."

"What’d’ you say, Father?" asked Stadelmeier, turning to the priest. "You know the land."

"The Herr Oberst is right," said Rezać. "I myself am under sentence of death if I go there, but even I advise it."

"I think we've got your executioner where we want him. Let's go, then. But, Colonel, send a squad out after Vathely, verrückt? I want his men to rendezvous with us at the stop."

"Jawohl!" snapped Slavin and reined out before the Governor could lay any more responsibilities upon him.

"Where are we?" asked the man.

"Nowhere," replied the figure beside him, tossing its white hair in the wind.

"Are you my mother? Or were you?"

"Your mother, as you say, ceased to be a long time ago. I am what is left of her."

Malibor Savić said: "Well, there's one argument supporting mortality."

"Immortality is not a pretty thing; even the gods have forsaken it."

"What?!"

"It is true, as you have seen yourself. Fabled Carcosa is dead, sere and mummified amid the wastes. The bosančica, the legends, the saints and heroes, all long since empty and gone, gone beyond."

"And you? Are you not a blood-drinker?"

"No more. I am aging now. I, too, will die, though not as them or even as you. Beyond I cannot go, as you can now and as they did. My soul, if indeed I ever had one, crumbled into nothingness ages ago. All is eaten away and rotten underneath. Even now the traitor you bred by your curse is about his work, smashing the brittle skeleton that alone remains."

"Can you not stop him?"

"I stopped his kind for too long. No longer will I do it. He wants the world's empty husk to collapse? Why indeed should it not? The Other Ones always wanted it--why not now give them its ashes? It is a fine jest. The Watcher, the gospodar, called out for it, though not without regrets; the traitor is set on it; the Enemy waxes strong and restless. There are no jocund, familiar earth-gods or goddesses to plead their cause--mortals who think otherwise are engaging in fond self-deception. The Goddess is dead and gone. Qlippot, shells, are all that is left." The figure's face took on a gem-like hardness, its hair streaming diamond-sparks as the night burst asunder with electrical fire. “I alone remain, and my time is very short.”

“And the children of men?”

"They wish to be burdened with earth's gods no longer," the voice crackled. "So, then, they wish to be their own gods? Very well--I have done with protecting them. They had better look sharp, for whoever would be a god must strive with Hell. Gotovo--it is finished! Let them prepare quickly, for Hell is rising up to meet them!"

The shade of Malibor Savić--or whoever it was--flashed away in the blasting winds, uttering a groan. The other figure dissolved in weaving, pulsing bolts of power, centring in an orgasmic play of lightning all round, spewing energy flares unimaginably far up and out into the Stygian night.

Hard about his task, meanwhile, Andrija Savić barely noticed that air was stirring inside the vast structure. He continued to concentrate on the floor before him on the dais, patiently scraping and chipping away around a certain stone.

The pounding on the door stopped momentarily and then it burst wide open, and two men stumbled into the dark room.

"dede Jovan!"

"Lights!"

Lights were brought, to reveal the old man's body lying still in his chair. Nikifor Djurić checked for a pulse and pulled up each eyelid by the lamplight.

"Foul play?"

"It doesn’t look like it," said Nikifor. "Yet he seemed well enough today."

"He was a hundred years old, after all," pointed out someone.

Nikifor Djurić straightened up for a moment and crossed himself three-fingered fashion, as did the others. "God have mercy on his soul," he said softly. “Fetch Brother Grgur."

"dede Marko's gone already."

"Good. Little Miloš and I will keep watch here."

After the others went out, Nikifor said to the boy: “I’m hungry. Go fetch us some bread and cheese, Miloš. And something to drink.”

“Yes, Uncle. It may take a few minutes. Are you alright here?”

“Yes. Go ahead.”

The boy went out, and Nikifor, with one eye on the door, began to pat down the dead man’s pockets.

Kosta Savić did not bother to open his eyes. He could feel blankets or wrappings over him, and also moisture on his upturned face.

He knew he was at the meeting-point of nothingness and eternity. He had been here before, more than once.

This time, however, he was not going back.

His thoughts wandered dully to Uglesić's farm. He thought about the burning farmhouse, the crazed dancing silhouettes around it, the heavy rifle giving little leaps as it fired.

He also remembered taking Štojko Uglesić's bullet in the abdomen. Joj , but Štojko had foxed him! Too bad he had only had two seconds of life left to congratulate himself.

Now, he supposed, Štojko's hand was dragging him down at last, his and Dabisav’s and dozens of others he had killed before that. Simple justice, they would all say. Nor did he expect any songs to be made about him--not complimentary ones, anyway.

Simple justice? It was, of course, no justice at all. Poetic justice would have had Štojko's bullet kill him on the spot. Legal justice would have had him on the end of a rope years before. God's justice would have had him stillborn. No, there was no justice; and if no justice, no mercy. He had been living on borrowed time, and now his credit had run out.

And Stana . . .

He reached out to her.

Stana . . .

The wind rose, ruffling his hair.

Stana!

It caught at him, blasting harder and harder.

Stana!

It erupted, screaming.

Staaanaaaa!

And Kosta Savić was gone, swept away by the forces he had helped unleash.

"What’d’ you mean, he's gone?!" shouted the Commissioner out the carriage door.

"I told you, sir," said Slavin's voice from the rain-whipped darkness. "He's gone. No one's seen him since that fracas back by the fork. God help him if he winds up back at the village."

"Anyone else gone?"

"Maybe one other man. Hard to tell in these conditions. We'll get a count at the stop. But all of his men seem to be back with us now."

"How far 'til Savitch's?"

