Blood Brothers

PART FIVE: Vampires.' — The Sundered Tribes — The Search

I

Lardis and Andrei were asleep when the searchers found Nathan and brought him in along with five more. By then sundown was one-third spent, and Nathan had lain unconscious in the grass at the foot of the west wall for more than nine hours. He was still unconscious when they dumped him unceremoniously on his back on a huge plank table salvaged from the wreckage at the site of the meeting place. This was where the survivors were being examined — all the survivors — to see if they really were survivors.

Between times, a lot had happened and was still happening. After the attack — after Wratha and her henchmen had done their worst, taken the best, destroyed what they could of the rest and left — then Lardis had taken charge, issued hurried instructions, finally rushed at killing speed up to his cabin on the knoll, where he'd hoped against hope to find his wife and son waiting and unharmed.

But he had doubted it. For he knew that Lissa always kept lamps burning in the cabin's windows when he was away, to guide him home, and he hadn't seen Jason since he and the Kiklu boys had gone on ahead into the town. That soft glow, from Lissa's lamps, could be seen for miles around — as indeed Lardis had seen it through the treetops during his and Andrei's approach to Settlement, but as he no longer saw it — burning up there against the dark flank of the mountains. And as he had driven himself like a madman up the steep side of the knoll, so he'd wondered who or what else had seen that glow, and why his son hadn't come back down when he heard the uproar and saw parts of the town burning.

It could be, of course, that Lissa had seen a suspicious mist on the slopes and stifled the lamps, and that then she'd restricted Jason to the house. It could be…

… But it wasn't. For when finally Lardis had got there it was to find his place in ruins. Following which he'd spent a back-breaking hour digging in the rubble, finding neither Lissa nor Jason. In a way it had been a relief: at least they were — or might still be — alive! But it was also the greatest tragedy of Lardis's life. For he didn't know where or in what circumstances they lived.

Taken by the Wamphyri? To be used by them, slaughtered by them, perhaps even… altered, by them? That hadn't borne thinking about. And so for a while he'd thought nothing but sat there in dumb silence, amidst the ruins, already grieving or preparing to grieve their loss. So that by the time Andrei came to sit with him — saying nothing but simply being there in silent commiseration — Lardis's unspoken agony was already turning outwards, to everlasting hatred and cold fury.

But even so, and for all that his loss was great, he had known he wasn't the only one. And when finally he'd looked at Andrei, to inquire in that gravelly voice of his, 'Well?'… then his friend and ally of so many years had known that the old Lardis was back. And nodding grimly he'd told him:

'In the old days you were iron, my friend. Now it's time to be iron again. For we're ready, down there.'

Then Lardis had come to his feet, straightened his back and shrugged off his weariness. And: 'Then let's be at it,' he'd said, as simply as that.

But half-way down, pausing briefly, he'd begged Andrei's forgiveness for striking him; also for the fact that he'd been deep in the woods — alone and lonely, bitter and raging, far beyond the South Gate — when the Wamphyri had struck so devastatingly at Settlement. To which the other had answered:

'You have it, and on both counts, but only if you will forgive me: that I ever doubted you…'

Since when, the pair had done or directed what must be done, between times catching up on a little sleep; the latter out of sheer exhaustion. Mercifully their weariness was as much mental as physical, so that they hadn't dreamed; otherwise their task might be impossible. Work such as this did not make for easy dreaming. And so they were asleep, in a hastily erected tent close to the meeting place, when Nathan Kiklu and five others were brought out of the darkness into the light from the lamps and the blazing central fire.

It was nothing new to Lardis and Andrei, this process of screening, the investigation or inquisition of the injured in the wake of a Wamphyri raid; in the old days they had seen plenty of this. But the last raid had been eighteen years ago and they were no longer inured to it. Of course, the friends and families of those they examined were invariably present, their dark Szgany eyes soulful in the flickering firelight, mutely questioning the examiners in their turn.

But if the horror wasn't now, at the direction of free men — men who were still their own men — then it would only come later, and from a different source entirely. And all of them knew it.

Coming to the table, Lardis shivered under the blanket round his shoulders and tied a knot in its corners under his chin. The accidental fires had been put out hours ago, since when the night had grown chilly… or maybe it was just him. At least the stink of monsters had cleared away now. He glanced up at the mountains blue-edged with starshine; no mist on the peaks now. In any case, the Wamphyri rarely struck twice in the same place, not in the space of a single sundown. And usually their raids followed fast on the setting sun, when they were most hungry.

It seemed unreal: to remember all of these things now. And to know how very necessary it was that he remember them.

The first figure on the table was that of a woman in the middle of her life, maybe thirty-six years old. Lardis shook himself awake, rubbed sleep from his eyes and stared hard at her face. He knew her: Alizia Gito. Her man was three years dead; he'd broken his back in a fall while hunting in the mountains.

Upon the index finger of Lardis's left hand, he wore a ring of gold set with a large, flat, reflective stone. Holding this over her open mouth, he watched for signs of breathing, the filming of the polished stone. Patiently he waited, and was rewarded when the stone's glitter faded to an opaque moistness. She breathed, but very slowly and faintly. As yet this proved nothing, except that she lived. Lardis had seen people dying before, and knew how their breathing was wont to fade away like this. Ah, but he also understood how well undeath could imitate life!

Alizia's face was very badly 'bruised and her jaw looked broken, but she had no wounds that Lardis could see: no cuts, and her neck was unmarked. He called forward two older women. 'Strip her — '

— And a haggard young man stepped forward, a growl rumbling in his throat as he grasped Lardis's arm. Lardis looked him in the eye, unflinchingly, and continued: '- but let her keep her dignity, what's left to the poor woman. Put a blanket over her.'

The young man was Nico, one of Alizia's sons, about seventeen years old. Lardis recognized him, and now asked after his younger brother. 'Vladi?'

Nico released Lardis's arm, shook his head. His eyes were very bright with unspilled tears. Taken,' he reported, with a gulp. 'I was in hiding under a cart. Towards the end of it I looked out, saw one of them knock Vladi on the head, toss him into the saddle of a flyer and make off with him. I found my mother later. Is she..?'

'I don't know,' Lardis could only shrug and shake his head. 'I have to look under this blanket to find out. Listen, I've looked at a lot of women tonight. It means nothing to me, but I know it means a lot to you. We can look together, if you like?' He put an arm across the other's slumped shoulders. And they looked.

Alizia was naked now; she'd been half-naked anyway. Lardis saw… obvious signs, but he had to be sure. 'Nico, I want to touch her, turn her over,' he said. 'Can you help me?' Very carefully, they turned her face down. There were indentations in her thighs and buttocks, deep as claw marks, some of them bleeding.

Lardis shuddered and let the blanket fall. His face was working as he stepped back a little, nodding to three men who waited at a discreet distance. One of them was Andrei Romani.

'No!' said Nico, his voice the merest gasp, a breath of air.

Lardis caught him by the arm, held him back. The executioners — three merciful killers — came forward very quickly. Nico screamed high and shrill, but Lardis trapped his neck in a powerful armlock and turned his face away.

The three lifted Alizia in her blanket and carried her to the very end of the table. And there they hammered a stake through her heart. The sound was meaty, soggy, and crunching where ribs splintered. 'But she's alive, she's alive!' Nico was gurgling. 'She's my mother! I came out of her!'

'Yes,' Lardis told him through gritted teeth, holding him even tighter, 'but what's in her now must stay there. She's no longer the mother you knew but a foul, undead thing. But you're lucky, for soon she'll be clean and merely dead. So forgive us if you can, and be thankful.'

'You… bastard!' Nico spat in his face. And on the table, his mother sighed and struggled into a seated position!

A ring of blood oozed from the rim of the stake between her breasts, also from her mouth where she'd bitten through her bottom lip. But her eyes were open now, and they saw Nico. She sighed again, bloodily, and held out her arms towards him. 'My son! Nico!' and as Lardis turned the youth's face away a second time, so Andrei took her head off with one clean sweep of a bright-gleaming sickle.

Nico had passed out in Lardis's arms. He was carried away by Kirk Lisescu, taken to people who would look after him. The parts of Alizia Gito were carried in their blanket to another fire on the other side of the open space, and there disposed of.

Lardis hung his head and Andrei went to him. 'Steel yourself,' he said. 'We're only half-way through.'

Lardis looked at him from a face made haggard by sorrow. These people were mine, and I'm killing them.'

The other shook his head. 'We're killing Them,' he said. 'Or should we let them live, run off into the forest and hide, and come back at the next sundown to kill us?'

Lardis half-turned away, then nodded, and looked at the next one on the table. And saw that it was Nathan Kiklu. They had already stripped him and thrown a blanket over him. Lardis went to him, saying, 'Nathan! Ah, no… this is the worst! I had hopes for him. There was something different in him, something better.'

He threw back the blanket, searched Nathan's body. There were bruises galore, but no cuts. Neither had he been violated, and the lining of his mouth was clean. As Lardis examined him, he coughed and groaned, began to stir.

Lardis was excited. 'Do you know — ' he said, more to himself than to anyone else, 'do you know — I think he's clear!' In the next moment his excitement turned to despondency. 'But his brother, Nestor: we saw him taken by that flyer.'

'A goner,' Andrei nodded, 'like so many others.'

'We don't know that for sure,' Lardis propped up Nathan's head and gave his face a sharp slap. 'We put our bolt in that beast good and deep!'

Andrei nodded again, and said, 'Aye, and Kirk's shotgun blew its rider right out of the saddle!' He looked up and a little apart, to where a Wamphyri lieutenant was nailed with silver spikes to a heavy wooden cross. He hung there like a bloody rag, apparently dead and certainly unconscious — for the moment. 'But the flyer made off, so what hope for Nestor now? If the wounded creature dropped him, then he's dead from the fall; likewise if it crashed. But worst of all if it made it home.'

Nathan coughed again and rolled his head a little in the crook of Lardis's arm. Lardis glanced at Andrei, said: 'Where, home? Aye, Karenstack, I know — but where before that? These bastards might be new here, but they weren't new to their hellish game. They were full-fledged! They had flyers, warriors; they wore gauntlets! So where did they come from?'

Andrei looked again at the lieutenant on his cross. 'When this one comes to, maybe we'll find out. But let's face it, he hasn't much of a choice one way or the other. If he talks he's for the fire, and if he doesn't….e's for the fire. Personally, I think we should burn him now. What if they come back for him?'

Lardis shook his head. They won't. They have other business to occupy them now.' For a moment he thought of Lissa and Jason, then shut them out of his mind. If he wanted to carry on here, then he must shut them out.

'But,' he continued, 'if they suspect it wasn't just an accident and we actually brought this one down and killed him… they'll certainly wonder about it. Strangers here, they're not yet sure of our capabilities. This was their first raid on us, and they had the advantage of total surprise. Even so, it's possible we killed a lieutenant, which means we might also be able to kill one of them. That in turn guarantees their eventual return — not just out of curiosity — probably at the next sundown. So catching this one is a point in our favour, especially if we can make him talk. He must talk, for I want to know who they are!….or later, if for nothing else.'

This was no idle threat and Andrei knew it; he also knew that Lardis must die one day at the hands of the Wamphyri. He must, for it was them or him now, to the end. And he was just a man and mortal, while they apparently went on forever.

Nathan woke up. Lardis knew it at once, for suddenly the youth's neck in the crook of his arm had stiffened, and Nathan had stopped breathing. He was holding his breath. He lay still, rigid, petrified by knowledge of what had gone before, and by ignorance of what was going on now. Then he opened his eyes a crack at first, then wider, saw Lardis — relaxed again and breathed out.

But Lardis hardened himself and narrowed his eyes a little. He wasn't yet satisfied that the youth was in the clear. 'Nathan,' he said, 'can you hear me?'

Nathan nodded and Lardis helped him to struggle into a seated position. He saw where he was, that he was naked, and clutched his blanket to him. Then, with Lardis still supporting him, he looked along the table: at one end, prone figures lying side by side, and at the other a great wet patch, gleaming red. Finally he saw the Wamphyri lieutenant on his cross and gasped his terror, his lips drawing back from his teeth in an involuntary snarl.

Lardis could well understand that; neither Nathan nor anyone else would require the benefit of previous experience to recognize such as this when they saw it; not with the beast in a state of metamorphosis, as this one had been when the silver shot from Kirk Lisescu's twin barrels ripped him out of his saddle. He had been laughing or shouting, filled with blood and frenzied elation as his creature swooped to claim one last victim. And for all that his eyes were closed now, his passion was still plainly visible, written in every line of his terrible face: The distended jaws, hanging open, their serrated incisors at least an inch longer than his lesser teeth, which were themselves as jagged as the peaks of the barrier range. The bunched muscles of his face, frozen, drawing back grey flesh from his gaping jaws in a mad laugh, or perhaps in a rictus of instant unbearable agony as he was hit. The flaring nostrils in a squat, flattened nose, whose bridge showed the first signs of convolution, a symptom of his condition: that he was a vampire of long standing. He wasn't yet Wamphyri, but given time he would be. Or would have been.

Nathan took all of this in and more. He took note of the jet-black lacquered gleam of the lieutenant's forelock, where a silver spike had been driven through its knot, holding back his head to the upright. What he could not know was that the forelock's sheen came from the human fat used to grease it. He saw the man's heavily muscular arms pinned horizontally to the crossbar through the wrists and elbows, with huge hands dangling loose; hands whose fingers were half as long and thick again as his own, and tipped with broad, two-inch nails filed to a chisel edge. What he did not know was that the power of this creature was such that he could drive those hands into a man's body to crush his heart or tear through the vertebrae of his spine.

'Ugly bastard, eh?' Lardis's voice was full of hate.

Nathan tore his eyes from the figure on the cross and nodded. Then, glancing at the sky, the position of the stars against the mountains, he gave a start and made to get down from the table. All of the Szgany were expert in gauging the time from the stars, but none so good as Nathan. He knew how long he had been unconscious. And meanwhile… what of his mother? And Misha?

Lardis grabbed his shoulder. 'Hold on, lad,' he growled. 'First tell me about the bruises on your back. In fact your back is a bruise, one big one!'

Nathan nodded. 'A… a creature — a wolf, man, fox, I don't know what — threw me against the stockade.'

Lardis's eyes were still narrow, suspicious. But in fact he had heard reports of a hybrid thing among the Wamphyri raiders. Hideous reports. 'Threw you? He didn't bite you?'

Nathan clutched his arm. 'He t-t-took… took Misha from me!' His eyes were wide again, brimming with the horror of it. Then, shaking Lardis off, he got down from the table, staggering as soon as his legs took his weight. His back was a column of molten agony from nape of neck to base of spine, so that he might have fallen if Lardis hadn't caught him under the arm.

'Don't try to go rushing off, lad. You're in no fit state for it. Anyway, what can be done is being done.'

'B-but my m-mother, and Misha!' He looked dazedly around. 'W-Where are my clothes? And what about N-N-Nestor?'

