Doorstep to Hell
The wind howled up from the depths, bringing a spray of snow hard as sand into their eyes as they slid, jumped and sometimes fell down the mountainside. The wolves had followed them over the peak, even after killing the horses left for them. The wolves knew what they were hunting.
The end of the slope and the beginning of a sheer drop into the blackness brought a halt to their descent. Far below, the tops of the thick conifers swayed in the wind. Egan looked over the edge, and said to Saturn, “I’ll be the bait this time. Make sure you don’t miss!” Saturn merely nodded in acknowledgement, and dropped over the side, holding onto the edge of the cliff with one hand. The other clutched his sword.
The wolves came panting and crashing down the slope, three great brown beasts with yellow eyes that glowed in the night. They paused only for a moment before their leader barked a command, and they lunged toward the vampire standing before them.
As the wolves closed in, a shape moved behind them in the blink of an eye. Saturn struck one wolf, severing its leg, and crashed into the other two, sending them over the cliff into the abyss. The wounded animal roared and clamped its jaws onto Egan’s cloak. As the Lasombra struggled to free himself, the Brujah grasped the hairy creature with both hands and heaved it up and over his companion. The wolf would not let go, even as it began to fall.
As the heavy wolf tumbled toward the trees, Egan lost his footing and went over the side after it, still attempting to free himself from its jaws. Saturn stepped to the edge of the cliff, and stabbed outward with his blade, impaling Egan through the knee. Egan and the wolf collided with the rocks below the edge and hung there, both writhing in agony as Saturn lay on his chest, holding them both aloft by the blade of his sword.
Long minutes passed. Slowly, the wolf’s struggles subsided until it finally went limp and released it’s death grip on Egan’s cloak. Only then could Saturn pull his companion back up to safety.
“Those beasts are getting larger the further into the mountains we go.” Egan winced as he straightened the bones in his leg and forced them to heal.
Saturn scanned the horizon. The surrounding peaks were black silhouettes under the pale moon. “Someone knows we are here. Four packs of wolves in the same night is four too many. Even if they were ordinary wolves.” His gaze focused on a distant valley beyond the next ridge. “Do you see that light?” He pointed for his companion.
“No, but I don’t have your eyes. What is it?”
“I think it is a beacon. Perhaps a signal fire on top of a tower. And it is in our path.”
“I’m ready.” Egan stiffly rose to his feet, still favoring his wounded leg slightly. “Remember to tell me if you smell any more wolves.”
Saturn sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose. The wind carried something not to his liking. I am sure that it was not I that he smelled, for since the night when we departed from Zara, they to the east and I to the west for perhaps an hour before turning back to follow them, always kept myself unseen, unheard and downwind from my unknowing servants. There was something about this place that had always set outsiders on edge. Perhaps it was I, in a sense, after all.
The pair walked and climbed three more hours through the snow before crossing a frozen river and eventually reaching the base of a long, gradual slope uphill. As they continued, the dark outlines of huts became visible. The light was a bonfire, burning on the ground in the middle of the hamlet. Egan and Saturn looked at each other and approached the settlement warily.
As they neared the first of the outlying structures, a woman stepped from the shadows into their path. Saturn drew his sword and Egan’s hands were on his knives. The woman wore a long fur cloak. Her dark hair hung in braids that swayed in the wind to her waist. Her face was foreign to them, like the Russians, but was undeniably beautiful. The three of them regarded each other, and none drew a breath.
Finally the woman spoke, but neither Saturn nor Egan could understand her words. Then she spoke again, this time in heavily accented Latin. “Crusaders, you must be. Welcome to Szas Zyaros. My father has been expecting you.” Without another word, she turned and began walking up the hill toward the center of the village.
“Excuse me, my lady,” Egan said as he followed. “How do you know who we are?” Saturn walked beside him, holding his sword down at his side and looking around as if expecting an ambush any moment.
“Who else would you be? Only foreigners would dare to travel the mountains in these times of war.” The woman did not look back, but led them onto a track of muddy snow, which was what passed as the settlement’s only ‘street’.
“A time of war? Surely you don’t mean the crusade, which has barely begun—“ Egan broke off, and stopped as Saturn put his hand on his shoulder. To the side of the path, a wooden pole had been driven into the ground. The pole stood twice the height of a man, and was sharpened at the top. Something wriggled on it.
Impaled on this pole was what once a man. His limbs had been severed, and his flesh was charred and black. Strips of burned skin hung off him like torn rags, and his face was a slashed ruin. The pole entered his body at the groin and exited through the small of his back. Although his throat had been torn out, his mouth was open wide in a silent scream, and he twisted his head from side to side in a feeble attempt to free himself.
The woman walked past this condemned vampire without a glance. “You have not heard tales of the usurpers, who have invaded these lands and make war with the Voivodes? I am surprised. You are lucky to have made it here unnoticed. My father’s village is neutral ground to the Voivodes and the armies of the forest, but the usurpers are always trying to capture our people.”
Saturn and Egan looked at each other again, and made a soundless agreement not to mention the wolves.
They continued to follow her, studying the doomed figure as they passed. When they looked forward again, Egan saw the other poles. Six more wretches clung to unlife along the path, all too drained and weak to do anything but stare at those passing them in a voiceless plea. Egan tore his gaze from them and focused on the destination ahead, and it was then that he smelled the bonfire.
In the center of the hamlet, a crowd of ragged mortals was gathered around the flames. Some wept, others laughed in madness. Most merely stared into the flames, which were consuming a pile of bodies. The woman passed through the crowd, taking a wide detour around the bonfire, as did the two crusaders. All of the mortals wore filthy rags. Most looked to be on the brink of starvation and many had the milky eyes of some plague.
As they left the fire and the decrepit villagers behind, the crusaders looked ahead to where the woman was leading them, and both were startled. Squatting at the top of the hill and surrounded by a stone wall, was a house of dark stone covered in ornate carvings. The front gate of the enclosure stood open, and two guards held crossed spears to block the entrance. As the woman approached them, the guards straightened their weapons to allow passage.
From the house, there was a dull clatter as one of the wooden shutters on the second floor opened, and something, large, dark and too quick for the eye to follow, flew out and upward into the sky with a ghastly flapping. Both crusaders flinched and drew up their weapons involuntarily at this sight, but the apparition was already gone.
The woman continued walking up to the front door of the house, which swung open at her approach. A man stood in the threshold, donned in a wolf fur cloak that gleamed white as the snow. A red peaked cap bedecked with jewels rested on his head. The woman kneeled before him, taking his hand and pressing it to her cold lips.
“Well met, my friends. You have come a long way from Italy and Saxony.” The man’s Latin was flawless. “Come inside and let us discuss this small business of defeating the devil in hell.”
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