by Brian Lumley
A small price to pay, in the end; and it had signalled the end, certainly -of the Wamphyri! For they had been there, the last of the vampire Lords, dead centre in the fireball when it blazed into life! Shaitan the Unborn, and Shaithis his descendant, survivors out of the Icelands, but survivors no more. They and all of theirs had gone up in the sound and the fury, until nothing was left of them. Alas — or perhaps not — Harry and Karen, and The Dweller too, had gone with them. And for fourteen joyous years the Wamphyri were no more —
- Until Wratha and her renegades had come raiding out of the east…
All of which was a story Lardis had repeated yet again, in the night, to Nathan and his hell-lander companions and to anyone else who would listen, as the Szgany Lidesci trekked by the light of the stars along an old forest trail, heading south and a little east from forsaken Sanctuary Rock. And:
‘You were four then,’ Lardis told Nathan after a long
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silence. ‘You and Nestor. My Jason was somewhat younger, and Misha Zanesti too. You probably don’t remember. You should ask your mother. I had split the tribe into small parties, sent them out into the woods. Nana had an able-bodied man with her, her sons - that is, you and Nestor -and old Jasef Karis the seer. But it was the end of Jasef, that trip. He was old, and he’d grown too soft in Settlement, in Nana’s care.’
Jasef Karis! And Nathan’s ‘dream’ came flooding back. ‘Lardis!’ he said, in such a startled tone that the Old Lidesci at once drew to a halt as Nathan grasped his arm. ‘If I tell you a name .. .?’
‘Eh, a name? What name?’ ‘Arlek Nunescu!’
‘Hah! And where did you hear that name, I wonder? Arlek Nunescu was a traitor! He would have sold me — us, all of us - to Lord Shaithis of the Wamphyri! But myself and Jazz Simmons, we caught him out. Well, in those days there was only one sort of justice — rough! Arlek paid the price in full. So what of him?’
‘Nothing,’ Nathan shook his head; but it confirmed that his dream had been real, all the same. ‘And this Jasef Karis: he was in my mother’s care, you say?’
‘Aye, Jasef the old thought-thief. A seer and a mentalist, he was. Perhaps there was something of the Wamphyri in him, but much watered down. He died on the morning of the hell-fires at the Starside Gate. So why all these inquiries, eh?’
Too much to explain now,’ Nathan told him. And too ‘· many of Lardis’s men about, who mightn’t care to be reminded of Nathan’s other talent: that he talked to dead people - even in his sleep! Not so bad that he could, well, go places in a single instant of time; no, for that was all to the good; any fool could see the usefulness of that! But this other thing he did .. . was something else.
Lardis looked at him in the forest gloom through wise old eyes well used to penetrating the Sunside night (and possi-
bly, Nathan thought, something of the intricacies of a man’s mind, too). But after a moment the Old Lidesci nodded, albeit with a frown, and said: ‘Very well. Later, perhaps …’
‘Where is my mother now?’ Nathan asked. ‘I think I might like to speak to her.’
Towards the rear of the column, with Misha and a bunch of the old ‘uns.’ Lardis jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘I gave ‘em a handful of good strong lads, to haul their travois and such.’
And Nathan said, ‘I’ll catch up later, then,’ and stepped to one side, letting the column pass him by. Then, as the long line of Travellers moved past him, he stood with his back to a tree and tried to order his thoughts. Easier said than done, for there was a lot on his mind.
Weapons, for one thing.
Nathan seemed to have lost one of the special crossbows somewhere or other; with all the action he’d been engaged in, that hardly surprised him. It might turn up later. As for the other five: Lardis and Andrei had one each, Nathan had claimed another, two more at least had been deposited somewhere along the trail from Radujevac to Sanctuary Rock, most probably in the cache of two bundles stashed in the boulder clump on the Starside plain; or perhaps in the bundle that he had hidden in the gorse atop the Rock. No, cancel that last; he couldn’t remember any crossbows among that lot. And since they hadn’t been in the bundles from the Cavern of the Ancients, they could only be out there on Starside’s boulder plains. Well, and they could stay there, with whatever other weapons had been in those temporarily abandoned bundles, until morning. Even with his powers, Nathan wouldn’t consider a Mobius-jump into the immediate vicinity of a wounded warrior! If the bundles had been out in the open … maybe it would be worth a quick visit and snatch. But not if it meant scrambling among the rocks for them.
