The Last Aerie

by Brian Lumley

  Misha!

  It took all of five minutes to lock the name out of her head. And another five to cool the incredible fires racing in her vampire blood. And: Love? she wondered again, but kept the thought to herself. Or should it be hate? Or was the dividing line between the two too narrow?

  But she knew the name of that dividing line well enough.

  It was jealousy!

  7

  Wratha’s New Raiders

  That the dog-Lord Canker Canison was crazy in his fashion, and deranged as any feral creature who falls under the influence of the full and hurtling moon, was not to be denied; but as Nestor had pointed out to his vampire lover in her bed, at other times and in other ways Canker was sane as could be and might even be considered wise. As now, for instance.

  For when it came to a choice of allies, the Lord of Mangemanse had neither time nor kind words for Wran and Spiro Killglance, his closest neighbours, and he was equally disdainful of Gorvi the Guile down in the aerie’s shadowy sump. But sane or crazy, the overriding factor in his decision was this: that the necromancer Lord Nestor Lichloathe had seen fit to join up with Wratha in her scheming, and if it was good enough for him it was good enough for Canker. Such was the dog-Lord’s affection for his young friend, let Nestor merely suggest something … it was done.

  At a meeting in Wrathspire, the three devised a strategy, tactics of a sort against the Szgany. And in the next sundown, taking their warriors, lieutenants, and even aspirant lieutenants with them, they put it into practice and went raiding en masse on Sunside.

  And it was a raid to remember!

  Wratha had no knowledge of warfare, and neither Canker nor Nestor was any better equipped. And so their plan was simple: one party to flush the Szgany out; one to form a gantlet like a net, wide at the entrance and narrowing to a tight neck; and a third lying in ambush, to block any escape and turn the prey back into the killing zone.

  How it worked:

  The three and their forces crossed the barrier mountains just an hour after the true sundown. Their crossing point lay midway between the hell-lands Gate on Starside and Settlement on Sunside, which is to say some forty miles west of the Starside mouth of the great pass. Then, while Canker and his pack landed, rested up, and waited in the higher Sunside foothills, Nestor, Wratha, and theirs split into two groups and headed out across the Sunside forest belt. Wratha angled west while Nestor skewed east, so that when they straightened out to fly parallel they were perhaps two miles apart. And staying well below the clouds, they knew they would be amply visible, and the rumble and sputter of their warriors plainly audible to Szgany on the ground.

  Any Traveller groups directly beneath the two aerial parties would go to earth, freeze, suffer the gut-wrenching stench of warrior exhaust gasses settling from the night sky, and wait for the terror on high to pass. But as soon as they thought it was safe to move, they’d break cover, split up, seek safer hiding places. Some would be lucky and relocate themselves outside the entrapment zone, but others less fortunate would run inwards and right into it.

  Along the route south—as the twin clouds of ill-omen which were Wratha, Nestor, and their parties pulsed like a two-pronged pestilence in the sky—they ordered down warriors or the occasional flyer and rider, to occupy vantage points in the forest and find themselves good relaunching sites, thus forming a gantlet. And so the net extended itself south.

  Four or five miles out over the forest, the two parties performed an aerial pincer movement and joined up in one body. Then, except for Nestor, Wratha, and their first lieutenants, the remaining flyers landed their riders without touching down, and lifted off with empty saddles. And while on high the Lord and Lady turned their mounts about-face and flew north down the center of the gantlet, so their thralls on the ground began forging through the woods for the barrier mountains, ensuring that they made as much noise as possible along the way.

  Within the gantlet, panicking Szgany groups were driven in the same direction, by the bellowing of vampire thralls to the rear and the hissing of monsters on the flanks. The night seemed filled with menace: nodding flyers and belching, amorphous, armour-plated warriors were everywhere, and strutting lieutenants were wont to loom large out of the darkness.

  Meanwhile—

  Canker and his pack had come down from the foothills to set up their ambush in the bottleneck, among boulders and rocky outcrops where some ancient upheaval had shattered the forest floor. And while he waited, so the dog-Lord conjured a thin vampire mist from his own body, and called up a ground mist out of the earth to swirl all about and give his forces cover.

