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"But…" the other began.
"Enough!" spat the chief-clerk Abdallah. "You heard the under-vizier, young prankster. We shall have no more talk of your godless spirits. You will straightaway leave off telling such things!"
"Your concern is appreciated, Abdallah," Walid said coldly, "but I do not require your help in this matter." The vizier strode away.
I was almost glad the clerk had added his voice, because such ideas would not keep the journey in good order… but like the under-vizier I, too, had been rubbed and grated by the clerk's highhandedness. I am sure others felt the same, for no more was said on the subject all evening.
Allah, though, always has the last word-and who are we to try to understand His ways? We bedded down a very quiet camp that night, the idea of poor Rifakh's lost soul hanging unspoken in the air.
From a thin, unpleasant sleep I woke to find the camp in chaos. "It's Mohammad, the soldier!" Fawn was crying. "He's been killed! He's dead!"
It was true. The mullah Ruad, first up in the morning, had found the man's blanket empty, then found his body a few short yards out of the clearing.
"His throat has been slashed out," said Ibn Fahad.
It looked like a wild beast had been at him. The ground beneath was dark with blood, and his eyes were wide open.
Above the cursing of the soldiers and the murmured holy words of the mullah, who looked quite green of face, I heard another sound. The young shepherd-lad, grimly silent all the day before, was rocking back and forth on the ground by the remains of the cook-fire, moaning.
"Vampyr… " he wept, "…vampyr, the vampyr…"
All the companions were, of course, completely unma
Our company was somber that day-and no wonder. No one wished to speak of the obvious, nor did they have much stomach for talk of lighter things-it was a silent file of men that moved through the mountain fastnesses.
As the shadows of evening began to roll down, the dark shape was with us again, flitting along just in sight, disappearing for a while only to return, bobbing along behind us like a jackdaw. My skin was crawling-as you may well believe-though I tried to hide it.
We set camp, building a large fire and moving near to it, and had a sullen, close-cramped supper. Ibn Fahad, Abdallah, the under-vizier, and I were still speaking of the follower only as some beast. Abdallah may even have believed it-not from ordinary foolishness, but because he was the type of man who was unwilling to believe there might be anything he himself could not compass.
As we took turns standing guard the young mullah led the far-from-sleepy men in prayer. The voices rose up with the smoke, neither seeming to be of much substance against the wind of those old, cold mountains.
I sidled over to the shepherd-lad. He'd become, if anything, more close-mouthed since the discovery of the morning.
"This 'vampyr' you spoke of…" I said quietly. "What do your people do to protect themselves from it?"
He looked up at me with a sad smile.
"Lock the doors."
I stared across at the other men-young Fawn with clenched mouth and furrowed brow; the mullah Ruad, eyes closed, plump cheeks awash with sweat as he prayed; Ibn Fahad gazing coolly outward, ever outward-and then I returned the boy's sad smile.
"No doors to lock, no windows to bar," I said. "What else?"
"There is an herb we hang about our houses…" he said, and fumbled for the word in our unfamiliar language. After a moment he gave up. "It does not matter. We have none. None grows here."
I leaned forward, putting my face next to his face. "For the love of God, boy, what else?"-
I knew it was not a beast of the Earth. I knew. I had seen that fluttering shadow.
"Well…" he mumbled, turning his face away, "… they say, some men do, that you can tell stories.…"
"What!" I thought he had gone mad.
"This is what my grandfather says. The vampyr will stop to hear the story you tell-if it is a good one-and if you continue it until daylight he must return to the… place of the dead."
There was a sudden shriek. I leaped to my feet, fumbling for my knife… but it was only Ruad, who had put his foot against a hot coal. I sank down again, heart hammering.
"Stories?" I asked.
"I have only heard so," he said, struggling for the right phrases. "We try to keep them farther away than that-they must come close to hear a man talking."
Later, after the fire had gone down, we placed sentries and went to our blankets. I lay a long while thinking of what the Armenite boy had said before I slept.
A hideous screeching sound woke me. It was not yet dawn, and this time no one had burned himself on a glowing ember.
One of the two soldiers who had been standing picket lay on the forest floor, blood gouting from a great wound on the side of his head. In the torchlight it looked as though his skull had been smashed with a heavy cudgel. The other sentry was gone, but there was a terrible thrashing in the underbrush beyond the camp, and screams that would have sounded like an animal in a cruel trap but for the half-formed words that bubbled up from time to time.
We crouched, huddled, staring like startled rabbits. The screaming began to die away. Suddenly Ruad started up, heavy and clumsy getting to his feet. I saw tears in his eyes. "We… we must not leave our fellow to s-s-suffer so!" he cried, and looked around at all of us. I don't think anyone could hold his eye except the clerk Abdallah. I could not.
"Be silent, fool!" the clerk said, heedless of blasphemy. "It is a wild beast. It is for these cowardly soldiers to attend to, not a man of God!"
The young mullah stared at him for a moment, and a change came over his face. The tears were still wet on his cheeks, but I saw his jaw firm and his shoulders square."
"No," he said. "We ca
I tried to grab his arm as he went past me, but he shook me off with surprising strength, then moved toward the brush, where the screeching had died down to a low, broken moaning.
"Come back, you idiot!" Abdallah shrieked at him. "This is foolishness! Come back!"
The young holy man looked back over his shoulder, darting a look at Abdallah I could not easily describe, then turned around and continued forward, holding the parchment scroll before him as if it were a candle against the dark night.
"There is no God but Allah!" I heard him cry, "and Mohammad is His prophet!" Then he was gone.
After a long moment of silence there came the sound of the holy words of the Koran, chanted in an unsteady voice. We could hear the mullah making his ungraceful way out through the thicket. I was not the only one who held his breath.
Next there was crashing, and branches snapping, as though some huge beast was leaping through the brush; the mullah's chanting became a howl. Men cursed helplessly. Before the cry had faded, though, another scream came-numbingly loud, the rage of a powerful animal, full of shock and surprise. It had words in it, although not in any tongue I had ever heard before… or since.