Wolves of Dacia - Chapter Five – The Lower-Dwellers

[Miki Yamuri]

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

Chapter Five – The Lower-Dwellers

For a few moments, into which so much despair was compressed that its gravitational force seemed to warp space-time and made them into an eternity, Andreea lost all perception of her surroundings. There was nothing but herself, naked and defenseless, and the livid, red-eyed, demonic mask that was the mulo’s face, and which was bearing down upon her: two isolated bodies in space, drawn slowly but inexorably towards one another, and to her certain annihilation. That was until a third, dazzlingly bright object suddenly drifted between them, breaking their deadly field of attraction and the illusion along with it. As Andreea’s senses returned, and the object of her salvation was apparently divested of its searing brightness, she saw it for what it was: a crust of stale bread, in her father’s hand.
This diminution did not reduce its effect upon the mulo: by the faint light of the match in her father’s other hand, Andreea could barely make out its silhouette, crouched against the back wall of its sepulchre, whimpering piteously. Though she had by no means lost all fear for the thing, the instinctive, paralysing dread that its gaze had inspired her with had all but evaporated, leaving only a rational urge to get as far away from it as possible while remaining within the Earth’s atmosphere. Even so, it was hard to repress a faint stab of pity, and a good deal of ghoulish fascination for it. Although its first reaction on being repelled by the bread had been plain frustration (and even that, scientifically speaking, was not a fact Andreea cared to dwell upon), it had soon reverted to a quieter but no less pathetic sobbing, just as it had been when they had first entered the burial chamber, mistaking it for one of their own people in hiding. Her morbid curiosity was not lost upon Serghei, who sharply called her back to attention:

“Get away from there, child!” he hissed, with extremely marked insistence. “The rest of the matches are in my left jacket pocket. Take them, and start back down the tunnel. I’ll follow on, and make sure it doesn’t get any ideas of doing likewise.”

“Back the way we came?” asked Andreea, with a nauseous pang as the memory of what had driven them down there in the first place hit home. “With the SS still out there and her down here, I don’t know which-”

“Better to be shot and die quickly than run into more of her kind,” he answered, not unconvincingly, she thought, but most unconsolingly. “With any luck, the Germans will have finished searching the area and moved on. I wouldn’t stay down here anyway; not for a million lei, so help me. Hurry, girl! And light me another match as well, if we’ve any to spare. This one’s about ready to burn my fingertips off.”

Very carefully, so as not to upset his grip on their humble but apparently impenetrable “shield”, Andreea reached into his pocket, withdrew the matchbox (which proved to contain four matches: not the best amount, she had to concede, for stumbling around a crumbling, mulo­-infested, subterranean cemetery), lit one, handed it to Serghei, lit another, and proceeded to backtrack, with all the stealth she could muster, along the tunnel back to the surface. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw her father edging along behind her, in backwards steps, with far more attention focused upon that which they were heading away from than what lay up ahead … or, indeed, what lay right under their feet, as became all too apparent when he caught his heel upon a loose stone and toppled over. Andreea was able to catch and steady him, at the cost dropping her match upon the cold, damp floor, where it quickly gave up the ghost. Serghei had also dropped his in shock, although not the bread (which any mere emotion, in the absence of amputation, could not have dislodged from his grip).

“The matchbox; quickly!” he hissed. “Even the thought of being lost in the dark with those things about is too-”

He was stifled by his daughter, who shushed him far more loudly than she would have liked, given her reason for so doing: namely the voices she had heard at no great distance behind her, but lacking the hollowness of their own voices within the close, echoing confines. It seemed that two men, at least, were at the entrance of the tunnel, and they continued to converse as Andreea and Serghei stood, petrified and silent, in the pitch darkness, suddenly oblivious of the peril from which they had been retreating.

“… don’t care what you say. I’ll swear to God I heard something down there.”

