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  An End in Ice

  By Rachel Ford

  CHAPTER ONE

  I am a son of Romania, and this is my story. My name is Radu. I was born in a little village in the eastern Carpathians, a place called Vale, sometime after the harvest in the year of our Lord 1425. My parents were people of that village: simple, good folk, who made their living off the land. My father was called Petru, and my mother Ioana. I was the second of two sons born to them, and older than the four sisters, Adriana, Maria, Irina, and Sophia, who followed.

  Some men are born with great wit and alacrity of mind; and some men are guided through life by a dim stupidity that no amount of learning or time seems to mend. I was neither so fortunate nor so unlucky. I was given a common share of good sense, and no more than the average wit. Nor was I singularly gifted in any other particular. I was no more the fastest runner amongst my peers than the slowest; neither the best hunter nor the worst; not the handsomest or the ugliest lad in Vale. But where I was ordinary, my elder brother, Pavel, was exceptional.

  He was the handsomest, the cleverest, the fastest, the surest footed and the most skilled. There was not a thing beyond his skill, or a feat he could not perform. And while this excess of perfection inevitably gave rise to a measure of jealousy, it was not long lasting or severe in nature. Pavel was not a proud man, nor a boaster, but rather a generous friend and a kind brother. No slights in his favor would long overpower the good will he engendered. We were, in short, fast friends as well as brothers. And yet, it was that very friendship that cost Pavel his life.

  It was shortly after the harvest, and around the time of my eighteenth birthday. Shorter days had been forewarning of it, and winter had been heralding her own arrival some days already. We had seen frigid gusts and thin layers of snow for a few days, but summer was not yet ready to surrender her dominance. For every dusting of snow, the sun would shine bright and sure the next day.

  Such a time is ideal for catching game: the frost and cold have destroyed many of the surer sources of food, so hungry animals must be out longer and venture further than they are otherwise necessarily wont to do; but the temperature has not plunged so low that the hunter dares not venture abroad.

  Such was the day that Pavel and I set out. The evening before had left the woods near Vale under a thin layer of snow, and though the day was warmer than the night had been, it was not warm enough to melt the snowfall.

  “It will be winter proper soon,” Pavel observed.

  I agreed. “We'll not have many chances like today, I should think.”

  “No. But the hunting is good, at least if Vasile's fortune is anything to go by.”

  I nodded. Vasile was a friend of ours, about my own age, and with the help of his brother he had brought home a pair of does just the day before. If the truth were to be known, this was as strong a motivation to me as the need to set meats by for winter.

  And though we were eager, and though the weather, by rights, should have made the area's game more desperate and easier to find, for hours we came up empty-handed. That, of course, should have been my first hint. As I say, however, I was not born the cleverest of men. And so, when my brother raised concerns, I waved them away. “Go home, then. But I'll not return with nothing to show for it. Not after a day out here.”

  At first, Pavel seemed unswayed by the argument, but in the end the fear of seeming ridiculous won out. Or perhaps it was the idea of leaving me to my own devices when he was anxious about the hunt that persuaded him.

  “Alright,” he agreed at length, “but only for a while longer. Then we go, empty-handed or not.”

  I took my victory, but without any real conviction that I would abide by the terms if the occasion arose. Game was plentiful roundabouts, and we would be a laughing stock if we came home after a day spent hunting with nothing to show for it. I would not be bested by Vasile and Alexandru, or Stefan two days before and the great buck he had brought home.

  But as the day grew longer with no results, I began to feel that I would be content even with a paltry compensatory prize so long as I did not have to return home with nothing. I was at the point of settling for a turkey or even a grouse when I beheld it.

  A stag, a great, noble creature, with a vast array of antlers, so perfect in his making that I could well have believed him escaped from the gardens of Eden. “Pavel!” I whispered, and my voice was hoarse with anticipation. “There.” My hands had instinctively reached for an arrow, and I strung it without a second thought. A moment later it was on its deadly way.

