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Thracians - Undead in the Med - Szgany

Later, M&ou:

Harry? Listen,But thoseme real problems However, and as you well know, the more difficult a problem is, the more surely it fascinates me So, I’ve been in conference with a few friends, and between us we’ve decided it’s a new maths

What is? Harry was bewildered And what friends?

The doors in your mind are sealed shut with numbers! Möbius explained But they’re written as syebra And what they amount to is the ine

Go on

Well, I could never hope to solve it on my own - not unless I cared to spend the next hundred years on it! For you see, it’s the sort of probleh trial and error So ever since I left you I’ve been looking up certain colleagues and passing it on to thehed Harry, there were others beforetime before one away They’re still there, doing in death what they did in life So I’ve passed parts of the problem on to them And let me tell you, that was no simple matter! Mercifully, however, they had all heard of you, and to ue, however junior

You, junior?

In the company of such as Aristotle, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, Galilei, Sir Isaac Newton, Ole Christensen Roemer even I am a junior, yes And Einstein a hts whirled But weren’t they mainly astronos, said Möbius The sciences interlace and interact, Harry So as you can see, I’ve been busy But through all of this there was one man I would have liked to approach and didn’t dare And do you know, he ca for me! It seems he was affronted that he’d been left out!

So who is he? Harry was fascinated

Pythagoras!

Harry was stunned Still here?

And still the Great Mystic, and still insisting that God is the ultirew very quiet And the trouble is, I’

Still Harry was astonished Pythagoras, onto helpHmm? Yes, oh yes!

But does he have the ti - ?

No, Möbius cut him short, for him this is of the ultioras was and what he did? Why, in the 6th Century bc he had already anticipated the philosophy of numbers! He was the principal advocate of the theory that Nus, the metaphysical principle of rational order in the universe What’s ical doctrine was metempsychosis!

Lost, Harry could only shake his head And that has soh My boy, you’re not listening No, you are, you are! It’s your da! It has everything to do with you For after two and a half oras advocated You, Harry: the one flesh and blood man in all the world who ever imposed his rasp what Möbius had said but it wouldn’t stand still for hioing to be OK, right?

We’re going to break down those doors, Harry, yes Given time, of course

HowHours, days, weeks We have no way of knowing

Weeks doesn’t cut it, Harry told hiood to

In the heights over Haliu, close to the ruins of his castle, Janos Ferenczy, bloodson of Faethor, ranted and raved He had brought Sandra and Ken Layard up onto the sloping crest of a wedge of rock that jutted out into space, a thousand feet above the sliding scree and the steep cliffs of the ht winds themselves were disturbed by Janos’s passion; they blustered around the high rock, threatening to tear the three loose and hurl them down

’Be quiet!’ he threatened the very elements ’Be still!’ And as the winds subsided, there where the clouds scudded like things afraid across the face of the ed vampire turned on his thralls

’You’ He drew Layard close, gathered up the skin at the back of his neck like a e of the sheer drop ’I have broken your bones once And ain? Now tell h?’

Layard wriggled in his grasp, pointed to the north-west ’He was there, I swear it! Less than a hundred o I sensed hi, even a beacon! But now there is nothing’

’Nothing?’ Janos hissed, turning Layard’s face towards his own ’And am I a fool? You were a talented man, a locator, but as a vampire your powers are immeasurably improved If it can be found, then you can find it So how can you tell er there? Does he coht? Is he so shake

’He was there!’ Layard shrieked ’I felt hiht I knoas there I found hier on hiirl She’ll tell you it’s true!’

’You - are - in - leagued Janos hurled hiauzy shift and tore it froed naked under the moon and tried to cover herself, her eyes yellow in the pale oval of her skull But in another ht Janos had already done his worst; against horror that nu the truth,’ she said ’I couldn’t enter the Necroscope’s h ht risk a glier there Or if he was, then hisaze burn on her and penetrate, until he was sure she’d spoken only the truth Then -

’And so he is corowled ’Well, and that hat I wanted’

’Wanted?’ Sandra sly ’Past tense? But no longer, eh, Janos?’

He scowled at her, caught her shoulder, forced her down beside Layard Then he turned his face to the northwest and held his arht ’I lay me down a s of the earth to breathe for me, and send up their reek into the air, to make his path obscure I call on my familiars to seek him out and make his labours known to me, and to the very rocks of the mountains that they shall defy his will stop him?’ Sandra tried desperately hard to control her vaaze on her and she saw that his nose had flattened down and become convoluted, like the snout of a bat, and that his skull and jaws had lengthened wolfishly ’I don’t know,’ he finally answered her, his awful voice vibrating on her nerve-endings ’But if they don’t, then be sure I knoill!’

