Bloodwars

by Brian Lumley

  Lardis Lidesci and Andrei Romani made an odd pair: the one a born leader, hot-headed, full of fire, vision, action; the other cool, calm, calculating, a friend and adviser. But both of them were fighters to the last drop of their blood; they’d been the closest of friends all their lives; they were united, as all of Lardis’s Szgany Lidesci were united, in their hatred of the Wamphyri.

  It was their apparent disparity that made their relationship so successful. Despite that the Old Lidesci frequently accepted and acted upon Andrei’s advice, he would never admit it, and for all that Andrei despaired of his leader’s volatile temper - Lardis’s tendency to leap before looking -he knew it was the reason the Szgany Lidesci continued to survive.

  Lardis came of seer stock and something of that art was in him. Andrei had seen evidence of it before: an uncanny knack of knowing when things weren’t quite right, enabling him to calculate the odds in advance of calamity. Which was why Andrei kept his advice to a minimum and acted mainly as Lardis’s principal support, his right-hand man, and why the other valued him above all other men, because he had the effect of cooling his too-hot blood when, without him, it might boil over. So their partnership worked, and so the Szgany Lidesci survived - or had survived, until this night…

  Their looks were different, too. Andrei Romani was a lithe, rangy man (‘skinny’, Lardis liked to call him), with nothing of fat but a great deal of muscle on his shoulders,

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  arms, striding legs. The years had cost him a lot of hair but little else; his dark Szgany eyes were still keen, and his aim with a crossbow deadly. That’s why Andrei was back in the cavern entrance even now, to replenish his quiver with bolts. For outside, the hand-to-hand fighting was fierce and bloody!

  And: Hand-to-hand, he thought, hurrying to a wooden barrel of ironwood bolts close to Lardis’s command position. Aye, and it’s all down to crossbows these days, now that the last of The Dweller’s shotgun sheJJs are used up. But, for all that Andrei’s shotgun - his ‘weapon out of another world’ - was alien and more than twenty years old, it had long been his pride and joy and he still kept it clean, oiled, polished . .. ‘just in case’.

  As for ‘old’, well, men grow old faster than machines, and they’re that much harder to repair, too. Lardis Lidesci could tell you all about that, who, for the first time in his life, had commenced to feel rheumatic twinges, or ‘growing pains’, as he was wont to call them, in his knees and elbows.

  But … What else can he teJJ me? Andrei wondered, spying his leader through the smoke and turmoil, and noticing a certain look on his face … as if he’d seen a ghost.

  Andrei went over to the other where he had moved to the central boulder and leaned against it, took his arm and stared into his eyes, and fired off questions without saying a word. And he wondered about the Old Lidesci: how he was, his heart, health, his mind, stability. The hell of it was, that was all he ever did: wonder. For there was never time to inquire.

  Lardis was short, barrel-bodied, near ape-like in the great length of his arms. His lank black hair framed a weather-beaten face where a flattened nose sat uncomfortably over a mouth missing several of its worn, uneven teeth. Under shaggy eyebrows, Lardis’s dark brown eyes glittered his mind’s agility, even as the man himself remained agile despite his stumpy shape, rheumatism and the inescapable fact of his mounting years.

  For he was old now, or at least starting to show his age. Two-thirds of a lifetime spent fighting the Wamphyri would age any man before his time. Another year or two and his only son, Jason, would have stepped into his shoes, except.. .

  … Jason had been taken in that very first raid, almost three and a half years ago, since when no man had heard of him. Seeing Nathan tonight had brought it all back to Lardis; alas, that it had brought more than Jason back, and the thought that he too might be alive. For Nestor Kiklu, Nathan’s brother, had also been taken that night - and he had been heard of!

  Lardis had seen it for himself, some seventeen, eighteen sunups ago:

  Nathan Kiklu had returned from allegedly fantastic adventures in the mythical east, beyond the Great Red Waste, where he’d dwelled a while in the gorge of Turgosheim as a companion or ‘familiar’ to Lord Maglore the Mage, in the self-styled magician’s Runemanse, an aerie of the Wamphyri. There, discovering that the powerful Vormulac Unsleep and the other would-be warrior-Lords of Turgosheim were intent upon the imminent pursuit and punishment of the Lady Wratha and her renegades (in short, an invasion of Nathan’s own Sunside/Starside, and the unthinkable bloodwar which must accompany or even precede it), Nathan had stolen a flyer with which to make his escape west.

