by Brian Lumley
Vasagi had waited on one side of the trail, where the old track bottlenecked between close-grown stands of iron-woods. On the other side, in the utter dark of the trees, Carmen was as a statue carved of night. And they had drawn down the shutters of their minds and reduced their
movements, even their heartbeats, almost to nil. Their eyes were shuttered, too, shielding their telltale scarlet glow; yet still they ‘saw’ through the closed, furry lids. They ‘breathed’ with the pores of their bodies, but made no vampire mist, lest their scent was in it. They were not required to think or to probe each other’s thoughts, for their plan was simple; there was no need for repetition.
Thus they were near-invisible, as one with the darkness of the woods. It said a lot for Vasagi’s metamorphic skill, in which he was past-master and which he’d taught to Carmen. They imitated the very night! They were the forest and the writhing, silvery ground mist. They were the rich brown earth and damp, swirling air. They were not there …
The head of the column had passed them by, then the silent, shuffling column itself. Armed men had been present with every group, or interspersed between groups. Guard wolves had come close, sniffing in the trees, but sniffing nothing; for there was no Szgany blood on Vasagi and Carmen — not yet — who had survived on the blood of trogs for long and long.
And finally the tail-end of the column came into view: a party of old ones, mainly, in the care of two women, ‘protected’ by three brawny but inexperienced youths .. . and quite a gap between them and the party of mature armed men that had passed a short while earlier. This final and most vulnerable group had fallen a little behind.
Many of the old ones rode a creaking open cart hauled by a team of shads; while, assisted by the women, the less fragile of the party walked or hobbled. The youths grunted and sweated a good deal, straining to drag heaped travois. Their crossbows dangled from their belts. To Vasagi and Carmen Who-Should-Not-Be, all of this looked very tempting, very good .. .
. .. Too tempting, too good!
And in unison, without any command being given, they came to life .. . and it was as if the forest woke from a dream to a waking nightmare! They, Vasagi and Carmen,
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were the nightmare! The darkness under the trees on both sides of the trail pooled, flowed into mobile, swift-moving stains, formed a pair of red-eyed fiends whose sinuous movements were fleet as wispy clouds against the stars, rushing inwards upon the old ones, Nana and Misha, and the three young men!
The latter were the first, because they had weapons and were young, strong. Even as they sensed their danger, cried warnings, let go of travois poles and reached spastically for their crossbows, so the vampire Lord and Lady fell upon them. And it was slaughter, pure and simple.
Despite that Vasagi and Carmen wore no battle gauntlets (or rather, because they lacked them), they had formed their hands into talons with nails like sharpened chisels. Slicing her first target above his belt, Carmen cut the youth inches deep through his soft leather jacket and coarse shirt. Crying out, trying to hold his guts in, he fell gasping, writhing to the ground. And Carmen kicked his weapon out of reach. Vasagi had meanwhile torn out the throat of a second youth, so that his soon-to-be corpse sprayed red even as it vibrated in its death spasm and crumpled to the dark earth of the trail.
The third young man was backing stumblingly away. Slack-jawed, babbling, he tried to load his weapon with fingers that shook like leaves in a gale. But Vasagi sent: Ah, no! directly into his mind, flowed forward, took the crossbow from him and tossed it aside. Quick as thought, Carmen joined him, took the youth’s face into her hideous ‘hands’ and breathed her essence into his gaping mouth. As he collapsed, paralysed with terror, she caught him up and bore him away into the woods. And Vasagi sent after her: Drink deep!
And you, my Lord, she answered, flowing as darkness back into the dark woods with her prey. And indeed he intended to, but from which of these human vessels? From whom?
All of this had taken but a moment. Many of the old ones
— looking the other way, mumbling together, or lolling sleepily on their cart — weren’t even aware that anything was happening. But Nana and Misha had seen!
For long, wasted moments they’d clung together, paralysed by the sheer shock of the attack, but as Vasagi’s scarlet eyes scanned and settled upon them, so they were panicked into activity. Then, screaming their loudest -screaming not only their horror but an unmistakable warning - they instinctively ran in different directions; for they knew that the monster could not target both of them at once. Nana ran to one side, skirted Vasagi, leapt nimbly forward along the trail. Misha threw herself under the cart and clung to the boards.
