The High-Tech Knight aocs-2 Page 14

  We traveled across the Vistula flood plain with Annastashia and Krystyana chattering constantly about all the wonders they had seen in Cracow. When we started climbing the foothills in the afternoon, the previously perfect weather began to cloud over. In a few hours it began to sprinkle on our expensive clothes.

  "I'd thought that we could make it to my Uncle Felix's manor today' " Sir Vladimir said. "But we haven't come as far as I'd hoped and I'm loath to get wet in a rainstorm the new finery our ladies made. I know of caves in these hills. I played in them when I was a boy. What would you think of making for one of them?"

  "Fine by me," I said. "We have my old backpack with us. I can treat you all to some freeze-dried stew."

  Sir Vladimir found a cave in short order. There were bat droppings near the mouth. Bats are common throughout the Carpathian Mountains. They're all harmless insectivores and there are so many of them that you can go for weeks without swatting a bug.

  It was a four-yard climb to the cavemouth, but over easy rock, almost a stepladder. We couldn't get the horses inside, but a summer shower wouldn't hurt them. I set up the dome tent and stowed our baggage in it while Sir Vladimir unloaded and hobbled the horses. Anna wouldn't tolerate hobbling, but she was so loyal that there was never any worry about her wandering off.

  Annastashia and Krystyana collected a night's supply of firewood and soon we were sitting in a semicircle around the fire, facing outward, waiting for the stew to start bubbling in my aluminum cooking kit. Krystyana was on my left and Annastashia and Sir Vladimir were to my right.

  We were settled just in time, for soon lightning and thunder were crashing and rain was coming down in sheets. I've always loved thunderstorms when I don't have to be in them, and the view from our mountain cave was spectacular. But soon the show was over and the rain almost ended.

  We started telling stories, a great art form in the Middle Ages but one that has been almost lost in modem times. Krystyana told a hilarious tale about how her uncle bought a pig, but came home with a cow. I rambled on for an hour about nine-fingered Frodo. A modem man may lack storytelling skills, but he sure knows a lot of plotlines.

  With dusk the bats rushed out in a clicking, squeaking swirl. The girls, unfamiliar with the harmless creatures, started screaming.

  Sir Vladimir took this as the cue for his story, which was about a vampire. His basic story line, that of a man who was of — the living dead, who hated sunlight and water, who drank human blood and made his victims into creatures like himself, was much like a modern movie plot.

  Vladimir's flashy storytelling style, with many gesticulations and facial expressions, added a lot to the natural setting, for Count Dracula had lived in these same Carpathian Mountains, only farther south.

  What's more, Sir Vladimir adamantly claimed that every word of his tale was true and his eye didn't have the wink and twinkle it had when he was fibbing. He actually believed it and had the girls doing so. While 1, of course, am above such things, I confess he had my heart thumping.

  As he was approaching the climax of the story, he suddenly stopped and looked behind me. The expression on his face was one of pure horror and I remember thinking that in the twentieth century he would have gone to Hollywood.

  There was a' shuffling noise and I wondered briefly how he had arranged the sound effects. Then I saw that the girls too were horror-stricken and actresses they weren't.

  I looked over my right shoulder and made what was perhaps one of the biggest mistakes of my life.

  A man was coming toward me, totally naked with skin as white as bone china. Spittle and foam were dribbling from his mouth, his throat was convulsing and his chest was quivering. He was reaching toward me!

  I was horrified and frightened. With no rational thought in my head, I drew my sword and with one motion slashed at him.

  I cut him entirely in half at the belt line. The two pieces fell to the ground at a crazy angle, the throat twitched a few more times and stopped.

  Instantly, a new horror struck me. I had just murdered a man, a crazy hermit perhaps but a fellow human being, for no other reason than that I was scared. I had become so callous in this brutal century that killing had become a reflex.

  Sir Vladimir was the first to come to life. He grabbed a piece of firewood, sharpened it frantically with his belt knife and began beating it into the chest of the dead body with a rock.

  This desecration of the dead brought me back to my senses.

