II
Four years later: Lardis Lidesci's house stood on a rise a little above Settlement, where the grassy, temperate but abrupt foothills of Sunside climbed towards rocky outcrops and steep, forested heights. He liked sitting in front of the house at sundown, to catch the last rays of the sun; likewise before sunup, to watch it rise. Unthinkable four short years ago (two hundred 'days', or sunup-sundown cycles), and even now nerve-tingling: to be up and about, safe and sound, and the parent star itself not yet risen. Strange, too, to live in one place, in a house; though almost all of the Szgany did these days -certainly the majority of Lardis's prosperous, ever-increasing band.
The Szgany Lidesci: Lardis's people.
Oh, there were still a few families who preferred their hide-covered caravans along the valley trails, and those who dragged their scant belongings on travois from place to place, unwilling to rest, relax, rejoice in the fact that the scourge of the Wamphyri was a thing of the past. But in the main they were settled or settling now, while other tribes, clans, bands of Travellers were following suit, building their own places along the forest's rim, east to west down the spine of the barrier range.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
Lardis's cabin was styled after The Dweller's house on Starside. Providing shelter for Lardis, his young wife Lissa, and not least their small son Jason - who had been named by his father after someone he very much admired - it stood a mile east of Sanctuary Rock. Lardis had chosen the spot himself, built the house, finally taken a wife and settled here, all in that period of twenty-four solar rotations following immediately upon The Dweller (whom some saw fit to call 'the changeling' now, and others Harry Wolfson) sending the Szgany out of his garden on Starside. And while Lardis had toiled to construct his home here in the lower foothills, so his people had followed his example, felled trees and built Settlement.
Since the place was the first community of its kind in more than two thousand years of wandering, Lardis found its simple name in keeping - if not the high, stout fence which the Gypsies had seen fit to throw up around it. With its catwalks, turret watchtowers and various defensive systems ... perhaps 'Fortress' would have been a more suitable name! But memories of hard times die hard, and Szgany dread of Wamphyri terror and domination was instinctive and immemorial.
The Wamphyri, aye!
Sitting here in the faint, false-dawn light of Sunside, looking down on Settlement - with its tiny gardens and allotments, blue smoke spiralling from its stone chimneys, the first antlike movements in its cramped streets - Lardis wondered if the Wamphyri would ever return. Well, possibly, for they were like a recurrent nightmare which fades but not entirely from inner memory, bloating anew when least expected, resurgent in the night. But not, he prayed, in his time. Let it not be in his or little Jason's time.
It wouldn't be, not if he could help it.
And yet ... it was reported that the vampire swamps were acrawl again. Creatures and ignorant, lonely men went there to drink, and came away more than creatures and less than men. Or more than men, depending on one's point of view: that of someone entirely human, or that of something other. Impossible and therefore pointless - and not least very, very dangerous - to attempt to quarantine, patrol or monitor those great boggy tracts sprawling west of the barrier range, those morasses of bubbling, festering evil. Their extent was unknown, unmapped; no one fully understood the nature of vampire contamination, infestation, mutation.
How then to keep the threat at bay? The Szgany Lidesci could only do their best. Lardis's plan had been simple and so far had seemed to work: West of the jagged barrier mountains, where the crags fell to earth, petered into stacks, knolls and jumbles, became foothills which eventually flattened into quaggy hollows, that was where the swamps began. Fed by streams out of the heights, the marshes brewed their horrors through the long, steamy sunups, released them into the gurgling, mist-wreathed nights. At least one tribe of Starside trogs, inhabitants of deep caverns far to the west of what was once The Dweller's garden, knew the danger well enough: they kept a constant watch for any suspicious creature emerging from that region. And since all such were dubious, they destroyed them whenever they could. Wolf, goat, man - it made no difference - if he, it, whatever, came stumbling or stalking out of reeking, moisture-laden darkness into trog territory, then he was doomed.
Lardis had taken his cue from the trogs. One hundred and forty miles west of Settlement, where the mountains were less rugged and the green belt of Sunside narrowed down to something of a thinly forested bottleneck, that was where the Szgany had always drawn their line of demarcation. In all Lardis's travelling days, he'd never taken the tribe across that line, neither him nor any other leader that he knew of. Apart from a handful of solitary types - lone wanderers who always kept themselves apart, perhaps for safety of body and soul - apart from these and the rare, nomadic family group, the territory beyond the line of demarcation was unknown to men, unexplored. But as for the line itself: now at least it was manned. And constantly.
There were two well established Gypsy communities west of Settlement: Mirlu Township only twenty miles away, and Tireni Scarp, three times as far again. Volunteers from all three of these 'towns' took turns guarding the brooding vampire frontier. Even now two dozen men of the Szgany Lidesci were away from home, an entire sunup's march to the west. There they'd stay for four long days - and four fraught, eerie sundowns -until relieved of their duties by the Szgany Mirlu. Eventually it would be the turn of a band from Tireni Scarp, and so forth. This way, just as Starside's trogs kept a lookout for incursions into their territories, so the Szgany protected Sunside.