  That he had come out of Turgosheim unscathed, untainted, had seemed a miracle in its own right … but that he’d done so in the saddle of a Wamphyri flyer? A fantastic adventure, indeed, but one which Lardis had heard from Nathan’s own lips, so that he’d accepted it…

  And no sooner had the youth returned than he had taken a wife; or rather, she’d taken him! His girl, Misha Zanesti, had waited for him long enough, and her father, Varna, had seen to it that she would wait no longer. Then, in the deep twilight before the night, as the couple had returned from their nuptial trek, back to Sanctuary Rock - disaster!

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  Lardis had gone out from the Rock into the night to meet them and hasten them home. And so he’d seen it for himself and had witnessed the weirdness of it:

  Nathan and Misha, returning aJong a foothills track to the Rock; but descending towards them out of the twilight’s mist, a pair of Wamphyri flyers! Their riders could be Lords … lieutenants? Lardis didn’t know, but he knew what they were after. And these young lovers out in the open, unprotected and unsuspecting. Then …

  … They’d felt the throbbing of the mist-damp air, glanced skywards, seen hell descending out of the stars! One beast and rider had gone after Misha, the other after Nathan. Lardis had seen the girl take a tumble into a covered pit, a trap for flyers and warriors alike. She might be shaken, even a little hurt, but at least she was safe for the moment. And so Lardis had gone after Nathan, head over heels down a scree-slide!

  Slithering on his rump and heels, he had actually passed under one of the flyers where it floated down upon Nathan, its great manta wings formed into air-scoops! Then Lardis had collided with Nathan, and a moment later the pair of them had come to a halt at the bottom of the slope. But relentless as some grotesque, sentient shadow and almost as close, the flyer had been right there behind them.

  Lardis was first on his feet; he’d turned his shotgun on the flyer, discharged it point-blank into the creature’s eyes -once, twice! The thing’s high-pitched scream; the frenzied lashing of its bloodied head, left and right; the insane pounding of its wings! Immeasurable satisfaction! And yelling like a madman, the Old Lidesci had reloaded and aimed his weapon again — but this time at the vampire Lord himself where he fought to control his injured mount.

  Which was when the mist had lifted a little, and Lardis -and Nathan, too - had seen just exactly who it was rocking in the saddle of his agonized beast:

  Nathan’s brother, Nestor!

  Lord Nestor, of the Wamphyri!

  But in that precise moment, Lardis had got off a shot which he was certain found its mark. Whether or no, the injured flyer had lifted off into the mist, and nothing more seen of beast or rider.

  Following which, it should have been over - but wasn’t! For breaking through the mist, the second flyer had snatched Nathan up and made off with him! And just like Jason and Nestor before him, neither had he been seen to this day, so that Lardis had suspected he was dead …

  Until tonight.

  But if Nathan still lived, then what of Jason, Lardis’s son, lost so long ago? And what of Nestor - The Lord Nestor, as he was now, or as Lardis had last seen him: with his face torn to a splash of blood against the mist-grey night?

  Except … Lardis hadn’t really recognized him then. Not then, and not for some little time. It was only later, whe
n he went to his bed, slept, and nightmared the thing through, that he’d seen that awful face again: scarlet-eyed and bloated with black hatred; but young and proud for all that, and in outline at least the very image of the one he’d come to kill! Then, in his dreams, Lardis had known.

  He’d suspected that Nathan knew, too, but Nathan had no longer been here to ask. And of course Lardis had never dared speak to Nana Kiklu about it, and certainly not to Misha .. .

  … Poor Misha! She’d got back her lover, only to lose him again! The strength of the girl, that she hadn’t fallen apart from it all. And all of it beginning to connect up in Lardis’s mind, solidifying there, making sense at last:

  Nestor Kiklu: a vampire Lord . .. And this sudden attack on Sanctuary Rock, which had always been the Szgany Lidescis’ best kept secret. Of course Nestor had told them! But why not before? He’d probably been one of them since the time he was stolen away! Nestor and Nathan … rivals for Misha Zanesti. Was that it? Nathan’s love had brought him back, most definitely - and against all odds, at that -but Nestor?