“I don’t dispute that, Sergeant,” replied the second of the men, likewise in German, but in a precise, overly-cultured, second-language tone. “Quite probably a rodent, but certainly not a Romani. You realise that’s a burial chamber? Our gypsy friends are pathologically superstitious. They won’t even use a dead man’s possessions. They would sooner destroy them, or sell them to outsiders, to avoid spiritual contamination. It would take more than physical threats to make them hide down there. Now, if Satan himself was chasing them … but let’s not flatter ourselves to that extent.”

“That’s as may be, your Lordship, but I think it’s surprising what a man might find he’s capable of after all when he’s got a gun pointed at him. Anyway, seeing as how I ain’t superstitious, I don’t reckon it could do no harm to check the place out.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that, bearing in mind that tunnel is over two thousand years old. Certainly, the fact that it has avoided collapsing for so long must give one some admiration for the original builders, but I would still be wary about leading a body of men down there. That would be an awful lot of hillside under which to be buried.”

“Alright, then. What about blowing up the archway and burying them?”

“Like hell you will, Sergeant. These tombs are a part of our national heritage. How would you like it if I visited Berlin and blew up the Brandenburg Gate?”

“Respectfully, sir,” replied the first voice, though more impatiently than respectfully, “I think that carrying out our orders might be bit more important than some mouldy old Roman tomb, unless you have a better idea.”

“Dacian tomb, in fact, and I believe I have: have you considered poison gas?”

“We’d need a bloody long hose to get all the way from the trucks up to here, wouldn’t we?” was the witheringly sarcastic response, much to Andreea’s relief, though it proved very short-lived.

“I don’t believe I specified carbon monoxide, Sergeant. There are other means. Hydrogen cyanide, for instance.”

“Your pockets would be just bursting with the stuff, would they, your Lordship?”

“Alas, no. But nothing prevents you from sending to Brasov for some. This entrance could be guarded, in the meantime. If there is indeed anyone down there, though I have my doubts, there is no other way for them to get out.”

“You’re sure this is the only way in?”

“Fairly certain. I’m not much of an archaeologist, but I do know that these burial chambers were not designed like the New York subway system. There are a few other tombs around this area, but they don’t link up. If you pass me your map, Sergeant, I’ll mark their locations for you. A well-armed man at each entrance should be a sufficient deterrent.”

“We’re spread pretty thin as it is, your Lordship. I’m not sure the captain would be too thrilled about-”

“Very well. You sort it out with him, and while you’re doing that I shall stand guard here, if that will assuage your fears … not to mention keep you from messing around with explosives in my forefathers’ graves.”

“You, sir? You quite sure you’re up to- ?”

“I may have a few years on you, but I can still handle myself like a soldier. You and your lads cut along, now, and find out what your CO thinks of my plan … only mind that you tell him what I said about the Romani: I find it hard to believe they would hide down there, but a few hundred milligrams of hydrogen cyanide will at least make sure that anyone who is hiding down there will stay down there for as long as the original … err … ‘tenants’. Dismissed, Sergeant.”

That seemed to signal an end to the conversation, except for some muted, incoherent grumbling accompanied by the padding and rustling of feet upon leafy ground, which soon waned into silence. It was not, however, a reassuring silence to Andreea, knowing as she did that Lord Cyanide was still on guard, and was certainly better-armed and – although he was apparently not a young man – probably a more able combatant then either her or her not exactly hale and hearty father. She was entertaining a vague hope that he might be lured to follow them into the burial chamber after all (and, with a bit of luck, into the proximity of its unholy inhabitant), when, to her astonishment, his cultured voice called out to them, now in Romanian, closer to them, and echoing from the stone walls:

“No doubt you’re alarmed, but if you’re feeling violent as well, do consider that if I had wanted to harm you I could have given you away to those Germans … and I am armed. No sense in taking silly risks, I’m sure you’ll agree.”

