by Brian Lumley
While Arkis ate, Shaithis studied him.
Squat in the body, Arkis’s skull was likewise squat, as if it had been crushed down a little. His face seemed pushed out in front, and his bottom jaw farther yet, with boar’s teeth curving upwards over his fleshy upper lip. And yet the overall effect wasn’t so much swinish as wolfish, especially with the inordinate length of his furred, tapering ears. Aye, somewhere in his lineage there’d been a grey one for sure. Moreover, he was lean as a wolf; well, by the standards of former times, at least. Now, eyes ablaze with the lust of feeding, upon however small a morsel, he nevertheless narrowed them to gaze on Shaithis. And when he was done:
“I’ll grant you it was a bite,” he grunted, “but was that the food you promised?”
“I made no promises,” Shaithis answered. “I stated a fact: I know where there’s food—by the ton!”
“Ah!” the other grunted, and cocked his head on one side. “Volse’s flyer, d’you mean? Ah, but they guard it well, Volse and the Ferenc. It’s a mousetrap, Shaithis; only approach their private pantry too closely and you’ll end up in it! No chivalry here, my friend. Cold, crystallized meat can never taste as good as red juice of meat spurting from a severed artery! But … beggars can’t be choosers. I have tried and failed; they’re never too far away; I know they lust after my blood.”
“Are you reduced to this?” Shaithis raised a black, spiky eyebrow. “Scavenging after each other?” He knew of course that they were; knew that he would be, too, soon enough. The “chivalry” of the Wamphyri was at best a myth. But in any case, his insult—the word “scavenging”—was lost on Arkis Leperson.
“Shaithis,” said the other, “I’ve been here four, going on five sundowns; five auroral displays, anyway, which I reckon amounts to much the same thing. Reduced to hunting each other? Let me tell you that if it moves I’ll hunt it! I had bats by the handful at first: squeezed ’em to pulp so they’d drip into my mouth—then ate the pulp, too!—but now they won’t come anywhere near me. They have minds of their own, these tiny albinos. Right now, I’m on my way to see the shriveled old granddad frozen in the ice up top. I’d have tried to get at him before, if I was desperate enough—which now I am! So don’t talk to me about being reduced to this or that. We’re all reduced, Shaithis, and you no less than anyone else!”
So maybe Shaithis’s insult had got through, after all. That came as something of a surprise; the leper’s son had always seemed such a dullard. Perhaps the cold had sharpened his wits.
“Arkis,” Shaithis said, “there are two of us now and we’ve shared food. That’s good, for it strikes me we’ll do better as a team. While you’ve been here you’ve learned things and must know many of the pitfalls. Such knowledge has value. Also, the disgusting Volse Pinescu and gigantic Fess Ferenc will think twice before coming on the two of us together. Now, what say we leave this echoing shell of ice and find our breakfast?”
The leper’s son sighed his impatience, which angered Shaithis a little: he wasn’t used to dull, squat creatures playing the equal with him. “Now, let me repeat myself,” Arkis grunted. “They guard Volse’s flyer, and guard it well! They’re likewise well fueled, which we’re not. And as you yourself have just this minute pointed out, the Ferenc’s a bloody giant!”
Shaithis flared his nostrils and for a moment thought to leave the fool to his own devices. Except that would also mean leaving him to the tender mercies of the others—eventually. And Shaithis wanted Arkis for himself—eventually. But these were thoughts he steered inwards, lest Arkis hear them. “And can they guard two beasts?” he said. “And did you think I’d walked here, Arkis Diredeath?” (the idiot’s other name).
It stopped Arkis dead. “Eh? Another flyer? I haven’t seen it. But then, I’ve not dared venture too far out on the ice lest they see me! Where, then, this flyer?”
“Where I sent it,” said Shaithis. “Still good and fresh and … wait a moment—” He sent out a beast-oriented thought: Do you hear me?—and in return sensed life flickering still, but burning very low. “Aye, and not yet bled to death. Not quite.”
“They know it’s there, that great vat of filth and the Ferenc?”
“Of course, else I’d not require assistance from you.”
“Hah!” Arkis cried. “I might have known it! Something for nothing? What? Think again, Arkis my lad. This is the Grand Lord Shaithis you’re talking to. Oh, let’s be friends, Arkis—because I’ve need of you!”