With three vampire thralls (caretakers, who looked after his pile for hiuarded its secrets) Janos went down into forgotten bowels of earth and nightmare, to an all but abandoned place There he used his necromantic skills to call up a Thracian lady from her ashes He chained her naked to a wall and called up her husband, a warrior chief of iant even now and must have been considered a Goliath in his day Both of these Janos had had up before, for various reasons, but now his purpose was entirely different He had given up too, and his appetite for torture and necrophilia had grown jaded in that same distant era While still the Thracian warrior stu out in the reek and the purple sed before his lady At sight of her he became calm in a moment; tears formed in his eyes and trickled down the leathery, bearded, pockk,’ Janos spoke to hinize this wife of yours, eh? But do you see how I’ve cared for her salts? She comes up as perfectly fleshed as in life - not like yourself, all scarred and burned, and pocked from the loss of your ather up your ashes, as I am with hers, when once more I send you down into your jar Ah, but as you must know, she has been of old, she gave !’ the other shut hi forward in his chains, he strained to reach his torht hard to keep Bodrogk fro and held out a glass jug for the other to see And: ’Now be still and listen to me,’ he commanded, harsh-voiced ’As you see, this favourite wife of yours is near-perfect How long she reed froo on the saer’

While he talked his creatures k’s chains to staples in the wall Now they stood back frolass ste, then quickly splashed droplets across the huge Thracian’s chest

Bodrogk looked down at himself; his mouth fell open and his eyes started out as smoke curled up from the matted hair of his chest where the acid had touched him; he cried out and shook hiony of his torture And the acid ate into him until his flesh melted and ran in thin rivulets, red and yellow, all down his quivering thighs

His wife, the last of the six wives he’d had in life, cried out to Janos that he spare Bodrogk this torture And weeping, she too collapsed in her chains At last her husband struggled to his feet, the orbits of his eyes red with agony and hatred where he gazed at Janos ’I know that she is dead,’ he said, ’even as I ahoul and a necromancer But it seems that even in death there is shame, torment and pain Therefore, to spare her any more of that, ask what you will of me If I know the answer I will tell it to you If I can perforrunted ’I have six of your men in their burial urns, where they lie as salts, ashes, dust Now I shall spill theuard, and you their Captain’

’More flesh to torture?’ Bodrogk’s groas a rumble

’What?’ Janos put on a pained expression ’But you should be grateful! These were your warrior coe when you battled side by side Aye, and perhaps you shall again For when ainst me, I can’t be sure that he’ll come alone Why, I even have your arone, and which was buried with you So you see, you shall be the warrior again And again I say to you, you should be grateful Now I call these others up, and I call upon you, Bodrogk, to control them Your wife stays here Only let one treacherous Thracian hand rise against k continued to gaze at him, ’I will do all you ask of me But for all that I was a warrior in life, I was a fair man, too It is that fairness which prompts me to advise you now: keep well the upper hand Oh, I know you are a vareat If you did not have Sofia there, in chains, then for all your acid I would break you into hed like a great baying hound ’That time shall never come,’ he said ’But I too shall be fair: when this is done, and done to le your dust, and scatter it to the winds forever’

"Then that must suffice,’ said the other

’So be it!’ said Janos

As the sun painted a crack of gold on the eastern horizon, Harry Keogh slept on But in the Aegean Sea off Rhodes Darcy Clarke and his teaer, faster boat than last tied west for Sirna Watching the sea slip by like blue silk sliced by the scissors prow, Darcy again went over the plans they’d ic

He re had sat at a table in their hotel rooed hi’s parents had been cocaine addicts; the drug had rotted theirboth of them while he was still littlethe Branch he’d aimed his talent in that one specific direction: the destruction of everyone who trafficked in huiven the locator other tasks from time to time, but everyone in E-Branch knew that this was his forte

Last night he’d e over the se map of the Dodecanese, and upon theon a fli had called for silence, and for severala finger to take up the white grains and touch thele sharp puff of air froarette paper and its poison away, and in the next er ’There!’ he’d said ’And an awful lot of it!’

Manolis Papastamos and Jazz Simmons had applauded, but Zek, Darcy and Ben Trask had not seemed much surprised They were impressed, of course, but ESP had been their business for e to them

Then Manolis had looked , and nodded ’Lazarides’s island,’ he said ’So noe knohere the Lazarus is hiding And aboard her, all the shit that the Vrykoulakas stole fro had been basic to et to the island in the hour after dahen the white ship’s vampire crew should be less inclined to activity, and to destroy the Lazarus, vaht there where she was anchored

David Chung was out of it now; his part had been played and the remainder of his time in the sun was his own; he wouldn’t see the rest of the team until the job was finished And now indeed they were on their way to finish it

Manolis brought Darcy’s mind back to the present: ’Another half-hour and we’re there Do you want to go over it again?’