Vasagi was undecided. He could turn the cart over, certainly … it would be worth the effort, aye, for the girl was a beauty. But so was the older woman, and both of them full of rich red blood!
He made up his mind and pursued Nana, leaning forward and /lowing in that sinuous, gliding, unnerving lope of the master vampire. And breathing a mist, and calling up a ground mist out of the shuddering earth, he rapidly closed the gap between. But at last, in answer to Nana and Misha’s piercing screams, there sounded pounding footsteps; the party of armed men was returning along the trail!
Issuing from Vasagi’s pores and from the earth alike, his vampire mist was as good as any he ever made. Even as he caught at the fleeing woman’s hair, jerking her to a halt and dragging her to her knees, so his mist enveloped her, clinging like damp cold sweat. But coming the other way, and almost colliding with Vasagi where he snatched up the fainting woman into his arms …
… An armed youth, all wild and ragged-looking in his anxiety! Blue-eyed and yellow-haired, shiny-damp with mist and the sweat of horror, he gasped his shock and disbelief as he saw:
‘Mother!’ the youth cried, snarling his hatred and swinging his weapon in Vasagi’s direction … but yet hesitating to
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pull the trigger! If his crossbow had been of an orthodox kind, he would have fired it, certainly. But Vasagi wasn’t aware of his good fortune.
Dropping the woman and lashing out all in one smooth movement, Vasagi caught Nathan a glancing blow, but sufficient to send him flying. And stooping over the fallen youth he glared into half-glazed, startling blue eyes … which at once snapped back into furious focus! Then —
- Vasagi reared back as the youth’s weapon-hand and arm swung determinedly up from the earth to point his wet-gleaming crossbow at him a second time. Only this time he fired it. The bolt missed Vasagi by a hairbreadth and went whirring off into the night. Ah, but this one would never shoot at a Lord of the Wamphyri again, be sure!
Vasagi stooped to grasp the other’s throat, fully intending to rip out the pup’s windpipe, chords and flesh and Adam’s apple, all in a welter of spurting red … only to release him in the next moment, shocked rigid by a flash of light and shattering explosion from behind and somewhere overhead!
However momentarily, the flash had lit the forest track with a dazzle of white fire, leaving one of the lower branches of an ironwood splintered, as if struck by lightning, where Nathan’s explosive bolt had shattered it some twenty feet above the ground. And finally, bending under its own weight, with a tortured squeal of torn timber, the weakened branch came crashing down!
The earth shook as the branch smashed down, blocking the trail. And beyond the dust and debris of its falling, figures came running with flaring torches and sweeping beams of light like mirrored sunlight … but in the dark of night?
It was all too much for Vasagi!
Snatching up the unconscious woman, he left the trail and fled, or flowed, into the dark maze of the woods and followed Carmen’s scent through the night. But when he was well clear of the Lidescis - and when he came upon Carmen waiting in a clearing, where already she’d com-
menced to slake her awful thirst - at last it was time to take the edge off his own hunger of more than two long years.
For goat-meat and trog-flesh will suffice when there’s nothing else, but there’s no real substitute for the sweet red juice of humanity.
And Carmen (even Carmen, a fearful Lady of the Wamphyri!) turning her scarlet-smeared face away, shuddering as the Thing that was Vasagi fed himself on the mercifully unfeeling figure, the melting shape, and finally the shrivelled corpse, that was once Nana Kiklu.
The rending! — The grunting and slobbering! — the pink-tinged steam that rose up from it…!
Misha, witnessing the departure of Carmen and Vasagi, had come out from under the cart and gone to Nathan where he writhed on the misted trail, clutching at his throat and choking. The two youths who had pulled the travois were quite dead; their colleague was missing, as good as dead. Finally Nathan could speak and croaked:
‘My mother?’ He looked wildly all about through the clearing mist. ‘Nana?’
