A Matter Of Taste by Fred Saberhagen (best reads .TXT) 📗

inhabiting a coffin, of riding in it through the night aboard a jolting wagon?

      But now I was not dreaming. I was as certain on this point as the reader is of being wide awake and reading now … and just at this critical juncture of metaphysics I was distracted by a peculiar physical sensation.

      Something, besides the obvious damage caused by recent wounds, seemed to be gravely amiss with the muscles of my chest. The truth was that I no longer breathed. But this lack was more than compensated for by the discovery, which followed swiftly, that I no longer felt any need to do so.

      Pain I still experienced in plenty; sharp pangs, radiating from my many injuries, shot through my body whenever I moved. But I had known worse torment. I was a soldier, and wounds and suffering were part of my natural state.

      For the time being I could ignore the pain. And if I were in any danger of bleeding to death, I thought, I would have done so long ere now. The fact was that I did not even feel weak; indeed, quite the opposite. And a quick inspection of my wounds satisfied me that I was no longer bleeding at all.

      Strange. But, even stranger, the mere thought of blood evoked neither fear nor disgust, but instead a rich, red thirst, a craving of such intensity that for the moment I forgot all about my pain and injuries and stood there growling like a hungry beast.

      That red thirst could not entirely distract me from an even stronger lust. This was a great and all-encompassing drive for vengeance, without which, perhaps, my will might have failed, and I would never have found the power to come out of my grave. This craving was centered primarily upon the traitor Bogdan, and to a lesser extent on his two chief companions, Ronay and Basarab. As for the common soldiers who had taken part in the attack on me, I scarcely thought of them; they had done me no real harm, and besides they were mere hirelings, only obeying orders.

      At the moment none of the three men I wanted were in sight, nor did I have the least idea where I might lay hands upon two of them. But as for the third, Ronay, a part of my recent and most strange dream had concerned him. It seemed to me that I could remember someone’s voice, saying that Ronay, wounded, unable to ride far, had sought shelter within the nearby monastery of Snagov.

* * *

      Walking slowly, I was halfway across the clearing, looking for some landmark by which to orient myself, when I heard a small animal scuttling in dead leaves nearby. Acting upon a new instinct, as strange to me as it was irresistible, I pounced on, caught, and killed a rabbit that had innocently chosen to wander nocturnally near my grave.

      Aching in the roots of my canines, indifferent to the sensation of furry skin against my mouth, I drank greedily from the torn veins of the little creature. New energy, supremely welcome, flowed into my tormented body. But an access of mental and physical strength only sharpened my craving for revenge.

      Casting aside the small, drained body—I cared not for the flesh, the blood was all—I began to consider with new clarity the all-encompassing strangeness of my new mode of existence. The sharpness of my senses with which I had detected the rabbit’s exact location, the speed and precision with which I had been able to seize the creature before it could spring away—these augured well for my ability to accomplish whatever vengeance I might decide upon.

      But now, newly fed, I was able to think beyond the needs and cravings of the moment. Where was I? Certainly not upon the field where I had fallen. And how, really, had I come here? I could not doubt the reality of the scene on the battlefield. But to credit my memory, to think that I had somehow witnessed my own death and burial, seemed a great absurdity.

      Though I had not yet begun to realize the fact, I had of course awakened standing on my own grave, my transformed body having risen like so much smoke up through my coffin’s wooden lid and all the earth that held it down. Stalking to and fro about the little clearing, moving in effortless silence, I knew only that I experienced a strong attraction to one particular spot of bare earth, in the center of the disturbed ground.

      Snarling with impatience, I at last broke free—for the moment—of this tender psychic bond between myself and my grave. The Snagov monastery was somewhere nearby, it must be, and Ronay might be in it.

      In a moment I had passed beyond the borders of the clearing. The thousand little sounds of the winter countryside at night came to my ears, whose powers seemed preternaturally acute. The subtle moonlight, even in the shadows of the trees, seemed to my eyes as bright as day. Pain wracked me with each stride I took, yet I could continue to ignore it. I scarcely noticed that the snow made little sound or none beneath my feet, or that my skin, so lightly clothed in a mere winding-sheet, was and remained impervious to winter cold.

      Certain subliminal clues that I had absorbed during my supposed dream, or derived from the general shape of the landscape around me, eventually combined to give me a firm idea of where I was. I altered my course, striding briskly over dormant winter fields, passing like a shadow through leafless groves. Indeed, it was no trouble to increase my pace to a wolflike if still two-legged lope.

      Minutes later, from a treeless hilltop, I had my confirmation. Snagov on its island was clearly visible before me in the moonlight, and in the next moment I was loping toward it.

      Snow and rain had entirely ceased to fall I did not know it then, but almost twenty-four hours had passed since my interment.