Lardis opened his mouth… but he could only say, 'Ah!' and look away.

'Nestor?' And now Nathan's voice was steady. Very steady.

Lardis looked at him again, frowning. In other circumstances it might even be funny, for this was the most anyone had ever had out of Nathan in as long as he could remember! Was it just the shock, or what? What had got into him? Had something got into him? 'Are you sure you're all right?'

'What about Nestor?' Nathan looked straight at him with those weird, bottomless blue eyes of his.

There was nothing for it but the truth. Lardis had too much to do; he'd not had sufficient time to give rein to his own sorrow yet, so mustn't concern himself with the tears of others. Straight out with it then: Taken!' he said. 'We saw it: a flyer got him and carried him off. That one on the cross was its rider. Kirk knocked him out of the saddle; Andrei and myself, we put a bolt in his mount's belly. But we didn't stop it. It made off and took Nestor with it. I'm sorry, lad.'

Nathan made to stumble away. Like Lardis, he would save what grief was left for later. But right now: 'My mother was in our house,' he said. 'She's buried!'

Again Lardis stopped him. 'Nathan, wait. We've been digging in all the fallen houses.' He called forward a woman with a simple map of the town scrawled in charcoal on a piece of cloth, and said, 'What of Nana Kiklu?'

The woman didn't need to look at her map and its smudged symbols; she'd known Nana well; she said nothing, simply shook her head inside her black shawl.

'Speak!' Nathan cried out, and Lardis stepped back a pace, astonished. 'What?' Nathan shouted. 'A shake of your head? What does that mean? Did you find my mother? Is she dead? Speak!'

Grief-stricken herself, with losses of her own, finally the woman found her voice and sobbed, 'Your mother isn't there, Nathan. They didn't find her. Neither your mother, nor the Zanesti girl, Misha, who was at your house. Her father was here to see if she'd been found. He was mad, tearing his hair! He lost not only Misha but also a son this night.'

Misha, lost! Finally the truth of it hit Nathan. He sat down in the dust and cradled his head in his hands. There were no tears, just a vast weariness. For he knew now that he must wake up — really wake up — and become part of this world he had spurned. Before… it hadn't mattered. Nothing had mattered very much. This world hadn't been his, hadn't even been real, because he'd thought it held nothing for him. With only a few exceptions, its peoples had seemed like aliens. But the loss of Misha was real, and he couldn't deny it; the one warm spot in his heart was empty now and cold.

No, there was one other warm place there, occupied till now by his dear mother. And was she, too, lost? In which case his heart must freeze entirely. He turned to Lardis. 'Did anyone see my m-m-mother taken?'

Lardis sighed. 'Nathan, I've many things to do. Too many things, and too little time. But when all's done be sure I'll ask around. You're not the only one with questions. By sunup we'll all know who was taken, murdered, raped, changed. And by then, too, we'll have… dealt with all this. Right now, however, there's nothing to be done. Not by you, at least.'

'And what am I supposed to do?'

Lardis shrugged, sighed. 'Find a warm place. Get some sleep.'

'And you? Don't you need your sleep?' Amazingly, Nathan was almost defiant. Lardis might expect such as this from his brother, Nestor, but from Nathan?

'I'll sleep later,' he answered roughly, turning away. 'But for now… I've work to do. So be off, I'm busy!'

Nathan shook his short-cropped yellow head. 'If you can be strong, then so can I. Anyway, how could I sleep? Lardis, I… I don't have anyone!'

Lardis heard the emptiness in his voice, like an echo of his own emptiness, and thought: Neither do I have anyone, not any longer. Except maybe you.

But out loud h^ said, Then be strong somewhere else, for the moment at least. This is a bloody place, Nathan, and what we're doing here is bloody work..'

After that there was no more time for talk, for Andrei had lifted the blanket off the next one and was beckoning urgently. Lardis went to him and looked where his finger pointed. The man under the blanket had been bitten in the neck, and wide-spaced punctures had formed scabs over heavy blue arteries. There was no breath in him, no pulse, and he lay utterly still.

Nathan backed off a few paces and stood there watching. He had to learn what he could of this sort of thing now, for it was no longer a game which he, Nestor, and Misha played in the woods. The Wamphyri were real, and so was the horror they brought with them.

Lardis yanked a bauble from its stitches in the cuff of his jacket, opened the cold grey fingers of the corpse's left hand and folded them around a small silver bell which he forced into the palm. Then he stepped back and waited. And in a little while…

… The 'dead' man (whom Lardis had been fairly sure was undead, but must test anyway), moaned and gave a shudder that shook his entire body. His eyelids fluttered but remained mercifully shut. He wasn't ready to wake up, but even unconscious the poison in his blood was protecting its changeling. His hand vibrated on the table's boards, unclenched, and in its agitation tossed aside the silver bauble. Finally he sighed and lay still again. And Lardis nodded, sharply.

The gaunt-faced, strong-willed executioners came forward, and Nathan saw what Lardis had meant by 'bloody work'. He forced himself to watch this one, just one, and was sickened. All the rattling, grimacing skeletons of whispered campfire stories took on rotting flesh now, and every bad dream of his childhood was realized at one and the same time.

Against this surreal background of smoky, ruddy firelight and terrifying burnt-pork stenches — where gaunt figures came and went through the night, carrying their burdens of blanketed bodies, and Lardis Lidesci was the Ultimate Authority, who determined life or death — finally Nathan was set free from his deep-rooted mental shackles, became a man of Sunside, Szgany, and left the shucked-off chrysalis of his weird other-worldliness behind him.

The shell was left behind, at least.

But a man is more than flesh and blood. When he is conscious a man can control his body and even, in large measure, his thoughts. But when he's asleep…? Are his thoughts entirely his own?

When he was very small, Nathan had sometimes asked his mother: 'Why do the wolves talk to me in my pillow? Why do I hear all of the dead people whispering?' Then she would seem to close up on herself like the flowers at sundown; an uneasy look would come into her eyes; she would shush him and beg him not to ask things like that, for such questions were strange and people wouldn't like or understand them.

These were only a few of the strange questions Nathan had learned not to ask, until he'd rarely asked anything at all but remained silent. Even in his dreams, he'd learned how to stay mainly silent.

But that had been then, in his childhood.

And this was now, and he was a man…

Lardis had told Nathan to go away, find himself a warm place, sleep. But he could not. Indeed, it would not surprise Nathan if he never slept again. Instead he turned his back on Lardis's and Andrei's 'bloody work' — what was happening on the great table, the monstrous but necessary examination of the dead and the undead by those who still lived, while they still lived — and went to sit cross-legged close to the foot of the cross, where the Wamphyri lieutenant hung on his silver spikes.

Someone brought Nathan his clothes and he dressed himself automatically, almost without conscious volition, then sat shivering under his blanket and waited for the lieutenant to regain consciousness. For Lardis intended to question this creature, this man or once-man, and whatever the old Lidesci's methods would be — however cruel — Nathan intended to hear for himself whatever answers they might elicit. He was Szgany now and had made himself a vow; it was unpublicized but a vow for all that, and it would be a hard thing to accomplish. In order to destroy his enemies he must first understand them.

There was a lesser fire close by, which slowly warmed him through until he began to nod. And despite that he had thought it impossible, in a little while he curled up on his side and went to sleep. It was the beginning of a healing process, but only partly physical. For mainly it was an opportunity for his mind to consolidate the undeniable fact of his existence, at the same time assimilating something of the monstrous facts which had focused that reality.

That was partly why he slept: to heal himself in body and spirit, and let the subconscious Nathan create some kind of order out of the chaos of the physical Nathan's new reality. But his mind was not like those of other men; complex as the genetics which had built it as a reflection of another's mind, it was living proof of that universal axiom, 'like father, like son'. The only difference between him and his Necroscope father was this: that Harry Keogh, in his own world, had had the benefit of a mathematical science, and of a million dead people who cared for him and were not afraid. While in this world… now the Great Majority had plenty to fear, and felt that they could only trust each other. And so they continued to avoid Nathan when his dreams impinged too closely upon theirs. Like now..

… He felt them shut him out, withdrawing into the silence of their tombs! More quickly than ever before, the teeming dead had sensed and rejected him. And so he must dream of the living.

Misha was at the forefront of his mind: naturally he would dream of her. Not as he had last seen her, in the clutches of a beast-man (his mind shied from that), but briefly, in snatches out of time. As a child, as a girl, and then as a young woman.

First as a child: Misha as he'd seen her that first time: all naked, sleek, shining, and agile as a fish in the water, swimming in the sun-dappled shallows and beckoning him to join her there. Strangely her innocence had deprived him of his own! And despite that he had been a child, his thoughts had been a man's thoughts. After that there had been other times, but always he kept his sensual self from her; they had played as children, sexless at first, until the passing years had brought changes.

One time, when they had been swimming together and after they'd scrambled back into their clothes — as they laughed and rough-and-tumbled each other on the riverbank — finally they'd fallen into each other's arms and she had felt him hard against her. At once, he'd sensed her catching her breath and drawing just a little apart. But then, as curiosity got the better of her, she had let her arm fall 'casually' across Nathan's lower half, to test the response of the small rod where it throbbed in his trousers.

Misha had older brothers; she wasn't blind; she knew about such things.

One day as they wandered in the forest, when he was fifteen and she something less than a year younger, they'd come across a plum tree. It was late in the season and the fruits were very ripe. Lifting her up until she could reach the shining, purple plums, Nathan had been more than ever aware of her thighs swelling into firm, rounded, still boyish buttocks, and conscious of the buds of her breasts where she strained her arms upwards. So that after she had picked several of the fruits, and he relaxed his grip to let her slide down between his hands -

— He'd marvelled at the sight of her brown legs, revealed where her dress rode up about her waist. She had seen his eyes on her and felt him against her where she stretched her toes for the forest's floor; and she'd told him, however breathlessly, impulsively:

'Ah, see! Your little man is jumping again.. '

And when he'd turned away, embarrassed and reddening:

'Nathan, wait!' she had taken his elbow. 'It's all right. I understand. There's no harm in him. He jumps for joy — for the joy of me!'

For her brothers had girlfriends, too, and Misha knew how they dealt with their frustrations, how they gained relief from the overabundance of their emotions. 'You should let him out,' she told Nathan then, still clinging to him, 'before he bursts!'

And in the secrecy of the long grass under the plum tree, she had whisperingly, wonderingly compared the purple of his swollen glans to the tightly stretched skins of ripe plums, and stroked him to orgasm. Since when and for three long years, she had satisfied him in this way, and allowed him to return this most tender compliment. But wise beyond her years, she had not once let him into her.

'Ah, no!' she would say when his flesh seemed most insistent. 'For when my children come along I must be able to teach them, which I can't do while I've still so much to learn. Also, I have not made up my mind. I may love you, Nathan, but I can't be sure. What if I discover someone else to love, but too late? If I let your flesh into mine now, this very minute, it might decide me against my will.'

And finally, just a year ago, walking in the twilight before the night, when they paused to fondle a while on a grassy bank and she'd held him throbbing in her hand, and Nathan had told her:

'H-h-he wants to k-kiss you, too. Where only my f-fingers have kissed you.'

And again on impulse she'd taken him deep into her mouth to draw his sting, and afterwards told him:

'There. Flesh is flesh, Nathan, but this way makes no new flesh.' And putting her finger to his lips, she'd added, 'Shh! Say nothing, make no protest! We are grown up now. Give me just another year, and then — I shall make up my mind. But it won't be easy. My father and brothers see many men in Settlement, and they see you. Oh, I know — I know you are more different than even they suspect — but harder far to convince them of that. And anyway, there could be someone else.'

The only 'someone else' there could be was Nestor and Nathan knew it, but he'd said nothing. Except… he had wondered. For there had also been times when Nestor and Misha were alone together, too, and who could say but that — ?

— But no, for Nestor chased after the other girls of the village, while Nathan had no one but Misha. Surely that must make a difference?

Now that his brother had entered his dream, Nathan moved on, moved forward, to the present. And now Misha was no longer a slip of a girl but a young woman, sitting there in his mother's house, like some warm wild flower in the light of lamps and the glow of the fire.

Small but long-legged — elfish as the creatures of Szgany myth, which were said to inhabit the deep forests — Misha Zanesti was the focus of Nathan's fascination; indeed, she was his only fascination in the world! So that it was hard to concentrate on what they were saying, she and his mother, when all he really wanted to do was look at Misha. Even now, dreaming, he couldn't remember what had been said, but he certainly remembered the way Misha had looked: Her hair dark as the night, velvet, the darkest Nathan had ever seen, which in the light of the sun shone black as a raven's wing. Her eyes — so huge and deeply brown under black, expressive, arching eyebrows that they, too, looked black — all moist and attentive where she listened to Nana Kiklu's warm low voice, and now and then nodded her understanding and agreement. Her mouth: small, straight and sweet under a tip-tilted nose which, for all that it flared occasionally in true Gypsy fashion (indeed, a great deal like her father's) had nothing hawkish or severe about it. Her ears, a little pointed, pale against the velvet of her hair where it fell in ringlets to her shoulders.

She might be less wild, voluble, deliberately voluptuous — less enticing and far more retiring — than certain of Settlement's Szgany girls, but she was in no way less than them. Misha lacked nothing of fire, Nathan knew, but kept it subdued and burning within. So that he alone (and perhaps Nestor, too?) saw its light blazing out from her in all directions, like the white of her perfectly formed teeth when they smiled into the sun. Ah, but he'd also seen those teeth snarl and knew of several village youths who'd felt the lash of her tongue when they sought to be too familiar! Well, they'd been lucky, those lads, for they might have felt a lot more than that if he… if Nathan… but that wasn't his way. Or it hadn't been, not then.

In any case, Misha could look after herself and had her own philosophy. He remembered her words: 'If a girl flaunts herself and acts the slut, she can only expect to be treated as such. I do not and will not!' But with Nathan she'd always acted as the mood took her. For which he was glad…

His mother and Misha faded from Nathan's dream and were replaced by Nestor. Nestor striding in the streets of Settlement, admired by the girls and adored by his friends even as the stuttering Nathan was shunned. Nestor proud, strong — arrogant? — but never the bully. Not until that night, last night, when he would have used his physical strength to bend another to his will. Nestor who had cared for and protected Nathan through all the years of their childhood, and cared for Misha, too, until he'd seen how closely she and Nathan were drawn together.

Nestor gone, taken, stolen by a Wamphyri flyer into Starside.

No.' said a voice in Nathan's dream, one which he recognized at once. For it was a mind-voice, and telepathic voices — even the whispers of the dead — are not unlike their more physical counterparts; they 'sound' the same as if spoken. But this was no dead person speaking, not even a 'person', though Nathan had always considered him as such. And: No, the mental voice came again, like a snarl, a cough, a bark in Nathan's dreaming mind. Your brother — our uncle — has not been stolen away into Starside. The flying creature which took him crashed to earth in the east, on Sunside.