Shaithis shrugged. “So be it. I merely envisaged a joint venture which would furnish joint returns, that’s all. Equal shares. But something for nothing? What, and did you think this was Sunside at sundown, with plenty of sweet Traveller game afoot?” He made as if to turn away. “Starve, then.”
“Wait!” The other took a pace closer. And in a more reasonable tone: “What’s your plan?”
“None,” said Shaithis, “except to eat.”
“Eh?”
Shaithis’s turn to sigh. “Listen, and I’ll ask you again: Can they guard two flyers, Volse and the Ferenc?”
“Certainly—a man to each.”
“But we are two men!”
“And if they’re both together?”
“Then one beast goes unguarded! Has the cold numbed your once-agile brain, Arkis?” (That last was a lie, but a little flattery wouldn’t hurt.)
“Hmm!” The leper’s son thought about it for a moment, then scowled and stabbed a finger at Shaithis.
“Very well—but if we come upon Volse Pinescu on his own, we kill him. And I want his heart! Is it a deal?”
“Agreed,” said Shaithis. “Actually, I should think it’s the only part worth eating!”
“Hah!” Arkis snorted. And: “Har, har! Oh, ha-ha-haaa!” he laughed, in his way.
And: Go on, laugh. Shaithis kept his thoughts hidden. But when Volse and Fess are done for, you’re next, bone-brain! And out loud: “Now, guard your thoughts. We go out onto the ice …”
Volse Pinescu’s flyer was rimed with frost, stiff as a board. Still Arkis Leperson would have set to, but Shaithis cautioned him: “Let’s not waste valuable time here. What? Why, you’d wear those tusks of yours to stumps on this!”
Arkis turned to him with a scowl. “It’s food, isn’t it?”
“Aye,” Shaithis said, “and half a mile over there a lot more of it—but thick, red, and flowing in juicy pipes. Good beasts I breed, Arkis, of the finest flesh. Now listen: Do you sense our enemies? No? Neither do I. So today they’re not doing much guarding, right?”
Arkis sniffed the icy air. “It worries me. What are they up to, d’you suppose?”
“Time for supposing after we’ve filled our bellies.” Shaithis had already set off across the blue fox-fire ice. And Arkis came shambling after. Shaithis glanced back once and nodded, then faced forward and grinned his sly grin as of old. Ever the leader, Shaithis, and how easy once more to take up the mantle. And behind him Arkis Leperson, like a dog to heel …
A wind came up.
While Shaithis and Arkis Leperson, called Diredeath, sat in a cave carved by Volse and Fess in the underbelly of Shaithis’s flyer and sipped the feebly pulsing juices of that now insensate beast, the radiant stars were blotted out by dark, scudding clouds. Snow came down in a short-lived blizzard, which loaned the ice a thin, soft coating.
When the wind died down again the cannibalized flyer was dead and its arteries already stiffening. “Cold fare from this time forwards,” commented Shaithis, sticking up his head to spy out the land around. He looked towards the spine of volcanic peaks. Then looked again. And frowned his concern.
“Arkis, what do you make of this?”
Arkis stood up, belched noisomely, looked where Shaithis pointed. “Eh? That? A whirlwind, a snow devil, the last flurry in the wake of the storm. What’s this great fascination with Nature, Shaithis?”
“Fascination? With what’s natural, none whatsoever. With what’s unnatural, plenty! Especially in a place like this.”
“Un
natural?”
“By Nature’s mundane standards, aye, if not by those of the Wamphyri.” He continued to study the phenomenon: a whirling cloud of snow forming a squat cylinder twenty feet high and the same in diameter. Something seemed to move in its heart, like a tadpole in a jelly egg, and the whole—device?—was making a beeline their way. It threw off whips of snow which quickly settled to the ground without diminishing the central mass.
Shaithis nodded; he knew what it was. “Fess Ferenc,” he whispered grimly.
“What, Fess?” Arkis gaped at the thing, now only a hundred yards away across the shining ice, coming at walking pace and beginning to thin out a little. “How, Fess?”
“That’s a vampire mist,” said Shaithis, donning his gauntlet. “On Starside it would creep, flow, drift outwards from him. Here it turns to snow! Fess was a fine mist-maker … his great mass. During the hunt, I’ve seen him cover an entire hillside.”
