Bloodwars

by Brian Lumley

  Beyond that time-door was the future: a chaos of hundreds of thousands of blue threads, all heading for the ever-

  expanding, hazy-blue and endless horizons of tomorrow. And even (or especially, or only) in the Mobius Continuum, human eyes could not gaze on that scene without human ears hearing a sound that was not there but born of the awesome immensity of the vision: an angelic chorus, an orchestrated, interminable Ahhhhhhhh!

  But not everything was angelic beyond the door. There were scarlet threads, too, among the neon blue (and green, and even golden threads!) For this was Sunside/Starside’s future, and it seemed the vampires had a future, too.

  Wamphyri! Goodly said, clinging fast to Nathan as the Necroscope launched himself into the future. Those red threads are vampires!

  Yes, Nathan answered. The greens are trogs, and the golden ones … must be Thyre! Of course, for our futures are mingling even now.

  They sped down the time-stream; blue threads grew dim and blinked out (or worse, turned red) as men died or were changed. And yet there was hope, too, as other threads burst from nothing into brilliant blue life, as people were born. Red threads approached, veered off, came again; none of it made any sense, except it told of struggles to come. Scarlet threads clustered close, a horde of them! They fell back, blinking out of existence by the handful. But then:

  Nathan jerked to a halt, and Goodly almost fell out of his grasp, almost fell into the future! There, somewhere in not too distant time-to-come, they pinwheeled like twin spiders on neon-blue threads, or fallen mountaineers on their ropes. Except it could be seen that all of the strength was in Goodly’s rope, in the precog’s life-thread; for where it blazed on into an undetermined but ever-expanding future, Nathan’s had come to an end! Behind them their threads - both of them - went winding back to ‘the present’; before them … only Goodly’s thread went on, seeming to beckon him. But now, to him, its twining looked sinister where it merged into the distant haze.

  The feeling of hanging from ropes was so real that Goodly cried out, ‘DON’T LET GO!’ His words gonged awesomely,

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  mentally in the metaphysical void. But Nathan said: It’s not a question of Jetting go. I … I can’t ‘let go’, for

  the thread is me. And this is where it ends.

  For a moment Goodly was silent while they spun there,

  turning endlessly at Nathan’s end. Then: Let’s get out of here, he said, quietly …

  Back at the temporary campsite, Nathan was more withdrawn than ever. Misha could get nothing out of him, nor could any of the others. But as the shadows grew longer and the sun sank ever lower, until the gap between its rim and the horizon was only a little greater than its diameter, again he snapped out of it. Meanwhile he conversed, however briefly, with Thikkoul the Thyre Stargazer, and was reminded yet again: We’re only given to see what will be, not how it will come about, or what comes after.

  Hope springs eternal; something of it, anyway. Even if the Necroscope could not save himself, he had his friends to think of, his loved ones, the Szgany as a race. Also, his nephew wolf Grinner had come to him and reported: The Wamphyri are stirring in the barrier mountains. Even before the last gold has slipped from the peaks, the bloodwar will be on in earnest!

  It was time now to move the Travellers to safety. It must be now, for Nathan could not say how much time there would be later — or even if there would be a later. The task took longer than he’d thought, but when he was done, all of the Szgany who would go were in the safe-keeping of the Thyre. In the barrier mountains, only the peaks were gold now, and the gold was swiftly fading. Nathan would like to move his ‘alien’ friends, too, if they would go. But as he had suspected, with one exception, the espers were all of a single stubborn mind: they would stay with the Necroscope and see it out.

  Anna Marie English was the exception; at Andrei Romani’s request, she’d gone with him to a Thyre sanctuary. There are so many children with no one,’ he’d told her. ‘You are gentle and can tend their needs.’ His words were valid

  enough, even though they’d conveyed something else entirely: the fact that he wouldn’t be the one to complain if she tended to his needs, too! And she had known it; that for the first time in her life someone wanted her.

