Blood Brothers

PART FOUR: The Brothers — The Raids

I

Predawn twilight on Starside, sunup a few hours away, and the peaks of the barrier range already changing from one massively homogeneous black-fanged silhouette to gaunt, grey-featured sentinels in their own right, each taking on its own unique shape. Soon the sun's rays, glancing through the high passes, would colour them gold. The change from dark to light was always inspiring, even gladdening.

So thought Lardis, head man of the Szgany Lidesci.

But to have spent the best part of a night here — on Starside! at sundown! — under the silver light of the moon and the blue glitter of the stars… and to have slept here! It was a thought which invariably set Lardis's scalp to tingling, brought gooseflesh creeping, and a sense of awe, wonder and heart-pounding horror bursting out afresh from every inch of his body and soul…

Every fifty sunups or thereabouts, Lardis would make this.. this what, pilgrimage? — this passage of exorcism, anyway — into Starside, and across the barren boulder plains to the tumbled stacks of the Wamphyri; to Karenstack, the last aerie, and back again through the great pass to Sunside. But he knew he would never make it alone, that the ghosts of all that had been would journey with him, touching their cold fingers now and then to the knobs of his spine.

A rite of exorcism, aye: to drive out the demons from his dreams and the olden nightmares even from his waking hours. A renewal of his faith, his belief — that the Wamphyri were no more, and would never return — in the shape of one more trek across their ancient territories, through all the long lonely hours of sundown, which had been their time. That was why Lardis came, why he continued to come and always would, as long as his legs could carry him: to convince himself of the marvellous truth, that they were no more.

'Dead and gone forever,' he muttered, mainly to himself, pausing to look back on Starside from a vantage point in the foothills, not far from the mouth of the pass. 'Wiped out in a body and cleansed from the world in what they thought was the hour of their triumph, when they toyed with their victims and glutted themselves at the shining sphere Gate. All of them that were left: Lord Shaithis, and even Shaitan the Unborn himself, who was their father, destroyed with their creatures. Likewise the Lady Karen, burned up in a single breath of hell, in the searing fire of something more hateful than all of them together! All gone, those creatures of evil. And possibly… possibly some that were good, too, even if they did bear the seeds of evil within them.'

'Some that were… what, "good", did you say?' An old and trusted friend and companion of Lardis's, Andrei Romani, stood there with him. 'Oh, really? The Wamphyri, d'you mean? Then perhaps you'll be so kind as to refresh my memory, for I'm damned if I can remember any that were good!'

Lardis glanced at him and nodded knowingly. 'Yes, you can. You're being contentious, that's all. What about Harry Hell-lander, called Dwellersire, who came from a world beyond the Gate to stand side by side with his son in the battle for the garden? And what of The Dweller himself, who with his father toppled all the stacks of the Wamphyri down on to the plain? Aye, and even the Lady Karen, who stood with them and fought against her own kind.'

Andrei looked astonished. 'Her own kind? Their own kind, you mean! She and the others, they were all Wamphyri! Harry Hell-lander, who could come and go in a twinkling, and call up the dead: he was Wamphyri, as well you know. Likewise his son, called The Dweller, who became a wolf… and how was that for a hell-spawning menace? As for Karen: you forget, Lardis, that I was there in the garden that time, when she tore the living heart out of Lesk the Glut, and stood there laughing, drenched in his blood! Now she was Wamphyri! Aye, but the plague was in all of them, so don't tell me what's evil and what isn't! Me, I say that somewhere there's a God, and that finally He'd had enough of them. So that night He took 'em all, every last one, which left us to act as custodians of the peace.'

Lardis and Andrei: they were older now and their joints stiffening just a little, their hair mostly turned grey, and their eyes not quite so bright. But their memories were still sharp. And after all, fourteen years isn't such a very long time, not for memories such as theirs. So for all that they argued, each knew that the other was right in part, and so a balance was maintained.

'You're right,' Lardis grunted at last, 'and it's best that they're gone, all of them. But still I often wonder: if not for Harry, The Dweller, Karen… what would have become of us? Where would we be now?'

'Dust, most likely,' Andrei answered, 'and nothing would matter any more.'

'And our children?'

There was no answer to that. Instead of searching for one, Andrei shivered and stamped his feet, then changed the subject. 'What the hell are we waiting for, anyway?' he wanted to know, raising his voice. And: 'Where the hell is that misfit son of Nana Kiklu?'

'What, me, a misfit?' came a loud, laughing inquiry from the shadows in the mouth of the pass. In the next moment there was movement there, where Nestor Kiklu and Lardis's son, Jason, had gone on ahead. They came out of the shadows into full view, and again Nestor inquired: 'Is someone taking my name in vain?'

'No, not you, but your dumbstruck brother Nathan,' Andrei shouted back. 'It's him who's keeping all of us waiting!'

Their shouting echoed reverberatingly through the pass, rolled up into the mountains and bounced down again, rang out across the plains of Starside. Lardis didn't much like it; it caused the small hairs to stir to life at the back of his neck, and made his breath plume that much faster in the cold air. Nor did he care for people calling Nathan Kiklu names, not even in misconceived jest, and not even Andrei. Oh, Nathan was a dummy, true enough, but there was a lot more than that to the lad. And: 'Quiet!' Lardis warned. 'For all that Starside's empty now, still it's no place for shouting…'

But someone had heard them, at least.

Down on the rim of the low crater which housed the Gate, Nestor Kiklu's twin brother Nathan came back to life where he stood gazing into the white hypnotic glare of the half-buried sphere of alien light. He mustn't touch that shining surface, he knew, on penalty of being drawn into it and vanishing forever. Out of this world, anyway. But still he was tempted.

Tempted… but not entirely stupid. For there were times when life seemed very good to Nathan right here, or rather, on Sunside. Sometimes life was good, anyway…

It was just that the Gate was such a weird, inexplicable thing. If it were really a doorway into some other place, for instance — a place where there were people — then why didn't they come through it and make themselves known? Lardis Lidesci said that in the old days they had come through now and then, and that the Wamphyri had prized them for their strange powers. Maybe that's why they'd stopped coming. On the other hand, Lardis had been known to say many things about the Gate, the old days, the hell-landers… everything.

Why, Nathan had even heard it rumoured that there'd once been a hell-lander woman Lardis had fancied! Except she already had a man, also a hell-lander. Her name had been Zek, short for Zekintha, and she could pick a man's thoughts right out of his head! Well, and so could Nathan, sometimes; Nestor's thoughts, anyway. But this Zek: she'd been pale and blonde, blue-eyed and… beautiful? Now how could anyone with colours like those be beautiful? None of the Szgany had them — with the exception of Nathan himself, of course.

Anyway, most of these events Lardis spoke of had taken place before the Kiklu brothers were even born, and as Nathan had noted, with the passage of time Lardis found a great deal to say about almost everything of yesteryear. It wasn't so much that he was very old (though certainly his youth, as the leader of a wandering Szgany tribe in the shadow of the Wamphyri, must have taken its toll of him), but that there was little now to occupy his mind, so that he was wont to dwell too much in the past. Which was something Nathan understood well enough, for on occasion he was himself given to dwelling in other worlds, and adventuring in lands of fantasy. It helped shut the real world out: the sounds of Settlement and its scathing voices, with all the taunts and questions which in the main Nathan no longer bothered to answer, or answered with his stumbling stutter. For ever since the night of the red clouds and the thunder in the hills, he had spent his time withdrawing from this world.. into others.

Other worlds, yes, and lands of fantasy…

… The twilight mountainsides, for instance, when he was alone and his wolves would come whining out of the hills to be with him. That was a secret, however, something he kept to himself, lest Settlement's Szgany youths call him a liar. For as everyone knew, wolves must be caught as pups and trained, or else they can't be trusted.

… And in his daydreams, which he knew were morbid things, however much they fascinated him.

… But especially when he slept and dreamed of… oh, of all manner and shape of things! Of the crumbling dead in their graves, who could talk to him if they wanted to but would not, though he frequently overheard them talking to each other; of meaningless yet maddeningly familiar numbers, cluttering his reeling brain until he thought his head must fill and burst from their constantly mutating rush and whirl; and of a different world of men which was weird and unknown as the spaces between the stars.

.. Perhaps like the world beyond the Gate?

Again the shouting of the others reached out to him from the foothills and the pass; until at last Nathan backed away from the coldly glaring source of his fascination, and jumped down from the low crater wall. But as he picked his way very carefully between the gaping mouths of giant, perfectly circular wormholes where they pierced the ground and angled down into otherwise solid, compacted earth and rock all around the perimeter of the Gate, still he sensed the lure of the silent, shining sphere, and felt it like a magnet in his mind.

'Nathan!' Andrei Romani's call came yet again, distantly, followed in a while by the echoes of his bull voice rolling down from the hills: 'Nathaaan!'… 'Nathaaan!… Nathaaan!'

Nathan had moved away from the Gate now, but still was unable to tear his eyes or his thoughts from it. The Gate to the hell-lands, another world, and possibly a world that was terrifying.

When Lardis talked of what had happened that night fourteen years ago, he usually spoke of 'a breath of hell', which came roaring out of the Gate to burn the Wamphyri in its fire. But at other times and less romantically, he had admitted that it might have been some kind of unthinkable weapon, whose power was such that the hell-landers themselves had little or no control over it. 'Whatever their world was like before,' (he would say), 'it really must be hell now, if that was merely the backdraught of one of their wars! Zekintha told me all about that: how their weapons were devastating.'

Measuring his pace, Nathan started to run. He had kept the others waiting too long and they'd be impatient. He was right: almost a mile away, Andrei Romani was complaining again. 'Is he deaf as well as dumb?'

Coming lithely, jinglingly from the mouth of the pass, Nestor and Jason joined the two older men. 'No,' Nestor shook his head and gave a disdainful grimace. 'My brother's neither deaf nor daft, nor even dumb. He doesn't want to speak, that's all. He's just… Nathan.'

Lardis glanced at Nestor, could almost taste the bitterness where his mouth puckered on his sour words. A pity they weren't closer, he thought, like they'd been as children. For then they had been inseparable.

Nestor had looked after his brother until they were well into their teens. Maybe he'd looked after him too well, fought one too many fights for him, taken one too many knocks on his behalf. Whatever, it wasn't the same between them now. And then there was Misha, of course. Young boys will always be boys and friends, until they grow into youths and become rivals.

Nathan and Nestor Kiklu: Nana's sons…

Twins, yes (Lardis continued to consider them), but in no way identical. Indeed, they seemed poles apart: in their looks, philosophies, lifestyles. Nestor upright, brash, devil-may-care, outspoken and even noisy; Nathan weighed down (but with what?), withdrawn, serious, and silent of course.

Nestor was like his mother. Only see them together, and there could be no hiding the fact that he was her son. Except where Nana was small, Nestor was tall; as would his brother be tall, if only he would stand up straight! Long-limbed, both of them. Which was somewhat strange in itself; for their father, Hzak Kiklu, had been small like Nana. All the better for hiding in holes in the ground. Perhaps that was the reason. Many children had grown up tall and strong, since the destruction of the Wamphyri.

Nestor had his mother's dark, slightly slanted eyes, her straight nose however small, her glossy black hair falling to his broad shoulders. Her smile, too, which could be mysterious at times. His forehead was wide; his cheekbones high; his chin jutted a little, more so when he was angry. His body was that of an athlete, and he wore his jacket with the sleeves rolled back, to display the width of his forearms. He looked Szgany through and through. That was Nestor, a youth to be proud of. But as for Nathan: Well, a throwback there! Though to what, Lardis couldn't imagine. Nathan's eyes were less tilted, and for all that they were the deep blue of a sapphire, still they lacked the gem's great depth. Their gaze was usually vacant, misty, or at best wandering (much like the mind which directed them, Lardis supposed, and indeed, much like the lad himself). But the strangest thing about him was his hair, which was the colour of damp straw! It was like Zek's hair, but a little darker, and Nathan kept it cropped as if ashamed of it. Possibly he was, for like his other anomalies it set him apart.

As for the rest of his features: they were not too dissimilar from Nestor's. A strong chin, high cheekbones, broad forehead… his mouth was fuller than Nestor's, less cynical, but given to twitching a little in the left-hand corner. Then of course there was his skin, which was pale to match the colour of his hair; so that all in all, he scarcely looked Szgany at all.

His mother said his pallor was due to spending too much time indoors, or walking abroad at sundown, when most of the Szgany stayed close to home. According to Nana, his health in general was poor, so that he avoided the common activities of Settlement's more active youths and preferred his own company. Well, the latter was quite obviously true enough. But to Lardis's knowledge, the rest of it simply didn't add up. On the contrary, Nathan seemed a wanderer born, and was forever out and about. Sunup and sundown alike, you would find him in the forest or on the mountain slopes, anywhere but indoors. And sickly? Lardis didn't think so. A disinclination towards japing, girl-taunting and — chasing, and rough-and-tumbling with the other louts didn't automatically make him sickly, did it?

No, Nathan wasn't just the runt of the litter, he was a throwback. But to what? And if he didn't look Szgany, then what did he look?

Lardis had pondered that question time and again: who did Nathan remind him of? Whose was that soft, that compassionate, indeed that innocent look in his eyes? But as always it remained a puzzle, an aggravation, a word stuck to the tip of his tongue which refused to eject and reveal itself. And Nathan himself an aggravation, so that at times even Lardis could kick him — if only to stir him to life!

That was why he had asked Nana Kiklu if he could bring her boys with him this time, into Starside on his annual pilgrimage: to get Nathan away from his old haunts, try to stir him into life. Maybe he'd find something here in the awesome barren wilderness to lure his mind back from wherever it wandered now…

Even as Lardis Lidesci thought these things, so there sounded the soft, regular pad of flying feet and the clatter of pebbles, and an approaching man-shape silhouetted against the glare of the near-distant Gate. And as the light grew marginally brighter over Starside, Lardis's thoughts immediately changed tracks.

What, sickly, this one? Well, if so, then Lardis wished he was as sickly as that, with heart and lungs banging effortlessly away, as once they had used to, to power his tireless limbs. And vacant, Nathan? Not now at least. No, for his eyes were shining where he came panting to a halt, and shrugged in that apologetic way of his. He was sorry he'd kept them waiting.

'Did it interest you, then, the Gate?' Lardis asked him, before anyone else could speak.

Nathan already had his breathing under control. He looked at Lardis and nodded, however slowly. But a nod was an answer, which in itself was an improvement; usually you wouldn't even get that out of him. And Lardis was pleased. It was like when they sat at the campfire in Settlement and he told his stories of the old times, and sensed Nathan's attention rapt upon him above all the others put together. A dummy? Well, perhaps… but only on the outside.

'Huh!' Nestor grunted. 'Oh, he's interested, sure enough. Interested in all the weird, unanswerable things. Stars in the sky: how many there are. Ripples on a river: why he can't count them. Where people go when they die, as if the smoke from their funeral pyres isn't answer enough in itself. And now the hell-lands Gate? Why, of course he's interested in it! If it doesn't matter a damn, then Nathan's bound to be interested in it.'

Again the sourness in his voice.

But Jason, Lardis's son, who was eighteen months younger than the Kiklu boys, was less hard on Nathan. 'The world's not much to Nathan's liking,' he said, 'and he steers as far clear of it as he can. Which is a very hard thing to do, because of course he must live in it! That's why he concerns himself with things which seem to us irrelevant. This way he has his world, and we have ours, and we don't cross over too much one way or the other.'

(And Lardis nodded, albeit to himself, for he considered this a statement of astonishing perception.)

Lardis was proud of his son; Jason was open-handed, instinctively fair-minded, handsome in his dark Gypsy fashion, and intelligent. But just like anyone else, he was wont to err now and then. Like now. And:

'The Gate isn't irrelevant,' Lardis quickly corrected him. 'Come up here a moment.' They climbed a small knoll — no more than a hump of jagged rock — to a slightly higher elevation, and from there looked back on Starside. Specifically at the Gate.