"Not long, twenty minutes' ride or so. Vathely could have even got around and been there ahead of us."

The politician began to say something, when Slavin stuck his head all the way in the door. "Two words with you, please, Claudius."

Slavin murmured something into Stadelmeier's ear. Then the latter cursed and said: "Screw it, let's go on. If he rejoins us, well and good. If he doesn't, we award him a posthumous medal. Let's go." He slammed the door shut and turned to Father Ante Rezać. "Well, on to destiny, Father," he said.

The priest was silent while the vehicle resumed its bumping, grating progress. Then, after a while, he said: "I used to believe in destiny."

"Odd belief for a Christian," remarked Stadelmeier.

"Christian?" asked Rezać with a touch of humour in his voice. "You don't have to be Christian to be a good Catholic."

The politician looked at the priest's shadowy outline for a full minute. Then his hand silently sought out his pistol holster and undid the flap and rested easily on the weapon's butt, not moving.

A clatter of stones and painful cursing jolted 'Young' Sava out of his cold, rain-soaked meditations. "Who's there?!" he demanded.

"It's Demjan," came the voice, with another oath. "Anyway, listen--you're to get some action after all, that ought to make Miloš' day. They're coming by the old back road, and fast. I guess Joro and Ilija's attack must've caused a change in their plans."

"They'll be stopping off at your place, then, as knez Velimir said. Hope your mother and baby brother are out of the way."

"Achgk!" ejaculated Demjan. "No, wait, they'd be at Alija's if they left the village."

"They're not at Alija Selimović’s, if that's the Alija you mean. But this is it. We've got to go. You alright?"

"Just a bruise. Let's go!" Demjan hitched up Kosta’s big Mauser rifle on its strap.

And with that, 'Young' Sava shouldered his own weapon, and the two loped off into the storm.

Stana sank down against a rock somewhere in the night. Her hair had come undone for the tenth time, and was plastered willy-nilly to her neck and shoulders. Her cloak was a sodden, shapeless mess, her dress torn and muddy.

She felt tired--no, more than tired, used up, as if her very soul had been wrenched from her body, and her physical functions were simply winding themselves out like clock-works, never to be wound again.

Or like a timing-device for a bomb.

She had once been wet, exhausted and exposed in a storm like this. She vaguely remembered . . . a wagon, or wagons? and a whip-wielding blind man . . .

So long ago . . .

She turned her cheek to the cold, wet granite and cried.

Velimir Ivancić came to amid shouting, clattering, and flaring lights.

Someone was shaking him. Aleksa was staring into his face from a distance of six inches.

"Savić's! The Schwabes are for Savić's!" Aleksa was saying. "knez Velimir--"

"All right, all right, I heard," snapped the chieftain. "Who's on it?"

"Miloš, and Veljko's men. And dede Jovan is dead."

Velimir sat bolt upright. "How? Who?"

"Just dead. No marks, no foul play unless it's poison."

"A pity," said Velimir, crossing himself. "But first, let's worry about the living. We need more men--"

"Radovan's on that," came the swift reply.

"Savić's. They'll have to stop at Savić's, for neither their men nor their animals have had any rest for many hours. They won't stay long, but if we move fast we've got them."

"We need you to ride up."

Velimir pushed himself up with his hands, stretched, recoiled with a little unaccustomed pain, and straightened his military tunic with an unconscious movement. "On the way," he said.

"I don't like this, sir," Sergeant Deutscher told Colonel Slavin as the black bulk of the old farmhouse loomed up against the stormy sky.

"I don't, either, but what else is there? At least we don't need to kill anyone to get in."

"But to get out?" muttered the NCO under his breath--in Yiddish.

"What's that, sergeant?"

"I said, 'Hope you're right,' sir."

The lancer swung down from his mount. "Probably not. Would you do the honours, or shall I order Sergeant von Essen to?"

"I will," said Deutscher. "Becker, Voss, let's go."

In a matter of minutes the house had been secured, lamps lit, and a line of weary soldiers were picketing their mounts before the stable door on the lower side.

"Very nice--for Bosnia," said Commissioner Stadelmeier, leaning back on the big stove while Schwetje, crouching, blew ever so gently on the smoking pile of tinder inside the iron door. "Hardly any odour of pigs' offal at all."

Slavin, busy about the work of grounding his bag nearby, did not reply. Instead, he said: "Guard-roster, Herr Hauptfeldwebel?"

"How long are we staying, sir?"

"Six hours," said the lancer, glancing up at the politician narrowly. But Stadelmeier appeared not to notice.

"Six men in three two-hour shifts," said the senior NCO. "They'll have to be picked carefully. Any suggestions, sir?"

Slavin looked over his shoulder with a wry smile. "I suggest you pick your men carefully."

The sergeant-major grunted. "I guess I asked for that one. Anything else, sir?"

"No, Herr Hauptfeldwebel. Carry on."

The man saluted and was gone, and as Schwetje's tinder-pile crackled into life, the Commissioner pushed himself off his back and went and tapped Slavin on the shoulder. The latter straightened up, and the two stepped out of the smoky, bustling room for a moment.

In the back room--still not all put right from Kosta Savić's fight with Yusef--the politician put his arms akimbo, looked up into Colonel Slavin's face, and demanded: "Will you remind me, exactly, why a battalion of Imperial Austrian cavalry is retreating headlong from a horde of subhuman Slavs armed with sticks and rocks?"

Slavin shook a cigarette out of the gold foil, stuck it in his face, lit it, and drew heavily, almost desperately on it. "The easy answer, sir, is because you ordered it so," he said, shaking out the vesta stub. "Which you did, remember?"