  While returning out of the south:

  Wratha and Nestor, performing low, lazy, north-drifting circles overhead, used their mentalism to order men and monsters in from the flanks, tightening the net. The trapped Szgany parties fled north, began to meet up with each other and shoal like panicked fish. Colliding, they milled left and right, met up with nightmares in both directions, and so continued to run ragged and panting along the one safe-seeming route. But after four and a half miles of forest they were on their last legs.

  They saw flyers descending out of the night sky and were terrified; the flyers had no riders, but the trapped Travellers couldn’t know that. Warriors trampled, hissed, and roared in the undergrowth; the black shadows of manta shapes flowed silently over starlit glades; vampire voices shouted orders.

  While from on high, Wratha sent to Canker: Now!

  And Nestor, to the small encircling force of thralls and lieutenants on the ground: Now!

  Then, as the carnage commenced, so he and Wratha descended, landed their beasts, and joined in the free-for-all. But it was a short-lived affair. Something less than forty Travellers—men, women, and children—had been caught in the vampire net; seeing there was no way out, a handful of them tried to fight back.

  The men had crossbows. Silver-tipped, kneblasch-soaked bolts zipped in the dark, most of them uselessly; razor-honed machetes flashed in starlight, but the arms which wielded them contained neither strength nor hope; ironwood stakes sharpened to needle points were grasped in slippery, trembling fists. Against powerful vampire thralls, leather-clad lieutenants, the Wamphyri themselves—against gauntlets, night-seeing eyes, and metamorphic flesh—they were as nothing. The Szgany were utterly exhausted; the lingering stench of warriors sickened them; their aim was off.

  Canker’s thralls—his “hounds”—rounded them up. Loping among them like one of their own wolves, they scarcely saw the dog-Lord himself until they felt his bite in arm or thigh, or he reared up to snarl and spray saliva, and smash his fist stunningly into the side of a victim’s head. Anyone seen to be carrying a crossbow … was a dead man. Canker’s, Nestor’s, and Wratha’s gauntlets seemed painted scarlet. Women and children were herded to one side, but men were knocked down and vampirized at once.

  Two minutes, three, and it was all over.

  Eight men, one woman, and two thralls had died in the fray, both of the latter with bolts dead centre in their hearts. One of Wratha’s senior lieutenants had suffered machete slashes to his chest and shoulder; his leathers had protected him; he was on his feet and would survive. Two of the dog-Lord’s “hounds” had been stabbed with ironwood stakes, but not deeply.

  Of the twenty-seven Szgany survivors, thirteen were men or boys, and three of these were grey-pates. Since the old men had little or no value except as meat, Wratha ordered their immediate execution. Their bodies, along with the other dead, went to fuel the warriors. The rest of the males, those who had not yet been recruited in the accustomed fashion, were now bled. Wratha and the Lords claimed the first of these bloody fruits, naturally, followed by their lieutenants and thralls.

  Most of the men thus infected fell at once into their vampire sleep; those who did not were ordered into the mountains, to cross into Starside before sunup. Then it was the turn of the fourteen women and girls.

  These had been split into three fairly balanced groups, two fives and a four. The La
dy Wratha took the smallest share of the get in females and turned her senior and junior lieutenants loose on the shivering, ragged quartet. There’s more than one way to vampirize a woman, and her men had done exceedingly well this night. It was Wratha’s idea of a small reward.

  Watching the mass rape—the swift and merciless shredding of garments, the naked, cringing girl-flesh, the twining, spastically jerking limbs and thrusting of tightly knotted buttocks, and all the mauling, gasping, and sobbing—Nestor had to admire Wratha’s style; her men would remember and be grateful. Learning from it, he set his own lads loose on his get of five, and stood close to Wratha where each of them recognized the other’s excitement. And looking forward to their time together, they knew how good it was going to be in Wratha’s bed at sunup.