They both threw out their vampire senses towards the weird, earthbound cloud. Only one creature inside it: the Ferenc, aye, but weary as never before. He hadn’t the strength to hide himself. “Ah-hah!” growled Arkis. “We have him!”
“But let’s first discover what goes on,” Shaithis cautioned him.
“Isn’t it obvious what goes on?” The leper’s son was scowling again. “Why, he’s finally burst that monstrous boil Volse Pinescu, but in the fight depleted himself. So now he’s at our mercy, of which I have precious little.”
Twenty paces away the cloud fell as a final flurry and Fess stood there, naked! Entirely naked, and not only of his snow-cloud cover. Arkis gawped but Shaithis called out: “Well, Fess, and how fortunes change, eh?”
“It would seem so.” The other’s deep bass voice echoed over the ice plain. But there was a shiver in it; he was freezing. And yet under one arm he carried his clothes in a bundle. Shaithis couldn’t see the sense of it. There must be a story here and he wanted to know it.
Arkis sensed Shaithis’s curiosity. “Me, I’m not interested,” he snarled. “I say we kill him now!”
“You say too much,” Shaithis hissed. “You think only of your own survival now, without a thought for the future. Myself, I think of my continued survival, now and however long I may sustain it. So you bide your time or our partnership ends here.”
“Am I to die?” The Ferenc stood tall, glooming on Shaithis across that short distance. “If so, then get it over with, for I’ve no wish to turn to a block of ice.” But he threw down his clothes and hunched forward a little, and his talons were sharp as razors hanging at his sides.
“It seems I have the advantage,” said Shaithis. “Also a score to settle. You caused me not a little pain.” The Ferenc made no answer. “However,” Shaithis continued, “we may yet come to an agreement. As you see, Arkis and I have formed a team of our own: safety in numbers, you know? But two against the Icelands? The odds are too high. Three of us might fare better.”
“Some kind of trick?” Fess couldn’t believe it. If their roles had been reversed Shaithis were already dead.
Shaithis shook his head. “No trick. Like Diredeath here you have knowledge of this place. And just as the blood is the life, so is knowledge. That has always been my conviction. To fight among ourselves is to die. Sharing knowledge—by pooling our resources—we might yet survive.”
“Say on,” said Fess, his voice more shivery than ever.
Shaithis shook his head again. “Nothing more to say. Come out of the cold and replenish yourself, and tell us what’s happened that you go naked as a babe in such a place, hidden in a weird and very unsubtle mist. Aye, and then perhaps you’d advise us on the whereabouts of the unlovely Volse Pinescu, your erstwhile companion.”
The Ferenc had no choice. Flee and they would catch him, for they were well fueled. Stand still and freeze, and they’d thaw him out and eat him. Go forward and talk, and … perhaps he could yet make his peace with Shaithis. As for Arkis, that one was something else.
He came on, got down in the lee of the stiffening flyer, tore a vein from the wall of flesh, and bit through it. Nothing was forthcoming (the creature’s blood was finished or frozen in the outer regions of its bulk), so he merely stripped the pipe down with his teeth and swallowed the pulp. It was sustenance if nothing else. Between mouthfuls he commented, “Perhaps we should have stayed on Starside. At least The Dweller would have made a quick end of it.”
“Still blaming me, Fess?” Shaithis stood over him, watched him fueling himself. Arkis sat well away, scowling as usual.
“I blame all of us,” the Ferenc answered, perhaps bitterly. “Hotheads, we rushed in like blind men over a precipice. Fools, we went to murder and instead committed suicide. It was your plan, aye, but we all fell in with it.” He stood up and went back out onto the ice to his garments, there crouching and cleaning them thoroughly with snow. At least there was that to be said for the giant: he’d always been scrupulous. When he was done he returned again to the cave of cooling flesh and lay his clothes aside to dry or freeze out.
“Some strange contamination?” Shaithis wondered out loud.
“You could say that.” The other wrinkled his already much convoluted snout. “Those stinking stains were Volse!” And as he continued to eat, so, between mouthfuls, he told them about it.
“Volse and I, we’d noticed smoke from the central cone. Also some strange activity now and then in a high cave. And we thought: If that old mountain contains heat and fire, it’s only reasonable that someone’s settled there. But who? Common men? Exiled Wamphyri, perhaps? No way to discover, unless we went to see. Oh, we cast our probes ahead of us, of course, but who or whatever lived in the volcano, he kept his thoughts to himself.