"Yeah, so, what's the hard answer?"

"Permission to speak freely, sir?"

"Ja, ja," said Stadelmeier, though it flashed through his head that the last time he had granted this request, Slavin had called him an asshole to his face.

"The hard answer," said Slavin, gesturing with his cigarette, "is that we're getting what's coming to us for meddling in this snakepit to begin with. You saw the village, and other villages like it. You saw the roads, the terrain, the people. There's nothing worth the while of the lives of any one of my men out there. So it doesn't matter whether we win or lose. If we lose, we have the shame of having been beaten by a have-nothing country; if we win, we've conquered a have-nothing country. Either way we wind up with nothing. And don't give me that Scheiß about 'civilising the Slavs.' Even you don't believe that. My men know it, too. They're tired. There's no give to them anymore. Look at that so-called fire-fight back by the fork. There's no evidence that any Bosnians were there at all. For all we know--" here his voice sank--"it could simply have been nothing more than Vathely's men seizing the opportunity to get rid of him. Of course, I'm wrong on this, as always, but still . . ."

A moment of silence was broken be a tap at the door. "Excuse me, gentlemen?" said the soldier outside. "Oehring needs to see you, Herr Oberst."

Slavin straightened up and took a last drag on his cigarette. He held the butt between two fingertips, instinctively looking round for an ashtray, and then with a sigh threw it on the floor and ground it out with his heel. "It's probably about Savić," he told the politician. "Start thinking about where you'd like him buried, all right?"

It was Stadelmeier's turn to grunt. "As far as I'm concerned, we won't need shovels and planks, just some rope and baling-wire. Still, carry on. Colonel."

And with a piercing look the lancer went out.

From where she lay in the rocks, Stana heard the uneven clopping and clinking of an approaching horseman picking his way up the trail.

She wondered briefly whether she should remain silent and let him pass by, or to hail him; but she arose and called out in Serbian: "Stop, please, whoever you are."

She did not neglect to raise the pistol and work the action back for a quick first round.

The noises ceased. "Gospodja?" came a voice. "Is that you?"

She lowered the pistol a bit. "Joro? Yes, it's me. I'm glad to see you."

Joro Djurić's figure--leading, not riding, a horse--appeared hazily in the darkness. "Gospodja, where's your mount?"

"I haven't one. I came up on foot. But what are you doing with one?"

"I ran into a Schwabe in the darkness. I tried to be civil but the bastard drew on me. So I killed him," Joro breezed.

Drew?

“You stripped the body, too?"

"But of course. Stuffed everything in these saddlebags and took the horse. I can't ride at all, and even if I could, a horse would eat me out of house and home in no time flat. So I figured I could sell the stuff. But what about you, gospodja? Are you hurt? Do you need help? Where are you?"

She drew breath to reply, then hesitated and listened. "Where's the rest of your men?"

"I got separated from Ilija and the others during the fight on the Vikoč road. It's thanks to being alone I stumbled on the Schwabe. We'd agreed to rendezvous at the turn-off to Alija's if anyone got separated, so there I'm headed. Join us, gospodja."

"Thanks, I will," she said, looking intently at the ridgetop behind the horse's head. "Can you help me up? I'm in here."

"Certainly."

"Just step up over that flat rock, Joro."

"Where? Oh, I see it. Thanks," he said, and as he stepped up his head crested the faint horizon and she shot him in it once. He dropped heavily, silently, like a big bag of flour.

Then she arose and walked the few steps to where the body lay. She turned over one hand with the toe of a boot. Sure enough, an Austrian service revolver lay in it--hammer pulled back to full cock, she confirmed swiftly, picking up the weapon.

"Poor Joro," she murmured. "Never could play backgammon, either."

Then she put a foot in the horse's stirrup and swung on. She could ride only very slowly, but knowing every rock and rut in this track as she did, she could ride. She also had the two side-arms and . . . no, she thought, feeling about. No carbine, and no saddle-holster for one, either,

She was, as she had guessed, riding an officer's mount--either Slavin's or Vathely's. She allowed herself to spend a moment hoping it was the latter's.

Then she squared herself up and rode on. Either way, there was work to do.

"All right, Oehring, how are our patients?"

"Vonhof's on the mend, sir. He's out again, but his vital signs are improving."

"And Savić?"

For an answer the medic turned back a blanket with one hand and held up a kerosene lantern with the other.

Even in the ruddy lamplight, the nobleman looked a ghastly shade of bluish-white, his flesh already sinking into the hollows of his face and causing his closed eyes to round out in their deep sockets.

"Dead, I assume," said the lancer quietly.

"Not a bad guess. His vitals are flat; he's just not cold yet. Go ahead and schedule the burial detail."

"Poor bastard," said the officer. "For all that he was a killer, still, it's too bad. I'll do what I can."

"That's all I can ask," said Oehring, replacing the blanket, "because I'm not taking him any further."

There was a moment of silence. Then Slavin said: "You know, one of the villagers--Leskanić, I think--told me once that he didn't know whether to feel happy for Savić because of the size of the reception committee gathering to meet him in the next world--or sad for him because of the committee's intentions."

"A lot of the men respected him," said Oehring. "Some of them called him der grauen Graf.”

The grey Count, thought Slavin, not bad.

Another soldier cleared his throat behind them. "Pardon me, Herr Oberst--Sergeant--"

"Yes, yes," said Slavin wearily. "Send for me when it's official, Oehring. Carry on. Ja, Herr Gefreiter?"