  As for Canker: where women were concerned, no mere thrall came before him! He took each of his five in turn, and rapidly, but saved himself for the last one, a girl of no more than fifteen years, whom he took from the rear like the dog he was. And finishing with each he tossed them to his men, howling, “Don’t let them go wanting, lads! Let them know what is their lot, in Mangemanse!”

  In a little while it was over. The worst of the raping, at least …

  Then Canker’s lieutenants built a fire and the two sweetest, youngest children were butchered for roasting. It was by way of a celebration. Shortly, the vampire thralls sat around in red-flickering light and ate smoking flesh, while those of them who still had the urge and the wherewithal dragged half-stunned women away into the bushes to shag them.

  Then to the final count, when it was calculated that the total remaining get was twenty-two, five of whom were already en route across the mountains for Starside and the last aerie. Most of the females would go on the backs of flyers, and the rest would follow on foot. All of them should make it. Wratha would claim eight all told, and seven each to Nestor and Canker. It had been an excellent raid, and as yet only seven or eight hours into sundown.

  “What now?” Nestor asked Wratha where she sat by the fire, her scarlet eyes made golden by its glow.

  “Now?” She looked up at him, and her gaze might almost be vacant. But then in a moment the glow beneath her scarp blazed up brighter, and her voice was more animated as she answered, “Now we unload this lot in our manses … and then we come back for more!”

  “What, tonight?”

  “Why not? We’ve been asleep for far too long, all of us. And if my plan to galvanize the stack is to work, then we need to show Gorvi, Wran, and Spiro that we mean business. Can’t you just see their eyes popping when they see this lot? They’ll be over here as quick as it takes to tell, trying their damnedest to catch up with us. And I want them to! If I can’t make them work with me, then let them think they’re working against me, just as long as it’s to the same end. For you’d better believe me, Nestor, time is running out. I feel it in the wind out of the east: Turgosheim is stirring and it won’t be long now …”

  “In which case”—he took her hand and helped her up—“if we’ve armies to make, then we’d best be at it.”

  They broke camp, mounted up, and launched into the night. And sated for the moment they headed for Starside and the last aerie …

  Four hours later they struck again, this time five miles east of the great pass and on the edge of the forest belt. And this time, too, a different tactic. Leaving Nestor in the foothills, Canker and Wratha used their parties to form an arc two miles across and cutting a mile deep into the forest. Dropping down from their flyers but leaving them airborne along with the warriors, they then tightened the arc in the direction of Nestor. The warriors flew to and fro over the catchment area, filling it with their gasses and destroying the will of any Travellers caught in the trap.

  And it worked. Driven north as the vampire net closed, the Szgany fled straight into the arms of Nestor and his party. The catch was smaller than before but still considerable: six males, four women, and five children. Two elders crippled with rheumatism were killed out of hand and divided between the warriors; the four youngest were put to death and taken for meat; the remaining get was split three ways to be flown back to the last aerie. And at that Wratha called it a night.

  Back in Wrathspire, they met to talk and count coup. And Canker was jubilant:

  “Ten! I can’t believe it! In my vats, I’ve a warrior waxing which I intended to terminate for lack of stuff, but now I can bring him along. There are fresh women for my pups, several of whom have gone without. I was even thinning down my manse’s work force, in order to satisfy the requirements of the kitchens and the provisioning. But now my rosters are filled again, and even muscle to spare. What a night!”

  “We’ve done well,” Wratha nodded. She had changed into lounging clothes: a thin sheath that fitted her gorgeous body like a glove, slippers, a jeweled scarp upon her brow. Every inch a beautiful “girl,” it was hard to believe that she had survived a hundred years and more. The blood is the life …

  They were in Wrathspire’s great hall, gathered round a blazing fire and sipping wine. It should have been a celebration, but Nestor was frowning. He had something on his mind, which caused him to display his irritation and frustration.

  “Out with it,” Wratha said after a while, and he looked up in something of surprise.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “Your dissatisfaction?” Canker barked. “Aye, it is.”

