by Brian Lumley
There were just two of them, flyers and riders, still airborne in the great dark bowl of the sky, where they blotted the stars in their criss-crossing. But they’d sensed the swirl of Nathan’s numbers vortex as he vacated the Mobius Continuum, and so knew he was there. A mentalist himself, he sensed their telepathic transmission flash north, reporting his presence.
So, another of his co-ordinates was now known to them. Good! Let them thin themselves out even more as they attempted to cover all of them, which was patently impossible. But these were thoughts he kept to himself.
‘Observers,’ he said to Goodly. ‘I doubt if they’ll land. There’s nothing here for them.’
Earlier, Nathan had moved Karl Zestos’s people here, plus two of Lardis’s men armed with weapons of Earth. Now, without pause, he took the precog down into the earth, where first he checked that indeed the routes from the surface had been camouflaged and booby-trapped, and that the Thyre and the Szgany Zestos were as safe as possible from attack.
Then he relieved one of Lardis’s men of his weapon - a self-loading rifle — and transferred out of the place. And to
be certain the vampires would know he’d moved on, he deliberately made a brief appearance on the surface before heading for Place-of-the-Beast-Bones.
Place-of-the-Beast-Bones was one of the few mistakes that Nathan had made during an incredibly busy Sunside evening. Now - not necessarily too late - he had realized the error; also that going there at this time might possibly compound it. That was a chance he must take. The error was geographical and lay in the colony’s location, only thirty-eight miles south-east of the great pass: well within Devetaki’s reach. Worse, as a surface settlement, it was vulnerable to attack.
Set in a stony desert depression, the colony was housed in flat-ceilinged caverns in the walls of a canyon cut by the resurgent Great Dark River. Where the strata had been sluiced away by water action, fossils of mighty prehistoric creatures were revealed: hence the name of the place. But in the canyon walls, descending tiers of wide ledges would make ideal landing and/or launching sites for flyers and warriors alike. And there were no sub-surface escape routes; where the river plunged back into the earth again, its course was an inhospitable, unnavigable borehole.
Possibly Nathan’s earlier visit-to deposit a small community of forest-dwelling Travellers here - had been monitored by the Wamphyri; if not, they would certainly know the location of the place now. Which meant that Place-of-the-Beast-Bones was going to need defending - which in turn meant a further series of dizzying Mobius-jumps, collecting armed men from other locations! But as Goodly pointed out along the way:
Or you could have moved the Thyre and the Szgany out of there; except … that would make the place a Wamphyri stronghold if or when they ever get to it. But in actual fact I don’t see that any of this does any harm. J mean, surely by now Devetaki has got the message: that she can’t possibly cover all of your co-ordinates? The more places you visit, the thinner she has to spread her net — or web! And all the time the night is moving on towards morning.
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And the Big One?
That, too.
And she - I mean Devetaki -will be involved in it?
The very cause of it, yes.
Finally the job was done, and Nathan satisfied that he had put as many armed, trained men into Place-of-the-Beast-Bones as he could spare. But as he and the precog stepped from the Mobius Continuum back into the Cavern of the Ancients, he shook his head worriedly. The Wamphyri aren’t stupid,’ he said. ‘Especially Devetaki. She’s got Yefros, and together they’re plotting something. All that’s happened so far is only a small part of a much greater scheme.’
In the Thyre mausoleum, Atwei, Trask and Misha and the others were waiting for him; now they could update him in person.
‘Zek and I have managed to pinpoint Devetaki and Yefros!’ Chung told him excitedly. ‘She’s directing all of this from a plateau over the great pass, midway between Sunside and Starside. Large vampire contingents are en route to most of the Thyre colonies, but the bulk of them have put down on the rim of the forests.’
Zek added: They’re maintaining their net formation -‘
And Trask finished it:’- Covering as much territory as possible. There’s a lot of fighting in the Sunside woods, Nathan: all those Travellers who didn’t trust you to move them to safety. Meanwhile we’re here, armed and dangerous … and useless!’ His voice was sour. ‘I know now how Lardis felt.’