As the two men walked away, Oehring sighed. Then he produced a small folding mirror, pulled down Kosta Savić's blanket again, and held the mirror an inch or two from the nobleman's nostrils for several seconds.

They he looked closely at the mirror, folded it back up, and replaced it with another sigh and a muttered oath.

Knez Velimir Ivancić heard the word passed down the line of men on the trail, and in response prodded his mount cautiously ahead. At length he got to the fork in the track, and swung down to meet a familiar figure.

"What’d’ you say, 'Young' Sava?" he greeted the other.

Sava nodded up the hill. "They're up there, all right, and settling in fast. If only we had a field-piece or two!"

"Artillery? Of course, General Leskanić, and maybe some observation balloons while you're at it. All right, you know your instructions and so does everybody else. You just send the first fifty men to the left and everyone else to the right. You'll send to me when everyone's in position. And by God, if anyone so much as farts--let alone starts firing--without my own signal, I'll have his head for a doorstop. You got that?"

"Perfectly."

"Good," said Velimir Ivancić, taking his horse's reins. "See you at the front."

Some time after moonset, Father Ante Rezać's eyes drifted open.

He wondered where he was for a few moments. He was not in his room at the rectory, where he had slept over twenty years. But it gradually came to him--the damp, earthy smell of rotting straw; a faint but definite odour of kerosene from the army lanterns; the snores and tossing of other sleepers and the lumpy patch of hay where he lay--he was at Savić's, billeted with Austrian soldiers in the stable.

In no way did he regret leaving the village. Naturally, he was not supposed to do that without Episcopal approval--but that might have taken months, even years in coming. Besides, it wasn't as though they could punish him effectively. His assignment here had been punishment to begin with. Even expulsion from the priesthood would have been preferable. But such merciful release would never be for him, he knew. He would die reprobate--a renegade priest--rather than as an ex-priest with a fighting chance for grace.

He should have left after Andrija Savić's death five years before. He had not done that for fear of being labelled with complicity in it. That he had ever hoped to escape such calumnies was, he thought plaintively, a sign of his highly noble and generous nature. And all this without thanks for the lonely, principled stand he had maintained against Savić evil. True, he had used some of their own tactics against them, meting out God's dispensation according to Mark 4:24. But on balance he had done well.

And a small voice somewhere insinuated: Very good--but I think Luke 12:20 fits the current situation better.

He sat up--the voice sounded so real--but no one was there. Then a weight left his chest, and fell with a plop on the floor.

Now suddenly shaking, he fumbled in the top of his bag for a wax vesta. After several tries he struck it and looked at what had fallen.

Yusef's mutilated head stared screamingly back at him.

He dropped the match with a yelp.

Flames at once leaped up--the kerosene smell--and as the priest scrambled to his feet the shadowy stable broke out with shouts, curses, orders, and moving bodies in every state of undress.

"What's all that God-damned noise down there?!" shouted Stadelmeier, elbowed awake by the duty sergeant just as he had drifted off to sleep.

"Fire!"

"Christ!"

Slavin appeared, shirtless and bootless, with a drawn revolver. "Keep that trap-door closed!" he bellowed. "Achtung! Beachten Sie, schnell!" He vanished again into the fuliginous haze that was wafting up from between the floorboards; lights and lanterns moved back and forth. "Don't run!" came the lancer's voice again. "I'll shoot the man I see running. Walk, walk, goddamnit!"

Other voices stood out in the din.

“Voss! Get the count!"

"Move it!"

"Clear a path!"

"Sir--Herr Kommissar!"

"What now?" yelled the politician, rising.

The medic Oehring appeared. "One moment here, sir, please."

Stadelmeier cursed, but went. Too many eyes were on him not to.

Down in the stable, Sergeant von Essen was yelling fire-fighting orders in a brassy tenor that rose here and there above the din. Some soldiers were trying to get out, others to get in; the thick, choking smoke mingled with animal dung, rotting straw, spilt kerosene, and the horses' nervous shrilling and the men's struggling and cursing. Putting it out was proving difficult, for some of the straw was very dry, as if partly burnt already.

Somewhere in the middle, the priest Rezać felt his progress impeded by hands on him. He clawed at them to let go, whereupon one took him by the throat and said in one ear: "Leaving the party so soon? Father?"

He turned, despite the jabbing pain, and there he saw a face from his nightmares, burning-eyed, ravenous, and topped with bristling white hair.

Lashing out blindly with his arms, he tried to turn, but the thing was all over him. His legs failed him and they fell, thrashing, as he fought for breath.

"Jesus Christ!"

"Sergeant!"

Von Essen was not sure what he saw in the murk, but was positive he didn't want to.

"The priest!" shouted a man.

"Sergeant, do something!"

He could see the struggle. He could see the old man's head pulled up from behind, and the bony, taloned fingers that slipped in under each eyeball and popped them out like grapes.

"Shoot! Shoot them both!" he shouted, and he never forgot the hellish face that lifted, glaring--guns roared and flashed--the face rose into a whole body, bullet holes blossoming here and there--and with a kick of its powerful legs sprang up and was gone in the swarming chaos.

"What is it, Oehring?" asked Stadelmeier. "Be quick."

The medic looked down at the stretcher. "Sir, I need to know if you--"

At that instant the room erupted as the trap burst open, sending malodorous smoke billowing in.

"God damn it!" roared Slavin.

Something half-scrabbled, half-flew into the room as shrieks and curses broke out.

Two different guns went off with blinding flashes in the haze; yellow, white, and blue sparks flew. A door banged, crashed, more yelling.