  “Then I’ll explain,” Nestor nodded. And to Wratha: “You see, Lady, you are not the only one who can think and plot for the future; I also have a mind. Very well, so tonight we were successful—to an extent. We’ve replenished our manses, with blood and meat and good strong working muscle, no doubt about that. But an aerie needs more than that. Canker has explained to me that in Turgosheim the Wamphyri were excessive in their requirements, depleting their Sunside prey to the point of decimation. Why, you almost committed the ultimate folly: to wipe out the Szgany, whose blood was your source of life. That was the main reason you fled here in the first place: to find the makings for expansion, which were lacking in Turgosheim.”

  “All true,” Wratha agreed.

  “And yet now, here in the west, we pursue the same course as before!”

  Canker snorted. “Hah! But impossible to deplete this Sunside to that extent! There are thousands of them out there!”

  “Not impossible.” Nestor shook a finger at him. “And anyway, that’s not the point.”

  “Then what is the point?” Wratha was genuinely curious, for it was quite obvious that this was not just Nestor being argumentative in the manner of the Wamphyri.

  He leaned back in his chair, away from the fire, and said, “Now tell me: how many of our western Szgany tribes are supplicant? Oh, in Turgosheim’s Sunside, all of them, I know. But how many here?”

  “One,” Canker answered for him. “They are two hundred and eighty strong and live in a town fifteen miles east of the great pass, between the foothills and the forest. They work in metals and are good at making and mending gauntlets. But they are few in number, as stated, and so we take only their goods, not their lives. Their fathers and grandfathers were supplicant in the old times, before we came here, and it appears the weakness was bred into them. They supply us with honey, grain, nuts and fruits, beasts and preserved meat, wine and materials for our clothes, and metal tools for our thralls.”

  “Exactly,” said Nestor. “One small township, and we Lords and Lady take a regular tithe of them and divide it five ways: between Guilesump, Madmanse, Mangemanse, Suckscar, and Wrathspire. Except I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but each time we collect, the takings are that much smaller! Honey grows scarce and the granaries are close to empty; our flyers go hungry. So tonight we fed our warriors … ah, yes! But when was the last time they had it red? To simply exist is not enough.”

  Wratha said nothing. She was beginning to see his point.

  He looked at her again. “Now, Wratha: you’ve said we must build an army. Good! I agree. But of what? Why, we barel
y have the means to satisfy our individual needs as they are, without that we feed entire armies! What we need are more supplicant Szgany tribes. If all of Sunside were in our grasp, to use as we desire, then we would be unconquerable! As for Vormulac and the rest of your ‘friends’ in the east: let ’em come!”

  She stood up, put her hands behind her back, walked this way and that before the fire. “You are right. And we could do it, too—bring all of the Szgany tribes to heel, as in Turgosheim—but for one thing.”

  “Oh?”

  “Lardis Lidesci!” The name fell from her lips like acid.

  “I know what you mean,” said Nestor. “And did you know, I was a Lidesci, upon a time—not related by blood, no, but of that tribe? And I dwelled in Settlement.”

  “Huh!” she snarled. “Settlement! And how may we quell the Szgany—herd them, pen them, put them to work, milk them!—when this Lardis sets such an example? He’s clever as a fox; he controls superior killing weapons; and his territory—yes, his territory, damn his rancid Gypsy heart!—is one enormous trap … for the Wamphyri! Indeed, the only difference between him and us is this: we must fly out from Starside into Sunside to kill, while he stays home and does it! Kills us, or would if he got the chance! And certainly he has killed our lieutenants, warriors, flyers, and what all. Moreover, the rest of the Szgany are following suit. Lardis has given them heart; he shows them the way; why, it’s even dangerous to go anywhere near him!” Too furious to go on, she fell silent.

  Canker scratched his long bottom jaw and said, “Then all seems simple to me … well, the solution, if not the means of execution. We have to raid on Settlement, find this man, and do away with him. We have to crush his people, their will, and of all the Szgany bring them to heel first. Following which, any other resistance will soon collapse.”