Читать книгу The Rising - Will Hill, Will Hill - Страница 13

TELEORMAN FOREST, NEAR BUCHAREST, WALLACHIA 12TH DECEMBER 1476

Vlad Tepes fled through the darkening forest, the din of the battle and the screams of his men fading behind him. He had torn his royal armour from his body and cast it aside, but he could still hear the shouts and running footsteps of his pursuers, getting closer with every minute that passed.

Five Turkish soldiers at least; maybe six, maybe more. The Prince of Wallachia knew better than anyone the horrors that would await him in the Turkish camp if he was caught, and he redoubled his efforts, the soft forest floor thudding beneath his feet.

I’ll die before I let them take me, he thought. I will bow to no one.

The army that had advanced across his lands had outnumbered his own forces by five to one. Less than a year earlier, Stephen Bathory, the Prince of Transylvania, had helped Vlad to reclaim his throne; they had marched together into Wallachia, their forces combined, and Basarab, the foolish, cowardly old man who had succeeded Vlad’s brother Radu as ruler, had fled without a fight.

But Stephen had refused to stay and help consolidate Vlad’s third reign, and his departure – betrayal, it was a betrayal – had left him vulnerable. He had received word within months that a Turkish army was moving north, and when it had been clear that no help was forthcoming, he had ridden out to meet it on the plains beside Bucharest, accompanied by his elite Moldavian guards and a little over four thousand men.

They fought like they were forty thousand. Fought and died, as men should.

Blood ran down Vlad’s arm from the sword blow that had knocked him from his horse, but he felt no pain. Instead, an ethereal calm had settled over him, bestowing upon him the clarity of a man who is running for his life. Somewhere behind him, either fleeing the battlefield or lying dead upon its blood-soaked earth, were his Generals, the brothers Rusmanov. When it had become clear that the battle was lost, that his brief third reign as the ruler of Wallachia was over, Vlad had fled, without a backward glance. He felt a momentary pang of guilt, but pushed it quickly aside.

I never promised them immortality. They followed me with their eyes open, and took their share of the spoils of victory gladly.

The sun had slipped below the horizon to the west, and darkness was gathering around Vlad as he ran. At the foot of an enormous white oak tree, he stopped and caught his breath, listening intently for the sounds of his pursuers.

The forest was silent.

Not the slightest noise could be heard, in any direction, and Vlad’s savage pleasure at the thought of having lost the Turkish soldiers was replaced with a sudden uneasiness. The trunk of the oak in front of him looked ancient, gnarled and twisted beyond anything he had seen before, and he had hunted and ridden these woods a thousand times since moving his summer palace to the small town of Bucharest. Vlad looked around the small clearing in which he was standing and saw that all the trees were the same, towering structures of mangled wood, their bark splintered and grey. At the base of the enormous trunks sprouted plants that Vlad didn’t recognise, sprays of black flowers and barbed, midnight-blue vines.

What is this place? I have never been here before.

This is the deep, whispered a voice, and Vlad whirled round, reaching instinctively for his sword. But the short blade was long gone, left in the gut of a Turkish soldier who had tried to prevent his escape.

Your sword will not help you here, whispered the same voice. It was light, almost jovial, and seemed to be coming from inside his head, from all sides, and from nowhere.

“Who speaks to me?” bellowed Vlad, striding into the centre of the clearing. “Show yourself!”

There was no answer.

The silence in the forest was absolute as the last of the light faded away. Vlad Tepes felt fear crawl into his stomach, as he looked around the clearing, searching for the way he had come.

There was no sign of it.

He was lost.

There were no broken branches, no flattened patches of grass, nothing to indicate that a man had passed this way within the last hundred years. Vlad stared into the darkness, trying to calm his racing heart. He was trying to decide which direction to set out in when he heard a sound, the first sound, apart from the grotesque, light-hearted voice, that he had heard since he had entered this place.

