Bloodwars

by Brian Lumley

  ‘Because he’s Wamphyri?’

  That and more. Nestor and those others in the last aerie, for a while now they’ve been our problem, too.

  ‘Wait!’ said Nathan. ‘I must be straight on this. If Nestor has numbers, why don’t I know it? Why can’t I read them? Why have I never sensed them? I mean, Nestor hated numbers!’ It was so, and now Nathan remembered something Nestor had used to say: that a number was the count

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  of fish he had caught, and division was the share-out after a day’s hunting, and multiplication was something rabbits had mastered without once using their fingers and toes!

  He doesn’t know he has them - or if he does know, then he doesn’t care to know. He blames you, Nathan, for the numbers in his head! He always has! For when you are near it sets Nestor’s vortex going, and he doesn’t much care for the whirling in his brain. ‘How can you know this?’

  Because it’s much the same for us. We have numbers, too, but no use for them! What was in our father is in us; it’s why we are different, clever. But to be what we are doesn’t require us to know everything that he knew! And Nestor is the same. Can you not try to understand? Ah, but you were far easier to talk to, upon a time! Nathan sensed great frustration in the other, a certain urgency. But he must have this out.

  ‘I was easier to talk to because I didn’t understand; I simply accepted! Now I am beginning to understand. But I tell you this: just as I’ve never sensed Nestor’s numbers, neither have I sensed yours, Dock’s, nor dinner’s!’

  A despairing wolf shrug. I have tried to answer for Nestor. Perhaps I am right, perhaps I am wrong. I say how I see…

  ‘And your numbers? Why haven’t I sensed them?’ They are subdued, dormant. Our mother told us, ‘Hide them! They are unnatural! Your father had numbers, too, and where is your father now? Gone in a bang and a great flash of light!’ As cubs we put our numbers aside. What were they anyway but a distraction?

  ‘Could you recall them? Show them to me?’ My numbers? (A wolf groan.) But what a waste of time! Now tell me, Uncle: have you returned to fight the Wamphyri, or to play with numbers? ‘It’s important.’

  Very well, but I must be brief. Watch! Nathan ‘watched’ - and he saw! Conjured out of nowhere -

  - It was a numbers vortex, that same mad cone of numbers; yet not the same. For while Nathan’s vortex was made up of real numbers - from the simple ‘gate’ marks of the Szgany system, to all the cyphers, symbols and algebraic jumble of alien, parallel worlds -his wolf nephew Blaze’s vortex was composed in its entirety of wolf numbers: paw marks, scratches, moon and star symbols, clusters of five or six rocks, pine trees grouped in threes and fours. The grey brotherhood ‘counted’ only those things that had meaning or use to them! But no meaning at all to Nathan.

  Yet the ebb and flow and whirl of the thing was not without direction .. . indeed it appeared to be all about direction. Nathan’s own vortex had always seemed to hint of vast distances spanned in a moment, and of all time being NOW. Also, there had been this sense of worlds far beyond. All a puzzle then, but of awesome relevance now: his numbers had proved to be the source material of the Mobius Continuum itself! Could there be a similar case here? For that familiar feeling of worlds beyond was very real — and of their direction! Nathan found it of great interest; he would have liked to study it longer . ..

  .. . Except Blaze shut it down before he could even begin. This gets us nowhere. Again his frustration was showing through, so that Nathan dropped the subject and asked instead:

  ‘Where are you now, and why did you seek me out?’

  To say hello … also to warn you, and to seek your help. Though how you may help is beyond me. You are too full of your own problems, your own questions. Let me answer yet another of them: I am high in the mountains.

  ‘Hello to you, too, then, Blaze high in the mountains -who upon a time was far less irritable! - and Grinner, Dock, if you’re listening. But you know that if I can help you with something I will. First, what did you want to warn me about?’

  About the Wamphyri, of course!

  ‘Of course, but I already know about the Wamphyri.’

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  Oh? Well, you know about Wratha and hers, at least.

  Ice melted on Nathan’s spine, and trickled there. ‘Are you telling me there are more?’

  Come from the east, aye …

  ‘When?’