Nathan pictured the speaker. He had his own name for him: Blaze, after the diagonal white stripe across his flat forehead, from his left eyebrow to his right ear, as if the fur there was marked with frost. Blaze, whose eyes were the brown of dark wild honey in the twilight, and feral yellow at night. Lean but not skinny, all muscle, sure-footed as a mountain goat and fleeter far. And intelligent? — oh, far beyond the average intelligence of the pack! He admired and respected him, and knew that it was mutual. Why else should the wild wolves of the barrier mountains call Nathan their 'uncle', and come to him in his dreams as they sometimes came to him in his waking hours?

The grey brother read Nathan's thoughts, which were focused now beyond the scope of casual dreaming. Because you are our uncle! he insisted. Mine, and likewise the ones you call 'Dock' and 'Grinner', my brothers from the same litter. And because you and we are of one blood and mind, we are curious about you and consider your welfare. Our father would have wished it, we think… (A mental shrug, the twitch of a grey-furred ear.) You are not of our kind, but you are of our kin, after all. You are our uncle, as is Nestor. But you are the one who understands us. You, Nathan, of all the Szgany, translate our thoughts and answer them.

Nathan had never understood the way they included him in their wolf family-tree; it could only be a compliment; he considered it as such, and was satisfied to be their friend. But now it seemed his friendship with the wolves was bearing fruit.

'What of Nestor,' he was eager. 'Does he live?'

Our grey brothers in Settlement saw him taken into the creature's mouth, the other's snarling answer came at once. He was snatched up, whirled aloft, carried east and towards the barrier peaks. But in the hills and all along the spine of the mountains, we observed the creature's clumsy flight. Wounded where a great bolt was lodged in its flesh, it could not clear the mountains. With fluids raining from its wound, it fell to earth, came down in the pines and expired on the slopes above a Szgany township. And so your brother, who is our uncle Nestor, is not in Starside but Sunside. But…. cannot say if he lives. Members of the pack were close to hand, but not that close. And the men of the town are fearful now of creatures other than men. Aye, and even of strange men! The grey brotherhood must stay well clear.

'Which town?' Nathan could scarcely contain his excitement, which threatened to wake him up. 'Where did the flyer crash? If Nestor is still alive, I have to find him. He's all I have left.'

You have us.

'Among men, he's all I have.'

You have the Lidesci, who was our father's friend even before we were littered.

'But Lardis Lidesci… is not of my blood.'

(A nod of that wise wolf head.) The town is the next one to the east, between the rivers.

Twin Fords?'

That is its name, we think. But Nathan, you have your mother, and a young female of the Szgany. We have seen you together, and she is always in your mind.

'Misha? I don't know if she lives. And if she lives, I don't know where or for how long. She was taken by a… by a human dog! By a beast-thing, Wamphyri!'

The Dweller, our father, was a wolf-human, a werewolf.

Nathan shook his head. 'Your father could not have been like this one. You are animals, not-humans. But this one was a… a beast! He was inhuman.'

We know of him. (That nod of a wise head again.) In the east, beyond the pass, the grey brothers have heard him singing to the moon in Karenstack. For he worships our silver mistress much as we do. But you are right: he is not like us. We are… animals, and he is a man-beast.

'Wamphyri,' said Nathan, 'aye And your mother? What of her?

'I don't know. Perhaps she was taken; I pray by my star that she was not; perhaps she ran off into the woods. But if she did, then why has she not returned? Do you know anything of her?'

No. It is only by chance that we know of Nestor. We wish you luck in your search for him.

'Do you leave me now?' Nathan was reluctant to let them go.

New things have come to pass. (In Nathan's mind, Blaze's golden eyes seemed to burn on him. But their yellow fire was fading, and the wolf's telepathic voice was faint now, retreating.) Strange and monstrous creatures are come into Starside, from where they raid on Sunside. The woods and mountains are no longer safe, neither for wolves nor men. These are problems for which we have no answers, but there is one at least who might know. Now we go to find out about these things.

Desperately, Nathan tried to retain him, hold on to this one familiar thread — however weird, tenuous, unbelievable — in a world which in the space of a few short hours had become a nightmare. 'Answers? But there is no answer to the Wamphyri.'

You may be right. You may be wrong. (The voice was fading out and starting to lose all sense and meaning. How else could Nathan translate the next and last words he heard, except that he misunderstood them?) But our mother speaks to our father, who is your brother. And if anyone would know, he is that one. And so we go to speak to the one who suckled us.

'Your mother, a wolf?'

Aye, where her bones lie bleached in a secret place…

It seemed that a cold wind keened upon Nathan then, as the wolf-voice went out of his dreams -

— But the wind was only the night air where someone had uncovered his head. Squinting his eyes in the firelight he saw Lardis kneeling beside him, turning back his blanket. 'Nathan,' the old Lidesci growled. 'Be up, lad, and away from here. This one you've guarded so well, he wakes up — and I have business with him.'

As dreams are wont to do in the light of reality, Nathan's was quickly disintegrating, breaking up. Those parts concerning impossible relationships were quickly forgotten; his wolves had always called him uncle, so that he saw nothing strange or new in it. It wasn't worth retaining. But as for the one important item of information, about Nestor: he clung to that, repeating it to himself: The flyer that carried Nestor away has crashed to earth in the east, close to Twin Fords.

Strange to think that just yesterday, in the late afternoon, Nathan and the rest of Lardis's party had passed through Twin Fords on their way home. Since then, it was as if a new age had dawned. An age of darkness.

Perhaps he had spoken out loud before he was fully awake. For Lardis at once demanded: 'Eh? Twin Fords? What of it?'

'I… I was dreaming,' Nathan answered. 'Of Twin Fords, I think.' He'd long ago learned not to talk about his dreams. Especially the stranger ones.

But Lardis was shaking his weary, hag-ridden head. 'No, it was no dream. Twin Fords was hit last night, as prelude to what happened here. A handful of refugees came in while you lay sleeping, and you must have overheard us talking. Twin Fords is no more; its people won't go back there; the tribes are sundered, Nathan, and we're all to be Travellers again. The days will be ours, and the golden sun our one sure friend, but all the long dark nights will belong to them, the Wamphyri!'

The Wamphyri lieutenant was groaning, stirring on his cross. Nathan stood up, eased his cramped bones and felt fire in his bruises. He glanced at the stars over the black barrier range, saw that the hour was well past midnight. He had never slept so long in one place, at one time. His bladder was full of water, which he must be rid of.

Stumbling away into the shadows, he found a place to relieve himself. The ground all around was already desecrated, steeped in vampire mist, warrior stench, and unavenged Szgany blood. A little urine couldn't hurt. Already Nathan's thoughts had turned as sour and cynical as the bitter brown taste in his mouth..

When he got back to the cross the lieutenant was fully awake, turning his head this way and that, as far as the spike through his topknot would allow, glaring at the handful of men who were gathered there to question him. For a moment the vampire's scarlet eyes lit on Nathan, burned into his soul, drove him back a pace before they moved on. Nathan was no threat; he was a mere youth, of no importance. But the men were something else. Especially the apish, hollow-eyed leader of this Szgany rabble.

Vratza Wransthrall brought his scarlet gaze to rest upon Lardis and scowled at him. 'Man,' he croaked, 'you are doomed. For what you have done and will do to me — ' his eyeballs swivelled left and right, observing the silver spikes which pinned him to the cross, '- my master, the Lord Wran, will stuff your throat with your own tripes, rip out your living heart and eat it smoking, and feed your tatters to his warriors. Whoever you were, you are no more.'

Lardis looked up at him, tilted his head a little on one side, sniffed at the air suspiciously, disdainfully. He glanced at the men around him: Kirk Lisescu, Andrei Romani and his brothers, and one or two others, inquiring: 'Do the words rise or fall from his lips? I think they fall; or is it the stench of warriors lingering on the night air? No, for that is sweet by comparison. And so it seems we've erred and should have nailed him higher. But what the hell… a stench is only a stench.'

The vampire's muscles bunched as he flexed grey arms on silver spikes; he gave a shudder that wracked his entire body, then groaned and hung still. But in another moment, lifting his head to glower at Lardis as before, he said: 'Aye, make your jokes while you may. For all of this — ' he snorted and tossed his head derisively in a small, sneering gesture which dismissed Settlement in its entirety, '- is finished. And all of your people are as dust. Let every man, woman and child of them that are yours count each breath he takes from this time forward, enjoying it individually as if it were his last. For the lucky ones have very little of breathing left to do. As for them that are unlucky: they shall be heir to the dubious delights of the great stack on Starside; from the mills where their bones will be ground down for meal, to the pens of the warriors and the reeking methane pits. They shall be fuel for my master's lusts, flesh for his fashioning, fodder for his beasts. So be it.'

Someone had brought Lardis a stool where he sat with a hiked knee supporting his elbow, and his square chin resting on the knuckles of a calloused hand. His attitude towards his captive seemed almost casual, but anyone in his acquaintance would recognize how doomful was his calm, quiet voice as he answered, 'Long-winded bastard, aren't you?' And then, more businesslike:

'Do you have a name, vampire, or are you satisfied to be remembered as a stench and a puff of black smoke rising from our fire?'

The creature gave a start, and glared harder than ever; but he also trembled a little where he hung suspended on the cross. Poisoned by the silver shot which had ripped into his great chest — also by the long silver spikes which pinned his wrists, elbows, and the twitching muscles of his calves to timbers hard as iron — he was weak by a vampire's standards, but still strong by a man's. Even now, if only he could get down from this cross, he'd wreak havoc among his tormentors before someone put a bolt through his heart. That was how he would prefer to go: fighting bloodily the one minute, with a bolt through his chest the next, and finally his head flying free in a crimson welter! After that, they could burn him all they wanted. But… not while he was still alive.

It was as if Lardis read his mind. 'Oh?' he said. 'And is it that the fire worries you?' He knew it was, for a vampire burns slowly, and the thing inside him fights it all the way.

Meanwhile, Kirk Lisescu had slipped away and returned with a spade. Whistling tunelessly, he bent his lean, muscular back at the foot of the cross and commenced digging in the loose soil there. Whenever his spade struck the upright, it shivered a little. Looking at the lieutenant, Lardis nodded to indicate Kirk's activity, and said:

'He digs here at the front, so that eventually the cross will be weakened and topple towards the fire there.' Standing up, he jerked his thumb negligently to his rear where a long, deep pit of glowing embers lay behind him. And: 'Phew!' Lardis wiped his brow, 'but it's hot!' Then, walking to and fro — with his great head jutting a little, though not aggressively, and his hands clasped behind his back — he continued conversationally:

'Of course, if you were to loosen up a bit and talk — why, my good friend here might stop digging in order to hear what you were saying!' He gave a shrug. 'And really it's as simple as that: while you talk you live, at least as long as you make interesting conversation. And when you stop talking you burn. Meanwhile, you still haven't told us your name, or where you come from, or how many there are of you… or anything at all which we might find remotely interesting!'

Snarling the last few words, finally Lardis gritted his teeth, sprang forward and snatched Kirk Lisescu's spade, and began shovelling himself with a vengeance; until the cross gave a lurch and an ominous creak, and tilted forward a fraction towards the fire in the trench.

But a fraction was enough, and now at last the vampire started to talk…

II

'My name?' the undead creature on the cross gabbled, his red eyes starting out, staring at the fire-pit into which he would topple slowly, face down, unless he chose to speak first. 'Is that all you want to know? My name and a little useless information? Well then, and for all the good it will do you, they call me Vratza Wransthrall. There, and what else can I tell you?'

Lardis tossed the spade aside, stepped back a little and filled his labouring lungs. Then he looked up at the other, nodded, and smiled albeit humourlessly. 'So you've taken your master's name, eh? And was it also your plan to step into his shoes one day?'

Beneath lowered eyebrows, the vampire's slitted eyes shot scarlet loathing at him. 'In Turgosheim,' he grunted, 'the Lord Wran the Rage had several lieutenants. Here and for the moment, he has just the one — myself! Yes, I would be Wamphyri. Or I would have been.'

Again Lardis nodded. 'Turgosheim, eh? And where, pray, is Turgosheim?'

The other glared at him, flared his nostrils, remained silent… until Kirk Lisescu took up his spade again. Then:

'East!' Vratza cried, straining on the silver spikes until the blue veins jerked and writhed in his arms, but straining uselessly. He might tear his flesh but he wouldn't tear those nails loose. And: 'East,' he croaked again, relaxing as best he could and hanging there shivering, panting. 'Beyond the Great Red Waste. There are mountains there, a lesser range — Starside to the north and Sunside in the south, much the same as here — but smaller. Turgosheim lies hidden from the sun in a gorge. It was our home but Wratha brought us away, to this.1

'Wratha?' Lardis cocked his head on one side. 'A girl's name? A Lady, your leader?'

'Wratha the Risen, a Lady, aye. She led us out of Turgosheim.' Vratza's floodgates were fully open now; Lardis need only question him.

'Why did she bring you here?'

'Because Turgosheim was used up. Too many vampires, too few Sunsiders.'

'Ah!' Lardis craned his neck, narrowed his eyes. 'And how many Lords were there, in Turgosheim?'

'More than forty, less than fifty. Including the Ladies.'

'And how many here, now?'

'Six. Wratha and her five.'

'And lieutenants?'

'Myself, and one other.'

Lardis drew in his chin. 'What? Six of them and only two of you?'

'Four of us died last night,' Vratza scowled, 'when we came out of Starside to raid on a town standing east of here.'

Andrei Romani nodded and clapped his hands appreciatively. And: 'Well done, Twin Fords!' he chuckled, however grimly. 'A little good news at last. At least they were prepared!'

'No,' Vratza shook his head. 'It was that we were not prepared. Some of the men fought back! In Turgosheim, that would have been unthinkable. But afterwards, striking here, by then we were prepared. As for myself, I was unlucky.. '

'Very,' said Lardis, quietly, 'for it will cost you your life — this loathsomeness which your life has become, anyway. But in fact we'll be doing you a favour.'

'You'll burn me anyway?'

'You know we will.'

'And you call that a favour? Hah! Why then should I talk to you?'

To live a little longer,' Lardis answered, as Kirk rammed the spade into the earth again.

The cross gave a jerk and Vratza cried, 'No, wait!' And in a moment: 'What else?' he groaned.

Lardis considered it, stroked his chin. 'Six of the Wamphyri, and two — no, one — lieutenant. And thralls?'

'Only those which we recruited in Twin Fords. And a few recruited here tonight, perhaps.'

'Aye, precious few,' Lardis told him, grinding his teeth. 'For we're old hands at dealing with your victims!' Clenching his fists, he took a pace forward; Andrei Romani was there to grab his arm and bring him to a standstill.

But the passion had gone out of Lardis in a moment; he was his own man again; he sighed and let his shoulders slump. 'And we have dealt with them,' he said. 'Most of them… I think.'