"Screw this!" bellowed the politician. "Fedor!"

Then a jab in the back of his neck stopped him, and a strange voice said: "I'll blow your shit-eating head off. Herr Kommissar."

"Son-of-a-bitch!" muttered Oehring.

Things got quiet very fast.

Kosta Savić had gained his feet. His skin looked a corpselike blue-white, and his hair stuck out at odd angles where the medic had hacked it off that afternoon. His emaciated, blood-encrusted body trembled a bit in the swirling smoke, but the hand that held the Commissioner's own Luger pistol to his head seemed steady enough.

"What do you want?" the politician asked evenly.

"I want to know the time," said Kosta Savić grimly.

"Eleven thirty-nine p.m.," replied Colonel Slavin, his pocket-watch in one hand, raised revolver in the other. "Why?"

A dull explosion went off outside and shouting and horse-cries sounded; but the nobleman drew a wheezing breath and said: "Then I am still gospodar--the equivalent of a Turkish beg and therefore ranking civil authority here--for twenty-one more minutes. 'Midnight tonight,' remember, Herr Kommissar?"

"What of it?" asked Stadelmeier, holding still.

"Therefore, in the name of His Sublime Majesty the Sultan, I arrest you for perpetrating an act of war on the Ottoman Empire.”

"Wha-at? This is ridiculous--"

The hammer of the pistol clicked.

"What act of war?" asked the lancer levelly.

"Abduction and attempted murder of a Turkish official about the pursuit of his duties, and transporting him under duress to a foreign country."

"An attentat?" said Slavin slowly.

"Horseshit!" spluttered Stadelmeier.

"Silence!" bellowed the nobleman; though the effort cost him a stifled cough or two, the pistol remained steady. "Time?"

"Eleven-forty. He's right, you know, Claudius, actually."

"He's stone cold crazy, and you too, Colonel," replied the politician venomously. "And I'm going to break you for this. Sergeant Deutscher!"

The NCO looked stolidly from one to the other. "Sorry, sir," he replied, "but you are a civilian. His orders come from you. Ours come from him."

The smoke drifted in the still air for a moment.

"gospodar?" said the lancer. "You do have twenty minutes, technically speaking."

"Finally," breathed Kosta Savić. "Herr Oberst, order the rest of the men out. And get your boots on."

"Achtung! Soldaten! Verlassen Sie alles sogleich! Raus!" ordered the officer, and it was quickly and efficiently done. Only the three of them remained, with a couple of lamps casting eerie, shifting shafts of light through the mephitic atmosphere.

"What’d’ you want, then?" asked Stadelmeier. "Twenty minutes is all you've got. Maybe all we've all got if we stay in here."

For an answer, a volley of shots occurred outside.

"A lot can happen in twenty minutes," rasped the nobleman. "Herr Oberst, if you will?"

Boots were already pounding on the stair outside; the door banged.

"Sir!"

"What?! Report!"

Gunfire rose again, sporadic but insistent. "It's the locals, sir. Bandits or something--I don't know. But it’s not muzzle-loaders, and there are plenty of them."

"Maurer, isn't it?" asked the lancer.

"Jawohl!"

"Is the fire out?"

"Not yet, sir, there’s only--"

"I know, I know," cut in the officer savagely. "Sound a parley!"

"What?"

"A parley!" Slavin yelled as a bullet shattered one of the windows. "Tell the sar'n't-major to sound a parley! Get a Croatian-speaker out there--Go! Raus!"

The man disappeared.

"Can we go outside, at least?" asked the politician.

"No," said Kosta Savić. "And don't be so foolish as to take a step. Trying to escape custody, you see?"

In the wan glow thrown by the lamps, holding the pistol stock-still, Kosta Savić looked to Slavin like Death itself. “What next, gospodar?” he asked.

“You called the parley.” replied the nobleman. “You therefore have something to say, hein?”

“We have you; you have him. What else . . .?”

And then a five-year-old conversation with Andrija Savić returned to Slavin’s mind.

“Herr Kommissar,” said the lancer slowly, “I believe it’s even worse than you think.”

Laying unseen, face down athwart the peak of the roof, the girl heaved for breath, trembling, her ragged clothing plastered to her slender body by the rain. Now and then a drop hit the place on the tile where blood was oozing out from under her, mixing with the rainwater, splattering pink in the dark.

But less than the wounds was the pain from the energy she was channelling downward, into the house, into a man who should have just died—but had not.

“Joj !” hailed Ilija Vuletić as a gust of wind swept through the clearing. “Joro, is that you?”

“It is me,” replied Stana, emerging from the trail-head and looking about at the dozen or so figures in the dark. “Ilija? Do you have a light?”

A dark lantern was unshuttered.

“Gospodja, you are alright? That is good. But we were expecting Joro Djurić with a message,” replied the tradesman. “Have you seen him?”

The woman said evenly: “I believe he was delayed.”

Ilija muttered a curse. “We need to move out.”

“I’m sure. Have you seen Slavica or Demjan?”

“Not since the village, gospodja.”

A muffled voice tried to yell: “Gospodja!” and there was a thump.

Ilija brought his rifle up and dropped it as a full-automatic burst from Stana’s pistol raked around the clearing, lighting it up with a flash for a few seconds. There were several oaths and crashing as someone, or some men, fled into the underbrush.

“Who’s there?” she called, moving.

“It’s Sava! They took me and Dem—“

“Yes, yes, where are you?”

“Here!” Stana knelt beside the form and took out her knife, feeling quickly for rope.

At that moment, a muzzle came up against her head and a voice said: “Danke schön, gospodja. A few less treacherous swine to infest the country.”