'It's getting lighter now,' Lardis pointed out what must be obvious to anyone. 'Another hour or so and the peaks will turn to gold, and so what I wanted to show you isn't so clear any more. Far better in the heart of sundown. And anyway it's fading with the years, washed down into the barren soil by the rains, and carried away by warm winds out of Sunside. But do you see the glow?'

They saw it: Maybe a hundred and fifty paces beyond the Gate, a raw crater in the earth whose sides were rough and broken, with a rim of fused slag like puckered skin around a giant wound. More stark and jagged than Starside's usually rounded boulders and other natural features, which had been worn down by the elements through untold centuries, this was a more recent thing, as if a shooting-star had crashed to earth here only a few short years ago.

Spreading out from the crater's farthest rim, a faintly glimmering plume of light lay upon the earth like the luminous early-morning ground mists of Sunside. A long, tapering spearhead, feather, or finger, it pointed towards the Icelands on the blue, aurora-lit horizon. But it was the earth itself — the barren soil and the stony ground — which glowed with this soft yet sinister radiance; as if some giant slug had passed this way, leaving its slime-trail to shine in the light of the stars.

'And over there,' said Lardis, pointing, his voice very quiet. Westwards, following the base of the mountains to the horizon and out of sight — given clearer definition in the shadow of the barrier range — the earth shone more brightly yet, with a light which came and went by degrees, like the foxfire of rotten wood or the cold luminescence of glowworms.

'Light,' Lardis gruffly continued. 'But not like the good clean light of day, nor even the light of a fire. A body can't live by it, and mustn't stay in it too long. It blasted Peder Szekarly that time, fourteen years ago: turned his skin white as a mushroom and robbed him of an heir. Aye, and it killed him, too, in the end. As for the trogs dwelling in the lee of the mountains: they paid the price, all right. It took them in their hundreds! But for their deep caves, they were finished for sure. Why, there are freaks among them still, whose fathers' blood was poisoned on that night of nights! The one good thing about it: it also fell on the swamps, since when we've had precious few vampire changelings…'

'Aye, hellfire!' Andrei Romani nodded in agreement. 'And it's burning still, though not so hot now. Me, I say leave it be, and all of Starside, too. There's nothing but ghosts here now, and it's a wise man who leaves them to their own devices."

'So you see,' said Lardis to Nestor, when they'd climbed down again and were headed for the pass, 'the Gate is hardly irrelevant. It's a marker shining there still, to remind us that this is the spot where the powers of the hell-lands and those of the Wamphyri clashed and cancelled each other out.'

'All very well,' Andrei put in, 'but what's all that to Nathan? Do you think it matters at all? I mean, do you think he understood or was interested in a single damn thing we've talked about? If so, well, he's not much for showing it!'

'He showed plenty of interest in the tumbled stacks of the Wamphyri,' Lardis replied. 'And in Karenstack, the last aerie, blackened like a chimney flue on that side facing the Gate. Aye, and I firmly believe he would have entered Karenstack to climb it, if we'd let him! And finally, it seems he also felt the mystery of the shining sphere Gate. If you ask me, I'd say that's a whole lot of interest — for a dummy.'

Just as they entered the shadow of the pass, he glanced at Nathan and saw the youth looking back at him. Nathan's eyes were shining again. With gratitude, Lardis thought.

But Nestor only said, 'About the Gate: I don't like to contradict you, Lardis — especially not you, a Lidesci, and leader of your people — but what is the Gate really except a ball of white light? So it attracted my brother… so what? Don't moths flutter to a candle just as readily? And don't they get singed just as often?'

Which, however much he disliked it, was another statement Lardis couldn't dispute…

For fifteen minutes or so they walked in shadows and silence, with only the jingling of their silver baubles to keep their thoughts company. Then a yellow glow came filtering down from above, as the first of the range's topmost peaks turned gold in the rays of a sun rising even now on Sunside. And:

'I timed that well,' Lardis grunted, pleased with himself. He struck off from the trail and climbed towards a ridge jutting over the western side of the pass. The others, all except Nathan who followed on directly behind Lardis (unquestioningly, of course), came to a halt and watched the two go. Until Nestor inquired of Andrei Romani:

'What now?'

'It's a ritual,' the other answered, 'which Lardis follows every year. Something he likes to see, back there on Starside. That jut of rock's his vantage point. Me, I've seen it before and can get along without it. I'll wait here and save my pins for walking. But you two can go on up, if you like.'

Nestor and Jason went scrambling after Lardis and Nathan, and after a steep but safe climb came upon them standing on a shelf from which they gazed north and a little east. The sunlight on the peaks was stronger now; it found passage between the high crags and cast a fan of beams out across Starside's sky. Up there, only the brightest stars survived; the stars, and the rippling auroras where they warped and fluttered over the far northern horizon.

'Sunup,' Lardis panted, his breathing still ragged from the climb. 'She rises slowly, the sun, along a low flat curve, and in the old days used to light on all the taller stacks one after the other in their turn. Now there's but one aerie left, as you've seen. But still I like to see the sun striking home in its topmost ramparts, and know that there's nothing hiding within, behind bone balconies and black-draped windows. Somehow, it's a very gratifying sight. But don't take my word for it; just wait and watch, and see for yourselves.' And he continued to gaze out across Starside.

Out there in what was once vampire heartland — rising up dramatically from a plain littered with the broken stumps and shattered segments of all the once-great stacks, which had not survived The Dweller's war on the Wamphyri — there stood Karenstack. Reaching almost a kilometre in height, the last aerie stood out as a lone fang of rock against the banded blue background of the north, its awesome shadow falling like a black, spastic arm far across Starside, and visibly stretching itself in the improving light, as if blindly groping for the north-eastern horizon.

The group on the bluff waited — a minute or two, three at the outside — for the sun's rays to sweep down, find them, and flood over them. Following which, in the very next moment, they observed the effect which Lardis had so desired to see: a golden stain spreading itself across the uppermost levels of the stack, burning in windows as hollow as eye-sockets, lighting up the grim mouths of launching bays, and seeming to set the high turrets and embrasures afire in a blinding effulgence.

And so like a giant candle, Karenstack stood falsely radiant amid Starside's silence, desolation and devastation…

For long minutes the four stood there, their attention rapt upon the molten grandeur of Karenstack's crest, which had become the centrepiece in an otherwise bleak and barren scene. But as reflective angles changed and the golden fire began to fade on the stack's stone face, so their momentarily uplifted spirits settled down again and the sense of wonder departed.

And from below: 'Ahoy, up there! Time we got on…"

Lardis blinked, nodded, turned his face to the others. 'Andrei's right,' he said, shading his eyes against the unaccustomed dazzle. 'Let's get down.'

The young men went first, with Lardis bringing up the rear. But before following on behind, he cast one more glance out across Starside: its moonscape of endless, boulder-strewn plains, the distant glitter of a frozen ocean, the unvisioned but imagined Icelands under their fluttering aurora banners, and of course Karenstack. And at last he sighed and began to follow the three youths down into the gloom of the pass…

….nd having descended a little way paused, rooted to the spot, suddenly frozen in his tracks. For Karenstack was burning still in his mind's eye and on the lenses of his retinas. Karenstack and something else he'd seen, or thought to see — but what? He closed his eyes and the picture came up clearer: the aerie's crest aglow with its false halo of fire. But below the area of reflected light, where the golden rays could never reach: Black motes swirling, jetting, settling towards the yawning mouth of a vast landing bay; midges at this distance, but what would they be up close?

As if in answer to his inward-directed question, a small black bat hovered close to his face, fanning his cheek before sideslipping and stooping on a moth which he'd disturbed. In the next moment it was gone, and Lardis breathed easier. Bats, yes, that was what he'd seen: great clusters of them, closing on the stack. Except that unlike the little fellow who fanned his cheek, they'd been the great bats of Starside — aye, and familiars of the Wamphyri, upon a time — which Zek had called Desmodus. And their home would be Karenstack itself, deserted now except for their black-furred colony.

'Father?' Jason's voice came from below. 'Are you coming? Can I give you a hand?'

'No, no,' Lardis husked from a dry throat, then swallowed and found his voice. 'I'm fine. I'm coming. Get on down.'

But from then on, and all the way back to where they had tethered their animals at the head of the descent to Sunside, and for most of the trek back to Settlement — which took the greater part of sunup to complete, for they had friends to see along the way — Lardis was far less given to talking and kept his thoughts to himself.

'Bats, yes,' he would mutter, and nod his head furiously, when the others were out of sight and hearing. The great bats of Starside.' Until, by the time they were home again, he had almost convinced himself.

During his waking hours, at least…

In his dreams, however, Lardis Lidesci was not convinced. For the blood of a seer still ran in his veins, and tormented him whenever he closed his eyes to sleep. It was weaker now, this sixth sense, this blessing or curse passed down to him out of a lost Szgany history, from some long-forgotten ancestor whose second sight must have been potent indeed, that its trace had survived all the sunups — and sundowns — flown between. But potent then, in some unknown long ago, and this was now.

It was now, and what small reserves of the thing remained in him seemed to have been running out ever since that time on Starside, when the Gate spewed fire and fury to write THE END on the last chapter of the Wamphyri. Or… perhaps it ran as strong as ever in his veins, except in recent years there had been no use for it. For the Wamphyri were no more.

So why had it started to bother him again now? And why did it continue to bother him?

For on the long trek home he had slept and dreamed, and all of Lardis's dreams were nightmares, from which he would start snarling awake, wide-eyed and panting. Until, even in his waking hours, at last the four who travelled with him had heard him muttering: 'Bats, aye — the great Desmodus bats of Starside.' And they had seen him nodding his head furiously.

'What ails you?' Andrei Romani had wanted to know, as they approached Settlement in the hour before evening twilight. The youths had gone on ahead, to meet up with their young friends about the campfires — Nestor and Jason to dance a while perhaps, to enjoy the music, good cooking, company, conversation: to be Szgany — and Nathan to seek out and be with his mother.

'Nothing ails me!' Lardis had snapped. And then, almost in the same breath: 'Well, if you must know, my dreams ail me. And the mists. And the smoke from all those fires up ahead. And all the busy sounds of Settlement, which are a tumult even here, almost a mile away! What? Has all the caution gone out of the world? Do they tempt fate? Don't they know the hour, and that soon it will be sundown?'

He glanced all about, at the ground mist and the shadowy forest, finally at Andrei, who gazed back at him in amazement. And: 'Where is the watch?' Lardis continued. 'We haven't even been challenged! We've seen neither man, youth nor wolf, despite that we crossed into Lidesci territory well over an hour ago!'

Andrei's astonishment, and his concern, were very genuine now. 'The watch?' he repeated. 'Man, you stood the watch down all of ten years ago! But the markers which define your boundaries are well maintained, and we haven't had a border dispute in… oh, I can't remember! So why now, after all this time, do we suddenly need a watch?'

Lardis blinked his fierce brown eyes and something of the passion went out of them. He blinked again, frowned and shook his head. 'I… I actually did that? I stood down the watch? Yes… yes, of course I did.' For a single moment he looked shaken, confused, lost -

— But in the next the passion was back, and with it all the grim determination of his youth. He glanced knowingly at the darkening sky, where the first stars glittered like blue ice chips over Starside beyond the barrier range, sniffed suspiciously at the evening air, stared piercingly at a ground mist rising out of the woods. And: 'Great fool that I've been,' he growled, as if he couldn't believe it, 'I stood the watch down!… And now must start it up again!'

Andrei Romani recognized it: that visionary fire in Lardis which had made him a great leader of the Szgany in a time when leaders were few and far between. But where once it had inspired men, now it caused a shiver to travel the length of Andrei's spine. 'What is it, Lardis?' he husked, gripping the other's arm. 'What did you see from that bluff in the great pass? I know you as well as any man, and you've not been the same since you climbed up there to watch the sun burning on Karenstack's face.'

Lardis felt Andrei's fingers digging into his arm, paused in his striding and turned to face him. His eyes held Andrei's as in a vice as he answered: 'I don't know what I saw, except that it frightened me and straightened out my addled senses. Or else addled them more yet.' He pulled himself free, turned and headed for Settlement as before.

Andrei frowned after him, then hurried to catch up. 'But you did see something?'

'Bats,' Lardis growled. 'Starside's great bats. That's what I took them for, what I've been telling myself they were ever since. Certainly they could have been, for I merely glimpsed them — a scattering of dots in the sky around Karenstack — which made no impression until after I'd started on my way down again. Well, and I know my eyes aren't all they used to be. But on the other hand, and if they weren't bats… then what were they?'

Andrei's shrug tried hard to be careless but didn't' quite make it. 'But they were,' he said. 'It's just that you've been letting the old times crowd too close in your memory. Perhaps it's a warning: that you should give it a rest and quit trekking into Starside every fifty sunups or so. After all, you're not as young as you used to be.'

'No, and neither are you!' Lardis snapped. 'If you're so sure of what I didn't see, then why is your voice so anxious, eh? Who are you trying to convince, Andrei, me or yourself? But I'll tell you this…" He broke his striding and rounded on the other. 'Since then it's like I've been asleep and I'm only now waking up. And my sleep had dulled senses which are only now coming alive. I can see, hear, feel, smell — I can remember — things! Things which I thought had gone forever.'

More stars had blinked into being. Again Lardis sniffed the night air, glared at the rising mist. 'Come on!' he said, striding harder yet for Settlement. 'And say no more. If I'm wrong — and I pray that I am wrong — then I'm nothing more than an old fool, frightened of my own shadow. Ah, but if I'm right… We have family and friends in the town, Andrei, and the long night is only just beginning!'

Together now, Lardis and Andrei, and breathlessly silent in the deepening shadows of the forest's fringe. And for all that they were tired where they followed sounds of laughter and music, smells of wood smoke and cooking fires, still they hurried. Hurried, yes; for as one man they were suddenly aware that those same sounds and smells were permeating the night air, rising through the wooded slopes into the peaks of the barrier range. And they were also aware that the campfires would be blazing like… like beacons.

But more than that, they were aware of all the life in Settlement. And of all the hot Szgany blood…

In the town, Jason Lidesci and Nestor Kiklu had gone one way, and Nathan Kiklu the other. The pair to the campfires, which burned through the night in the gathering places, and the one to his mother's house against the stockade wall.

In the central open space, a public place where the main fire and many lesser cooking-fires burned — where tables and chairs had already been laid out in preparation for Lardis's and the others' return, for the Szgany Lidesci rarely missed an opportunity to celebrate — Jason and Nestor had received a boisterous welcome from their friends, and then exchanged more sober greetings and information with the town's elder citizens and dignitaries.

The latter had wanted to know how the trip had gone? And where was Lardis now — and Andrei Romani? — how far behind the younger, fleeter members of the party? What news from the other towns and villages to the east? And so forth. Jason and Nestor had restricted their answers; everyone knew that Lardis and Andrei would want to tell everything in their own way, in their own good time. Indeed, the story-telling would form a major part of the celebrations.

Finding chairs in the quiet corner of an old stone wall, finally the two settled down with a jar of wine and a pair of small silver goblets between them. They weren't important now; Lardis Lidesci and Andrei Romani were the important ones, and their arrival imminent. Between times, Jason and Nestor could talk.

'My father sometimes worries me,' Jason admitted, having washed the trail's dust from his throat with a gulp of sweet wine.

And: 'Huh!' Nestor grunted. 'You should have my problems, for my brother worries me all the time!' His voice was at once sour, a sure sign that the conversation had returned to Nathan.

Jason was hardly taken aback. 'You're too hard on him,' he said.