  The stag must have heard the siren hiss as it flew through the air, for he looked up an instant before it struck. But he was too late. Though he had moved to bolt, a heavy thud signaled that the arrow had struck flesh. I inwardly cursed as I saw that the tip had pierced a few inches past the target – I had intended a perfect, clean shot to the heart, and at a range of fifty yards, as we were now, I would have had no difficulty, had the creature not moved.

  Still, the arrow embedded itself amongst vital organs, and I knew it was a lethal hit. “I got him!”

  The stag, as if to confirm my proclamation, went down. Whooping with delight, Pavel and I rushed forward.

  But then, in a clatter of hooves and a rush of blood and fur, he was on his feet again. “Hell's bells!” In another instant, he was racing through the brush, away from us. Pavel loosed an arrow, and it missed. By time I had reached for one, the stag was out of sight.

  “Come on!” I was as quick after him as limbs chilled by hours in such temperatures would manage. But Pavel held me back.

  I don't know what instinct drove him, what sense guided him, but he shook his head. “It's nearly dusk, Radu. Let him go.”

  Exhilaration and anger mixed in me at that, and I shook free of him. “Damn you, Pavel, are you mad?” Then, an unjust thought entered my mind, and, angry as I was, I uttered it. “You just wish you spotted him first,” I snapped. Not even the expression that crossed his features – an expression that would have chastened and silenced a wiser man – stopped me. “Go on,” I sneered. “Go home. But I'm going to claim what's mine.” I turned my back on him.

  But he did not go home. I heard him, a moment after I left, following behind. Part of me regretted my words, hasty and arrogant as they had been, but I would not be stopped to apologize. Pride would not allow it – nor, I told myself, would the hour, for it was indeed getting late, as Pavel had said.

  Still, the sun had not set, and there was ample light by which to follow the trail. Even had there been less light, such a trail, crimson blood against white snow, twigs smashed and broken, would have been hard to miss.

  Time wore on, and still the stag ran. He was out of sight, but every now and again the sounds of a great creature crashing through the undergrowth gave proof beyond the trail we followed of his nearness.

  “Will he never run out of blood?!” I wondered in exasperation as we ran. I was cold, and wearying quickly. I did not relish the idea of exhausting myself before having to carry this creature back to our village.

  “We should go home,” my brother urged. “It is almost dark. We can return and find him tomorrow.”

  That was less palatable to me, though, than continuing the chase. “We'd never find him,” I argued. “Not before the wolves did.” By now my breath was coming in ragged gasps, and forming great, crystallized puffs of moisture that hung in the air.

  “Even so,” Pavel argued. “It's better than staying out here.”

  His persuasions were altogether too late, though. We had broken onto a clearing, and there he was: the most beautiful stag ever beheld by mortal eyes. Or so he seemed to me. The feeling seized me that I, common, unexceptional Radu, had killed this creature. His slumped, unmoving form, laying limp in the center of the clearing, w
as no less majestic than it had been standing. In my heart, I was convinced that never had a hunter prevailed against a more admirable quarry than mine.

  I did not even hear my brother's cautions, though now, thinking back, they ring heavy in my ears. I went forward.

  It had started to snow again, though I could not say when. But what struck me was the mist that was also present here, in this glade. For half a moment, I pondered the phenomenon. I could not recall ever having seen both snowfall and such heavy mist together. But what were the subtleties of nature, beside the kill that I had but to reach out and take?

  I went on. The clearing was not large, and I crossed it easily. The mist seemed to grow heavier as I moved in, and did not dissipate at my motion as such bodies are wont to do. Still, I had a good idea of where the deer had fallen, and, knife at the ready lest the creature have some last little bit of fight in him, I went for it.

  My wonder, I think, is easily conceivable when I found the spot empty; and the dread that followed should be no less so, as all of my brother's protests and warnings crashed upon my ears. “Pavel!” I cried, a panic that I could explain seizing me. “We have been the butt of some absurd jest: there is nothing here, Pavel. We must leave this place.”