“The way is longer than it looks: maybe five miles to the foot of the mount, then a rising climb of two more to its cone. But near the top where the way gets steep, there was this cave. And that was where we’d seen signs of activity, like mirrors glinting in the starlight. Dwellers, we’d thought. Snow trogs or the like. Meat, anyway.
“Aye, there was meat, all right.” (The Ferenc’s aspect was suddenly grim.) “A ton of it! but best if I tell it as it happened and not go ahead of myself …
“So we arrived at the mouth of this cave, all craggy and yellow with sulphur: an old lava-run, I fancied. But hardly fit habitation, and no jot warmer than any other place around here. We cast our probes ahead of us; there was life in there, some dull intelligence far back in the cave; we hardly felt threatened. And it seemed likely the bore hole passed right through the mountain all the way to the core. And if that’s where the warmth was, that’s where we’d find the life.
“So we went in. The tunnel had its twists and turns, and it was dark and smelly as a refuse pit in there. But what is darkness to the Wamphyri?
“Volse, who had fashioned the most incredible pustules to enhance his already hideous appearance, took the lead. He’d stripped off his jacket, and his upper body was entirely festooned with all manner of morbid things. ‘Who or whatever,’ he said, ‘only let them see me or feel me near, and they’ll know there’s nothing for it but to faint and hope it’s a bad dream!’ I thought he was probably correct and had no objection to his going first.
“Then … Ah—!” Fess gave a small start as he spied a miniature albino bat hovering near, under the overhang of the dead flyer’s side. In a lightning swipe he scythed it in two parts in midair. And: “Ah, yes!” he said. “And perhaps I should mention: Volse and I, we had companions all along the way. These damned bats! They get everywhere.”
“Why treat them so harshly?” Shaithis cut in. “On Starside they were our small familiars.”
“These aren’t the same.” Fess shook his great head. “They lack obedience.”
Shaithis frowned. They’d obeyed him—hadn’t they?
Arkis growled: “Never mind the bats, but finish your story. It interests me.”
Partially replenished, invigorated from his feeding, the Ferenc began to don his clothes, generating body
heat to complete the job of drying them out. He was adept at this as he was at mist-making. And while he dressed so he continued with his story:
“Volse went first, then, into the heart of the riddled rock; and I’ll be honest, we thought there was nothing there. Nothing to alarm or threaten us, anyway. And yet I sensed that the picture we had of that place, of its suspected dweller or dwellers, was probably a false one. It seemed to me that my mind was watched, even though I’d failed to detect the watcher. But the deeper we proceeded into the mountain, the more the conviction grew in me that our progress was monitored, even minutely; as if each step led us closer to some terrific confrontation, some contrived and monstrous conclusion. In short, an ambush!”
Arkis grunted and nodded his head. “The very way I felt,” he remarked in a low, dark mutter, “on those several occasions when I’d approach Volse’s flyer for a bite to eat.”
“Just so.” Fess nodded, without taking offense, and perhaps deliberately failing to find anything of accusation in Arkis’s statement. “And I knew … fear? Well, no, not fear, for we’re none of us bred that way. Shall we simply say, then, that I experienced a new sensation, which was not pleasant? Nor was this presentiment without foundation, as will be seen. And all the while those damned albinos tracking our course, until their fluttering and chittering had grown to be such an annoyance that I stayed back a little to strike out at them where they swooped overhead. Which probably saved my life.
“Ahead of me, Volse had gone striding on. But he sensed it coming in the same instant that I sensed it, and he said one word before it struck. The word he said was: ‘What?’ Yes, he questioned it, and even questioning it never knew what hit him.”
“Explain!” Arkis was breathless. And Shaithis was intent, rapt upon the Ferenc’s story.
Fess shrugged. Fully dressed again, he sliced gobbets of flesh from the flyer’s alveolate ribs, sliding them one by one down his throat. “hard to explain,” he said after a while. “Fast, it was. Huge. Mindless. Terrible! But I saw what it did to Volse, and I determined that it would not do the same to me. I never fled from anything in my life before—well, except The Dweller and the awesome destruction he wrought in the battle for his garden—but I fled from this.
