Avengers

by Brian Lumley

  Blaze stood up, shook himself down, and said, Huh! The tame dogs back there saw me run. They may have thought I was running from them, and some even dared to mock me. But never fear, I’ll snarl at them as we pass, to remind them who they deal with!

  “An excellent idea,” said Harry. “Should curs come snapping at you, bite their tender noses. If their teeth cut your flesh, cut theirs deeper. An eye for an eye. I can see there’s much of me in you!”

  So it would seem, Blaze answered, inclining his head. But I am not displeased…Grandfather? And now we must go. My uncle Nathan is in need of your “certain skills.”

  In Harry’s Room at E-Branch HQ, six psychically endowed agents sat in a ring around a seventh who was temporarily “possessed” by an eighth—the revenant of a man who had been arguably the greatest psychic talent ever—to “listen” to a tale told by a wolf in an alien world. In E-Branch (never a stranger to weird events) this was probably one of the weirdest of all.

  “This, then, was the way of it,” Blaze began, while ambling back towards Settlement a good half-mile away. “After a time—when the world turned back again and the Northstar shone on the boulder plains as before, when our silver mistress moon sped on high in her accustomed orbit and the waters of Starside’s shining lake were all drained away—then the Wamphyri returned out of the far, forbidden north.

  “As mange is to a wolf, so are the Wamphyri to Sunside/Starside, feeding on the goodness until everything dies. They waged war on the Szgany of Sunside, all settled now in towns, and war with Nathan’s people, the Lidescis, who were the fiercest warriors of all. But this was when my uncle was well, and it proved to be a fatal mistake on their part.

  “There were three of the olden Wamphyri, come back from the Icelands. At first they had been secretive in their recruiting, striking only at remote Traveller encampments, so that for long and long their presence went unnoticed. They took of Starside’s trogs, too, for their labourers, and began rebuilding among the tumbled stacks of olden Starside.

  “My uncle had been away visiting the Thyre for many sunups, and at first didn’t know what transpired in Starside. He wasn’t neglectful of his duty with the Szgany but had a ‘sister’ among the Thyre, called Atwei—not a true sister, as you are surely aware, Grandfather, but a sister of the heart and spirit—with whom he visited.

  “Anyway, when he returned and found out what had happened, then Nathan moved entire tribes into the furnace deserts of the south. The greatest Traveller of all—moving in that unfathomable way of his, and travelling in a single instant to wherever he desired—he took hundreds of the Szgany to safety in Thyre territory, where the watering holes and underground colonies of the desert dwellers offered sanctuary. How may I state this for a fact? Because we were there, because my uncle made myself and my brother Grinner privy to all his works at that time, and because as once before the grey brotherhood sided with the Szgany against the Wamphyri, becoming Nathan’s watchers in the heights of the barrier mountains.

  “But the Szgany are proud, and this was not like the olden times when the Wamphyri were awesome conquerors and could not be defeated. No, for the Szgany had knowledge of alien things. My father, The Dweller, had brought weapons of great destruction into Sunside/Starside, and while he was long dead and gone, still his human brother, Nathan, had discovered the route back to your world, Grandfather, for more of the same.

  “He went, bringing weapons he was given and others that he stole back into Sunside. And the Lidescis spread the secrets of black gunpowder, guns, and rockets among all the Szgany tribes, so that their men could stand and fight. For my uncle knew that hiding among the Thyre in their furnace desert colonies wasn’t good enough. There were creatures other than men that the vampires could kill for their blood and flesh—the wild things of Sunside’s forests and the barrier mountains…such as wolves, aye!—and Nathan couldn’t possibly save all of them. Also, the Thyre were his friends and he would not place them in jeopardy, knowing that sooner or later the vampire Lords would seek them out. He would not have their blood on his paws…

  “But let me move quickly forward, for I sense that you know most of these things that I have told you, that you’ve had this story from some other source. And anyway, what more is there to tell? Of how my uncle finally defeated the Wamphyri? And in his triumph, even as he celebrated, of the accident and injury that shook his mind from its orbit? Both of these things? Very well, they came about in this order:

  “When first Nathan had found out about the resurgent Wamphyri, he had gone up against them on his own as one man—albeit a warrior with superior weapons. Unwilling to risk the lives of friends, he had ravaged among the vampires on lone forays along routes not of this world. But as they learned what he could do, so they began to lay traps for him, and then my uncle’s hit-and-run guerilla tactics became ever more dangerous.