  I was already retreating, heading back for the edge of the wood where my brother remained, when a Thing – I cannot describe it, even now, without recalling my uncomprehending terror – rose.

  It was a shape, like a man, but rising from the mist itself; a horrible Thing, with eyes that burnt red as it looked at me, and fangs that glistened in some obscure light, whether the last touch of daylight or beams of moonlight I cannot say.

  It was the face, as I have described it, that I saw first, but then I took in the rest of It. The body was only half formed, rising out of the mist, and, literally, forming from it. Terror, more even than those hellish orbs of eyes had inspired, struck me. This Thing was not a man, not even a proper devil, but a creature that took solid shape out such an immaterial thing as mist.

  I could not scream, or even think. I wanted to yell for my brother, to warn him to flee before it was too late. But fear – no, that is too mild a word: mind-numbing terror – paralyzed me.

  Then the monster struck. Had my wits been at hand, they would have proved no match for the Creature. A rush of tendrils of mist and trailing fabric, and I was down.

  I could hear, distantly, Pavel calling for me in alarm, but one sound was louder in my ears than any other. Like the crashing of waves against a shoreline, I heard the pounding of my pulse in my head, blood beating against my temples.

  Then I felt a strange, sharp pain in my throat, and a feeling, like liquid fire bursting from behind a dam. There was a relief, almost, in my head, as the thunder diminished; but my veins burnt, and I realized at once – rather more slowly than a wiser man would have – the horror of my fate.

  The Creature was draining me of blood. His cold, hard lips had seized onto my throat, and they were even now greedily siphoning away my life.

  I knew now what the Thing was. Vampyr. Devil. Hellspawn. It was the legend my people told, of men who walked at night and drank the blood of innocents. It was why the old women crossed themselves when shadows flitted by, why the old men prayed the rosary at the sight of bats. But it was myth. No one in a hundred years had claimed to see such a creature. Only the mad and the elderly talked of them now.

  Thus my brain, more feeble than usual in its attempts at ratiocination, reasoned. But the evidence of my own eyes, the encroaching horror of death that invaded my senses, told me otherwise.

  I whimpered, remembering that I still held a blade. I tried to lift the weapon, but to no avail. I could not find the strength to do it, and the mist seemed to weigh heavily in my lungs when I tried.

  Then, of a sudden, the viselike grasp that held me broke, and the monster's lips left my throat. A shriek split the night.

  I blinked with unseeing eyes, until my vision cleared. “Pavel,” I managed to breathe. It was indeed my brother who had freed me, and who had caused the Creature to scream in such a blood curdling fashion. He had driven an arrow through the Thing's back until the tip came out the other side, dripping blood.

  The mist was gone now, and I could see the whole of the glade. The vampire had retreated, and moved unsteadily away from us. Pavel glanced between us, me and the monster, as if trying to make up his mind as to what to do next.

  “Help me, Pavel,” I pleaded. My mind was yet in the thralls of terror, but God forgive me for my selfish self-pity at that moment – because I never will. “He – It – tried to drink the very blood from my veins, Pavel.”

  That seemed to decide my brother, for, with a shudder, he nodded. “You're safe now, Radu. I think I killed it, or as good as. Come, we must be quick.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  How long we ran, I do not know. I only know it seemed like an eternity passed. I feared my lungs would rend for want of air as my veins burned for lack of blood, but terror drove me on; and when I could go no further on my own, Pavel dragged me.

  I had begun to hope, to believe, that we might make it back to Vale alive. We had seen no trace of the monster, after all. And so much time had gone by. He must be dead, I thought. I might have even said so aloud. I don't remember clearly. By the time we had reached the spot where we'd first seen the stag, I was all but delirious. But what is uncertain in my memories from that night, I know from what followed.

  The moon was high and almost full, a silver orb half obscured by falling snow. Our shadows danced between the black shadows of trees as we ran, and our breath came and went in great clouds. Strange as it is, these were the things I remarked; these are the things that stick with me to this day.

  Then a third shadow joined ours. At first we saw wings, and then the wings, or the shadowy form of them, merged into a humanoid figure. “Vampire!” I murmured, crossing myself.