'You think so?' Nestor raised an eyebrow. Eighteen months Jason's senior, he considered Lardis's son clever but naive; hardly the right kind of man to inherit the leadership of the clan when that time came, and never strong enough to hold it together and make it a power in the world. There was too much of the thinker in him, too little of the doer. 'But Nathan's not too hard on me, right?'

'Nathan, hard?' Now Jason was taken aback. 'But he's soft as a child!'

Nestor nodded. 'He is a child, in some things, aye. And in some ways he's an idiot, despite what your father thinks! But I'm his brother and so know him better than anyone, and there's another, weirder side to him.'

'Oh?'

'We're twins, as you know,' Nestor nodded. 'Not identical, no, but still our kinship goes deeper than ordinary flesh and blood. Far deeper.' He nodded again but angrily, even savagely. 'I mean, I wouldn't mind Nathan dreaming all the strange things he dreams, or blame him for living in his daydreams — just so long as he'd leave me out of them!'

'But how are you part of them?' Jason was puzzled. 'In what way do they concern you? Why, I've never met brothers more dissimilar than you two!'

'Huh!' Nestor grunted again. 'But up here,' he tapped his forehead, 'in our minds, we're not that dissimilar.' He leaned closer. 'Listen, and I'll tell you how it's been for as long as I can remember.' He got his thoughts in order, then:

'Among other things,' he began, 'my brother dreams of numbers. Great waves of numbers, all meaningless, swirling in his head like a river in flood! There's this — oh, I don't know — this fabulous "secret" behind them, which he seeks to discover, except he hasn't a clue where to begin. And so in his sleep he goes through the numbers again and again, endlessly searching them for their secret meaning. All very well, and I'd have no complaint — if only he would keep his dreams to himself!'

'What?'

Nestor nodded. 'Don't ask me how, but I "hear" his dreams! I can see him, feel him there in my head, lost in these damned numbers! Now to me, a number is the count of fish I've caught, division is the share-out after a day's hunting, and multiplication is what rabbits do. As for schooling: I got as much of that as I need — and all I can use — when I was a child. So, if I can't work something out on my fingers and toes, then I'm not interested in it. I'm not one of these so-called "wise men" who tinker with runes and scratch on slates to keep records and histories, or work out the distance to the moon, which they say is another world. I won't be around when the things we do today are history, and as for the distance to the moon: what possible use in knowing that, except to the wolves who sing to her?'

Jason was fascinated. 'You really hear his dreams?'

'Not all of them,' Nestor shrugged, concerned now that perhaps he was saying too much. 'For his mind is deep, like a well, and there's a lot he keeps hidden. Even so, it's full of faraway worlds and dead people….nd numbers, of course! Not that I'd pry, you understand, for if it was up to me I'd have nothing at all to do with Nathan's damned dreams and fancies! But I can't control it. His dreams find their way into mine, so that he's just as big a pest asleep as when he's awake!'

Puzzled, Jason shook his head. 'But how can you be sure? How do you know you share the same dreams? Has he told you? A rare event that, for he scarcely speaks at all!'

'He doesn't have to,' Nestor was tired of the subject now. 'I only have to wake up in the middle of the night in our room, and look at him sleeping there, and I know. Now and then, not very often, I can read his mind as clearly as the spoor of a wild pig. Read it, and hate it!'

'Hate it?' Again Jason was astonished, by the fire in the other's voice, and by his passion. 'Hate your brother's mind? But why? Is he devious?'

But Nestor merely scowled, shook his head, and finally sighed. 'What, Nathan, devious? No, I hate it because he's as gentle and trusting as the doves nesting in the eaves!'

Jason found it all very hard to understand, and not least Nestor's curiously mixed emotions. 'You share your brother's dreams and read his thoughts,' he shook his head in wonder of it. 'Well, the way I see it, it can mean only one thing: that you are true Szgany, Nestor, both of you! For there are mysteries in our blood which even we can't understand. Why, there could even be something of the Wamphyri in you — !' He quickly held up a hand to ward off any protest (though in fact Nestor would be the last to take offence at his remark). '- As there is in most of us, naturally. For in the old days the Wamphyri were like a plague among us, and there are throwbacks even now. My father believes it's the source of all Szgany mysticism: the power of fortune-tellers who read dreams and palms, and seers who scry afar.'

Nestor pulled a face. 'You really believe in such stuff?' Obviously Jason was even more naive than he'd suspected. 'Can you show me one genuine — what, mystic? — in all Settlement? And am I, Nestor Kiklu, a mystic? Not likely, nor would I want to be. No, it's simply that we shared our mother's womb, were born together, and brought up almost as one. Except we're not one but entirely different. And finally… I've had enough of him.'

'Of your own brother?'

'Yes,' Nestor answered. 'Of the trouble he's been to me, and the trouble still to come.'

'Ah!' said Jason. For he believed he understood something of that, at least.

Nestor frowned at him. 'Ah?'

Jason saw his mistake at once and tried to change the subject. 'Back on Starside, you said that Nathan was neither deaf nor daft. And yet a moment ago you called him an idiot. Something doesn't match up.'

Now Nestor scowled. 'A lot doesn't match up,' he answered. 'Like the way you're avoiding saying what's on your mind! Now out with it.'

Jason grimaced, shrugged awkwardly. And: 'Misha,' he said. A single word, a name, which felt like a great weight rolling off his tongue. Nestor was a hard one; his hands were hard; it wouldn't be the first time he had broken lips just for speaking that name.

The other sat up straighter, pulled air into his chest, let a little of it come growling out. 'What of her?' Nestor's young voice was all gravel now, a man's voice, threatening and inquiring in one. Indeed, a jealous voice.

'As children you three were inseparable,' Jason said, hurriedly. 'All four of us together, all the hours of the day. Me, I was a friend. But you and Nathan, she loved both of you. She still does, I'm sure.'

Nestor slumped down again. 'So am I,' he answered, perhaps morosely. 'And that can't be. And you're right, of course, for that's the trouble in store: Misha. She loves us both, but who the most? If it's me, then it's because I'm a man and can look after her. If it's Nathan, then it's because he's still a child and needs looking after! Well, a real rival wouldn't be much of a problem. I could deal with that. But Nathan? My ridiculous, speechless — or at best stuttering — pale-faced, corn-cropped brother?'

Jason nodded. 'I see now why you've gone your own ways. I saw it begin — oh, four, five years ago? — but didn't really understand what it was.'

Nestor, caught up in his own thoughts, scarcely heard him. There have been times,' he burst out, 'when I might have taken her — even by force!' (Jason looked startled, shocked.) 'Maybe I should have. It might have settled things there and then. But Nathan… Nathan… damn him.' I know he only has to smile at her, just smile, and… and…'

Jason stared at him. 'And does he know it, d'you think?'

Nestor sat up again and tossed back his wine in one. 'No,' he said. 'Not an inkling. And now you know why I consider him an idiot. For all his dreaming of other places, and his endless quest for meaning in a handful of numbers, where she's concerned he can't add two and two! And if he could — or if he ever does — what then? If I can't live with him as he is now, how could I ever live with both of them together? What, Misha and Nathan? And who would look the dumb one then?'

'What will you do?' Jason's concern for his father was all but forgotten now.

Nestor poured more wine into their goblets, then snatched up and drank his own as if it were water. 'Ask her to be mine, and soon,' he answered. 'No, tell her she's going to be mine!'

'And if she says no?'

'Then I'm gone, out of Settlement, away from the Szgany Lidesci forever. What opportunity for me here? You're the next chief of the tribe. And shall I be a hunter all my days, grow old by the campfire, and sit there telling stories like your father? Forgive me, Jason, but I see little profit in that. And anyway, what stories would I have to tell? How one day I caught a fish, put a bolt through a rabbit, and skewered a wolf where he crept up on my animals? No, the days of adventure went with the Wamphryi. But me, I wish they were back, and I always have! What good in being strong in a world where even the weakest is my equal? I feel I've a name to make for myself, but how? And where? Not here, for sure. And not without Misha…'

'You're ambitious,' Jason told him, his eyes narrow now.

'And is that wrong?'

'You don't much like it that I'll be chief one day.'

Abruptly, Nestor stood up, swayed a little, clutched at the table to steady himself. The trek had been long and he was tired — they were both tired — and the wine was strong. 'Maybe I don't much like anything about Settlement any more,' the words came slurring out. 'Maybe I should leave come what may. There are places to the west, and new territories far to the east. It's rumoured there's even a place beyond the farthest wasteland. But frontiers are few, and time is wasting.'

'You'll take Misha and go?'

Nestor snorted and shook his head. 'No, for her brothers are big lads, both of them! So for the moment it has to be her choice. But with or without her, still I'll go. And if it's the latter, then be sure I'll be back one day.'

Now Jason stood up, but only to take a pace to the rear. 'Be sure you'll be back? But why do you make it sound like a threat? What, will you bring an army with you? To steal Misha? Or… do you also covet my father's territory?'

'Are you worried?' Nestor scowled. 'For Lardis? But it's you who'll likely be chief by then.'

'And should I be afraid of an old friend?' Jason's look was sour as Nestor's now. 'Aye, and maybe I should.' He shrugged and turned away. 'Anyway, it's high time I was home. My mother will be waiting up for me.'

For a moment Nestor's expression changed, softened; but then he stiffened his back, and turned it on Jason where the other moved off abruptly towards the North Gate and the dark foothills. And as that young friend of his childhood went off, disturbed and soured by their conversation, so Nestor chewed his lip and glanced all around, perhaps to avoid calling out after him…

Meanwhile, the old meeting place had filled up, and now there was movement, shouting at the East Gate. Lardis and Andrei were here. But in all this great crowd, never a sign of Misha. Where was she? And where Nathan?

Nestor picked up the jar, drained it, wiped his mouth on his sleeve. And: Tonight/ he promised himself. I'll have it out with Misha tonight. Or I'll have her tonight, one way or the other. And if there's anything of a man in Nathan — and if he cares for her at all — maybe then he'll yelp and bare his teeth!

Jason had disappeared now, out through the North Gate and into the night, on his way home to Lardis's cabin on the knoll. But here in Settlement… what was going on? That awful commotion and shouting. And angry, furious shouting, at that! Was it Lardis, bellowing like a stag at the rut? It could only be. His voice was unmistakable.

And pushing his way through the gathering crowd, Nestor went to see what it was all about…

II

Some two hours earlier, eastwards, and not quite twenty miles distant:

… The Lady Wratha climbed down out of the saddle of her flyer on to a high plateau still warm from the sun's last rays. Stepping to the rim, she looked down through hooded eyes on the fires of a Szgany town nestling in the lee of the barrier range; looked down on the fires of Twin Fords.. and smiled. She smiled with all the delight of a young girl, and lusted after Twin Fords with all the evil of an ancient horror.

And waiting on the rim of the plateau while her band of circling renegades found landing places on the flat, scrubby expanse of rock behind her, she gazed on Sunside in the twilight of early evening — a sight unseen by Wamphyri eyes for all of fourteen years — and let her mind drift back a little: to her flight from Turgosheim across the Great Red Waste, all along the spine of these unknown mountains, and deep into Old Starside…

Unlike Turgo Zolte's flight in the time of Shaitan the Unborn, Wratha's had been relatively easy. Where Turgo was pursued and unable to pause for respite, Wratha suffered no such handicap. Which was just as well; her flyers were unused to covering vast distances, and for all her boasting in Vormspire's great hall, her aerial warriors were mainly untried. Oh, no one could doubt that they were superb engines of destruction, but as for flying skills: there had been no way to put those to the test, not in the skies over Turgosheim.

In the end, however, little had been left wanting in performance; all of the flyers had made the crossing; only one of the warriors had been lost.

The plan had been to 'refuel' at the western edge of the secondary range of which Turgosheim was a part, then climb as high as possible on thermals out of Sunside before commencing the long glide westwards. The ceiling would of course be that altitude where the sun's rays, striking tangentially across the curve of the world, intersected the flight path: not very high initially, for the slow-moving sun had only recently set. Phase two would come when it was calculated that the warriors had expended about half of their energy. At this point they would climb again, to whatever limit the sun and exhaustion permitted, before finally gliding and jetting down into Old Starside.

The warriors were the main cause for concern. For in the end, having converted much of their own mass into fuel, they might be obliged to draw on their flimsy gas-bladder reserves. Loss of weight would compensate in some small degree, but the equation was still a loser. Lacking energy, buoyancy, and conceivably even will (for while small minds are malleable, their attention span is limited), a fatigued warrior might well gravitate to earth. If and when that was perceived as imminent, the weak one would be sacrificed and torn apart in mid-air, to fuel the rest of them on their way.

In the event, it was Canker's creature that paid the price. The energies consumed in its landing at Vormspire — its savage work in the great hall, and the subsequent launching from the spire's shattered window — all had served to deplete it. Thus, at the apex of the second climb, when the warrior was seen to be failing, then Wratha had ordered its dissolution.

Canker had raged (naturally, and to no avail), but in any case his protest was an automatic, instinctive reaction, his stance untenable, and resistance inconceivable. And three to one the other warriors had fallen on Canker's weary creature, dismembering and devouring it in short order. After bone and chitin armour had rained to earth, when all that remained was a thin, skeletal frame drifting at the mercy of the winds, finally the bladders had been drained and the empty rag-thing allowed to spiral down to oblivion.

And replenished, the group had flown on…

From time to time the Lady, Lords, and their handful of lieutenants would pull cartilage stoppers from wells drilled in the knuckled backbones of their flyers, and sip sparingly on sustaining spinal fluids…

They took turns to sleep, half of them nodding in their saddles while the rest controlled the beasts and maintained the course…

On high, the stars glittered like ice-chips; far below, the Great Red Waste seemed endless; the obscenely flowing shadows of the renegades, however faint, diluted and somehow polluted the starlight where they passed…

Sundown crept towards sunup and they were anxious…

Now, time and again, the propulsors of the warriors would sputter warningly, the beasts would falter, and even the most vicious mind-darts would fail to inspire them. Such creatures could never turn on their mistress and masters, of course not, but it was conceivable that eventually they might seek to kill and devour one another…

Then, distantly but closing, moonlit mountains rose up to greet the inevitable descent — but wider, higher, vaster mountains far than those of Turgosheim — so that Wratha knew this could only be Old Starside. And, south of the towering range, Old Sunside, too.

All propulsive power stilled now, the wind keened under leather canopies where flyers and warriors alike shaped manta wings and fluttering mantle vanes into gliding aerofoils. And as a thin line of silvery light made a crack on the southern horizon, so they skimmed low and silent over the first peaks of Starside's eastern range… and spied their first signs of life since leaving Turgosheim!

There on the north-facing flank, in a stony basin lying midway between the foothills and the rearing mountains proper, a circle of small fires sent up spirals of black smoke. Within the circle, figures capered and made intricate, awkward, apparently aimless leaps and twirls. Sounds of guttural, rhythmic grunting, and the jarring clatter of ceremonial crotalae, rose up with the reek of burning wood and dung.

Huh.' Spiro Killglance, flying close to Wratha, sent her a bitter, scornful thought. Trogs.' Two dozen of them, performing their rites.

Her answering thought was darker, more practical, and much more to the point. Meat.'

The warriors were ordered down: two of them would land between the fires and the mountains, so blocking the route of the trogs back to their cavern homes, and the third would make sure that none escaped into the foothills. Propulsors sputtering into hot, stinking life — with stabilizing vanes extended, and tiny saucer eyes in their bellies swivelling to seek landing sites — the monsters came down bellowing and snorting, eagerly to earth.

On the ground, the trog ceremonies came to an abrupt halt. Wide black eyes under dark, sloping foreheads scanned the starlit sky, found hideous shapes circling, rapidly descending. For a single moment, mouths gasped and jaws fell open in disbelief. Then, shuffling and lurching in their fashion — their leathery limbs galvanized far beyond the earlier exertions of their esoteric devotions — the trogs scattered. But all too late.