He drove from his mind all of the gaunt, accusing faces of those he had examined and found wanting, and tried to concentrate on the business in hand. But it was hard, for he was very tired now. And: 'Warriors,' he growled at last. 'How many?'

'Three,' came back the answer. 'But they will make more, as soon as they have the stuff for it.'

What? The 'stuff? Lardis couldn't contain a shudder. This nightmare thing was talking about people — decent human beings, good Szgany flesh — mutated by the Wamphyri into monsters! Deep inside he felt his gorge rising, also his fury and everlasting hatred. And he knew that he wouldn't be able to talk to Vratza Wransthrall for very much longer.

But for now he must control himself, keep a tight rein on powerful Gypsy emotions, and say: 'Something here rings like a bell without a clapper — hollowly. You say the Wamphyri came here out of this Turgosheim with only a handful of lieutenants and warriors between them? What, and were they banished?'

'Not banished, no,' Vratza answered, sweat dripping from him where he suffered the agonies of the silver spikes. 'But she would have been, the Lady Wratha, if the others had known of her works earlier. It was this way:

'Warriors, the aerial sort, are forbidden in Turgosheim. But as you have seen, Wratha the Risen and her colleagues made fighting creatures that flew. To do so they must work secretly, in the privacy of their manses; it was the only way they could escape the restrictions of Turgosheim and make new lives here. But in the end they were discovered, and so forced to flee.'

Lardis frowned, scratched his head. There are no warriors in Turgosheim?'

'Not which fly. Of other types: a few lesser creatures are kept in the spires and manses, and there are those which roam in Turgosheim's bottoms, guarding against intruders.'

Lardis frowned, tried to picture all he'd been told, and slowly nodded. He looked around at his men, narrowed his eyes, and continued the questioning. 'But eventually — I mean, now that this Lady Wratha has found her way here — it's entirely possible that the others will breed monsters of their own and follow her, right? And is that why she's in such a hurry to make new lieutenants, warriors, thralls?'

Up on his cross, Vratza was growing weaker by the moment. The alien stuff in his blood, which made him a vampire, was poisoned; his flesh could not repair itself; each of the small silver balls in his peppered chest was an agony in its own right. Even so, and for all his suffering, he was beginning to see Lardis Lidesci in a new light. He nodded, as much as the spike through his topknot would allow, and grunted, 'I can see… can see that they will have their work cut out… with such as you. And I believe that I… that I am not the first thrall of the Wamphyri with whom you've spent an hour or so in… in poJite conversation. A shame we weren't destined to meet on terms more equal.'

'Aye, too true!' said Lardis with a snort. 'What? Equal terms? You with your gauntlet and the strength of five men, undead and almost impossible to kill? Hah! Do you remember how you were taken? And were those equal terms? No, don't try appealing to my humanity, Vratza Wransthrall. For where you and your like are concerned, I am a monster in my own right!'

Kirk Lisescu tugged urgently at his elbow. 'Get on with it,' he whispered. 'He grows weak. Get what you can out of him and then make an end of it.'

Vratza scowled down on them. 'I have a vampire's ears,' he growled, 'in which your whispers ring like shouts! Anyway, you are right: I am weak and fading fast. You should go away now and let me die. That is what I wish.'

'A few more questions,' Lardis told him, 'and then I'll see to your wishes personally.'

'No! No!' Vratza protested, groaning. 'It is… it is enough. I… I am finished.' He hung his head, slumped down on his spikes.

Lardis nodded, but grimly. 'So you're finished, are you?' he repeated the other. 'Yes, and I'm the village idiot, lured away from a nest full of eggs by a partridge with a "broken" wing!'

Vratza said nothing but simply hung there, even when Kirk took up his spade again.

Lardis waited a little while, then said, 'Vratza, listen to me. We can't stay here but must move on; all of us, the entire village. And we certainly don't intend to take you with us. Now, you are going to die, I make no bones about that. But how you die is up to you. This is your choice:

'Answer a few more questions, and then go cleanly, without even knowing it. Or hang there till morning when the sun comes up, and suffer the worst of all possible deaths — for such as you. Now listen: you are right and I've had dealings with vampires before. I have seen and heard the likes of you melting in sunlight: the swift blackening and peeling of your skin, the black smoke boiling as your fats begin to melt, the awful screaming as your guts rupture and your eyeballs start out upon your cheeks. After an hour, two, three at most, you will be a black and tarry rag-thing hanging there, with all your bones protruding and your black skull frozen in a final scream! Is that what you want, Vratza Wransthrall?'

Vratza twitched a little but made no answer.

'So be it,' Lardis nodded. And: 'Men, bind this creature more firmly yet, with good silver wire round his arms, legs and neck. And knock a few more nails in him, so that he won't jerk himself loose when the sun's first rays hit him. Then clear the village. We're moving out, right now, within the hour.' It was a bluff, of course, but Vratza didn't know that.

'Wait.'' The vampire's scarlet eyes shot open as he began to strain again, but less powerfully, against the spikes where they pierced his flesh. Then, panting, genuinely exhausted, he hung there glaring at Lardis as before; but helplessly now, hopelessly. And:

'I'm good as dead anyway,' he choked the words out. 'Your silver is in my blood. But… do I have your word? Will you make a clean end of it?'

Lardis nodded, and growled: 'Which is more than you ever granted.'

Vratza lay back his head against the cross, closed his eyes and breathed deep, and said, 'One bolt won't be enough. I was Wran's thrall for long and long. I've come very close to being Wamphyri…'

Lardis nodded again, and quietly said, 'So I've noted. Be sure we'll take care of it.'

'Then… ask your damned questions and be done!'

To one side of the cross and a little behind it, just out of sight of the crucified vampire, Andrei Romani's brothers placed loaded crossbows in readiness on the now empty table, and Kirk Lisescu snapped his shotgun shut. They didn't want Vratza to see their preparations, in case he should resolve to remain silent to the end. But, strangely, there was no hatred left in them now — not for this one, who was finished — just a grim determination.

And Lardis said: 'You've told us about this Lady Wratha, who is the leader of the six. Also about your master, Wran the Rage. Now tell me about the rest. Who are they, and how may we know them?'

Vratza levelled his head and stared out bleakly across ravaged, smouldering Settlement. And as if he were speaking to the night:

'Gorvi the Guile is one of them,' he said. 'As his name suggests, he's smooth and slippery as oil. Then there's Spiro, Wran's brother, called Killglance. They are twins, Spiro and Wran, whose Wamphyri father had the evil eye. In his youth he could kill men — kill the Szgany, burst their hearts — just by looking at them! The brothers have tried it, too, though as yet with no success to mention. Also, there's Lord Vasagi, or Vasagi the Suck, as he's known. I will not try to describe him but… you will know him anyway, when you see him. Last but not least there's Canker Canison, who sings to the moon and leans to the fore, loping like a dog or a fox, but upright on two legs…'

A choked cry — half-gasp, half-shout — rang out from the flickering shadows a little beyond the range of the fires, and Nathan Kiklu stumbled into view, his eyes fixed on the terrifying yet tragic figure on the cross.

Standing in the shadows of an upended cart opposite the dull-glowing fire-pit, listening to all that Lardis had asked and every answer that Vratza Wransthrall had given him, Nathan had been witness to everything. Until a moment ago his eyes had been like misty mirrors: full of starlight, firelight, strangeness. But now, suddenly, he was alert as never before. Coming forward to stand beside Lardis, he gazed up hard-eyed at the wretched creature on the cross. And:

'What was that?' he said, his clear youth's voice contrasting with the coarseness of the night, cutting it like a knife. 'About a dog or a fox, a loping thing? Canker Canison, did you call him?'

The vampire angled his huge head to look down on Nathan. He recognized him: this was one of the first faces he had seen when he regained consciousness, before the questioning commenced. Then… the youth had seemed terrified; he'd backed off a pace and stumbled, moved away to where Vratza's scarlet gaze couldn't follow. Even now he was unsteady on his feet, but no longer awed.

And so Vratza was brought to this: even children dared to gaze upon him now, without cringing!

Curling his fleshy upper lip, the vampire snarled and showed Nathan his twin-tipped tongue and dagger teeth. But still the youth stood there. Until finally Vratza smiled — if what he did with his face could be called smiling — and said: 'I was your age, when I was taken in the tithe. Since when… I've come a very long way.' He glanced at Lardis. 'Aye, even to the end.'

Lardis put an arm across Nathan's shoulder. The lad has… he has an interest in all of this,' he said. But looking at Nathan, he knew it wasn't a healthy one.

'Oh?' Vratza cocked his head a little on one side, questioningly.

Nathan's mouth twitched in the left-hand corner. 'It… it's my girl. This dog-thing, Canker, knocked me down and took her from me. Since when… she hasn't been found.'

'Ah!' said Vratza, matter-of-factly. And as if Nathan no longer existed, his red eyes swivelled to look at Lardis. 'Is it done? Am I finished?'

Lardis nodded; Kirk Lisescu and the others took up their weapons, came from behind the cross into view.

Vratza saw them, and fire and blood sprang into his eyes together. He opened his nightmare jaws and hissed, vibrating his forked tongue in the red-ribbed cavern of his throat.

'No, wait!' Nathan shrugged free of Lardis's arm, pointed a steady hand and finger at the monster on the cross. 'I want you to tell me: about Canker Canison, and about Misha. How will it be for her?'

'No!' Lardis got in front of Nathan, throwing up his arms as if to ward off some horror; indeed, to ward off a very real horror. 'Vratza, don't tell him anything! Your time has come.' He glanced at his men where they took up their positions, and nodded. But the vampire was already speaking — to Nathan.

'My last act,' he said, in a voice which bubbled like tar in a volcanic pit, 'to curdle your dreams now and forever. You ask about Canker? And your girl?'

'Yes,' Nathan had to know. But behind him the men were lifting their weapons, aiming them.

'Canker takes women for one thing only,' Vratza gurgled. 'To use them. And when he has used them — in whichever of the many ways he favours — then he worries them, as a wolf among goats!'

'Be quiet!' Lardis roared.

A crossbow thrummed and its bolt took Vratza close to the heart, burying itself in his torn and bloody chest until only the flight protruded. He jerked massively and coughed up blood, then sucked at the air — and continued to speak! And with his voice rising to a shriek, and finally a gale of mad laughter, he said:

'Boy, do you see this shaft in me, how it tears me? So she is torn, even now. And Canker's shaft is just as vicious. Be sure he'll fuck her heart out! Oh — ha, ha, haaaaa!'

Nathan staggered to and fro, his face pale as a papery wasp's nest, with dark punched holes for eyes and mouth. And as a second bolt joined the first (though still not on target, for the men were shooting in haste to shut Vratza up, and so missing their aim), the youth whispered:

'And now… now I want you to die.'

Kirk Lisescu granted Nathan's wish. Twin blasts, coming in quick succession, turned the vampire's head to pulp as silver shot removed any last trace of a face.

Blood flew in gouts and splashes; booming echoes came back thunderously, first from the stockade's walls, then from the hills; Lardis dragged Nathan roughly aside, out of the red rain. 'You don't want that on you,' he gasped. 'What? Even the air that bastard breathed is tainted!'

Again Nathan shook him off, then staggered away into the night to be sick. Once, hearing shouting, he looked back and saw the cross and the thing upon it as a black silhouette against the glow of the fires — but the silhouette was hideously mobile!

Vratza Wransthrall had told how he was close to becoming Wamphyri, and he'd been right. Undead meta-morphic flesh formed nests of writhing tentacles which sprang from his guts, chest, and all the massive parts of his body. Whipping and vibrating, they lashed themselves — lashed him — to the cross's upright and horizontal bar. But the men had lassoed both arms of the cross and were hauling on it furiously, until it leaned over and toppled into the fire-pit.

Nathan heard the hiss, saw white smoke or steam rising, which he knew would soon turn black. Lardis had it right: in an hour, Vratza would be reduced to a stench and a final puff of smoke. Nothing more would remain of him -

— Except, of course, that monstrous picture which he'd painted in Nathan's head. And that might very well last for a lifetime.

Meanwhile, Nathan's stomach in its entirety desired to be out of him…

Afterwards: Nathan went back to his mother's house and dug in the ruins. He wasn't satisfied that the searchers had done everything in their power. And in order to be absolutely certain, when he was finished with the house he laid bare the floor of the barn. And found nothing, not even a bloodstain.

He stood on the spot where he'd last seen Misha in the embrace of a snarling red-eyed fiend, hung his head, gritted his teeth, clenched his fists. But he didn't cry. No, he told himself, I'll shed no tears until I've shed his blood, taken his shaggy head, smeJJed the stench of his burning hide and seen his last black trace go drifting on the wind!

It was his Szgany vow.

He slept again, and before the dawn went to the Zanesti house where it stood undamaged. Misha's father and surviving brother were there, pale as ghosts, sitting in silence. Before, they hadn't much cared for Nathan; now, her father cradled his head and cried on it. But Nathan wouldn't. And Misha's brother (perhaps thoughtlessly, but surely he could be forgiven) said, 'She never knew a man; she'd been with no one; she wasn't even whole. Once, I would have killed the man who looked at her like that! And now I would kiss him — because Misha had loved him.' And he'd looked at Nathan, perhaps hopefully.

But the youth could only shake his head and say, 'Always remember, you have each other." Which, while he'd not intended it that way, caused them to see that Nathan had no one. Before they could say anything he left them and went looking for Lardis, only to discover that the old Lidesci had experienced the selfsame doubts and returned to his ruined cabin on the knoll.

Nathan joined him there, where Lardis had been at work again in the wreckage. He came across him sitting in what had been his garden, with eyes as vacant as his soul, staring south, waiting for the first glimmer of light to make a silver stain on the far faint curve which was the rim of the world. And when at last Lardis sensed him there, blinked life back into his eyes and looked at him, then Nathan said:

'What will you do, Lardis? Will it be as you told it to Vratza Wransthrall? Will you trek with your people, and turn them into Travellers as in the old days, to keep them from the Wamphyri?'

Lardis shook his head. 'Some will move on,' he answered, gruffly. 'Can you blame them? But I will stay here. Not "here", you understand, but in Settlement. And I fancy a good many will stay with me. Maybe that way, by adopting at least this one of the Wamphyri's methods, we'll defeat them in the end.' 'By adopting their methods?'

Lardis nodded. 'When the Wamphyri have something, they fight to keep it. Especially territory. They are fiercely territorial, Nathan. In the old days, most of their wars were for territory, for the great aeries, the Starside stacks. Oh, they were for blood, too, and for the sheer hell of it; but mainly they were about territory. It's what drove them to go against The Dweller, and why they were destroyed. And now, finally, it's why they've returned.'

'And how will you keep Settlement?' 'By defending it! This sunup you'll see activity as never before in Settlement. So much to do… I shouldn't be sitting here… I must get on down!' He stood up.