Suddenly the Necroscope was desperate; he simply couldn’t be everywhere at the same time; and he could see no end to it. ‘I have to draw their fire,’ he said, ‘and lure them away from both the Travellers in the forests and the Thyre colonies.’
‘But that’s exactly what Devetaki wants!’ Zek told him.
Then let’s give it to her!’ Nathan growled, and his voice hardly seemed like his at all. His blood was up now, and behind his sore eyes his mind ached from the pressure of it all… or from something else.
‘Settlement!’ Goodly hissed, staggering as his hand went to his brow. ‘It… it will be Settlement!’
Nathan bared his teeth and said, ‘Well, that’s good enough for me! That’s where it all started, more than three and a half years ago. Now let it finish there, one way or the other!’
Andrei Romani and Anna Marie English had come up from the subterranean colony. Pushing forward, Andrei said, ‘You’re not leaving us out of this one. Indeed, if it’s going to be Settlement, then a/1 of the Lidescis will want to be in on it! There are caches of Dimi Petrescu’s powder there, pitfalls, warrior-traps … rockets! We can put up a real fight!’
Trask grabbed Goodly’s arm. ‘Settlement? You’re sure?’
The precog nodded. ‘Yes.’
And Trask said grimly, ‘All of us, then, and we’ll need all the Earth-weapons you can get together. Nathan, we’ll be a focal point of resistance that the Wamphyri can’t resist!’
There was nothing else to be said. With the exception of Misha (whose only talent was to love Nathan dearly), and Anna Marie English who wanted to stay with the Thyre, Nathan moved them to Settlement. Then he collected the Szgany Lidesci from Crater Lake, the Szgany Zestos from Crack-in-the-Rocks, weapons from wherever he could find them.
What with all the explaining he must do en route, it took the best part of two hours, until he was sick and disoriented from it… even the Necroscope, disoriented!
But by the time he was finished, Andrei Romani already had everyone working at a frenzied pace in the shattered old town. When finally the Wamphyri came, Settlement would be ready for them …
Hours passed; reports reached Nathan from the Thyre: the Wamphyri had definitely stopped advancing on them across the night-dark desert. It looked like their colonies were safe, at least for tonight. The vampires had not moved off entirely, however, but rested in the forest fringes where they met the
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savannas. They were still within striking distance, even now.
As for the bulk of Devetaki’s forces: David Chung reported plenty of furtive movement, mainly hidden under what Trask had termed ‘radio silence.’ But as time went by, so Zek and Chung began to piece together a picture of what was happening.
Devetaki’s ‘web’ was more truly web-shaped now: concentric semicircles of vampire elements, flitting or spurting over the forests, taking up planned positions and hemming Settlement in where the old place nestled in the lee of the foothills. Other ‘covert’ contingents had landed in the heights overlooking the town, but vampire mists were not in evidence; the virgin grandam kept her movements discreet as possible.
In the town itself: discretion was flown to the wind! The men couldn’t be expected to work by starlight alone in what the Old Lidesci had long since transformed into a deadly trap for men and beasts alike! Andrei Romani had lit fires -literally beacon fires - by which the men worked. Bomb-hurling ballistae and giant crossbows were back in working order; fragile
-seeming rocket-launching frameworks (complete with their all-too-frequently treacherous missiles) had been hauled into position where stockade walls had been destroyed; men with amazing alien weapons patrolled equally treacherous catwalks atop swaying walls. And Nathan Keogh, called the Necroscope, was at an utter loss to explain why nothing was happening. His nerves were on edge … but nothing was happening. Settlement was full of people, lit up brighter than at any time in four years; it was surrounded by vampires … and nothing was happening!
Nathan called Trask and the other espers together to ask them: ‘What in hell is - or isn’t - going on? Why is Devetaki waiting? The twilight before the dawn is only seven hours away. Sunup in less than twelve hours’ time! What is she doing? The way her web is laid down, she could hit us with one wave after another endlessly, until eventually we’d be overwhelmed. What is she doing?’
Zek Foener had the right answer. ‘Keeping you guessing,’ she said. ‘Waiting for you to panic. Watching to see which way you’ll jump.’
