Andrei Romani nodded and clapped his hands appreciatively. And: 'Well done, Twin Fords!' he chuckled, however grimly. 'A little good news at last. At least they were prepared!'
'No,' Vratza shook his head. 'It was that we were not prepared. Some of the men fought back! In Turgosheim, that would have been unthinkable. But afterwards, striking here, by then we were prepared. As for myself, I was unlucky .. .'
'Very,' said Lardis, quietly, 'for it will cost you your life - this loathsomeness which your life has become, anyway. But in fact we'll be doing you a favour.'
'You'll burn me anyway?'
'You know we will.'
'And you call that a favour? Hah! Why then should I talk to you?'
To live a little longer,' Lardis answered, as Kirk rammed the spade into the earth again.
The cross gave a jerk and Vratza cried, 'No, wait!' And in a moment: 'What else?' he groaned.
Lardis considered it, stroked his chin. 'Six of the Wamphyri, and two - no, one - lieutenant. And thralls?'
'Only those which we recruited in Twin Fords. And a few recruited here tonight, perhaps.'
'Aye, precious few,' Lardis told him, grinding his teeth. 'For we're old hands at dealing with your victims!' Clenching his fists, he took a pace forward; Andrei Romani was there to grab his arm and bring him to a standstill.
But the passion had gone out of Lardis in a moment; he was his own man again; he sighed and let his shoulders slump. 'And we have dealt with them,' he said. 'Most of them ... I think.'
He drove from his mind all of the gaunt, accusing faces of those he had examined and found wanting, and tried to concentrate on the business in hand. But it was hard, for he was very tired now. And: 'Warriors,' he growled at last. 'How many?'
'Three,' came back the answer. 'But they will make more, as soon as they have the stuff for it.'
What? The 'stuff? Lardis couldn't contain a shudder. This nightmare thing was talking about people - decent human beings, good Szgany flesh - mutated by the Wamphyri into monsters! Deep inside he felt his gorge rising, also his fury and everlasting hatred. And he knew that he wouldn't be able to talk to Vratza Wrans-thrall for very much longer.
But for now he must control himself, keep a tight rein on powerful Gypsy emotions, and say: 'Something here rings like a bell without a clapper - hollowly. You say the Wamphyri came here out of this Turgosheim with only a handful of lieutenants and warriors between them? What, and were they banished?'
'Not banished, no,' Vratza answered, sweat dripping from him where he suffered the agonies of the silver spikes. 'But she would have been, the Lady Wratha, if the others had known of her works earlier. It was this way:
'Warriors, the aerial sort, are forbidden in Turgosheim. But as you have seen, Wratha the Risen and her colleagues made fighting creatures that flew. To do so they must work secretly, in the privacy of their manses; it was the only way they could escape the restrictions of Turgosheim and make new lives here. But in the end they were discovered, and so forced to flee.'
Lardis frowned, scratched his head. There are no warriors in Turgosheim?'
'Not which fly. Of other types: a few lesser creatures are kept in the spires and manses, and there are those which roam in Turgosheim's bottoms, guarding against intruders.'
Lardis frowned, tried to picture all he'd been told, and slowly nodded. He looked around at his men, narrowed his eyes, and continued the questioning. 'But eventually - I mean, now that this Lady Wratha has found her way here - it's entirely possible that the others will breed monsters of their own and follow her, right? And is that why she's in such a hurry to make new lieutenants, warriors, thralls?'
Up on his cross, Vratza was growing weaker by the moment. The alien stuff in his blood, which made him a vampire, was poisoned; his flesh could not repair itself; each of the small silver balls in his peppered chest was an agony in its own right. Even so, and for all his suffering, he was beginning to see Lardis Lidesci in a new light. He nodded, as much as the spike through his topknot would allow, and grunted, 'I can see ... can see that they will have their work cut out ... with such as you. And I believe that I... that I am not the first thrall of the Wamphyri with whom you've spent an hour or so in ... in poJite conversation. A shame we weren't destined to meet on terms more equal.'
'Aye, too true!' said Lardis with a snort. 'What? Equal terms? You with your gauntlet and the strength of five men, undead and almost impossible to kill? Hah! Do you remember how you were taken? And were those equal terms? No, don't try appealing to my humanity, Vratza Wransthrall. For where you and your like are concerned, I am a monster in my own right!'
Kirk Lisescu tugged urgently at his elbow. 'Get on with it,' he whispered. 'He grows weak. Get what you can out of him and then make an end of it.'
Vratza scowled down on them. 'I have a vampire's ears,' he growled, 'in which your whispers ring like shouts! Anyway, you are right: I am weak and fading fast. You should go away now and let me die. That is what I wish.'
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
'A few more questions,' Lardis told him, 'and then I'll see to your wishes personally.'
'No! No!' Vratza protested, groaning. 'It is ... it is enough. I ... I am finished.' He hung his head, slumped down on his spikes.
Lardis nodded, but grimly. 'So you're finished, are you?' he repeated the other. 'Yes, and I'm the village idiot, lured away from a nest full of eggs by a partridge with a "broken" wing!'
Vratza said nothing but simply hung there, even when Kirk took up his spade again.
Lardis waited a little while, then said, 'Vratza, listen to me. We can't stay here but must move on; all of us, the entire village. And we certainly don't intend to take you with us. Now, you are going to die, I make no bones about that. But how you die is up to you. This is your choice:
'Answer a few more questions, and then go cleanly, without even knowing it. Or hang there till morning when the sun comes up, and suffer the worst of all possible deaths - for such as you. Now listen: you are right and I've had dealings with vampires before. I have seen and heard the likes of you melting in sunlight: the swift blackening and peeling of your skin, the black smoke boiling as your fats begin to melt, the awful screaming as your guts rupture and your eyeballs start out upon your cheeks. After an hour, two, three at most, you will be a black and tarry rag-thing hanging there, with all your bones protruding and your black skull frozen in a final scream! Is that what you want, Vratza Wransthrall?'