The noise was a scratching, creeping sound, and it ran up Vlad’s spine like ice. It was the sound of something crawling through the ancient trees, something slow, and old, and patient. Vlad spun round, his fists clenched, searching for the source of the noise in the spaces between the trees and the dark undergrowth. Then he realised what was happening, and terror gripped at his heart.

The trees themselves were moving.

Slowly, two of the ancient white oaks curved out and down, crossing at head height to form a circular passage that led further into – the deep, it’s the deep – the dark forest.

Come to me, whispered the voice. Come to me.

Vlad stared incredulously at the opening before him. This could not be real, he thought; surely his mind had broken at the loss of the battle, the deaths of his Generals and his men, and this was nothing more than the vision of a lunatic?

Do not be foolish, hissed the voice, and Vlad cried out. The lightness of tone was gone; the voice sounded like death, old and deep and dark. Come to me, while I still invite you. There is nowhere else for you to go.

Vlad looked around the clearing, and saw that the voice spoke the truth. The trees on all sides had closed together, forming an impenetrable wooden wall that surrounded him completely.

He was trapped.

Sickly sweet bile churned in his stomach, as he realised he had no choice. Forcing his legs to move, Vlad walked slowly forward, his entire body trembling, and entered the circular opening. The darkness that engulfed him was total; it was the very absence of light. He heard the trees begin to move again, closing the entrance behind him, and took a tentative step forward.

There was nothing beneath his foot.

Vlad overbalanced, his arms grabbing at nothing, then pitched forward, screaming as he did so, and fell into the deep.

He awoke an unknowable amount of time later.

There was grass beneath his back, and as his eyes struggled open, he saw the night sky above him. Constellations of stars spun and swirled, impossibly low, patterns of light that he had never seen before. A group of pale red stars gathered into the shape of a bull’s head, then disappeared as a cluster of iridescent green lights drew the image of a vast, coiled snake across the black sky.

The images turned Vlad’s stomach, and he looked away. He pushed himself up so he was sitting on the grass, fighting to remember where he was, and what had happened to him.

The grass he was sitting on was a green so dark it was almost black, even beneath the spiralling, shifting kaleidoscope of light overhead. It grew in a circle, perhaps twenty feet in diameter. Around its edge, statues of ancient grey stone stood watchfully, without the smallest of gaps between them. The carved figures were grotesque: men and women in contortions of agony, animals in the throes of violence and death, demonic creatures, horned and spiked and scaled, with expressions of lustful pleasure on their faces. Above the statues there appeared to be nothing but the inky-black sky. There was no doorway, or passage, that would explain how he had come to this awful place.

I fell. I think I fell.

Then memory exploded through Vlad’s head, and he cried out as he remembered: the battle, the forest, the ancient moving trees, and the awful, unnatural voice that had spoken to him. He forced himself to his feet, and found himself looking at the only thing in the circle beside himself.

It was an altar.

A large rectangular block, crudely carved from pale grey stone and standing at the edge of the grass, beneath a pair of intertwined statues depicting such violence that Vlad, a man who had visited tortures on his enemies that had been whispered throughout the entire European continent, could not look at them. The stone was carved with letters of a language that he didn’t recognise, and the top was stained dark brown with long-spilled blood.

Fury overwhelmed Vlad, and he ran forward. He beat his hands on the surface of the altar, screaming and bellowing at the alien sky above his head. This was not where he was supposed to have ended his days, alone and scared in this place of old horror; he had commanded armies, lain waste to cities and entire countries, walked with kings and emperors. He raged at the darkness that surrounded him, swearing death to whatever had brought him here, cursing his enemies, promising revenge on everyone who had ever wronged him, offering his soul for the chance to see his betrayers cold in the ground.

Nothing happened.

Above him, the stars spun, blooming into life and winking out, as though millions of years were passing in mere seconds. The statues around him stood silent and impassive, staring down at him with empty eyes. The altar remained nothing more than a lump of stone.