  A day at most.

  ‘How many?’

  More than we can count! But we are wolves, not good with numbers.

  The ice trickled faster. ‘You’ve seen them?’

  Your nephew Dock has seen them. Dock is the leader of the pack that holds the high ground beyond the great pass. Dock has seen them at a place called Stone-Like-a-River, where they camp in great numbers. Grinner, too, has seen something of them. His pack holds the ground from this side of the pass to the heights over Twin Fords. My pack runs in the west, from Grinner’s boundary to a place over Tireni Scarp. Beyond that. .. lies the territory of a dangerous old bitch-wolf! She’s a common wolf- yet uncommon! Fiercer than a dog, much! Leader of a fine pack, aye! But we hold each other in mutual respect, and confine ourselves to our own places. This way there are no disputes, skirmishes. The grey brotherhood is a brotherhood. ‘Or a sisterhood?’ Nathan smiled. She is a rarity. (The other’s wry shrug.) Nathan’s levity had been brief. ‘But you yourself have not seen these eastern Wamphyri?’

  1 talk to Dock and Grinner: Isn’t it enough that they have seen them?

  Nathan nodded. ‘Of course. And I may tell you this, the invasion of these creatures isn’t unexpected. It’s the reason I brought strange weapons out of a strange land, with which to fight them! If you’ll work with me and the Szgany - the grey brothers would act as observers, and the Szgany as fighters - that would be invaluable!’

  I guarantee our assistance. (A great flood of relief.) ‘You’ve had problems?’

  Have 1 not stated as much? Wratha and the others eat wolf-hearts, kidneys, and cubs basted in their mothers’ milk! Would you not call that problematic? It’s why my brothers and I have split the Great Pack three ways. We were a horde on the mountain slopes: too easy to trap! They chased us over cliffs; they brought down avalanches upon us; they used cubs for lures, and knew that their mothers would follow to their doom. They are a plague!

  They always were, in the old times, too.’

  ‘I wasn’t here then.

  ‘Nor was I, but the Szgany have legends. Men live a long time, if they’re lucky, and they keep records.’ Nathan frowned. ‘But. .. Nestor has hunted you, you say?’

  Nestor himself? I cannot truly say. But the others - all of them! Or if not them, then their thralls. What odds, Nestor is one of them? And as for him . .. there are worse things than the hunting of the grey brothers. Members of my pack have seen him where he digs among the relics of his own kind, to -

  ‘- I know!’ Nathan cut in. ‘I know . .. what Nestor does. I know what he is, a necromancer. I heard it from the Old Lidesci. Nestor . .. can’t help himself. As for his hunting: he has even hunted me! He caught me, too, for a little while.’

  Which is why you’ve been away?

  ‘Yes, locked away, a prisoner in a strange place. Finally I escaped unharmed. But …’ Nathan could only shrug and repeat, ‘Nestor isn’t responsible. He can’t help himself.’

  Of course not: he’s Wamphyri!

  That last was like an arrow in Nathan’s heart, and Blaze had felt it go home. I am sorry, Uncle …

  Me, too. (A new voice: Grinner’s.)

  And me. (And this was Dock, but faintly and from much farther away, in the heights beyond the great pass into Starside.)

  Then for a while Nathan was silent, mulling over all he’d been told by Blaze. But eventually he asked, ‘What advice did your mother give you, that time when you went to see her where her bones lie bleached?’

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  She was the
one who said we should spJit the pack, Blaze answered. Which was wise of her. And we’ve been that way ever since. Well, and it worked /or a while. Thinned out, we could hide that much more easily when the vampires came a-hunting. But now, with the in/lux of these newcomers from the east. .. they will be the horde!

  ‘Until they, too, are thinned out.’ Nathan nodded. ‘And already we’ve started.’

  Grinner came back with some eagerness, and Nathan could almost see his bared fangs gleaming white, salivating in the starlight. I for one know that you have started! I am in the mountains between Twin Fords and the pass. I saw the Wamphyri come like a cloud out of the last aerie, heading west for Settlement or Sanctuary Rock. Ah, yes, but they were a much more ragged cloud when they returned!

