Wolves of Dacia - Chapter Three – Beyond the Forest

[Miki Yamuri]

Chapter Three – Beyond the Forest

Wolves of Dacia – Anthony Burns, 2008, all rights reserved

A short, sharp bang and the smell of smoke disturbed the atmosphere of relentless efficiency and mind-numbing tedium in the control room, as LOCI blew one of its overworked thermionic valves. Miss Levi, however, paid it no heed, absorbed as she was in her private project. Almost finished, she thought, while soldering the last few connections. Her excitement at this happy prospect made her oblivious not only to her “duties” (such as they were), and the risky nature of her endeavour, but also to her surroundings: a fact she realised, much to her consternation, when she heard a cold voice behind her.

“What’s that you’ve got there?”

The one small thing to be grateful for was that it was not Miss Bendice who thus spoke. The woman Miss Levi saw behind her as she swivelled around in shock was a less than reassuring figure, with her close-cropped dark hair, tight black uniform, wiry build, and suspicious frown. Commander Navarro was definitely not the sort of person whom anyone with an iota of discernment would want to cross, but unlike the director she was at least the sort of person whom one might, in dire straits, dare to risk bluffing.

“It’s part of the magnetic core memory,” said Miss Levi, with desperate plausibility. “It developed a fault. Nothing that can’t be fixed.”

“Really? It looks like a radio transmitter to me.”

It was impossible that Miss Levi should ago ten years, or even that her heart should skip a beat, but this was not to imply a lack of mortal fear on her part.

“What the hell would you know, anyway?” she dissembled, and tried to lend it credibility by continuing with her “work” as if all was normal. Her trembling fingers let her down rather badly, but the commander just shrugged her shoulders and dropped a thick bundle of punched data cards onto the desk.

“And what might those be?” asked Miss Levi.

“This week’s readings from the DRC, to be given to LOCI at once.”

“More horoscopes, I take it?” asked Miss Levi, sneeringly. “Chinese hexagrams? Tarot card readings? Tell me, are they analysing bird’s entrails and old tea-leaves yet, or would that just be silly?”

“No idea,” replied the commander, humourlessly. “Just feed them into the machine.”

“As My Lady wishes. It’s no skin off my nose if they want to waste LOCI’s capacity on this rubbish, though it does seem a shame scientifically speaking,” she declared, picking up the punched cards and going over to one of the input readers.

“Should you be doing that right now?” asked the commander, as she fed the first card into the reader slot.

“Am I going deaf? Stupid question, I realise, as I can practically hear microbes sneezing ever since … but didn’t you just tell me to give it the damn cards?”

“I know, but you haven’t finished your repair work, have you?” she said, significantly, and gestured towards the unfinished radio transmitter on the desk. Miss Levi bit her lip (an ill-considered move that drew a fair quantity of blood and made her anxiety obvious) and replied, not very confidently:

“Oh … it’s … not a very important component, to tell the truth.”

“Really? You don’t seem very sure about that. Maybe I’d better just take this ‘component’ and show it to the director, and see what she thinks of your-”