A dozen flyers sideslipped this way and that, settling to earth like leaves falling in still air, or flat stones sinking in water. They flopped down on springy tendrils which uncoiled from their bellies; and Wratha and her five, and their vampire lieutenants, took battle gauntlets from their beasts' harnesses and climbed down out of their saddles.

After that… mayhem!

Five, maybe six trogs attempted to slip through the murderous Wamphyri noose which threatened to close them in; three made it past the circle of long-necked manta flyers with their vacuously swaying, diamond-shaped heads; two were left, after running the gauntlet between the warriors snuffling and snorting in the shadow of the mountains, to make it home. But out of two dozen, only two. And as for the rest: It was slaughter where Wratha's renegades scythed among them, their gauntlets red in the flying spray of their havoc. Hoarse screams echoed through the night, became gurgles, guttered into silence like candles snuffed out. It was the work of minutes, three at most, which in the end saw a terrified silence fall over Starside; a silence broken only by the panting of a trog priestess, grabbed up alive by Canker Canison. Rabid with lust, he tore her rags from her and took her three times in quick succession — once in each opening — before tearing out her throat and crushing her skull. Then, draining blood from her wounds while her heart still feebly pumped, he glared at the others where they watched him. So, she'd been a trog. She was still female, wasn't she?

The rest was routine. Wamphyri, lieutenants, warriors and flyers alike, all took their fill. But shortly, when the edge was off their hunger: Spiro Killglance paused to wipe his mouth on his sleeve, turning it scarlet, and gruntingly inquired, 'What now?'

'Westward,' Wratha answered at once, dabbing a square of coloured Szgany cloth to the perfect bow of her girl's lips. 'The sun will be up soon, and we need to find a place.'

Then we should go carefully,' Gorvi the Guile's voice was oily, insinuating, 'and spy out the way before us. For if Maglore is wrong and the Old Wamphyri lie in wait — '

But Wratha only shook her head. 'No. For all my detestation of that old' thought-thief, still Maglore is right. When did you last see trogs out in the open in Turgosheim? Speaking for myself, never! Because we, the Wamphyri, are in Turgosheim. But here?… they take no precautions but cavort grotesquely by the light of their fires, and when we fall on them flutter in every direction, like Sunside chickens! No, there are no Wamphyri in Old Starside. Not until now, at least.'

Replete, then they had rested an hour before mounting up to fly west. The warriors, sated but not glutted, were ordered into a reverse arrowhead formation, one on each flank and the third to the rear. And thus the Wamphyri returned to the long forsaken territories of the Wamphyri…

As time had passed and the air grew brighter moment by moment, so the jagged shapes and twining contours of the barrier range had stood out that much clearer, until finally the rays of the rising sun had lit golden on the very highest peaks. And as Wratha's anxiety had risen up in her again, so she'd seen Karenstack, the last aerie. But scattered all about that lone fang — lying there in total disarray, like dismembered stone giants with their stumps scorched as by colossal fires — she also saw the vast sprawls of rubble which were all that remained of the other ancient aeries.

But… the one stack remained.

And before the sun could burn her renegades, Wratha led them into the hugely frozen yawn of a cavern launching bay as big as the largest Turgosheim manse, which opened in the east facing wall of the stack two thousand and more feet above Starside. And dismounting there in that high, empty, echoing place:

'See to the warriors and flyers,' she had instructed the lieutenants, 'then see to yourselves. I don't know how far the sun will rise; it may light upon half of the aerie, for all I know! So find rooms for yourselves — without windows! Or if they have windows, be sure they face north.'

Then, with her five following on behind, she had set out to explore the rest of the stack.

They climbed.

The aerie seemed to go up forever, and Wratha tried not to show the awe she felt. She knew she could house five hundred thralls and lieutenants in this upper third of the stack alone! And below, where the great honeycombed butte widened into its base?

Why, given a hundred, two hundred sundowns, the place could be filled with an army and stand impregnable! With its great height, it was a giant watchtower on all Starside, which none could approach unseen — especially not from the east. For Wratha had no doubt but that they would come one night, out of Turgosheim to track her down. Except they'd be weary, and their blood thin, and their warriors spawned of feeble, watered-down stuff. While she… she would be Wratha! Wratha the Risen, but risen higher than ever Maglore, Vormulac, Devetaki and all the others together could ever imagine.

So she pictured it; but for now, all she had was this aching, echoing, empty shell of a stack.

Dust lay thick; the bone water pipes had come apart in places, and likewise the complicated gas-channelling systems; cartilage stairways were creaking and dangerous, and required earliest possible attention. At windows cut through solid rock, black bat-fur drapes were all fallen into moulder, and in the empty storerooms rotting cocoons had long since slumped into sticky, molten-silk puddles. The great red spiders were still here, however, to spin more cocoons as they were required.

As for the workshops: they were in good order, and their hollowed vats huge as any in Mangemanse or Suckspire. With the assistance of Canker and Vasagi, crafty masters of metamorphism both, Wratha could have good stuff brewing here in no time. But the basement granaries would be empty, the gas-beast chambers and methane pits reduced to so much dust and bone-shard, and the water in the wells lively with all manner of creeping and swimming things. Oh yes, it would be a long time before the stack could be put back to rights. But when it was, what a fortress then!

And glancing at her companions through half-shuttered eyes where they gawped and strutted in the vast rooms of the upper levels, Wratha had thought: Mine, all of this — eventually. Except she kept the thought to herself, of course.

The upper levels…

At first sight of them, then Wratha had known that this was a Lady's stack, that its last inhabitant had been female. For one thing, there were mirrors here: plates of gold hammered perfectly flat, polished to a high sheen, giving warmth and life to the features which they reflected. And they had been female features, certainly; for Wratha knew that while all of the Wamphyri Lords were vain, only the vainest would ever adorn his walls with such as these.

No, for generally mirrors were deemed dangerous things, which in the olden times had been known to reflect death (in the form of sunlight), as easily as life! Long ago, in Turgosheim's Sunside, Wratha had even owned a silver mirror; this despite that all such lethal devices and metals had been forbidden to the Szgany since time immemorial. Well, and now she could look upon her face again, admiring once more the beauty she'd clung to for over a century. But who last had looked in these mirrors, she wondered? And had she been beautiful, too?

She had been slim, beyond a doubt! For in the biggest bedroom of the largest suite on the penultimate level, there Wratha found several dresses, or what had been dresses. They were falling into decay now, but if Wratha had been alone and in the mood… she was sure they'd suit her figure perfectly well. So, she had been shapely, this Lady, and young; or having all the outward trappings of youth, at least.

Her bed was still here. Built high and wide, of great heavy slates, its polished wooden steps and carved headboard remained intact. Wooden rails, too, suspended from the high ceiling on chains, with golden rings which once held sheerest Szgany curtains. But all gone now, turned to dust, and ropes of cobwebs hanging in their place. Likewise the bed's covers: all blotched with lichens and fluffy mould.

As for the rest of the room: There was an onyx water basin, with bone pipes descending from the roof's exterior gutters, or from some long-shrivelled siphoneer's place; narrow shelves of fretted cartilage, filled with all manner of worthless knick-knacks and baubles under an inch of dust, Szgany stuff mainly; airing cupboards with gas jets below, and other pipes leading off to heat a great stone bath… big enough for two?

With whom had she shared it? Wratha wondered, allowing herself a smile. Or was she a Lady in every respect? But no, for Wratha knew all about Wamphyri 'Ladies'. This one had not stinted herself but had taken pleasure in all her little luxuries. This one had lived!

Sniffing the air as she moved through the cavernous apartments, Wratha had felt ever more at home here; but at the same time she'd felt that the five with her were more and more like alien invaders of her privacy. Until at last:

'Out of here!' she'd rounded on them. 'This is my place. All of these upper levels which we've explored, they're mine.'

'What?' Gorvi the Guile had exploded. 'Are you insane? Why, there's room here for all of us! Our lieutenants, too, and all the thralls we care to muster!'

For all that his words were snarled, the Guile's voice was oily as ever. Tall, slender, and with the dome of his head shaven except for a single central lock with a knot hanging to the rear; always dressed in black, so that the contrast of his sallow flesh made him look fresh risen from death; with eyes so deeply sunken in their sockets they were little more than a crimson glimmer, yet shifty for all that — this was Gorvi. He was sinister, but who among the Wamphyri was not? And he cowed Wratha not at all.

'My lieutenants!' She wrinkled her nose and glowered at him. 'And all the thralls 1 care to muster! But… did I hear you call me insane?' Now she also glared at the brothers Wran the Rage and Spiro Killglance. 'But madness is their speciality, surely?' And, redirecting the blaze of her scarlet eyes to Canker Canison where he prowled like a dog, sniffing the floor. 'Nor am I too certain of him!'

'Now hold with these insults!' cried Wran, his eyes flaring dangerously, but not without a certain shrewd intelligence. 'For at best they're a blind — eh, Wratha? And Gorvi's right: we all should have a say in this.'

'No!' Wratha turned on him, on all five of them. 'Now you hold, all of you, and listen! I was the one who schemed and plotted, and drew you all together, and brought you here out of Turgosheim unscathed. Why, but for me you'd be skulking in your hovels still. Mangemanse, indeed! Suckspire! Madmanse! My place was the best of the lot — a worthy spire — and so I lost the most. Well, now I've regained it. So here's how it will be:

'Gorvi the Guile. As your name can't help but hint, you are an insular creature, little trusting of your fellows. You are crafty and would not feel safe in a manse without a bolt-hole. I make no accusations but merely state the facts. Therefore, take the wide and spacious base of the stack — say, the two lowest levels? — for your own. This will give you a dozen escape routes from your windows out on to the plains. Also, you will have control of the wells, whereby you are guaranteed our aid in the event of any future attack from Starside's bottoms. At the same time, however, it means that the wells will be your responsibility, and to judge by the rest of this place they'll be bound to require your most urgent attention. A task for the first of your thralls, to be recruited in the next sundown.

'Wran and Spiro. Despite that you are brothers and even twins — who among the Wamphyri normally despise each other — you two prefer to be together, within certain limits. So be it: choose yourselves apartments in the several levels immediately above Gorvi's, where the width of the stack should provide not only ample accommodation but also plenty of room for privacy. I fancy you will be well suited. Also, from what I saw of the crumpled ruins which litter this region, your area of responsibility will be great indeed! Namely, control of the refuse pits and methane chambers. For I noted that almost every one of those former aeries was burned and broken in the same section, and I can't doubt but that this stack is of a similar design.

'Vasagi. You were ever a loner, no less than I myself. I suggest you take the next levels down from my own. No fear of claustrophobia, with all this air surrounding us! Your warriors, when they are made, may have joint use of my vast launching bays. In return for which, I may require some small assistance in the fashioning of creatures of my own. As you see, I acknowledge your mastery of the metamorphic arts..

'Ah, but I acknowledge yours no less, Canker, and would also enlist your aid! You shall be central among us, occupying the levels between the brothers and Vasagi. This way, when the moon rides on high, we may all share your… singing, and the… delights of your devotions together! Alas, not much in the way of duties, but what is that to an artist like you?'

Canker was not fooled, nor any of the others; they knew that apart from his skill in the fashioning, the only reason he was here was to make up the Lady's numbers. But the levels she had assigned to him required an overseer, certainly, and at least she'd apportioned the rest of the duties, displayed her powers of reason (however warped), and reinforced her leadership. In the end they must accept, but meanwhile:

'No need to go rushing off immediately,' she'd told them, while they thought it over. 'Outside, it's sunup. Our lads will have seen to the beasts, and to themselves. All will have their heads down by now, and we should do the same. We've come a long weary way, and nothing more to get excited about till the sun sets. So find beds for yourselves — several levels down, I'd suggest — and catch up on all the sleep you've missed. Come nightfall, we'll all of us have work.'

'On Sunside?' Canker had grinned and winked.

'Aye,' she'd answered. 'Where else?'

It had been like a promise, which above all else placated them…

Then it had been sundown. And almost as quickly as that, or so it seemed.

For Wratha and the others had been weary as never before in their long lives, their sleep deep and dreamless, undisturbed even by calls of nature. This latter was not strange; such was Wamphyri metabolism that their bodies wasted very little; what was consumed was transformed.

Once, towards twilight, Wratha had come half-awake with some weird fancy or anxiety niggling either at her or the vampire within her. For a moment, opening her eyes, she'd thought to see sunlight blasting in through the undraped window!….ut it was only moonlight. And propping herself up she'd seen the auroras writhing over the Icelands, and Starside's barren boulder plains turning a uniform, ashen grey as clouds covered the moon. Then, remembering that she'd made her bed in a room facing north, Wratha had relaxed. And hearing Canker's mournful howling rising from some nether place of his choice, she knew what had lured her from sleep and gladly returned to it.

But the next time she came awake, that was because she knew! Knew that the last glint of gold was gone from the peaks of the barrier range, that all of Starside lay in shadow, and that the others were even now stirring, called up from their sleep by the long night just beginning. And her eyes blinked open like shutters thrown back, and her forked tongue moved luxuriously, sensually, in the thirsting tunnel of her mouth.

Sundown! And now she would see what this new but ancient land had to offer.

Knowing that the others would be just as eager to be up and about, Wratha had no time to spare. In the launching bays she'd found Gorvi and Vasagi mustering their lieutenants and rousing their beasts, and in a little while Canker, Wran and Spiro had joined them. Gorvi had been surly.

'The climb is crippling!' he'd complained. 'But I won't be making it again. While the rest of you slept I went below, looked my place over, and saw what you have not seen: that the sun strikes only these higher levels. Wratha, you are welcome to them! But down there, I have launching bays of my own, and stables for my flyers. When we return I'll take my creatures below. As for the wells: you're right, they are foul. When I have the material, then I shall make a creature to eat the slime and purify the water.'

'You have no complaints, then?' Wratha was pleased.

Gorvi shrugged, and grudgingly replied: 'Only that I must dwell in the basement, as it were, and see to the wells for all to share. As for my levels, apartments, facilities: they are or will be ample. But all this talk of responsibilities prompts me to inquire: just what are your duties, Wratha? I mean, now that you've risen to the top, as it were…'

'I shall house and tend the siphoneers,' was her immediate response. 'A place of these dimensions will need more than one, for no use having water if you can't deliver it.' She frowned at Gorvi. 'What? And do you imply that I would shirk responsibility?'

Without waiting for an answer, she turned to the brothers Wran and Spiro. 'And did you inspect your levels, also?'

Despite that they were physically identical (or perhaps because of it), the twin bloodsons of Eygor Killglance affected opposing styles and mannerisms: one was loutish, the other a 'gentleman'. In the main their allegedly inherited 'madness' was also affected, though this was a matter for conjecture and argument among the Wamphyri. Undeniable, though, that in Turgosheim the destructive rages of Wran had been notorious, giving licence to the general consensus that he, at least, was quite insane.

As for their disparity in appearance: paradoxically it was Spiro who went in rags and sandals, with a strip of cloth upon his forehead to keep his hair out of his eyes, while Wran dressed impeccably in a cloak and finely Grafted leather boots out of Sunside. Physically, their looks were nothing extraordinary: broad in the shoulder and narrow in the hip (if running a little to fat), they stood six and a half feet tall. A small black wen on the point of Wran's fleshy chin, together with his elegant dress, distinguished him from his brother.

