by Brian Lumley
As darkness closed in, he saw twin flashes of fire from the muzzle of Kirk Lisescu's shotgun; up on the stockade catwalk, Lardis Lidesci and Andrei Romani were frantically traversing the great crossbow inwards. Then….artilage hooks caught in Nestor's clothing, and clammy darkness compressed him.
Squirming and choking, denied freedom of movement and deprived of air and light, he breathed in vile gases which worked on him like an anaesthetic, blacking him out. The last things he felt were a massive shuddering thud, followed by a contraction of the creature's flesh around him and its violent aerial swerving.
Then his limbs turned to lead as the flyer fought desperately for altitude…
PART FIVE: Vampires.' — The Sundered Tribes — The Search
I
Lardis and Andrei were asleep when the searchers found Nathan and brought him in along with five more. By then sundown was one-third spent, and Nathan had lain unconscious in the grass at the foot of the west wall for more than nine hours. He was still unconscious when they dumped him unceremoniously on his back on a huge plank table salvaged from the wreckage at the site of the meeting place. This was where the survivors were being examined — all the survivors — to see if they really were survivors.
Between times, a lot had happened and was still happening. After the attack — after Wratha and her henchmen had done their worst, taken the best, destroyed what they could of the rest and left — then Lardis had taken charge, issued hurried instructions, finally rushed at killing speed up to his cabin on the knoll, where he'd hoped against hope to find his wife and son waiting and unharmed.
But he had doubted it. For he knew that Lissa always kept lamps burning in the cabin's windows when he was away, to guide him home, and he hadn't seen Jason since he and the Kiklu boys had gone on ahead into the town. That soft glow, from Lissa's lamps, could be seen for miles around — as indeed Lardis had seen it through the treetops during his and Andrei's approach to Settlement, but as he no longer saw it — burning up there against the dark flank of the mountains. And as he had driven himself like a madman up the steep side of the knoll, so he'd wondered who or what else had seen that glow, and why his son hadn't come back down when he heard the uproar and saw parts of the town burning.
It could be, of course, that Lissa had seen a suspicious mist on the slopes and stifled the lamps, and that then she'd restricted Jason to the house. It could be…
… But it wasn't. For when finally Lardis had got there it was to find his place in ruins. Following which he'd spent a back-breaking hour digging in the rubble, finding neither Lissa nor Jason. In a way it had been a relief: at least they were — or might still be — alive! But it was also the greatest tragedy of Lardis's life. For he didn't know where or in what circumstances they lived.
Taken by the Wamphyri? To be used by them, slaughtered by them, perhaps even… altered, by them? That hadn't borne thinking about. And so for a while he'd thought nothing but sat there in dumb silence, amidst the ruins, already grieving or preparing to grieve their loss. So that by the time Andrei came to sit with him — saying nothing but simply being there in silent commiseration — Lardis's unspoken agony was already turning outwards, to everlasting hatred and cold fury.
But even so, and for all that his loss was great, he had known he wasn't the only one. And when finally he'd looked at Andrei, to inquire in that gravelly voice of his, 'Well?'… then his friend and ally of so many years had known that the old Lardis was back. And nodding grimly he'd told him:
'In the old days you were iron, my friend. Now it's time to be iron again. For we're ready, down there.'
Then Lardis had come to his feet, straightened his back and shrugged off his weariness. And: 'Then let's be at it,' he'd said, as simply as that.
But half-way down, pausing briefly, he'd begged Andrei's forgiveness for striking him; also for the fact that he'd been deep in the woods — alone and lonely, bitter and raging, far beyond the South Gate — when the Wamphyri had struck so devastatingly at Settlement. To which the other had answered:
'You have it, and on both counts, but only if you will forgive me: that I ever doubted you…'
Since when, the pair had done or directed what must be done, between times catching up on a little sleep; the latter out of sheer exhaustion. Mercifully their weariness was as much mental as physical, so that they hadn't dreamed; otherwise their task might be impossible. Work such as this did not make for easy dreaming. And so they were asleep, in a hastily erected tent close to the meeting place, when Nathan Kiklu and five others were brought out of the darkness into the light from the lamps and the blazing central fire.