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  Nathan’s Jove and Nestor’s - what, hatred? But they were twin brothers, born of one womb in the same hour! Ah, but Nestor was Wamphyri now! Blood brothers, aye …

  ‘What is it, my friend?’ Andrei Romani’s anxious inquiry drew the other out of it; out of the past and his morbid reverie both, and back into the fear-fraught present. ‘What have you seen? What’s wrong, eh?’

  Lardis looked at him. ‘Not what I’ve seen, but who.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Aye,’ Lardis’s curt nod. ‘And not what’s wrong, but right -I hope!’

  ‘Will you explain?’

  ‘Let these explain!’ said Lardis, and showed him Nathan’s grenades. But before the other could say a word: ‘No, let him explain!’ And Lardis pointed across the cavern.

  Nathan, Trask and Chung had emerged from the Mobius Continuum against the wall of the cavern, where Nathan had put in his first appearance. Andrei took in all three at a glance, but mainly Nathan. And like Lardis, he knew him at once. ‘What? But that’s Nathan Kiklu!’ he gasped before falling silent, lost for words.

  The three came hurrying through the hustle and bustle, but this time not unnoticed. A group of sweating, grimy, sharp-eyed men stepped forward, pinioning their arms as they drew close to Lardis. The Old Lidesci quickly cautioned them: ‘Now hold! For I know these men. They’re friends. Be about your business.’

  Andrei still couldn’t speak, and he noticed that the two with Nathan (one of whom, the small yellow man, looked a very strange specimen indeed) seemed similarly shocked, stumbling, incapacitated. But it only lasted a few seconds. Then-

  — Nathan and Andrei grasped forearms in the customary Szgany greeting - and so did the strangers, with Andrei and Lardis both! Not so strange after all. And:

  ‘Andrei,’ said Nathan, ‘put that down.’ He took Andrei’s crossbow and handed him a new one - brand new, the oil

  still gleaming on it. ‘As for bolts.’ Nathan held up a fistful. ‘Use these — but careful how you handle them, and don’t drop them! When you go out, stick close to Lardis and watch his back.’

  ‘When we go out .. .?’ Andrei’s mouth had difficulty staying shut, even when he wasn’t speaking.

  That’s right.’ Nathan nodded. ‘Into the thick of it. Now listen: if you come up against warriors, Lardis has the answer right there in his hands.’ He indicated the grenades. ‘As for these bolts: they’ll kill thralls, lieutenants, even flyers - and they’ll kill them dead!’

  Lardis pocketed the grenades, took the second of Nathan’s three crossbows and a fistful of explosive bolts, and growled: ‘Is there a plan?’

  Nathan shook his head. ‘Only to destroy our enemies, and save the Rock.’

  ‘Sounds like a good one to me.’ Lardis and Andrei headed for the cavern entrance, where again the sounds of battle were on the increase. But when Nathan and the others didn’t follow, they looked back -

  - And saw that the Necroscope and his hell-lander friends were gone .. .

  .. . Up into the foothills directly above the Rock, from which vantage point to look down on the fighting and take their pick of opponents. And:

  ‘Those flyers.’ Trask pointed. ‘Down there on the trails where they lead to the Rock. There must be seven or eight of them, maybe more. With all this smoke and fire, it’s hard to tell. But if we could take out the flyers .. .’

  Nathan shook his head. ‘Not all of them. There are lieutenants down there, too. If we cut off their escape route, they can only stand and fight … I mean to the very end. And that would mean more Szgany losses.

  ‘Half of them, then,’ said Chung. Then, when those monsters see what’s happening to their mounts, they’ll likely make a run for it! Okay, take us down there, Nathan, and let’s see what we can do.’

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  Perhaps surprised, the Necroscope looked at him, frowned. ‘You’re ready?’

  ‘Not really, but as ready as I ever will be.’ Chung’s grin was nervous.

  Now Nathan seemed worried about it. There’s still so much you don’t know. I mean, there are traps down there, camouflaged pits in the earth: flyer-traps, mainly, but warrior-traps, too. Don’t make a mistake and fall into one. And don’t get too much blood on you! It isn’t especially active in itself — unless it’s from a Lord or senior lieutenant, which could be dangerous in your eyes, nose, mouth - but, well, you can’t be too careful…’

  ‘Son,’ Trask told him, ‘you had better believe that we’ll be careful! We fought with your father on Earth, remember? And we were careful there, too. Just get us down there. The sooner this is over the better.’

