Wolves of Dacia - Chapter Four – The Wild Hunt

[Miki Yamuri]

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

Chapter Four – The Wild Hunt



Half an hour ago …

In order to cover as much ground and afford their quarry as little opportunity for escaping them as possible, the troopers had separated into small groups and were advancing through the forest in a wide, staggered formation, trying to keep line of sight with each other. Trooper Arne and Trooper Schmidt were handling one of the bloodhounds they had commandeered from Brasov, and were thus one of the foremost groups, as none of the actual soldiers were particularly gifted in the art of tracking. Not that the dog was enjoying much more success: for several wearisome minutes it showed no signs of picking up any scent whatsoever, but when it finally did it made no secret of the fact, as its whole body tensed, its eyes widened, and a low growl emanated from between its teeth. Rather unhelpfully, it also stopped dead in its tracks and showed no inclination to follow the scent.

“What d’you reckon, Heinrich?” asked Arne, looking all around and taking a firmer grip upon his sub-machine gun. “We’re onto them at last?”

“About time,” grumbled Schmidt, “keeping an even firmer grip on the dog’s lead as it began to alternate growling with whimpering, and assumed an even tenser, albeit shivering posture. “I feel as if I’ve been stomping up this sodding hillside these ten years, and all for a few flea-bitten gypsies. Why can’t we just call up the Luftwaffe and get them to drop a ton of incendiaries all over this stinking forest? We could burn the whole pack of ‘em and be done with it.”

“No idea. It might do the trick at that, but I’m not sure His Nibs would be too happy about us torching the landscape.”

“You reckon? I didn’t think Captain Meinert wanted to come on this damn vermin hunt more than the rest of us.”

“Not him. I meant that local nob. Dragomir, or whatever the hell they call him. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is his ancestral estate, and I doubt he’d thank us for burning it to cinders.”

“Who gives a stuff what he thinks? Since when have the SS taken orders from … ? Woah there!” called Schmidt, as the bloodhound suddenly strained at its leash, vainly attempting to beat a retreat and continuing to whine piteously.

“It’s a dog, mate. Not a horse,” said Arne, sagely if unnecessarily.

“Scared out of its bleedin’ wits is what it is. You still reckon it’s got the scent, Karl?”

“I guess it must have. Why else would it be acting up?”

“Well … ain’t there supposed to be bears and wolves in these parts? I knew I might get shot when I signed up, but I don’t reckon as I’m being paid enough to be eaten alive.”

“You’re worse than the mutt, Heinrich. You a soldier or ain’t you?”

“Does that make me less edible? I only wish … Damn!” he cursed, as the bloodhound pulled free of his grip and bolted back the way they had come, down the thickly wooded slope and out of sight within seconds. “You reckon we should go after it?”

“I reckon you should,” said Arne, peevishly. “That weren’t no fault of mine, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to risk losing the rest of the lads. We’re losing ground even-”

“Yeah, whatever,” growled Schmidt, and started off after the dog, leaving his comrade all alone and in a condition of instant regret. Looking around, he found that he was already unable to discern the glimmers of the other patrols’ flashlights, and the silence that surrounded him went beyond the mere absence of noise to become a cold, leaden sarcophagus of deathlike inertia. Even the owls and cicadas, formerly vocal enough, had run out of voice, leaving only the comfortless sound of his own rapidly-paced breathing. He was giving strong consideration to the idea of following his comrade, when he was detained by a very delicate yet, in some sense, immensely powerful touch upon his shoulder. This invasive hand languorously drifted around him, pausing tenderly on his breast before coming to a final rest upon the bare skin of his throat. Its touch, though light and tickling as before, sent a cold thrill right through to his blood and nerves, painless but overwhelming, seizing his body in a premature state of rigor mortis.
Though the touch had robbed him of his motor powers, unfortunately it had not done the same for his senses, and so he found himself, most unwillingly, face-to-face with the owner of the hand. Her movements were languid and graceful, like those of a dancer, and her attire – a long, black, silk gown, low-cut, bare-armed, and of a somewhat Grecian appearance – also had a balletic air. The semi-opaque, lustrous fabric cascaded revealingly over the contours of her figure, emphasising her youth, beauty, and gracefulness, which seemed unimpeded by the cold (which the garment was in no sense suited to). He flawless, statuesque face and long, black hair further enhanced her loveliness … and all to no avail. For when her less appealing characteristics were taken into consideration, all of her beautiful aspects seemed no more than a devilishly cruel joke: a gorgeously-designed, richly-decorated tomb, containing nothing but loathsome, mocking, inescapable death.
Her elegantly curving eyelashes framed a pair of red eyes that gazed upon him with unrestrained and completely unsentimental longing, such as a starving lion might bestow upon the first gazelle it had seen in a month. Her full lips framed a bestial mouth in which her restless tongue could scarcely for a moment refrain from polishing her long, sharp canine teeth, in anticipation of the imminent feast. There was certainly no shame in fear, and far be it from Arne to have thought otherwise, but a clinging apathy had also begun to creep upon him, and even as he tried to hold onto his fear (his rational mind insisting that it was the proper and useful response, in this situation), indifference swamped his efforts, leaving only a mild sense of disgust that alternated with attraction. This attraction was purely, instinctively sexual: as she pressed her cold, eager lips to his and the taste of stale blood filled his mouth, the only emotion that managed to penetrate the heavy fog was plain revulsion. However, since he could not resist her mentally or physically, it seemed his only hope was that she might make his death a painless, or even a pleasurable experience. She was certainly giving it her utmost, when an angry voice intervened, and she instantly broke her embrace to attend to it:

“For shame, daughter! Kill it, by all means, but stop degrading yourself!”

As this was said, the speaker drifted into Arne’s view. In all aspects of appearance including her matching style of dress, she could have passed for the sister of the other demonic apparition, but her expression was more severe. The other seemed to feel the force of her admonishment, and replied with something not unlike remorse:

“I meant no harm by it … but don’t you think this one’s handsome?”

“All I see is a beast,” answered “mother”, treating the petrified trooper to an intent, loathing scrutiny, “fit only for slaughter. Do you forget so easily what you owe this … mortal trash?” The first she-devil shrugged weakly, and assumed the most human countenance she was, in all probability, capable of: a meek, downcast look, maybe of shame for having upset the other or maybe of fear for the hate and rage with which she spoke, and continued to do so: “These swine would have murdered you, Madalina, if she hadn’t saved us, and now they invade her realm.”

“How could they know- ?”

“They know nothing. All they care about is hunting the Roma who fled this way, but they are being dealt with. Our task is to deal with these vermin, and that doesn’t mean-”

But whether that prohibition was against courting, flirting, or merely kissing, Arne was unable to learn, as a rustle in the nearby undergrowth suddenly distracted the creatures, and they swivelled in perfect unison in its direction. Moving his eyes with a considerable effort of will, he could just make out Schmidt standing a few yards away, looking aghast but commendably resolute, all things considered, his MP40 trained upon the women as they smiled back at him, perfectly hideously. His facial muscles tightened at the sight of their diabolical expressions, but he managed to rally himself tolerably well, sensibly dismissing the obvious explanation for what he saw.

“What is this; an effing Halloween party?” he asked, sarcastically and almost confidently. “Pull yourself together, Karl. You and me ain’t dumb Romanian peasants, so if these gyppo whores expect to frighten us with-”