The voice was calm, self-satisfied, and not overtly threatening. Nonetheless, both Andreea and Serghei wholeheartedly agreed with its stated opinion on silly risks, and they were reaching for their pocket-knives when a bright, artificial light clicked on a few yards ahead, illuminating the tall, dignified form of an elderly army officer, with a flashlight in one hand and a Mauser pistol in the other. The expression with which he regarded them was as serenely superior as his voice, but the weapon was inducement enough for the two Roma to cancel their previous action in favour of raising their empty, open hands over their heads. The officer raised a listless eyebrow, and after a few seconds of cool consideration on his part and blood-freezing dread on that of his captives, he holstered his gun.

“I appreciate respect,” he declared, while sifting through his pockets with his free hand, “but I can’t see that this attitude is getting us anywhere. Your hands down, if you please. And you, girl: take this,” he ordered, urging the flashlight upon Andreea, who was too bewildered to protest. “Those jolly lads will be back before long, with reinforcements, and if I can’t seal this entrance before then … a-ha!” he exclaimed triumphantly, taking a small, round, metallic object from an inner pocket, the sight of which finally inspired Serghei to break his cautious silence:

“What’s that? A hand grenade?” he asked, apprehensively.

“Well it isn’t a die-cast model of a pineapple, I can assure you.”

“You’ll have the damn roof in on us!”

“Behind us rather than on us, I hope. In spite of what I told Sergeant Lang, these Dacian builders knew their stuff. The whole structure is not going to come down like a house of cards because of one small, intentional cave-in. A seven-second fuse ought to suffice for us to get clear of this section, and then-”

“Not the tomb: we can’t go back in there,” interrupted Serghei, driven to audacity by sheer panic. “You mustn’t-”

“With all due respect to your beliefs,” interrupted the officer, with the hint of a sneer, “the danger outside is rather more serious, and I don’t propose that we shall remain long down here, in any case.”

“You told that German sergeant that this tunnel was the only way out,” said Andreea, mildly surprising the officer and wiping the contemptuous curl from his expression.

“You understood? Most commendable … which is more than I dare say for my honesty. As a matter of fact, these tunnels and passages do form a linked system, and our exit point will be elsewhere, far from the SS and closer to your fellow refugees. Oh yes,” he added, taking note of the surprise and resurgent hope in both of their faces. “My friends in the resistance have been keeping tabs on them, and will have seen to it that they came to as little harm as possible. The SS are another matter … but we daren’t assume that they will have been wiped out to a man, or even driven away. I really must seal this passage, so if you’d both kindly stand back-”

“You don’t get it. We can’t go back in there,” asserted Serghei. “There’s a …”

“Cave-in? Methane gas build-up? Vampire? Ah; then I suppose that’s third time lucky,” he remarked, smugly, having seen and correctly interpreted the nervous twitches in their expressions.

“You know?” asked Serghei, appalled rather than impressed.

“It’s a landlord’s duty to be intimately acquainted with all of the occupants of his estate. Even the squatters,” he added, with an unpleasantly significant smile that was all too transparent to Serghei.

“Hold on there,” he protested. “Landlord or not, you can’t go comparing us to those-”

“Pariahs? Outcasts? Rejected, misunderstood beings to whom it pleases me to grant sanctuary on my lands? As you wish, though I can scarcely applaud such an illiberal attitude.”

“Never mind that,” said Andreea, acting quickly to forestall the possibility that her father’s fury, at being classified with an unclean, devil-possessed corpse, might prove both eloquent and time-wasting. “The point is, that mulo is very probably still back there.”

“I shouldn’t wonder, my dear, but with all due respect to your superstitions, they’re really quite docile … and they, at least, know who they owe their protection to.”

“That’s a relief,” she replied, acidly. “Then I must apologise for being so judgemental, just because your harmless little mulo tried to kill me.”

“No doubt you provoked it,” he rejoined, but with an audible dent in his smugness, much to Andreea’s satisfaction, although Serghei was quicker off the mark to protest, emphatically:

“Like hell we did! We didn’t even know what it was, at first. We reckoned it might be one of our own, and my daughter was right polite to it … then it went for her like a bloody rabid wolf, so if you think we’re going back in there, Mister, you can damn well-”

“Point taken,” said the officer, curtly, while searching through his pockets again. “In that case, we shall just have to improvise. Here,” he declared, throwing a small metal disc to Serghei. “Even if your presence should offend them, they will certainly respect that symbol.”