  “By then the olden Wamphyri—the three from the Icelands—had long since fled his wrath (into the Starside Gate, according to some) leaving all they’d made behind them. And oh, they had made some cruel vampires and monsters out of men! Now these blood-lusting lieutenants and thralls vied among each other, to see who would be Lords in their turn. This had left them weaker than ever…though never weak in the human or wolf sense, you understand. No, for they were still terrible creatures.

  “Anyway, my brother and I and other leaders of various wolf packs, we had seen these aspirant Lords fighting one another on the boulder plains; we had witnessed their skirmishes and small but vicious bloodwars in the ruins of shattered aeries. And all such had been reported to Nathan, who was then prompted to make a plan. It was time, he said, to end this thing and finish them off for good in one last surprise attack, one final battle—to be fought on their own ground!

  “How bold! To confront the vampires of Starside in Starside itself! Impossible for the Szgany on their own, too terrible to consider. The distances involved, and movement in the open over a pitiless boulder wastelend, and the mindless monsters waiting there. Ah, but by use of Nathan’s instantaneous mode of travel, by no means impossible…

  “In the hour when the sun rises over the mountains to shine across the territory of the vampires, Nathan armed great bodies of men and ‘moved’ them to the mouth of the pass into Starside. Of course, the sun hangs low in Sunside’s sky, so that when its rays sweep over the mountains they never touch Starside’s floor. But even so, sunup to vampires is as the darkest of dark nights in a wild unknown place to men, or a deadly sliding scree avalanche to a wolf: a very terrible thing to contemplate! Which is why they burrow in their holes when the sun is up, shutting out the light, sleeping and dreaming their horrid red dreams, leaving only their monstrous guardian creatures awake and watchful. But even they stick to the shadows of Starside’s boulder mounds and crumbling ruins, shrinking from the sunlight as best possible. Of course they do, for they, too, are the stuff of vampires.

  “So then, in that same hour when the sun turns the mountain peaks to gold, myself, Grinner, and other pack leaders had gone creeping out onto the barren boulder plains to locate the positions of the last of our enemies. And having found them, mind to mind with our uncle, we reported their numbers, whereabouts, and fortifications to him, fixing their coordinates in his mind. At last he could move on them. And he did!

  “In his special way, transporting his teams of arsonists up close, he burned the warrior creatures when they were only half-awake, scorched the grounded flyers’ membrane wings to immobilize them, brought the rest of his army forward into the battle area. And all done in a trice! Szgany mirror-men in the barrier mountains reflected sunlight down into the areas where they saw flames rising; others on the ground trapped these rays in mirrors of their own, turning them on the vampires as they rose up from sleep. Grenades and bullets cut them down; men moved among them with machetes and axes; even the most dire battle gauntlet was useless against scything metal shards and silver shot! Even Nathan was surprised at how quickly the last remaining monsters caved in.
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  “And for all of that long sunup the Szgany gathered up vampire debris and burned it on the boulder plains in the ruins of the old Wamphyri stacks, and the smoke and stink of their fires went up to the sky, so that when night came again even the ill-omened Northstar was partly obscured. But other than the smoke and the dying fires, nothing else moved in all Starside…

  “It was over, and not a man of the Szgany—or wolf of the brotherhood—lost or even wounded in that final victory.

  “Which makes Nathan’s injury that much more poignant.

  “It came during the celebrations in Settlement. The Lidescis built great bonfires in the foothills, to signal the utter destruction of the vampires, the end of their reign of terror. They danced, feasted, and sent off such rockets into the skies that they rivalled the light of our mistress moon!