It was an encouraging assumption, but Schmidt was swiftly disillusioned of it, as they started forward and he immediately squeezed his trigger, spraying them with a thick hail of bullets. It was not entirely without effect: as he fired on them, they seemed to take on a less substantial appearance, the vague shapes of the trees becoming visible through their bodies. That effect only lasted for the few seconds in which it took him to exhaust his magazine, whereupon the spectres became solid, sneering reality again, not only unharmed but exultant. As they bore down upon Schmidt, their Medusa stares drilling into his motor system, he found himself incapable of reloading, resisting, or (most assuredly his preferred option by now) running away.
But as “mother’s” teeth sank into Schmidt’s neck and “daughter” set to work upon his wrist, and as his complexion gradually faded to a sickly, greyish hue, Arne was feeling their paralysing influence slowly lifting from both his body and mind. Cold, stiff, and terrified he remained, but released from his former total rigor and suicidal sense of apathy. Not, alas, to the extent that he could have run from the scene with a realistic hope of not being caught up with in seconds. However, he did possess enough mobility to aim and fire his own sub-machine gun … not that Schmidt’s attempt inspired him with any confidence that it was likely to do the slightest good. On the other hand, their backs were turned to him and their attention was all focused upon draining Trooper Schmidt to the last drop of blood. If he took them by surprise, there was always the hope that they would not be able to defend themselves as they had done before. Going over the appealing alternatives in his mind, and finding them conspicuous by their absence, he gritted his teeth; struggled against the pins and needles in his arms; slowly trained his weapon; mentally recited a short, unhopeful prayer; squeezed the trigger, and was pleasantly surprised.
They did not, as before, dissolve into spectres, but instead screamed, writhed, and soon keeled over, silent and bloodied. It was plain to see that “mother” was done for, although the realisation of this was too horrible to do any great favours for Arne’s morale: as if she had fallen prey to some deranged movie director with an unhealthy fetish for time-lapse special effects, he saw her skin tighten and shrivel; her lustrous hair become grey and withered; and her strong, youthful body contracting into a mummified relic. The same could not be said for “daughter”, who twitched where she had fallen, pitifully at first, but with increasing violence, and – though he did not linger to confirm the fact – it seemed to Arne as if the bullet-holes (one of which had gone clean through her head) had been visibly closing over, the many grievous wounds healing like temporary indentations in a pool of viscous liquid.
Arne’s retreat from the scene was determined but very clumsy, and almost aimless but for the desperate hope that he had spotted a flicker of light between distant trees. He fell several times, dropped his MP40 (and did not retrieve it), and in spite of the branches he managed to elbow aside he also collected an impressive quantity of scrapes and bruises from the ones that eluded him. To make matters worse, a chill mist had descended and, in spite of the breeze, was thickening around him by the second, until his visibility was only marginally greater than his arm’s reach. Upon the latter, he was finding himself increasingly reliant, as he groped his way through low branches and thick, tangled undergrowth, each step more arduous than the last as he strove against the thorns that caught at his clothing and against his exhaustion, but even drawing breath was now a struggle. The dry, cold fog, though wafting around him in vaporous eddies, seemed harder for him to run through than the deep mud of an army assault course, and not a great deal easier to inhale. For a brief moment of panic, he considered the possibility that he might have fallen victim to a poison gas attack by the resistance cell they had suspected of conspiring with the gypsies, but as the miasmic swirls began, gradually, to coalesce and take on familiar shapes, his fear found its rightful object.
The formless tendrils drifting around his arms resolved into pale, slender fingers, exerting a steely grip; while two baleful orbs of red light glared out of the mist in front of him. Like newborn stars of ill omen, they gathered the vapours into their orbit, where with supernatural alacrity those rudimentary solar systems compressed and solidified … into the face and form of the demonic girl, now as free from all signs of injury as it was from all signs of affection or mercy, and bearing down upon him. The following seconds brought an agonising, stabbing pain in his neck; shortly succeeded by an icy, black wave of oblivion that smothered all of his senses in unison; then …
… nothing.

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

“How much … further?” gasped Johann, more impatiently than he had intended, though no more than he felt was merited for the past hour (at least) of scrambling through trackless woodland, sometimes uphill, sometimes downhill, but never on a level path, and rarely on a clear or dry one. Brother Shandor, sick of answering that question and preoccupied in throwing nervous glances all around while fidgeting with the crucifix around his neck, ignored him. Although in the physical sense the anchorite had put his stumbling, wheezing, bedraggled travelling-companion to shame, he seemed the more anxious of the two, his agitation increasing the deeper they ventured into the forest. Johann, for his part, was too busy drawing ragged lungfuls of cold, thin, unsatisfying air to have any emotion to spare for the unknown. The known, at present, was quite appalling enough, and idle fear was as far beyond him as any sympathy for his reluctant guide. He repeated his question, this time without the faintest inflection of patience. Shandor took a flask of brandy from inside his robes and tossed it over to him. His numb fingers fumbled the catch, but even though it was not the answer he had desired her did not hesitate in retrieving it from the snow and taking eager, warming draughts, while the anchorite finally spoke, in a stern but troubled voice:

“A keen lad, aren’t you?”

“Sure … keen not to freeze to death.”

“Is that so? Then take solace. If it’s the cold that does for you, I’ll be damned … if I’m not already, so help me, Lord.”