It was as much as could be done; Lardis had agreed all of the procedures with Anton Mirlu and Yanni Tireni; the Lidescis - because they were situated furthest from the boundary and so had further to trek in pursuance of their duties - would seem to have got the worst of the deal. At the same time, however, they were the furthest away ... but never to the extent that Lardis was out of touch. No, for he must always maintain his intelligence, keep up to date where and whenever vampiric outbreaks or manifestations were concerned ...
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
Hunched in his chair in his small garden over Settlement, Lardis chewed over all of these things, considering what had been and wondering what was still to be; until suddenly, feeling a chill, he turned up the collar of his jacket. Not that this would warm him, for his was a chill of the soul - maybe. He snorted and gave an agitated shrug. At times he cursed the seer's blood in him; it told him things and gave warning, true, but never told enough and sometimes warned too late.
A thin mist was gradually (and quite naturally) rising out of the earth, up from the streams and rivers, advancing through the forests and gathering in the hollows. Already Settlement's walls were fading into the grey of it. Lardis didn't much care for mists; he'd seen too many which were other than natural; he remembered their clammy feel against his skin, what had issued them, what all too often issued out of them. But this one -
- He narrowed dark Szgany eyes and merely scowled at this one. Knowing its source he could afford to, for it was simply the dawn. In just a little while now the glorious, laborious sun would lift its rim up over the far furnace deserts, pour its light on fringes of scrub, crab-grass, savanna where they gradually merged into forest, until finally its golden rays would light upon Settlement and the barrier range itself.
Sunup, soon! The land knew it, stirred, breathed a moist breath of mist to wake birds and beasts alike, and cover the shimmer of trout in the brightening rivers.
Sunup, aye ... And with the thought, all manner of morbid omens and imaginings slipped quietly from Lardis's mind. For a little while, anyway ...
'Halloo!' The cry broke into Lardis's solitude, brought him to his feet.
Going to the front of the garden and looking down the zigzagging, rudimentary stairway of stones which he'd wedged into the steepest part of the descent, Lardis saw two disparate figures climbing towards him, their feet swathed in a milky weave of ground mist. One of them, whose familiar voice had hailed him, was Nana Kiklu. The other - male, gnarled, and somewhat bent -was the mentalist Jasef Karis; or the 'thought-thief, as most people knew him, except that was an unkind expression. Oh, the old Gypsy could get into your head right enough, and steal your thoughts if he wanted to! But that wasn't his way. Usually he kept his talent to himself, or else used it to the tribe's advantage as a whole.
As for Nana: her man had died following the battle for The Dweller's garden, which itself had followed fast on the hell of the bloodbath at Sanctuary Rock. And Lardis remembered that only too well...
Then: the Wamphyri Lord Shaithis had come into Sunside looking for Zekintha Foener and the hell-lander Jazz Simmons. In fact Zek and Jazz were both hell-landers, but while Lardis had admired them individually, his memories of Zek were that much fonder. Though it would have been impossible to mistake her for a Gypsy (what, with her colouring, like a burst of sunlight?), still there had been something of the Gypsy about her. While she'd never once encouraged Lardis, nevertheless he'd entertained hopes. Perhaps if things had worked out differently ... but they hadn't. Zek was gone now, returned to her own world. Anyway, Lardis had Lissa and Jason, and loved both of them. He channelled his thoughts afresh: After the slaughter at Sanctuary Rock and the period of sojourn in The Dweller's garden, when the tribe had returned to Sunside to build Settlement, then Nana had been given the task of caring for old Jasef; for there were no drones among the Szgany. Indeed, if circumstances had been as of old, then Nana would have been obliged to find herself another husband. And as for the old man: surely the day had long since dawned when the mentalist would have been no more. His rapidly shrivelling brain, desiccated bones and knotted ligaments must certainly have done for him by now, when during some nightmare raid from Starside - with neither wit to hide himself away, nor agility to flee - Jasef would have ended his days as fodder in the belly of a hybrid Wamphyri warrior creature. Except ... that had been then and this was now, and things were very different.
Lardis continued to follow the progress of the pair as they climbed towards him, and his thoughts in respect of the aged Szgany telepath were neither callous nor calculating, merely honest: Old Jasef, with his mind-reading abilities and what-all: what he ate didn't amount to much, nor was he troublesome. In his lean-to adjacent to Nana's cabin, he lived out his time in what small comfort was available and was grateful. For he knew that in certain Szgany tribes he might not be so fortunate; he might even be put down, like his father before him, because there was something of the Wamphryi in him. It was very little and showed itself only in his mentalism, but in Lardis's eyes that made him valuable. Especially now that things were starting to happen again, albeit things which the Szgany could well do without.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
Now Lardis looked back some thirteen sunups to the last time Nana brought Jasef Karis to see him - and to what had resulted from the visit:
'Karen's in her aerie and worried!' The old man's hands had fluttered like brown-spotted birds. 'Likewise Harry Wolfson where he prowls with the pack on Star-side's flank, howling under the racing moon. Their thoughts are strange and ominous. I have seen with their eyes how the auroras writhe and pulse over the Icelands, and smelled with their nostrils the weird winds that blow from that cold realm!'