Then there was the rocket-launcher that had gone over the edge of the Rock with him. That must be written off:
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shattered into bits, without a doubt, when it struck bottom. Which left one other launcher, also in the boulder plains cache. And atop the Rock: fragmentation grenades, a lightweight flame-thrower, a machine-pistol and ammo. They, too, would have to wait, at least till the moon was up; Nathan scarcely fancied stumbling about up there in the starlight.
He had seen what personal arms his party of hell-landers carried: John Carling had a self-loading rifle; the other cavers had machine-pistols; likewise Trask, Chung and Anna Marie. And most of them were now equipped with fragmentation grenades stuffed in their pockets. Lardis had also re-equipped himself with grenades, but no one else had been allowed to touch them. The rest of the Old Lidesci’s senior men could wait until morning, when Nathan or one of the E-Branch people might find the time to do a little rudimentary weapon-training. But not much, not while more than half of Nathan’s arsenal was scattered in difficult or dangerous places.
In the shadow of his tree, Nathan gave a sharp nod. That was as much planning as he could do for now: either wait for full moonlight, or sunup, and then at his best opportunity recover the arms, and in so doing make the Szgany Lidesci strong as never before. But for how long? The ammunition wasn’t going to last forever. By the time it came down to the real thing, hopefully the two warring Wamphyri factions would have already taken the best part of the job out of his hands.
That was about as much as he could hope for.
But at the same time Nathan did have something of a plan, albeit a dangerous one, which might speed his task up somewhat. Some three and a half years ago, he’d accompanied Lardis on what had then been an annual pilgrimage to the last aerie, when he’d visited not only Karenstack (now Wrathstack), but also seen the tumbled, fire-blackened remains of all the other aeries of the Old Wamphyri. And seeing those fallen giants, it had been easy to see what had
brought them down: explosions in the gas-beast pens and methane chambers.
And of course, Lardis had verified it often enough: that the Necroscope Harry Keogh had somehow sent the rays of the sun blasting in through windows, bays and every crack and crevice, into the heart of each stack in turn, until they’d exploded in their lower levels like so many bombs.
Well, Nathan held no great sway over the sun, but he knew there were more ways than one to cause explosions. Dimi Petrescu’s explosive powder - gunpowder, in fact, but of a poor quality - mightn’t have the power of the real stuff, but it would certainly cause a flash and a bang. As would a couple of fragmentation grenades, for that matter!
Deprive Wratha of her base: at best she’d be killed, and at worst forced into a fight with Vormulac and the others out of Turgosheim. Nathan must give it some thought…
And thinking, as his ideas gradually took shape and form, he watched the seemingly endless Lidesci line go by. They were in small parties or packets: a few caravans, a great many travois; family groups, couples, singles; low-talking women, long-striding men and hushed children. All wary, sharp-eyed in the mercifully cloudless night, trekking under the cover of trees that leaned protectively over the ancient track, but yet able to see in fine-filtered starlight.
And beasts: muzzled shads and yellow-eyed wolves - not grey brothers as suc
h, but brothers to the Travellers, certainly. All well spaced out, humans, beasts, watchdogs; so that in the event of an attack, each group might break for cover independent of the others. About a half-mile of them, mostly silent, guarding even their thoughts in the treacherous night. Wheels, travois poles, pots and pans all muffled; minds muffled, too, generally. Fearful in a way, yet paradoxically strong. Strong under Lardis Lidesci, a survivor in his way no less than the Wamphyri. Or even more so.
Which was the subject of a conversation even now about to take place forward of the line, where Anna Marie English had joined Ben Trask in the gap left by Nathan …
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‘Survivors,’ Anna Marie said under her breath, striding out
with Trask and David Chung some few paces apart from
Lardis’s party. Only a moment or two earlier, Trask had
been talking in lowered tones to the Old Lidesci, asking him i
various questions: :
Why were the Lidescis trekking in the night? Wasn’t it dangerous?