Vlad slumped against it, the fire gone from him as quickly as it had arrived.

Why am I here? If not for some devilment, then why? Perhaps I am mad.

You are not mad, whispered the voice he had heard in the clearing. But you are stupid.

Vlad looked around, but still nothing moved inside the silent circle of statues. The voice was cruel, and mocking, and he tried to think what it could mean, why it was questioning his intelligence. His gaze landed on the brown stains atop the altar, and clarity burst through him. He dug the fingers of his right hand into the wound on his arm, tearing the flesh open. Vlad grunted in pain as blood began to run thickly down his arm, coating his hand; he lifted it high above his head, and paused.

If I am not mad, then only damnation awaits me here.

You were damned long ago, hissed the voice, and Vlad knew in his heart that it was right. He flicked his hand, and dark red droplets of his blood pattered across the surface of the altar.

Instantly, the air was full of energy; it crackled round Vlad’s head, lifting his long black hair from his shoulders. He watched the hairs on the backs of his arms stand up, and felt thick, greasy power in his teeth and bones. The statues began to move, rumbling to life on their pedestals, inflicting their tortures on one another in slow, gruesome thrusts, a writhing wall of agonised, abused stone. Before him, the altar began to run with a black liquid that appeared to be bubbling up from the microscopic holes in the stone itself, a thick oil that seemed to absorb light. When the entire surface of the altar was covered, a mouth, impossibly wide, and full of teeth the size and shape of daggers, opened in the liquid, and appeared to smile at him.

“What are you?” asked Vlad, his voice trembling.

You could not hope to understand, replied the mouth. It was the same voice he had been hearing since he had run blindly into what it had referred to as the deep, but now it was smooth, almost friendly. And it does not matter. What matters is that I know what you are.

“What am I?”

A monster. The mouth curled into a wide, awful grin. Capable of cruelty that impresses even one like me. A carrion bird. A parasite. A—

“Enough,” said Vlad, as forcefully as he was able.

The mouth on the altar grinned even wider.

And brave, up to a point. Often to the point of foolishness. Or danger.

“Why did you bring me here?” demanded Vlad.

You brought yourself. Your rage cried out across the deep. I merely lit the way.

“Why?” asked Vlad. “Why, for God’s sake? What do you want from me?”

I want to offer you something. In return for something you haven’t used for a long time.

“What are you talking about?”

Your soul, said the mouth, and bared its teeth. I want your soul. It will amuse me for millennia. And I will pay you handsomely for it.

Vlad stared at the slick surface of the altar. The mouth was still smiling, and he felt his stomach churn.

“What would you offer me?” he asked. “What price could be enough for what you ask?”

I can give you revenge, on everyone who has ever wronged you, or failed you. I can give you life everlasting, that you might hunt your enemies to the end of their days, without ageing, without dying. I can give you the power to lay your world in ruins. All this, I can give you.

“I sense deception,” said Vlad. “Such an offer is surely too good to be true.”

You are correct, replied the mouth. There can be no light without dark, no reward without punishment. But I deceive you not. You had not asked to hear the terms.

“I ask to hear them now.”

Very well. You will never see the sun again; to look upon it will mean your end. You will not take food, or drink, as humans do; only the lifeblood of other creatures will sustain you. You will be safe from mortal hands, and mortal weapons, and you may share your new life with others, as you see fit. But when your time on this plane comes to an end, your soul will belong to me, and Hell will await you. For all eternity.

“I accept.”

The words were out before he even realised he was going to say them. The abomination’s offer would condemn him to a life lived in the shadows, in the presence of death, and blood, but for Vlad this would not feel unfamiliar, and the alternative was not worthy of consideration. The life he had lived was over, he knew it all too well; the Turks would hunt him to the ends of the earth, and he would stand tall in the darkness rather than run and hide in the light.