Misha had no answer for him, not even a shake of the head. She knew that he wouldn’t accept it even if she told him. Looking at her - seeing the drained look on her face — he got to his feet and automatically, uselessly, dusted himself down .. . but in a little while stopped and reeled like a drunkard. And: ‘Nana?’ he said again, hopelessly.
Suddenly there was no strength in him, and he went to his knees, crumpling to one side. Misha fell with him, cradling his head with her breasts. ‘Oh, Nathan, my Nathan .. .’
‘N-N-Nana?’ It was a sob, almost the wail of a lost child. But in the next moment it was a choked, outraged roar of sheerest rage, madness:
‘Motheeer! Nanaaaaa.’ Naaa-naaaaaaa!’
The party of armed men had arrived. They saw the bloodied bodies, guessed the rest. And in a little while Ben
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Trask and David Chung came running, their torch-beams flashing, and Lardis Lidesci not far behind, cursing vividly.
Nathan took Misha’s face tenderly in his hands. Unashamed tears washed his own gaunt visage as he begged her, ‘Which way? Did you see?’ His voice was the merest whisper.
She pointed into the woods — then grasped his arm as his face twisted into a snarl and he seemed to lean that way, as if tugged by invisible forces. ‘Nathan, no!’
He got up again, shakily. ‘But I have to. I must.’ And in his metaphysical mind:
Nathaaan! His sweet mother, calling to him. His poor brave Nana, unafraid even now. And the awful truth like a hammer-blow to his reeling mind, that she spoke to him in his mind! And the fact that it wasn’t telepathy.
‘Ma?’ The word fell from his lips like an echo from long, long ago, when another Necroscope had mourned his mother, in a dim and distant world.
And now her words were warm, and Nana’s smile was warm in the deadspeak aether: Nathan, son. Try not to feel so torn. For there was no pain, none at all. And even now we’ve not been put apart. No, for now I’m another voice to talk to in your pillow. I always knew you were your father’s son, Nathan. And what the Necroscope Harry Keogh did, you can do again. Aye, for all of us, the living and the dead alike . ..
‘Look!’ Trask pointed.
High overhead, and rising, a pair of manta shapes pulsed through the sky. Wamphyri flyers, scudding like clouds against the stars. They were there, and they were gone, lost over the horizon of treetops.
Nathan snarled, stumbled a pace in the direction the flyers had taken. He would conjure a Mobius door, leap into the sky, go after them! But:
No, Nathan, not in haste or hatred. That way you’re fallible. Your father was fiery, too, sometimes. But not when he made war. Then he was cold.
‘War,’ Nathan panted, gritting his teeth. ‘Aye!’ And his empty blue eyes mirrored the ice-cold starlight.
And mustering all the strength of his blasted, bereaved, agonized mind, he hurled a question, a taunt and a challenge after the unknown Wamphyri thief who had stolen that which was precious beyond words:
You! Bastard Thing! Mother-killer! Who are you? Who is it I must seek out to kill?
Eh? came back a mental grunt, perhaps surprised. A Szgany mentalist — and powerful! Is it you, freak? Blue-eyes, yellow-hair? I see that it is. And she was your mother, was she? Well, and now we’re kin, Blue-eyes - for her blood runs in my veins, too! Oh, ha-ha! And so you’d seek me out to kill me, would you? But that’s been tried before! There came a grim chuckle, gradually fading, and finally a hoarse, chilling whisper: Very well, if you’re that tired of life, then seek me out. I look forward to our meeting. But don’t forget to ask for me by name …
… By the name of Vasagiiiii!
Vasagi! A name to ring, raucous as a cracked bell, in the Necroscope’s mind forever. Or if not forever, for as long as it took to still it. Then, to himself, a promise: Vasagi, you are doomed! I swear it…
Except it was not to himself, for the Necroscope’s every thought was deadspeak. And:
All in good time, Nana told him softly. But first, me.
‘You, Ma?’ The anger fled out of him in a moment, for the moment.
Oh, indeed. For while I’m dead, son, we really have to be sure I’ll stay that way. Find me, and give me to Lardis. He’ll know what to do.