  And Misha . .. had complained bitterly, tearfully, but not until the others had gone. The Necroscope had moved her last, after explaining that if there was danger, her presence would only place him in greater jeopardy. After that, Nathan, Trask, Zek, Chung and Goodly - and Grinner, of course -had been alone in the camp, in the twilight before the night. Then for a while, weary from all his works and alone with his thoughts, Nathan had sat apart from the others …

  But shortly:

  Zek came to him and said, ‘You probably know it already, Nathan, but I’ll remind you anyway: Harry Keogh inspired just such loyalty in his time, and your brother The Dweller. Their friends couldn’t be persuaded to leave them, either. And they won their battles! Perhaps it bodes well, right?’ But Zek had missed the point, for they had lost their last battle. And of course, she hadn’t seen what the future had shown to him.

  He said nothing but looked at the sky, in which the first stars were beginning to glitter over Starside. And the biggest of them was the ice-shard Northstar, star of ill-omen, like an evil eye watching over Wrathstack. Just seeing it there - its cold blue radiance — was like an invocation. Grinner coughed once, low in his throat, lay back his head and howled a moment, then waited for an answering howl to come echoing through the woods, and others from further afield. They carried his message, even to the barrier mountains: that the night would soon be here, and all of its dangers.

  And back from the mountains came another message, but this time carried on the telepathic aether: The Wamphyri Lords under Devetald prepare to launch against the last aerie.’

  Nathan had heard it, too, so that Grinner’s confirmation was scarcely necessary when he said: Uncle, it begins …

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  An hour earlier, Wran and Nestor had departed Wrathstack on a south-westerly course. Behind them they towed gas-beasts, ostensibly to bomb the most westerly of Devetaki’s observer posts on the boulder plains. And indeed they would bomb it, but that was only part of their overall and individual schemes. Each of them suspected the other’s true motives, and finally, as their target became visible up ahead:

  You’re fleeing, right? said Wran.

  Nestor shook his mental head. I’m taking my last chance to settle an old, old score - on Sunside. Of all people, you, Wran, should understand my position. In your time, you’ve settled scores of your own. It is … oh, a question of honour, I suppose. I was betrayed, and if I’m now to die I want to know that he dies first! He glanced across the gulf of air. But on the other hand, I think that you are truly fleeing, which isn’t like you. What, cowardice? From Wran the Rage? I might expect such from Gorvi, but you?

  The other’s shrug. As you’re surely aware, I’m no coward, Nestor Lichloathe - but neither am I a fool! Nor, despite rumour, am I entirely insane . .. but my brother is! Along with his power, his madness waxes. Whatever is to befall the last aerie, sooner or later Spiro will turn on me. Aye, and that murderous eye of his can blind, maim, kill!

  So what will you do?

  I won’t be the first Lord of the Wamphyri to strike out on his own. The land west of here is unknown, unexplored, by vampires at least. I’ll lie low till things cool down, then see how the land lies. Maybe Spiro will get himself killed. I hope so, for it will save me the trouble!

  Talking of trouble, Nestor answered, there’s just such up ahead!

  I’ve seen it, said Wran. Are you ready?

  For answer, Nestor swung a bolas of flints and iron.

  The ‘trouble’ was a small warrior, propulsors blasting, even now spurting aloft from a crater-like depression in the boulder plains, only two miles short of the Starside foothills.

  Down there, the handful of members of a
thrall observer group gesticulated, stabbed pointing fingers at the oncoming flyers and gas-beasts, then took cover or scrambled for flyers.

  The warrior was up; without pause, it blasted for Wran in the lead. Towing a gas-beast, it was hard for Wran to manoeuvre. Still, he managed to turn his straining mount on its side as the warrior sped by, its spines tearing holes in the membrane webbing of a manta wing. But neither was Wran idle. Even tilting dangerously in his saddle, he swung a bolas of hooks that got caught up in the warrior’s bladders, ripping two of them wide open on its left flank.

  Bravo! Nestor grunted, hurling his own bolas, seeing it fly true and turning his face away. The stricken warrior throbbed where it redistributed gases to maintain its balance. But as escaping gas mingled with air to form methane, so Nestor’s bolas hit home and struck sparks . ..