Miss Levi was struck by the pointlessness of this veiled threat. It was not as if her forced labour paid any wage, so blackmail was out of the question. Presumably, as had been the case with the menaces she been accustomed to receive from Nazi party thugs in Berlin before her “recruitment”, it was just a bullying tactic to overpower her. In this respect, it failed dismally, as she pulled a test-tube from her pocket, uncorked it, and dashed its contents – a thin, red liquid – in the commander’s face, with a swift and smooth motion that would have served her well at the OK Corral. This dramatically reduced Navarro’s threat potential, as – after having let forth with a brief but heartfelt moan of anguish – she collapsed unconscious upon the stone floor.
This left Miss Levi with no time in which to ponder her next move. There was certainly no point in trying to destroy the radio apparatus and hoping that her word might be believed instead of the commander’s: she knew full well it would not. The only hope that left her with was to take the transmitter to some high place and broadcast to anyone at all within range. The chances of achieving this without being caught en route were not inspiring, and if the worst came to the worst, she had but one more “grenade” with which to defend herself. Obtaining test-tubes from the equipment store and wine from the old cellar had been simple enough, but reciting the Kiddush over them had been such a painful and depressing experience that she could only endure it twice, and could not help but pity even Commander Navarro for having taken that cruel payload of sanctified wine full in the face.
As for what that signified … probably better not to dwell on it, she reflected, as she gathered up her transmitter and belted out of the control room and up the stairs. The issue would have to be faced eventually: if, as she suspected, her condition was incurable, then she would be no better off for escaping. In fact, it would leave her a total outcast, despised as a traitor even by her fellow outcasts, not that she cared two straws for the good opinion of Miss Bendice or any of her merry band of sadists and sycophants … though in a loose, unethical sense, Miss Bendice was her protector, however laughable her claims of being her benefactor were. All of her ludicrous, extravagant promises of power and glory, as if she would ever share a thing … although the remote prospect that she was sincere did have some vague appeal, certainly when compared with the prospect of her radio signal being picked up by the Germans. Not that anyone, whatever their nation or politics, would be likely to be well disposed to her now. The rewards for success were almost as dire as the punishment she would certainly face if she failed, and that dread was what truly enabled her to press on, moving quickly and stealthily along dark corridors and stairways, where her sense of duty could never have carried her by itself. Nevertheless, she knew that had a duty to warn the world of Miss Bendice’s plan, even if that meant calling upon the aid of Hitler himself.
Eventually, she came out onto a wide, flat rooftop, surrounded by stone parapets topped with badly weathered carvings, that might once upon a time have been angels, eagles, dragons, or demons to judge from the vestigial wings a few of them still bore. It was a cold, clear night, tranquil save for the rush of the wind and the occasional caw of a raven. She quietly shut the tower door behind her, moved to the far side of the platform, set up her equipment, and began broadcasting, hoping (in spite of the lack of a receiver) that someone could hear, if not acknowledge her:

“Please listen carefully to me and trace this signal, if you are able. We are being held prisoner in a scientific forced labour camp. The enemy are conducting research that could give them a complete advantage, and must be stopped.” The raven that had been circling overhead now swooped low, and perched upon the worn, featureless head of one of the carvings, but Miss Levi was too preoccupied to notice. “I do not know our location, as I was brought here unconscious, but I will try to describe it: a large building, old, with fortifications, stone walls, red slate roofs. Some sort of chateau, overlooking a deep chasm with a riv-”

“No-one can hear you, Nadja.” The voice was not overtly threatening. If anything, it was rather sad, but more to the point it was right beside her, exactly where it ought not to be, and that was enough to shock Miss Levi into spinning around, in a clumsy fashion that culminated in her falling upon her fragile transmitter. Miss Bendice observed the destruction with little emotion, before continuing: “It is no loss to you, child. I have long suspected you of these tendencies, and thus never allowed you to work in the communications centre. Had you ever done so, you would have known better than to have attempted sending a signal from here after dark: the time when our friend in sub-basement one is at its strongest. My poor, deluded Nadja … I’m afraid that you shall never be perfectly happy with us.”

Miss Bendice took a step towards her, with a pitying yet terrifying expression. Aware that it could do her little good now, but with her muscles entirely under the control of her fear, Miss Levi took the remaining test-tube from her pocket and threw its contents into the director’s classically perfect face. Miss Bendice stopped, with a bemused expression, caught a drop of the wine trickling down her cheek upon the tip of her finger, and delicately tasted it.

“Hmm. Bordeaux, 1905 if I’m not mistaken,” she declared, while the tower door opened to admit a pair of grim-faced, black-suited, jackbooted guards who marched up to Miss Levi and seized her between them, by the arms. Her fear, astonishment, and mounting sense of despair left her with no ability to resist them. “I doubt our host will approve of the waste, but that’s his lookout.”

“I don’t get it,” said one of the guards, in amazement. “Mercedes was out cold when we found her. I had a go at wiping that stuff off with my glove still on, and it made me feel sick to my stomach. Are you sure you’re alright, Director?”

“Quite sure, Dimitri, and please do try to get accustomed to using my name. I know you hail from a disciplined background, but we shall have no titles in the New Order.”

“As you wish, Diana. So what do you want done with this one?” he asked, with contemptuous emphasis and a quick glance at his fear-sick prisoner.

“Poor thing … Take her to sub-basement three,” she ordered, adamantly though with a hint of regret. “You know what to do with her there. Oh, and be sure to tell Lewis that he will be on monitoring duty from now on. That is, until we can find a new recruit who can take over from him.”

************

“The whole place is like a morgue, sir,” reported SS Sergeant Lang, having just concluded a most unproductive tour of the deserted shacks and eerily silent dirt lanes of the Romani settlement. “No people at all. Plenty of other stuff, mind: food, clothes, chickens, goats, and we found a few cooking fires still smouldering away. I reckon they’ve done a runner.”