  "For the love of God, Sir Vladimir, stop that!"

  "It must be done, Sir Conrad! It's still alive! It still can kill us!" There was more than a hint of panic in his voice.

  There was no obvious way of stopping him short of violence. Sir Vladimir was swinging the rock with all his strength but forcing a wooden stick through a human ribcage-especially one that is open at the bottom-is no easy feat. The intestines and liver were squirted out onto the cave floor, and all of us were splattered with blood.

  I stared at the man I had murdered. Slowly something dawned on me. The foam at the mouth. The white skin. The convulsions. "Rabies," I said. "RABIES! Sir Vladimir, get away from that body! That stuff is infected! It's contagious! We could all end up like that poor bastard!"

  "Not any more, Sir Conrad. I've done it." He stood up from his grisly work, a stump of wood projecting brutally below the corpse's left nipple.

  "Trust me on this! If ever in your life you take me On faith, do it now! That's a virus, a disease, like leprosy or the plague ' We must clean this blood and dirt off of us!"

  "Just what would you have us do?"

  "We've got to get out of here! We've got to get ourselves clean!" I started shoving them toward the cavemouth.

  "Sir Conrad!" Krystyana said, "It's raining out there! Our clothes!"

  "Damn your clothes! This rain is a Godsend! Get out there or I'll throw you out, You too, Annastashia! Move!"

  They scurried out, but Sir Vladimir stood staring at me.

  "Sir Vladimir, please!"

  He paused a moment, then said, "Right."

  I tossed our possessions over the edge and followed them down to the ground. The rain was coming in buckets again and the lightning was flashing. Both were welcome, by me at least. In total darkness and without water, the task would have been impossible. Anna heard the commotion and came running up. "Back, girl! Rabies!"

  She nodded her head and backed off.

  "The rest of you, strip!" I shouted above the storm. "Hang your clothes over the bushes where they'll get rinsed out. Wash yourselves. Krystyana, break out my soap!"

  I bullied them into sudsing down twice in the bone-chilling rain. Finally, we gave the girls the tent and Sir Vladimir and I hunkered down as best we could under a tree.

  "Sir Conrad, was this really necessary?"

  "Yes."

  "It's some sort of superstition among your people?"

  "It's not a superstition. I've told you before, most diseases are caused by germs, tiny animals, smaller than you can see. That poor bastard in the cave was infested with them."

  "Sir Conrad, you've also taught me the scientific method, and told me never to believe anything that I could not prove with my own senses. With my own eyes I just saw a vampire. I touched it. I felt it. I smelled it. Can you doubt that this is true?"

  "You certainly saw something, but what you saw was the victim of a disease."

  "As to these germs, well, to be scientific about it, I've never seen one. If you ever build that microscope that once you talked of, perhaps I will. For now, I know what I saw, I know what I did."

  "As to this chilly midnight bathing party, well, you are a stranger here and I was only being polite and going along with your customs as you have so often gone along with ours."

  "Okay. Have it your way. Your scientific deductions were satisfied by pounding a stake into the vampire's heart and my superstitions required that we ritually bathe off the devil-viruses."

  "That's not what's bothering me."

  "What bothe
rs me, Sir Conrad, is sitting here wet and naked in the cold rain, with only male company, when but a short time ago I was most comfortably situated with my love at my side."

  "Well, I'm sitting right next to you."

  "More's the pity."

  We were silent a long while. Then I said, "I think we were both right about the man in the cave. Most legends have some basis in fact. The symptoms of rabies are a lot like the way you described a vampire. The fear of light and water. the white skin. And if one bites you, you'll certainly become one. I think your vampire is my rabies victim. Two names for the same thing."

  "If you say so. How long does your ritual require before we can go back to the cave?"

  "It's not a ritual and we don't go back, ever."

  "Right. It is not a superstition. The cave is merely permanently defiled and unclean."

  It was a long night and I spent it soul searching. I suppose I did the man a favor, giving him a quick death. Rabies is a rough way to die. Maybe he would have bitten one of us and maybe I saved one of the others from joining his sad fate. There was nothing I could do to cure the disease.