Nathan touched his arm. 'I won't be seeing it,' he said, shaking his blond head. 'I'm heading east.' Lardis was disappointed. 'You're deserting me?' 'Never that,' the other answered. 'I came to find out what you would do so that eventually I'd know where to find you. But first I must find Nestor.'

'Nestor?' Lardis's eyebrows peaked. 'Why, anyone would think you weren't there last night! Nestor's gone into Starside, Nathan, in the mouth of a flyer. Look, I've no time for this and so must speak plainly: Nestor's dead, or worse than dead! Can't you get that into your head?'

Nathan followed him down the first flight of steps cut in the steep side of the knoll. 'But you wounded the flyer with a bolt from one of the great crossbows,' he replied. 'What if it crashed? In fact, I dreamed that it crashed — on the wooded slopes over Twin Fords.'

Lardis turned to him. 'You dreamed it? What, and are you a seer? Since when?'

A seer? Am I? Nathan wondered. No, I don't think so. But my wolves talk to me, and sometimes I hear the dead whispering in their graves…

He shrugged. 'No, I'm no seer — but I know how to hope when hope is all that's left. And I fancy you do, too, Lardis. Isn't that why you came back up here: to dig again where you have already delved enough, even knowing you'd find nothing?'

After a moment Lardis sighed and nodded, turned away and continued on down. 'Then you have to go,' he said. 'Except — if your star is good to you, and likewise mine to me — you'll promise to come back one day and be my son.'

'I feel I'm that already,' said Nathan, lying yet at one and the same time, and however paradoxically, remaining sincere. For certainly the old Lidesci had been as much a father to him as any he had ever known. And yet behind Lardis's back where Nathan couldn't be seen, he frowned wonderingly. Because just for a moment then he'd seemed to remember something else from last night's dream… something which his wolves had told to him? Some connection between his father — his real father, Hzak Kiklu — and theirs? Some blood relationship between the two? And was that why they called him uncle?

Still unseen, Nathan shook his head in bewilderment. But how could that be? For quite obviously, their father had been a wolf!

It was all very mysterious and puzzling. But then, that was frequently the way of it with Nathan's dreams: some things appeared as real and solid as the ground under his feet, while others were vague and ephemeral as ripples on a pool, or frost on the high peaks before the dawn. Some things he remembered, and others he was glad to forget, mainly because he couldn't understand them. Best to fasten on what he perceived as real, he supposed, and leave the fanciful stuff to its own devices.

It was a mistake, but all men make them. Especially when they are under pressure. And Nathan was no exception..

In the hours after dawn, as Nathan trekked for Twin Fords, the thought or question would frequently recur: But why would they take my mother?

He would understand — and detest his understanding of it — if she had been raped, vampirized, murdered out of hand. For after all, so many had been. But taken? Nana Kiklu was no mere girl. On the other hand, she was or had been a warm and beautiful woman. Her sons had always thought so anyway, and without prejudice — especially Nathan.

But.. did the Wamphyri take people indiscriminately? Were they so insensitive of human life that they would simply take, defile, use or waste whatever, whoever, was available? Perhaps they were and did.

Or perhaps it was just that they followed a simpler set of rules: blood is blood, and flesh is merely flesh. For when a hunter is hungry, is he concerned that the rabbit he shoots should have pleasing marks? Does he really care if it is past its prime? And what about the sandal-maker? What difference does it make to him which beast supplies the leather for his sandals, as long as it's supple, hard-wearing stuff?

But on the other hand, the Wamphyri were or had been men, and the 'beasts' they hunted were likewise men — and women! So that they didn't just hunt for meat, or even for stuff to fashion into monstrous undead creatures, but for… other reasons, too. And so Nathan would always come back to that, and end up wondering if Nana shared the same fate as Misha Zanesti. If Nana had been taken.

And if she hadn't? Then what had happened to his mother, and where was she now?

Nathan had seen a monstrous, massively armoured warrior creature ravaging destructively in the streets of Settlement, and knew that these Wamphyri fighting beasts were carnivores, indeed vampires in their own right. Maybe that was the answer: a horrific answer, to be sure, but a quick end at least. Could it be that the same monster which flattened their home had also snatched up his mother? If so, she would have been dead instantly. But never a trace of her, nothing, not even (Nathan was obliged to consider it, however flinchingly) a splash of red.

The same for Misha; except that with Vratza Wransthrall's deliberately cruel picture still burning in Nathan's all-too-vivid imagination — and Canker Canison's slavering dog-voice reverberating in the vaults of his memory — he suspected or feared even worse for Misha! And however much he loathed himself for thinking it, he could only wish her dead.

Striding east along an old Traveller trail, he found himself thinking back an hour or two, to when he and Lardis had climbed down from the house on the knoll into Settlement. Lardis's band of old comrades had been waiting for him there, with all of Settlement's citizens — those that remained, anyway — gathered together at the central meeting place to hear his words. What Lardis had said to them then had been simple and to the point, and entirely typical of him:

'All is as it was twenty years ago,' he had said. 'The Wamphyri are back, and we are their sport, their food, their cattle. The townships will soon be broken down, and all the Szgany sundered, scattered into small groups throughout the length and breadth of Sunside. So they, the Wamphyri, would have it. But there are differences.

'Now we have made our homes here in Settlement, and we travel no more. This is our place, built with our own strong hands — with which we must likewise defend it! And our hands are strong, even against the Wamphyri! Last night….e were taken by surprise. Next time it will be different, when we'll make these creatures pay — and heavily! For as I've as good as said, it's my intention to face up to them. That's my intention, yes…

'You, however, have a choice. For I make no bones about it, the risks will be great and I won't ask anyone to stay who isn't willing to face up to it. Men will die, of that you may be sure — but so will Wamphyri! And so the choice is simple:

'Go off on your own and become Travellers, if that's how you see your future, and I'll make no objection. Live as best you may and as once we lived, never knowing what the next sundown has in store for you. You are welcome to wander wherever you will in those lands bounded by my markers. Except I would tell you this: when sundown comes, and if you're in the vicinity of Settlement, don't come here looking for succour. Those who fight for it are welcome to it, but those who desert me are gone for good.

'Now, I see that some have already moved on. Well, and I wish them luck. But any more of you who would join them, do so now. I see no profit in talking to people who'll pay me no heed anyway…' Then Lardis had waited a while, but none had stirred. Those who would go had already left. And so at last he had continued:

'Very well. And this is what I want of you:

'You men, you take your orders from me. Likewise you women. If you lost a wife or husband last night, don't mourn but find a new one. If you lost a son or daughter, don't mourn but hate! And let your hatred be your strength.

'You old ones, sick ones who can't work or help… you can work, you must help! No, not by furious fighting or hard labour but in those areas where your help is most needed: in keeping the fires, harvesting the fruits of the forest, tending the animals. For it's you who must feed the builders and fighters, and when they've time to rest make sure they do so in comfort, or whatever of comfort is available. For we all have our parts to play.

'Now, to the tasks…' And he had gone on to list them.

Nathan had been witness to all of this; he'd listened to everything the old Lidesci had said, and his admiration was boundless.

And Lardis was inspired; he forgot nothing; so that in something less than half an hour, Settlement was more abustle than at any time in all of fourteen years. And its people were doing exactly what they had done then: preparing for war! Which left Nathan feeling like a deserter, for he knew that soon he would be out of it.

He had mentioned this to Lardis, who told him: 'Son, you have your reasons which you've explained well enough. And still I say come back one day, to where there'll always be a place for you. But before you go…" He'd called for Ion Romani, who had got together a final list of all the night's victims.

Scrawled upon a piece of bark were the sigils of those whom the Wamphyri had been seen to steal away, those who had been found slaughtered or changed, and those who were simply missing. Of the latter: by now a small number would be vampire thralls, hiding from the sun in the woods or the depths of mountain caves, waiting for the night when they could make for Starside.

And of course there were also marks for Nana Kiklu and Misha Zanesti. They were shown as missing, too, as was Nestor. And Nathan had known that Lardis didn't have the heart to show the three as he believed them to be, dead and gone forever. No, for his own wife and son were similarly listed.

Then Lardis and Nathan had embraced, and the latter had gathered up his small bag of things and left Settlement for Twin Fords…

Nestor would remember very little of his brief flight in the fetid pouch of the stricken flyer. Even if he'd remained conscious during the trip (impossible, for the creature's gases were noxious and anaesthetizing, and it was only by a tremendous effort of will that he had stayed upright and mobile in the first place, before being taken), still he would remember very little; just darkness and clammy reek, and flexible cartilage hooks fixing him firmly in place in the pouch's confines.

As for the beast's rapid and erratic descent from mountain peaks it had neither the strength nor the altitude to surmount — the way the massive bolt lodged deep in its body snagged in the green canopy of trees to set it spinning, crashing through pine branches and brambly undergrowth, finally to come to rest shudderingly on a steep wooded slope over Twin Fords; and Nestor's subsequent partial ejection from the gaping slit of the pouch — he would remember nothing whatsoever of that.

The wonder was that he lived through any of it, let alone all of it… and yet perhaps not such a wonder after all. For the flyer was of vampire stuff; Nestor had breathed the essence of its body; the oils of its man-trap pouch had got into his various scrapes and gouges. Insufficient to change him substantially, but perhaps enough to assist in his healing. That and his youth, his great strength, his will to survive — all of these things had combined to pull him through.

But healing takes time, and the greatest healer of all is sleep. Up there on the hillside over the ravaged town of Twin Fords — where the leaping, cleansing flames of funeral pyres blazed up in the night, and gaunt-eyed people went stumbling through horror and chaos in the wake of Wratha's raid, much as they did in Settlement — Nestor slept. It was the sleep of exhaustion, of traumatic physical damage, of the poisons in his system which on the one hand deadened him, and on the other supported and repaired his damaged functions. And so it was a healing sleep. It would help towards healing his body, at least…

Even so, he might have died from exposure. But the grotesque flyer was still feebly alive, its body was still warm, and only Nestor's head, shoulders and one arm dangled from the palpitating flap of its pouch. The rest of him remained inside, as yet 'unborn', in a metamor-phic womb of cartilage and quivering, insensate flesh. And all through the night the creature leaked its fluids and its life into the loamy soil, and its remaining warmth into Nestor. So that he lived.

He lived and slept through the longest night of his life, and awoke in the hours before dawn to wriggle free of the flyer's pouch and fall a few harmless inches into springy moss and soft leaf-mould. And with the creature's broken body supported on the shattered stumps of pines, forming a sagging, diamond-shaped ceiling overhead, there he lay for a long time recovering his reeling senses. Some of them, at least.

But the one which had suffered most, and one of the most basic and important at that, was memory. So that when finally Nestor could find the strength to crawl away, sit up and examine the sources of his aches and pains, the one facet of being which he could not examine was his past. Not in any great detail. Misty faces were there, only half-recognized, distorted and grimacing in his mind's eye; scenes out of his childhood, and the early years of emerging manhood; even something of the violence of his most recent past. But all of it so vague, disjointed and kaleidoscopic that it was impossible, even painful, to piece together. And Nestor had had quite enough of pain.

The one incontestable 'fact1 — the one answer which surfaced time and time again whenever he considered the question of identity and being — was the repetitive phrase: 'I am the Lord Nestor.' So that in a little while he knew who he was at least. But what sort of a Lord was he?

Physically: his skull still felt soft at the back, where plates of fractured bone were agonizingly mobile under an area of rough, puffy skin and subcutaneous fluids; but at least he could touch himself there without feeling sick. Apart from a slight blurriness of vision, his eyesight seemed sound in the pre-dawn light. Other than his lumpy, tender face — his nose which was definitely hooked now and still sore where the bone was knitting, split lips, and several loose teeth — no bones appeared broken in his limbs or body. In short, he knew that whatever he had survived, he would probably continue to survive it. Certainly he was hungry and thirsty for two men, and a good appetite is usually indicative of good health.

With this in mind he looked down on the fires in Twin Fords and the black smoke hanging like a pall over the town, and wondered if he'd find breakfast there. Probably, because after all he was a Lord. Also, he wondered if he would find some answers, clues as to his and the world's circumstances in general.

As for the three-quarters dead flyer: Nestor had seen its grotesque carcass as a hugely anomalous lump in the darkness of the trees: a sprawling blanket or tent of skins, or more likely a tangled platform of fallen branches. He had considered it no further than that.

Its true nature — the fact that it had transported him to this place, and that he had emerged from it — these things were entirely forgotten. But as twilight brightened into dawn and the rising sun lit up the peaks, and its golden light fell like a slowly descending curtain towards the tree-line, so he had cause to regard the creature anew. For now the thing in the trees was most definitely alive!

It tried to arch its broken wings, craned a prehistoric neck for the sky, and cried out in a hissing, clacking voice. But the shattered pines had pierced its membranous wings and crushed their fragile alveolate bones, and all its energy had drained away along with its fluids. Pinned down, grounded and broken, the creature could only despair its fate, for the vampire stuff in it sensed the sunrise as surely as a lodestone senses north, except the flyer wasn't attracted but repulsed. Or would be, if it still had the power of flight.

Walking unsteadily, gingerly around the perimeter of the triangular stand of pines at the rim of the bluff where the flyer had crashed down, Nestor observed the slate-grey, leathery skin of the thing; its long neck and spatulate head, and dull, near-vacant eyes. Despite that its head was huge, blunt and acromegalic, still there was something vaguely, disturbingly human about it; but nothing remotely human about the tentacular thrusters which it drove into the pine-needle floor each time it arched its torn manta wings, as if to assist in launching itself into flight. These reminded Nestor of nothing so much as a nest of giant maggots erupting from the belly of some dead thing.

And at the base of its neck, where its back widened out into swept-back wings… was that some kind of saddle?

He might have climbed back under the canopy of the trees to make a closer inspection, but such were the thing's struggles that he feared it might flop down on top of him; and so he held back. At which point the jagged rim of sunlight creeping down across the tree-line fell squarely upon the creature — to devour it!

So it seemed to Nestor.

For the pines filled with stench and steam at once, as the doomed flyer's skin shrivelled and turned from slate-grey to the unwholesome blue of corruption and the texture of crumbling pumice. Its flesh quaked, bloated, split open in a dozen places, out of which its smoking fats ran like water! Then the thing screamed — a sound so thin, high and penetrating that it sliced like a sharp edge of ice on Nestor's nerves — and commenced a shuddering vibration which only ceased when several of the shattered pines were displaced and the flyer slumped down between them to the forest's floor.

And there the sun continued its cleansing work, blazing through the trees to reduce the monster to so much glue and blackly smouldering gristle. But in a little while it became obvious that this would take hours, and what with the poisonous odour and disgusting mess, Nestor didn't wait for the end.