“Thank you, Sergeant,” replied his C.O., Captain Meinert, frostily. “I’d never have worked that out by myself.”

“Meant no disrespect, sir. I just thought it worth mentioning, ‘cause if you ask me they up and left in a hurry. We found mugs of cold coffee, unfinished meals, and they can only have taken the bare essentials. Mind you, it looks as if they did have time to cover their tracks, for all we’ve been able to find … or not, as the case may be. They didn’t just see us coming up the road and scarper. They had early warning.”

“One of the local peasants told them, no doubt,” said Colonel Dragomir, dispassionately surveying the depopulated settlement. “Hardly to be wondered at, considering the drunken riot your boys were raising back in Brasov. Not exactly discreet, was it, Captain?”

“I see that new aide of yours didn’t hang about,” replied Meinert, taking no pains to conceal his resentment at the unasked-for input of this non-German military observer, superior officer or not. “Sergeant Lang informs me that his feet were colder than a refrigerator on the Russian front. Maybe he’s gone and blown the whistle on us.”

“I sent him away myself, on a mission that need not concern you, Captain. Security … as I trust you understand. So, what do you intend to do, in light of this development?”

“Sergeant Lang: detail some men to fetch petrol from the trucks,” ordered Meinert, pointedly ignoring his questioner, “and get some other lads to fill sections of these filthy drainage ditches with wooden debris. Don’t want them acting as firebreaks.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but if we’re torching the place we needn’t waste no petrol. These wooden shacks will go up like a bonfire anyway, and we could always gather dry brush and twigs from the edges of the forest just to speed them along a bit.”

“Good thinking, Sergeant. See to it.”

“Wait, Sergeant,” ordered Dragomir, to Meinert’s astonishment and intense provocation. “Do you intend to leave your mission unfulfilled, Captain? Are you not afraid High Command will take a dim view of that?”

“Our mission was to destroy the settlement, and burning it down would seem to fulfil that. Carry out my orders, Lang.”

“Wait. You have a selective memory, Captain. The orders, insofar as I recall them, were to liquidate the settlement and its inhabitants. I believe you should at least be trying to verify their present circumstances.”

“Oh do you? Well how very diligent of you,” said Meinert, giving him the third degree in sarcasm but receiving only a slightly raised eyebrow for his pains. “But how, My Lord, do you suggest we go about this?”

“They’ve gone into the forest. That much ought to be clear.”

“Must it? I fail to see-”

“Where else would be safe for them to go? Not along the roads: they’d be spotted. In any case, they were in a hurry, and would have made for the nearest cover.”

“He’s got a point, sir,” said Lang, infuriatingly.

“Right, as you’re all so damnably keen,” hissed Meinert, “then I suppose we’d best make arrangements. Schmidt! Arne!” Two of the nearby storm troopers stepped forward. “Take one of the trucks and go back to Brasov. Commandeer some bloodhounds from somewhere, and bring them back here.”

“That won’t be necessary, Captain,” said Dragomir, with sickening geniality. “Not wishing to boast, but I do have extensive tracking experience myself. I was a cavalry scout in the last war, and my familiarity with these mountains is at least the equal of any Romani’s, so if your troops will consent to follow my-”

“Much obliged, Colonel,” interrupted Meinert, with great emphasis and no gratitude, “but I’d sooner put my faith in the mutts. Do as I say, boys, and while you’re in town, make a stop by the command post and pick up the camouflage gear: oak leaf pattern, tunics and trousers. Jump to it.”

“A little alarmist, wouldn’t you say?” said Dragomir, but at least made no attempt this time to prevent the troops from leaving. “From whom are you hiding, Captain? A band of frightened, fleeing, unarmed civilians? Are your men so nervous?”

“Your memory seems to be as selective as mine, Colonel. Have you forgotten that the only reason we’re on this wretched hunt … apart from your insistence, is that the prisoner transports we were meant to be supporting were bombed on the way here, most likely by resistance elements. If they are camped out in these mountains, they might well be in league with the gypsies, and this whole thing could be a set-up job to lure us into an ambush. I would much sooner not encourage them.”

“Hmm. What a devious brain you have, Captain, although that does seem rather far-fetched. Still, as you see fit,” ordered Dragomir, and marched off before Meinert could think of a suitable comeback. His mind, however, bestowed no end of uncomplimentary remarks upon the Colonel. If only I knew who it was that lumbered me with this interfering old toff … but he did not, and in all probability could have done little about it in any case. Still, imagining the vengeance he would have liked to inflict did his heart some good.

