by Brian Lumley
Oh, it’s no great burden, (She was self-serving in translating his meaning.) And anyway, what are friends for? As for the keep and its defenders: they can wait until morning.
Morning? Sunup, d’you mean? But how may we work at sunup?
I have a prisoner, an informant, remember? At the crack of dawn those fighting men will head for Sunside. But a mile down the pass our forces will be waiting. It will be light, but as yet there’ll be no sunlight! Those men will feel safe; on the contrary, they’ll be ours! And their weapons, too …
Good! Vormulac’s sour grunt. At last, I gain something! That makes a change! I grow weary of the many ways in which my army gets thinned out.
To which she answered, No, my Lord, it gets weeded out - which was surely your intention?
And after a while: Your intention, perhaps, he said, but very quietly, very ominously, and in his secret mind.
Except, of course, his mind was no secret to Devetaki, not with her superior mentalism. But this time she knew better than to let him know she’d heard him …
Back in the courtyard of the keep, Bruno Krasin had sent men to assess losses within the keep itself. Now he stood
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flanked by heavily armed corporals, where he eyed the newcomers who had arrived in time to dispose of the third vampire. Their bearing suggested that they were military types, but their too-casual, too-civilian-styled uniforms placed them squarely in a paramilitary category.
‘I’m Bruno Krasin,’ the Russian introduced himself in English bluntly. ‘Platoon Commander Krasin to these men. I wasn’t aware that your British E-Branch had a paramilitary section.’
‘It doesn’t,’ the senior man replied. ‘We’re CMI — or we were.’
‘Were?’ But even though Krasin tried to maintain a cool, unshakable attitude, still his eyebrows had gone up at mention of CMI. It was also news to him that this more mundane British intelligence agency had any knowledge of, interest in, or connection with Sunside/Starside.
‘Were, yes.’ The other nodded. ‘Now we’re outcasts. Much like yourself, I imagine? What, mercenaries? You can only be from Perchorsk: Turkur Tzonov’s men? Perhaps you’d better take us to him.’
But Krasin slowly shook his head. ‘Take you to Tzonov? I don’t think you would want to go, even if it were possible . ..’ Briefly he explained his meaning.
‘I see,’ said the other, quietly thoughtful when Krasin was through. ‘A pity. There was a time when Tzonov and I would have had a great deal in common. On the other hand … I take it that you’re in command now?’
‘Huh!’ Krasin grinned wryly, humourlessly, and offered a fifty-fifty shrug. ‘For as long as I last, yes. But since getting here … we’ve seen some weird stuff.’
‘So what’s your next move?’
‘Sunside, just as soon as it’s light.’
‘Can you use two more guns?’
Before Krasin could answer, a senior corporal appeared in the mouth of the cavern entrance to the keep and called down to him: ‘Sergeant! In the upper levels, we found three more dead men, sir …’
Six fatalities all told. The night wasn’t halfway through and Krasin was down to seven men! Signalling a brief acknowledgement, he turned to the newcomers and rasped, Two more guns? I could use fifty!’ And the funny thing was, he really would be glad to have these two along. In this alien world of vampires, not only was their firepower a bonus but it was good to see a pair of genuinely human faces!
‘Let’s go inside,’ he said, shivering. ‘I have a fire and we can talk. I need to know more about you. Anything you know about this place will probably be useful. We’ll have to pool everything we know.’
They skirted the remains of the burning vampire where its stench continued to go up to the sky, and made for the steps to the cavern entrance. Then, pausing with his foot on the bottom step, Krasin asked, ‘What’s your name, anyway?’
‘Paxton,’ said the other, ‘Geoffrey Paxton. A Big Gun in Combined Military Intelligence - until recently, when I found out about this place. Mainly about the gold. Now they can keep CMI. All I want is to be rich!’
In fact, Paxton wanted a whole lot more than that; indeed, he wanted everything he’d lost and more yet - and believed he knew how to get it, and intended to get it on his own terms — but as an explanation for being here, what he’d said to Krasin must suffice for now. The Russian should understand greed well enough; he would accept Paxton’s motives without hesitation.