I never doubted that you would, said the voice. But I wasn’t finished. The grin widened until it began to spill from the edges of the altar, running in thick black trails towards the dark grass.

“What do you mean?” cried Vlad. “What trickery is this?”

No trickery at all. You accepted my offer, without hearing the last of its terms.

“Tell me what you are holding back! Tell me at once!”

The mouth set into a hard, straight line, and when it spoke again, its voice was the sound of freezing blood, of pain and hopelessness.

You have nothing left to barter with. I suggest you refrain from issuing demands.

Vlad began to tremble, with rage and the terrible, creeping feeling that he had been outsmarted. Fear was again spilling into his stomach and up his spine, and he regarded the altar with horror.

“I apologise,” he forced himself to say. “I humbly ask to know the final term of the covenant.”

That’s better, said the mouth, its smile returning. The final term is this: the first blood you take is the sole key to your undoing. Your first victim will carry the only means of ending your second life.

“What kind of deception is this?” cried Vlad. “You promised me everlasting life!”

I promised you nothing. I told you that I could give you everlasting life; whether you achieve it is entirely up to you. If you were incapable of dying, then how would the contract ever be fulfilled? But I have given you more than any human who went before you, and I would see you more grateful for my generosity.

“What gift is this that I receive in return for my soul, full of conditions and caveats?”

I promised no gift, replied the mouth. I offered nothing more than the covenant that has now been agreed.

“Then I withdraw my acceptance!”

Too late, said the mouth, grinning widely. Then it moved, bursting forward from the altar and enveloping Vlad completely in black fluid that felt as cold and wrong as the end of the world. He screamed soundlessly, over and over, but the liquid held him tight, until it was over, and it withdrew.

He fell to his knees, a desiccated thing; his eyes had tumbled in on themselves, blinding him, and his skin was as dry and leathery as parchment. He was not breathing, but he was still alive, still able to feel the indescribable pain of what had been done to him. When he felt that he could bear the agony no longer, when he thought he must die or be driven mad by the pain, the black liquid moved again, coating him for a second time.

But instead of showing mercy, and ending his torment, as Vlad prayed it would, it sank into him, disappearing into his pores, and a sensation of power beyond anything he had ever felt surged through him. His eyes spun back into place, as his skin smoothed and coloured and his heart began to beat anew, and he rose to his feet on legs that felt as strong as tree trunks, clenching fists that felt as though they could shatter mountains. A primal roar burst from his throat, and then he was falling, towards the midnight grass, through it, into blackness, back into the deep.

When he came to, he was lying on the floor of the Teleorman Forest. He opened his eyes and recognised instantly the white oaks that rose above him towards the night sky, the smell of the grass beneath his body and the cold breeze that whispered across his face. For a long, disorienting second, he wondered whether he had dreamt what had occurred, whether his mind, ravaged by exhaustion and the horror of his army’s defeat, had rebelled against him, conjuring impossible terrors from the depths of his nightmares. But then he got slowly to his feet, felt power bubbling beneath his skin, and remembered the deal he had made with the terrible grinning mouth.

It seems you kept your word, devil. And I will do everything in my power not to keep mine.

He grinned in the darkness, and felt something shift in his mouth; new teeth slid down from inside his gums, fitting perfectly over his incisors. The tips of these new teeth were razor-sharp, and they cut through his lower lip as though it was tissue paper. Blood spilled into his mouth and he fell to his knees in the throes of an ecstasy beyond anything he had ever imagined, pleasure so overwhelming that he had no option but to close his eyes and wait for it to pass.

When it eventually did, he rose again, and looked at the patch of forest where he had awoken. In a wide circle around him, partially hidden by overgrown bushes and wild undergrowth, were pieces of stone that looked as though they had once been the bases of statues, and a small mound of rocks that might once have been part of something large and rectangular. But the stones were buried in the earth, covered in moss and dirt, and looked as though they had been undisturbed for hundreds, maybe even thousands, of years.