“And what the devil’s that supposed to mean?” asked Johann, fear and outrage putting the cold and fatigue out of his mind even more efficiently than the brandy.

“What? You don’t reckon this mission old Sorin’s sent you on might not have its dangers?” he replied, with a note of contempt and a good deal of evasion, thought Johann, but before he could take him up on this point, Shandor had already resumed his course, and Johann was compelled to follow, for fear of losing his way. “Anyway, boy,” resumed the anchorite, as they trudged onward, “he’ll have told you all you need to know, I daresay, and it’s none of my business to fill in the gaps. You’ll be in the know soon enough, mark it well.”

“Soon? Then I gather we’re nearly- ?”

“Right over there,” declared Shandor, stopping and pointing to the south. As Johann came alongside him, he saw that they had reached the edge of a river valley; wide, deep, and thickly forested except for a few rocky bald patches. Even the river itself was mostly concealed by the trees; making its presence chiefly felt by a distant, hollow rumble. Awe-inspiring a prospect though it was, it did not particularly recommend itself as a suitable area for human habitation.
Nevertheless, someone had obviously taken the landscape as a challenge, and risen to it impressively, if not tastefully: nestling halfway up the valley, half a mile or so along from where they stood, was an imposing castle. It boasted such a mass of gaunt, conical towers and turrets that almost rivalled the denseness of the surrounding fir and spruce trees, and clung to the steep slope like a colony of red-shelled limpets, daring gravity to do its worst. It was of a highly intricate design, sporting innumerable arched gothic windows, embrasures, flying buttresses, carved parapets, and one wildly out-of-place domed roof, of green, tarnished bronze or copper, over the thick central tower. Although the greater part of it was dark, several windows were lit up, and there was little evidence or ruin or neglect. Even the narrow, vertiginous dirt track running towards it, along the side of the valley, seemed well trodden.

“Very … picturesque,” lied Johann, regarding the monstrosity with a newly-discovered sense of architectural snobbery. “Err … Renaissance, is it?”

“Most of it,” replied Shandor, with a strained effort to sound dispassionate, though his voice betrayed a stronger and deeper sense of disgust even than Johann’s. “The parts of it you see, anyway. They say the foundations are much older, built before even the Romans came to this land.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“Dragomir’s family, lad. This land is all theirs, or so they’ll tell you, anyway.”

“This seems a little remote for their ancestral seat.”

“There used to be a road … when they built the place, but they let it all grow over again. Sorin’s ancestors used this place for a retreat. They were a godless bunch, right enough … Got up to all manner of orgies, pagan rituals, and suchlike stuff as they wouldn’t have wanted their peasants or the priesthood getting wind of. I reckon you’ll pardon me if I prefer to keep my distance, and bid you goodnight here.”

Johann’s feelings could not have been less in accord with this statement, but as Brother Shandor had commenced his journey back with the determined step of a man not easily talked out of his resolutions, and since he still had his rifle and Johann did not have his pistol, there seemed little to do but to make the best of it.

“They’re expecting me there?” he shouted at the anchorite’s rapidly receding back.

“I was ordered to deliver you here safe and sound, so I reckon it would be rather pointless if you weren’t,” he declared, neither stopping not turning, “not that it’s any of my business.”

“In that case, you might at least give me my Luger back.”

“Here,” he replied, pausing just long enough to take the confiscated pistol and clip from his pocket and throw them into the trodden snow between them, “and much good may it do you.”