Darcy shook his head ’No, you all know your jobs As for et onto the island and into Janos’s place’ He looked at his teaht one-piece suit Underneath she wore a yellow bathing costu at all to the ie but was sleek, tanned and stunning With her blue eyes, her blonde hair flashing gold, and a smile like a white blaze, there wouldn’t be a man alive or undead who could keep his eyes off her!

Her husband looked at her and grinned ’What’s so a her head

’I was thinking,’ Jazz answered, ’that we’d like to sink these blokes along with their ship The idea isn’t that they should go diving in the water after you!’

’This is so I learned from the Lady Karen on Starside,’ she told him ’If I can distract them, then the rest of you will be able to do your jobs more safely and easily Karen was an expert at distraction’

’Oh, they’ll be distracted, all right!’ Manolis assured her

Ben Trask had meanwhile opened up a s metal discs some two inches thick by seven across The back of each disc was black, netic, and the obverse fitted with a safety switch and tian fitting thehts, and shook his head ’I still don’t kno you got theed ’In a diplo We may be silent partners, but we’re still part of British Intelligence after all’

There’s a rock up ahead,’ Zek shouted from where she now sat on a rubber mat on the narrow deck on top of the cabin and in front of the windshield She pointed ’Manolis, is that it?’

He nodded ’That’s it Darcy, can you take the wheel?’

Darcy took control of the boat and throttled back a little Manolis and Jazz stripped down to swiht In there, they tested aqualungs and checked their swilasses and a straw hat In his Hawaiian shirt he was just so Darcy er and Zek was seen to be right: it was littlerock There were a few shrubs, patches of thyrass, and lots of rocks and situated centrally, above coastal cliffs, a weathered yellow stack going up sheer for hty feet

Zek looked at it and put her hand to her brow ’That’s a pigives me the shudders just the same And there are men - no, vampires - on it Two of them at least’

The boat rounded the point of a promontory and Darcy sahat lay ahead But even if he hadn’t seen it, his talent had already forewarned him ’Stay down,’ he called out to Manolis and Jazz in the cabin ’Draw those curtains You two aren’t here There are just the three of us’

They did as he told them

Zek stretched herself out luxuriously on the cabin’s roof and put on sunglasses; Trask lay back and hooked one leg idly over the boat’s rail; Darcy headed the boat directly across the mouth of a small bay And there, anchored in the baythe white ship, the Lazarus

Trask knocked the cap off a bottle of beer and tilted his head back,what he could see of the island intently That was part of his job, while Darcy and Zek, in their various ways, studied the Lazarus

The island consisted of a tiny beach inside a pair of bare spurs of rock extending oceanward, and an al to the central stack From this side, the top of the stack was seen to be a ruined fortification or pharos of so where they zig-zagged up to it But half-way up the stack, a false, flat, extensive plateau seees past the upper section had split down the centre and half had toppled over With massive walls built around the plateau’s perimeter from one side of the needle rock to the other, the place had obviously been a Crusader stronghold The old walls had long since fallen away in places, but it was seen that nealls were now under construction, and scaffolding was plainly visible clinging to both the stu upper section of the stack

Darcy meanwhile considered the Lazarus The white ship stood off from the beach in deep water central in the s into the blue of the sea On the deck under the black, scalloped awning, a man sat in one of several chairs But as theinto view he stood up and took binoculars frolasses, and he kept fairly well to the shade as he put the binoculars to his eyes and trained them on the motorboat

Zek propped herself up on one elbow and waved excitedly, but the watcher on the deck ignored her - at first

Darcy throttled back and turned the boat in a wide circle about the white ship, and joined Zek in her waving ’Ahoy, there!’ he put on an upper-class English accent ’Ahoy aboard the Lazarus!’

The e and leaned half-inside, then came back out He now aimed his binoculars at Zek where she continued to wave; this was scarcely necessary for the circling boat was no aze on her and shivered, despite the blazing heat of the sun A second ht have been the twin of the first, joined hi boat - but mainly they observed Zek

Darcy throttled back more yet, and a third e Ben Trask stood up and held up his bottle to the Darcy’s faked accent ’Maybe we can coht Darcy

Zek scanned the ship, not only above but also below decks She counted six all told Three sleeping All of them vampires Then

One of the sleepers stirred, woke up His mind was alert; it was more completely vampire than the others; before Zek could cover her telepathic spying, he had ’seen’ her!