This is the place I went to. But it’s old now. Where I went it was new.

He left the stone ruins behind, and began to walk in the direction of the distant battlefield. The occasional scream still floated through the night air, and in the distance he could see a dull orange glow emanating from the fires he knew the Turks would have built to burn the bodies of the dead. Although he did not know what he was going to do when he reached the site of the battle, he knew he no longer feared the invaders and their weapons, and he was determined that he would discover the fates of his Generals, the three brothers whose loyalty he had rewarded by leaving them behind. As the forest began to thin around him, he heard voices in the darkness, and headed silently towards them.

In a clearing, gathered round a roaring fire, was an encampment of villagers from the plains beyond the forest, who had fled their homes as the Turkish armies approached. There were perhaps fifteen families: men, women and children, warming themselves near the heat of the fire, nursing infants, boiling water in metal cauldrons, holding spitted meat over flames. A number of the women were singing an old working song, and it was their voices that Vlad had heard, the ancient melody carrying sweetly on the cold air. He circled the encampment, slipping silently through the trees, looking for an opportunity. He was hungry, and the smell of the roasting meat was invading his nostrils and making him salivate.

“Stand where you are, sir.”

Vlad turned slowly in the direction of the voice, and found himself face to face with a middle-aged man, standing in the shadow of one of the towering oaks. The man was dressed in the sturdy clothing of a farmer, and was holding a bow and arrow at his shoulder, the metal tip of the bolt aiming steadily at Vlad’s chest. He raised his hands in placation, and took a small step towards the farmer, who backed away immediately.

“No closer,” he said. “And speak, so I would know if you are friend or foe.”

“I’m neither,” replied Vlad, a smile creeping across his face. “I’m something else.”

The man lowered his bow by a couple of degrees.

“You are not Turkish,” he said. “Are you Wallachian? Answer.”

“I was,” replied Vlad. Then the hunger hit him like a bolt of lightning, and he folded to his knees, his head wrenched back in agony.

The hunger roared through Vlad Tepes like a hurricane, opening a huge abyss in his chest and stomach, a clutching pit of emptiness. He grabbed at his breast, tearing at his own skin with his fingernails, trying to pull himself open, trying to find a way to fill the gaping hole that had appeared at the centre of his being. His head thundered with agony, as though drills were being applied to his temples, and his limbs were suddenly as heavy as lead.

The farmer threw aside his bow, and ran to the stricken man. He knelt down and pulled at the stranger’s shoulders; the head came up easily, inches from his own. The farmer looked at the vision of horror before him, the glowing red eyes that stood out in the middle of the twisted face, the gleaming white fangs that extended below the upper lip, and drew in breath to scream. Then the stranger plunged his teeth into his neck, and the scream died in his throat.

Vlad lunged on instinct alone; the pain of the hunger had driven rational thought from his head. His new fangs slid through the farmer’s skin, piercing the jugular vein, sending blood gushing into his mouth and down his throat. And instantly, the pain and the hunger were gone, replaced by a feeling that was almost godlike. He swallowed the blood that sprayed from the man’s torn throat, until he was sated, and withdrew his fangs.

The two figures fell to the cold ground.

Vlad’s chest was thumping up and down, alive with power; the farmer’s was barely moving, as blood seeped steadily out of the ragged hole in his neck. The former Prince of Wallachia leapt to his feet, and found himself floating several inches above the ground. He spun slowly in the air, then laughed, a terrible cackle that echoed between the silent trees and floated across the fire at the centre of the encampment, drawing frowns from the men gathered round it. Several of their wives crossed themselves, and the infants among the group began to cry.

The laughter faded as Vlad resumed his course back towards the battlefield, floating slowly and effortlessly between the trees and over the undergrowth, spinning and swooping in the air, like a child who had been given a marvellous new toy. Where he had been, there was nothing but a patch of spilled blood, and the dark shape of the farmer on the ground, his body cooling as his life ebbed away.