It was nothing new to Lardis and Andrei, this process of screening, the investigation or inquisition of the injured in the wake of a Wamphyri raid; in the old days they had seen plenty of this. But the last raid had been eighteen years ago and they were no longer inured to it. Of course, the friends and families of those they examined were invariably present, their dark Szgany eyes soulful in the flickering firelight, mutely questioning the examiners in their turn.
But if the horror wasn't now, at the direction of free men — men who were still their own men — then it would only come later, and from a different source entirely. And all of them knew it.
Coming to the table, Lardis shivered under the blanket round his shoulders and tied a knot in its corners under his chin. The accidental fires had been put out hours ago, since when the night had grown chilly… or maybe it was just him. At least the stink of monsters had cleared away now. He glanced up at the mountains blue-edged with starshine; no mist on the peaks now. In any case, the Wamphyri rarely struck twice in the same place, not in the space of a single sundown. And usually their raids followed fast on the setting sun, when they were most hungry.
It seemed unreal: to remember all of these things now. And to know how very necessary it was that he remember them.
The first figure on the table was that of a woman in the middle of her life, maybe thirty-six years old. Lardis shook himself awake, rubbed sleep from his eyes and stared hard at her face. He knew her: Alizia Gito. Her man was three years dead; he'd broken his back in a fall while hunting in the mountains.
Upon the index finger of Lardis's left hand, he wore a ring of gold set with a large, flat, reflective stone. Holding this over her open mouth, he watched for signs of breathing, the filming of the polished stone. Patiently he waited, and was rewarded when the stone's glitter faded to an opaque moistness. She breathed, but very slowly and faintly. As yet this proved nothing, except that she lived. Lardis had seen people dying before, and knew how their breathing was wont to fade away like this. Ah, but he also understood how well undeath could imitate life!
Alizia's face was very badly 'bruised and her jaw looked broken, but she had no wounds that Lardis could see: no cuts, and her neck was unmarked. He called forward two older women. 'Strip her — '
— And a haggard young man stepped forward, a growl rumbling in his throat as he grasped Lardis's arm. Lardis looked him in the eye, unflinchingly, and continued: '- but let her keep her dignity, what's left to the poor woman. Put a blanket over her.'
The young man was Nico, one of Alizia's sons, about seventeen years old. Lardis recognized him, and now asked after his younger brother. 'Vladi?'
Nico released Lardis's arm, shook his head. His eyes were very bright with unspilled tears. Taken,' he reported, with a gulp. 'I was in hiding under a cart. Towards the end of it I looked out, saw one of them knock Vladi on the head, toss him into the saddle of a flyer and make off with him. I found my mother later. Is she..?'
'I don't know,' Lardis could only shrug and shake his head. 'I have to look under this blanket to find out. Listen, I've looked at a lot of women tonight. It means nothing to me, but I know it means a lot to you. We can look together, if you like?' He put an arm across the other's slumped shoulders. And they looked.
Alizia was naked now; she'd been half-naked anyway. Lardis saw… obvious signs, but he had to be sure. 'N
ico, I want to touch her, turn her over,' he said. 'Can you help me?' Very carefully, they turned her face down. There were indentations in her thighs and buttocks, deep as claw marks, some of them bleeding.
Lardis shuddered and let the blanket fall. His face was working as he stepped back a little, nodding to three men who waited at a discreet distance. One of them was Andrei Romani.
'No!' said Nico, his voice the merest gasp, a breath of air.
Lardis caught him by the arm, held him back. The executioners — three merciful killers — came forward very quickly. Nico screamed high and shrill, but Lardis trapped his neck in a powerful armlock and turned his face away.
The three lifted Alizia in her blanket and carried her to the very end of the table. And there they hammered a stake through her heart. The sound was meaty, soggy, and crunching where ribs splintered. 'But she's alive, she's alive!' Nico was gurgling. 'She's my mother! I came out of her!'
'Yes,' Lardis told him through gritted teeth, holding him even tighter, 'but what's in her now must stay there. She's no longer the mother you knew but a foul, undead thing. But you're lucky, for soon she'll be clean and merely dead. So forgive us if you can, and be thankful.'