Andreea leaned closer to her father and shone the flashlight upon the disc. It was old, of green-tinged bronze or copper, and intricately engraved with a pentagram at its centre, surrounded by two concentric circles with ancient Greek letters stamped in the space between them. It was familiar to both her and Serghei, though while her reaction was one of academic curiosity, her father’s was pure distaste:

“What’s this diabolical rubbish?” he asked, gingerly turning it over in his hands, but before the officer could answer, Andreea had a flash of recognition:

“It’s a hygieia,” she announced, and enjoyed a brief sense of exultation at the looks of amazement she had elicited. “Named for the Greek goddess of health, and sacred to the disciples of Pythagoras. I saw a reference to it in a medieval text on alchemy and medicine,” she added, knowing perfectly well that this would only increase the officer’s astonishment, and perfectly happy to let it do so.

“Right … a medieval text,” he repeated, incredulously, “which just happened to be propping up a table-leg in your shack, I suppose?”

“I’ll have you know that my daughter went to one of your fancy gadje universities,” said Serghei, with something not unlike wounded pride, “though if I’d known beforehand that they’d be teaching her all about Satanic signs then I’d have been damned myself before I’d have allowed-”

“It’s no such thing,” protested Andreea, irritably. “It’s an ancient, pre-Christian sign said to represent the elements, or the five senses. It stands for life and health, so it’s not much different from your crusts of bread.” As soon as she had said this, and noted the hurt expression on her father’s face, she regretted not having at least tried to adopt a less patronising tone. The officer, by contrast, seemed in mighty good humour.

“Ah yes, the carrying of bread to ward off evil,” he mused, again sounding infuriatingly pleased with himself. “A quaint custom, though not without foundation. I take it, then, that you have your own protection? Then pray, let us be on our way. These trinkets may repel the supernatural, but any attempt to use them to repel bullets is likely to prove most disappointing. Shine the flashlight upon the walls, young lady, if you’d be so kind. I need to find a decent-sized gap in these stones to push the grenade into, and concentrate the explosion, or it’s likely to take the easier path and blow us to perdition. A little to the right … and hold it there. This has distinct possibilities,” he declared, inserting his hand into a deep crevice where part of the stonework had crumbled away. “Yes; I believe that will do nicely for a spot of vandalism.”