Following which encouraging remark, he resumed his course. Johann momentarily considered threatening him into escorting him back to Predeal, but quickly abandoned the notion: partly out of a natural disinclination to threats of violence, but mainly because the brandy had got to his head, making it unlikely if push came to show that he could even walk straight, never mind shoot straight.
All things having been equal, he would have preferred to have rested for several minutes until he had regained some semblance of sobriety. Unfortunately, as this entailed the inescapable possibility of freezing to death, he was compelled to take up his pistol and begin his slow, unsteady journey along the narrow valley path. The distant rumble from below regaled him with the promise of a watery grave for whatever portion of him remained, should he take a false step and descend through several fathoms’ worth of jagged outcrops and stunted trees. Thankfully, the ground soon rose sheer at his left-hand side, offering any number of crevices and protruding roots which he could use to steady himself. After edging along this crude handrail for some thirty-odd minutes, he found himself up against the gently curving wall of the castle’s south tower, discouragingly blank save for a few narrow windows high above him and an arched set of double doors. They were of ancient, weather-beaten wood, yet massive and solid, with black iron hinges and a heavy, ornate knocker in the form of a wolf’s head. Upon trying to use this, he found that the ring was fused in place, and he resorted to pounding upon the door, none too effectively, with his frostbitten hands. A few minutes and several increasingly desperate attempts later, the door remained closed fast and impenetrable.
All dread of the unknown dangers into which his new orders had been sending him was swept away by a far more palpable, nauseating awareness of imminent hypothermia; delirium; black, dead fingers and toes; gangrene; amputation; organ failures; and lingering, excruciating death. It took a further minute for him to assert some control over his panic and turn away from the door, hoping that he might find a route that would take him around the castle walls without requiring any life-threatening feats of mountaineering. In doing so, he caught sight of a decidedly misplaced object mounted upon the stone frame, roughly at head-height: a small metal box with a circular grille set in its top half, a single square button below it, and a telephone mouthpiece clamped upon its side, with a wire running from it into the box. With the possible exception of Brother Shandor’s hermitage, this was the last place on Earth Johann would have expected to see a door intercom system. His survival instinct, however, was impatiently insisting that the time for idle curiosity would be when he was on the other, warmer side of the door, so with awkward, painful motions, and no small amount of trepidation in spite of his eagerness to get out of the freezing night air, he took the microphone from its hook and pushed the button.
This produced no immediate or obvious result, giving him a few more seconds in which to indulge his morbid thoughts before his attention was drawn back to the grille by an electronic crackling and a distorted – though audibly female, Spanish-accented, and keenly irritated – voice that emanated from it:

“Is that you, Dimitri? Would you mind telling me what the devil you’re doing at the south gate, and why you’re bothering me about it? Can’t you just- ?”

“My name’s von Ritter,” interrupted Johann, all thoughts of prudent courtesy overridden by a fear that the peevish voice, if left unchecked, might whine on until his blood had frozen solid. “Second Lieutenant von Ritter … ADC to Colonel Dragomir?” he added, after a probably uncomprehending, and certainly unhelpful silence. This last announcement, however, had a much more positive result: there was a heavy, hollow, metallic clunk, and the doors promptly swung inwards, neither creakily nor silently, but accompanied by the gentle hum of an electric motor. The hallway that stood revealed before him was spacious and brightly lit, but grimly decorated with dark wooden panelling, elaborately carved in designs both fair (such as valkyries; archangels; Classical and Nordic gods and heroes; and intricate motifs of intertwining trees and vines) and loathsome (such as harpies; devils; hybrid monstrosities that defied either description or naming; and convoluted patterns of twisted bodies and tortures faces, jumbled together with occult symbols). As if in a rather desperate effort to lighten the atmosphere, a speaker mounted in the vaulted ceiling piped a catchy jazz number, and the disembodied voice of Ella Fitzgerald echoed throughout the room:
She was truckin’ on down the avenue,
Without a single thing to do,
She went peck, peck, peckin’ all around,
When she spied it on the ground.
A-tisket, a-tasket,
She took my yellow basket,
And if she doesn’t bring it back,
I think that I will die.
Whereupon a phantom saxophone took over the mockingly upbeat tune, while Johann, not much comforted by these signs of civilisation, proceeded inwards. The door automatically closed and locked behind him, giving him both relief and anxiety (at having the chill air and his only escape-route, respectively, blocked off), but it did not hold his attention for long. For no sooner had it closed than one of the side doors of the hallway opened and two young women marched through: one fair, one dark, and both armed. Their pistols were of an old make: 1896 Mausers, with blocky magazines in front of the trigger-guards; broom handle-shaped grips; and long, spindly barrels, the latter both pointing in his face. Those weapons were certainly not as sleek as his own Luger P08, but what small difference that made to his odds of surviving a shoot-out was less than encouraging. The women were identically dressed, in black combat boots; black tights; and close-fitting black polo-necks, giving them them – along with their lithe figures and the tight buns in which they wore their hair – the appearance of paramilitary ballerinas. It may have been merely an impression created by these curious uniforms, but he thought that they also moved like dancers, with extreme precision and hardly a wasted movement. Even their eyelids remained impressively still as they prowled over to him, never taking their eyes (or their aim) off his face. Their stony expressions were stern rather than threatening, but inspired him to remain where he stood with more than a simple sense of caution: a psychotic fear erupted from some dark corner of his brain and would not be pacified by his rational mind, however much it insisted that these were merely two pale young ladies with guns, and that sensible co-operation with them would, more than likely, ensure his survival.