But it was the ragged one, Spiro, who answered Wratha's question about an inspection of their levels:

'Briefly, aye,' he glowered, as was his wont. 'We, too, have a serviceable launching-bay for flyers and warriors, and like Gorvi we'll move our beasts down there at first opportunity. But it seems that when this place was deserted, the gas-beasts were left behind to die and rot in their chambers. Now their dust is everywhere, drifted into every nook and cranny, and clogging all the ducts. As you know, impurities can cause blockages, stenches, even explosions. Which means that before we can hope to bring back light and warmth to the stack, all must be made clean, the walls of the chambers polished, the pipes flushed to discover the leaks, and all repairs made safe.'

Wratha nodded. 'Well, in one more sundown — two at most — we should have thralls enough for all such work. Meanwhile, we'll have to live with it. Ah, but as I recall, luxuries were also scarce in Turgosheim!' And to Canker:

'How about you? Do you have complaints, too?'

He shook his head, set his mane flying. 'None!' he barked. 'I have a small but useful workshop, a launching-bay, and veritable mazes of apartments on all levels. My windows are wide and face north, with suitable balconies from which I may ogle the moon. When I sing… the walls reverberate with choruses all their own, and my rooms are filled with sound! All I need now is a bitch to warm my bed, a bone to sharpen my teeth on, and I shall be content!'

'You shall have all of that and more,' Wratha nodded, and turned to Vasagi the Suck. 'Last, but by no means least?'

Vasagi had no voice as such. Below his dark, flattened, convoluted nose his face was a trunk of pale pink flesh which tapered into a quivering proboscis. But the Suck had developed his sign-language to an extraordinary degree; there was meaning in his slightest glance, each turn and tilt of his head, every wrinkle of his forehead or flutter of his long, tapering fingers. So that between this and his telepathy, which was an art shared by all of the Wamphyri to one degree or another, his 'voice' was as clear as any other's and clearer than most.

I have no complaints, he answered as 'simply' as that, with a complicated shrug that said it for him. Except Wratha could swear that she also 'heard' him say: However, and if or when I do have complaints, then you shall hear of them first, Lady.

If there was a threat in it, she ignored it for the moment. But she would not forget it. Meanwhile, there was enough to keep everyone occupied.

'Mount up!' Wratha cried. 'Up, all, and into the air — warriors, too! The sun is off the peaks and it's twilight on Sunside. And now, if Maglore has it right, we shall see what no one else has seen for all of fourteen years.'

With which they had headed west over the boulder plains, then south across the mouth of the great pass and the glowing hemisphere of the legendary hell-lands Gate, finally to this very plateau where now -

— Where now Wratha's renegades landed and joined her on the rim. And as they returned to earth and the present, so did the Lady's thoughts…

There!' she said, pointing. 'Look there!'

Below them, maybe three miles distant in the lee of the twilight mountains, a Szgany town or more properly a village stood on slightly elevated ground between twin streams which tumbled down from the heights. Southwards, the streams joined up and formed a river through the forest; to east and west, at ancient fording places, stout wooden bridges spanned the cascading waters. The lands thus enclosed, between mountains on the one hand, streams on the other, were sufficient to support the township.

Szgany! Vasagi's facial anomaly quivered his anticipation.

'Women!' Canker fell to his knees and might have offered up thanks to the moon in his fashion, but Wratha stopped him with a glance.

Thralls galore!' Gorvi's whisper oozed his delight. 'And fresh lieutenants to oversee them in their duties.'

'Flesh for the shaping,' Spiro scowled. The first small nucleus of our army. But a town as big as this? Why, Turgosheim never saw the like!'

'And all ours,' Wratha nodded. 'But I think you'll find this a small place, compared with what's waiting out there!' She threw her arms wide as if to enclose all of Sunside, and their greedy scarlet eyes took in something of its span: The curved horizons to east and west, and between them a dozen and more campfires clearly visible, dotting the darkening land like glowworms as far as the eye could see. Broad forests lying dark to the south, and beyond them furnace deserts, cooling now under banded amethyst skies. In all, a vast expanse.

'How many of them?' Wran, who was normally silent except in a passion, spoke up. The Szgany, I mean. Ten thousand, do you think?'

'What?' Wratha smiled at him. 'Why, even in Turgosheim's Sunside there are that many! No… fifty thousand, and more!'

Spiro gripped his brother's arm. 'Just think, Wran! Fifty thou…!' But the words were choked off as his emotions overcame him. He cleared his throat. 'Our tithe will be massive!'

Tithe?' Wratha laughed, a young girl's laugh, which in the next moment became a woman's voice again, indeed a Lady's. 'No tithe-system here, Spiro. We take what we want!'

'Oh?' said Gorvi. 'But if they're so many, surely they can fight us? We only talk of building an army; they are already an army!'

Wratha shook her head. They are Szgany, yes, but it seems that in fourteen years they've become as territorial as we ourselves. See how they've settled, divided their lands, built their towns. Fight, did you say? With what and against whom? Against each other, perhaps, but not against us. Have you forgotten the trogs we fell upon in their devotions? The Wamphyri are no more, Gorvi! We are the stuff of legends!'

Gorvi was astonished; for this time his natural duplicity — his devious mind, which usually examined every angle, expecting trouble from whichever quarter — had worked against him to obscure the simple facts, which Wratha had made clear. 'But of course.'' he said, his face agog. They are unprepared. They don't know we're here, or even that we exist!'

'But they will,' Wratha told him, 'eventually. And then it will be as it was in Turgosheim, too late — for them! Then they might choose to fight, by which time we shall be too many. Which is why we start by increasing our numbers… start now, tonight!'

Then why do you keep us waiting? Vasagi might look alien, but his eager thoughts were all Wamphyri.

'Simply to remind you why we are here," Wratha answered. 'I know you have certain needs, all of you; also that you must put them aside, for the moment. Now is no time for wasteful self-indulgence, but for structuring our future. Tonight we kill, but only to rekindle! Tonight we destroy, in order to create! Canker — ' she turned to him, '- take as many women and make as many vampire babies as you will, until you are exhausted. But remember this: the rest of us will be making thralls! Bring a Szgany slut back to your manse, by all means, but your flyer has room for just two passengers. And we shall be taking back fine young Szgany flesh, for the making of lieutenants. Enough. I hope you take my meaning…' She turned to Wran.

'Wran, you are handsome tonight, as ever. A fine cloak and boots, and your good gauntlet at your belt. Ah, but should you rage, your cloak and boots will be ruined with blood! Aye, and your every effort wasted. So kill by all means, slay with your gauntlet all you will, but remember this: a dead man is only a dead man. Not until he has something of you in him will he rise up again, trek for Starside before the rising sun, and be your thrall in the bowels of the stack. Now, your rages are legendary, I know, but not tonight, Wran, not tonight. Instead, let it be like this: don't maim but make each kill a clean one, for we've no use for thralls who are cripples. And every time you slay, take a little something, a sip, from your victim — but at the same time give a little something back! That way you'll make useful vampires, Wran, not useless corpses.'

She looked at the rest of them. The same applies to all, of course..

'Now: these are the instructions you should give to those who become your thralls: that when they rise up undead and flee from the rising sun, they should bring with them into Starside grain from their storehouses, nuts and fruits, tools and other metal things — but never silver! — and any woven items which they can carry. They can bring them on their travois or carts, through the great pass; which is why this place makes a good choice, because it is close to the pass…' She paused for a moment's thought. And eventually: 'Well, I think that covers it.'

They began to turn away, head for their flyers, but she stopped them. 'No, wait: two more things.

'I remember a time — oh, long ago — on Turgosheim's Sunside, when I was a Szgany titheling. A captive of the Wamphyri, I was given into the charge of a young lieutenant and taken up on to his flyer's back. Then… I killed him! Any live prisoners you take, make sure they're either tightly bound or unconscious, or both!

'Finally, don't let the warriors glut themselves. A morsel here, a tidbit there, sufficient only to fuel themselves and no more.' She nodded sharply. There! Is all understood?'

All was understood. Again Wratha's nod. 'Good! Now let their fires guide you down to what will be glory for you, hell for them. And if all goes well, later there's maybe a treat for you…'

The Szgany of Twin Fords scarcely knew what had hit them. Two of the warriors landed at the bridges, destroying them in seconds, and the third towards the junction of the rivers, from where it herded fleeing villagers back towards the town. The flyers were guided down closer to Twin Fords itself, to encircle it in a ring of lolling grey primordial shapes. Largely harmless when grounded, still these manta-shaped beasts were fearsome to look at, and they had orders from their riders to roll upon and crush anyone who came too close. They could eat flesh, of course, but were instructed not to; their food consisted of a special preparation, which Wratha hoped soon to manufacture on Starside.

But in Twin Fords their arrival had not gone unnoticed: the rumble of warrior propulsors was unmistakable to certain of the older inhabitants, also the amorphous, squid-like silhouettes which blotted out the stars as they passed overhead, and the stench of exhaust gases which fell on the town like the smoke of a hundred corpse-fires. And a concerted sigh of horror went up and was passed on, swelling to a choking cry in the suddenly reeking twilight: Wamphyri! Wamphyri.'

Issuing a clinging vampire mist as they advanced into the village, the raiders heard that massed cry — indeed, they felt the terror which their presence engendered — and laughed. They fed upon it, and with Wamphyri passions inflamed met the fleeing inhabitants head-on. The result was carnage.

Wratha and her five were in the streets, blocking every exit as best they could. Human yet inhuman, they were simply figures in the stinking, slimy mist… until the people who fled into their arms saw their eyes, their melting, changing faces, and the metamorphic poisons which dripped from their fangs!

Wran raged, of course, but he also remembered Wratha's words and his fury was controlled. Having left his gauntlet tied to his saddle, instead he drove fingers like talons into the chests of his victims, nipping their hearts a little until they fell twitching to the ground. And kneeling, he would fasten his teeth in their necks to taste their blood, which served to transfuse his own blood's monstrous fever into them. So he dealt death and undeath to a score of victims in as many moments.

And 'dying', they all sensed the instructions of Wran's hideous vampire mind, which spoke to them as one body although they were many: When you rise up and come to me in my manse in Starside, bring me your goods and chattels, which are now mine. Only remember: come before the sun is risen! For your Szgany flesh is as a soft metal beside the fire of the sun, and what has been forged may be melted. Aye, and what I have made can be unmade forever.

Within the hour he killed sixty like this, men, women and youths, of which less than one third would make it to Starside. For before they could escape from the sun, first they must escape from the raid's survivors; and of course, there would be some who woke up too late, or not at all, but slept on with stakes in their hearts until they were burned. In its way, it was not unlike a process of natural — or unnatural — selection.

Spiro's way was simpler than his brother's: he snatched up people where they fled through his mist and bit their faces, then struck them down with hands like hammers. Pain and shock did the rest. They would not die but wake up with sore heads and strange cravings, and hear the message which he'd left in their changeling minds.

As for Canker: to the terrified people streaming out of the stricken town, he must seem like a tame wolf who fled with them. But he was not a wolf and he was not tame. Loping among them on all fours, he chose only the fleetest, and for every male he chose a female. He was tempted.. there were plump young beauties here… but like Wran the Rage, Canker, too, remembered Wratha's words. Why waste his energies now in the cold comfort of the streets, when he'd be using all these women later in whichever way he chose and to his heart's content? — those of them who made it, anyway. His brand would be unmistakable when he saw it: they would be limping where he'd savaged their legs to bring them down, and chewed a little in the junction of neck and shoulder.

Gorvi the Guile crouched in the arch of a mist-wreathed doorway, from where he called out softly, urgently to people rushing by: 'Quickly, there's safety within!' Upon entering, they stumbled over the sprawled heap formed of previous victims, saw the smoking blobs of sulphur which were his sunken eyes, and at the last felt the needles of his gleaming teeth.

Vasagi the Suck waited around a corner, grabbed up any who passed too close, and stabbed them deep in their ears — even to their brains — with his darting, spurting proboscis. For Vasagi, all was accomplished in this one, simple, flowing action; if he desired it, his toll might be huge. But he did not. And his message to the undead was likewise simple: It was Vasagi the Suck who tasted your brains and bent them to his will. Report to me on Starside. You will know me by my face, which is unique.

So the six and their shadowing lieutenants advanced into the town, leaving death and undeath in their wake. And each of them was like a plague in his own right, except Wratha.

She wore her gauntlet, but only for protection. And killing no one, her method was the simplest of all. Stepping close on the heels of the others where they went, flitting from one to the next as they advanced, she would go to certain of their male victims and touch them, saying: I am Wratha. He who killed you is to me what you were to him: nothing! Where/ore you are mine. When you come into Starside, be sure you come unto me.

So she recruited her thralls, all of them men or youths. But still she did not see herself as a thief. No, for as the leader of the pack, in order to ensure that all went well for the rest of them, she needed her wits about her. Personally, she could not afford the additional distraction of the kill. Thus Wratha excused herself.

And indeed all went very well, for a while…

… Until the six and their lieutenants came together in an open space where the fires burned in the town's centre. And face to face, with the warrior stench fading and only their own mist draping them, victory shone from their redly luminous eyes. It had been almost too easy. It had been too easy!

For suddenly, a voice from behind snarled: 'Murdering — bastard — things!' And human, Szgany, the voice itself was a threat. Whirling as one, falling to defensive half-crouches, the twelve turned outwards. Behind them in a ring, a dozen or more men of the village hemmed them in. But these were mature, experienced men: men of the old days. Their faces were filled with horror, hatred, and resolution; they carried crossbows, loaded and aimed.

Wratha had half-expected it. Szgany herself upon a time, she knew there were always some who retaliated, who could not be crushed utterly: these people, for instance. In the old days this band — these wanderers, always on the move from place to place in their avoidance of Wamphyri raids — had not been supplicant; they'd not surrendered easily to Wamphyri oppression but fought back. And these men… they remembered how! Their bolts would be silver-tipped, steeped in kneblasch, deadly. There were long knives in their belts, and wooden stakes!

And: Come! Wratha called to her warrior. But in that same moment, the men began firing.

Wratha's lieutenant, a young man and very bloody, with a gauntlet which was clogged with red flesh (her restrictions had not applied to thrall watchdogs such as him), hurled himself in front of her — and took a bolt in his throat! He gagged, threw up his arms, was hurled back against her — to be grasped and held there by Wratha, as a shield.

The other lieutenants had acted in a like fashion, three covering their masters, the others leaping head-on to confront the threat. Bolts took one of them in mid-flight, skewered him and stretched him out, but the other got in among the would-be avengers. He struck left and right, his gauntlet spraying red, until silver-edged swords hissed to cut him down.

Vasagi the Suck's mental screech sawed at his colleagues' nerve-endings; he had been struck in the side, where his vampire flesh was now poisoned. A master of metamorphism, he would quickly shed the infected flesh and cure himself; but his cry served to galvanize his five Wamphyri colleagues to action.

Until then they had been stunned and immobilized by the attack, even Wratha, for in Turgosheim's Sunside it would have been impossible. But now:

'Wran,' Wratha cried, 'now you may rage all you will!'

Gorvi cursed where he issued a screening mist for all he was worth; Vasagi reeled and tore out the bolt from his side, hurling it down; the rest sprang to join their lieutenants in the fray.

The men of the village were reloading. One of them got off a frantic, lucky shot which took Canker's lieutenant in the heart. In the next moment Canker was on the crossbowman, tearing out his throat…

Wratha came face to face with a man just finished reloading who elevated his weapon point-blank against her breast. Even as he squeezed the trigger, her hand closed on the projecting head of the bolt. Ignoring the 'pain' of kneblasch and silver (she was partly immune, anyway), her fist clenched the bolt more tightly yet and her awesome vampire strength held it back. But the crossbow itself answered the laws of physics. Flying backwards, its thrumming wire sliced the man's windpipe like a razor, even as Wratha's gauntlet disembowelled him.

Gorvi's mist settled over everything, and Gorvi himself was central in it. His gauntlet turned one man's face to ruin, sheared through the rib-cage of another as if the bones were twigs. And the screams of the dead and dying were like music in the ears of the Wamphyri.