  . .. There came the great whuuump! of ignition as the warrior burst into flame from stem to stern. Roaring its pain, its fury, the thing angled anal propulsors, keeled over, came headlong in an inverted suicide-dive to batter its tormentors from the sky. Before it could reach them, more bladders exploded; it tilted towards the ground; its roaring became a whine of frustrated lunacy as, with all propulsors blasting, it smashed down in flames from three hundred feet and burst apart in steaming chunks and a crimson spray!

  After that it was easy. Two mounted flyers were off and running, and another, panicked, had launched without a rider. Both escaping riders were thralls, not even lieutenants. They wouldn’t have stood a chance against true Lords, and knew it.

  Good luck to them, Nestor commented, cutting loose his gas-beast, which joined Wran’s in settling towards the earth. Down below, a lone flyer hauled half-heartedly on its tether. In a nearby clump of boulders in the centre of the depression, skins had been stretched over a framework of ancient

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  bones to form the post’s accommodation. Presumably, there were at least two more thralls cowering inside.

  But their luck’s out.’ Wran grunted, paying out a line weighted with a net of hooks and flints, and raking the gas-beasts until they screamed and split open from internal pressure. Twin blasts followed, and the Lords were glad of their elevation as smoke-rings hurtled up on superheated thermals. Down below . .. the scoops of a freshly gouged double-crater issued smoke; a handful of smouldering scraps drifted on the turbulent air; a shattered, blazing flyer crumpled down into its funeral pyre. There were no signs of survivors.

  Nestor and Wran split up. West for me, said Wran. But I won’t forget you. Who could have foreseen all this, that time I brought you out of Sunside?

  It was my intention to kill you, Nestor answered coldly, For the way you ‘initiated’ me.

  Oh, I know that. Wran tossed his head. Well, who can say? There’s always tomorrow and tomorrow.

  But: Not for me, said Nestor.

  Then I’ll not wish you luck.

  Of course not. Why lie now?

  Wran laughed and sped away. You did well, Nestor, for a bare-arsed whelp out of Sunside!

  Nestor made no answer, but set his course for the heights over Settlement…

  Wran’s mount had suffered damage in the brush with the aerial warrior. They weren’t serious injuries, but bad enough that he would like to examine them, perhaps apply spittle to the torn areas of membrane wing, and rest the flyer for an hour or two before continuing his flight west.

  Preoccupied — knowing that the bloodwar was (or would be) behind him, and all the forces of the opposed Wamphyri factions concentrated at Wrathstack - he saw nothing of danger in landing in the barrier mountains ten miles west of Settlement. But it was a mistake.

  It was also a fortuitous event - if not for Wran. For in a cavern in the crags close by, someone had made his temporary home; an awesome someone, a someone who hated Wran with an all-consuming passion. In fact there were two of them, male and female (so far as sexual distinction matters in the Wamphyri), but his was the driving force. And the undying force that drove him was revenge!

  It was a coincidence, then, a trick of fate, Wran’s landing here; yet something which had been bound to happen sooner or later, one way or the other. For if he had not strayed into the territory of his enemy, be sure that his enemy would have come for him. And in a while, as Wran sat with his back to an outcropping rock and let his thoughts drift, perhaps dwelling on future problems, a far more immediate problem crept up on him.

  Vasagi scarcely dared believe his luck; if a state of grace exists for vampires, then that was what he felt. It was every dream he’d dreamed for two and a half long years, every morbid desire he’d conceived since his fateful duel with Wran on Sunside. And now it was his to savour to the full. And with all the powers of his mentalism restored, blocking the lustful outflow of his thoughts to less than the flutter of a moth, he moved in the shadows and was a shadow, until he stood close to Wran, but still unseen, unsuspected in the dark.

  Then, unshielding his mind:

  Ah, see, he said. You’ve learned nothing. A skilful creature may still creep up on you unseen, even to within striking distance — except this time there’s no foolish Szgany youth to give warning through his clumsiness!

