Death's Head Legion (13 page)

 

CHAPTER TWENTY

Foothills of the Carpathian Mountains

Wallachia region of Romania

Eastern Europe

T
he two and a half hour flight aboard the
Raposa
from Volos was easy enough, but that's where easy ended. The first stop was the small city of Piteşti on the Argeş River. Too small to be considered a city and too large to be just a town, Piteşti was nonetheless an important commercial and industrial and center.

A trading town based on its crossroads location, Piteşti served as an informal residence for a number of Wallachian princes up until the late 1700s. By the late nineteenth century Piteşti became known as an important political center.

Anywhere Filotoma didn't have friends or customers, there were usually people who he held markers for. He shook the tree in Piteşti and it yielded much fruit.

His extensive network among the Romani and the high regard in which most of them held him was because Filotoma was one of the few traders who treated them as equals. Also, they knew he ensured absolute confidentiality in commercial dealings. Filotoma said he believed there should be a wall of separation between business and state for obvious reasons.

For six days and nights they traveled all around the countryside in a horse-drawn carriage, to Ramnicu, Valcea, Cotmeana, Bouleni, and Tigvenu. Every village on their route, Rucker noticed, had large crosses standing near the town gates.

This was the land between the East and the West. It was the rock upon which the waves of eastern incursion broke again and again—be it the Turks or the Ottomans or the Persians or the Mohammedans. This was the enchanted, haunted, broken land that bore the brunt of man's worst instincts of war, and his best instincts of hospitality and trade. It was as beautiful as it was deadly.

Their carriage arrived at Ramnicu just before the sun set. Villagers were hurrying to get indoors. Their driver, in fact, insisted they get out so he could get the horses and the carriage to the livery before darkness fell.

“What's so important about it getting dark?” Rucker asked the innkeeper, who took their packs to their rooms.

“It's what comes in the dark,” the old man said. “What doesn't want to be seen. What you're better off not seeing.”

Since they couldn't travel at night, they spent evenings in the village inns, where a warm fire and hot food staved off the chill of the night air and whatever was worse. Over the door of almost every inn there was a horseshoe. Oil lamps burned throughout the inn's main den. Though it was the late 1920s, in this part of the country there was no electricity.

“What does the horseshoe mean?” Terah asked the elderly innkeeper's wife.

The old woman cackled, but it was a friendly laugh.

“That's a story near and dear to the Romani. A true fable—a
paramitsha
,” she said.

She lit candles around the room then, her theatrical manner making it clear that the story she was about to tell had been told countless times before, to entertain and scare the guests.

“Long ago it is said an evil necromancer—a summoner of death—sought to destroy the wandering tribes. So she called forth four great undead spirits—
shilmulo
, as the Romani call the undead—named Hunger, Bad Luck, Bad Health, and Unhappiness. These four wraiths traveled the land, leaving destruction, disease, and death in their wake.”

Professor Renault edged closer to the hearth. Deitel felt the chill as well.

“One Romani warrior had the courage to stand up to these horrors. His name was Aleandro Kalderasha. He mounted his mighty steed and rode out to face the four undead wraiths. The wraiths, you see, had split up to better spread their destruction, so it was Bad Luck whom Aleandro first came upon. The creature's pus-filled eye sockets fixed upon the warrior, its jaws dripped poison from snake teeth, and his claws blackened with the blood of the Rom he'd killed,” the woman said.

She threw something into the hearth and the flames exploded, causing every heart in her audience to skip a beat.

“Even mighty Aleandro couldn't stand to look upon this creature's countenance, so he turned his steed and took off—discretion is always the better part of valor. The creature chased him through the night. As it was about to catch him, Bad Luck's influence reached out to Aleandro's horse, believing it would cause the horse to falter or throw the man. Instead, though, it caused the horse to throw its shoe, which struck the creature in the forehead, cleaving into his brain . . . Like all undead, when the brain is destroyed, the creature dies.”