The women pressed the knife into ‘Young’ Sava’s hand. “Stay down,” she whispered urgently.

The voice had belonged to Captain Vathely.

Oblivious to all else, Andrija Savić kept at the flagstone on the dais in front of him. He now had Kosta’s knife out and had some time since worn away its edge upon the mortarwork, which was dug several centimetres down; irregular ridges of dust and mortar bits lay strewn along the stone’s outline.

It was a big stone, rather larger than the stones which surrounded it.

And if he heard, he gave no sign, of faint swishings around and above him, and a low but definite vibration which insinuated itself throughout the whole of the gigantic space.

“So, you see, sir, it is as you told me yesterday morning. You were right. We are indeed not only on the border, but over it.”

The Commissioner said: “Prince Nicholas’ men signed that treaty. We are in Bosnia.”

“That is questionable,” replied Kosta Savić, still holding the pistol steadily to the politician’s head. “It is beyond question that we are on land which rightfully belonged to the vladika , the Prince-Bishop. Church land is inalienable. And in any event your writ does not run on Bosnian citizens for . . .”

“Seventeen minutes,” said Slavin, consulting his watch again.

Stadelmeier coughed in the smoky air, but did not move to wipe the tears forming in his eyes from the haze. “Right. Goddamn it, what do you want, then?”

“An armistice. In return for your life, and for cessation of hostilities, your men are to surrender their weapons and be escorted to Foča. And you and yours will stay beyond Vikoč until this case is heard in Cetinje by the ecclesiastical court. We will abide by that justice.”

In the ensuing moment of silence, an odd gunshot or two sounded, and they could hear some movement down in the stable.

Stadelmeier licked his lips. “Tell ‘em anything, Herr Oberst. Go, go—just get us the hell out of here,” he said finally, his voice betraying what he wanted to express physically.

The lancer looked at the nobleman, who nodded slightly. He shrugged on his greatcoat over his underwear top and headed for the doorway.

“Remember, no one else comes in. Instruct the guard at the door so I can hear you. And be swift, Herr Oberst,” added Kosta Savić. “I cannot be responsible for . . . accidents.”

Slavin palmed his pistol and left.

“What are you going to do with me now, Herr Rittmeister?” asked Stana, still kneeling. “Ransom, I suppose?”

“Soon enough, perhaps,” replied the hussar softly, his revolver’s muzzle still at her head. “That depends on you. First, your weapon. Stay very still, I beg you, gospodja.”

He picked up the Mauser pistol where she had laid it.

“And?”

For an answer, Vathely started undoing trouser buttons with his free hand. “I’ve dreamed about this, gospodja. Clasp your hands behind your back. Good. Turn around. Slowly. Stay down. Keep your hands down, or else.”

With some difficulty, she did as instructed.

“Now get in there and suck, you bitch. Like your life depended on it. Because it does.”

And with a look on her face that no one could see, not even Vathely, she complied.

“Wait a moment,” yelled Velimir Ivancić into the wind. Then he turned to face the man beside him. “They what?”

“It’s true,” said Janko. “Marko’s men made a deal with the Schwabes. Joro, or Ilija, or both, tipped off that Hungarian to the ambush on the Vikoč road so that they turned this way. I wondered when I heard Sava yelling. I think they took him captive—maybe shot him.”

“Filthy Croat swine,” muttered the knez . “We’ll deal with them in the morning. Is that what that burst of gunfire back there was?”

“I sent a man to find out,” returned Aleksa. “You’re going to have the Schwabes disarm, right?”

“Evacuate Foča,” urged another man.

“No,” said the veteran. “Just wait a bit. I think that Oberst is on his way. That man will talk sense.” He turned. “Joj !” he shouted again.

“You and one man. Me and one man,” came Slavin’s voice out of the darkness. “Everyone else falls back fifty metres.”

“Let’s do it,” said Velimir. “Let’s go, Janko. Give the order, Aleksa.”

“Knez Veli—“

“Move, goddamn it!” commanded the knez .

Once the central flagstone was up, the others came away easily, and soon Andrija Savić was looking down at a huge stone which had been covered by the others; a stone whose edge was interrupted by seven leaden seals worked with strange devices and writing in some forgotten language.

The air in the place, which had been moving, now began to swirl abound him, throwing up dust and playing in the long dirty brittle strands of his hair; the bloodless flesh hung in strips from his fingers. But he delayed not a moment. Muttering something occasionally to himself, he took what was left of Kosta’s handžal and began chiselling away at the seal nearest him.

And as the first seal broke, and as he moved on to the second, the vibration in the floor began to build audibly; tiny jets of a palpable haze, such as from a boiling cookpot, forced their way out here and there along the stone’s edge.

He worked so feverishly that perhaps he did not notice his parchment-like skin beginning to blister up and turn sickly moist.

“I hope he’s talking sense out there,” said Kosta Savić to Stadelmeier in a conversational tone.

“I hope he’s buying time,” grumbled the politician. “You’ve only got about ten minutes, you know. Why didn’t you tell us about all this this morning?”

“You were warned,” returned the nobleman curtly, still holding the pistol steady. But with Stadelmeier’s back to him he could risk a glance downward.

Drip.

“Why don’t you just shoot me and yourself and have done with it?”

“Now, that’s a thought,” said the nobleman.

There was a moment of silence.

“Can I sit down, at least?”

Kosta tapped him on the shoulder with the Luger’s barrel. “Slowly,” he said.

The politician moved, slowly, down onto the bench, the other man staying carefully behind him in the smoke.

