by Brian Lumley
A flock of speeding night birds, winging east, sensed them and fragmented squawking in a dozen different directions. Mating owls launched themselves in pairs from rocky crevices, to glide and hide in the deep gulleys around. Lardis’s companions, brave men all, closed their eyes and literally stopped breathing, leaving their leader himself to identify and plot the course of the terrible shapes in the star-bright sky. And on they came, those obscene diamond designs whose manta wings pulsed oh so silently, lifting them into the upper heights.
They were flyers, their once-human flesh converted and fashioned into metamorphic airfoils … vast webs of membrane over spongy, arching alveolate bones, forming air-trap wings for lift and support… their flattened, spatulate heads nodding this way and that on long necks, sniffing out the breezes from Starside that came blustering between the peaks to form thermals. Flyers, a pair of them: they were the aerial observation and command posts of their Wamphyri makers and masters; and not only this, they were also their mounts!
For a moment Lardis glimpsed two lesser shapes humped in their saddles at the base of each flyer’s neck. One was manlike, and the other—Lardis couldn’t be sure. But he remembered what a man of the decimated Szgany Scorpi had told him about a sluglike thing called Shaitan …
Still climbing, the flyers passed directly overhead and disappeared into the upper peaks. But Lardis maintained his frozen crouch, his breathless immobility. For where the Wamphyri Lords aboard their flyers had gone silently, the things that followed in their wake were anything but silent! As they came powering into view, with their propulsive orifices rumbling and throbbing, it took every ounce of Lardis’s iron will to keep from closing his eyes and shutting out their total horror.
They were warriors, six of them.
Warriors! Ah, but whatever that single word might convey in other tongues, when the Szgany used it to describe the grotesque fighting beasts of the Wamphyri, then it meant only one thing—shrieking madness! But as for these creatures … in the case of at least one of them, even that description seemed inadequate. Seeing the beast, Lardis flinched uncontrollably; his lips drew back from his teeth in an involuntary grimace.
While the five—lesser?—creatures flew in a tight arrowhead formation, their far more monstrous cousin came on centrally and slightly to the rear. Its pulsing outline against the stars was such that it riveted Lardis’s gaze; he had merely glimpsed the others before this one stamped itself on his disbelieving mind. Longer, bulkier, and carrying more armour than its companions, it seemed impossible that a creature like this could ever lift its bulk an inch from the earth, let alone fly! Yet here it was, squirting like an enormous octopus through the inky, star-spattered sky.
Details burned themselves into Lardis’s brain:
Its grey-mottled flesh, with scales tinged blue in star-shine like smoothly hinged plates of some weird flexible metal … clusters of gas bladders like strange wattles, bulking out its throbbing body and detracting from its manoeuvrability, but necessary to carry the extra weight of dinosaur body armour … its grapples and hooks, cutting appendages in the shape of crab claws … the evil intelligence of its many eyes, some of which peered forwards, while others scanned the peaks all around. And yet none of these various parts seeming additional to the warrior but integral, built-in, like the armour and weaponry of any smaller creature of the wild. Except Nature in her wildest mood and deadliest dreams had never equipped anything like this!
Like the flyers and their riders before them, the warriors passed directly overhead, so that the last and most terrible of these Wamphyri constructs left a lasting impression of its size and power. With its leathery vanes fluttering like the mantle of some vast cuttlefish, its bladders vibrating as they shrank and expanded, balancing the whole, and the exhaust gases from its propulsors drifting in a cloud of gut-wrenching stench down into the hiding place of the four Szgany, it was awesome. But at last it too was gone.
Lardis’s companions, hearing the roaring and sputtering of the monster fading into distance, opened their eyes in time to get a final glimpse of it spurting for Starside; then its trail of foul fumes drifted lower and enveloped them like a fog, and it was as much as they could do to hold their breath while the hot moist stuff settled all about.
Peder Szekarly wasn’t so fortunate and snatched breath at precisely the wrong moment; inexperience has its price. He had only joined with the Szgany Lidesci in the six-month after the battle at The Dweller’s garden; his knowledge of warriors consisted of a scattered handful of obscure, reluctant memories from childhood, and sightings glimpsed distantly from the fringes of Wamphryi raids, when as a youth he had fled with other refugees from centres of nightmare activity.