  Perhaps Wran had been asleep, or drifting with his private thoughts, dozing; whichever, it took only a moment for the oily, oozing message to sink in. When it did …

  … He snatched for his belt, his gauntlet - which wasn’t there! It was hanging from the saddle of his snoring flyer! He went to spring to his feet, but a great taloned hand came down on his shoulder, holding him effortlessly in place.

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  And eyes — but such eyes — gazed down on him, red and rapacious from under a cowl black and blacker than night!

  Again he would stand up, but a second shadow had appeared out of nowhere and stood at his right. His salivating, elongating bottom jaw fell open. He croaked, ‘What? Who …?’

  But he already knew who. Knew too that it was impossible, yet real. Knew that this one was dead - the true death - yet stood here cowled and smiling, with his mind at least, for his face was invisible. And his smile was so monstrous it put even the worst of nightmares to flight!

  And ‘Vasagi!’ Wran answered his own question, in the moment before the female brought a large stone crashing down with all her might onto the crown of his head …

  Devetaki launched her forces in two great waves, with only ten minutes between them. But as for the contingents she’d sent out along the spine of the mountains, they remained at their posts. For theirs was a different role, to be determined later, at the direction of the locator Alexei Yefros.

  Bone horns blared; drummers beat on the sounding membrane of wattles along the sides of their flyers’ outstretched necks, causing their mounts to stutter and honk, pacemakers for their own pulsing manta wings; pennants streamed out from the spined backs of aerial warriors bringing up the rear, and the throb of their propulsors was like thunder in the settling dusk. Way out in front, three miles or more in advance of the leading wave, a lone flyer and thrall rider sped to the fore. The rider carried a slender lance; at its tip, a pennant displayed clasped hands: the sign of truce or conference.

  The last aerie was no longer disguised as an uninhabited shell; Wrathstack displayed the sigils of its tenants, and its levels were alive with lights, its chimneys roaring with fire, smoke and stench. Aerial warriors waited to launch from all of the major bays; flyers and riders were likewise positioned in lesser launching-bays and heavily defended ledges; the

  glint of battle-gauntlets and sheen of polished leather armour was visible in every nook and cranny of the gaunt, rearing face of the stack.

  Devetaki’s parley-thrall came on. His mount arched manta wings, rose up on winds off the Icelands; a mote against Wrathstack and the writhing of northern auroras. It flew on a level with the sun-bleached turrets of Wrathspire, gradually descending in a zigzag to and fro across the face of the last aerie.

  Wratha herself came out on a jutting b
alcony and called: You - why are you so eager to die?

  You have me wrong, Lady (the thrall was nervous but well-rehearsed). Devetaki has sent me to talk. My pennant flies the truce … we]], for what it’s worth and however brief a time. But I may not sit here a]] day; an army waits on your word.

  If Devetaki would ta]k, Wratha answered, then let her present herself. Let her come of her own free will to my roof. She knows me, and that my word is good.

  But the thrall shook his head. It is not the custom for a conqueror to talk to the conquered! Devetaki waits to see what wi]J be her get for letting you and yours Jive.

  Bah! said Wratha, but without malice. Your virgin grandam would have me surrender, then cut off my head and melt my body! She seeks to spare herself the bothersome ritual turmoil of the fray - and all of the losses which must surely result. Indeed, she seeks to spare herself, not me, for my forces and position are superior! Wherefore, if Devetaki Skulfguise has _ the heart for it, let her come on. For I am secure in Wrathspire.

  The thrall’s careful shrug, and his not so careful answer: But you are only one of several rebels, Lady, and I must speak with the rest. Side-slipping, his flyer descended until it was level with Suckscar. Wratha had seen Nestor fly out with Wran and knew he would not be back (knew, too, that if Wran did not return within minutes, he must likewise be counted out of it); but she wondered if Lord Lichloathe had left his manse as best possible defended.

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  He had, for now Devetaki’s messenger called loudly across the gulf of air to Nestor’s right-hand man Zahar, where he stood framed in a broad window. ‘You there, Lieutenant! I would speak with your Lord and master on behalf of the Commander of an army from the east. Her name is Devetaki Skullguise, which I’m sure you’ll recognize.’