Chapter VI
Lamia Attacks
Early summer's light splashed through the forest awning. Larval broods squirmed, and creature lairs came to life. Gnats tortured Lamina's eye, drowning in its goo, and floating to its edges. She wiped them away and continued her watch. Paying close attention to the guard towers. She watched the bowman at the parapets. And the workers, standing in the shade of Dracula's fortress--and the approach of a leper.
She would not war in open fields for her hatred of man's armies. Man with his torches and dogs, deadfalls, and spear pits. Hannibal's phalanx once cornered her in a canyon. His archers shot a thousand arrows as she climbed a cliff to freedom. My attack is by ambush, though I am fit for battle.
Her tail, a slicing decapitator at its tip, had a cluster of glands that spat a ruinous venom. Her arms were long and heavily muscled. At the ends hung her talons. She towered over men, twice their height, and equaled an ox in weight. She walked on two legs but was gazelle-like. Her tongue flicked, a sniffer for tracking the scent of infant flesh or a drop of colostrum. Her breath brought cyanotic death to her victims. She tore off the swaddle and gobbled the meat with her mouth of daggers. Her odor was unspeakable, and her blindness incomplete. A cyclopean orifice could accommodate but would not preserve an eye snatched from an animal or borrowed from a witch.
The art of Hera's cruelty had climaxed in Lamia's design. Most godless was the savagery of Lamia's heart.
She'd tracked Desponia for a century. But now, the Stygian witches lay rotting in the sun at the underworld's entrance. She need not think of returning the eye. Zeus will seek revenge for the witches. My days are numbered, but my revenge is at hand.
***
Meanwhile, in Maria's workshop, Luminita scurried behind a curtain. She peered out from behind as Desponia called for Ehrlich to enter.
"Pardon, Ma'am, I have trunks for the journey."
"Bring them, Ehrlich."
"Yes, you strange man, bring them," Luminita called out.
Desponia caught Luminita's arm and dragged her out.
"Oh, my arm!" Luminita cried.
Ehrlich rolled his eyes to the ceiling and tossed his hands up.
"Apologize, Luminita!"
"I want no apology from this scallywag," Ehrlich said.
"I'm sorry," Luminita said in a tiny voice.
The severity of Ehrlich's expression softened. He shuffled his feet, rolled his hat into a cylinder, and lowered his eyes.
"Ehrlich? I am."
"No need, Miss; you've done me no injury. I am an ugly man. There is no doubt."
"Oh! But you're nothing of the sort," Luminita cried, embracing Ehrlich.
"Careful of your effect," Desponia said. "He is a man. Ehrlich, arrange transportation for my seamstress and her assistants. To Medias, I should think."
"If dropped at the Plow and Stars, we could join our husbands," Maria said.
"Yes, see to packing the trucks first."
Desponia turned again to Ehrlich, "Who counts the village workers?"
"I left Small Alex to the job."
"The stable hand? I doubt I like it. He's no man for security. Relieve him at once. Have him come for these trunks in half an hour and recount the workers. I'll be away for part of today. I'll not tolerate lapses--double the guard. Keep the bridge up. See to it that every entry has a guard. Pick a patrol to walk the castle's perimeter at the top of each hour. Enter and leave only through the north wall door."
Ehrlich hurried back to the yard, giving fast orders to reassemble the workers. Meanwhile, infiltrators had made the castle's interiors after a leper created a distraction among the workers.
"A coin for the afflicted," he begged, holding a dissembling hand.
The workers shrank back as he passed. "Ah," said the leper, hesitating before a pregnant woman and reaching.
"For the health of your child, give me a coin."
"Be gone with your sickness," she said, throwing a coin at the leper's feet.
The infiltrators, both wearing cowls fell in with the workers; they were Luminita's husband and his partner and easily passed Small Alex, a shepherd and a dreamer and careless about his duties. As the workers passed the checkpoint, the infiltrators found hiding places in the stable's hayloft while the leper slipped into the wood.
***
All this while Dracula slept, sinking deeper into his infernal dream.
Once a modern man, Vlad had chosen logic over superstitions and reason over religious fanaticism.
While at university in Siena, he befriended a young Egyptian student. Ammon told fantastical stories; enormous treasures that existed in tombs forgotten to time. The Valley of the Kings. He talked of a map, passed down through generations, of how it came to his grandfather, Habib. Habib destroyed it for fear of a pharaoh's curse. But he could not unknow the details of the map. It haunted his dreams and guided his subconscious. It occupied his waking mind as well. One day, to rid himself of the obsession, he redrew the map from memory. He placed it in a velvet-lined box that he hid in a limestone cavern he'd discovered while herding goats. But the fascination would not end. He visited the hiding place. And he experienced states of rapture as he held his lamp aloft and imagined ingots of gold.
As an old man, Habib revealed the map's location to Ammon's father. Omar thought it fanciful but retrieved the map nonetheless. The stories excited Dracula to distraction. Imaginings of the described treasures would not leave his mind. Ammon assured Dracula that he could guide an expedition. Dracula devised a plan, promising Ammon a share in whatever treasure gained. Dracula believed he would distinguish himself as an experienced explorer, contradicting the notion that supernatural powers were at work in the world. Curses are for the dammed!
And then came the cost of his folly. Ramses' tomb awaited, as did Dracula's eternal wretchedness. He'd maneuvered the sides of a pit, then crept into the smoldering crucible. He entered the corridor. There he found the Litany of Re and the Book of the Gates, only shadow murals in the dying light of his lantern. Fear tested his courage, but he pushed on with Ammon. And then a hand fell on his shoulder, and he lifted his lantern to Ammon's startled face.
"We must leave this place, brother," Ammon said, already taking backward steps.
But Dracula pushed on toward the antechamber and infinitude. An unnatural thirst grew upon him such that, in time, he would rise to slaughter all who opposed him and dip his bread in the blood of his enemies, Ottoman and Saxon alike, all the while walking the battlefield in search of his lost humanity.
***
"Am I pretty?"
"Walk the length," Desponia instructed.
Luminita went to-and-fro, swinging her hips and tossing her hair.
Maria's assistants, Claudia and Patience, exchanged smiles.