Chuy motioned to the serving girl for more wine.

“Aleandro retrieved the shoe and,” the old woman continued, “upon returning home for the night, he nailed it above his door as a remembrance of his victory. But before the sun could rise again, the three other wraiths—Hunger, Bad Health, and Unhappiness—came to his home to seek revenge. When they saw the horseshoe, Unhappiness said, ‘There are three of us left, brothers, and three shoes remaining on that horse.' They turned and fled the land.

“It is why the Romani are forever the foes of the undead, why they are pledged against the Adria—the dark Otherness—and why the horseshoe represents the good luck of the Rom.”

Another round of drinks was ordered, and Chuy wondered aloud about how prominent the undead featured into the beliefs of the Rom.

“Fox and I have traveled through this part of the world before,” he said, “but rarely have we heard such stories.”

The old woman cackled. “Perhaps you didn't know how to listen. I am not of the Romani, but a friend of the Romani. They do not always share their secrets as openly and easily as you of the West. They whisper. You of the West seem . . . not to,” she said diplomatically. It was hard to say how much of the response was genuine and how much was still her act.

Terah asked about the wolfsbane blossoms on the windows.

“They keep the night things away. The Nosferatu. I lost my own daughter to the night creatures,” the woman said. “Stay inside and keep the doors locked, for all our protection.”

After the innkeeper's wife retired for the night, the rest stayed up waiting for Filotoma's return.

“Someone want to tell me why it is that every time I turn around lately someone is talking about the undead?” Rucker asked.

“These stories aren't that uncommon throughout the world,” Terah said. “Almost every culture we know has stories about the undead. The Chinese tell the story of the Jiângshî, reanimated corpses that travel the night and kill to absorb the life essence of the innocent. They are said to arise when a person's soul fails or refuses to leave the body. They are creatures much like Voudoo's undead, often decaying and covered in greenish furrylike mold and long white hair. They were first recorded in the folk tale of the ‘Traveling Corpse over a Thousand Li.' Families who could not afford wagons would pay a small fee for Taoist priests to take them far away for burial. Those dead longing for home would arise from the grave, make their way back to their families and take revenge for not properly burying them where they could rest.”

Deitel took a long drink of his beer.

“Well, you can just rock me to sleep tonight,” he said.

Rucker stoked the fire.

“In Norse mythology,” Terah went on, “there are the
draugr
, Viking warriors that were buried rather than burned. They would seek to consume those who desecrated their graves, as it was known that Viking warriors would be buried with their wealth. And there are the
liche
from German mythology—probably where the Germans got their idea. The
leichen
are cadaverous like other undead, but unlike almost all undead except the Nosferatu, a liche retains some degree or even all of its living intelligence. This is in contrast to the Haitian manifestation known as the zo—”

Terah was cut off mid-word when the front door of the inn slammed open. Everyone jumped. Filotoma stood in the doorway.

“Jesus, Nick, you scared the hell out of us,” Rucker said.

“Oops. I do not always know my own strength,” he said. “I've been meeting with some Romani friends.”

Filotoma took off his coat and helped himself to a very large cup of wine.

“It took some trading and more than a few drachmas—I will bill the foundation for my extensives, Fox—but they finally told me the story of the spear,” he said.

“The Romani call the spear the Sacred Tshurri. The Romani sorcerers were its keepers for centuries but lost it for hundreds of years. All their magic centered around keeping the spear from the hands of mortal conquerors. Who chose them for this calling is lost to history. But as they were always outsiders and without power, they knew the danger of the spear falling into the hands of the ambitious.”

“But it still fell into the hands of the Arabs, despite all their efforts,” Renault said.

“Exactly. They got it back five hundred years ago. The Romani witches know how to use its power to supplement their own without tapping into its darker power,” Filotoma said. “But the Romani are wise, so they don't use it. Much. And every season, so that even the devil won't see, a different tribe is entrusted with the spear. Only no one in the tribe but one knows which tribe is chosen. Even the tribe high father is in the dark. But not Nick. Nick is the one who provides to the Romani witches the rare ingredients they need for their brews and spells. Was just a matter of confirming it. Is the Danis tribe.”