  “But alas, such explosive devices were crude things and by no means reliable, and one such which flew awry exploded close to Nathan. He was hurled down by the blast; his skull struck a rock; unconscious, he was taken to Misha’s makeshift dwelling. And there he has stayed in the care of his mate…

  “That was many sunups ago, even as many as the toes on two wolves, and then some, since when there has been small improvement. After a while he walked, but it seems that everything is an utter mystery to him. He remembers nothing, or so little it makes no difference. And when I’ve looked into his head, all I have seen is emptiness. Those baffling numbers which once were there…where are they now? And where the uncle I loved as a cub and love as a wolf full grown? If you can help us find him, Grandfather, all Sunside will be forever in your debt…”

  Arriving back at Settlement, Blaze paused and composed himself, then advanced stiff-legged in through the west gate. The Szgany who saw paid him no special heed. A familiar of Nathan’s, Blaze came and went as he saw fit. As for Settlement’s tame dogs: the look in his yellow eyes warned them off, so that he had no need for snarling…

  13

  Skin Graft——Clay Pigeons and Red Herrings

  MISHA WAS ON HER OWN NOW, AND AS BLAZE paused whining at the door of her “house” she looked up, saw him, and welcomed him in. “So you’re back,” she said, smiling however wanly. “What was the big hurry? Did you have a thorn in your paw or something? Such an undignified exit!”

  He understood her words—which rang in his mind as well as in his ears—wagged his tail a very little, and made for Nathan where he sat in his chair. And again the young ex-Necroscope’s deep yet vacant eyes seemed to focus, if only for a moment, on the wolf, before they once more glazed over.

  And here he is, Grandfather, Harry’s changeling descendant whined again, low in his throat. He has no shields as such, so you can be in without him even knowing. Huh! But of course you can, for he “knows” nothing! Alas, you won’t find him at home.

  “I have been there,” said Harry, “and I know you’re right. My son isn’t home, his house has no furniture, and the fire is out in the hearth. It is as if it were inhabited by some blind ghost, which looks out now and then through the windows of his eyes, seeing nothing. Surely I can do no harm there? The least I can do is bring a little atmosphere into the place.”

  When you leave me for him, will you ever return? Blaze had sensed that this “visit” was a singular, probably unique event.

  “I doubt it,” said Harry. “This time I answered a call. But there are many calls, and I have been too long…away?”

  Too long away? said his changeling grandson, who in his way was wiser than most men. I think I understand—and anyway, it isn’t my place to ask from where. Grinner, who has seen strange far places, might know, and I must speak to him of it. But when or whenever you go, know that we shall wish you a long…continuance?

  “You know that I appreciate it,” said Harry. “But even your brother Grinner hasn’t been where I shall go. How long is time, eh? Where is any- or every-where, and how far is away?”

  Farewell, then, said Blaze.

  And Harry was gone from one to the other in a moment—

  —Gone from that sharp wolf mind with its astonishing repertory of scents and sensations, back to the grey-misted place, the “empty house,” called Nathan.

  In there, in that deserted echo chamber of a place, with no one else to hear except the minds of his psychic explorer colleagues from Earth, Trask spoke once more to Harry:

  “What will you try to do, and how will you go about it?”

  “It’s just an idea, that’s all,” said Harry. “But you know how a skin graft works?”

  “Of course,” said Trask. “A patch of skin is taken from an undamaged, healthy part of the body and planted on a burned or flensed area to facilitate new growth.”

  “Right,” said Harry. “But perhaps it’s a poor analogy after all. For where a body has suffered one hundred percent burns—”

  “There’s no hope,” said Trask. “But in this case there must be some hope at least. I’m sure that on the two occasions we’ve witnessed, Nathan recognized Blaze if only momentarily.”

  “But still I can only do so much,” said Harry. “I have only a short time left to me. Other places are luring me.”

  “Then get on with it,” said Trask. “Do whatever you can for him, and it won’t only be Sunside that’s in your debt.”

  And Harry got on with it.