“Now hang on a-” Serghei tried to protest, with no great air of hope, nor of any surprise at being totally ignored as the officer pulled the pin of his grenade, thrust it into the crack, and ushered them both back down the tunnel at an urgent pace, which Andreea was not reluctant to comply with. She did not relish the idea of what they might encounter in this subterranean charnel house, but that dread paled in comparison to the ticking bomb in the opposite direction, and on this occasion, though the force of her fear was strong, it could not dilate seven seconds into a more comforting space of time. They had not even regained the burial chamber when the fuse burned down, and it suddenly seemed as if Thor and Zeus had taken up hammer and thunderbolts and struck a bet on which of them could deafen the most mortals. The wall might have contained the explosion as intended, or so Andreea inferred from the happy fact that she was enveloped by nothing worse than a cloud of dust, blinding and stifling, but on the whole preferable to fire and collapsing masonry. What the wall did not contain was the sound of the blast, nor of the subsequent cave-in behind them, which left her, after the initial shock and pain, with a high-pitched ringing in her ears, while the dust cloud cut down her visibility, even with the flashlight, to no more than an arm’s reach ahead.
Nevertheless, with what little sense of balance remained to her, she stumbled on, not caring to take for granted that the tunnel had finished collapsing and afraid that if she stopped to look back, though she would probably not turn into a pillar of salt, she might all too easily become one with the hillside. Thus, having very little sense of her surroundings, it was some time before she realised her mistake. Her hearing had started to clear, and she could tell from the echoes of her footsteps that she was in a narrow tunnel rather than a wide chamber, which could only mean that she had run right through the burial chamber and into another passageway on the other side of it. It puzzled her that the dust of the explosion had managed to drift so far and so thickly in such a short time, then it dawned upon her that this was a fog of a different nature: fine, dry, odourless, and although it did not choke her as the rock dust had done, it made up for it by being acrid and painfully cold to breathe.
The words “hydrogen cyanide” crept insidiously into her head, and although her reason patiently informed her that HCN was invisible and smelled of rotten almonds, that knowledge was altogether without comfort. Poison gas or not, these chilly exhalations were dangerous enough to be blundering around in, nor did they seem natural to her: they swirled and eddied in ways that had nothing to do with any air currents she could feel, and even passing her hand through them had no obvious effect upon their patterns. Then there were the lights: not a spectacular display, but merely small, dull, faint spots of redness that hovered in pairs in the mist like fat, sluggish fireflies. Some came and went, others moved freely about, while one pair, shining more brightly than the rest, settled in front of her. As she stared at them, curiously fixated, a long tendril of peculiarly dense mist seemed to coalesce between her and the lights, extend towards her, and drift across her right cheek, over her shoulder, and down her arm before dispersing, its touch – though lighter than gossamer against her skin – more tangible than mist had any business in being, and leaving a tingling sensation in its wake. It was neither warm nor cold, but penetrated deeply and soothed her throbbing head and aching limbs. Its effect upon her mind was much less beneficial, as the red lights, holding steady at eye level, drifted to within inches of her face, while the surrounding mists continued to swirl, gather, and drift apart, assuming transient shapes that suggested a nose, a chin, flowing hair, parted lips, and animal-like elongated teeth. They set her morbid imagination racing, but did not linger for long enough to form a complete picture, nor to deprive Andreea of the comforting possibility that she was simply going mad or suffering a gas-induced hallucination.
Notwithstanding that cheerful hope, none of the options seemed to be worth hanging around for, and she made the effort to turn and leave. She definitely formed the intent, and was fairly certain that the command had left her brain, but it seemed to have encountered a roadblock en route to her leg muscles. She tried again, putting more will into the simple act of taking a step than she had ever done, except in some dreams in which she had found herself unable to run from danger. Her efforts were no better rewarded on this occasion, her muscles refusing to do so much as tense. As stray tendrils of mist continued to reach out to her, tracing their tingling paths over her skin and intertwining with the dishevelled locks of her hair, she adopted a more desperate strategy and tried calling for help, only to discover that her larynx too was taking no new orders for the duration. It seemed as if she had forgotten the basic trick of translating thought into motion, preventing her from even turning her head away from those blood-red light and the vaporous glimpses of a young woman’s face in the thick mist that surrounded them. It drew closer, until the whole left side of Andreea’s face prickled with the static charge, as if the mist were a thundercloud wafting a cold, moist wind into her ear: at first a steady stream of air, constant of tone; then of erratically shifting tones, almost like whispers. She could not have pinpointed the moment at which this breeze became unmistakably coherent, so subtly did it come and so disordered were her emotions, but whether the voice existed in reality or only in her head, its import was all too clear:

… the other mortals … soldiers … murderers … my mother … my poor mother … I was furious … You do understand? She had no power to respond, not that this seemed to discourage the whispers. I wanted to kill them … kill all mortals … kill all who hate us … You don’t hate me, do you? You don’t have to be afraid of me. Andreea did not take it up on this option, but it continued regardless. You and I could be friends … more than friends … sisters, even, and look after each other. Won’t that be nice? You’re still so afraid, it pointed out, perceptively if pointlessly. Sleep now, darling. You’ll feel different when you wake … so different, I promise, very soon … and forever.