To give him credit he was quiet about it, but before he was done he’d emptied both stomach and bowels, and then must rest for an hour before he was useful for anything else …
Andrei Romani wasn’t really the rebellious sort, merely inquiring. “I see no point,” he argued, “in proceeding to the garden now. If there was to have been a fight it’s already happening, and we’re already out of it! Also, how may we fight such vileness as crossed our trail less than two hours ago? It makes little sense to me.”
The moon was up again, flying, while from eastern peaks and ridges came the inveigling howls of the grey brotherhood, those great wolves who owned the silver moon for mistress and Harry Keogh Jr for master. But their howling was strange and strained, and Lardis read bad omens in it. To Andrei he said:
“Do you hear that, my friend? And can you read it? Those are The Dweller’s dogs, I fancy, but I can’t decide if they’re whipped or what.” Pausing only slightly in his striding, where he led his party across a long, high saddle of stony ground, he let his querulous companion catch up and grasped his arm. “Now listen, Andrei Romani—you too, Peder Szekarly, Kirk Lisescu—and I’ll tell you again what we’re about and why we’re still about it. This is how I see it:
“The old Wamphyri, Shaithis and at least one other, are back on Starside; it was them and their creatures passed over us in the gulley back there. They inhabit Karenstack and raid from it among the Szgany as of old. Except now it’s been made much easier for them; we Travellers travel no more; instead we have houses and tend gardens of our own, which makes us sitting targets. All of this is proven …
“Upon a time, however, the Szgany fought the Wamphyri off—fought and won—and when they were at their most powerful, at that! It was the Szgany stood up to the Lords Belath, Volse Pinescu, Lesk the Glut and Menor Maimbite; aye, and even this same wily Shaithis, returned now out of the Icelands.
“But … you and your brothers were actually there in the garden that time, Andrei! Need I tell a Romani how the Szgany fought with The Dweller’s own weapons—these very shotguns we carry now, brought from another world—while he used the sun itself to blast his enemies to stinking shreds? Of course not!
“Well, and now he runs with the wolves, I know, and we’ve only a pact to keep us safe …
“Ah, but now his father, called Dwellersire, has returned to Starside! I’ve seen him, even talked with him—though I’ll admit that my words weren’t so very sweet. Well, now they shall be sweeter. For who could even guess what weapons he might have brought back with him, eh? What, Harry Dwellersire? I tell you, we must go to the garden, if only to seek alliance!” He paused, released his grip on Andrei’s arm, continued in a softer tone. “Or perhaps, in some future time, you’d prefer to fight against Karen, the changeling, and his father, eh?”
“What?” Andrei Romani, a lithe, rangy man, at once frowned and drew a little apart from Lardis. “But you know I would not! Come what may, I have my loyalties. Why, we fought side by side, even as you’ve told it—the Szgany, trogs, and the three together—against our common enemies. Nothing can change that. Nothing of my doing, anyway.”
“Agreed, aye,” Lardis answered with a curt nod. “Nothing of our doing. But wouldn’t you deem it ‘of our doing’ if we did … nothing? Monsters the three ma
y well prove to be in their own right, though as yet they’ve done us no harm, only good; but tell me, should we let them stand and fight—and possibly die—alone, when it’s more our fight than theirs? And what then, eh, when they’re dead and gone? Simply return to Sunside and wait for sundown, and the one after that, and … however few we have left? Ah, but suppose they win, and having won pause awhile and think? And what, pray, will they think? Where were the Szgany in the reek and the roil, eh?”
After a long moment, Andrei shrugged or perhaps shivered in the cooling air. “Let’s get on,” he said gruffly, turning up his collar, and his face to the north. “Six or seven miles to the last pass, and an easy climb to The Dweller’s garden. It’s possible that the Wamphyri merely spied out the land—a reconnaissance flight. If it was more than that, then maybe they’ve missed their prey; there are plenty of hiding places, as we know. Why, just like us, the three could be on their way to the garden even now …”
In a little while, striding out, Lardis spoke to Andrei in a low aside, confidentially. “For a moment there you had me worried, old friend,” he said. “After all these years I’ve known you, I was beginning to think I didn’t know you!”