Through all of this Wran raged, and likewise his brother Spiro. So that they were still raging as Gorvi's mist cleared and it became apparent that nothing more threatened. Distantly, briefly, there sounded the patter of flying feet, but that was all. The dead lay where they had fallen.

As Wran and Spiro grew calm, so there sounded the stuttering throb of propulsors and Wratha's warrior, followed in short order by the others, began circling overhead. Gorvi the Guile looked from the warriors to the smoking red ruins of men where he stood among them, and said, wonderingly:

'So they did fight, after all…'

And with a nod, Wratha answered, 'A handful of them, who remembered the Old Wamphyri. But we must never tolerate resistance.'

They should pay for it!' Canker declared. 'Let's follow them, hunt them down!'

Wratha looked at Vasagi and her face framed a question. His eyes were wide with fury where he stood holding his side, but he shook his head and glanced at his warrior spurting over the rooftops. He sent a message, and the beast at once crashed down on a huddle of dwellings, shattering them outwards!

And: The Suck is right,' Wratha declared. 'Let the fools run and hide and think it over, and when they return discover the retribution of the Wamphyri!'

Her creature likewise crashed down, with more sod and timber buildings disappearing into rubble, and Wran and Spiro's warrior followed suit.

And leaving all of the monsters wallowing together in the town's debris, Wratha, her renegades, and their two remaining lieutenants returned to their flyers. Now the warriors would fuel themselves on the victims of the brief battle, human defenders and vampire lieutenants both. It should not occupy them for too long…

Later, airborne, Wratha said: All accomplished, except we've lost four lieutenants and failed to recruit more. So, we have a choice. We can wait and make new lieutenants from our thralls when they come over into Starside, or…

The others waited, and in a moment: Do you remember, she continued, I said that if all went well there might be a treat for you? They did, and she went on: Vasagi, are you up to it?

With telepathic perceptions sharper than the others, the Suck knew her mind. And: Yes, he answered, as brief as ever.

They rose up level with the peaks and Wratha pointed west. The night's still young, she said, and we have lieutenants to recruit. So let's see what else this marvellous Sunside has to offer, eh?

No one disagreed.

At about which time, and twenty miles away: The three more youthful members of Lardis Lidesci's party, returning home from their Starside trek, had gone on ahead into Settlement. But Lardis and Andrei Romani still had the better part of an hour to go before they in turn would enter through the town's East Gate…

Ill

Something less than an hour later, in Settlement: Attracted by a sudden commotion and surge in the crowd, Nestor Kiklu made his way through the milling people to discover what was going on. And he saw that he'd been right: it was Lardis Lidesci's voice making all the fuss. As for what it was all about: that remained to be discovered.

At the forward edge of the crowd, where the people who had come out to welcome Lardis home now held themselves back, shocked by their leader's outburst, Nestor felt himself swaying with an unaccustomed dizziness. Complementing the natural excitement of the night — that and his passion of a minute or two earlier, when he'd talked to Jason about Nathan and Misha — the Szgany wine was quickly going to his head. Reeling, he paused to lean against a cart, and became just one more slack-jawed witness in a sea of astonished faces.

For there at one of the old decoys Lardis stomped about in the tired, broken-down framework of torn, weathered skins and rotting wooden ribs — and raved! Ever faithful, Andrei Romani followed on behind his leader, trying to calm him down and imploring the crowd to hold back and not concern themselves; the old Lidesci was just worn out from the trek. But to Nestor and the rest, Lardis looked far less tired than…

'… Crazy!' some woman muttered, close by. 'He must have been drinking on the way in, and had a skinful. Why, listen to the man! Playing at being the Big Leader again, after so many years of doing nothing! What? But if his Lissa knew the state he was in, she'd be down here boxing his ears by now! But no, they have their fine cabin up on the knoll, well away from us common folk.'

Old bag! Nestor thought. He didn't think much of Lardis, but old sows like that were worse far. All the same, what on earth was Lardis up to?

'Lardis!' someone shouted from the crowd. 'Now what's all this about? Why, you sound like you've lost fifteen years out of your life, and gone back to the bad old days! As for these lures and all such rubbish: we abandoned their upkeep a lifetime ago. They should be stripped down for firewood. So what's all the fuss?'

Now Nestor began to understand, and to believe that maybe Lardis really was crazy; certainly he'd been acting strangely since they came back through the pass. In order to get a better idea of what was going on, he pushed himself upright and moved closer still.

Fuming and sputtering, with Andrei Romani still in tow, now Lardis stalked around the perimeter of the decoy. 'What?' he snarled. 'But look at the state of these lures! The skins are tattered and the timbers rotten. What could you impale on stakes as wormy as these? Nothing! They'd crumble at a touch. As for a warrior impaling himself, ridiculous! What creature would ever feel challenged by… by this mess?'

'Lardis,' Andrei tried to keep pace with him, catching at his arm to slow him down. He kept his voice low but still Nestor heard what he was saying. 'Lardis, you'll only excite the people, worry them, frighten them silly. Can't this keep, at least until you've rested? You have no proof, after all. I mean, you're not sure, now are you?'

Nestor's head felt light, even giddy. He wondered: proof of what? Not sure about what? Perhaps Lardis was tired after all — or sick, maybe? Even now he was looking at Andrei with burning eyes, turning his gaze on the muttering crowd, finally holding up a trembling hand to his sweating brow. But no, he wasn't sick, for in the next moment he was raving again.

'The stockade fence!' he shouted, heading in that direction. 'You've cut doors in it, gates on all four sides. Except they've stood open for so long that they're warped and won't close any more. And just look at the great crossbows and the catapults!'

He went at a stumbling run, up the rickety wooden steps where they climbed the fence, to tug at the lashings of a catapult whose huge spoon of a head stood taller than his own. In a moment, rotten leather had fallen to mould in his powerful hands. Disgusted, Lardis let the dust trickle through his fingers and looked around. And his fevered eyes went at once to frayed hauling ropes where they dangled from the pivoting hurling-arm. Then, risking life and limb, he used these self-same ropes to slide back to earth.

'Oh, they take my weight, all right,' he panted, landing. 'But how do you think they'd stand the strain of hauling that bucket down against its counterweight, eh? Well, I can tell you that for nothing: they wouldn't!'

'Lardis!' Now Andrei had stopped trying to reason with him, and his voice was suddenly harsher, angrier — sorrier? 'Man, I don't think you… I mean, it seems to me that you're not… that you're no longer responsible!'

Lardis had meanwhile turned away to head for the South Gate. Still following him, Andrei cried out: 'Lardis, do you insist on being right? But man, you can't be! You mustn't be!' Sensing a drama, the crowd moved as one man to shadow the pair. But finally it seemed that something of Andrei's words had got through to Lardis. What? What was that he'd said? That Lardis Lidesci was no longer responsible? Or did he simply mean sane? His footsteps faltered, stopped, and he turned.

And as Andrei caught up and went to him, pleadingly now, so Lardis hit him once and stretched him out. Then he turned and went more quickly yet — but crookedly, brokenly — towards the South Gate and the forest beyond. And this time the crowd let him go.

Nestor shook his head, partly in amazement and partly to clear it. The wine lay like a blanket in his brain and on his tongue. Alcohol: even as it deadened the senses and killed off common sense utterly, still it generated passion and excitement. Drunk, Nestor was excited about what had happened, which must surely signal the beginning of the end for Lardis Lidesci, his decline and fall — and the rise of his weakling son, Jason? And he was passionate about…

… 'Misha!' He spoke her name out loud, and turning bumped into someone. The other, a youth he knew, whose face was now a frowning blur, steadied him and said:

'Misha? I saw her earlier, heading for your mother's house, I think. But what do you reckon about — '

But Nestor had no more time to waste here. Not waiting to hear the youth out, he thrust him aside and went stumbling in the direction of the houses huddled in the western quarter of the stockade, in the lee of the fence and the watchtower. One of those houses had been 'home' to him for as long as he could remember, but perhaps no more.

And the strong wine churning in his stomach, and likewise the thoughts in his fuddled head: Misha at his mother's house… And who else would be there?… Why, none other than Nathan!… The two of them together, like lovers reunited after a long absence.

Well, Nestor knew what he must do about that!

With the murmur of the crowd fading behind him, he walked unsteadily through the empty streets of low cabins, store and barter-houses, stables, beehive granaries; and with every thudding beat of his heart his resolve grew stronger and his course seemed more clearly defined. If what he planned was a crime, at least it would be justified. To Nestor, at least.

The west wall loomed, and there was Nana Kiklu's house, one of several built close to the fence: a long sloping roof of wooden shingles at the front, and a short one at the back, covering the stable and barn. Hanging open, the louvre-covers at the windows let out lamplight and the low murmur of voices. His mother's voice, Misha's tinkling laugh, and Nathan's stumbling stutter. Inside, all would be light and warmth.

Perhaps wistfully, Nestor thought about that: all light and warmth… but the narrow alley leading to the back of the house and the hay barn was as dark as his intentions. And suddenly he knew how dark they were; so that he might have gone straight to the door and entered, been one with the others, and woke up in the morning with a thick head, a sigh of relief and a clear conscience. But it was not to be, for at that precise moment he heard laughter and the door opened a crack, and he stepped back a pace into the shadows of the alley.

Then Nestor heard his mother bidding Misha goodnight, the door closing, and the lingering footsteps of two people coming towards him as they made for Misha's house. And when they stepped into view, and paused silhouetted, her arm hugged Nathan's, and the starlight gleamed on her smile. And Nestor was cold as stone again, but the fire inside him raged up hot as hell.

He felt his feet carrying him forward, had no control over them, or over the hand that made a fist and drove for Nathan's chin, striking him and rocking his head back against the wall. Misha had time for a single gasp as Nathan crumpled — time to stumble backwards, wide-eyed, away from his attacker, and gulp air to make a shout — which came out as a shocked exclamation as finally she recognized… 'Nestor.'?'

And as her eyes went wider yet he grabbed her up, muffled her mouth with his hand, and dragged her kicking and biting — but all in silence — along the passage to the barn door, where he lifted the bar with his elbow. Inside, the piled hay made a musty-sweet smell, and the inky darkness was striped with starlight filtering faintly in through a loosely boarded side wall.

Nestor was aroused now; with his free hand, he tore Misha's dress open down the front and fondled her firm breasts, and she felt him hard where he pressed himself to her. And the incredible became possible, even likely, as he half-pushed, half-fell with her on to the hay.

Misha had always known Nestor was strong, but the strength she felt now was that of the rapist: mindless, brutal, fevered and phenomenal! His breath was hot and sweet with wine, his kisses rough and lusty, and his hands even more so where they alternated between squeezing her breasts and dragging her legs apart, positioning her on the hay. And to accompany every move, each panting breath, he tore at her clothing, and at his own.

Now she fought him in earnest — raking his face, trying to butt him, bite him, bring her knee into his groin — all to no avail; in just a few seconds she was exhausted. Pinned down, breathless and gasping, her fate seemed certain. She drew air massively to scream, and Nestor brought his face down on hers, crushing her mouth. How she tossed and wriggled then, desperate to be rid of him as he threw her dress up over the lower part of her face….nd a bar of starlight fell across her forehead and eyes.

Seeing the fear in Misha's eyes, Nestor flinched inside, in his guts. Perhaps for her part she felt the change in him, which came and passed in a moment. And: 'Why?' she panted, as he completed the work on her underclothes. 'Nestor, why?'

He began to come down on her, his hand behind and under her, opening her up. 'When your father and brothers know,' he husked, 'they'll either kill me or see to it that we're married. Whichever, it will be decisive.'

His mouth closed on hers; she felt his manhood throbbing, thrusting, searching her out, and wondered: Married? Then why didn't you just ask me? For after all, she had always known it would be one of them, Nestor or Nathan. She hadn't known which one, that was all. Now she did, and it wasn't Nestor.

But maybe she knew too late…

Nana Kiklu kneeled by her stone fireplace and chopped a few last vegetable ingredients into the stew bubbling in a copper pan. Her boys would be in soon, Nestor from the welcoming party and Nathan back from walking Misha home. They might have eaten already, but with their appetites it would make little difference. And home cooking was always best.

Nana smiled as she thought of Misha: that girl was really smitten with her boys. But then, she always had been. Sooner or later she would make her choice, and Nana hoped… but no, she must be impartial, and certainly she loved them both and had no favourite. But Nathan, Nathan…

The smile fell from her comely face, became a frown, and she sighed. If not Misha Zanesti, then who would take Nathan? And if it was him, then what of Nestor? For they had grown up together, all three, so that whichever way it went the choosing would be painful and the parting of the ways hard.

And again Nana thought: Nathan, ah, Nathan!

Misha understood him and his ways; something of them, anyway. And as for Nana: she, of course, understood them only too well! She need only look at him to see his father, Harry Keogh, called Dwellersire, looking back at her. Fortunate that no one had ever noticed or remarked upon it; but times had been hard in those days, when people had enough to do minding their own business without minding the business of others. And Nathan's differences hadn't become really marked until he was five, in the year after the last great battle, which had destroyed his alien father along with the first and last of the Wamphyri.

On occasion, infrequently, Nana had seen Lardis Lidesci look strangely, wonderingly at Nathan. But even if he suspected, Lardis would never say anything. He had always been the strong one, Lardis: the protector. And anyway, he got along well with Nathan and liked him; that is to say, he got on as well as could be expected with someone who kept so far apart.

Nathan had always kept himself apart, yes, except from Misha, of course… And now Nana was back to that.

Finished with her vegetables, she sighed again, stood up, crossed to the window and looked out. Twilight was quickly fading into night now; the stars were very bright over the barrier range, and a mist was rolling down off the mountains and across the lower slopes. In the old days a mist like that would have sent shivers down Nana's spine, but no more. And her mind went back all of eighteen years and more to just such times — and one night in particular — in The Dweller's garden on Starside. What she had done then… maybe it had been a mistake, maybe not, but her boys were the result and she wouldn't change that.

Nestor and Nathan: they'd never known their true father; which, considering what came later, was probably just as well. But for all that Harry had been (and must now forever remain) a stranger to them, the one unknown factor in their young lives, still he'd left his mark on them, and especially on Nathan. Oh, Harry Dwellersire had marked both of her sons, Nana knew, but in Nathan it burned like a brand.

Burned! She sniffed the air and went back to the fire. For that would never do, to let her good stew burn. But in the pot, the water was deep, simmering, not boiling over at all. And so the smell must be something else entirely. A smell at first, and now… a sound, which Nana remembered.

Impossible!

She flew to the window. Out there, the mist was leprous white in moon-and starlight, undulating, thickly concentrated where it lay on the foothills and sent tendrils creeping over the north wall and through gaps in the stockade's inner planking. Nana had never seen a mist like it. No, she had, she had! But there are certain things you daren't recall, and this mist was one of them.

The sound came again — a sputtering roar — and a shadow blotting out the stars where it passed overhead. And drifting down from the darkness and the night, that nameless reek, that stench from memory, that impossible smell. Utterly impossible! But if that were so…

… Then what was the meaning of the sudden, near — distant tumult which Nana now heard rising out of the town? What was all that shouting? What were those hoarse, terrified, Szgany voices screaming?

No need to ask, for she knew the answer well enough. 'Wamphyri! Wamphyri!'

And as the throbbing sputter of propulsors sounded again, closer, shaking the house, the one thought in Nana's mind was for her boys and the girl they loved: Nathan! Nestor! Misha!

She ran to the door and threw it open.

Nathan! Nestor! Misha!

The bellowing of warriors seemed to sound from every quarter, and the sickening stench of their exhaust vapours touched and tainted everything. Nathan! Nestor! Misha!

