Chapter 279 - Last Rites part 10

We spent the rest of the day "appeasing the locals".

After a quick meal of rye bread and mutton left over from the day before, we departed the inn and made our way to the home of Getvar's mayor, a fellow named Njegoslav Ivosevic. The food and drink sloshed queasily in my guts as we walked. I'd partaken only what was required to pass for a mortal man in the company of the living, but the Strix was not happy about it, and I had to bear down to keep the mash from spewing from every orifice. 

It was an overcast morning, the sky low and gray, but I had donned my tinted spectacles anyway, and kept a handkerchief handy should my eyes begin to weep in the glare.

I'm not sure which would be more alarming to the locals-- if I soiled myself explosively, or began to weep tacky black tears—but I didn't want to put it to the test.

The houses of the village were mostly timber-framed constructions with jettied upper floors. The streets were paved with flat creek stone. Altogether, it was a pleasant-looking little village, and typical of the period, although, like most other Middle Age settlements, there was raw sewage running in the gutters and pigs and other livestock milling about the avenues, things you would not see in a modern community. It might have looked like any other medieval town but for the tangible fear in the eyes of the inhabitants. Laborers and merchants scurried about their business, keeping a wary eye cast over their shoulders. They did not stop to exchange pleasantries or dawdle to trade the latest gossip, as they would normally have done, and there was a conspicuous absence of women and children in the light mid-morning traffic.

"It is a village under siege," Justus said to me, and I nodded in agreement.

Ivosevic was thrilled to meet us, and asked what he could do to aid us in our investigation. He was a fat, bearded, jovial man with a large, drink-purpled nose. Justus described what he planned to do to rid the town of its vampire infestation, and asked that the mayor assemble a group of stouthearted men to assist us in these endeavors.

Ivosevic sent several servants hustling away immediately.

By noon, our group of fearless vampire hunters had assembled at one of the local cemeteries. From the parish church was Father Mahmud Abramovic, an ancient creature who took an instant dislike to Justus, though he was very courteous to me. Lord Hanon Gundic, a wealthy landowner, arrived with several of his villeins—big, strong, sunburned laborers. Ivosevic joined us, accompanied by half a dozen of the village's councilmen. They brought the horse Justus had requested, an unmutilated steed named Labas, and the mayor's bastard, Pajo, a child of ten who had yet to experience the pleasures of the flesh.

According to folklore, Justus explained to this assemblage, the grave of a vampire could be detected by leading an unmutilated horse, ridden by a virgin, through the cemetery. If the horse refused to pass over any of the graves, those sepulchers likely harbored a member of the undead. If that happened, they would have to exhume the corpse, cut off its head, stuff the mouth with garlic, and drive a wooden stake or large iron nail through the heart so that the body could not rise again. This would have to be repeated at each of the cemeteries in the village and in the surrounding countryside.

Justus confided in me later that he felt terribly guilty misleading the earnest citizens of Getvar, now that he knew the truth, but we had no choice. The farce had to be played out. The secrets of the vampire race had to be preserved, and mortal man protected from his own avaricious nature.

In the first cemetery we visited, the great black steed crossed every grave without hesitation, so we moved on to the next, a smaller, more ancient boneyard that encompassed only a dozen graves. This graveyard was a private cemetery that housed the members of an extinct noble family. The mayor tried to lead the horse across the graves as he had previously, but the stallion reared up at the second one, and refused to go any further.

"Ah!" Lord Gundic cried. "So it is the cursed Tadics who blight our fair village!"

Lord Gundic's ancestors, we found out later, had warred with the Tadics several generations previous, and were mainly responsible for the fall of House Tadic.

"Dig it up! Dig it up!" Lord Gundic commanded, pointing a trembling finger at the grave. The weathered stone leaning over the offending grave stated Paladije Tadic 1472 – 1498, the script worn nearly to illegibility by time and the elements.

By sundown, we had exhumed three graves in the Tadic cemetery. Each coffin housed a curiously well-preserved member of House Tadic, which we promptly staked through the heart and beheaded. None of them were vampires, of course. The quality of the soil in which they had been interred (a viscous clay) is the most probable explanation for their lack of decomposition, but Getvar's new vampire hunters were adequately impressed. The final corpse that we desecrated, the most recently buried member of House Tadic, even groaned audibly when we staked her. It was just gas, expelled from her bloated body when they hammered a stake through her heart, but the villagers cried out in horror, and convinced themselves that she had tried to come out of her grave and attack them.

A crowd had gathered by then, buzzing with excitement. The citizens of Getvar watched us avidly, relieved that something was finally being done to protect them.

The bodies of the Tadic "vampires" were sprinkled with holy water, prayed over by both Father Abramovic and Friar Justus, and reburied, then we all went home to rest and have our supper, promising to meet at Mayor Ivosevic's manor at first light the next morning.

There were several more graveyards that had to be checked for "vampires" before our work in Getvar was finished, but I was satisfied. I had done what needed to be done. The mortals had been deceived, the truth obscured by superstition and ritual. I intended the retire with the rest of the men, relax for a little while, and then, after everyone had gone to bed, proceed with the real business of ridding Getvar of its ghouls.