Lardis had nodded, and asked: 'What are their thoughts?'
'Karen is uneasy - very! She makes monsters!'
'Out of men?' Not wanting to believe it, Lardis had held his breath. It had been hard enough, that time four years ago, to believe she still lived! What, Karen alive? And Harry Dwellersire so sure that she was dead? But when The Dweller returned to Starside after delivering his father back to the hell-lands, then the truth of it had been seen: the Lady Karen herself had come visiting! She and The Dweller (two of a kind?), walking, talking together on the silvered slopes, in the heights over Star-side's boulder plains. But why not? She had been his ally against the Wamphyri Lords, hadn't she? She had been the one to bring first warning.
And now this: she practised the arts of the Wamphyri and made monsters! But from what? Perhaps it was as well after all that The Dweller had become a changeling, whose powers waned like his waning man-flesh. Aye, for he was the leader of the grey brotherhood now - a wolf! - albeit a wolf with the pale slender hands of a human youth. Had it been otherwise ....h, what unthinkable nightmares he and Karen might have bred together! And what blood-lusting progeny, to come raiding again out of Starside!
Jasef, however, had given a shake of his palsied head. 'No, Karen took no men to make her creatures. Neither flesh of Travellers nor even trog flesh, but ... stuff, which she discovered alive in the workshops of the Lords Menor Maimbite and Lesk the Glut, buried beneath the ruins of their toppled aeries.' Then with a shrug he'd added: 'But what odds? For it, too, had been the stuff of men ... upon a time.'
While word of Karen's weird industry and Harry Wolfson's fretful prowling was bad enough news in itself, still Lardis had wanted to know why they'd been driven to these extremes; had Jasef gleaned the reason for it? Had The Dweller's metamorphosis driven him mad? What did Karen fear that she made guardian creatures, when she herself was the last of the Wamphyri? There had been rumours: some said she'd taken men for lovers and never harmed a one of them. What had Jasef divined of these things? Anything at all? Or was he merely groping in the dark?
'Awful winds whistling out of the Icelands,' the ancient had moaned, rolling his eyes. 'The changeling and Karen, they have watched the auroras weaving, and listened to voices out of the living ice!'
At which Lardis's eyes had narrowed. Twice now the old man had mentioned the Icelands, those far northern regions beyond Starside, into which the Wamphryi had banished malefactors of their own kind since time immemorial. After the battle at the garden, several surviving Lords were known to have fled there: the gigantic, acromegalic Fess Ferenc, the entirely loathsome Volse Pinescu, the squat and vindictive Arkis Leperson - even the great Lord Shaithis himself, plus an unknown number of lieutenants and thralls. Well, and they were only the last of many gone before them. But none had ever returned. Not yet...
And Lardis had shivered and husked: 'Are you telling me that they fear the return of ...?'
'Wait! Wait!' Old Jasef had fluttered his hands. 'In the hour before dawn I dreamed of The Dweller, the changeling, the wolf with a man's hands. Except it was more than just a dream, and he asked for you, Lardis. If you would know more, then go and speak to him who runs with the pack.'
'Oh?' Lardis had grunted, shrugging in that jerky way of his, to indicate his irritation. 'Just like that? And should I, too, run with the wolves? And will they also respect my life, like the tame wolves of Settlement? Now tell me: even if I wanted to see The Dweller, how would I seek him out and where find him?' But he'd known the answer even before the question was out.
'Where else?' said Jasef, cocking his head on one side.
At the grave of his mother, of course ...
Nana and Jasef had reached the topmost flight. Puffing and panting where the going was steep, the old man leaned heavily on Nana. Their errand must be important. Lardis called down, 'You should have sent a runner. I would have come to you.'
A runner - even those simple words conjured images: Of a racing moon in the skies over Starside, and Jean grey shapes, running like quicksilver, whose silhouettes seemed part of the night. Never fully seen - a grey blur on the periphery of sight - they melted into the ridges, the crags, the shadows of black and stirless trees. Their triangle eyes had been luminous in the garden's preternatural gloom.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
For of course Lardis had known his duty, and despite his fear had gone there; climbed up to the high pass and through it to the garden, to meet with Harry Wolfson at the grave of the Gentle One Under the Stones. Oh, he'd not gone alone or unarmed; five of his best men had accompanied him, and he'd carried his shotgun and a box of silver-shot cartridges from The Dweller's armoury. It wasn't that Lardis didn't trust Harry Wolfson: he had trusted, almost worshipped him in his time and would do so even now - to a point. But there had been word of him. Hunters on the evening slopes of Sunside, returning late to Settlement, Mirlu, Tireni Scarp, had seen him running with the pack. And he had howled with the best of them!