Which was just as well, for he certainly wouldn’t understand or accept the other …
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II
At the Leper Colony -
The Fall of Sanctuary Rock —
Tzonov: Escape!
When Devetaki and Vormulac got back to the main camp on the lava falls, it was only a few hours before midnight. The warrior-Lord’s observation posts had been established out on the boulder plains; his fighting contingents had returned replete from the massed Sunside raids; the army’s provisioning was now complete. There was sufficient good fresh flesh in storage to see men and beasts through the night and coming day, and meat afoot to last another night at least.
Along with Vormulac’s other generals, Zindevar Cronesap made report. The Lady’s familiar bats had returned out of the west with news of a large Szgany encampment; they’d seen fires and a great deal of human activity; Zindevar’s interpretation was that there had been a battle, or, if not war as such, then violent blood-letting of one sort or another. Due to obvious limitations in communication, she was able to supply only an approximate description and location for the site: a massive outcropping boulder or knoll situated in the Sunside foothills some eighty miles west of the great pass, something less than two hours’ flying time away.
Since the night was still young, and Vormulac edgy about things in general, he decided to investigate. For, after all, Lord Unsleep would not sleep, not even come sunup, and he and Devetaki Skullguise had already determined on a joint venture to explore the regions west of the pass. This seemed as good a time as any; it might serve to dispel Vormulac’s
gloom and take his mind off things a while. Also, it would let his generals see that he was an adventurous and innovative commander in the fullest sense of the word.
First, however, he must inform Wamus’s contingent of the loss of their leaders, and invest them with a new one: one of Devetaki’s several senior lieutenants. The Lady had an abundance of them; she herself had ‘chosen’ the fledgling Lord; he already slept the sleep of change.
The fact that from now on Wamus’s contingent would have strong connections — even affiliations? — with Devetaki had not failed to impress itself upon Vormulac. It simply did not concern him; he was Commander-in-Chief; the virgin grandam had merely taken on another secondary role, that of weaning along a new Lord, thus ensuring that Wamus’s men and creatures continued as one body and remained intact as a fighting force .. .
So that while Vormulac gathered information from the other Lords, and attended to the minutiae of command, Devetaki found herself free for an hour to inspect the progress and well-being of her own lieutenants and thralls, and to visit her alien captives under guard in a crumbling secondary cone.
Alexei Yefros was still asleep; he shuddered and moaned in red, ravaging dreams; he would wake up eventually, entirely in thrall to his mistress Devetaki. Turkur Tzonov prowled to and fro, a fur thrown across his shoulders, his dark mind seething with plans of escape and the retention of his humanity. Ah, he was devious, this one . .. well, considering that as yet he was entirely human. Watching him from a distance (or rather, listening to his thoughts), Devetaki smiled. Then, putting on her smiling mask, and taking Tzonov’s machine-pistol with her, she went to him.
There was that which she would discuss with him. Since he was so intent upon his freedom and his continuation as an entirely human being, maybe they could come to some arrangement? The virgin grandam would deny, renege upon any such agreement, of course, but not u
ntil she had what
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she wanted. Or until she had disposed of what she did not want.
And from now on Devetaki would keep the alien close beside her, leashed and muzzled, like some strange and vicious pet. At least until the most opportune moment, when, with a flourish -
- But yet again she must guard her thoughts. For such as they were, they could easily get her pegged out on a peak as the sun rose over Sunside, and steamed away in its cleansing glare.
Or, on the other hand, they could win her a whole world or perhaps even two …
Less than two hours later — secure in the knowledge that Wratha and her renegades were confined by siege to the last aerie of the Old Wamphyri - Devetaki, Vormulac and a dozen each of their lieutenants and men, escorted by a pair of small, powerful warriors throbbing on the flanks, followed the spiky spine of the barrier mountains west, keen eyes scanning for landmark Sanctuary Rock.
While seven miles south and a mile east, where the forest gave way to savanna, Lardis Lidesci and his Travellers had come finally to the leper colony under the last great stand of ironwoods. Or rather, they’d come to the place where the colony used to stand, but where even the ironwoods stood no longer.
