by Brian Lumley
Suddenly those sections were released, their ropes hissing as they uncoiled from narrow windows, and the harpoon heads slammed down in line to strike sparks from the polished rock of the bay. A moment earlier, the long neck of
Zack’s mount would have been pierced through - and maybe Zack himself! Even the best possible scenario would have seen him bucked out of his saddle into thin air! And:
Oh? And who Jaughs now, eh, Zack? Wratha’s mocking mental voice, taunting him from somewhere within.
But not for long, Lady! he answered with a snarl, turning his startled mount to one side and stalling it into a clumsy glide … which was a single moment before he heard the first dull rumble of angry, alien propulsors.
And round from behind the great fang of Wrathstack they came, full of deadly intent, riding a breeze out of the northern Icelands and spacing themselves to provide individual challenges to Zack’s lesser creatures: four of the most nightmarish constructs he had ever seen! From their aspect alone — without that Zack sensed the fearsome focus of their tiny minds, or saw the scarlet bloodlust in their eager, swivelling saucer eyes — he knew the defenders were experienced in battle. And where his own forces were mainly expeditionary, exploratory, these were full of purpose, a grim determination, and knew their enemy.
A pair of flyers, too, their lieutenant riders alert and observant in their saddles, gliding out from fortifications on Wrathspire’s roof to direct the warriors. And in the last great aerie itself, a hundred minds coming sharply awake, uncloaking as their owners went to work with a vengeance!
More flyers emerging from secret exits below and rising on the Icelands wind … and a veritable cloud of small but deadly aerial warriors suddenly appearing as if from nowhere! (In fact, there were only five of the latter: three released by the Killglance brothers from a hidden bay in Madmanse, and two sent out by Canker Canison from the rear of Mangemanse. But all appearing together, they seemed like a cloud to Laughing Zack.)
Back off.’ - Get out of it! He sent his telepathic command with all the force of his vampire mind. They’ve set a trap, an ambush!
Too late!
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His warrior, trapped in Wratha’s landing-bay, raged like the mad thing it was and vented furious propulsive gases, but to no avail. Barbed pike-heads came stabbing from niches in the walls and through holes in the floor, tearing at its gas-bladders and slashing at its undulating mantle. Mainly unhurt though definitely incapacitated, finally the stupid thing answered its master’s command and backed out of the bay. Taking the dangling grilles with it in a jumble of buckled iron, it flopped free of the stack and fired its propulsors to stabilize its flight. But with air whistling through holes in its mantle, and most of its buoyancy gases escaped from ruptured bladders, the doomed warrior’s ungainly retreat was erratic to say the least.
Howling its frustration, it quickly capsized, commenced a spiralling, accelerating dive, slammed headlong into one of Suckscar’s causeways at its junction with the stack and burst like a bomb! Steaming hot plasma painted Suckscar’s slanting strata red; great gouts of blood washed outwards in a scarlet flood, and ran in a torrent down the wall of the aerie; loose scales, chunks of smoking meat and chitin shards spun lazily in the gulf of air. And as the huge body crumpled to the near-vertical wall, clung for a moment and then began to fall, its raw flesh left a crimson skid-mark where it slipped and slithered; until finally it struck a projection and was deflected outwards and down, end over end into eternity.
The rest of Zack’s party were faring no better. Close to the base of the stack, Vormulac’s giant construct had somehow been driven from the rim of Gorvi the Guile’s landing-bay and attacked in mid-air by speedier, more manoeuvrable creatures. With its gas-bladders ruptured and listing badly, it had been forced down on the boulder plains. Damaged in the crash-landing, it had lain helpless as all three of Gorvi’s ground warriors closed in. These earthbound constructs, unhampered by the clumsy bladders and skirt-like mantles of their aerial cousins, were heavily armoured and hideously agile. Built and equipped for infighting, they grunted their
exertions and roared their triumph as they stripped the giant to its alveolate bones and strewed its guts far and wide.