They had their pact, however, and not a man of the western Szgany townships would ever shoot at a mountain wolf. Still, to be absolutely sure they'd not be tempted, Lardis had left his men to wait for him at the back of the garden, where the pass led down to Sunside. And then he'd gone on alone to the rendezvous, at the grave of The Dweller's mother. Except it had not been the changeling whom Lardis met in the now ruined garden. Not him but his father, the Necroscope Harry Keogh, returned at last out of another world.
Lardis could remember the first moments of that meeting in detail: how first the garden had been empty, then the tall figure of the hell-lander, standing there at the wall, alone, shoulders slumped, forlorn, where a moment ago there had been an empty space. And Lardis had known at once who this must be, for no other could come and go like that; and he'd wondered: Is this what The Dweller wanted me to know, that his father is back in the barrier mountains?
But then, at Lardis's approach, so Harry had straightened, turned, seen him there. And in that selfsame instant Lardis had known that The Dweller wasn't the only changeling in Starside. Grey and gaunt, Harry's flesh, and crimson his eyes. Wamphyri!
As for the rest of that meeting - their actions, the substance of their conversation - it was all but forgotten. Lardis had wanted nothing so much as to be out of there. Perhaps he'd mentioned The Dweller's fate, and something of his fears of a threat out of the Icelands; perhaps they'd spoken of the Lady Brenda, and the cairn where she lay buried; perhaps at that there had been something other than blood in the Necroscope's eyes. One of the few things Lardis did remember, and clearly - one action of which he would always be ashamed - was that he'd discharged his weapon, uselessly, and that the hell-lander could so easily have killed him ... but hadn't.
Later: they had stood together in silence at Brenda's grave. But when Harry inquired after the Travellers, then Lardis had been instantly suspicious. Worried about the other's intentions, he'd asked: 'And will you hunt on Sunside, Harry - hunt men, women and children - when the nights are dark?'
'Does my son hunt the Szgany?' was Harry's answer. 'Did he ever?'
But by then the atmosphere had been sour as Lardis's mood. And as he'd headed for the pass where his men were hidden, his parting shot had been: 'Oh, you'll come a-hunting soon enough, for a woman to warm your bed, or a sweet Traveller child when you're weary of rabbit meat!' And the howling of the wolves had followed him and his men all the way down to Sunside ...
Nana and Jasef had reached the top of the steps; Lardis took the old man, led him stumbling to his own chair and seated him there; Nana said:
'I could have come on my own but Jasef said no, he wanted to speak to you in person. Also, you have privacy here. Such things as Jasef would tell you are best said in private. He doesn't wish to panic the people.'
'And you?' Lardis looked at her, giving the mentalist time to compose himself, catch his breath. 'Has he told these things to you?'
She shrugged. 'I look after him; he mumbles in his sleep; from time to time I overhear things.'
'I mumble, aye,' the old man agreed, showing his gums in a wry grin. 'But ah, the substance of my mumbling!'
'Let's have it,' Lardis nodded grimly. 'What is it now, old man?'
Jasef made no bones of it: The Wamphyri are back on Starside!'
Even though Lardis had feared as much, still he was aghast. He shook his head, grasped Jasef's arm. 'But how can it be? Is it possible? We destroyed the Wamphyri!'
'Not all of them,' said Jasef. 'And now they've returned, Shaithis and one other, out of the Icelands. They plot against Harry Hell-lander, the Lady Karen, even the changeling. Their voices are in the wind over the barrier mountains, and in my dreams I hear them talking.'
'Of what?'
'Of sweet Traveller flesh, of the blood which is the life, of bairns to roast like suckling pigs, and women to rend with their lust! All of these things, which they've missed in exile in the Icelands. Even now they inhabit Karen's aerie, flying out from it with their warriors invincible to raid on eastern tribes.'
'Just two of them?'
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
'What?' Jasef's rheumy eyes peered at Lardis in wonder. ' "Just" two of them, did you say? "Just" two Wamphyri Lords?' And of course Lardis knew that he was right. It might as well be an army. Except ... armies weren't always victorious.
Jasef read his mind. 'Aye,' he nodded, 'the Szgany Lidesci are protected: we have The Dweller's weapons! Those weapons in which he instructed us, at least. But what of the other tribes and towns? "Just" two of them - for now! But do you think the Wamphyri won't take lieutenants? Do you think they won't breed, make monsters? Lardis, I'm only an old man whose days are numbered, and so I have very little weight in the world. But I'll tell you what I fear the most: that this is the beginning of the end for all of the Szgany.'
Suddenly Lardis was desperate. He grasped Jasef's arm that much tighter. 'How can we be certain that you've read aright? You aren't always so sure of yourself. Even your dreams are sometimes ... only dreams.'