Yes, but better than waiting for Wratha to gather together :
her forces and launch an all-out attack. For she now knew ;
the location of Sanctuary Rock.
Where were they going; were there other places of sanctu
ary in the woods to the south? ;
There was a leper colony at the edge of the woods, where ‘·
the forest met the savanna fringe that extended south some
miles to the furnace desert proper. South was away from
the Wamphyri and towards the sun; also, the vampire Lords
feared leprosy, a disease their metamorphism found imposs
ible to handle. The colony wasn’t guaranteed to keep them j
away, not by any means; Wratha probably wasn’t even
aware of the existence of the place! But it had been a lucky (
place in the past, and hopefully its luck would still be
holding.
What would they do there?
They would make camp close to the colony, dig in, build makeshift defences. At sunup, still some thirty or more hours away, Lardis would give a briefing; then there would be weapon-training, and an apportioning of the Necroscope’s amazing arms and ammunition. But since the lad was himself a weapon, Lardis must wait and see what he had in mind. Indeed, for to know him was to be certain that something was brewing in there!
But, at the same time, Lardis’s optimism following the battle at the Rock seemed to have dissipated somewhat; despite the advantages of the Necroscope’s weapons from another world, and his recently-acquired powers, still the future looked grim.
For Lardis knew the worst of it now: Nathan had told
him that indeed Vormulac and a mighty army out of Tur-gosheim were here and the bloodwar already commenced. Now it would be as it had been in the old days: as warring vampire factions depleted each other, so they would refurbish themselves upon the Travellers. Wanton, indiscriminate destruction of human life! Or if not its destruction, its hideous alteration to suit the requirements of the Wamphyri…
Then a mood had come over Lardis and he’d paced apart for a while, and his silent men had let him be. Trask, too, moving apart to where Anna Marie English had fallen in beside him and just a moment ago muttered her one-word comment: ‘Survivors.’
Trask glanced sideways at the ecopath and was at once arrested by something odd, something new, that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Starlight seemed to suit her; in the night she looked almost .. , attractive? And it was that, simply that - the spring in her step, her newly awakened -what, /oie de vivre? -that Trask found strange. For it seemed that indeed Sunside/Starside suited her! Nor were his thoughts deliberately unkind; rather, they were ‘truthful’. For it was the nature of her talent that she should not be attractive, but reflect the aura of her surroundings. She was an ecopath, the ecopath, after all. Her nature - or un-nature? - was the nature of her environment. On Earth she had felt each new ecological disaster as a hammer-blow to her psyche, even to her physical being. And yet here . ..
‘Who, survivors?’ Trask asked her. The Lidescis?’
‘Oh, they are.’ Her silhouette nodded. ‘For they’re human. We are survivors, yes, our race as a whole. But I was talking about the Wamphyri. In fact, I was thinking out loud.’
‘One word,’ Trask answered, ‘“survivors” - but enough to give me the impression that you admire them?’
‘That’s your talent.’ She smiled. ‘You saw the truth in what I said. For of course I admire them! I admire their form, their vitality, their tenacity, at least.’
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Trask glanced at Lardis some little way away. ‘It’s a good job he can’t understand everything we’re saying!’
She shrugged. ‘If Lardis understood it fully, I think you would find he’d agree. Their form - as a life-force, albeit a force for evil - has been very successful, indeed admirable.’ ‘Come again?’
‘. .. But the real survivor,’ (she was determined to finish, and took his arm, gripping it for emphasis) ‘is this world!’
‘You said “has been”.’ Trask was fascinated. He knew that her talent could not be put aside lightly. ‘The Wamphyri “have been” successful? Now what are you getting at? And what do you mean, this world is a survivor?’
‘Because it’s young, it’s strong,’ she said. ‘Unlike the Earth, our Earth, Sunside/Starside hasn’t yet been poisoned to its core. It can fight back for - oh, a long time yet.’ The planet can fight back?’ ‘Exactly. It can recover. I feel it will recover!’ Trask frowned. ‘From what?’