But in his mind's eye, now more visions were waking; and as he began to climb down the wooded slope towards the near-distant town — and as a waft of foulness reached down to him from the dissolving flyer — he 'remembered' a previous rush of reeking air…

.. Wind in his hair, yes, and dark diamond shapes adrift on the updrafts under glittering ice-chip stars — flyers just like that one back there, with riders proud and terrifying in saddles upon their backs — and a distant cry of horror faint on the morning air, but fading now as the scene itself faded back into vaults of memory. 'Wamphyri!'

Wamphyri? The cry had been real, carrying to him from the town in the 'V of the rivers; but the Lord Nestor ignored it in deference to its evocation.

He paused, looked back and up the slope to where smoke and steam continued to pour from the pines, spilling out of them like a slow-motion waterfall over the rim of the bluff. Had that been his flyer back there? But that couldn't possibly be, for here he stood in sunlight and felt no harm.

But at the same time… did he still feel com/ortabJe in the sun's warm rays? Had he ever?

Lord Nestor of the Wamphyri…

It seemed like a dream, some game which he'd played as a child, but he remembered now how he had hunted his human prey in the deep forests, sniffing them out, searching for them with all of his vampire senses alert! Except… where were his vampire senses now?

A vampire — indeed, Wamphyri — was he? He shrank down a little from the sun, which paid him no heed but burned, as ever, benevolently on the southern horizon.

Had he been a vampire, then? But if that were so, how may one of the undead return to human life? And why would he want to? And what of the people in the town down there, Twin Fords? How would they receive him if he werht' among them?

He frowned, sat down in the long grasses of the slope and considered his position. He must be cautious; he must know himself, before he dared show himself to others. But where was his past? What had it been? If people asked him, what could he tell them? That he was the Lord Nestor of the Wamphyri? Hardly!

Then, close by, a distraction: A rabbit, emerging from its hole, blinked pink eyes and turned twitching ears this way and that before hopping tentatively forward — and uttered a short shrill scream as a wire snare tightened around its neck! Then, triggered by the animal's sudden frenzy, the weighted branch of a sapling slipped its anchor, sprang erect and hauled the poor creature aloft to hang it.

Now here at last was something that Nestor remembered and understood well enough: hunting and trapping. So what did it matter that the trap wasn't his; surely it would make good sense to satisfy his hunger here rather than in Twin Fords, whose people might well be suspicious of him?

Just a few short paces away, Nestor had already noted the reflective glitter of a flinty outcrop weathering up out of the shallow soil. Using a fist-sized rock to knock a pair of good firestones free of the mass, now he gathered together the rabbit and the makings for a fire. And in a nest of tall boulders which provided him with shade and cover both, he set about to prepare his meal. If the smoke of his fire was seen from below, then he'd probably be reckoned for just another lonely hunter having his breakfast up in the hills.

But for some reason as yet unfathomed (perhaps it had to do with the many fires burning down there, the black smoke roiling, and a too-familiar stench carried up in the heat and the smoke?), Nestor fancied that the people of the town would have problems enough this morning, without worrying too much about him..

Unknown to Nestor and fourteen miles due west of him where he cooked and ate his breakfast, his brother Nathan was striding out for Twin Fords. And in Settlement-

— Nathan had been gone for well over an hour when Misha Zanesti came through the forest from the south and slipped into town through the South Gate. She was seen, recognized by a girl who had been posted to keep her eye on the gate, and her presence reported to Lardis Lidesci. Misha, too, would report to Lardis, but not until she'd been home.

And in her father's house ten seconds after she entered: Astonishment! Rejoicing! A great flood of laughter, questions, tears! The joyful madness (for Misha) of being whirled about, crushed, lifted off her feet, gazed upon! And for them the joy of whirling, crushing, gazing.

Finally, they demanded to know what, how, where — everything.

But she only wanted to know about her brother, and about Nathan. And then the sadness all over again — for her brother, Eugen, taken by the Wamphyri. As for Nathan: he had been here, yes. And her surviving brother, Nicolae, remembering Nathan's visit and how he'd felt then, said: 'Misha, you should marry that one as soon as possible — even today!' And her father saying nothing, which meant that he agreed.

By which time Lardis and Andrei Romani had come knocking at the door, and Varna Zanesti knew why; but so did Misha. For Nana Kiklu — who remembered what it had been like in the time of the Wamphyri, and how it must be again — had warned her it would be this way. So that Misha knew exactly how to handle it even if her father, the huge and tempestuous Varna, didn't. Neither him nor her brother Nicolae, who was the model of his father but on a younger, only slightly smaller scale. They let Lardis and Andrei in, but as soon as the door was closed:

'Lardis,' Varna rumbled, 'I'm reunited with my daughter, as you see. But my emotions are in turmoil, and so I warn you: do nothing to further disturb them. As for Misha: you need only look at her to see that she is whole and well.' He stood like a rock — glowering, towering over Lardis — with his huge hands knotted at his sides.

Varna was massive. But while he dwarfed most other men of the Szgany Lidesci, his size had its disadvantages: it left him slow-moving, lumbering. Black-browed, bearded, and barrel-chested: by virtue of his aspect and dimensions alone he might appear brutal. And he could be, if he or his were threatened. A very determined man, Varna (some might say pig-headed, but not to his face), whose remaining son was scarcely less massive, and no less resolute.

And Nicolae, casually fitting a bolt to the groove in the tiller of his crossbow, said: 'Andrei Romani, you're my elder and I respect you. But if you're hunting for vampires, best go do it somewhere else. The girl is my sister.'

Before the others could so much as speak, Misha placed herself in the middle of the four men. And: 'Lardis, Andrei,' she said, 'you've nothing to fear from me. And if I'm to be examined, then do it here, now, in my own home, and be sure I'll understand. For just this morning both Nana Kiklu — ' she paused briefly, looked at Lardis and smiled, '- and your own wife, Lissa, have told me the way of it. And so I'm ready.'

Suddenly Lardis felt weak at the knees; his mouth fell open and his dark eyes opened huge as saucers; ignoring Varna and Nicolae, he stumbled forward a pace and took the girl by the arms — as much to steady himself as to confine her. And scarcely breathing the words, he said, 'You… you had this from Lissa? This morning?'

'Yes, oh yes!' she answered. 'Where we waited for sunup near the place of the lepers!'

Lardis staggered again, clapped a hand to his forehead and cried: 'Ah! The leper colony! Of course — I remember — yes!'

For upon a time, some ten years ago, Lissa had accompanied him when he was out beating the bounds of his territory. They'd camped a mile from the colony, and it had been then that he'd told Lissa: 'In the old days, if we were in this vicinity when the night came down, we would always camp as close as possible to the place of the lepers. For there was one thing you could be sure of: that no Starside Lord would ever come a-hunting here! No, for leprosy strikes terror in their black hearts, and it's as much a plague to them as they are to us!'

And Lissa, by the mercy of her star, had remembered his words…

'Lardis,' Misha said, while still he sputtered and gaped, and before he could explode with all of his many questions, 'first look at this.' She split off a small piece of garlic, the Szgany kneblasch, from one of several cloves on a shelf over the fireplace. And popping it into her mouth, she began to chew. Then she pulled a wry face — but one which was normally wry — and swallowed. 'There,' she said, still grimacing. 'Now I won't be able to breathe on anyone for the rest of the day! But it's worth it. Now then, give me one of your silver bells.' He fumbled one out of his pocket and handed it over. Misha rubbed it between her palms, hung it for a moment from the golden ring in her left ear, pressed it to her cheek and finally kissed it.

And giving him back his bell, she went to the door and threw it open. Daylight flooded in, turning her hair a shiny raven black as she stepped out into glaring morning sunlight. And whirling the skirts which Nana Kiklu had repaired for her during the long night, she said: 'Under all of this grime my colour is my own, Lardis, not the lifeless grey of a vampire. When I've bathed myself — and how I need to! — then you'll see. But tell me: what do you think of this blouse I'm wearing?'

He looked, and saw that it was one of Lissa's blouses; his own wife's design and stitching couldn't be mistaken. And finally he was convinced, which in any case he'd wanted to be. 'Yes, yes,' he drew her back inside the house. 'You had that from Lissa too, I know. But now… now tell me about Jason!'

Misha looked at him. Lardis's face was alight with high expectations, but a shadow had moved across hers. Her father and brother knew that look; they made sure Lardis was seated, with Andrei close at hand, then went to stand quietly in a cool, shadowy corner. And:

'Lissa was hoping — ' Misha began, stumblingly, '- she was hoping that you — that you could tell her something.'

Lardis groaned and hung his head, but in another moment he lifted it and said: 'An hour ago I had no hope for either one of them, and now you tell me my wife is alive and well.' He glanced at her sharply. 'She… she is well, isn't she?'

Misha nodded and answered, 'A few bumps and bruises, but that's all. She had a narrow squeak — so did we all — which I'll tell you about in a moment.'

Lardis sighed, and continued: 'And so there must be hope for my son, too. Yes, I'm sure there is. But now tell the rest of it your way and in your own time, so that I may take it in. But tell all of it, and so make an end of my foolish, fumbling questions.'

She nodded, and began:

'Your place on the knoll was hit first. But Lissa had seen a mist on the hillsides. Dousing the lamps, she'd gone out into the garden. It was a flyer which wrecked your cabin, Lardis. It came from the east, following the contours of the foothills, and settled on your house which collapsed under its weight. And riding the creature's back — a man!'

'Wamphyri, aye,' Lardis growled. 'Or one of their lieutenants. I had thought that perhaps it was a warrior; but now, thinking back on it, the stench was not so great.' He nodded his head, indicating that Misha should go on.

'This man — this vampire — was tall and slender, with eyes tiny as jewels, deep-sunken in his face,' the girl continued. 'He was dressed all in black, with a black cape and boots. His skull was shaven, except for a topknot. He looked like a corpse, and yet was lively, sinuous as a snake. But for all that he was Wamphyri and powerful, he also seemed nervous, cautious, furtive. At least, this is how Lissa describes him.'

Lardis said nothing but thought: Gorvi the Guile? Possibly.

'Lissa had hidden herself in the trees behind the house,' Misha went on, 'from where she could watch what happened. That was a mistake, for the vampire sensed her there! And satisfied that there was no danger, he stood in the garden with his hands on his hips and sniffed Lissa out! She felt his hypnotic power in her mind, and knew that she'd been discovered.

'She tried to make a run for it, past the vampire Lord to the steps cut in the steep side of the knoll. But he got in her way and showed her the killing gauntlet on his hand. And closing with her, he said: "Where is your man? Where are your sons? Show me your daughters!" He caught her up by the hair — ' (Lardis almost started to his feet)'- and then Jason was there!'

'Jason!' the word burst from Lardis's lips.

'He had come up from Settlement,' Misha was breathless, 'to discover this creature threatening his mother. Crying out his rage, without pause he hurled himself at the vampire. Distracted, the monster released Lissa, turned on Jason and struck at him with his gauntlet. Ducking the blow, Jason stabbed the other with his knife, whose silver blade glanced off the vampire's ribs, tore along his forearm and caught in his gauntlet, which Jason wrenched from his hand. And Jason's knife was red with the vampire's blood!'

'What then?' Lardis couldn't contain himself.

'Lissa saw your hatchet in a tree stump…'

'My axe?' Lardis cut in again. 'No other axe like it in the world — and I left it in the garden? To the rain and the rust? Just see how lax I had become! Jazz Simmons gave me that axe; he brought it with him from the hell-lands, and for nine hundred sunups it kept its edge! But go on.'

'She worked the hatchet out of the stump,' Misha continued, 'and went to leap on the vampire Lord where he clutched his side and arm. He saw how keen was the weapon's edge, and knew that even in a woman's hands it could take his head. And both Lissa and Jason together, they were intent upon killing him! Well, perhaps he's a coward, this one — '

They all are!' Lardis cried.

'- But he fled before them, snatching up his bloodied gauntlet as he went. And as he got behind his flyer where it wallowed in the ruins of your cabin, Lissa heard him cry out: "Roll on them! Crush them!"

'The creature made to thrust itself upon them; they ran in different directions; Lissa was struck by the flyer's wing and knocked over the knoll's steepest rim! And… and that was the last she saw of Jason. Then: she fell through the brambles, bracken, saplings of the hillside, tumbling most of the way to the bottom. Her clothes were torn — you see how this blouse is stitched, here and here? — and so were her hands and arms, but not seriously. And when she came to rest, then she would climb to the top again!'

Lardis groaned and clutched his head. 'What a fool of a women I married,' he said. And then, with pride: 'But what a woman!'

'Hear me out,' Misha told him. 'She would have climbed back to the top — to be with her son and help him fight the vampire Lord — but missed her footing and went plunging the rest of the way to the bottom! Then, shocked out of her wits, half-stunned, she made for Settlement where she hoped to find you and tell you what had happened. But at the North Gate… she saw the town was burning, saw what was loose and ravaging in its streets.

'Weak now and terrified, hoping to find a place to hide, Lissa went into the forest and skirted Settlement to the west. And that was where she bumped into Nana Kiklu. Nana had hidden in the woods after her house was wrecked, but when things had seemed to quiet down a little she'd gone back in through a gap in the stockade to look for her sons. Instead of finding them, she found me. And so I have Nana to thank for my life.

'She dragged me out of there and brought me round, and as I regained consciousness.. that was when Lissa came stumbling and crying through the night. Nana calmed her, and then would have returned again into Settlement. But by then there were monsters everywhere. Their roaring, and all the screaming… it was terrible. And Lissa and I, we couldn't be left alone. We… we were no longer capable. I feel so ashamed — of my own weakness!'

'You've nothing to be ashamed of, daughter,' Varna Zanesti rumbled, but with a catch in his voice. He came forward to put his arms round her and glower at Lardis. And: These women,' he growled. 'Why, they put the rest of us to shame!'

Lardis nodded, but neither he nor Varna knew how true it was; especially in Misha's case. For she had avoided explaining a single detail of why she'd been so close to Nana Kiklu's house in the first place. And so like Nathan before her, she'd covered up for Nestor's shameful lapse. But now:

'I have to know,' she said, eagerly. 'Where is Nathan?

I would have expected him here by now… oh!' And to cover her immediate embarrassment: 'Oh, and Nestor, too, of course! Nana is eager for news of both of them, naturally.'

'Aye, "naturally",' her father repeated knowingly — and in the next moment fell deathly silent. For he remembered now about Nathan's brother. And poor Nana Kiklu, after all she had done and been through: still at the leper colony, knowing nothing about her son taken by the Wamphyri.

Then, low-voiced, Lardis told Misha about Nestor, and went on to explain Nathan's absence: how Nathan believed that the flyer which took Nestor might have crashed to earth somewhere in the east, and had gone to see if he could find him there. Misha was sad to have missed him, but at the same time felt glad that he had forgiven Nestor. For after all, nothing had come of that one's bad behaviour in the end. And if Nestor still lived, perhaps all this would serve to reunite them.

'Of course,' she said, when Lardis was done, 'Nathan will be back, won't he? I mean, whether he finds Nestor or not… Nathan will return?'