'You… bastard!' Nico spat in his face. And on the table, his mother sighed and struggled into a seated position!
A ring of blood oozed from the rim of the stake between her breasts, also from her mouth where she'd bitten through her bottom lip. But her eyes were open now, and they saw Nico. She sighed again, bloodily, and held out her arms towards him. 'My son! Nico!' and as Lardis turned the youth's face away a second time, so Andrei took her head off with one clean sweep of a bright-gleaming sickle.
Nico had passed out in Lardis's arms. He was carried away by Kirk Lisescu, taken to people who would look after him. The parts of Alizia Gito were carried in their blanket to another fire on the other side of the open space, and there disposed of.
Lardis hung his head and Andrei went to him. 'Steel yourself,' he said. 'We're only half-way through.'
Lardis looked at him from a face made haggard by sorrow. These people were mine, and I'm killing them.'
The other shook his head. 'We're killing Them,' he said. 'Or should we let them live, run off into the forest and hide, and come back at the next sundown to kill us?'
Lardis half-turned away, then nodded, and looked at the next one on the table. And saw that it was Nathan Kiklu. They had already stripped him and thrown a blanket over him. Lardis went to him, saying, 'Nathan! Ah, no… this is the worst! I had hopes for him. There was something different in him, something better.'
He threw back the blanket, searched Nathan's body. There were bruises galore, but no cuts. Neither had he been violated, and the lining of his mouth was clean. As Lardis examined him, he coughed and groaned, began to stir.
Lardis was excited. 'Do you know — ' he said, more to himself than to anyone else, 'do you know — I think he's clear!' In the next moment his excitement turned to despondency. 'But his brother, Nestor: we saw him taken by that flyer.'
'A goner,' Andrei nodded, 'like so many others.'
'We don't know that for sure,' Lardis propped up Nathan's head and gave his face a sharp slap. 'We put our bolt in that beast good and deep!'
Andrei nodded again, and said, 'Aye, and Kirk's shotgun blew its rider right out of the saddle!' He looked up and a little apart, to where a Wamphyri lieutenant was nailed with silver spikes to a heavy wooden cross. He hung there like a bloody rag, apparently dead and certainly unconscious — for the moment. 'But the flyer made off, so what hope for Nestor now? If the wounded creature dropped him, then he's dead from the fall; likewise if it crashed. But worst of all if it made it home.'
Nathan coughed again and rolled his head a little in the crook of Lardis's arm. Lardis glanced at Andrei, said: 'Where, home? Aye, Karenstack, I know — but where before that? These bastards might be new here, but they weren't new to their hellish game. They were full-fledged! They had flyers, warriors; they wore gauntlets! So where did they come from?'
Andrei looked again at the lieutenant on his cross. 'When this one comes to, maybe we'll find out. But let's face it, he hasn't much of a choice one way or the other. If he talks he's for the fire, and if he doesn't….e's for the fire. Personally, I think we should burn him now. What if they come back for him?'
Lardis shook his head. They won't. They have other business to occupy them now.' For a moment he thought of Lissa and Jason, then shut them out of his mind. If he wanted to carry on here, then he must shut them out.
'But,' he continued, 'if they suspect it wasn't just an accident and we actually brought this one down and killed him… they'll certainly wonder about it. Strangers here, they're not yet sure of our capabilities. This was their first raid on us, and they had the advantage of total surprise. Even so, it's possible we killed a lieutenant, which means we might also be able to kill one of them. That in turn guarantees their eventual return — not just out of curiosity — probably at the next sundown. So catching this one is a point in our favour, especially if we can make him talk. He must talk, for I want to know who they are!….or later, if for nothing else.'
This was no idle threat and Andrei knew it; he also knew that Lardis must die one day at the hands of the Wamphyri. He must, for it was them or him now, to the end. And he was just a man and mortal, while they apparently went on forever.
Nathan woke up. Lardis knew it at once, for suddenly the youth's neck in the crook of his arm had stiffened, and Nathan had stopped breathing. He was holding his breath. He lay still, rigid, petrified by knowledge of what had gone before, and by ignorance of what was going on now. Then he opened his eyes a crack at first, then wider, saw Lardis — relaxed again and breathed out.