The prospect of imminent violence, however, did not improve his mood as was generally the case. Having had the mission forced upon him by the colonel greatly reduced its appeal, not to mention that a trek through that forest would not have been an appealing plan at any time, never mind at the dead of night. What the devil’s the matter with me? A fine time to go soft. After all the horrors he had seen – and, indeed, participated in – since the war had begun, a dark forest should have held nothing capable of appalling him. No … I’ll be fine when the action really begins. His misgivings somewhat relieved by that comforting piece of self-delusion, he went to supervise his men in their arson.

************

About the only thing Andreea and Serghei had to be grateful for was that it was a clear night. The moonlight that filtered through the forest canopy offered a sickly but inadequate illumination to all of the tussocks, streams, potholes, and other varied obstacles with which nature contrived to break their necks. Even so, they made poor time, and were confident that they had long since fallen behind the rest of their fleeing comrades. It had been at least an hour since they had heard any footsteps or voices ahead of them, and Andreea could not help wondering, morbidly, how long it would be before they heard voices behind them, more than likely in German. To make matters worse the terrain, which had been rough going from the beginning, was becoming steeper and more treacherous by the minute, and whereas her father had at first scolded her bitterly for assuming that he needed her help over every little obstruction, even his faint mutterings of dissatisfaction had now died out. Had he been inclined to protest, it would have been a severe struggle for him to force coherent words through all of his wheezing. Presently, he was having such difficulty drawing breath that Andreea was obliged to cast aside her better judgement and declare a short rest stop, and found him unusually amenable.

“Just … for a minute,” he gasped, sitting down upon a fallen log while Andreea took a battered canteen of water out of their bundle and handed it to him. He nodded by way of thanks, took a swig, and resumed speaking in a marginally stronger tone. “We can’t stop for long … Isn’t safe to hang about.”

“You don’t need to tell me, dad. They must have found the camp by now, and probably know just where to start looking for us. Maybe we’ll be lucky, though, and they won’t think we’re important enough to follow,” she suggested, with utterly false hope.

“Never mind your precious Germans,” he said, with a dismissive scorn which she wished she could share. “There’s worse than them in this accursed forest. Damn it, but I’d have thought better of Dorin than to lead us to the temples, of all places. How that lad’s mind must work …”

“We are following them, though,” she pointed out. Or at least, I hope we are, although since they had lost track of their fellow refugees, all they had in fact been following was a roughly northward course according to their best guess of in which direction the temples lay. “I suppose you trust Dorin enough not to think that he’d lead you to something worse than the SS, anyway, or we might as well just sit tight and wait for them to catch up.”

“You’re not stupid, girl, so don’t act the part. You’ve no more of a notion than Dorin has, in spite of what became of your poor mother, God rest her. It was out here she came by her ‘gift’, as some called it, but it was no blessing to her: it was the work of a mulo, that appeared to her in a fair form when she was just a girl and tempted her with the promise of having the power of second sight, but all it wanted was to use her as its eyes and ears, and so find others to prey upon. Believe me: all of the fascist thugs and murderers in the world couldn’t have driven me into this place without protection, and so I’ll thank you to take this,” he declared, removing an object from his pocket and throwing it to her. She caught it, and looked upon it with a pitying scepticism.

“Well dad, I don’t know much about the spirit world,” she said, trying hard not to sound cruelly sarcastic, in spite of a powerful inclination, “but if this mulo can be beaten to death with a stale bread-crust, you’ll have to pardon me for being more frightened of the SS.”

“I see I’ll get nothing but foolishness out of you today,” growled Serghei, “but if you’ve any respect for me at all, you’ll keep that close to you.”

“Whatever you say, dad, though if we should meet up with evil spirits and the like I’d have thought that a crucifix-”

“Which just goes to show where all this fancy learning’s got you, not to know that bread is the staff of life. Without bread, my girl, you’d have had no precious university to go to in the first place. If you or I had been born at all, we’d have been hunters and scavengers out in the wild, at best.”

Tell me about it, she thought, morosely, suspecting that he had just painted a depressingly accurate portrait of their future lives. Nevertheless, what all this had to do with evil spirits and the walking dead escaped her, and she confessed her absolute ignorance. Serghei, in his element on the subject of ancient lore, continued readily:

“Think, girl, of all of the people who’ve worshipped the grain. The Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Dacians … all of them had gods that died and were reborn: that went into the earth, and rose again. You see how it works? Like the grain, sown in the earth and rising again, bringing forth new life. Even our Saviour himself followed that cycle.”

