One day, coming out of an uneasy sleep during which she had whimpered more than usual, Sarah opened her eyes wide and, catching sight of Ethan, she spoke quite clearly, but in a low voice.
‘There’s great danger. All of us, great danger. Must stop him. Stop all of them.’
Within seconds, she fell asleep again. Later, when she woke and grew fully conscious, she remembered nothing of what she’d said, and Ethan did not press her. But her eyes were troubled, and Ethan sensed that a fragment of memory remained behind them. She knew something, he was sure of it, something that posed a threat to ‘all of us’, whoever that included.
It happened again some days later. Great danger, great harm, an ancient evil, marchers on a high place, banners, boots polished to perfection. This time she spoke at greater length, only to fall asleep again. Perhaps, thought Ethan, it was nothing more than words out of delirium. But he sensed her fear, and it seemed real to him.
That night, he heard her call loudly from her bed, and dashed across to help. She was calling in a tremulous voice, as if beset by wolves or stinging insects. He caught her right hand and held it tightly, wishing her asleep again; but this time she stayed awake.
‘Put the light on, Ethan.’
He found an oil lamp and fumbled with matches until the wick caught. As he replaced the glass, a pale whitewash of light brought the little wooden room into view. Sarah was sitting up in bed now. Her forehead was covered in sweat, her hair lay bedraggled and lifeless across her cheeks. He pulled it back and sat down on the edge of the bed. Her hands were shaking. Again, he took one hand in his and held it until she began to grow calm. How he wished he could take her in his arms and hold her until the terrors died.
‘We have to talk, Ethan.’ She seemed suddenly more clear-eyed than he was. There was real consciousness in her gaze, not the blur he’d been looking at all this time.
‘Go on. I’m listening.’
And in the immeasurable stillness of the forest her soft voice spelt out to him the outlines of a horror she could only dimly see.
‘Don’t underestimate Aehrenthal,’ she said. ‘He may surround himself with thugs, but he’s not a thug. When he thought I’d been softened up enough, he came to visit me. He didn’t rape me or hit me or threaten me in any way. He just talked. Mostly, he talked about himself. He’s a clever man, but he never went to university, so he seems to think I’m some sort of marvel. He knows a lot about me, he’s done his homework. And he told me why he kidnapped me.’
She took a deep breath. He could feel the tremor in her hand, and squeezed more tightly.
‘He’s convinced I know how to find this place in Libya where Great-Granddad found the relics. It seems he’s not content with getting hold of them, but wants to see where they were found. I think he knows there’s something else there, something more valuable than the relics.’
‘The tombs.’
She nodded.
‘He asked about tombs, but I just said I knew nothing.’
‘It would be the greatest antiquities find in history. He probably doesn’t even guess just how much is out there. It would certainly make his name if he could lead an expedition to Wardabaha.’
Her eyes widened and she shook her head.
‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘It’s not about that. He’s not doing this to make his name or even to make the kind of money he guesses he could make. It’s the other way round: he became an antiquarian because he thought it might lead him to all this.’
‘To make a lot of money.’
She said nothing for several moments. He thought she was growing tired and decided to leave her to fall asleep.
‘Ethan, he’s the head of some sort of Nazi organisation. They have followers here in Romania, in Hungary, in Austria and Germany. A lot of followers. And a lot of allies, mostly right-wing Christian groups. He told me about them, said the relics would be in safe hands, and that I could trust the place in Libya with them too.’
He looked at her blankly.
‘I don’t get it. What has any of this to do with Nazis?’ But even as he asked the question, he remembered the photographs he’d seen at the Wolf’s Lair.
‘I don’t really know,’ she said. ‘But they’ve been hunting for the relics for years, he told me.’
In Ethan’s mind, a memory stirred. He stared into the flames. Something about Himmler and the Lance of Longinus. The Nazis had been tracking it down. The Lance of Power. The Spear of Destiny. All occult nonsense, of course, he thought. But occult nonsense could inspire men to great deeds. Great deeds and evil deeds.
When he looked round, Sarah had fallen asleep again.
18
Children of the Night
Afterwards, he could not say how it happened. He had done his best not to encourage it.
Some sort of change came over her, overnight, or so it seemed. Since her rescue, Sarah had been overcome by lassitude. She had stayed in bed relentlessly, as though driving herself inwards, searching for some complete escape, to run to a place where neither men nor wolves could reach her. But now, the tiredness began to lift. She went to sleep one night in that mood of withdrawal, and woke in the morning ready to pull herself from bed.
Her legs were still weak. Ethan helped her to walk the few yards from the bedroom to the fireplace in the larger room. As he made to lower her into a chair, she kissed him lightly on the forehead, hesitated momentarily, then pulled his head down and placed her lips full on his.
Shocked and entranced, he drew back, letting her drop onto the chair.
She laughed.
‘It’s all right, Ethan, I won’t eat you. Unless, of course, you’re the sort of man who panics when a woman kisses him.’
‘But why…?’
‘To thank you for coming all the way out here to rescue me. Knight in shining armour stuff. And to say I think I’m making progress. It may take me years to put this all behind me, perhaps I’ll never recover properly, but I’m starting to feel a bit more confident. And because I like you.’
He was about to ask her more about how she felt, when the door was flung open. A rapid gust of cold wind rushed in, followed by a frantic-looking Ilona. She slammed the door behind her.
‘We’ve got to get out of here!’ she gasped. She’d been running, and was out of breath. ‘Get your things on, we must be out of here in the next two minutes.’
‘What’s going on?’ Ethan was already looking for the coat Ilona had brought for Sarah. Ilona was helping Sarah to her feet.
‘Not now. Move.’
At that moment, a sound echoed behind her voice: the baying call of a wolf. The cry was answered from far off by a second howl, then a third. For half a minute, their voices joined together, creating a moaning, pulsating chorus that rose and dipped in that uncanny music wolves intone.
They stumbled out, hurried along by Ilona. Ethan could sense her fear. The wolves? Or something else?