Lardis couldn’t believe it; it wouldn’t sink in; his eyes refused to accept it. The smell of death, the devastation, the sheer wanton destruction of it all! But the evidence was unmistakable: trampled underbrush all around, crushed shrubbery and vegetable gardens where warriors had raged, their hideous lingering stench; and the simple, most obvious and damning fact of all: that the terrified inhabitants of this place had tried to flee the holocaust, only to be herded or thrown back into the inferno. For their grotesque, blackened bodies, many still burning, were all lying close to the perimeter. It was the work of the Wamphyri, certainly - but how, why, what had induced them to come here, risking infection from the one human disease that they feared?
There was just one survivor, dying of his burns; but while he lived, Lardis must talk to him. And despite Uruk Piatra’s delirium of pain, he desired to answer the Old Lidesci’s questions and tell of the part he had played in the downfall of at least one of the Starside Lords. But first his own hoarse, coughing question:
‘Lardis, tell me - am I the last?’ He had been blinded, not by his disease but by the flames. But Lardis had made introduction, and Uruk had identified himself. That last had been necessary; there was no other way a man could know; the leper’s burns were terrific, and he clung to life only by the strength of his will. So that Lardis found himself thinking:
Uruk Piatra, aye, Uruk Long-life, they called you, which you always cJaimed was a misnomer. And yet here you are, Jast after all of you poor unfortunate lepers — in this colony, at least. And out loud he confirmed it: ‘You are the last, Uruk, aye. However things go with the Wamphyri, I’ll not be beating the bounds out this way again.’
‘It was your father built this place,’ Uruk reminded him. ‘The Lidescis are blessed . .. their stars are the warmest of all the stars in the cold, cold sky. And yet … not all the Lidescis are blessed . ..’
Perhaps he rambled: ‘Not all of the Lidescis were blessed?’ What could Uruk mean? The Lidescis as a family, or as a tribe? He could only mean the Szgany Lidesci, or a member of the tribe, for with Jason gone the only true Lidesci was Lardis himself; and Lissa his wife, of course, through marriage. Fascinated, Lardis leaned forward a little, the better to hear the other’s broken whisper. ‘Say on, Uruk, if you can. What is it you would tell me?’
‘Are we … alone?’
They were out on the prairie, a short distance from the still smouldering quarter-acre of the colony, where even the ironwoods had been reduced to blackened totems. Uruk had been found with his rags burned into his flesh, sprawled in the muddied pool of the colony’s spring. Wrapped in a
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blanket, he had been carried out here, where Lardis had come to talk to him.
Lardis nodded, despite that Uruk couldn’t see him. ‘We’re alone. My men are . .. mazed. They sit about the smoking ruins and feel the horror of it. You people were helpless, crippled, dying. You were dead, or as good as: corpses that yet walked or stumbled. Even without the Wamphyri, there was no hope for such as you. So why did they do this? What could they hope to gain from this? They could not . .. use you. What reason could they have had? Or are the Wamphyri utterly without reason?’
-‘Not . .. not they.’ The merest twitch of Uruk Piatra’s blistered, blackened head, because he hadn’t the strength to shake it. ‘Not they, Lardis Lidesci … but he! And aye, we knew his motive well enough: it was revenge!’ Then he told his story:
Some nineteen, twenty sunups ago … a lone flyer crashing in the forest in the twilight before the night! Its rider was a vampire Lord, with tiny pellets of silver shot lodged in his ravaged face. Likewise his mount, its face half blown away and hanging in shreds. The work of a Lidesci weapon, no doubt, for who else but Lardis’s people could boast these weapons out of an alien world? Hurled from his saddle, the young Lord had suffered in his fall through the trees. Any ordinary man would have been killed, but this one was Wamphyri! And Uruk Long-life had seen a way to pay the Szgany Lidesci back for all the years they’d supported the colony. And not only the Lidescis but the Szgany as a whole; all of them would benefit from a simple yet extraordinary act… of mercy! But there’s mercy and there’s mercy … And so the lepers had cared for this one who had crashed down into the forest. They had cleansed his wounds, balmed him, teased the silver shot from the raw flesh of his face, bandaged his sore, bleeding places. They had treated him as one of their own, and with their nubs of hands and grey scale fingers had succoured him through the long night. Except he was not one of theirs but Wamphyri, and they
were lepers, and their ‘kindness’ was in no way a kiss of life but a bane, a blemish, a blight.