And: ‘Shaking her web,’ said Trask. Trying to tangle you up or startle you into doing something against your better judgement. Maybe trying to force your hand.’ The words had seemed to leap to his lips unbidden, surprising even him.
Nathan turned to him. ‘How, forcing me? How can she force me to do anything by not moving?’
Trask couldn’t answer; but suddenly the precog lan Goodly was pale in the gouting firelight. ‘Who said she isn’t moving?’ he said. And his great wide eyes went outwards to the night.
In the next moment Wamphyri ‘radio silence’ was broken — indeed shattered! Zek, whose mind was wide open, reeled from a sudden telepathic onslaught. But not against her; the vampires were simply ‘talking’ to each other, and their messages could scarcely be clearer:
Ignore the Szgany! They’ll keep. But take the Others, the outsiders, the talented ones/
They have weird weapons but their numbers are few.
And the harsh, threatening sendings of some lesser Lord: You lieutenants, you thralls: success means glory! But failure means death! This last I can promise you, and by my own hand! Wherefore you have everything to gain, nothing to lose. Devetaki wants the Necroscope, and the female mental-ist especially! Take them alive!
‘She wants me!’ Zek gasped, and groped in a pocket for a lone bullet which she’d placed there right from the beginning. She’d been the property of a Lady once before, but not a Lady like the one who commanded this army.
Nathan had heard the sendings, too. His mouth was dry as a hard-baked river-bed as he looked at Zek, Trask, the others from Earth. Uppermost in his mind was a picture of Ethloi the Ancient’s diagram of a device to close the Gates forever, the saving of one world at least. Which meant the saving of Trask and the others’ lives was imperative.
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‘I have to take you -‘ he began, but they were already crouching down, taking up positions, spreading out.
And David Chung’s warning a malediction in the suddenly electric atmosphere, as a mist rolled down from the foothills and swirled in through gaps in the battered stockade, and the air grew heavy, and a growing rumble of thunder which wasn’t thunder sounded from the forests and mountains:
‘Here they come!’
The Gate on Starside!
The thought was like a brand burning in Nathan’s brain: he had to get his friends to the Gate, and now! In one sense, the Necroscope felt like a traitor - the thought of leaving the Szgany Zestos and the Lidescis to battle on alone - but in another, there was the chance it would have the beneficial side-effect of diverting the attack. For right now, Devetaki wasn’t much concerned with common Travellers: it was Nathan, Zek and the other alien talents that she wanted to recruit.
Also, Nathan himself wasn’t going. Not very far, anyway, and not for long. He would be back just as soon as he saw the others through the Gate. Except, even as he worked it out, they were scrambling for previously arranged vantage points. Then, to further distract him:
A warrior crashed down from a suddenly leaden sky on top of a ramshackle structure that only roughly resembled a house. Obviously this creature had instructions to destroy any Szgany refuges. Its furious bellowing turned to roars of agony as the flimsy shell collapsed, pitching it into the pit waiting below, where it impaled itself on sharp six-foot stakes. Gas-bladders burst and released their stench; the doomed creature’s propulsors fired sporadically and sputtered into silence; some brave Traveller loped forward, hurled a torch that spun end over end like a ring of fire, -before falling directly into the pit amid a chaos of tortured vampire flesh and splintered timbers. The ensuing blast hurled the Necroscope from his feet, but he was up again in a moment.
A flyer came pulsing over leaning stockade walls; its lieutenant rider’s visage was the leering, blood-lusting mask of a primal beast where he leaned forward in his saddle, swinging a bolas of vicious hooks and seeking victims. Zek was halfway across a rubble-strewn square. The lieutenant saw her and his jaws gaped wider yet in nightmarish anticipation as he swerved his mount in her direction. Skimming lower, the beast arched air-trap wings; its belly-pouch yawned open.
NO! Nathan sent directly into the lieutenant’s mind. Feral eyes glanced his way, opened wide, were immediately trapped by his eyes! And: No - you -fucking - DON’T! the Necroscope told him, crouching down and unleashing his mind-bolt.