  But this was all rationalization after the fact. In truth, I had murdered a man because he frightened me.

  The lands we rode through the next morning were cheerful, despite the depressed mood of our party. The fields were well tended and soon to give a good harvest, the peasant, cottages were big and well built and most had brightly painted trim. The people were well fed, half of them were fat, and all were fairly well clothed. And, everybody bustled, as if whatever they were doing right Id then was the most important thing in the world.

  That sort of attitude is contagious and we had cheered up some by the time we entered Uncle Felix's manor in our second-best clothes. I had to call him that even though he was Sir Vladimir's uncle and not mine. He was the kind of man who is everybody's uncle. Big, bluff, crude, and wholesome, he radiated good cheer and good wishes.

  "That you, Vlad boy? You big enough for girls already? Pretty ones, too! And a giant! You must be Stargard! Welcome! Mama! Go kill a fat calf for supper! We got company! Iwo! Iwo — you lazy peasant! Come take care of the horses! Well, you people? Get down!"

  A little intimidating at first, but you couldn't help liking him. Soon dozens of people were rushing about, our horses unloaded and put in a barn, and our baggage opened out. Some women tsk-tsked at our wet finery and took it away, while the four of us were treated to an impromptu dinner for twelve.

  Uncle Felix had already eaten, but sat down to join us and ate enough for six men just to be, sociable.

  "So, boys. You are out adventuring? Have you killed any dragons?"

  "No dragons, Uncle Felix," Sir Vladimir said. "But we killed five Crossmen in an open fight and we dispatched a vampire last night."

  "Another vampire in my hills, eh? That's the second one this year. I'll have to warn the peasants. Tell me about the Crossmen."

  Sir Vladimir launched into his tale, which grew better each time he told it. He never exactly lied, you under stand, but the embroidery around the edges got constantly brighter.

  "Whew! The duke may like it, but the duke is not your liege lord." He waved — a chubby finger at Sir Vladimir. "You know, your papa is not going to be happy about this!"

  "I know. I was wondering if you could intercede for me. "

  "Maybe. But it's too close to harvest for me to leave now. After that, well, maybe the trial will settle everything. But if he's still mad at you at Christmastime, I'll go talk to him."

  "Now you, big fellow-I've heard so many things about you that I don't believe that I'm thinking I should have believed some of them after all. Tell me what you know."

  "That's quite an order, Uncle Felix-excuse me, I mean Sir Felix."

  "Uncle Felix is okay. Everybody calls me that. Never could figure out why. I heard that when you came here, you were walking through the woods with nothing but what you could carry on your back. With no weapons and no armor and living wherever you stopped for the night. And you did this just for sport. That true?"

  "Well, yes."

  "Then you're either a very brave man or a damn fool."

  "I don't think I'm either of those. It's a common sport where I come from. We're mostly city dwellers and you need to get back to nature every now and then. The equipment we use is very lightweight. You can actually carry everything you need."

  "But no weapons?"

  "Uh… weapons are frowned upon. But they're really not needed. Most animals will leave you alone if you don't frighten them."

  "Animals, maybe. What about men?"

  "What about them? I wasn't looking for any trouble."

  "Trouble finds you in the woods. What about thieves?"

  "There aren't that many of them. Look, I shouldn't be talking about this. I made a vow."

  "As you wish, Stargard. What about all these fights you been in?"

  "Well, four times I've been attacked by crazy people on the road. I defended myself. What more is there to say?"

  There was no question of our proceeding that day. Uncle Felix wouldn't have stood for it. It was raining again and anyway, Sacz was a full day's ride away. It was best to leave in the morning.

  I never quite left the table that afternoon. With dinner completed, more beer was brought, with a few snacks: — sausages, cheeses, breads, cold pies, preserved meats, smoked fish, puddings, spreads, pickled fish, pickled cabbages, pickled pickles, and a vast pile of etceteras.