'Not this time, Lardis,' the old man shook his head. 'Alas, not this time. Do you think I enjoy playing harbinger, bringer of ill omen, like a man whose very breath carries the plague? Believe me, I do not. But I know the Wamphyri, and especially Shaithis, who was ever the clever one ...' He paused to issue an involuntary, uncontrollable shudder. 'Aye, that one's thoughts are strong; they carry on the aether like cries across an echoing valley, and my mind the valley wall, which traps them for me to read.'
Lardis turned this way and that in search of some unseen solution, but in the next moment hope lifted his voice. 'What of Karen?' he demanded. 'What of Harry Dwellersire? That one has powers, which he put to work in the battle for The Dweller's garden. And the pair of them - forgive me for saying it, for even thinking it - they are Wamphryi in their own right! I can't see them sitting still, doing nothing, while Shaithis regains his old influence, recoups his old territories. What? Unthinkable! We were allies before, we'll be allies again.1
Jasef nodded, however tremulously. 'Better the devils you know, eh, Lardis? But weren't you listening? Karen has already fled her stack! She's ..^h the hell-lander at this very moment, in his son's garden. As for the changeling: almost certainly he'll side with them against Shaithis and the others. But tell me, what can a wolf do? Ah, he isn't The Dweller which once we knew!'
Lardis paced back and forth, to and fro. 'Well, at least I know what I must do!' he said, finally. And turning to Nana: 'Go back down into Settlement, speak with Peder Szekarly, Kirk Lisescu, Andrei Romani and his brothers. Tell them to report to me, and at once -with their guns! We go again to the garden on Starside. If Harry Dwellersire and Karen are in need of soldiers ... I'll wait here and ready myself, until the five join me. We go to parley with them who defend the Starside garden, as they defended it once before. We go to offer our alliance, and to talk of war!'
Nana nodded. Silent all of this time, now words tumbled from her lips in a breathless gush. 'Lardis, do you think that I ...? Could you possibly ...? I mean to say ... only that I should like very much to go with you!'
Astonished, he looked at her, frowned, tucked his chin in. 'You? Starside? Are your wits suddenly addled, Nana? You, with two small sons to care for, and them only a year older than my own Jason? How could I allow such a thing - and why would you want it? Don't you know the danger?'
'I ... of course I do,' she looked away. 'It was just ... it was nothing but a whim.' And then, in another burst: 'But I ... I nursed Harry Dwellersire that time, and I wondered how he fares now that he is -'
'- Changed!' Lardis finished it for her. 'For he was only a man then, Nana - albeit a strange one - and now is other than a man. You may not go with me. What, to Starside? Of course you may not! Stay in Settlement and care for Hzak Kiklu's children, while you may. A whim, you say? A damned foolish one, I say! And should I let a vampire Lord, even one such as Harry Dwellersire, lay crimson eyes on one of my own Szgany women? Such a fate could be yours ... I would not wish it on a dog!'
But: Ah.' she thought. You don't know, you don't know!
It was Lardis's last word on the subject, however, and Nana was left silently cursing her own tongue, which had so nearly betrayed her ...
Returning downhill to Settlement was easier. As Nana and Jasef approached the last flight, where she would run on ahead with Lardis's message to his men, the old man panted, 'Nana, that was a mistake back there.'
While she, too, was short of breath, still she held it for a moment. 'What was a mistake?'
'Forty sunups, thereabouts, a woman swells with her child,' the old mentalist played at being thoughtful. 'But four years ago' (he did not say 'years' but continued to use terms suited to Sunside and Szgany time scales) 'there were events of great moment, when no one was keeping count.'
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
'What are you saying?' But she knew very well what he was saying, even before he answered.
'Hzak Kiklu died after the battle in the garden,' Jasef mused at length (a completely unnecessary reminder, which proved what Nana had always known anyway: that old as he was, still Jasef wasn't the old fool that others believed him to be). 'But before he died he was still very much the man. Obviously so, for you have your sons! Ah, but a long, slow pregnancy that, Nana,' he went on, 'which lasted ... what? Almost ten months?'
Ten and a half,' she muttered low. 'But as you yourself have observed, no one was counting. Get to the point, Jasef.'
'I was given into your care,' he said, 'since when you've been good to me. There are some who wouldn't have cared much one way or the other. What, an old thought-thief like Jasef Karis? As well forget to feed him, let him lie on his pallet, fade away and die. But with you, I've wanted for nothing ... well, maybe a new set of pumps in this old chest, a couple of decent teeth, new knees! But of comforts I've all I can use. So, I have my own reasons for being fond of you, Nana.'
'It works both ways,' she answered. 'You're not such a bad one. So?'
He was silent a moment, while they negotiated the final bend. But at last: 'I saw you start,' he said, 'when I told Lardis that Harry and Karen were together in the garden. Those black eyes of yours turned hot as coals, Nana.'