Something unbelievable, monstrous, armoured, fell out of the sky, directly on to Nana's house. Along with the adjacent houses, her place collapsed into dust, debris, ruins, like a ripe puffball when you step on it. Shattered, the door flew from its leather hinges and knocked Nana down in the billowing dust of the street. But even as she dragged herself away from the hissing and the bellowing — and now the screaming, which rose up out of the smoking rubble of the nearby buildings — still she repeated, over and over:

'Nathan! Nestor! Misha!' And wondered, would she ever see them again?

Five minutes earlier, in the barn: Misha felt Nestor beginning to enter her, and in desperation gasped, 'Let me… let me help you.'

He lifted his face from her breasts and stared at her disbelievingly. But then, as she reached down a hand between their bodies, he could only grunt an astonished, 'What?'

Certainly Nestor could use help; not only was his drunkenness a handicap in its own right, he was also inexperienced. For all his swaggering and boasting among Settlement's youths, and his apparent familiarity with certain of the village girls, he was a virgin no less than Misha herself. Indeed, more so, for she at least seemed to know something.

She caught him up where he jerked and strained, and tightened her slender hand to a yoke around the neck of his pulsing member. As she began to work at him he murmured, 'Ah!' and rose up from her a little, to allow her more freedom. Never releasing him for a moment but continuing to gratify his flesh, she at once took the opportunity to roll him on to his back.

He was young and full of lust; her hand was a warm engine of pleasure, squeezing and pumping at him; it couldn't last.

Aching to touch her, tug at her, feel the warm resilience of her perspiring breasts, he reached out a trembling hand — but too late. And as his fluids geysered and splashed down in long, hot pulses on to his belly, so Nestor groaned and flopped back in the hay. But even lying there in a mixture of mindless ecstasy and empty frustration, still he sensed her straightening her clothing and drawing away from him. And as his tottering senses found their own level, suddenly he wondered: How? How had she known what to do?

And trapping her wrist before she could stand up and run from him, his question was written there on his face plain for her to see. As was the answer on hers.

'Nathan!' he snarled then, as she snatched her hand away, got to her feet and backed off. He made to get after her, came to his knees. If she'd learned that much from his not-so-dumb brother, then obviously she knew all of it. And now more than ever, Nestor desired to be into her. If only for the hell of it.

Misha saw it in his face, shuddered her terror and flew for the door; he hurled himself ahead of her, slammed it shut. And moving menacingly after her where she stumbled in the dark, he huskily asked: 'But why? Why with him? Why Nathan?'

'Because he… he needed someone,' Misha's voice was a frightened whisper. 'Because he needed something. But mainly because… because there was no one else who cared.'

'Well, now there is someone else,' Nestor growled, his head clearing. 'Me! Except I don't care, not any longer. No, but there is something I need.'

He caught her and lifted her skirts, and when his hand went to her throat she knew that this time she mustn't fight. But she could still protest. And: 'Nestor, please don't!' she begged him.

'What you've done for him, you can do for me,' his voice was choked with lust and fury.

'But we didn't…' she gulped as he pinned her to the wall and positioned himself between her legs. 'We've never

'Liar!' he snarled. For in his mind's eye he'd seen them: Nathan and Misha, panting out their lust as their flesh heaved and shuddered. And hoarsely he ordered her: 'Now do it, put me in. And after that… just pretend that I'm Nathan!'

It was like an invocation.

'B-b-but you're not!' said a stuttering voice from where the barn door now stood open. And it was Nathan, silhouetted against the night, one hand to his face, and the other a fist which was wrapped round the door's inch-by-three ironwood bar.

Nestor half-sobbed, half-moaned as he thrust Misha aside and went for Nathan's throat — and ran head-on into the flat side of the other's ironwood club! It smacked him in the face, shook his teeth and flattened his nose, struck him down like a swatted fly. He lay there groaning, clutching his face, while Misha stumbled towards Nathan where he stood with legs spread wide and feet firmly planted, and the bar held high for a second blow. Maybe he would do it, and maybe not, but Misha knew she couldn't let it happen.

And neither could Nathan. Even before she could reach him, he'd turned away and let the bar fall.

At which point both of them heard the uproar swelling out from the town's crowded meeting place, and the throb of powerful propulsors overhead. If they had heard that ominous sound before, then they'd been too young for it to make any lasting impression. But still it was strange, frightening, evocative; as was the wafting stench which suddenly accompanied it.

They looked at each other, clung in each other's arms for the very briefest moment -

— Only to be wrenched apart as the roof caved in and the barn flew apart! Then, as their entire world collapsed in chaos all around them, the nightmare they had just lived through commenced its long spiral down from one dark level to depths more lightless yet…

Nestor was a child of ten again, playing in the woods with his lieutenant, Nathan, and the Szgany thrall Misha. He, of course, was the vampire Lord Nestor. That was what he had wanted to be all of his young life — what he would always want to be, and the only role he would ever accept — Wamphyri!

But this time, and for all that the plot was simple, the game wasn't working out. Nathan and Misha had joined forces to escape from the aerie (a ramshackle treehouse) into the woods, and Nestor was intent upon finding and punishing them. Indeed, and after a decent interval, they were supposed to let him find them, except today they didn't seem to be playing according to the rules. And though Nestor had searched for all he was worth for at least half an hour, still they continued to elude him. So that his mounting anger where he slipped through the green maze of the forest, pausing every now and then to sniff at the air in approved vampire fashion, might well be equal (in young boy measure) to that of the legendary Wamphyri themselves. And how he would punish this wayward lieutenant, and this ingrate Szgany slut, when he discovered them!

Normally it was easy to find them. He might lean against the bole of a great tree — stand there absolutely motionless, holding his breath in the forest's often preternatural silence — and wait for a telltale sound to give them away: a furtive rustle of undergrowth, the snap of a dry twig, their whispering, conspiratorial voices. Or if not 'voices' in the plural, one voice at least: Misha's. For of course Nathan could not, or would not speak, not without sputtering and stuttering like a fool. And so it would be Misha leading the way, doing all the whispering, the planning, the… cheating?

That's what it was: cheating! Spoiling the game! For by now Nestor should have found them, chastised them, sent them to pick nuts and berries for him as punishment, and stood over them scowling while they filled his mother's basket. Which was the real reason they were out here in the first place: to fill Nana Kiklu's basket with wild fruit and nuts. Except, and as always, it had seemed a good idea to turn work into a game.

And now he shouted into the green haze all around, 'Nathaaan!… Mish-aaa!'… and waited for their answer.

Hah! Try waiting for a birthday, or a wish to come true!

So now there was only one thing for it, the one infallible method. Nestor didn't like to use it, for it seemed to him an intrusion: like that time he stumbled over lovers in the long grass of the foothills, and watched them at their play. He had never forgotten it: all naked backsides and thrusting, jerking flesh. And hurting, too, from the sound of it. If that was love you could keep it! But at the same time he'd known it was wrong of him to watch them… as had the young man when it was over and finally he'd sensed a peeping-tom there! What a chase that had been, and Nestor lucky to get out of it unscathed.

This wasn't the same, he knew, but it was similar, and he and his brother had this unwritten rule never to use it. Even the very young have things they would rather keep secret, entirely to themselves. Especially their thoughts…

But on the other hand, didn't Nathan intrude upon him, too, in his dreams?

Of course, Nathan would know what he'd done; he would feel him there in his mind, and slam it like a door in his face. Ah, but if he and Misha had played the game as had been intended, Nestor wouldn't have to do it, now would he?

He sat down with his back to a mossy bole, closed his eyes and let his mind drift. Somewhere out there, Misha and Nathan were hiding from him. Somewhere in the deep woods, which they all three knew so well, his brother (no, his 'lieutenant') and the Szgany thrall Misha trembled in terror where they huddled in the forest's green expanse. But being Wamphyri, Nestor could smell them out! He could extend his senses, or issue a vampire mist, and know when its lapping tendrils touched their shivering flesh! He could scry on them from afar and see them where they cowered! And only let him catch a glimpse of their surroundings, he would know their secret location on the instant!

And so his thoughts drifted out until they touched upon Nathan's. It was difficult and would have been even harder if his brother weren't distracted, if he'd been looking inwards, as was his wont. But this time his thoughts weren't clouded; his mind was clear for once, and concentrated upon something entirely different from Nestor and the game. Concentrated in fact upon Misha…

… Misha, swimming naked in sun-dappled shallows, sleek and agile as a fish, and just as innocent. Misha, all silver and gold from the sunlight shimmering on her brown pixy body, laughing as she taunted Nathan, daring him to join her in the water. And seeing Misha through Nathan's eyes — seeing her exactly as Nathan saw her — it was as if Nestor saw her for the first time, from a different viewpoint or through a different soul….hich of course was precisely the case.

Then Nathan knew he was there and Nestor felt his shock, which caused him to start and bang his head against the tree. In that same moment, the scene on his mind's eye blurred and blinked out. But not before he recognized their location: the sandy shallows at the river's bend, where the speckled trout played in the pebbles and eels wriggled in the long grasses.

Nestor knew all the shortcuts; he could be there in four or five minutes, before Nathan accepted Misha's dare and got into the water, and certainly before they were out again, dry and into their clothes. He could be there as quickly as that… but he wouldn't.

It wasn't so much what Nestor had seen through Nathan's eyes that stopped him, for if anything that would have goaded him on; it was what he'd felt in the other's inner being. The tumult of emotions there in his unguarded, for once unsuspecting mind. The young man trapped in a little boy's skin, stretching to break free of it, but held back by the knowledge that he'd be a stranger here alone in a strange land. A fear, then, of growing up, when at last he'd be obliged to accept that he was a part of this world and forced to live in it. The lonely depths of his feelings; the awareness of his own outsideness; the sure knowledge that he was without purpose here and could never belong, except to Nana, and to Nestor… and to Misha, of course.

All of this concentrated in Nathan's rapt mind, given focus there and highlighted by this crystal clear vision of innocence: a little girl, naked, swimming, laughing and real — undeniably real! — as if she were a mainstay, a prop, one of the precious few reliable factors in Nathan's entire world of unreality; which made him fear to reach out and touch her, in case she too was just a mirage.

At the time — the real time, the waking moment of the actuality eight years ago, before the dream — Nestor hadn't understood what he felt. It was hard enough to fathom 'love', without trying to understand something so far beyond it. And much too hard to understand the jealousy which held him back, to walk slowly home on his own; that cold void opening between him and his brother, which made him wish that Nathan really did belong in some other world, and that he would go there, soon.

One thing he had known, however, and that was the pain and the anger inside, which Nathan had caused. Yes, and Misha, too. So that if Nestor really were Wamphyri -

— Then — then.'

But he wasn't, and Nathan and Misha weren't his thralls. They were just children playing a game. One which they'd used to play, anyway. For from that time forward they would never play it again…

Nestor's dream was fading, slowly giving way to crushing darkness and the return of physical sensations, most of which were feelings of pain. Pain and anger, a monstrous claustrophobia, and a nameless stench.

The dream gradually receding, yes, but in its wake the pain lingering on.

And the anger…

Nathan drifted in a darkness shot with brief, brilliant bursts of violent illumination, scenes from the recent past: Misha smiling where she held his arm tightly against her body.. Nestor attempting to rape her against the wall of the barn, his voice husky with lust and fury, his hands hurting her with their fierce fondling… the ironwood bar from the door in Nathan's hand, feeling good and hard and solid there.

Then he had hit Nestor, hard! Following which something a great deal bigger had hit him, and harder! And now this claustrophobic darkness as his memories tried to piece themselves together and become whole again.

Nathan knew he wasn't dreaming; he was sure of that; his dreams were very special to him, and this wasn't one of them. No, it was the period between sleeping (or lying unconscious) and waking; the interval when the real world starts to impinge again, and the mind prepares the body for a more physical existence. It was him trying to remember exactly what had happened before the world caved in, so that he would know how to act or react when it all came together again.

And occasionally in such moments, those gradually waking moments as the mind drifts up from the fathomless deeps of subconsciousness, it was also a time for communication. Sometimes Nathan would hear the dead talking in their graves, and wonder at the things they said, until they sensed him there and fell silent.

It wasn't so much that they feared Nathan; rather they were uncertain of his nature, and so held themselves reserved and aloof. This was understandable enough, for in their terms it wasn't so long ago that there had been things in this world other than men, more evil than men, which had preyed upon the living and the dead alike; the former for the blood which is the life, and the latter for all the knowledge gone down into their graves with them. Things whose alien nature, whose condition, was neither life nor death but lay somewhere in between the two, in a seething, sunless no-man's-land called undeath! They had been the Wamphyri, who were known to spawn the occasional necromancer: one of the very few things that the dead fear. Which was why the Great Majority were wary of Nathan.

He knew none of this, only that he sometimes overheard them talking in their graves, and that where he was concerned they were secretive. He was like an eavesdropper, who had no control over his vice.

But in fact, and despite that he could hear them talking and might even have conversed with them (if they had let him), Nathan was no eavesdropper in the true sense of the word, and no necromancer. He did come close to the latter, however; very close — perhaps too close — though he wasn't aware of it yet. But the dead were, and they daren't take any chances with him. They'd trusted his father upon a time, and at the end even he had turned out to be something of a two-edged sword.

And so Nathan lay very still and listened neither maliciously nor negligently, but out of a natural curiosity, and in a little while began to hear the thoughts of the teeming dead in their graves: the merest whispers or the echoes of whispers at first — and then a great confusion of whispers — going out through the earth like sentient, invisibly connecting rootlets, and tying the Great Majority together in the otherwise eternal silence of their lonely places.

It didn't feel at all strange to Nathan — he'd listened to the dead like this, between dreams and waking, for as long as he could remember — but this time it was different. Their whispered conversations were hushed as never before, anxious, questioning, even… horrified?

For on this occasion there were newcomers among them — too many newcomers, and others who came even now — bringing tales of an ancient terror risen anew. Nathan caught only the general drift of it. But it was as if, along with a background hiss and shiver of mental static, he also heard the rustling of a thousand pairs of mummied hands all being wrung together. And so in the moment before they sensed him, he became aware that their fear was no nebulous thing but in fact very tangible.

This much he learned, and no more. For as soon as they knew he was there…

… Their thoughts shrank back at once, were withdrawn, cut off, and there was only a shocked, reverberating silence in the otherwise empty mental ether. It was as sudden as that, giving Nathan no time to probe any deeper into the problem; but at least he thought he knew how they had sensed him so quickly: because they had been alert as never before, almost as if they were expecting some… intrusion? The only thing that worried him about it, was how in the end he'd sensed that they identified him with the source of their terror!

And finally, before their withdrawal, there had been the name of that terror, which at the last was whispered from the tips of a thousand shrivelled tongues, or tongues long turned to dust: Wamphyri!

But why should that be — how could it be — that these long defunct legions of the teeming dead feared the Wamphyri, who were themselves dead and gone forever?

Nathan knew he would find no answer to that here, not yet, not now that the dead had fallen silent. And so he left them to return to their whispered conversations, and rose up from his dreams to seek the answer elsewhere…

… Rose up from dreams, to nightmare! To a memory complete with every detail of what had gone before, except the answer to the question: what had happened here? But in his first few waking moments Nathan knew he had that, too, for the dead had already supplied it.

It was a fact, all too hideously reinforced by the alien stench of warrior exhaust gases, the rubble in which he lay sprawled, the distant screams of the dead and the dying, and other sounds which could only translate as inhuman.. laughter? Unless all of these elements were figments of his imagination, and Nathan himself a raving madman, it could only add up to one thing: the Wamphyri were back! And they were here even now, in Settlement!

Which prompted other questions: how long had he been unconscious? Minutes, he suspected, a handful at most. And what of Misha, and his mother… and Nestor?