  Pavel set me down, and turned to the creature. “Go, Radu. Go!”

  He had drawn an arrow in one hand, and a dagger in the other, and was facing the Creature. There was no arrow in him – It – any longer. Whatever injury Pavel had inflicted was gone. The idea struck me with a measure of terror, and I moved, as best as I was able, to my brother's side.

  The Creature sneered at us with thin, fleering lips over long, glistening teeth, and I recognized the same malevolence I had seen earlier. “Pavel,” I said. I tugged at his sleeve, as if to pull him away from the danger, and fought at the same time to retain my footing. My head reeled as if I was drunk, though, of course, I hadn't touched a sip.

  The vampire's smile widened, and such an evil, leering smirk sent shivers up my back. “Get out of here!” Pavel shouted. “Leave us alone, and I'll let you live, Monster.”

  Whether the tremble I heard in my brother's voice was the product of my own imagination or a reality, I cannot say. But the monster was not swayed. He stood, for a moment, and then he pounced. His movements were swift and sure, a hunter going in for the kill. Pavel was the best hunter I knew, and for a flickering moment I hoped he might prevail against this devil.

  But the Thing moved quicker than he, and with more deadly intent. I heard a loud snap, like the sound a tree would make if broke in two, and Pavel cried out. His arm, the one with which he had wielded a dagger, was limp and oddly twisted. He turned, though, to face our foe, who stood behind us now. I wondered that my brother had not simply shot him, as he had done the first time; but I noticed now, though I had not seen it before, that his bow was lost somewhere. I realized at the same time that mine was long gone as well.

  He held an arrow, and he stood in a defensive guard, or as defensive as he could make with one useless arm. I could see the pain and fear in his features; and, again, the malice in the Thing's. It will seem odd, perhaps, but in that moment, when my brother and the vampire stood face to face in a snowy wood, while my head reeled and my senses danced, time seemed to hold fast. I saw the monster clearly, as I had not had an opportunity to study him before. I s
aw the pale skin, the sloping brow, the aquiline nose, the flaring nostrils, the thin, hard mouth. I realized as I surveyed those features that he was, or at least had been, a son of Romania as much I was. That, more than anything that had happened before, more even that the cold hatred that emanated from those dead eyes, filled me with a loathing, a contempt and hatred that I could not contain. I cannot describe it, even now, except as a feeling of betrayal, but much more than that.

  I darted for the blade that had fallen from my brother's smashed hand. It glinted silver against the snow, within reach it seemed to me, and I thought, in that moment of madness, that I might be able to destroy the monster with it. Pavel must have seen my movement, for he stepped between me and the creature. But the vampire too had seen it, and he set on my brother.

  I grabbed the blade, and with a head that swam lunged for the Thing. It was on the ground, now, on top of Pavel. My brother's good arm was crushed in a grasp that squeezed so tight it seemed like to break his very bones, and there was in his eyes an expression that I shall never forget. Terror. Cold, hopeless terror.

  I swung the blade downward, clumsily, for the thing's back. I hoped to imitate Pavel's initial success, but my aim was off – where he had come close to the heart, I was inches away. But the blade never struck. The monster, without even drawing his repulsive teeth from my brother's throat, swatted me away.

  I say swat, for, by the movement of his body, that is all it was: the sort of irritated swat one gives an annoying insect. But the power in that blow sent me flying, not falling, backwards.

  I hit something – a tree, I think it must have been – and for a moment, felt pain. Then I fell, and felt a new sensation. I had landed on something, a stump or a rock, and it struck sharply in my back. For a moment, I felt a sharp pain running the length of my spine. Then I felt nothing.

  I do not mean to imply that I lost consciousness, or awareness. I mean, literally, that I felt nothing. I could hear the beat of my heart, see the bloody butchery before me, but I could feel nothing from the middle of my back downwards. Not the icy ground beneath me, not the broken bones I was sure had resulted from that fall, not even the snowflakes as they fell on me.