'Hot for a moment,' she turned her face away. 'But only a moment. His blood is in my children, after all.'
He nodded, thought it over, and said, 'What prompted you to keep it secret?'
'Common sense,' she answered, 'and maybe something other than that. There are a couple of women in Settlement who might have made much of it, and several who would have made too much! But at the time, when Harry lay ill in The Dweller's garden, I didn't think about him being a hell-lander. To me he was just a lonely man in a strange land, even as I myself was lonely. But you're right; a lot was happening; by the time the twins were showing, events were crowding fast. Everything became a blur in the mind's eye.'
They were down on to the level. Nana released her charge's arm, handed him his stick. 'And now, even if I would tell, I can't. Harry Hell-lander is Wamphyri! What would I gain from the truth? The best that could happen, my boys and I would be watched - always, and very, very closely - even in the best of times. And right now, with the Wamphyri back on Starside?' She shook her head. 'When men are panicked, they are wont to stampede, Jasef. And then the innocent get trampled underfoot.'
He nodded and watched her start away from him.
The innocent, aye,' he agreed. And a little louder, as she put distance between: 'My father paid the price in full! Impaled, beheaded, burned. But then, he was no longer innocent. Indeed, and as the vampire change took hold on him, he was no longer a man!'
She came to a halt, looked back. 'But my babies are men' she said, slowly and dangerously. 'And that's all they are.'
'Of course, of course,' Jasef waved her away. 'On you go, Nana Kiklu! Be about Lardis's errand. Yes, yes, and we shall keep your secret, which no one else knows ... Nor shall they ever ... Only men, your babies, only men ...' But to himself: What, only men, Nana? Spawn of the Necroscope, the helWander Harry Keogh? And only men? Ah, I wonder. I wonder...
Two of the brothers Romani were off hunting in the forests; Kirk Lisescu was fishing; none of them returned to Settlement until mid-morning, by which time their movements were slow and tired. By then, too, Lardis had grown disenchanted waiting for them, and had come down from his house to discover for himself what was the delay. His arrival coincided with that of a weary, travel-worn party of terrified Gypsies from the eastern foothills - survivors of a Wamphyri raid!
That last took a little time to sink in, but when finally it did ...
... Then the fact of it hit Settlement like a thunderbolt - stunningly! Even Lardis, who had received at least some prior warning, was shocked. And if in the past there had been times when he'd doubted the veracity of old Jasef Karis's telepathic skills, well, his doubting days were over.
Lardis talked a while with one of the seven survivors, a man of about his own age. Plainly he had been fit and strong, but now was mazed and mumbling. 'When did they strike? When?' Lardis shook the other, but gently.
Two, maybe three hours after sundown,' the man answered, his face hollow and haggard. 'Earlier, some of the children had wandered home in the twilight; they'd been chasing goats in the peaks; said they'd seen many lights in Karenstack. Perhaps we should have been warned. But it's rumoured the Lady Karen is dead, and these were only children. They could be mistaken.'
'Where were you? Where?' Lardis shook him again.
'Beyond the Great Pass,' the other gave a start, blinked rapidly, 'on a plateau under the peaks ...' His eyes fastened on Lardis's, seemed for a moment to gaze into his soul, and in the next glazed over again. But somehow he managed to continue: Two years ago, we went into the heights and found a lake there. There was good fishing, goats in the peaks, game on the wooded slopes. We are - or we were - the Szgany Scorpi. Emil Scorpi, my father, was our leader. There were thirty of us ... then. And now, only seven. We built homes for ourselves in the woods around the lake. Our boats were on the water. At night, under the first stars, we'd sit round our fires on the shore, cook our fish, eat together. Why not? For there was nothing to fear. All of the great aeries lay broken on Starside: Wenstack, Menorstack, Glutstack - all tumbled and lying in ruins. Only Karenstack remained, and they said Karen was dead. Maybe she is, what odds? It wasn't the Lady Karen who fell on us ...'
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
Lardis groaned and nodded. 'Shaithis, aye.'
The young survivor grabbed his arm. 'Yes, Shaithis ... and one other! I saw him! He isn't a man!'
'Not a man?' Lardis frowned. 'No, of course not. None of them are. Wamphyri!'
'But even the Wamphyri were once men,' the other insisted. 'They are like men. Except this one ... was not.'
Now Lardis remembered. Jasef had not been clear on this point. 'What was he like?'
The other's throat bobbed. He shook his head, failed to find words. 'A ... a slug,' he finally gasped. 'Or a leech, upright, big as a man. But ridgy as a lizard, cowled, and his eyes burning like embers under the hood. A weird worm, a snake, a slug ...'
'His name?' The hairs had stiffened on the back of Lardis's neck.
The survivor nodded. 'I ... I heard what Shaithis called him. It was Shaitan!'