“Right … so the bread is just as good as a crucifix, then?”

“Of course,” he answered, rather stiffly on account of being blatantly humoured. “A mulo, as you damn well ought to know, is a foul being that loathes all things living and covets their life-force, although however much it absorbs it can never actually become alive … though it may grow stronger and deadlier.”

“Oh. You say that as if I ought to draw some comfort from it.”

“Well I might. The bread is God’s gift of true life to us, and the mulo finds that as unbearable to look upon as any holy sign. But you must keep it in mind. The marime dead thrive on fear and doubt, so unless you have faith-”

“Oh, I get it,” she interrupted, trying and failing not to sound patronising. “It’s psychological, then: focusing on the object gives you confidence, and the power of that repels the evil forces and whatnot.”

“Get that notion out of your head, girl. The dead have great, terrible powers, and we have no hope of resisting them by ourselves. When you ‘focus’, it ought to be on your creator and sustainer, in the hope that his power will protect-”

On this occasion, the interruption was even less ceremonious: it began with a rattle of machine-gun fire, no more than a quarter of a mile away, followed by a long-drawn scream in a male voice, more gunfire, another scream in the same voice (but shorter, more intense, and suddenly cut off), some incoherent but definitely German-accented shouting, more shooting, more screams (including one in a female voice), then a period of relative calm, disturbed by only a few barely-heard shouts. Not that Andreea and Serghei took any pains to listen to them: at the first shooting, they had been on their feet and were scrambling uphill with renewed vigour. Unfortunately, even this burst of adrenaline was unable to conquer Serghei’s exhaustion and weak lungs for any great length of time, and their pace slowed dangerously. It soon dawned upon him that his daughter was holding back on his account, and he called out to her:

“Go on ahead, child, for pity’s sake. I’ll manage. I’ll … lay low over there,” he decided, after a few moments of desperate reconnaissance that resulted in the discovery of a deep gully a short distance along the hillside. “Plenty of cover over there. I’ll wait until those bastards have finished searching the area, and catch up with you later.”

“Fine. Let’s hide, then,” said Andreea, with forced resolution and a sick, wavering undertone. “You could be right, at that. It might be our best chance.”

“Your best chance is to run, and not hang about getting sentimental on me. It’s not going to help me to have to share my cover with you.”

“We stick together,” she stated, implacably, and marched off ahead to the gully before he could think of any more convincing excuses for why they ought to split up. Resigned to his failure, and increasingly keen to get out of the open and into whatever safety was on offer, Serghei followed her.
Their refuge was a long, narrow cleft that cut deeply into the hillside. After a very short distance within, they were bathed entirely in shadow and tripping over every root, branch, and rock that lay in their route, although they were at least grateful for the fact that the bottom of the gully was dry. If a stream had ever flowed through it, it had long since ceased to run, although it had certainly not been idle in its day: the sides of the ravine were very nearly sheer, soon rising to well over the height of their heads, and quite impossible to climb should a sudden escape prove necessary.
Thus deducing that there was a strong possibility their hiding-place could become their death-trap if they did not make the most of it, they crept onwards until they reached a dead end, where the moonlit sky was a faint strip overhead, barely discernable from the looming, pitch-black walls that now confronted them on all sides except the way they had come. The back wall was several metres high and altogether sheer, but not unbroken: there was a low opening at its base which they would have overlooked, had Andreea not accidentally kicked a stone through it, resulting in a hollow, echoing clatter of stone on stone. With a good deal of urgent fumbling, Serghei took a box of matches from the bundle, lit one, and held it to the opening. It turned out to be a low, stone portal, constructed without mortar and consisting simply of two thick columns supporting a wide lintel, upon which was carved some badly weathered bas-relief of which the only distinguishable design was a dragon-like monster with a long, serpentine tail and a wolf’s head. It might once have been a full-sized doorway, but it was now so choked with dirt and leaf litter that it barely afforded enough space to crawl through.
Not that either of them were particularly keen on that course of action. Aside from the baseless but understandable fear of darkness and the unknown was the far more practical concern of being entombed alive, should this obviously antiquated structure choose this, of all times, to collapse. In any case, their present refuge seemed to be fairly well concealed from prying eyes, and they would have contented themselves with it, had Andreea not happened to look up and notice a disturbing change in the scenery: namely a human silhouette, leaning over the edge of the ravine and looking down upon them. She whispered news of this to her father, and neither of them required any further incentive to enter the eerie, cold, dark tunnel with which providence had so graciously furnished them.
Thankfully, when they were actually within the tunnel and standing upon an uneven stone floor, worn to a marble-like smoothness and made all the more treacherous by slippery patches of calcite deposits, it did at least prove spacious enough for them to stand upright. Serghei lit another match, affording them flickering glimpses of the dripping, nitre-encrusted stone walls as they scurried onward, caring for little except to put distance between themselves and whoever it was who had seen them. A few minutes and matches later, they had heard nothing from behind them, but any feeling of relief was rendered impossible by the sounds coming from up ahead: at first, a repetitive, indistinct snuffling that might have been of human or animal origin. As they drew closer, is resolved into the unmistakable sound of a woman’s sobbing, and whilst that brought them some small relief (considering what the alternatives might have been) it was still less than encouraging.