Several of Zack’s lieutenants and thralls had effected landings in the stack’s bays. Some managed to escape, others didn’t. Zack saw a flyer about to launch; a handful of defenders emerged from niches to scramble beneath it and cling on to or hack at its launching limbs; the flyer tilted over the very rim, flapped its manta wings to avoid toppling, was held back and down by the sheer weight of numbers clinging to its belly. As its rider was bucked cursing from his saddle, other defenders rammed pike after pike into the flyer’s belly, before its thrusters were sliced through and it was allowed to fall…
One of the remaining three warriors had landed on a sabotaged platform; defenders of Madmanse released chains, knocked loose weakened stanchions, sent the thing plummeting. But some clever thrall had learned a lesson from Lardis Lidesci; before the warrior fell, it had been drenched in oil and torched! Now a fireball lit the dark night air, hissing and screaming, puffing jets of blue and white fire as it plunged to earth.
Wratha’s flyers, coming from above, attacked Zack’s. They swooped; their riders lowered clusters of weighted, razor-sharp hooks; Zack’s thralls were gripped through leathers and flesh, ripped from their saddles, and dashed against the aerie’s wall … or simply allowed to fall. If they had been Wamphyri, they might have shaped metamorphic flesh for flight. But they were only men.
A clump of gleaming hooks swung close to Zack himself. Too close; he felt the vibration of the air as the weapon whistled by his head and ripped a chunk from his flyer’s manta wing. And that was enough for Laughing Zack.
Away, and run for the barrier mountains! he called to men and beasts alike, but needlessly. Even a brave man knows when to flee, with or without orders. The survivors -two warriors, one listing badly, and three flyers, including Zack’s own, one of which was minus its rider -turned
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away from the last aerie and made off … or would have.
But even Wratha had not foreseen the rest of it.
From out of the north-east, some pulsing, spurting thing zeroed in on Zack’s damaged warrior, ducked beneath the listing hulk of its body and sliced its bladders tip to tail with twin rows of erectile dorsal spines! A construct of Vasagi the Suck at his monstrous best, the warrior had been designed with just such a purpose in mind: the disposal of other aerial warriors. Except Vasagi was gone now, and Nestor Lichloathe ruled in Suckscar!
Wratha had come out onto a balcony to see the last of it. It was Nestor, aye, returned now from whatever lone mission had diverted him in Sunside. Nestor upon his flyer, all swathed and cloaked as usual, his face masked except for his eyes, burning with some inner passion or incendiary knowledge. And accompanying him, his best out of Suck-scar. Survivors of the defeat at Sanctuary Rock, they were eager to give good account of themselves and so balance the odds. But with what little was left of Zack’s lot, there was scarcely enough work for them.
Nestor’s warriors fell on Lord Shornskull’s sole remaining beast and dismembered it in short order, and his riderless flyer went the same way. One lone thrall and flyer, first away from the ambush, had put sufficient distance between to effect an escape. Which left Laughing Zack himself.
As Nestor’s warriors zeroed in on his flyer, and fired on all propulsors for a multiple ram, Zack reverted to character, threw back his great head and laughed loud at Nestor across the gulf of air. But in the moment before the collision he loosened his cloak, divested himself, and launched from his doomed flyer’s back. Three-quarters of the way to earth he achieved metamorphosis, formed webbing between his arms and legs, flattened his body to an airfoil - all in vain. For even as he slipped into a controlled glide, so Nestor’s flyer swooped on him.
Snatched from mid-air, Zack was gripped in the flyer’s bel
ly pouch with only his left arm and leg protruding. These
kicked a while, regained their normal shape, then hung still. The flyer had clamped its rubbery pouch shut on Zack to expel all air, and even a vampire must breathe or suffocate. Lord Shornskull was no exception. A moment more and .. . he was not dead, but very unconscious. So he remained until, two hundred and fifty feet over the boulder plains, Nestor hauled on his reins to bring his mount out of its dive, and commanded the creature: Drop him!
Zack’s body fell like a stone, burst like an egg, spattered the dirt and pebbles black in the starlight. His parasite leech, itself injured and knowing it was all up for him, fled his shattered body. One of Gorvi’s warriors, coming to investigate, failed to see the leech and crushed it flat.
Thus Zack suffered the true death and knew only darkness.