Drip.

Then there was an urgent voice outside, and a rap on the door.

“What?!” snapped Kosta Savić, his gaze unmoving.

“Herr Kommissar--“

“Shut up,” Kosta told Stadelmeier. “Stay out!” he said toward the door. “Was ist los?”

“You must leave! The tank in the stable--“

“Enough!” bellowed the nobleman. “Tell the Herr Oberst he has five minutes.”

“Sir--“

“Did you not hear?! Raus! Macchen Sie schnell!”

Bootsteps clattered down the stairs.

“What tank in the stable?” asked Stadelmeier carefully.

“My kerosene tank,” replied the other. “Let us hope all that gunplay downstairs did not put a hole in it. I filled it only two weeks ago. We are both hostages now, eh, Herr Kommissar?”

Not far away, Stana at last leaned back from Vathely’s trouser-front, wordless for a moment, and then spat the contents of her mouth on his coat.

For a reply, she received one, two blows of the pistol-barrel on her face.

“Not bad, gospodja,” the officer grunted. “You seem to have done that plenty of times. Now get up. Get going.”

There was noise in the bushes, and she yelled: “Go! Go!” That got her another blow.

“It doesn’t matter now,” said Vathely. “Move, bitch. I’ll be right behind you.”

In the lower clearing, rays of moonlight were breaking through the scudding clouds as Colonel Slavin shook the hand of Velimir Ivancić. “Done, then,” said the officer. “We will release the gospodar now; both sides will pull back until dawn; and we will not cross this side of Vikoč again while I command.” Which is probably until tomorrow night, he thought sardonically.

“And we can have the Hungarian captain if we catch him,” added the knez in low voice.

The lancer nodded once, and both men turned to go.

The thing that had been Andrija Savić wrenched the last seal off the great stone with what had been fingers before the flesh melted away. The swirling air’s speed had risen to a rush, twisting around the great stone’s location with sinuous coils of gases and dust.

From its kneeling position it raised its bony arms, flying tatters of clothing as the stone began to shudder on its setting.

“You can’t go in, Herr Rittmeister,” the guard yelled down. “He has the Herr Kommissar hostage in there and he has ordered everyone out.”

“He does, does he?” snarled Vathely. “Well, you tell him that I have his wife right here, and I will count ten before I give her one in the neck!”

There was a murmur, while both Vathely and the woman watched ribbons of smoke issue from the faint glow of the doorway and disappear into the wind. The guard called down: “The Commissioner says you are to wait for Colonel Slavin.”

“And where is he?”

“At a parley, sir--“

“A parley?” the officer yelled. “What--with these . . . these apes? We have Savitch, and his wife, too--what else do you want?”

“I have my orders, Captain,” replied the guard.

“Orders,” scoffed Vathely. Then he shouted out to the yard at large: “Anyone want to know what she’ll do--if you ask her the right way?! Come here and find out!”

“What will she do, Captain?” asked Slavin’s voice from behind him.

Vathely turned, his jaw working convulsively for a moment. “Colonel, I--it was a joke, that’s all.”

Slavin’s hand shot out and grabbed the hussar’s pistol arm. “Well, this is not a joke. You are under arrest. Hartlieb, Felder.” The two soldiers took their places beside Vathely as Slavin wrenched the weapon away.

“Sir, no! You don’t understand--“

“We are not at war with women, Herr Rittmeister,” cut in the lancer, removing Stana’s pistol from Vathely’s belt. “Herr Gefreiter--her wrists are bound behind her--with twine, you say? Cut her loose.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” said Stana as Maurer tugged at her bond with his knife blade. “May I see my husband now?”

“We will all see him, and the Commissioner,” replied Slavin. “He must know of this too. You first, gospodja. Then you,” he said to Vathely, prodding him in the back with his pistol, and adding in a whisper: “And do not try to resist arrest, Janos.”

“But the fire is still going, sir, and there is danger--“ began Maurer.

“Then we will be quick. I want everybody out alive, for we have a truce. It can happen.” He called to the guard by the door, and up they went.

They entered the room to the same scene which Slavin had left fifteen minutes before--Kosta Savić holding Stadelmeier’s Luger on him in the wavering lamplight as draughts from the broken window and the doorway stirred the haze within. Slavin took care to latch the door with one hand behind him.

“Well, Herr Oberst?” asked the nobleman, keeping his eyes on Stadelmeier.

Slavin said: “Both sides pull back until dawn. We will ride out to Foča under a cease-fire and we will stay west of Vikoč until the legal matter is settled. And both of you are free to go.”

Stana’s eye caught some items on the table where Oehring had been working. Slavin was watching Vathely, who was watching Stadelmeier, whose back was to her. She took a slow step or two and turned, her hand moved and the heavy pinking shears disappeared.

“Can we get out of here now?” asked the politician.

“One thing,” interjected the woman, moving toward Slavin, who still had his pistol in the small of Vathely’s back. “There is one more matter.”

“Yes?” said her husband.

“This man,” she said levelly, her eyes smouldering, “disgraced me. Sexually.”

Three voices began to exclaim, but the nobleman’s drowned them out. “Wife, where is your honour? Why did you not kill him then?”

Stana took one more step. “Because I wanted—witnesses.” And with the last word she whipped around and Vathely’s throat exploded, spraying blood everywhere as the serrated edge of the shears tore it completely apart.

Stadelmeier half-rose, his hand moving up from his boot, and there was a deafening explosion as his shirt-front burst open.

“gospodar!” shouted Slavin, swivelling his pistol, but the nobleman’s weapon was pointed up.