Still seeking a place to hide, a hole in the ground, any scrap of cover, Zek saw it happen: saw the lieutenant cave in as if crushed by a giant hand … saw scarlet gush from ears, eyes, mouth … saw his head compress into his chest, and his upper torso into his lower body, before he was swatted like a fly sideways from his saddle! But the flyer came on.
She twisted the fins on a grenade and forced herself to stand tall, stand still and wait. The flyer’s belly-pouch was zeroed on the middle of Zek’s body; there were only inches to spare between the lip of the pouch and the lapping white lake of the vampire ground-mist; Zek lobbed her grenade, and threw herself flat. The flyer scooped at empty air, then closed its pouch and rotated its manta wings for elevation.
It passed over Zek, climbing into the reeking air …
… And pressured smoke jetted like steam from the scalloped gash of the flyer’s pouch, in the split-second before internal lightning gutted the creature, driving lances of fire and shards of steel up through its spine! Its rubbery neck slumped at once; its mighty manta wings began to fold upwards; collapsing like a pack of cards, it drifted on, rapidly losing height as it disappeared in mist and distance.
By which time Nathan was at Zek’s side, looking this
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way and that to locate the others. And by then, too, the night was alive with the throb of propulsors, dark with the pulsing shadows of flyers, shocked to full, awful awareness by the urgent shouting of men, the stutter and cough of automatic weapons.
Trask had seen the incident with Zek, the flyer and rider. To hell with his position on the stockade wall! With his heart in his mouth, he came running -
- As behind him, that section of the great fence buckled and fell inwards, and the ugly shape of a warrior was silhouetted against the misted forest, its pincers and stab-bers all mobile as it prepared to launch itself upon Settlement’s defenders! Rockets were hastily aimed and fired; Travellers tossed grenades; a burst of automatic fire ripped into exploding gas-bladders before the heat of a rocket’s exhaust turned the monster into a raging inferno.
A moment later and Goodly stumbled out of the smoke and stench with David Chung close behind. ‘I knew it was time and that you wanted us,’ he shouted at Nathan. ‘David knew where to find you!’
Nathan took them with him through a Mobius door . .. just forty paces, to where Andrei’s men worked at a battery of four makeshift rockets. ‘When you’ve finished with those,’ he told them, ‘try these.’ Retaining Zek’s machine-pistol and the grenades in their pockets, the five dumped the rest of their alien weapons and ammunition
on the ground. Where Trask and his colleagues were going, they wouldn’t be needing them any more.
That was the idea, anyway.
Then Nathan took them to Starside .. .
Checking his co-ordinates, the Necroscope got them as close to the Gate as possible: maybe forty-five yards north-west of the low crater wall and its core of white light, like the shining eye of some blinded, paralysed Cyclops gazing upwards into the Starside sky. The weird interference of the Gate, amplified by its proximity to the natural Gate at the
bottom of the crater, was stronger far than that of its Perchorsk twin; Nathan’s Mobius door writhed like a snake, threatening to warp back out of existence as he hastily guided his charges out on to the barren boulder plains. If he’d tried to get any closer than this, he knew there would have been a problem. What he didn’t yet know was that he and his friends had a problem anyway.
Without pause as they cleared the door, Zek, Trask, Chung and Goodly crouched down and went running towards the blinding hemisphere of cold light. Caught up in the urgency of the moment, Nathan ran with them; he was intent on seeing them safely on their way, Zek and lan to Romania, Trask and Chung to Perchorsk. Perhaps too intent .. . And perhaps, too, all of the action back in Settlement had glutted their sensibilites, blunted their natural talents.
Clumps of boulders, silhouetted in dazzle from the Gate, appeared as concentric rings of menhirs going out across Starside towards the northern auroras, also to east and west, and south to the foothills and barrier mountains. Facing the Gate, the rocky terrain reflected its brilliance. By contrast, away from the Gate, the shadows of these boulder clumps were etched as sharp as knives and black as pitch — ideal hiding-places, as Zek and Goodly could testify. And not only for men.
After a handful of long, loping paces, the group passed between two such clusters … and at once sensed the shadows moving there! It was very much a group thing: a sudden shared awareness, a sensation of intense danger. In actuality it was the relaxation of massed vampire minds -the opening of channels of communication - the springing of the trap!