Nathan moaned, staggered, and finally resigned himself to it. He stepped aside from the others, conjured a door and followed Nana’s voice to where her body lay crumpled on the forest floor. And when he saw her, if he hadn’t known that it was her, then he never would have known .. .
He took her back to Lardis, handed her into the Old
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PART SIX
Battle Stations!
Lidesci’s arms … and passed out cold under the glittering stars.
Ben Trask and Misha caught him, and lowered him on to one of the travois. And: ‘Thank God for that!’ Trask said.
Misha looked at him, until he explained, ‘Where Nathan is now, there’s no more pain. Not for a little while, anyway.’
Lardis gave a grunt and said, ‘And no war either — for a little while, at least. Eh, Ben Trask?’
The other shook his head grimly. ‘Not yet,’ he answered, ‘but it’s as well to let him rest. For the war will come soon enough, you can be sure of that.’
Looking at the poor shrivelled thing in his arms, then at the man on the travois - his drained face, for the moment drained, whose looks were now more than ever Harry Keogh’s - Lardis gave a nod of his gnarled old head. Oh, yes, he was as sure of that as he’d ever been of anything …
I
Wratha’s War Counci] -The Attack on the Keep - New Arrivals
Lolling on the jolting bed of a travois, with a skin tossed over him against the chill of the Sunside night, and his young wife Misha walking alongside, the Necroscope slept a sleep of total exhaustion; this time a far more emotional than physical fatigue. Finally burned-out if not actually bereft, there was no room for dreams in the closed-down vaults of his mazed mind now - or rather, no energy for them. Neither dreams, thoughts nor even esoteric, whispered conversations .. . nothing to disturb him. This was a healing sleep, for a wound as deep as the soul.
The Great Majority knew, of course, and were silent; they had felt Nathan’s grief; their whispers no longer echoed in the deadspeak aether. And for the first time in what seemed a very long time, the Necroscope was finally at peace -
- But the rest of Sunside/Starside was not.
Out on the boulder plains, Vormulac’s observation posts were being set up in ages-fretted ossuary piles or the rubble of crumpled aeries, wherever man and beast could find shelter from the grim grey light of the coming day. It made little or no difference that the sun never shone on the boulder plains; the mere proximity of that furnace orb was enough of a threat in itself. When the barrier mountains turned golden in their peaks, that would be the signal for the warrior-Lord’s creatures to cower down and sleep, however uncomfortably, irritably, in whatever shade they could find. It was the way of the vampire.
And far down the spine of the barrier range, beyond the
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dog-leg pass, Black Boris pulsed east with his company of lieutenants, thralls and warriors, to make camp in the caverns of the trogs. Black Boris, at least, was not too displeased with his lot.
While in the great pass itself:
Lord Unsleep and Devetaki Skullguise landed and hid away their flyers, and crept silent as shadows to find an advantageous position from which to watch Lord Wamus’s invasion of the gorge’s guardian keep.
And fifteen miles east of the pass, a veritable swarm of vampires settling to what remained of Wratha’s stunned supplicant Szgany tribes, sacking, raping and looting indiscriminately, putting on fat and gathering provender against the coming day and all the bloody nights that were yet to be. For in the final analysis, the warrior-Lord had seen little or nothing to be gained out of the conservation of these snivelling supplicants; since Vormulac must in any event provision his army, it were best done at Wratha’s expense. Moreover, it pleased Lord Unsleep to know that in using up these people he destroyed in short order what must have cost Wratha no small amount of time and effort to implement! Therefore, all in all, such slaughter seemed the logical decision. Or the logic of the Wamphyri, at least. And in any event… gratifying?
As for Wratha herself:
Even now, in Wrathspire, that Lady was making decisions of her own …
With the exception of Canker Canison, Wrathstack’s Lords had all come up to Wratha’s war council. Gorvi grudgingly (he felt far safer in Guilesump, where he’d taken additional, personal, and secret precautions against the stack’s invasion); the Killglance brothers awkwardly, distanced from each other by reason of Spiro’s ‘superior talent’; and Lord Nestor Lichloathe gloomily, as was his wont. Indeed, such was the necromancer’s morbid fascination with death, he now more than ever shrouded himself in cerecloth robes, till