But Lardis hardened himself and narrowed his eyes a little. He wasn't yet satisfied that the youth was in the clear. 'Nathan,' he said, 'can you hear me?'
Nathan nodded and Lardis helped him to struggle into a seated position. He saw where he was, that he was naked, and clutched his blanket to him. Then, with Lardis still supporting him, he looked along the table: at one end, prone figures lying side by side, and at the other a great wet patch, gleaming red. Finally he saw the Wamphyri lieutenant on his cross and gasped his terror, his lips drawing back from his teeth in an involuntary snarl.
Lardis could well understand that; neither Nathan nor anyone else would require the benefit of previous experience to recognize such as this when they saw it; not with the beast in a state of metamorphosis, as this one had been when the silver shot from Kirk Lisescu's twin barrels ripped him out of his saddle. He had been laughing or shouting, filled with blood and frenzied elation as his creature swooped to claim one last victim. And for all that his eyes were closed now, his passion was still plainly visible, written in every line of his terrible face: The distended jaws, hanging open, their serrated incisors at least an inch longer than his lesser teeth, which were themselves as jagged as the peaks of the barrier range. The bunched muscles of his face, frozen, drawing back grey flesh from his gaping jaws in a mad laugh, or perhaps in a rictus of instant unbearable agony as he was hit. The flaring nostrils in a squat, flattened nose, whose bridge showed the first signs of convolution, a symptom of his condition: that he was a vampire of long standing. He wasn't yet Wamphyri, but given time he would be. Or would have been.
Nathan took all of this in and more. He took note of the jet-black lacquered gleam of the lieutenant's forelock, where a silver spike had been driven through its knot, holding back his head to the upright. What he could not know was that the forelock's sheen came from the human fat used to grease it. He saw the man's heavily muscular arms pinned horizontally to the crossbar through the wrists and elbows, with huge hands dangling loose; hands whose fingers were half as long and thick again as his own, and tipped with broad, two-inch nails filed to a chisel edge. What he did not know was that the power of this creature was such that he could drive those hands into a man's body to crush his heart or tear through the vert
ebrae of his spine.
'Ugly bastard, eh?' Lardis's voice was full of hate.
Nathan tore his eyes from the figure on the cross and nodded. Then, glancing at the sky, the position of the stars against the mountains, he gave a start and made to get down from the table. All of the Szgany were expert in gauging the time from the stars, but none so good as Nathan. He knew how long he had been unconscious. And meanwhile… what of his mother? And Misha?
Lardis grabbed his shoulder. 'Hold on, lad,' he growled. 'First tell me about the bruises on your back. In fact your back is a bruise, one big one!'
Nathan nodded. 'A… a creature — a wolf, man, fox, I don't know what — threw me against the stockade.'
Lardis's eyes were still narrow, suspicious. But in fact he had heard reports of a hybrid thing among the Wamphyri raiders. Hideous reports. 'Threw you? He didn't bite you?'
Nathan clutched his arm. 'He t-t-took… took Misha from me!' His eyes were wide again, brimming with the horror of it. Then, shaking Lardis off, he got down from the table, staggering as soon as his legs took his weight. His back was a column of molten agony from nape of neck to base of spine, so that he might have fallen if Lardis hadn't caught him under the arm.
'Don't try to go rushing off, lad. You're in no fit state for it. Anyway, what can be done is being done.'
'B-but my m-mother, and Misha!' He looked dazedly around. 'W-Where are my clothes? And what about N-N-Nestor?'
Lardis opened his mouth… but he could only say, 'Ah!' and look away.
'Nestor?' And now Nathan's voice was steady. Very steady.
Lardis looked at him again, frowning. In other circumstances it might even be funny, for this was the most anyone had ever had out of Nathan in as long as he could remember! Was it just the shock, or what? What had got into him? Had something got into him? 'Are you sure you're all right?'
'What about Nestor?' Nathan looked straight at him with those weird, bottomless blue eyes of his.