For a while …
… Until the necromancer Lord Nestor Lichloathe of the Wamphyri ‘spoke’ to him in his fashion, and said:
ZacJt Shornskull. Ah, but you’re a mess now! I might even sympathize and leave you in peace, /or I never knew you in life and so have nothing against you in death … but alas, it can’t be. For there are things you know which I must know, before I may leave you to sleep the last long sleep.
And: What. ..? said Zack. Who …?
Did you not feel me before I even spoke to you? Nestor’s deadspeak voice oozed like tar. Strange, that, because the rest of them do.
The … the rest of them? The rest of who?
The rest of the dead. They know when I am near, for I can feel them trembling in my mind! It is my art, you see. And the dead /ear me for it.
Zack had known he was dead, or at least he had very much suspected it, in that pitch black interval before his mind was awakened again. For, regaining consciousness in the last moment before crashing to earth on the boulder plains, he’d known that no man, not even a vampire, could
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survive such a fall. Yet now - it seemed he was alive after all! Alive, aye, but blind and crippled and … empty? For he sensed that even his leech had deserted him, he’d come so close. But:
Closer them you think, Zack, Nestor told him. For you are dead, and I am the necromancer Nestor Lichloathe.
There was no feeling - none whatever — in any of Zack’s limbs. It might even be that he had no limbs. Or that there was no life in them. Which would be the case, naturally . .. if he were really dead? Where … am I?
In Suckscar, to which I’ve lifted you up. In Wrathstack, which you invaded.
Wrathstack! Named after Wratha the Risen! Well, Zack had got that right, at least. And a thrall had escaped to get word of her whereabouts back to Vormulac. Huh! Cold comfort to Lord Zack Shornskull, who was either dead … or in the company of a madman!
His thoughts were deadspeak, of course, and Nestor heard them. No ‘either’ about it, Zack, the necromancer told him, in his most gentle and his most terrifying voice. You are dead to the world - but not to me! And now I have some questions /or you, some small points which we would clarify.
We?
Myself, the Lady Wratha, the Killglance brothers, Canker and Gorvi, of course.
And Vasagi?
Ah, no! For he is gone, and I have taken his place, his manse.
Ah! ‘Suckscar.”
Correct. I like the name, which isn’t out of place after all. Vasagi sucked with his beak and I with my mind. He sucked from veins and I from brains . .. even dead minds. I suck knowledge, Zack, and you have what I need! So let’s be at it. The first of my questions: How many men, monsters and flyers, has Vormulac Unsleep, and where is he camped?
Aye, a madman! Zack answered at once. What? I should tell you where Vormulac is? Why, he would tear out my
heart and eat it raw! And despite the weirdness of Lord Shornskull’s situation (or perhaps because of it? For if, in fact, he were truly dead, then what harm could anyone, even Vormulac, do him now?), he allowed himself a chuckle: the worst possible error! For a moment later:
I see you need convincing, Nestor sighed. But I’ll admit, I admire your tenacity: to laugh from the throat of death.
Don’t you mean, in the face of death? said Zack.
And Nestor’s answer more doleful yet, You do need convincing, don’t you? Now listen - do you feel this?
At last Zack did feel something: a breath of air - and a sweet one at that - blowing cool in his face. Like the breath of some gasping Sunside woman, trapped on the run, stripped of her skirt and thrown flat, feeling his weight come down on her and his first probing stab in the moist sleeve of her cunt.
You’ve a vivid imagination, Nestor told him quietly. But inaccurate to say the least. I merely breathed on you. I don’t take it red too often, and my breath is sweet. But tell me, why don’t you breathe on me, eh? Or even spit on me, if you like! Why don’t you at least try, Zack?
1…1…
Because you can’t, can you? Ah! But if only you could see what I can see! Then you’d know for sure why you can’t breathe, see, feel. (Nestor’s voice was the merest whisper now, but one that burned in its intensity.) Shall I show you?
H-h-how can you show a blind man anything?