She looked at him as if in surprise. ‘From the “white sun” - or the grey hole - that gave the moon its wobble, changed the planet’s orbit disastrously, created the barrier mountains, furnace deserts and frozen Icelands. Recover from the Great Red Waste suppurating away like some gigantic sore far to the east, which I can feel even from here! And recover —’
‘— From the Wamphyri?’ He saw that he was right. She nodded and said, ‘Even from them. It’s just a feeling I have, Ben.’
‘Just a feeling?’ f
‘It’s my talent. I feel that … that even without our
intervention, they’re on the decline.’ Her voice was a sigh.
‘The spring in your step?’ He inclined his head question-ingly. ‘Because you feel the years dropping away, you think it somehow signals the decline of the Wamphyri? Like, maybe they overstepped Nature’s welcome? Survivors no more?’
She shrugged . .. and was her bone-dry, brittle self again.
‘Well, maybe it’s not as dramatic as all that! And of course I could be wrong; perhaps I’m simply feeling the raw youth of the place. I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see what…’
But: ‘What?’ he gasped, as the night back along the trail was split by a flash of light and a sharp crack’ — definitely an explosive bolt — and the sound of panicked screaming came clear on the still night air. ‘What the hell.. .?’
Trask had an electric torch; using it to light the trail, he went stumbling back the way they’d walked. Nathan was back there somewhere. It could only have been him, using his crossbow.
But on what?
He … and she, had witnessed the abortive battle at the Rock, and afterwards he had used superior mentalism to penetrate Lardis Lidesci’s triumphant - and triumphantly open mind, and so knew his thoughts: that his people must now become Travellers again. Then, they had waited …
Eventually, they had seen the Szgany Lidesci leave their warren, the direction in which they headed, and by a circuitous route had gone ahead to lie in ambush. And it had pleased him to know that he could achieve what Wratha and the rest of her pack of dogs had failed to achieve: to strike at the Lidescis and feed on their good strong blood! Oh, he had known whose blood he would prefer - whose blood he must finally slake his vengeful burning thirst upon, if only to satisfy a craving come into being some two and a
half long years ago — but that must wait on a more opportune time, and for now be satisfied —
- Satisfied to take by stealth that which Wratha and the others, including Wran the Rage Killglance (ah, Wran the Rage! Wran, Wran, Wran.’ The name burned like some mordant poison in a mind now utterly deranged) . .. which they had failed to take by force.
For he was that monstrous being called Vasagi (once the Suck), and his consort was the Lady Carmen Who-Should-
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Not-Be, but who was. And theirs was an errand of vengeance, not against the Szgany Lidesci, but Wrathstack, certain of whose inhabitants were shit in their eyes, their mouths and their putrid hearts, made yet more putrid by their loathing of them.
It was Wran who was Vasagi’s fixation, his Great Hatred: Wran who had done his best, or his worst, to kill Vasagi; while paradoxically it was the necromancer Lord Nestor Lichloathe who was the Lady Carmen’s. Paradoxically, because it was Nestor who had saved Vasagi’s life that time in the Sunside foothills! But that was then and this was now, and the dire privations of the years flown between had drawn these outcasts together in their common cause: revenge!
For while Lord Vasagi and the Lady Carmen had suffered, those others in Wrathstack had lived life to the full without a thought for such as the once-Suck, ruined in his body, raped of his leech and pegged to a hillside as the sun came up. And who had given a damn for Carmen, whom Nestor’s grave errors of lust and gluttony had in the first instance elevated, only so that he might later reduce her to a stain? Except she was not reduced but was Carmen Who-Should-Not-Be. And Vasagi was … Vasagi!
So they’d waited on the woodland trail, these two oh so long forgotten and oh so recently returned, Vasagi and Carmen; waited for the good strong blood which is the life. And their sinister purpose was as much a matter of warped : pride - to do what Wratha and the others had failed to do - _ · as for the rich red blood itself. But it would be good, that blood, most certainly, and sustain them while they saw j what was what and which way the wind blew, and made their secret plans.