She stopped waving and told Darcy: ’Let’s go One of the much, only that I’m more than I appear to be But if they run off noe’ll lose them’

’We’ll see you later,’ Ben Trask called out as Darcy turned the boat away and sped for the tip of the far pro froht down and allowed the boat to cruise close up to a flat-topped, weed-grown rock barely sticking up out of the sea Jazz and Manolis came out of the cabin, put on their masks and adjusted their deine they stepped from the boat to the rock and so into the sea

’Jazz,’ Zek called down, ’be careful!’

He ht not; his head went down and a streaed to fifteen feet and headed back towards the Lazarus

’More distraction,’ said Darcy, grimly, as he throttled up and turned back out to sea

’Darcy,’ Zek called to him, ’keep just a little more distant this time They’ll be wary, I’ht out to sea and the Lazarus caot down on his knees and took a sterling sub- under the seat He extended the butt and slapped a curved un between his feet and covered it with the bag

Half aback towards the white ship There was activity aboard nohere the three on the deck hurried round the rail, pausing every few paces to look over into the water Jazz and Manolis would be there any ti as before The ain Zek felt binoculars trained on her almost naked body But this time the interest was other than sexual

Then, as Darcy leaned the boat over on her side and reco, they heard the rattle of the Lazarus’s anchor-chain as it was drawn up, and the throbbing cough of her engines starting into life And now a fourtha stubby, squat-bodied un in his arht have been that his shout of warning was a signal to let the battle co there on the deck of the Lazarus with his legs braced, hosing the smaller craft with lead Zek had scrambled down off the cabin roof; as she ducked into the tiny cabin the windshield flew into shards and Darcy felt the whip of hot lead flying all around Then Trask stood up and returned fire, and the gunner on the Lazarus was thrown back as if he’d been hit by a pile-driver He bounced off a stanchion on the deck, ca over the rail and splashed down into the water And another crewun

Darcy was round the white ship now and putting distance between theed for the open sea; but as Zek carabbed the wheel and yanked it hard over, shouting: ’Look! Oh, look!’

Darcy let her have the wheel and looked Thedown into the water, shooting at so which dreay from the white ship’s flank It could only be Jazz or Manolis, or both of them

’You handle her!’ Darcy yelled, and heand drew out a second bag fro But as he loaded up the second SMG there ca of sprayed bullets, and Trask cried out and staggered back, only justover the side The upper muscle of Trask’s left arh, which turned scarlet and spilled over with blood in the nextfire

But the Lazarus was an to turn slowly on her own axis, and the water boiled furiously where her propellers churned They couldn’t stop her now and so let her go, and Zek went to Trask to see if there was anything she could do He grimaced but told her: ’I’ll be OK Just wrap it up, that’s all’

Heads broke the surface of the water as Zek tore Trask’s shirt froht back and drew alongside Jazz where he slipped out of his lung’s harness and trod water, then helped hi in in an expert flurry of flippers In another ed up into the boat - at which point the h and stopped dead

’Flooded!’ Darcy cried

But Ben Trask was pointing out to sea and yelling, ’Jesus, Je-sus!’

The Lazarus had turned round and was coines was louder, faster as she bore down on the s furiously to get the lanced at the waterproof watch on his wrist ’She should have gone up by now!’ he yelled ’The limpets, they should have -’

And when the Lazarus was soo off Not in one unified explosion, but in four

The first two exploded near the stern of the white ship, with only a second or so between the the stern one way and then the other, and also of lifting it up out of the water Slewing and ing as the engines seized up, the Lazarus was still advancing under so of her former impetus; but then the third and fourth limpets went off where they’d been placed towards the steed the whole picture With the stern already low in the water fro, now the proas pushed up on the crest of white-foa ocean so the engines exploded The back of the boat was at once split open in gouting fire and ruin, and hot, buckledfuel

As the glare of the fireball di cliave up the ghost, settled down in the water and sank Scraps of burning awning fluttered back to the tossing ocean and the drifting sely and offered up clouds of stea of the waters continued for a few seconds longer, before falling silent

’Gone!’ said Darcy, when he could draw breath

’Right,’ Jazz Sione And her creith her’

Manolis got the one down An oil slick lay on the water, where bubbles surfaced andrainbow colours Then, even as they watched, a head and shoulders ca up, lolled over backwards, and the lower part of the blackened body slowly rotated into view He lay there in the water as if crucified, with his ar on his neck, shoulders and thighs But as they continued to stare aghast, so his eyes opened and glared at them, blood and salt water

Manolis didn’t think twice but shut off the ht into the gagging vampire’s chest The creature jerked once or twice, then lay still in the water But still they couldn’t be sure Zek looked away as they reeled hihts to his ankles and let hiht

’Deep water,’ Manolis commented, without emotion

’Even a vampire is only flesh and blood If he can’t breathe he can’t live Anyway, the floor of the sea is rocky here: there will be roupers down there Even if life were possible, he can’t heal himself faster than they can eat him!’