Shaitan! A gasp escaped Lardis before he could check it. Shaitan: first of all the Wamphyri! But how was it possible? Shaitan was a legend, the darkest of all Szgany legends.
'I know what you're thinking,' said the other. 'But I saw what I saw. One was a Lord, but there was also the great slug. I heard them conversing. Shaithis was the manlike one, whom I heard call the other - him, it, whatever - by the terrible name of Shaitan. As for the rest of what I saw, before I fled like a coward with the others, don't ask me. This much I'll tell you, and no more: their warrior creatures were lean and hungry, and not just for food! It was a nightmare! My mother! My sisters! The Wamphyri have bred monsters with the parts of men!'
After that: Lardis asked no more questions of these ragtag remnants of the Szgany Scorpi, but went about Settlement seeing to its defences. A guard from now on, on the catwalks and in the towers, and no more sending men west to man the vampire frontier. No, for now the threat was closer to home; and now, too, Lardis thanked whichever lucky stars shone down on him that he'd been outvoted that time during the construction of Settlement, when the other council members had insisted upon huge weapons built into the very walls.
Catapults armed with boulders girdled in spiked chains; great crossbows to fire bolts hewn from entire trees outwards into the cleared area around Settlement; trenches covered over with tentlike frameworks of coarse hide, painted in imitation of small warrior creatures and supported by sharp-pointed pine stanchions. Any enemy warrior, spying one of these grotesque semblances, would attack at once and doubtless impale himself; and men, safe in the trench below, would leap out, hurl their oil, set fire to the monster where he writhed and roared!
While all of these devices were still in place, they nevertheless required attention. Frayed ropes to be seen to, and if necessary replaced; the great crossbows must be loaded, their launching tillers greased; children had played at climbing in the frames of the lures and broken them in places. All to be put back to rights. So that as Settlement recovered from its shock, there was plenty of work for everyone.
It was like slipping from a tranquil dream into a living nightmare, the old horror resurgent after a brief respite. It was the Wamphyri! And sloth fell from the Szgany Lidesci like the shucked-off skin of a snake, so that they emerged startled but fresh, alert, agile. And very, very afraid.
Lardis called a council meeting, revoked the powers of his fellow councillors, declared himself leader as of old. Councils are useful when times are peaceful, but in times of war a tribe needs a leader. None was better qualified than Lardis. In fact, since he'd never relinquished his position, this was simply his quick and efficient way of re-establishing his authority. And no one argued the point.
He made arrangements: Two-thirds of the able-bodied men would stay in Settlement; the remainder and all of the women and children were to disperse into the woods to the west, far beyond Sanctuary Rock and even so far as Mirlu Township. Runners would meanwhile pass on the warning to the Szgany Mirlu, who in turn would relay it to Tireni Scarp. Lardis's own party of fighting men were to accompany him to the garden overlooking Starside, where he hoped to form an alliance with Karen and Harry Dweller-sire.
Most of Sunside's 'morning' of twenty-five hours' duration was used up by the time Lardis was satisfied with his arrangements. The 'day' of seventy-five hours and 'evening' of twenty-five would be consumed during the various phases of the climb and the rest periods between. For the trek into the mountains, along the high trails and through the passes, would be a long one ... which was probably just as well.
For such as the three in the garden were, it was unlikely they'd be abroad during sunup ...
Lardis called in at his house on the first leg of the trek. He told Lissa what was happening, kissed Jason, sent them off down to Settlement. There they'd join up with Nana Kiklu and her boys, old Jasef, and one younger, more capable man, before heading into the comparative safety of the forest.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
Lardis watched wife and child begin their descent, studied for a moment the hivelike hustle and bustle of Settlement, finally turned to his five companions.
'Well,' he said, 'and so it's come to this. But we've all been here before, right? And this is nothing new to the Szgany Lidesci. However, if any one of you would rather stay with his family, take care of his own, let's hear it now. You know that it won't be held against you. Ours is a job for volunteers.'
They merely looked at him, waiting.
And Lardis nodded his satisfaction. 'That's it, then. Let's go.'
As the six set out, the great golden ball of the sun was gradually, oh so slowly closing with the highest point in its low southern arc ...
They toiled upwards for six hours, through the foothills and into the first scarps, then collapsed with fatigue among cliff-hanging trees which gave them shade from the glaring sun. There they slept; later they ate; the sun seemed to hover, and moved a little to the east. With about sixty solid hours of daylight remaining before the 'evening' and twilight, Lardis was not displeased with their progress.
Phase two saw them traversing a series of misted lesser scarps made treacherous by waterfalls, and skirting several boggy, steamy false plateaux of sedge, reeds and tough creepers, before the ground dried out and started sharply upwards again. The going was much harder here; taking longer to cover a shorter distance proved frustrating and wearisome. But eventually they made camp, fed themselves from their supplies, took their second sleep period at the foot of steep cliffs where an ancient fault cut a narrow and precarious causeway to the top. When they awakened it was plain that the sun had already commenced its not quite interminable descent.
