House of Bathory Read Online Free PDF

being who approached, her nostrils flaring.
    “Easy, now, easy, easy, easy,” Janos crooned in a singsong voice as if speaking to a child. And again came the strange whistle.
    The mare reared again, her whinny echoing across the valley.
    “Stay away!” shouted the driver.
    Janos did not heed him. He steadily worked his way closer and closer to the horse’s shoulder. He slowly placed a hand on the mare’s neck, murmuring as he looked at her from the corner of his eye.
    The skin on her neck quivered under his touch, rippling like a lake surface punctured by a barrage of stones. The harness slowed its jingling as the mare calmed. All the while Janos spoke to her, his breath small puffs of mist in the cold air.
    The mare relaxed her tightly bunched neck, slowly lowering her ears closer to the man’s mouth.
    “What are you saying to my horses?” asked the driver, his voice full of suspicion. “Are you casting a spell on them? Come away from the horses.”
    “Let him, you fool!” shouted a thin passenger, craning his neck through the carriage window. “The horses will overturn the coach and kill the lot of us!”
    Janos did not look away from the mare. He moved in front of her, risking a strike from her powerful foreleg—a blow that could easily break a man’s leg. He could feel the warm breath of the second horse, a bay gelding, trying to reach his hand with its muzzle. He ran a hand over the chest of the gelding. He moved to the right of the coach and faced the steep road.
    “A horse sorcerer,” said a kerchiefed woman, looking out the window of the coach, She shoved her husband’s head out of her way so she could see better.
    “Thank you, sir,” said the driver, blowing out his breath, as he felt the slack in the rein. “You have skill with horses.” He wiped his nose on his ragged sleeve. “The Countess should be pleased to have you.”
    “I hope that is so,” replied Janos. Then he nodded to the horses. “Was it the ravens that startled them?”
    The driver shook his head, and motioned for Janos to come near. He whispered, “They always sweat and rear when we pass by Č achtice Castle, night or day.”
    Janos noticed the driver’s hand tremble in its fingerless glove. He could smell the slivovica , the fiery plum brandy, on the man’s breath. The driver drew a silver flask from his pocket, offering his passenger a draught.
    “To steady your nerves for Č achtice Castle,” said the driver.
    Janos shook his head.
    The driver shrugged and took the drink himself, his body relaxing as the harsh alcohol slid down his throat.
    “We must make Beckov before nightfall. I bid you well, Passenger Szilvasi.”
    Janos backed away.
    “Ya!” shouted the driver, slapping the reins lightly on the horses’ backs. The wheels of the coach churned up frozen mud, leaving Janos at the side of the road.
    The remaining passengers in the coach stared wild-eyed at the man who had shared their journey across the Hungarian flatlands to this remote outpost on the flanks of the Little Carpathians.
    The kerchiefed woman made the sign of the cross, whispering a silent prayer. She kissed her fingers and extended them in the frosty air, back toward young Master Szilvasi.
    Janos watched the coach disappear down the road. He picked up his sack and gazed at the fortress castle rising from the rocky hill above the treetops. The ravens still cawed overhead, circling the fortress in erratic loops.
    “Do not let her catch you staring, Horse Sorcerer,” warned an old man, appearing from below the road on a path leading from the dark pine forest. He carried a load of brush and twigs strapped to his bony back. The stranger spoke broken German.
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “She will cast a spell on you, the evil witch,” the woodcutter said. He spat. “That Hungarian sorceress is the devil incarnate.”
    Janos placed a wool-wrapped hand on the old one’s shoulder. “Pray tell me, sir, what do you know of the Countess?”
    The old man