The door rattled but Slavin barked: “Wait!” as Dragan Vuković came out of the shadows, his own fifty-four calibre Gasser revolver smoking, and now pointed at Kosta Savić.

“He was going to shoot you, gospodar,” observed the blond farmer, sparing a brief look down and nudging a derringer out of the dead politician’s hand with his shoe.

“How did you get in?” asked Slavin, moving his weapon back and forth from one man to the other as flames began to lick around the edges of the trap-door.

“I was here before any of you,” said Dragan Vuković. “I don’t know what treachery you were hatching—you kept all the talk in German, I noticed.”

“The only treachery was Joro’s and Ilija’s—with that Hungarian there,” said Stana heatedly.

“We would hardly speak Serbian for your benefit, not knowing you were here,” returned the nobleman, his voice still even, though his body was now shaking.

“Keep your weapon up there, gospodar,” replied Dragan.

“We have a truce,” said Slavin, and then spoke a few German words toward the door. “knez Velimir and I settled it. You are all--“ a look at Vathely’s body here, and then to Stana--“all free to go. Now,” he added, gesturing with his head toward the growing flames.

“The rest of you can go. I need a moment more with the gospodar here,” said Dragan Vuković, keeping his weapon upon that man.

“My God, Dragan, he’s dying right now!” pleaded Stana, motioning toward Kosta, who had sunk to his knees. “Let him die here!”

Dragan looked round the room. “I suppose you’re right, gospodja,” he said, keeping his revolver up and starting to back toward the door. “No need to waste a perfectly good bullet on the murdering bastard.”

With a shriek Stana leaped for the farmer, clawing for his face; the big Gasser roared again, and three, four more shots as Kosta Savić and Slavin fired together. Dragan and Stana collapsed on each other.

“gospodar!” yelled the officer as the nobleman coughed and spat out a gout of something dark.

“Get out!” gasped Kosta Savić, swinging the Luger toward Slavin. “Raus!”

“gospodar--“

“Someone should live to tell,” rasped the man as the flames leaped higher. “I won’t. Now get the hell out of here before I change my mind. Now!”

Slavin held for only one second more. “You’re a man and a Serb, gospodar,” he said, and turned and wrenched the door open.

And at that moment a fireball blew half the floor away.

And at that moment, above a vast ruined city, looking from the air, one could have seen a toxic miasma spilling from all the portals and apertures of a great domed structure in the middle, flooding the dead streets with murk and wisping up into the shrieking winds that tore through its rooftops and gables. And then one would have seen light welling up through the drumwork of the dome and out its thousand windows in shafts of putrid iridescence—light that was not light but rather the visible emanation of a dark power as old as the stars, and dedicated to the perversion and destruction of those Powers that had made them, if such were possible, and to the rape and murder of all their legatees.

It began its work with the twisting shafts, out of which myriads of twisted beings winged their way up, up, and off into a thousand directions through the sky, chittering and cackling; and as the sickening refulgence built to a blinding peak, the titanic dome slowly, almost lazily exploded, sending two- and three-ton chunks of shattered stone hurtling miles into the air. The rest of the city began to crumble in an outward wave as the centre erupted straight up into the roiling clouds, making them hiss and begin to emit a poisonous rain.

Sergeant Deutscher pulled his cloak about him in the field as another wind-driven spatter ran across the field, and mumbled an oath. Next to him, the soldier Svoboda, holding a lantern, cast a lingering look back at the burning farmhouse. “There’ll be no putting that out,” he said. “We only had a couple of buckets for the stable where it started.”

“I know,” said the NCO. “Screw the whole business, I say. I only hope the Old Man got out.”

Svoboda knew who he meant.

“Joj there!” came Velimir Ivancić’s voice. “What’s the situation?”

“The gospodar and gospodja were both in there,” replied Svoboda. “And the Herr Kommissar as well, with Captain Vathely and Colonel Slavin. There was gunfire. A few men saw someone get out, but we’re not sure who yet.”

Three figures walked slowly up. “What about my sister?” asked Demjan Savić, hitching up the big rifle on its strap again. “Did anyone ever find her?”

“The girl? We haven’t seen any girls,” replied Svoboda truthfully.

“She’ll turn up,” said Veljko Leskanić.

A moment passed.

“So, the truce still holds?” asked the knez .

Svoboda repeated the question to his superior, then reported back: “We’ll see who’s in charge.”

A mounted figure passed at a slow walk between the men and the fire, and as they looked the horseman clopped to a halt.

“I couldn’t walk.” said Colonel Slavin in Serbian. “My leg needs some attention.”

“The truce, sir--?”

Slavin gestured wearily. “Is good,” he completed. “The men who wanted this fight are dead now.”

“And the others?” asked Velimir.

“They are dead too,” said Slavin. “Peace be upon them.”

Svoboda, Veljko, and Demjan crossed themselves silently; the others imitated the unaccustomed gesture.

“We will not see his like again,” said the knez after a moment. “Nor hers either, I think.”

“This is the end,” said the majstor abruptly. “The end of . . . something. And the beginning of something else. What that something else is, I don’t know. But I don’t think I’m going to like it.”

There was another pause. Veljko spit.

“So you are gospodar now?” asked the officer. “What about that, young Demjan Savić?”

“No,” said Demjan. “I am not gospodar, not now. Not ever.”

“But the title?” asked Velimir. “Who then? Not your baby brother?”

Demjan scuffed his foot on the grass a moment, then looked up at the sky, where two tiny stars appeared for a moment between the flying clouds.

“Everything must die,” he said. “Now is a good time.”

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