If there was any more of this, it was beyond Andreea’s ability to hear it, as her senses grew vague and her thoughts clouded, in spite of her struggles to retain a foothold on consciousness. Her final impression was of a solid form that coalesced from the fog and embraced her almost as delicately, but for a distinct sense of cold, moist pressure upon her neck. Then, painful even through her enveloping numbness, the acute sense of two small but deep puncture wounds, moments before total oblivion claimed her.

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

“How many remain unaccounted for, Sergeant Lang?” asked Captain Meinert, inspecting the survivors of his SS unit, assembled at the mouth of the crevice which, until recently, had led to a deep tunnel in the hillside. A quick survey of their pale, sweating faces was enough to inform him that their numbers were reduced, though he could not immediately put names to the missing faces.

“Three, sir,” replied Lang, coming out of conversation with one of the men. “Troopers Engelmann, Arne, and Schmidt.”

“And is that all you have to report? Whatever happened to our line of sight?”

“Corporal Schroeder was in the next patrol along from Arne and Schmidt, sit. He says they heard screams and shots from that direction, and their light just seemed to go out. He would have investigated, only he didn’t reckon he ought to go breaking formation without orders.”

“I can’t commend his bravery, but it’s just as well,” replied Meinert, with mild scorn. “What of Engelmann? He was on patrol with … ?”

“With me, sir: Richter,” declared the wide-eyed, sickly-faced young storm trooper who had been speaking with Lang. “As for what happened to Emil … well, I don’t know if … You’ll never believe it, sir.”

“Probably not, but pull yourself together, Trooper, and let’s hear it.”

“We heard this, like … well, singing. It was a woman’s voice. Beautiful, I guess, though I couldn’t, like, make out any of the words. Latin, I think. There was something about it, though, not quite … well … holy, sir, if you know what I mean.”

“If you mean that you’ve no head for hard liquor, Trooper, and no stomach for active service besides, I know all too well.”

“I mean it, sir. Begging your pardon, and I don’t deny I was scared, but I had this feeling … like I wanted to follow the voice: like I couldn’t even have stopped myself from following it, then I grabbed a hold of my pocket Bible, and it went away. I just felt scared again, but I could resist it. I know how daft that sounds.”

“Which will spare me the trouble of informing you. Am I to gather that Trooper Engelmann did fall for your siren’s lure?”

“He just ran right off into the woods after it, sir, like a man possessed. Nothing I could have done to stop him.”

“We’ll let your court martial board decide on that, Trooper, assuming you or any of us live to see the day. In spite of your drunken fantasies, it’s clear enough what’s been happening, and I’m sure it was no siren that detonated that tunnel … unless she’s about sixty, surprisingly well off for facial hair, and calling herself Colonel Dragomir. The only possessed man around here must be you, Sergeant Lang. I’d be fascinated to know what possessed you to let that treacherous old fox out of your sight.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but how was I to know he was with the resistance?” asked Lang, sheepishly.

“You surprise me. Your instincts weren’t always so dull, as I recall from our stint in Czechoslovakia, or neither of us would be alive to enjoy our present mortal perils. Mind you, I’ll admit that I didn’t suspect this much of Dragomir, but I didn’t trust him an inch. You remember how keen he was to lead the way? He didn’t even want us to bring the camouflage gear. Now I think about it,” at which point there was a small but significant cracking sound deep in the shadows of the nearby trees. The inexperienced troopers did not even notice it, but the captain exchanged a meaningful glance with his sergeant and continued speaking without a pause, while Lang quietly operated the cocking lever of his MP40. “Now I think about it, this was all more or less his idea, for us all to come traipsing up here like sheep to the slaughterhouse. Why I didn’t realise it all at first, now!”

It would have won no awards as a well-constructed sentence, but it achieved its object admirably: in an almost balletic duet of well-drilled violence, Meinert and Lang levelled their firearms, swivelled to face the same patch of apparently innocent woodland, and showered it with bullets. A shriek of agony – which mainly sounded of human origin, although its high-pitched vibrato had an almost bestial or avian quality – went up from the targeted area, but soon faded away, though not before the rest of the panic-stricken platoon had started fumbling with the bolts and safety catches of their own submachine guns.