'Of his own free will?' Lardis shrugged. 'Immediately? I can't promise it. Oh, I want him to come back — and so do you, I know — but Misha, he thinks that you, too, have been stolen away! So what is there here for Nathan now?' And there followed more explanations: how the last time Nathan had seen her, Misha had been in the grip of a slavering, hunch-shouldered Wamphyri hybrid.

'Ah!' her hand flew to her mouth. And: 'But Nana saw that creature too!' she gasped. 'She had just returned to the gap in the stockade fence, and saw the dog-thing drop me to go loping off after some poor screaming woman. But that means… Nathan was right there, just a few paces away!'

Lardis nodded. 'Crumpled in the grass at the foot of the fence, aye. If Nana Kiklu had known where to look, she might even have seen him there. But with the vampire mist and what all — everything that was happening — and you and Lissa to care for…'

Misha's eyes were wide; she made an instinctive, almost involuntary move for the door. Her intention was all too obvious, but her father stood in the way. 'No!' he said. 'I forbid it! The old Szgany trails where they skirt the foothills are no safe place for a girl even at the best of times. But now? Why, there'll be changeling people hiding in the thickets and caves, trapped by the sun as they headed for Starside. And there are bound to be vengeful men out hunting them! I'll not lose you a second time, Misha.' He turned to his son. 'But Nicolae…?'

It was Lardis's turn to object. 'What, and am I still the leader of my people, or has Varna Zanesti taken my place, to do my work and my thinking for me? Well, and you're a fine strong man and all, Varna — likewise your son — but no one would call Nicolae fleet of foot! Anyway, you've both of you mourned enough and now have reason to rejoice. And while I am still the leader, I won't have you split up again. Finally, I need both of you, indeed all three of you, right here in Settlement. What? But there's work to be done! On the other hand, I do have a number of runners to choose from, who'll be after Nathan in a flash.' Turning to Andrei Romani, he nodded. 'See to it.'

As Andrei went off in great haste, Lardis spoke again to Misha. 'I love Nathan Kiklu like a son, and I'm sure there's more to him than he's been given credit for. Will you and he get together now?'

She looked at her father and Varna shrugged. 'The choice is yours, daughter. But it's true the lad came looking for you, and I have to admit, he seemed a likely son-in-law to me.'

Nicolae nodded, and added: Til have him for a brother, certainly.'

'Good!' Lardis clasped Varna's broad forearm.

Then: It was as if the old Lidesci had woken up from a nightmare. He straightened up and squared his shoulders, as if to throw off some great invisible weight, and to Varna and Nicolae said: They could use your help repairing the stockade, for it's heavy work. And then the great catapults and crossbows need bringing up to scratch. Also, Dimi Petrescu is convinced he can duplicate the black, explosive powder from The Dweller's shells and grenades. Old Dimi's been working at it for eighteen years, on and off, but he's very weary now and needs the strength of others to make purest charcoal, break rocks, and grind sulphur and iron into dust."

He nodded. 'So… it's a long day ahead, lads, but you can't say it hasn't started well enough. All we have to do is keep it rolling, right?' And to Misha:

'Girl, the way I see it you've done more than your fair share already. Yet now I'll ask you to do one more thing. If I get a couple or three likely lads together and arm them, can you lead them back to the leper colony, and so bring Lissa and Nana Kiklu safely home? I ask this of you, Misha, in order to save time. You know the whole story, you're sympathetic, and so the women will have word of their sons from another woman. What do you say?'

And as he'd known she would, Misha nodded and said, 'Just bring me my escort, and I'm ready…'

Within the half-hour she was on her way back through the woods with Lardis's 'likely lads': three tried and trusted friends. The way was fairly easy going; as the crow flies it was maybe seven miles, nine if you counted the winding trail. Misha knew all the shortcuts, however, and also the shallow fording places across the many streams. Last night in the darkness, with only star-and occasional moonlight to see by, Nana Kiklu had provided the strength and will, but Misha had been their guide.

Then it had taken five hours; now, as she'd already discovered, it would take less than two and a half to retrace her steps. By then, too, Lardis's runner should be catching up with Nathan on the approaches to Twin Fords. Such was the span of Sunside's day — more than one hundred and twenty hours — that with luck the two should be together again a third of the way through the morning. By then she would be very tired, but for now thoughts of Nathan sped Misha on her way.

While at the leper colony: Nana and Lissa were camped less than a hundred yards from the colony proper, at the edge of the forest where it gave way to rolling savannah, then scrub, and finally the mainly uninhabitable desert wastes known collectively as the Furnace Lands. Out there, only ten to fifteen miles south of the leper colony, there was nothing much worth mentioning: sand, scorched earth, rockpiles; snakes, scorpions, and other poisonous creatures; a scattered handful of aborigine tribes. Of the latter: In the old days when the Szgany had been true Travellers, these primitive desert nomads — who seemed no further advanced along the evolutionary trail than Starside's trogs — had sometimes bartered with men. They would meet at high sunup, in the dry savannah margins between desert and forest, to trade fancy lizard leathers and healing salts for Szgany knives and knick-knacks, wines, gourds and garlic. And now, here at the rim of Lidesci territory, the nomads traded just as in the old days; except now they traded with the lepers. Nana Kiklu knew this for a fact; for, far out on the savannah, she'd noticed a tall springy pole with a fluttering rag pennant, like a fly on the face of the sun.

As a girl, travelling with a small tribe, she'd seen just such markers before and knew that the listlessly flapping pennant indicated a nomad trading place. She supposed it was just as well that the lepers had some sort of trade, even with the mysterious, little known or understood nomads; for certainly the bulk of the Szgany weren't likely to come too close. No, for leprosy was as contagious among them as it was among the Wamphyri.

Not that the colony had been entirely abandoned by the Szgany Lidesci. On the contrary: it had been Lardis's father who conceived of it and built the first nucleus of airy lodges under the trees at the forest's edge. As to how that had come about: Twenty-four years ago a good friend of the elder Lidesci had contracted the disease. Before the affliction made itself obvious, it had been passed on to every member of his family. In those days — in that earlier period of Wamphyri domination — the old ways had been simple and hard: such sufferers were usually banished out of camp to wander alone until they died, on penalty of an even swifter death if they should ever try to come back. Some tribes had even been known to put lepers down out of hand. But Lardis's father wasn't able to do that, and so instead he built the leper colony here at the rim of Szgany territory to house the family of his friend.

Later, hearing about the place, other lepers had made their way here from the wilderness and from various tribes, and so the colony was established. And seven years later as Settlement had grown up and prospered, it had been a younger Lidesci, Lardis himself, who had continued to send supplies to the colony on a regular basis, so helping those who were mainly incapable of helping themselves. And even though in those early years the Szgany Lidesci rarely had a surplus of anything, still there was always enough to give a little to the lepers.

Now it was the turn of the lepers to give in return…

These were Nana Kiklu's thoughts where she stood in the shade of a tree at the forest's very edge, and thought back on the events of last night. Not on the painful scenes — such as the destruction of her house, and the fact that she'd not been able to return and search for Nathan and Nestor, which had left such an ache in her heart that it would not be driven out until she and her boys were reunited — but on her exhausted arrival here at the colony. Exhausted, yes, for she and Misha Zanesti between them had been mainly responsible for getting Lissa Lidesci here safe and sound. Poor Lissa, cut by thorn and thicket, and very nearly insane from what she'd seen and been through.

And yet while Nana had the strength both physical and mental, it had been Lissa who was wise enough to advise their coming here, and Misha who was artful enough to lead the way. Misha Zanesti, to whom as a child the forest had been a vast and glorious playground. So all three had played their parts, until at last the woods were behind them and they came upon the savannah by moonlight.

Then, too, Misha had known or divined the way; studying the stars and stating her belief that they had strayed too far west, she had led her companions in the other direction, along the edge of the rolling grassland. Until finally, in the lee of great trees which stood like sentinels looking out towards the inhospitable deserts, they'd seen the soft glow of lamplight and knew that this must be the colony.

Then there had been a low wooden fence, a robed and hooded watcher at the gate, holding up his lamp, and the hoarsely whispered, mumbled query: 'Who comes? Are you lepers?'

'No, not lepers,' Nana had answered, turning her eyes from the lamp's bright glare, 'but friends of those that live here.'

'Not lepers?' the other shrank back. Then go away — and go quickly! For we lepers have no friends. And it's not so much that we live here, as that this is where we come to die…'

'No friends?' Now Lissa had found voice to speak up. 'Not even Lardis Lidesci whose land this is, whose father built this place, and whose wife I am?'

'Ah!' the other hissed, and they caught a brief glimpse of his face where he held his lantern higher yet: the grey bone showing through his cheek, and the fretted gape of his nostrils. The Lidesci? His wife? But in the dead of night? And you — ' he swung his light towards Misha, '- only a girl, yet dishevelled, full of bruises, and your clothes all in tatters? And… and… the Lidesci's wife, you say?' He turned back to Lissa. 'But likewise wild and torn? Now say, what is this thing?'

'Old man,' it was Misha's turn to speak, 'hard times have come, and we must spend the night here and wait for sunup.' And innocent, she reached out a hand to touch his sleeve.

'Ah!' he said again, a gasp this time, and swiftly drew back out of reach. And: 'I am not… not old,' he shook his head, however slowly..

But in the next moment, 'What hard times?'

The Wamphyri are back in Starside,' Nana told him then, breathlessly. 'And tonight they raided on Settlement!'

Finally they had made an impression. The Wamphyri!' the leper croaked, bobbing about in sudden agitation. 'What? They are back, did you say?' Abruptly he turned, hobbling off down a path towards the wooden buildings under the trees.

'Wait!' Misha called after him. 'We can't spend the night in the open!'

He glanced back. 'I only keep watch,' he husked. 'But we have a leader, too. Now wait here, and I'll bring him.'

In a little while he returned; several more lepers, all dressed alike, came with him. One of them was tall, shuffling, obviously in great pain. The sleeves of his robe seemed empty from the elbows down… but his cowl was thrown back so that his face at least was visible and clean. He was pale, hollow-cheeked, with dark expressive eyes.

'I'm Uruk Piatra,' he told the women, looking at them. The others call me Uruk Long-life. And you…" He looked long and hard at Lissa — her oval face with its gentle almond eyes; her slim, long-limbed figure — and said, 'Yes, you are Lardis Lidesci's wife. You've been here before, am I right?'

'With my husband,' she nodded. 'When he was beating the bounds. Twice, I think, but long ago.'

'Aye, long ago,' the other agreed, 'when I had hands.' He looked at all of them again, blinking in the yellow light of the lanterns. 'But I've been told a terrible thing: that the Wamphyri have returned to raid in Sunside!'

By then Lissa had taken a firm grip on her nerves. 'It's true,' she told him, 'all horribly true! We've come here from Settlement, which was burning when last we saw it. There were vampires in the streets, killing, raping, making thralls. But I remember that long ago, my husband told me that this was a place safe from all vampires. That's why we've come here: to hide through the night from the Wamphyri, and to shelter from the forest and its beasts — till sunup at least, when we'll think what to do.'

The leper leader shook his head and his expression grew more haunted yet. 'A monstrous thing!' he said. 'But there are terrible things and terrible things. For a woman to fall into the hands of the Wamphyri would be a nightmare, I know, and to live with them even worse than dying. But to live here… is a slow, lingering death in itself — which you risk just by being here.'

Nana Kiklu had had enough of this. 'So, we are turned away by lepers!' Her words were bitter. Then we'll sleep here, outside your gate. Only bring us clean blankets and a lantern, and we'll look after ourselves.'

Uruk Piatra looked at her and nodded slowly. 'Being what I am,' he said, 'does not make me any less the man. Upon a time I was Szgany, like you. Not a Lidesci, no, but I was a man. And even now I know my duty. I meant simply this: that I could not invite you in, for your own sakes. But certainly we can do better than blankets and a lamp! When lepers come here, we build them homes. Until they are built, however, a tent of skins must suffice. I suggest you pitch it under the trees, over there.'

Nana went to speak again, then hung her head.

And again he nodded. 'It's all right. I understand. Only looking at you I can see how much you've suffered.'

He gave orders and the other lepers went back to their sprawl of dwellings, returning in a while with a tent, blankets, vegetables, an iron pot and tripod. And: 'Stay here,' their leader told Nana, Lissa, and Misha,

'while they build your tent under the trees and light a small fire. Then you must make your own soup, with water from the stream there.'

And while their refuge from the night was put in order for them, so the three had told Uruk their entire story…

That was how it had been for them at the leper colony, in the early hours of the previous night. But as they had settled in to wait out the long hours of darkness, their worries were not so much for themselves as for their loved ones.

Not unnaturally, Nana's thoughts had been for Nathan and Nestor: How had they fared through Settlement's devastation, she wondered? — wondered it in her sleep, and through all of her waking hours — till at last, still wondering, she'd shivered awake with the dawn. Had it been just as bad for them? Surely it must have been even worse! And how were they faring now?

Now in the light of early morning, in the foothills over Twin Fords, Nestor finished his rabbit and stretched out his limbs in the long grass to digest it. While behind him and somewhat higher, at the sheer, rearing rim of an outcrop, vile evaporation continued to spill out of the trees and tumble down the cliff like a frothing waterfall — but less vigorously now — from the three-quarters liquefied flyer destroyed by sunlight.

As for Nathan…

Following old Traveller trails between the forest and the foothills, striding east towards Twin Fords, Nathan was tempted to seek out his brother in a way neither of them had used since childhood. It would mean breaking his easy, long-legged, mile-eating lope for a few minutes, which he was scarcely willing to do, but if it proved successful at least his mind would be at rest.

For there had never been a time in Nathan's life when he was more aware that he was only one half of twins; when, as if to accentuate his and Nestor's physical differences, he could feel this new rift between them like a great canyon, yawning ever wider the closer he came to its rim. And he knew that Misha Zanesti had been only a part of it, that it had been coming anyway and she had been merely the catalyst.

But it had all culminated so swiftly. First Misha: Because of her love for Nathan (rather, because of Nestor's jealousy), the brothers had drifted apart; that rivalry which had seeded itself in childhood had finally bloated into life, separating them. But they weren't the first brothers to come up against such a problem; it was something which might well have righted itself, eventually. Especially now that… now that Misha…

But no, Nathan couldn't bring himself to dwell upon that — Misha with the dog-thing, Canker Canison — not in the way Vratza Wransthrall had so gleefully described it. And yet he must, for back in Settlement he'd vowed against the Wamphyri, especially Canker. And though he felt choked inside, still a low growl escaped his throat as he pictured that one! Aye, and his vow was a double, even a triple vow, surely; for the Wamphyri were also responsible for whatever fate had befallen his mother, and for tearing him physically apart from his brother. As for the latter… he could only hope that it wasn't permanent.