When the four reached the back of the saddle which formed the hindmost boundary of The Dweller’s garden, they found signs of a ferocious confrontation: the lingering stench of furiously expended gases, scales of armour plate torn from some huge creature’s underbelly, massive clots of dark red plasma drenching the hardy mountain heather. That was all for the moment—enough to draw their nerves taut as the wire on a loaded crossbow.
But keeping low and moving silent as shadows between the garden’s derelict outbuildings and untended plots, they soon came to the forward boundary wall where Lardis had talked to Harry Dwellersire that time three months ago. And there they discovered the first victim of whatever battle had occurred: a warrior, dead on the ground, dispatched like a pheasant by a fox! Its squat neck had been bitten through armoured scales, leathery hide, flesh and gristly cartilage down to the spine and through it. Almost decapitated, the thing lay there in a pool of its own steaming liquids: fifteen tons of savagery, itself savaged! No need to inquire what living engine of destruction had done this.
Awed, Lardis Lidesci moved cautiously around the giant corpse. He pointed out dislocated main eyes in the crimson-rimmed, empty sockets of the grotesque skull. And, “See!” he whispered. “No fight this, but a slaughter! And the butcher, he thrust his claws in through those eyes, to nip the tiny brain and get it done with. And these fluids, still warm and reeking … Why, this creature of Karen’s, it was alive no more than fifteen minutes ago!”
“Lardis!” Kirk Lisescu’s call came husking from crags which he’d scaled at the eastern extreme of the wall. “Quickly! Come see!”
Keeping low, Lardis and the others ran, loped to the foot of the crags, climbed them to Kirk crouching on a ledge in the scoop of a fallen boulder. “Do you see?” the small, wiry man whispered. “Do you hear?”
He pointed out over Starside. The others could see well enough, and eventually even hear, though not at first.
Far out over the boulder plains, drifting east like a small cloud of midges, black specks darted, glided, spurted under the dome of a glittering sky. Midges at this distance, yes, but up close they’d be monsters. Likewise in the lee of the barrier mountains sprawling eastwards: shapes in flight, and others in pursuit. It was the Wamphyri, friends and foe alike; though impossible to tell one from the other.
“Who’s who?” gasped Peder, jaw slack, eyes peering first this way, then that.
Lardis shook his head, slitted his eyes against the blue glitter of starblaze, tried to count those shapes which spurted. “How many fighting beasts do you see?” he grunted. “We know Shaithis had six.”
“Karen and Harry Hell-lander had two at least,” Andrei muttered, however sourly. “We found signs of the one and the carcass of the other!”
“Better pray they had more than that,” Lardis growled. “Better pray they had a Jot more!”
Carried on changing winds, sounds of the aerial skirmish ebbed and flowed: the hissing and roaring of warriors, the low rumble of their bio-propulsive systems, the clatter of scales on armoured scales as huge bodies collided in mid-air. But as the commotion faded into distance, Kirk Lisescu had finished counting. There hadn’t been much to it, after all.
“Two flyers and six warriors out over the boulder wastes,” he reported, “all heading east, towards the sphere Gate and the tumbled stacks of the Wamphyri. Two more flyers in the lee of the mountains, pursued by a warrior.”
Lardis’s tally agreed. “And the big one’s with the main party,” he added. “Seven warriors in all, and Shaithis hasn’t suffered any losses—unless I’m wrong and that huge corpse beside the wall was one of his. But even at best, it’s still two against five …”
Andrei Romani shook his head in dismay and stated, quite simply, “They’re done for, finished!”
Lardis scowled at him. “If they are, then be sure we won’t last much longer—or fare any better!”
He looked out again over Starside, scanning the horizon from the eastern boulder plains inwards to the mountains. The larger cluster of airborne specks was beginning to descend, elongating into a straggling line; the smaller party, consisting of two flyers with a lone warrior in pursuit, was also losing altitude where it skirted the lower peaks. Even as he continued to watch, this secondary group of three disappeared behind a distant jut of crags.