“My colleague here is going to search you,” said the dark lady, in the voice he recognised from the intercom. “Meanwhile, I’ll be keeping you covered. Make any sudden movements … and we have a problem. Understand?”

She might have spared herself the trouble of pointing this out, as the only sudden movement he was presently capable of was involuntary shuddering, which he did a good deal of as the fair lady came right up to him, holstered her pistol, and ran her hands up and down his sides, arms, and legs, padded his pockets, and relieved him of his Luger, which she handed to her comrade with the abrupt announcement, “He’s clean.” The dark lady relaxed slightly and lowered her aim, and Johann recovered a little of his composure and mobility, but to say that the mood remained a little tense was as adequate a statement as to say that the demonic wood carvings and painted scenes of death, torture, and dark ritual that glared at him from the walls remained a little upsetting.

“Admiring the décor, are we, querido?” asked the dark lady, with an ironic lilt that confused rather than reassured him. “Not very nice, is it? Don’t get the wrong idea, though. Our director would cheerfully have this lot torn out and thrown into the incinerator. Bet you it’d burn well, too. It looks the part,” she quipped, while gesturing her gun-barrel towards a Renaissance painting of Hell that Johann could only suppose the artist managed to complete by having a sick-bucket right next to his easel. “Shame, really, that it won’t burn for all eternity, or we could save ourselves no end of trouble keeping the generator fuelled.”

“Good plan, though,” ventured Johann, still nervously, but somewhat emboldened by the warmth, and the sight of his hostess finally holstering her gun. “Why not have it all torn out?”

“Actually, I asked her that,” replied the fair lady, in a knowing tone that tried hard but just failed to conceal a note of smugness. “The director, that is. She told me that she didn’t want to ‘weaken’ the room, so to speak. You know that this place is built upon ancient foundations?”

“So I gathered, but if taking the panels off the wall would make the whole tower collapse you should seriously contemplate moving-”

“Her sense of ‘weakening’ was more esoteric, Lieutenant. Imagine a cross between a unified field theory and Jung’s collective subconscious. Our director has hypothesized that all man-made objects, including buildings, acquire a form of psychic imprinting from the minds of their makers. More than likely, this is a change in their subatomic structure, which disrupts the affected object and causes it to occasionally radiate similar waves. Like a photoelectric effect, only psycho-kinetic in nature. The older or more significant the structure, the greater the amplitude of the psychic waves generated, or so runs her theory, which would certainly account for all of the-”

“Enough of the lecture, Moira,” snapped the dark lady, to Johann’s relief. “Whatever she wants him to know, she’ll tell him in her own good time. Anyway, it can’t be more than a couple of hours until dawn. No time for introductions, Lieutenant, never mind science lessons. You may as well get some rest. You’ll begin your induction tomorrow evening, but for now we’ll take you to your quarters and-”

The mood re-froze in an instant and both ladies drew their pistols again as a muffled but frantic commotion was heard outside the main door. Johann turned, and was confronted with an optical paradox that might have made M C Escher’s head spin: a man, as lithe and elegant in his way as the two women and similarly dressed, was coming through the door … through the closed door. Then Johann’s mind seemed to jump a groove in reality, and although part of it was still insisting that the door was closed and a ghostly guerrilla fighter was passing through solid matter, another part was insisting that the door was open, or that it was not there at all: that it had never even been made, in fact, and the man was only passing through a primordial, timeless void (which seemed to make perfect sense to that latter part of his mind, though the rest of it protested loudly). As the man crossed the threshold, the space-time continuum recovered its bearings: the door was closed, the man – clearly flesh and blood – stood before them, and Johann was halfway to persuading himself that he had simply suffered a momentary hallucination brought on by cold, exhaustion, and morbid thinking. His subconscious was whispering something quite different to him, but it was mercifully drowned out by the dark lady’s acerbic tones:

“Damn you, Dimitri. You know you’re not meant to-”

As she berated him, the new arrival opened a metal box mounted beside the door, pushed a button within, and the doors began to open: not quickly enough, however, for his liking, judging from the way in which he seized them and pulled them the rest of the way, their gears screeching in futile protest. Dimitri stepped back outside and presently came in again bearing a body in his arms: in point of fact, little more than a skeleton, save for a translucent layer of skin; desiccated eyeballs; and a few wisps of long, grey hair. It was draped in a thin black gown that was riddled with small holes, and was clearly not a body that had seen a spark of life for some considerable time, although to judge from the pain and rage in Dimitri’s face one might have thought it had passed away that very night. The pain subsided a little, and the rage intensified as he caught sight of Johann, whereupon his face contorted into an expression that threatened summary execution, although only for the heart-stopping moment before the dark lady found her authoritative voice again:

“He’s been cleared, Dimitri. Not your concern. What happened to her?”

“She’s been murdered, is what’s happened,” he announced, with a superficial calmness that found no confirmation in his bloodshot eyes, which glared upon Johann with such intensity as if they fervently wished they might turn into flamethrowers. “Shot through the heart by one of his lot. A lucky stroke for him, actually, ‘cause if I wasn’t carrying poor Miruna and I could get my hands round his neck, then-”

“Cool it, and make your report. Who was she?”

“I just told you, didn’t I? Miruna … One of the lower-dwellers,” he added, in deference to the blank look he had received. “The one whose daughter was listed for euthanasia. Diana let the pair of them stay on.”

“I remember,” ventured the fair lady, “Madalina; the former Down’s Syndrome case. Is she -?”

“She’s still out there, somewhere. Naomi and Poldek are searching for her and any of the other lower-dwellers.”

“Others? How many of them are out there?” asked the dark lady, almost with concern.

“I was hoping, Commander, that you might be able to tell me-” he began, with a faint note of reproach which was not lost on her, as she furiously cut in:

“You think I’d order any of them out there? Those stupid kids, thinking all of this is a great game … Hell, if I’d known the plan was to let them defend our perimeter, maybe I could have saved myself the effort of lugging all those crates up to-”

“Perhaps I’d better take the lieutenant to his room,” suggested Moira, with a vague stab at being tactful, which failed to conceal from Johann that the present subject was not for his ears. The commander replied with a curt nod, and resumed her conversation with Dimitri in hissing whispers, while Moira took Johann by the arm and hurried him through a door, down a short corridor, and up a long flight of spiral stairs. All thoughts of resistance were banished by the surprising strength of her grip – he did not like to imagine what it might be like if she was actually intent upon hurting him – and the fact that the passages were illuminated only by feeble wisps of moonlight through narrow windows, making guidance a necessity even at the cost of a numb forearm tonight and bruises tomorrow. After a gruelling ascent that left him breathless and her slightly more irritated, she led him through a door that gave off the stairway and into a small bedroom. The bare stone walls; sparse, antique furniture (a chair, box bed, and wardrobe, all adorned with grotesque carvings and the latter two sharing a regrettably coffin-like air); and the sickly light that filtered through the murky window-panes, gave the room a decidedly sepulchral quality in spite of the altitude, though it took no great stretch of the imagination to suppose that the gusts of wind interminably rattling the casement were the restless spirits of former tenants.
On the positive side, the one article of modern furniture was s single-bar electric heater, which his guide plugged in and turned on while he divested himself of his cold, damp boots and overcoat. Even when it was fully warmed up, the heat it radiated was no inferno, but in the wake of his recent experiences it was like a transfer to the Africa Corps. As he settled before it, chafing the beginnings of warmth into his hands and only holding them to the heat when he was confident they could bear the shock of it, Moira took bedclothes from the wardrobe, shook the dust and spiders off them, and made up his bed in a fashion that, though sloppy and unpractised, was perfectly acceptable for his present needs. That business concluded, she made as if to leave, but turned back at the threshold and spoke:

“I’m afraid I will have to lock you in. Security, you understand: until the director has given you clearance, you can’t have free run of the place. Good night, Lieutenant. Good luck with your testing.”

She left, locking the door behind her, on this enigmatic and less than encouraging remark, though Johann’s imagination, as worn out as his body, did not dwell on what it might signify.