When they coughed, they did not avert their faces; their breath went into his wounds. The balms and ointments they used were theirs, mixed with their hands. They ladled the water he drank and prepared the soup he ate, and generally did whatever they could for him .. . glad in the knowledge that their mercy would kill him, and knowing that it would kill him their way; that they had made a pJague-bearer to carry their curse back into Starside with him, to the last great aerie of the Wamphyri!
He had been feverish; crying out in the night, he’d named himself as Lord Nestor of the Wamphyri, once Nestor of the Lidescis. And at Uruk Piatra’s urging, the young Lord had spoken of deeds and named names. There was this Nathan among the Lidescis - Nestor’s great enemy - and this Misha who had betrayed him. But Wratha the Risen would make them all pay. Yes, and so would Nestor, now that Nathan was no more, now that he had been sent to hell! If he had been sent to hell!
Then, tossing and turning in his fever, Nestor had ranted and raved at someone called Zahar, making vile threats and constantly demanding reassurance that his orders had been carried out and this Nathan hurled into hell…
So the night had passed, and in the false dawn the young Lord’s fever had broken; he’d woken up and gone blundering off into the grey misty forest. If he died on Sunside … so what, he died. But if he made it back across the barrier mountains into Starside -
- Who could say? A plague of leprosy could not take all of the Wamphyri; it never had before. But certainly they would be slowed down, and the Lidescis and Travelling folk in general would earn something of a respite from them.
The one thing that Uruk and his people hadn’t taken into account was the possibility of Nestor’s return. For in all the long years of the colony’s existence, no vampire had ever come here of his own free will. Until now …
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Almost from the first few words, Lardis had known what was coming. What, twenty sunups ago? The day of Nathan’s marriage to Misha? The night of Nestor’s attack on his brother, when Lardis himself had crippled that flyer with a load of silver shot, and eve
n got off a shot at Nestor? Both of them good shots, apparently! Well, and now he knew the whole story — also knew why it had been for his ears only: because Uruk Long-life had not wanted it known that an ex-Lidesci was the author of this deed tonight. Not that it was the fault of any human agency, and certainly no man of the Szgany Lidesci was to blame; but in any case, Lardis understood.
He nodded his head, and whispered gruffly, ‘My thanks to you, Uruk Piatra. But now … I’m at a loss. For there’s nothing I can do for you in return.’
Again that twitch of Uruk’s scorched head, and once more his tortured whisper: ‘There is … something.’
And Lardis knew what it was. ‘But it seems too cruel,’ he said, ‘to end it like that. For one whose life has known hardship enough already.’
‘Would you make that one’s death . .. harder still? I desire it, Lardis Lidesci. And by … by your hand?’
‘Very well,’ Lardis could only agree. ‘Afterwards, well, the others must burn - those who are not burned already. You know why, Uruk. But I shall see to it that you are buried in a secret place out on the savanna.’
‘Ahhh!’ Uruk answered in a dying sigh, the last living, breathing sigh he would ever utter. And with that the matter passed out of Lardis’s hands. For which he was glad .. .
For long minutes Lardis sat there before covering Uruk’s face. Until suddenly he became aware of Misha standing over him. She hadn’t been there for long, he was sure; she’d heard nothing of his conversation with Uruk. Her primary concern lay elsewhere, unconscious under a fur on a Szgany travois.
‘How is he?’ Lardis asked, standing up and groaning as he felt his joints crack.
‘In a fever,’ she told him. ‘I’m worried about him.’
A fever, Lardis thought. His brother, too, last time he was here. One a /ever of the body, the other of the soul. And when he’s awake, must 1 tell him that Nestor did this? I suppose I must. So that where the one has lost his Jast vestige of humanity, the other may put aside any last remaining thoughts of love, pity, and do what must be done. Brothers, aye: bloodbrothers from the same womb. But different from the start, and never more so than now. While out loud, he said, ‘Take me to him.’