  Then Blaze, infected with his brother’s excitement: And I saw the fires of the battle! Thunder and fire-lights in the sky, and noises like splitting rocks!

  Nathan smiled a thin cold smile. ‘Oh, yes. They got the worst of it this time.’

  And every time, from now on?

  ‘Let’s hope so. Contact me when you have news or difficulties. And remember what I said: as of now we work together. Keep watch on the movements of the Wamphyri. You are the eyes of the hawk, and the Szgany are its talons!’

  And what of you, Nathan, in the scheme of things? What will you be: the warhawk’s beak?

  ‘I hope to be, aye.’

  We will keep watch. (The nod of a wolf head and the flash of its blaze.) Enough for now. Except … I should warn you. Be careful how you use your deadspeak. For Nestor has it too. With him . .. it’s different: the same and yet the opposite. Like the light of the moon and the light of the sun: one is cold and the other is warm. But Nestor listens to the thoughts of the dead, and eavesdrops on their conversations - and on yours, when you use deadspeak! He could be listening even now. Indeed, I’m sure he is.

  Nathan was at once alert, his mind probing the deadspeak aether. And in the north, Starside … was that a presence, an intelligence, listening? If so, it kept a very low, and a very suspicious profile. Nathan gave a grim nod. Til try to remember that,’ he said. ‘But for now, farewell.’

  Then, from Dock far away, the wag of an unseen tail stump and a far, faint, whispered, Keep safe, Uncle!

  And: Aye, from Grinner, who liked to keep things short.

  With which they were gone.

  But Nathan was not alone, and he knew it…

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  II

  New Contacts Tried, and an Old Contract Denied

  Misha too was fast asleep by now, clinging to Nathan, automatically adjusting to his body-shape as he lived in dreams that were much more than mere dreams, which caused him to moan and mumble a little as he turned in his sleep.

  Brief glimpses of the mountain heights, of a fleet moon tumbling on high, and the throats of the grey brothers a-throb with weird, unearthly ululations, their song of adoration. For, like all natural creatures of the night in any world, they worshipped their silver mistress moon . ..

  The howls faded away and were gone, and Nathan had been the only one to hear them.

  Or perhaps not the only one, for his conversation with Blaze, Dock, Grinner had been telepathic after all, not dead-speak, which is private. Sleeping, Nathan had had little or no control over eavesdroppers. The teeming dead knew that he had returned, of course, and despite having no great faith in him - or perhaps because of it? - and trusting his necromancer brother even less, they had listened to his conversation with the wolves in morbid fascination: much as a bird watches a snake. But one among them at least was vociferous.

  Nathan knew his voice of old; why, he even remembered a name - Jasef Karis! - but not where he remembered it from: some old dream out of the past. Jasef Karis, yes. But a mere name did not give him rank or authority in such matters. Perhaps one day Nathan would go to him personally - if the rest of the Szgany dead would let him! For, of all

  Sunside’s Great Majority, Jasef had always seemed to be on his side, invariably to the consternation of his colleagues.

  And so - quietly, not daring to speak or even think too clearly - it was the Necroscope’s turn to eavesdrop. And once again, if Misha had been awake, she would have sensed her husband ‘listening’ to something. In fact, to the furtive whispers of the dead.

  Back again! (An audible shiver - or shudder? — in the incorporeal voice.) Doesn’t Sunside/Starside have enough of monsters?

  Bah! (Jasef Karis.) You make me want to be sick, the Jot of you! Why, for all that he’s a youth and human, the Thyre revere him! You have heard them: their Elders gone from them as we are gone from ours, the way they speak of him! Nathan’s a hero to the dead of the Thyre! And to their living. Does it take unmen of the furnace deserts to recognize the saviour in our midst? For believe me, this one will be the saving of the Szgany — if you’ll let him! How can you lie there and ignore him, when your very children among the living are at risk? He is your one hope: the continuity of the Szgany, and the guardian of your graves, those of you that have them!