I am a necromancer, Zack. You can hear my voice and feel my breath, my .. . touch? And when I concentrate, why, then you may even see what I see! Like so:
Zack saw - and screamed! Even Laughing Zack. Screamed like that same Sunside slut he’d raped. His very first, she’d been, after he ascended and achieved his full measure of metamorphism. Ah, that was a fuck! Shagged dry first, then sliced to the ribs as he turned his tool to a cartilage-toothed saw! Not so dry then, but wet and hot on his quivering bone…
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Conjured deliberately, the memory of her agony served as a balm for his own.
Really? said Nestor, as Shornskull’s mental shuddering subsided. Did you do that, Zack? My, but you were a hard one in your time! Not so hard now, though. Indeed, you’re even a bit soft in places, eh? And again he showed Zack . .. to Zack! The wobbling, soggy mess that had been a man.
But by now the other was sobbing, and Nestor very much suspected that he wouldn’t need to torture him, not this one. For he had already tortured him by showing him the truth of his condition. Zack knew now why he couldn’t breathe: because a man needs lips and a face and a throat to breathe. And he knew why he felt nothing: because when your limbs and your body and your head are so much jelly, you can’t feel anything — because you are dead! It was true, and finally he believed Nestor.
Then you may believe this, too, the necromancer told him. Just as you felt my breath on the raw red smear of your face, so you would feel my hands on your broken body and most sensitive parts. That is my art! And believe just one more thing: I can return to you tenfold all the pain you ever gave -all the pain of this vampire world - again and again and again!
For answer, the monster Zack Shornskull continued to sob. It was as much as he could do. Except:
Do — you - believe me? Nestor must have an answer.
Yes/ Yes! Yes! Zack sobbed. And he sensed Nestor’s talon hands draw back from where they were poised, and he felt that they drew back … reluctantly?
Following which, he answered the necromancer’s questions, every one, and Nestor knew he answered true …
At the end of it, Zack wanted to know: What’s to become of me? And he sensed the negligence in Nestor’s answer, his deadspeak shrug:
What else can become? It’s over.
I’ll be buried? Burned? Or what? I am - or was - a Lord of the Wamphyri, after all. Have I no rights?
None. Our forces are depleted. There’s the provisioning to consider. You’ll be eaten.
Lords are not eaten! Zack was aghast. Their essence may transfer! Something of them - however little - may get into lesser creatures. Is that a fitting end for a Lord? Continuity without consciousness?
In wartime, Lords are eaten, Nestor contradicted him. And we are at war. You won’t infect any of
ours … but if you did, so what? They are already vampires, every one. As for your Wamphyri essence: that will be well distributed. Ground down fine with the meat of lesser men … why, the warriors won’t notice the difference!
You … are a monster! Zack’s final protest.
Aren’t we all? Nestor’s answer.
Then, as Laughing Zack’s shattered remains were removed, so Wratha stepped forward, spat upon them, and cried her derision. ‘Who laughs last, laughs loudest - eh, Zack!’
But Lord Shornskull couldn’t hear her, and Nestor didn’t bother to translate …
Nestor told Wratha everything he’d learned from Zack: the warrior-Lord Vormulac’s whereabouts, the strength of his army, the fact that almost every Lord and Lady in Tur-gosheim - with the exception of Maglore the Mage, who had remained behind as caretaker -had joined Lord Unsleep’s crusade against her; following which she went off with the others, escorted from Suckscar as was only right and proper, to make her plans. Only the dog-Lord lingered, and Nestor could tell from Canker’s expression and actions (his irritable whining, the way he touched his ear tenderly and shook his great wolf’s head) that something was amiss.
‘What’s wrong?’ he wanted to know, when he was sure that the others were out of his manse. ‘Where are those high spirits of yours now, Canker? Why is your bark changed to a whine?’
‘But I might easily ask the same of you!’ Canker snarled
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by way of an answer. ‘Indeed, in the last four to five months, why, I might have asked it a dozen times!’
Nestor nodded wearily, beckoned the dog-Lord to a chair. Himself stood gazing from a window at the black-fanged silhouette of the distant barrier range. ‘Aye, things have changed,’ he finally said. ‘We’ve sniffed war a while now, and finally it’s come. Nerves have become frayed … even friendships, it appears.’