Lardis clambered back down to the garden. “Come on!” he growled.
Recognizing the urgency in his voice but failing to see the point of it, the others followed him down. “Come on where?” Peder Szekarly wanted to know. He was somewhat recovered from his poisoning now but still felt he could sleep right through sundown.
At the foot of the crags Lardis turned to him. “East along the high ridges, where else? However far is necessary to fathom the outcome of that fight. Guess-work isn’t good enough—we’ve got to know which way it went! The future of the Szgany, every man, woman and child of us, hangs in the balance.”
He turned abruptly and made as if to head for the garden’s upward sloping eastern flank … and just as suddenly the shadows came alive with a massed, furtive creeping motion! Lardis and his three froze. They’d heard nothing, yet found themselves surrounded. But by what? Had Shaithis and the slug-being out of the Icelands left something behind to act as a rearguard? How many things had they left here?
“My father would be … it would please him,” came a low, faltering voice from the darkness, one which coughed, growled, and was scarcely human at all. “Please him to know … to know that he still has … has friends among the Szgany.”
Legend had it that in the long ago the olden Travellers had owned to a benevolent God. More recently, however, they had only recognized demons … called Wamphyri! Not that anyone ever prayed to them, nor yet used their name as a curse; let it suffice that they were a curse! So that when it came to praying, the Szgany usually held to the sun; not as a form of true deity, but as a symbol of good fortune. Or, if a man had been born during sundown, he might give thanks to whichever star had been overhead at the hour of his birth. Lardis Lidesci was hardly superstitious; at the moment of the voice out of darkness he couldn’t have said if his star was in the sky or not—but he hoped it was!
Flanking Lardis on the left, Peder Szekarly nocked his crossbow; on the other side, Andrei Romani snapped shut his shotgun; both aimed into the shadows. A little apart, Kirk Lisescu frantically shoved shells into his double breech.
But: “Don’t!” Lardis warned them. “The grey brothers are all about us, and that was their leader speaking.” The others must give Lardis his due: if anyone would recognize that awful voice, it was surely him. Similarly, he who had been The Dweller knew Lardis. He came padding forward out of the shadows—a great grey wolf!
Eyes aslant, yellow, feral—and crimson in their cores—Harry Wolfson paused half in da
rkness. But his hands were visible in the starlight…
He looked at Lardis and cocked his head a little on one side, inquiringly. And the look on his face was never seen on the face of a dog as he half-said, half-snarled, “I … know you. Come talk to me, where my gentle mother sleeps under the stones.” He began to turn away, paused and looked back. “But only you. Your men … they will wait here.”
“Lardis!” Kirk Lisescu snapped shut his weapon, began to crouch down.
“I said don’t!” Lardis barked, as fifty pairs of yellow eyes blinked and moved nervously in the shadows. “Only let a man of you shoot one of these, I swear I’ll kill him with my bare hands!”
“No,” Harry Wolfson coughed at once, “you wouldn’t have to. The grey brotherhood takes care of its own. So put down your … your weapon, yes … and come talk.”
At the cairn, the great wolf was silent for long moments. He nuzzled in turn each of the larger burial stones, marking them, whined a little, gazed burningly on Lardis. And eventually he said, “She, too, remembers you. It was a while ago. After the battle, you joined us here. You were kind. Despite your own privations, your people … were kind. To me, to my mother, my father. And you and I, we talked together, when I was … was a man. I remember it.”
“All of this is true,” Lardis nodded, discovering a lump in his throat which had little or nothing to do with fear. “We talked on several occasions. At the last, you seemed to know what was coming.”
The other looked at him in that curious, alert way of his, and Lardis found it weird that a wolf should understand his words and answer them with a nod and snarled words of its own: “And now … now it has come. Strange, even sad in a way. Sometimes I feel I’ve lost so much; at others I take pleasure in what I’ve gained. Except … my man-memory is fading, and all the time more swiftly. I forget the man-times and remember only the wolf-times, and it has made … made a traitor out of me. For I swore I would be … be here, when the Wamphyri came a-visiting Karen and my father. But I… forgot, and so was late.”