  Nathan understood the last few words well enough. Since time immemorial, the Szgany had burned most of their dead, certainly those killed by the Wamphyri; it was the only safe way. But if a man or woman died in an accident — or of sickness or old age, or if they were revered among their people and it was deemed safe - then they might be given a decent burial. Some tribes even had their own places of interment: mounds, tumuli or cavern systems. Unmarked graves out in the forests must be numerous, and Nathan wondered if Jasef Karis had his own place somewhere out there. It seemed likely, for where a majority of these dead voices were literally thin as air (proof that their owners had been burned to nothing, or that they were long gone from the world of the living), some were louder and even substantial: the more recently dead, more focused, more ‘together’

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  with their mortal remains. And Jasef, although his was the voice of an old man, was of the latter.

  As for the more freshly dead, such as those killed in the fighting at Sanctuary Rock: as yet they’d be confused and unacquainted with their new, dark, incorporeal environment, and so unable to speak out. Nathan hoped to have friends among them eventually, when the truth of their situation had sunk in, but for now he could only suffer the alienation of the Great Majority - and suffer in silence, covertly, if he wished to listen to their conversations.

  … So much for the Thyre, one dead voice was saying now, with an irritating air of assumed authority as false as his ingratiating tone. We knew the desert folk all our lives, yet did not know of their mentalism! They kept that from us, and doubtless other secrets, too. For what good reason? So that we would continue to believe that they were ignorant desert trogs? Well, and what is it they’ve been hiding out there in the furnace deserts all this time, eh? And in how many other ways do they make fools of us? Answer me this, why should we put our faith in the opinions of such deceivers as the Thyre? And if this Nathan is a hero to them, then be sure it’s to their benefit, not ours!

  And now it was Jasef’s turn again: Benefits? You talk of benefits? Man, we’re dead! We derive no benefits! The only ones who can win out of Nathan championing them are the living: your sons and their sons! Who gives a damn that the Thyre are secretive? And who cares what they’ve got in their deserts? They’re a race apart, like the shambling trogs in their Starside caverns. And did you envy them their existence, too? Well, I say enough of this. If Nathan KiJdu comes to me looking for answers, 1 for one shall supply them! What? Why, his mother cared for me all my days -the last of my days, anyway. More care than I ever knew before. What was in Nona Kiklu is in her son: the lad’s a good ‘un! That is my opinion .. .

  Now the apparent spokesman for the dead, his voice trembling in fury and perhaps something of fear, too: ‘Ware,

  Jasef Karis! Or earn yourself the detestation of the Great Majority throughout the length and breadth of Sunside.’ Do not defy us in this!

  Us? But I hear only one voi
ce - yours! And what of the rest of the dead? Or is it that you’re all truly dead, in your minds as well as your bodies? And what will you do, shun me if I speak to him? Damn me, but that will hurt! I cradled Nathan Kiklu as a child - would you have me turn from him now?

  But . .. (another voice, tremulous,) … he talks to wolves, Jasef! And they use deadspeak, too, for we can hear them! What manner of a man may converse with a wolf? And what manner of a wolf, for that matter?

  A man with the same blood! Jasef snapped. His father was the Necroscope. And their father was the Necroscope’s son, The Dweller! What could be more natural than that? Don’t your nephews and nieces talk to each other? Wouldn’t they talk to you, if they could?

  The self-appointed spokesman was on him in a flash. Werewolves! He talks to werewolves! The Dweller, their father, was a vampire. Everyone, the living and the dead alike, knows it. Why, those wolves are The Dweller’s blood-sons! What, and will you tell us they’re not vampires, too? And what about tomorrow? Wamphyri, aye!

  But now Jasef was silent, for the spokesman had found the weak spot in his argument. Or one of them, at least. And a second one was just around the corner.

  What’s more, and far more to the point, the spokesman continued, sensing that the argument was won, Nathan’s brother is most certainly Wamphyri - and a necromancer to boot! So, what are we left with? We’ve listened to your arguments, Jasef, all the points in favour; so be so good as to hear ours, the points against:

  One: Nathan has lived among the lying Thyre and has doubtless learned their sneaky ways. Two: he has even lived with the Wamphyri and come through it… unscathed? Three: he came out of the cast on a vampire flyer .. . and

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