Ben Trask hite and shaky but well in control of himself His shoulder was all strapped up now ’What about the one I knocked overboard?’ he said

Manolis took the boat to the middle of the bay where the Lazarus had beenthat splashed feebly in the water Even shot, the vampire had made it half-way to land They closed with hied him back out to sea, where they dealt with him as with the first one

’And that’s the end of therunted

’Not quite,’ Zek re stack of white and yellow stone inland There are two more of them up there’ She put her hand to her brow and closed her eyes, and frowned ’Also thereelse But I’m not sure what’

Manolis beached the boat and took up his speargun He was happy with that and with his Beretta Darcy had his SMG, which he considered enough to handle, and Zek took a second speargun Jazz was satisfied with Harry Keogh’s crossbohich he’d faht have taken the other SMG, too, but Ben Trask was now out of it and they un with him - just in case His task: stay behind and look after the boat

They waded ashore and started up the rocks The trail was easy to follohere the thin soil had been compacted between boulders, and where steps had been cut in the steeper places Half-way to the stack they paused to take a breather and look back Ben atching the the stack So far there had been no sign of life in the place, but as they approached its base Jazz spied ed Zek into cover andjumbled rocks ’If those creatures up there had rifles,’ he explained, ’they could pick us off like flies’

’But they haven’t, or they would have already,’ Manolis pointed out ’They could have got us as we beached the boat, or even as we engaged the Lazarus’

’But they have been watching us,’ said Zek ’I could feel the for us up there,’ Jazz squinted at the rearing, dazzling white walls

’We’re skating on very thin ice,’ Darcy told the others ’I can feel h’

A shout echoed up to the up the incline after them ’Hold it!’ he yelled ’Wait!’

He approached to within thirty or forty yards, then fell back against a boulder in the shade and rested a while And when he had recovered: ’I’ve been looking at the fortifications throughvery wrong The clih - up those ancient stone steps there - but it’s not It’s a lie, a trap!’

Jazz went back and met Ben half-way, and took the binoculars from him ’How do you mean, a trap?’

’It’s like when I listen to a police intervieith a suspect perp,’ Ben answered ’I can tell right off if he’s lying even if I don’t knohat the lie is So don’t askup there, just take my word for it that it is!’

’OK,’ said Jazz ’Go on back down to the boat From here on in we step wary’

When Ben had started back, Jazz looked through the binoculars at the zig-zagging, precipitous stone stairway from the base of the stack to the ancient walls Close to the top, a ju inous edge by a barrier of heavy-duty wirebetween deeply bedded iron staves Cables, al down froloo moments Demolition wire? It could be

He rejoined the others where they waited ’I think we’re walking right into one,’ he said ’Or ill be if we start up those steps’ He explained his

Darcy took the binoculars from him, stuck his head out fro rock ’You could be right , it’s all wrong’

’No e can cut those cables,’ Jazz said "Those things up there have the advantage They could spot ato make it up those steps’

’Listen,’ said Manolis, who had also been studying the route up the rock ’Why don’t we play the for it, and make them waste their ambush’

’How?’ said Darcy

’We start on up,’ said Manolis, ’but we are stringing it out a little, and one of us is staying well ahead of the rest The path turns a corner just underneath the cave with the boulders And just before the corner, there is this big hole - er, this concavity? - in the face of the cliff So, one of us has already turned the corner, and the others look all set to follow him The creatures up in the fort are in a quandary: do they press the button and get the one man for sure, or do they wait for the others to cooes faster, past the point ofon! But they only just show the of the climb The vampires can’t wait; they have missed one of us and so must try for the other three; they press the button Boom!’

Jazz took it up: ’The three at the rear have noed theuys on top they’re expecting what happens next As the charge blows those rocks out of the cave higher up, so the three skip back round the corner and into the scoop in the face of the cliff’

’Is how I see it,’ said Manolis, nodding, ’yes’

’Or,’ said Darcy, his face suddenly pale, ’we leave it till tonight, and -’