“Lower your weapons, you curs!” snapped Meinert, while replacing the spent magazine of his Luger. “Do you think if there were any more of them they’d just be waiting patiently in the dark for their turn to be shot? Save your ammunition for when you actually have a target.”

“That one was practically begging to be a target,” said Lang, matching the contempt in his CO’s voice, while reloading. “Let’s hope the rest of this resistance cell are just as good at stealth tactics.”

“Spare the cockiness, Sergeant. That could have been a diversion to draw our fire, albeit a suicidal one. Get these men to sweep the perimeter, and make certain that they don’t catch us with our guard down from some other direction.”

“Right you are, sir. Where are you headed to?” he asked, as Meinert started off in the direction they has been firing along.

“To have a look at the one we got, of course. It might give us some idea of what we’re up against, or at least what their armaments are like,” whereupon he marched into the bullet-riddled trees and out of sight, which did nothing positive for Lang’s morale but did not affect the efficiency with which he began issuing orders. Before he could finish, however, Meinert’s voice called out to him from the shadows, in a tone that the sergeant did not care for in the slightest: not quite panic, but with an unaccustomed urgency which Lang had never heard there before, even while under heavy fire and grenade attacks from Czech insurgents, with half of their unit lying dead and dismembered around them. All in all, it was not a tone conducive to optimism.
Cocking his MP40 again, Lang followed his CO into the grove, where he found him standing over the body of their late stalker and wearing a glazed, stupefied expression that was no more natural to him – nor encouraging to Lang – than his voice had been. Looking at the dead “resistance fighter”, the sergeant could not help but sympathise with, and copy his attitude.

“Just to be quite sure I’m not going mad, Sergeant,” said Meinert, slowly and deliberately, “you did hear a scream when we fired, didn’t you?”

“I thought I did, sir,” he replied, not altogether affirmatively, without taking his unwillingly fascinated stare off the corpse.

“I’ll try to derive some relief from that. Now, how old would you say that body is?”

“I wouldn’t like to say, sir. I ain’t no pathologist.”

“Then the sooner we find one, the better. Recall the men, and detail two of them to carry that … thing. We’ll take it back to Brasov, and let Dr. Schonfeld probe its secrets.”

“He’s welcome to it,” said Lang, with a rising sense of nausea that both shamed and disquieted him. When all was said and done, it was merely a dead body, albeit a less than picturesque one: emaciated and shrivelled almost to a skeleton, but the sergeant had seen plenty of bodies, both dead and alive, in much more grotesque and mutilated states since he had joined the SS. He could have borne the sight of this one perfectly well, but for the fact that all signs pointed to it having been alive only a minute or so ago. Lang was not an expert tracker, but even he could see that this body had not been lying in the undergrowth for as long as its condition implied: the plants around it were bent and crushed, some of them with freshly-snapped stems, and nothing had grown over it since it had fallen. In any case, it was perforated with nine-millimetre bullet holes, though without a trace of blood, as far as he could make out. “You can’t tell me any of that’s natural and proper, sir.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, Lang, but let’s try to avoid sounding like a pack of superstitious old women,” admonished Meinert, sounding slightly more like his old self, but with all too conspicuous an effort to provide much reassurance. “We may yet find that there’s a rational … What the devil’s he wearing?”

“Dunno … Looks like robes. Sort of Greek or Roman stuff, sir. Can’t see no shoes. He doesn’t seem to have any weapons, either.”

“Be thankful for small mercies, then … but tell the men to use their ammo sparingly, if need be. If this … person has any friends about the place, I’d as soon not have to meet them with empty guns. See to it, and no delays, if you please.”

As he set out to regroup the platoon for their retreat, taking a parting glance at the withered corpse as he did so, Lang reflected that the captain might just as well have saved himself the effort of his last remark.