Nathan dragged himself upright, clambered shakily out of the debris of the barn — and back into it at once! For out there, maybe fifty yards towards the town centre, he'd seen the incredible bulk of a warrior hurl itself against a barter house and reduce it to so much rubble. And overhead, a huge, kite-shaped flying thing had arched its wings as it came down like some weird leaf into the main street.

Someone moaned in the litter of timber and straw at Nathan's feet: Misha!

He tore at the rubbish, hurling it aside, and stared down at Nestor's face, all bruised and bloodied. He was stretched our flat, unconscious, three-quarters buried; but it was his moan Nathan had heard, not Misha's. And even as he looked at him, so Nestor moaned again. But there in the rubble beside him… a slender white arm. And this time it must be Misha!

Trying not to bury Nestor deeper yet, Nathan dug her out. He slapped her face, gathered her up in his arms, whispered her name urgently in her ear. She was wan, dusty, pale in the starlight falling through wispy smoke and gut-wrenching stench. He couldn't tell if she was breathing or not.

In the near-distance, the Wamphyri warrior roared as it moved inwards towards the town centre. Nathan looked around. The stockade fence was buckled outwards behind what had been his mother's house. There was a gap there, where the great wooden uprights had been wrenched apart. And beyond the gap, the dark forest. The darkness had never seemed so welcoming.

Nathan saw how it must be, what he must do: first carry Misha to safety, then search for his mother, who was probably buried in the ruins of the house, finally come back one last time for Nestor.

He picked Misha up and staggered from the ruins towards the break in the stockade fence. But half-way there he heard a panting and a patter of feet and looked back. A great wolf-shape — obviously one of Settlement's trained animals — had come from the direction of the main street and seemed to be making straight for him, seeking human company. All very well, but Nathan would have problems enough saving the girl he loved and his family, without having to worry about…

Nathan's eyes went wide, wider. The 'wolf seemed to be enveloped in a drifting cloud of mist, and one of its forepaws was bulky with something that made a dull glitter. More biped than quadruped — loping towards him at an aggressive, forward-leaning angle — it only went to all fours in order to sniff the earth and turn its great ears this way and that, listening. Worse: its eyes were scarlet and glowed like lamps in the dark, and to cover its hindquarters it wore belted leather trousers!

And now Nathan saw that it wasn't coming through the mist, but that the mist was issuing from it!

He had heard all the campfire stories of the old Wamphyri — their powers, hybridisms, animalisms — and knew what he was facing. And of course knew that he was a dead man.

Canker Canison came loping, reared up snarling, as tall and taller than Nathan…!

Nathan tried one last time to stand Misha on her own two feet and shake her awake, to no avail. He held up a hand, uselessly, to ward the dog-, fox-, wolf-thing off. Canker came to a halt and leaned forward. He sniffed at Nathan, then at the girl in his arms, and cocked his head on one side, questioningly. And: 'Yours?' he growled.

Nathan held Misha back from the monster; Canker laughed, caught him by the scruff of the neck and hurled him brutally aside, against the stockade wall. Unsupported, Misha crumpled to her knees. Canker caught her up, sniffed at her again, and snatched her rags of clothing from her in a moment.

And as Nathan slumped to a heap in the long grasses at the base of the damaged wall — even as his eyes glazed over and he passed out — he was aware of Canker's eyes on him and his writhing muzzle, and the spray of foam coughing from his jaws as he laughed again and said: 'No, not yours — mine!'

What he did not see or hear, because he was already unconscious, was the scream of a terrified woman running through the streets: the way Canker let Misha fall to go chasing after her, and his grunted philosophy:

'Better a live one than one half-dead.' And his half-bark, half-shout — 'Wait my pretty, for Canker's coming!'

— as he plunged after his doomed, demented victim…

The pain and the anger…

And not only inside, but outside, too.

It was an hour later and Nestor's turn to come awake

— slowly at first, then with a sickening rush! And like Nathan before him, he too woke up from a dream to a nightmare. Except where Nathan had remembered everything, Nestor remembered very little: a handful of scattered, uncertain fragments of what had gone before. Mainly he remembered the pain and the anger, both of which were still present, though whether they sprang from dream or reality or both, he was unable to say.

Three-quarters buried in rubble, dust, straw, his body was one huge ache. His face was a mess and some of his teeth were loose; at the back of his head, above his right ear, an area of his skull felt soft, crushed. When he put up a tentative, trembling exploratory hand through the debris to touch it, agonizing lances of white light shot off into his brain. Something shifted and grated under his probing: the fractured bone of his skull, indenting a little from the pressure of his fingers.

He asked himself the same question that his brother had asked: what had happened? But unlike Nathan, he had no answer. Not yet.

He pushed at wooden boards pressing down on him, shoved them aside, choked as dust and stench fell on him from above. But framed in the gap he could see the stars up there, drifting smoke, and strange dark diamond shapes that soared in the sky. And he could hear a throbbing, sputtering rumble, fading into the distance.

Yes, and other sounds: faint, far cries… moaning… sobbing… someone shouting a name over and over again, desperately and yet without hope.

Nestor kicked at the rubble, extricated his arms, dragged himself into a seated position and shoved the clutter from his legs. He looked around, at first without seeing or recognizing anything; there was nothing here that his glazed eyes and stunned mind were prepared to take in. No, there was something: the tall stockade fence, which for a moment focused his attention. But even that was different, gapped in places and leaning outwards a little.

He stood up, staggered, stepped from the debris. Whatever had happened here, his clothing seemed to have been ripped half from him! Automatically, fumblingly — like a man flicking dust from his cuffs after a hard fall — he made adjustments to his trousers, his leather shirt. And slowly, reeling a little, he headed for the town centre, away from the rubble of his mother's house.

His mother's house?

Now where had that thought come from? And turning to look back at the freshly made chaos — at the black, jutting, splintered timbers and smoking mounds of debris, under a dark shroud of still settling dust — he slowly shook his head. No, for his mother's house had been a warm and welcoming place. Hadn't it?

Along the way, voices continued to cry out from shattered buildings; people stumbled like ghosts here and there, calling for help, or for lost families; flames gouted up where hearth fires turned ruined homes to funeral pyres. There was nothing Nestor could do about any of this, for there were far too many people in need of help. And anyway he needed help himself.

He began to remember names and fractured, jumbled fragments of conversation: Jason, Misha, Nathan, Lardis, Andrei… Nestor?

Jason: 'What will you do?'

Nestor, growling: 'It's Misha's choice. With or without her, I'll go. But be sure I'll be back one day.'

Misha, afraid: 'Because… because he needed someone! And I was the only one who cared. But Nestor… why are you doing this?'

Nestor, determinedly: 'When your father and brothers learn what's happened, then they'll kill me!'

Misha, astonished: 'No, they may not, for you are the Lord Nestor!'

Nestor: 'Of course! And I fear no man, for I am Wamphyri!'

Nathan: (But here there was nothing, no words at all but a cataract of numbers foaming down the falls of Nestor's mind and forming endless, meaningless patterns there, one of which was a weird figure-of-eight symbol like a discarded apple rind or wood-shaving lying on its side. And rising over the rush and swirl of numbers, a distant, dismal howling of wolves. And superimposed over all these things a haunted, haunting face, all sad and lonely and… accusing?)

Lardis: This is where the powers of the hell-lands and those of the Wamphyri clashed and cancelled each other out.'

Andrei: 'But they're gone now, reduced to dust and ghosts, and we should let them lie.'

Nestor, in anger: 'What, ghosts? The Wamphyri? Never.' For I am the Lord Nestor!'

The voices came and went in Nestor's head: voices out of the past, the present, the imagination. Voices from child-reality, adult-reality, and unreality alike, all seeking the stability of a central focus, revolving together in the grand free-for-all of his trauma. True memories merged into pseudo-memories as his past life faded away and devolved to a single, self-repeating phrase, I am Nestor of the Wamphyri! Until it seemed certain that the present, surreal and incoherent as a dream, could only be a dream, given substance by the subconscious will of its creator. And Nestor felt relieved to know that he was only dreaming.

In the near-distance, amid smoky, flame-shot ruins close to Settlement's east wall, a last lone flyer flopped up hugely on to a pile of rubble and craned its swaying head towards the sky. Pausing to watch, Nestor was vaguely aware of a rider in the saddle where the creature's neck widened into its back. But in another moment the flyer had thrust itself forward and aloft on powerful coiled-spring launching members, and rising up from the ruins it banked in a wide circle over the town and rapidly gained height. Feeling its shadow on him as it passed overhead, Nestor gaped at its massive diamond shape flowing black against the stars, and wondered at its meaning.

Then, slack-jawed, with his head tilted back at an angle and his half-vacant eyes still fixed on the alien shape in the sky, he continued his shambling walk through the reeking smoke and scattered rubble; until his path was obstructed and he felt something splash wet and warm against his torn trousers.

Sprawled at his feet, he saw the shattered body of a man whose face had been flensed from the bone. A dark red fountain was spurting in bursts from his savaged throat; but even as Nestor considered the meaning of this, so the crimson fountain grew spasmodic, lost height and gurgled out of existence. And with it the man's life.

But it had been only one life, and this was only one body among many. Looking around, Nestor could see plenty of others, almost all of them lying very still.

And so he came to the old meeting place, that great open space which stood off-centre in Settlement, a little closer to the east wall than the west, and there discovered life in the midst of all this death. But not immediately.

First: The East Gate was burning. Yellow and orange flames were leaping high over the stockade wall, where the gate seemed to have been set on fire deliberately. The wide path from the gate to the gathering place was strewn with bodies; Nestor dimly recalled, however, that there had been a crowd here. Well, while the corpses were a great many, still they would not have made a crowd. So some had escaped, anyway. But from what?

Wamphyri! said a voice in the back of his mind.

But another said: Impossible, for they are no more!

And a third, his own, insisted: But I am the Lord Nestor!

The smoke was clearing now and the vampire-spawned mist evaporating, sinking into the earth. People were starting to come out of hiding, stumbling among the dead, crying out and tearing their hair as they discovered dead friends, lovers, relatives. Central in the open space, where tables lay overturned and the ground was strewn with the spoiled makings of a feast, a young man, Nestor's senior by five or six years, stood over the body of his girl and tore his shirt open, beat his breast, screamed his agony. She had been stripped naked, torn, ravaged, brutalized.

Stepping closer, Nestor stared at the man and believed he knew him… from somewhere. And a frown creased his forehead as he wondered how it was he knew so much yet understood so little. Then he saw the rise and fall of the girl's bruised breasts and noticed a slight movement of her hand. And as her head lolled in Nestor's direction, he saw a strange wan smile upon her sleeping or unconscious face.

He moved closer still, touched the sobbing man on the arm and said, 'She isn't dead."

Wild-eyed, the other turned on him, grabbed him up with a furious strength, shook him like a rag doll. 'Of course she's not dead, you fool — you bloody fool! She's worse than dead!' He thrust Nestor away and fell to his knees beside the girl.

Nestor stood there — still frowning, still mazed — and repeated the other's words: 'Worse than dead?'

The man looked up, peered at him through red-rimmed eyes, and finally nodded. 'Ah, I know you now, Nestor Kiklu, covered in dirt. But you're one of the lucky ones, born at the end of it. You're too young to know; you don't remember how it was, and so can't see how it must be again. But I do remember, and only too well! I was only six years old when the Wamphyri raided on Sanctuary Rock. Afterwards, I saw my father drive a stake through my mother's heart, watched him cut off her head, and burn her on a fire. That's how it was then and… and how it must be now.' He hung his head and fell sobbing on the girl, covering her nakedness.

There were more men in the open space now, a handful, but these were different, older, harder men. They had grown hard in their young days, spent in the shadow of the Wamphyri, and were now filled with some grim purpose. Nestor seemed instinctively to know these things, and felt he should know the men, too, but their names wouldn't come. They were hurrying towards the east wall, where colleagues on the high wooden catwalk beckoned to them, urging them on.

Nestor followed in their wake, but more slowly, and tried to understand what one of the men on the catwalk was shouting to them. In the still night air — with only the dazed, bewildered, trembling voices of other survivors, and the whoosh and crackle of the fires to compete with — his words carried over the open area loud and clear. And for all that they were hard words, still there was a catch and even a sob in his familiar voice:

'Too late now, you dullards!' he cried. 'Didn't I try to warn you? You know I did. What? And you took me for a madman! And now… now I think I am a madman! But all those years of building, of being prepared, gone up in smoke, gone for nothing. And all this good Szgany blood, spilled and wasted, and unavenged…'

And at last Nestor remembered him: Lardis Lidesci, whom even the Wamphyri had respected, upon a time. And beside him on the catwalk, Andrei Romani; between them they'd wound back the loading gear of a giant crossbow, and manhandled a great ironwood bolt with a barbed, silver-tipped harpoon into its groove on the massive tiller. Men's work for sure, but they were men.

So were the others on the ground, whose names now sprang into Nestor's mind: They were Andrei Romani's brothers, Ion and Franci, and the small wiry one was the hunter of wild boars, called Kirk Lisescu. Together with Lardis, these men had been legendary fighters in the days when the Wamphyri came a-hunting on Sunside and the Szgany dwelled in terror; even now Kirk Lisescu carried a weapon from those times, a 'shotgun' out of another world. But Nestor knew that except in dreams all such things were over and done with long ago.

Weren't they?

While he puzzled at it, the men had moved on towards the east wall. But up on the catwalk Lardis was shouting again and pointing at the sky — over Nestor! And now, shutting out the stars, a shadow fell on him.

He looked up, at the lone flyer where it sideslipped to and fro, deliberately stalling itself and losing height. For a moment it seemed poised there, like a hawk on the wing, before lowering its head, arching its membrane wings and sliding into a swooping dive. It was heading directly for the bereft young man where he sobbed over his ravaged love. And its rider was lying far forward in his saddle, reaching out along the creature's neck, directing its actions with voice and mind both.

Suddenly something snapped into place in Nestor's befuddled mind. For if this was a dream it had gone badly wrong. And if it was his dream, then he should have at least a measure of control over it. He started lurchingly back towards the ragged figure crouching over the girl in the centre of the open area, and as he ran he shouted a warning: 'Look out! You there, look out!'

The man looked up, saw Nestor running towards him, and beyond him the others bringing their weapons to bear, apparently on him! Then he glanced over his shoulder at the thing swooping out of the sky, gasped some inarticulate denial, and made a dive for the shallow gouge of an empty fire-pit. As he disappeared from view the flyer veered left and right indecisively, then stretched out its neck and came straight on — for Nestor!

Coming to a skidding halt, suddenly Nestor sensed that this was more than a nightmare. It was real, and the reality gathering impetus, rushing closer with every thudding heartbeat. He glanced all about, saw open space on every side and nowhere to take cover. From behind him someone yelled, 'Get down!' And a crossbow bolt zipped overhead. Then…

….he flyer was almost upon him, and the underside of its neck where it widened into the flat corrugated belly was splitting open into a great mouth or pouch lined with cartilage barbs! Nestor turned, began to run, felt a rush of foul air as the flyer closed with the earth to float inches over its surface. And in another moment the fleshy scoop of its pouch had lifted him off his feet and folded him inside.

As darkness closed in, he saw twin flashes of fire from the muzzle of Kirk Lisescu's shotgun; up on the stockade catwalk, Lardis Lidesci and Andrei Romani were frantically traversing the great crossbow inwards. Then….artilage hooks caught in Nestor's clothing, and clammy darkness compressed him.

Squirming and choking, denied freedom of movement and deprived of air and light, he breathed in vile gases which worked on him like an anaesthetic, blacking him out. The last things he felt were a massive shuddering thud, followed by a contraction of the creature's flesh around him and its violent aerial swerving.

Then his limbs turned to lead as the flyer fought desperately for altitude…