A terrible, terrible thing to have lost all of them: his mother, Misha, and Nestor. He neither knew nor wanted to know what effect the death of his brother would have on him, but he supposed it would be like losing an even bigger part of himself — perhaps the last part.

For he and Nestor: they'd shared their mother's womb, her milk, the love of the same Gypsy girl — though she'd loved one as a brother and the other for himself. But their blood was one blood, and even their minds had seemed fashioned of like stuff; at least, they were similar enough that sometimes they touched upon each other.

Which was what Nathan intended now: to touch Nestor's mind, and in so doing prove that he still lived. And if there was nothing there, a vacuum? That was the chance he must take: to be part of something which once was whole, at least, or to be even emptier than the husk he inhabited now.

With all of these thoughts and others swirling in his head and clouding the psychic ether, it was hardly the best moment for such an experiment, but Nathan drew off from the trail anyway, sat down with his back to a boulder and closed out the day, his furious loathing of last night's raiders, all other emotions, everything, and let his mind drift…

The dead drew back from him!

He felt that at once; their shock, even their horror. But this time Nathan's interest Jay with the Jiving… he hoped. And up in the high hiJJs, in deep caves, grey-furred ears sprang erect, grey heads were lifted, and triangle eyes blinked in gJoomy lairs. There were three of them, three together, who knew his mind as if it were one of theirs: Blaze, whose brow was marked with his mother's white; Grinner, whose damp bJack lips forever twitched, as if on the verge of smiling; Dock, whose tail had been shortened when he was a cub and wanted to play with some brave vixen's brood.

They divined Nathan's purpose at once but couldn't help him, not this time. For none of theirs was abroad in the daylight, and no further reports of Nestor had reached them. If it were night, that might be different. But not now.

Nathan acknowledged them anyway, where they whined a little, curJed up and resumed their contemplations. And moving on, he let his thoughts drift, drift..

.. Until they struck upon a mind he knew, yet at one and the same time did not know! For it seemed different, changed, wiped clean. Or perhaps wiped unclean, with a dirty, bloodstained rag? For this was Nestor, and yet it was not him.

Nathan couldn't understand. It was as if Nestor's mind itself was undecided about his identity! And a great rage of pain and frustration, of need and ambition, and of loss and discovery seethed in the core of him!

Such was Nathan's shock that he snatched himself back from the stranger which was his brother — and jerked erect where he sat with his back against the rock!

And all of his thoughts fled back to him like whipped dogs, and his quandary was deeper than before where he took up the trail again and headed east…

Nestor was asleep, digesting his meal, converting the strong food into energy. He was asleep and wandering in the most fragile of dreams — which were scattered on the instant that the alien Thing entered his mind!

Alien, yes, and a hated enemy! He knew it from the whirlpool of numbers, symbols, meaningless equations and other mathematical devices behind which the Thing concealed its identity and purpose. That same enemy which had plagued him all the days of his life! Shivering despite that the sun blazed down on him, Nestor opened his eyes…

.. and looked up at two men, one about his own age and the other much older, who had come across him where he lay!

The enemy of his dreams was at once forgotten; he saw the men — saw that just for the moment they were looking at each other, not at him — and closed his eyes again, feigning sleep. But what he'd seen stayed etched on his mind's eye: One of them, the young one, was kneeling beside him with his fist knotted round the handle of a knife whose sharp blade gleamed like liquid silver in the sunlight. Slender, wide-eyed, nervous, he looked more than a little frightened. The other, a weathered, surly-looking man in his middle years, stood erect with a loaded crossbow held in his strong brown hands. He had been scowling and was now quietly muttering to himself:

'Steal a rabbit right out of my trap, would you, boy? And what are you doing up here anyway, eh? Especially this morning, after last night…'

'No vampire,' the one on his knees whispered, still glancing over his shoulder at the first speaker, 'else he wouldn't be out in the sun. And look at the state of him, all bruised and banged about! Was he a lone hunter, perhaps, scared down out of the mountains? What do you think, father?'

'What do I think?' the first one's answer was a low rumble of unreasoning hatred and suspicion. 'Oh, I'll tell you what I think: that the bloodsucking bastards have thought up some new tricks, and that this one's some weird Wamphyri changeling! So he's not changed far enough yet that the sun will hurt him… so what? You saw his flyer up there, all melting away, and its black bones poking through the rot. Too much of a coincidence to find a thing like that up there, and then to find this one down here. That's what I think!'

Nestor's flyer? He remembered it. Indeed, it was one of the very few things which he did remember. But what was that the older man had called him, a changeling? Hah! Little he knew. For Nestor was no mere thrall but a Lord! He was the Lord Nestor — of the Wamphyri!

The word was like a fire in his blood — Wamphyri.'

And now he tensed himself — but carefully, guardedly — for action. His arms were folded comfortably on his chest, and one knee was bent a little. All to the good.

'So what do we do about him?' the one who kneeled wanted to know.

'First we wake him,' the other growled. And reluctantly: Then… I suppose we'd better drag him down into Twin Fords, and find out about him there. For I'd hate to make a mistake.'

Too late! thought Nestor. You've made too many already.

He felt the younger one's hand grip his arm above the elbow, shaking him, and heard him bark: 'You, wake up!' Following which, all was a blur of motion.

Nestor's eyes blazed open! Stiffening his hands and shooting them wide in a slicing motion, he knocked aside the young one's knife arm, simultaneously wrenching his hand from its hold on his right arm. Suddenly unbalanced, with his hands sliced out from under him, the youth could only topple forward. Grasping his advantage, Nestor slammed his bent knee into the other's groin, and jerked his head up off the ground to butt him full in the face.

Lips which were already snarling their shock and terror split open bloodily; teeth and bone crunched sick-eningly; the youth's yelp of astonishment turned to a red gurgle as Nestor grabbed for the knife. He found it in the other's slackening fingers and gashed himself wrenching it free. But the slicing pain served only to galvanize him further.

The older man was hopping left and right, trying to line up his weapon, shouting, 'Stab him! Kill the bastard!' He would get off a shot but his son was in the way, and what he couldn't see was that Nestor had the knife. And suddenly it seemed that the sprawling, jerking body of his son lifted itself up a foot from the one he was pinning down, and in mid-air shuddered convulsively. Then the youth was thrust aside, turned by Nestor's arm and knee, and his awful face was a bloody mask with a gasping hole for a mouth. Also bloody was the slit in his jacket, from which Nestor drew out the knife.

'Son!' With a cry of anguish, eyes popping, the father watched his son's brief death struggles, saw him flop motionless on the bloodstained grass. Then:

'You!' he snarled, swinging his weapon towards Nestor and pulling the trigger. But Nestor was on his feet, his arm already fully extended forward, and the red-blotched knife in flight! Nestor was good with a knife, but on this occasion he was lucky, too. It took the man in the throat, in the 'V of bone directly under his Adam's-apple, punching a hole there which penetrated to the spine.

Even crumpling to the earth he was as good as dead, and so didn't see his bolt take Nestor in the side, skewering his flesh like a needle through a blister. He didn't see it, but there were others higher up the hillside who did.

Nestor heard them cry out, looked up from where shock had knocked him off his feet, and saw them through the wash of scarlet agony flooding over him. A group of four or five men, something less than two hundred yards away, descending the hillside towards him in a series of breakneck leaps and bounds — vampire hunters!

Nestor got his fingers into the tear in his jacket and ripped it open. The bolt had entered his body under the ribcage on his right side, scraping a rib at the back where its barbed head had emerged. Its flight was sticking out at the front, and both holes were dripping thick, dark splashes of blood where a five-inch bridge of white, puffy flesh joined them like a bulging roll of fat.

Nestor didn't think twice but gripped the head of the bolt with his right hand and the flight with his left, and bent the wooden shaft against his side until it snapped. He saw the skin of his side bulge as the broken shaft forced the white flesh outward, and almost passed out; but he knew that if he did, it would probably be the last thing he ever did. And in any case, breaking the bolt had been only half of it. Now he must draw it out.

He did so without pause, and had to fight from gagging as the red blood spurted. Then, cinching his jacket tightly to his body, he somehow got to his feet and made off down the steep slope. But weak and desperate as he was, his heart was already pounding and his breath faltering. And those men back there — Szgany, and full of bloodlust — they'd not give him a second's respite or his life a moment's thought once they had him. It would be the stake, the knife, the fire for Lord Nestor of the Wamphyri!

He limped to the rim of a bluff and looked over, saw deep water rushing into the foam and spray of broad falls, and white water all the way down to the levels and the broken bridges of Twin Fords. But from behind as if to spur him on, rising above the hiss and surge of foaming waters, he could hear the angry shouts of his pursuers.

And looking back just once, to glimpse raised weapons and furious faces, he shouted his defiance — and jumped!

Nathan got into Twin Fords a little less than two hours later. He found the town a shambles — a pesthole of stumbling, slack-mouthed survivors; a bubbling cauldron of narrow-eyed, suspicious, would-be avengers; a chaos of terrified, demented people — with little or nothing of Settlement's order and discipline about it. Before that, however: There were guards on the approach roads to the town, who stopped him the moment he crossed the river through the shallows of the fording place, where all that remained of a once-sturdy bridge was a weir of timbers crushed down into the mud. He was recognized as one of Lardis Lidesci's party, which had passed through heading west for Settlement just yestereve, and allowed to go on into the devastation.

And the chaos was at once apparent. At least two fires were still smouldering where granaries had been gutted; the dead — or their pieces, if they had been vampirized — were still being dragged through barely recognizable streets to be burned on funeral pyres; the wailing of women and weeping of children was nerve-rending. Inside a more or less intact perimeter of wooden buildings, the destruction was enormous, far worse than in Settlement. Here, where a great many houses had been simply smashed flat, it appeared that the Wamphyri and their creatures must have raged out of control.

Approaching the centre, where the leaders and elders of the Szgany Zestos were holding a meeting, Nathan witnessed the discovery and destruction of a vampire thrall who had slept too late. Flushed from her hiding place under the eaves of a house by men brandishing torches, a woman was driven into the street and ringed about. With the sun beating down on her she shrank back and tried to cover herself, all the while raving and gibbering, and cursing the men about her in language so filthy that Nathan couldn't believe it.

Wild, grey as a cloud, with eyes bubbling like sulphur, finally she braved their torches and launched herself at the nearest man. And as she snarled at him it was at once obvious that her eye-teeth were unnaturally long, white and sharp!

The bolt which cut her down was equally sharp, likewise the knives with which they took her head…

Then Nathan arrived at the meeting place in the shade of a large, hastily erected, open-sided tent. And as the gathering broke up he recognized Karl Zestos, the oldest son of Twin Fords' former leader. His father, Bela Zestos, was dead now, a heroic victim of the vampire raid; if from the wreckage of his people Karl could salvage a number sufficient to lead, then he would become a Traveller King in his own right.

Recognition like sorrow was mutual; the two spent a few moments trading their grim stories; Nathan picked up several details of last night's raid on Twin Fords which had not been available in Settlement. More than anything else, he was interested in Canker Canison. But when he explained why.. then the other's face turned grey. And:

'My friend,' Karl told him, shaking his head, 'you must pray that your Misha is dead! The reports I have heard…'

'I know,' Nathan answered, cutting him short. 'And when I think about it, I'm tempted to try willing her dead! Except that's not possible, and I'm glad it isn't.'

'I understand,' the other nodded, then frowned at Nathan and added: 'But something is strange here. I remember you differently: not only from your colouring, which is rare among the Szgany, but also for the fact that you were quiet and retiring. You have a brother, right? He's the one I remember as forward and outspoken!'

'Am I forward and outspoken?' Nathan was surprised. Then perhaps I've gained from Nestor's loss.' He explained his meaning and his mission: how his brother had been taken, and how he had 'dreamed' of the flyer crashing in the hills close by.

That… rings bells,' Karl told him then; but if anything his frown was more deeply etched than before. 'Some men were up in the hills this morning, looking for changelings who had escaped out of town. You'll understand that there are many people we can't account for. Anyway, they discovered a flyer and… a man. A youth, at least.'

Nathan grabbed his arm. 'A youth? Alive?' 'He was — living — when they found him, yes,' the other replied. 'But "alive"?' He shrugged. 'Undead, perhaps.'

Nathan groaned. And: 'Explain,' he said. Karl told him the story as he'd had it, finishing with: 'He leaped into the torrent and was swept away. They saw him go under in the white water, but they didn't see him surface.'

'And you say he… he murdered two men?' The other could only nod. 'He was seen to do it, aye.' Nathan shook his head. Then it couldn't be Nestor!' Again Karl's shrug. 'Who else could it be? The description I was given fits. Also, you've related how things were in Settlement. So how do you know Nestor wasn't vampirized before the flyer took him? You don't.' He sighed. 'I'm not unsympathetic, Nathan, but it seems to me you should forget him now and go back home to those you have left.' Nathan was bitter. 'I have no one left!' Then follow me,' Karl urged. 'I need good, strong young men. I'll take my people out of here and return to my father's way of life before he built this place, and be a Traveller.'

But Nathan's mind was still on Nestor, and now he mused: There are two tributaries plunging out of the heights. Which one did he jump into?'

The one that descends to West Ford,' Karl answered. 'But what will you do?'

Til try to find his body,' Nathan told him. 'And then I'll know, for better or for worse.'

The other nodded. 'Good luck. But Nathan, if you do find him… be prepared.'

Nathan didn't find Nestor, but at least he found word of him.

He spoke to the guards at the ruined bridge. They'd seen the body of a man go drifting down river. There had been blood in the water and the body was facedown, motionless. They would have dragged him out but had failed to notice him until he was over the slippery weir and drifting deeper. He could be one of two things: a murdered victim of last night's raid, or a vampire thrall caught by the sun in the foothills.

Anyway, that had been more than two and a half hours ago. By now he'd be tangled in roots somewhere down river, or sunk to the bottom in the mud and the weeds…

Nathan thanked them for the information, if not for their 'assurances', then forded the river and set out to follow its course downstream. Walking a path used by the town's fishermen, and scanning the overgrown banks as he went, he followed the rushing waters to where the river joined with its twin in a broad green swath, but saw never a sign of Nestor. At which point most men might have given up, but not Nathan. He would follow the greater river all day, if need be. And when night came?… Well, sundown must find him wherever it found him.

And for that matter, what difference did it make?

Fifteen minutes after Nathan passed from sight of the West Ford bridge, Lardis's runner made the crossing. He had been held up by a string of vampire hunters along the way.

By then the guards at the fording place had changed; one of them reported that he'd seen a man of Settlement talking to Karl Zestos in the town; the runner hurried on into Twin Fords without ever knowing that Nathan was less than three miles away but in a different direction.

Having found and spoken to Karl, the runner quickly returned to the sunken bridge. This time the guards could only shrug and offer their opinions that Nathan must be on his way back to Settlement, and that the two had passed each other by on different trails. It seemed the only logical explanation. Thus the runner gave up the chase, and began retracing his steps…