“Well, that’s just perfect,” said Serghei, acidly.

“Sorry?” replied Andreea, managing to find her father’s comment startlingly unfeeling, even though her nerves could likewise have done without hearing that incessant, mournful sound.

“Must be one of the others, mustn’t she? So that means some of them have run into trouble as well. I wonder how many of us are hiding in this hole already. A nice lot of rats in a trap we’ll make, if those Germans should find their way down here.”

“I know,” hissed Andreea, under her breath, “but let’s try not to make it easier for them, shall we? This place is like an echo chamber, so if we could keep the noise to a minimum-”

“Be sure to tell her that,” he interrupted, as a fresh bout of sobbing reverberated down the passage, and Andreea had to concede that he had a point. After they had walked for another minute or so, the tunnel opened into a wide, circular chamber, with a domed ceiling and many alcoves lining the walls. They were regularly spaced and shaped, and each was long and deep enough to accommodate a recumbent human form. Most of them were empty, but the wavering light of the match occasionally picked out a hint of detached femur, ribcage, or skull. Andreea, much to her private embarrassment and irritation, could not repress a shiver of superstitious dread.

“Dacian catacombs. How charming,” she announced, vainly hoping that a touch of sarcasm might relieve her nerves. The whimpering was now very clear, and as she looked about the chamber she noticed a deeper shadow in one of the floor-level alcoves that bore a decided resemblance to a huddled figure. Cautiously, for fear of startling her (and thus causing her to make an even greater racket), she approached, but could make out nothing of the mourner save for her dark outline. When Andreea was within a few feet of her, she crouched low and spoke, very softly:

“Nicoleta? Is that you? Iuliana?” The figure gradually ceased its sobbing, but gave no reply. “Never mind. Look: we have to be quieter. I’m really sorry for whatever’s happened to you, but the storm troopers are still searching the area, and if we don’t-”

As she spoke, the figure slowly turned her head to face her, and although the weak light gave little definition to her dark hair and clothing, her face stood out in stark relief, the chalk-white skin and red-irised eyes reflecting it all too effectively. Her expression, at first merely curious, warped upon beholding Andreea into a twisted, demonic parody of itself, its youth and beauty mangled out of recognition in a distorted, deeply-furrowed snarl. This mask-like appearance was not improved by her mouth, which, with its full, deep red lips, might have looked well enough while closed, but not while it was wide open and baring its upper canine teeth: nearly an inch in length, and sharp as daggers. Almost as unappealing as her appearance was the rasping, guttural hiss that emanated from that sabre-toothed mouth and seemed to pierce right through the layers of Andreea’s personality, education, and wisdom; straight to the primeval instincts such as her most distant mammalian ancestors might have felt upon encountering a ravenous flesh-eating dinosaur.

This was fear beyond anything she had ever known. Not as a girl of six being kicked in the mud and called “gypsy bitch” by peasant boys; nor while walking back to her digs in Berlin one night, while being tailed by a group of teenagers from the Hitler Youth; nor even on hearing the gunshots of the SS so close behind her, had she felt so tangible an emotion: a freezing, nauseating, leaden cloak of an emotion. The rage and loathing that flared from those inhuman eyes seemed to drain all of her spirit’s vitality, and as the mulo emerged from its alcove and closed in for the kill, fear itself was transcended, superseded by a paralysing sense of futility and self-contempt, in which state she could almost have welcomed the approaching bite that was to end her lifetime of miseries.