  ‘Very well, but keep within hailing distance. Then, if you see lieutenants or thralls coming, you can call for me.’ Without more ado, he conjured a door, guided Trask through it-

  - And out into a part of the flyer launching-area which was farthest from the Rock, where monstrous grey shapes nodded in the mist not very far away. Then: ‘Good luck, Ben,’ Nathan told him, leaving him there.

  It was Chung’s turn, and Nathan dropped him off a little closer to the rock, but in a place where there was no sign of human - or rather inhuman - activity, just continuing sounds of fierce fighting from the near-distant Rock. And finally the Necroscope located himself at the head of the column of flyers, so that he would be the first to note any retreat of the lieutenants from their front-line positions.

  Nathan chose a flyer, ran towards it through drifting smoke and reek, lobbed a grenade that bounced and rolled to a standstill directly under the flyer’s nodding head. A moment later . .. the detonation was so vicious that it stripped the creature’s face of flesh, hurling back its head so violently that the tapering neck was broken in the whiplash.

  And again Nathan felt the power of these weapons from another world, and thrilled to it! Well, and why not? As the Wamphyri and their creatures, thralls, lieutenants took pleasure in destroying men, so he could rejoice in destroying them. What was their warcry? Wamphyri! Wamphyri! Nathan felt like shouting, ‘Human! Human!’

  He chose another target: a second grey head, nodding and mist-wreathed, maybe thirty yards away. Except. .. someone was coming, crouching low, panting. Someone whose eyes were feral yellow, glowing like gold in the dark. A lieutenant!

  Nathan snatched his crossbow from his belt … nocked its wire, loaded the bolt … was aware that the vampire was almost upon him. He lifted his arm and hand, head and eyes, and saw a flame-eyed demon with jaws gaping and arms outstretched, rushing at him!

  He squeezed the trigger - then hurled himself backwards and to one side. The lieutenant mewled like a mad thing as he staggered, snatched at the bolt in the right of his chest and tried to draw it out. Sprawling in the dirt of the trail, Nathan turned his face away. And with a sound like a crack of doom, flesh and innards went flying in all directions and half a man staggered this way and that upon the old trail, before colla
psing in grotesque and bloody disarray .. .

  Behind Nathan, lost in the smoke and rolling mist, there were other explosions, dim flashes of light. But these weren’t the soft-sounding pyrotechnics of Lardis’s inferior gunpowder. They came with a series of crisp cracks, which even the swirling mist couldn’t deaden. It had to be Trask and Chung, about their deadly work. Good!

  From the other direction, however, towards Sanctuary Rock: hoarse cries of rage and terror, screams, the throb and sputter of warrior propulsors, the occasional whine and careening flare of a rocket run wild. But Nathan knew that Lardis was there; he had heard at least two explosions which could only be caused by grenades. The Old Lidesci had already expended his most effective weapons — necessarily, Nathan was sure.

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  The Necroscope’s blood was up, and up there in the front line he knew that blood was being spilled — good clean Szgany blood, some of it; spilled or perhaps changed forever. The idea of transferring himself into that zone was terrifying, but that was why he was here. If he didn’t at least try to make Sunside/Starside safe for his people, then what was the point?

  He used the Mobius route back up into the foothills for orientation, then transferred down onto the approach trail to the main cavern entrance.

  Maybe one hundred and twenty yards from the foot of the massive outcrop, a defensive arrangement of covered pits and trenches had been dug in the hard earth and rock. In plan, the pits formed two concentric semicircles, ringing the entrance in. They were eccentrically positioned, so that any advancing enemy who avoided the first row must run right into the second.

  On the ground, however, and due to the declining terrain, the Rock’s defences presented an even more complicated picture. Enemy forces approaching from the forest (the south) must push uphill towards the Rock, while those from the east could follow the more or less even flow of the foothill contours. Lardis had known this, too, when he’d dug his pits; it was why in addition he’d drug a trench behind the pits on the level ground. And that was where the thick of the fighting was taking place even now.