  Not skin but memories. First of Blaze, reinforcing Nathan’s picture of the wolf who was his nephew, then memories of people Nathan had known—people they’d both known—transmitted from Harry’s memory banks into those blank spaces that were all that was left of his son’s.

  It was done at incredible speed; Harry played the part of a neurosurgeon working with a laser tool, but rather than slicing or splicing nerves he welded patches (pictures?) of memory back in place on the bare walls of Nathan’s mind. Pictures of Misha, taken straight from what he’d seen of her through Blaze’s eyes; pictures of Trask, Chung, Lardis, and Goodly, a group once well-known to Nathan; and again pictures of Blaze himself, faithful, lifelong friend. And finally, saved until last, Harry conjured a fantastic numbers vortex—a whirling wall of mutating symbols and cyphers, the metaphysical equations of Möbius mathematics—to spiral like background static in the otherwise aching void of Nathan’s mind.

  And then his time was up…

  Something had happened to Nathan, and Misha didn’t know what to make of it. She didn’t know what to make of Blaze, either. Wolf he might be, but she knew of his relationship with Nathan—the fact that he was actually a relative—and also that he was far more than just a wolf of the wild. Right now he danced, skipped, and yipped. His tail was a frenzy of side-to-side movement; his ears were up, intent, turning this way and that but always ending up pointing at Nathan seated in his chair. Now he got up on his hind legs, forepaws on Nathan’s knees, black-shining muzzle inches from Nathan’s nose, and stared into Nathan’s eyes.

  It was Nathan’s eyes now, yes, but a moment ago it had been his movements, actions. Actions of a sort, anyway. Galvanic and by no means definitely the product of intelligence or awareness, still he had moved; lifted an arm to point at something, opened his mouth as if to speak, but only gurgled. Not much of a miracle in itself, but in a man who had done absolutely nothing for a six-month without prompting and guidance, and made no attempt to utter a single word…it was astonishing!

  So much so that for several seconds Misha hadn’t been able to move. When it had started she had been standing in the open doorway, catching the last warm rays of the sun as it sank down oh-so-slowly beyond the forest’s rim. Then, very clearly, she’d heard the stamp of a foot—but a foot, not a paw—and Blaze the only other creature present. Blaze…and Nathan. Startled, Misha had looked back into the dusky unlit room to see what was happening. And what she’d seen had frozen her rigid for several long seconds.

  Nathan’s twitching, his pointing, his meaningless mouthing; as if he heard something, saw something, remembered something!

  And his wolf-nephew Blaze’s frantic caperi
ng—reinforcing the fact of it—letting Misha know that she wasn’t dreaming.

  Then she’d cried out, rushed to his side, gone down on her knees alongside Blaze, both girl and wolf staring into Nathan’s eyes. And light in there! No longer the emptiness of the spaces between the stars but the light of reason! It was there for the space of a breath, two, three, before slowly fading. But it had been there! And before it had vanished entirely, Nathan’s mouth had jerked open again.

  This time, while it had been something less than a whisper, Misha knew that he had spoken. Only one word—but a word that brought her to laughter and tears in the same moment: “Misha.”

  And just as she’d seemed to sense weird presences this last half-hour or so, so now she sensed Nathan’s presence, knew that he was in there, and that this was the start of his recovery…

  There was no sensation of movement—never had been through any of what Trask and his people had experienced—but still it was a shock to every system to find themselves back in Harry’s Room at E-Branch HQ, from which they’d never in any case departed!

  But all of them knew that Harry had gone now, even if, like Blaze, they didn’t know where.

  Jake, stirring in his chair and blinking—even as the six blinked back at him—was as a man just this moment woken from a dream: he frowned, looked alarmed or at least puzzled, seemed uncertain of his reality.

  “A dream?” he said, as simply as that. “Was I dreaming?”

  But as the six espers disengaged and stood up stiffly: “No, it wasn’t,” said Trask. “And we weren’t! Can you remember it?” Looking at his watch, he saw that more than an hour had passed. No wonder his joints were creaking!