“You could have told us sooner,” Rucker said. “Sometimes I just want to shoot you, Nick.”

“You'd have to shoot first to get Nick,” Filotoma said.

The Greek's eyes traveled up to his right hand, which was up against Rucker's neck and now held a .38 caliber single-shot Derringer in a gambler's wrist slider. It was pointed safely away; Filotoma was just making a point.

The Greek looked at Rucker with a sly grin. “And I always shoot first.”

Rucker didn't laugh, but he did have another drink with Filotoma.

“Fine, we move out in the morning,” Rucker said. “We wouldn't get any help from the villagers here anyway.”

A
s soon as the sun peaked over the rocky horizon, the ragtag expedition was up and moving again. But this time they split up. Five days on the trail had been too much for Renault, and what they faced ahead would be even more dangerous.

Renault told Terah everything else he knew about the spear and then headed south with Chuy in the carriage to Piteşti. Chuy would fly Renault back to Rome in the
Raposa
, where the Prometheus Society would provide private contractor bodyguards. Chuy would also be picking up a special delivery straight from Austin, care of the society. He knew he would have to push the
Raposa
to its limits to make time and the next rendezvous.

“You take care of my crate,” Rucker said to him before the carriage departed. “Not one scratch.”

Chuy said, “Be careful, Fox.”

“
We
will,” Deitel said.

Rucker, Filotoma, Terah, and Deitel set out on horseback along the mountain path toward the last known campsite of the Danis tribe. Rucker wore his cowboy hat – a necessity as much as an affectation, Deitel thought. He had his big Colt cowboy pistol again. Deitel and Terah wore riding gear and weapons that Filotoma had supplied, but Rucker was picky about having his own gear that he'd brought from the Raposa. If it had been possible, Rucker would have preferred to have his own horse, Shadow, but the stallion was safe and sound back in the Freehold. The smaller Bosnian ponies they rode now, just 12 hands high, were better suited and more sure-footed for the mountainous Eastern European terrain anyway.

It was a treacherous path and an exhausting ride. Late in the day they found themselves needing water for riders and horses alike. They'd expected to make it to the Argeş River by noon, where they could replenish their canteens. It was five hours past that and they were still miles from the river.

The sun had been relentless, and despite the beauty of the landscape, there was little in the way of shade on their trail. If Rucker seemed less affected than the others, it was only because of his upbringing in the Chihuahua Outback.

Finally, the four riders came upon a small farmhouse. The fields around it were well kept, and several rows of crops—beets and potatoes, it looked like—were well into their growth cycles. And there was a well. They paid the farmers handsomely for all the water they could drink and take, as well as additional fresh bread and meat. Then they were on their way again.

If the Wallachian landscape was haunting during the night, it was twice as beautiful during the day. Deitel didn't notice. He'd never ridden a horse, and he knew the beast could smell his fear. All his focus was on staying in the saddle.

More than a few times it veered off the path, causing the German doctor to be swatted with low-hanging tree branches or to look to the left at the steep, two-hundred-foot drop to the valley below. Mounting the thing had been its own comic opera. Rucker didn't help much. He just sat on his horse watching. And laughing.

“How is it you know these paths and these Romani so well,” Deitel asked Filotoma.

“I make friends wherever I go, young man. If I happen to offer Romani fantastic goods at unbelievable low prices, so much the better. If they trade with me sometimes, I only ask for a little help making deliveries that are no one else's business.”

“Sometimes,” he added, “that involves traveling by caravan along these goat paths to get, um . . . what is word . . . Hypochondrial? Hypothetical? Word that means you can't use the truth against me. Sometimes it might involve getting certain goods to certain people inside a certain Black Iron Curtain. Do you get me?” he said, touching his nose.