Climbing the causeway, now they were up into the mountains proper. Sunside's levels had been left far behind, almost lost in a faintly purple haze of depth and distance where only the glittering snakes of rivers showed through a grey-green canopy of forest. Further south, at the curving rim of the world, the furnace deserts formed a searing yellow band across the entire east-west horizon; way up ahead, the mountain peaks seemed hidden behind wave upon wave of ridges and false summits.
Already it seemed they had climbed forever, and a like distance yet to go. But Lardis was not dismayed; his directional instinct told him that he was on course; he recognized many mountain features. If all continued to go according to plan, they'd be passing between the ultimate peaks even as twilight darkened towards night.
Which was precisely where all ceased to go according to plan ...
Climbing an easy, rocky ridge towards a new summit, Ion Romani was last in line. Where the others had passed without incident, he disturbed a stone which harboured a small, sleeping snake. The creature hissed, emerged from its hiding place and bit him; he reared back from it, missed his footing, went sliding and skittering down a tearing flank of sharp stone to a shallow fall on to a bed of boulders. He landed awkwardly and broke his arm, and so made himself useless for any more trekking.
They dressed the moaning Ion's wounds as best they could, made a sling for his arm, divided up their provisions. Franci Romani would stay with his younger brother, deal with his snake fever when it came on, eventually discover for them an easier, more gradual descent to Settlement. In all the incident wasted three hours of valuable time, leaving only four men to continue the expedition ...
Later: A spiral of frothy clouds, lured south from the peaks by thermals rising off the distant deserts, afforded intermittent relief from the sun's glare; a promising goat track ended disappointingly in sheer, unscalable cliffs, so that a new route must be found; for the toiling men, time's passing became a meaningless blur as hours slipped by in straining, swearing, sweaty procession. Finally, with every muscle in every limb a fiery ache, Lardis called a halt some three hundred feet below the tree-line.
In the time frame of another world of men, two and a half days had passed since they set out upon their climb. This was their last chance to sleep, and then cover more ground before the twilight came down. Already the sun was settling towards the south-easterly horizon.
... They set no watch and overslept, and Lardis woke up ill-tempered and creaking in every joint. He feared that four years of easy living had sucked all of the energy out of him, and was angry to discover this weakness now, just when he most needed his great strength. With the sun an orange hemisphere clinging to the rim of the world, and the preternatural hush of twilight already settling, he urged his men to greater efforts as they climbed up through the last trees and into the winding passes and trails between the peaks. Bird song faded into the hooting of owls; the moon raced headlong, tumbling on high; out of the west, the first wolf howled a lone appreciation of his fleet, sky-floating mistress.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
But at last the four struck upon a trail recognized of old, and Lardis was able to state with some certainty that from now on the going would be easier. Nine more hours should see them up the last rise, through the final pass to what was once The Dweller's Starside garden where ... where they would see what they would see.
Except that they were to see it, and know the worst, long before then ...
Half-way through the peaks and with the twilight fading into night, as the four proceeded cautiously along the dried-out bed of an ancient watercourse, suddenly Lardis felt a leaden weight on his heart and a clammy chill in his soul. He knew the sensation of old: a legacy of talented Gypsy forebears. At the same time, as if at a signal, the distant howling of wolves tapered down into uneasy ululations and ceased, and the small mountain owls where they called to each other across high-walled ravines likewise fell silent.
Scarcely breathing, the four crouched down in the shadows of looming rocks and looked all about. Behind them, wan spokes of pink and yellow light probed the southern sky over Sunside like a fading fan. Sundown, yes ... but not just another sundown. Lardis crouched lower still and pulled the others down with him. Fingers to his lips in the darkness, with a breathless hiss, he cautioned them to continued silence. And they waited ...
Faint yellow patches turned powdery grey on the reflective flanks of the surrounding peaks; the velvet gloom settled that much deeper; there came a high-pitched, querulous squeaking, a sudden throb of membrane wings - bats! But there are bats and there are bats.
Lardis's fiery Gypsy blood ran cold. His world had many bat species, not least the insectivores, like tiny winged mice. But these creatures which suddenly appeared out of the night to speed overhead in close groups of three, with their silhouettes etched blue in starshine, were of no such small, harmless variety. Full-grown adults, they were not unlike the Desmodus or true vampire of a world known to the Szgany only as the hell-lands - but the span of their wings was almost a metre tip to tip.
Despite the size of the creatures, and the fact that campfire legends were full of alleged attacks, Lardis knew that in themselves they were not especially dangerous; it was what they stood for which froze him to a statue. More than four years had passed since he had seen a swarm so intent, so full of purpose, but even as he'd known it then, so in his own instinctive way he knew just exactly what it meant now.
Familiars of the Wamphyri were abroad in the night skies again, winging ahead of their masters on an errand of utmost horror ... searching!
But searching for what?