  It was Tuesday, but somehow a holiday had been declared. Maybe it was the rain and maybe it was the fact of our visit. Or maybe these people always acted that way.

  Chessboards and checker sets were broken out, as well as a half dozen board games I'd never seen before. There was Nine Man Morris, which had elements of tic-tac-toe and Chinese checkers. There was Fox and Geese, a chase-and-capture game, and Cows and Leopards, a vastly more complicated variant. There was Goose, a race game.

  Furthermore, every game seemed to have a skill variant and a chancy gambling variant. Uncle Felix got me into a game of Byzantine chess, which was played with normal chesspieces but on a circular board. He further insisted that we play it with dice. You had to roll a one to move a pawn, a two to move a knight, and so on.

  If none of the moves permitted by the dice was possible by the rules of chess, you lost your turn; if you were in check, you had to roll the right dice to get yourself out of check or you lost your turn. Then your opponent had to roll the right dice to take your king to win. This resulted in some very strange games and I'm glad I wouldn't bet him. Anyway, I think his dice were loaded.

  Sitting and playing board games suited my mood, but Sir Vladimir was feeling far more energetic. He had Krystyana, Annastashia, and a half dozen or so of Uncle Felix's ladies playing something called The Last Couple in Hell. I never quite figured out the rules, but it involved a lot of running around and screaming.

  People wandered in and out, bringing things, eating things, and taking things. At least three conversations were going on at any one time and the noise never stopped. Children and dogs wandered through and were petted, spanked, or ignored as the case required. Uncle Felix almost never used a proper name. He just pointed and yelled, and things happened.

  I never figured out who were family and who were servants; perhaps they weren't too clear about it themselves. When Uncle Felix yelled, people jumped, but not always the same people who jumped last time. The girl who brought in a steaming plate of braised meat promptly sat down with us to help us eat it. Later, Uncle Felix pinched her butt; up till then I'd been sure that he'd been patting his daughters and pinching the servants.

  Try to imagine a friendly, loosely organized madhouse with sound effects. Intimidating, but you grew to like it.

  After six hours of continuous eating and drinking, Uncle Felix got up, belched, and announced that supper was served.

  They really had killed a fatted calf and two men brought it in on a spit. Having already done a full day of heroic tre
ncher duty, the best I could do was dawdle at my food. Uncle Felix looked at me, genuinely hurt.

  "There's something wrong with the food?"

  We were back in our best clothes, only slightly the worse for wear, the next morning. The sky was gray and we were all still logy from too much to eat and drink the day before, so we were mostly silent on the way to Sacz.

  The land and climate around Sacz were identical to Uncle Felix's, but the living was far worse. The leader sets the tone of an organization, and the tone of Sacz was bad. Half the fields were unplanted and I don't just mean those lying fallow. The forests were encroaching on the farmland. Those fields that had been planted were rank with weeds.

  The cottages were hovels and the people were listless, lackadaisical, uncaring. You had the feeling that they thought that nothing they could do would improve things, that nothing really mattered. Most of them looked underfed.

  In Poland, every man, even a sworn peasant, had the Right of Departure. If things got bad, he could sell out or abandon whatever property he owned and move elsewhere. It was a little like the bankruptcy laws of modem times. Well, around Sacz, anyone with any gumption had already left.

  I decided that hunting was so important to Baron Przemysl because he was such a poor manager his lands and people would not produce enough to support him; wild game was the only thing that he had to eat, so he was hard on poachers.

  Baron Przemysl was a grimy, gouty, disagreeable person. He produced a Tadaos much whiter and thinner than I remembered. Tadaos was speechless while the baron carefully, publicly counted the ransom money. He shook his head, blinked at the sunlight and rubbed the scabs where the shackles had been on his wrists. Having lived in his own filth for almost a month, he stank monumentally. I stayed upwind of him, but the baron didn't seem to notice the smell.

  Once the baron had finished his long, slow count, he turned and limped away without so much as a thank-you or an invitation to supper, and it was late in the day. I decided not to tell him how to cure his gout.