Vratza twitched a little but made no answer.
'So be it,' Lardis nodded. And: 'Men, bind this creature more firmly yet, with good silver wire round his arms, legs and neck. And knock a few more nails in him, so that he won't jerk himself loose when the sun's first rays hit him. Then clear the village. We're moving out, right now, within the hour.' It was a bluff, of course, but Vratza didn't know that.
'Wait.'' The vampire's scarlet eyes shot open as he began to strain again, but less powerfully, against the spikes where they pierced his flesh. Then, panting, genuinely exhausted, he hung there glaring at Lardis as before; but helplessly now, hopelessly. And:
'I'm good as dead anyway,' he choked the words out. 'Your silver is in my blood. But ... do I have your word? Will you make a clean end of it?'
Lardis nodded, and growled: 'Which is more than you ever granted.'
Vratza lay back his head against the cross, closed his eyes and breathed deep, and said, 'One bolt won't be enough. I was Wran's thrall for long and long. I've come very close to being Wamphyri...'
Lardis nodded again, and quietly said, 'So I've noted. Be sure we'll take care of it.'
'Then ... ask your damned questions and be done!'
To one side of the cross and a little behind it, just out of sight of the crucified vampire, Andrei Romani's brothers placed loaded crossbows in readiness on the now empty table, and Kirk Lisescu snapped his shotgun shut. They didn't want Vratza to see their preparations, in case he should resolve to remain silent to the end. But, strangely, there was no hatred left in them now - not for this one, who was finished - just a grim determination.
And Lardis said: 'You've told us about this Lady Wratha, who is the leader of the six. Also about your master, Wran the Rage. Now tell me about the rest. Who are they, and how may we know them?'
Vratza levelled his head and stared out bleakly across ravaged, smouldering Settlement. And as if he were speaking to the night:
'Gorvi the Guile is one of them,' he said. 'As his name suggests, he's smooth and slippery as oil. Then there's Spiro, Wran's brother, called Killglance. They are twins, Spiro and Wran, whose Wamphyri father had the evil eye. In his youth he could kill men - kill the Szgany, burst their hearts - just by looking at them! The brothers have tried it, too, though as yet with no success to mention. Also, there's Lord Vasagi, or Vasagi the Suck, as he's known. I will not try to describe him but ... you will know him anyway, when you see him. Last but not least there's Canker Canison, who sings to the moon and leans to the fore, loping like a dog or a fox, but upright on two legs ...'
A choked cry - half-gasp, half-shout - rang out from the flickering shadows a little beyond the range of the fires, and Nathan Kiklu stumbled into view, his eyes fixed on the terrifying yet tragic figure on the cross.
Standing in the shadows of an upended cart opposite the dull-glowing fire-pit, listening to all that Lardis had asked and every answer that Vratza Wransthrall had given him, Nathan had been witness to everything. Until a moment ago his eyes had been like misty mirrors: full of starlight, firelight, strangeness. But now, suddenly, he was alert as never before. Coming forward to stand beside Lardis, he gazed up hard-eyed at the wretched creature on the cross. And:
'What was that?' he said, his clear youth's voice contrasting with the coarseness of the night, cutting it like a knife. 'About a dog or a fox, a loping thing? Canker Canison, did you call him?'
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
The vampire angled his huge head to look down on Nathan. He recognized him: this was one of the first faces he had seen when he regained consciousness, before the questioning commenced. Then ... the youth had seemed terrified; he'd backed off a pace and stumbled, moved away to where Vratza's scarlet gaze couldn't follow. Even now he was unsteady on his feet, but no longer awed.
And so Vratza was brought to this: even children dared to gaze upon him now, without cringing!
Curling his fleshy upper lip, the vampire snarled and showed Nathan his twin-tipped tongue and dagger teeth. But still the youth stood there. Until finally Vratza smiled - if what he did with his face could be called smiling - and said: 'I was your age, when I was taken in the tithe. Since when ... I've come a very long way.' He glanced at Lardis. 'Aye, even to the end.'
Lardis put an arm across Nathan's shoulder. The lad has ... he has an interest in all of this,' he said. But looking at Nathan, he knew it wasn't a healthy one.
'Oh?' Vratza cocked his head a little on one side, ques-tioningly.
Nathan's mouth twitched in the left-hand corner. 'It... it's my girl. This dog-thing, Canker, knocked me down and took her from me. Since when ... she hasn't been found.'
'Ah!' said Vratza, matter-of-factly. And as if Nathan no longer existed, his red eyes swivelled to look at Lardis. 'Is it done? Am I finished?'
Lardis nodded; Kirk Lisescu and the others took up their weapons, came from behind the cross into view.
Vratza saw them, and fire and blood sprang into his eyes together. He opened his nightmare jaws and hissed, vibrating his forked tongue in the red-ribbed cavern of his throat.
'No, wait!' Nathan shrugged free of Lardis's arm, pointed a steady hand and finger at the monster on the cross. 'I want you to tell me: about Canker Canison, and about Misha. How will it be for her?'
'No!' Lardis got in front of Nathan, throwing up his arms as if to ward off some horror; indeed, to ward off a very real horror. 'Vratza, don't tell him anything! Your time has come.' He glanced at his men where they took up their positions, and nodded. But the vampire was already speaking - to Nathan.
'My last act,' he said, in a voice which bubbled like tar in a volcanic pit, 'to curdle your dreams now and forever. You ask about Canker? And your girl?'
'Yes,' Nathan had to know. But behind him the men were lifting their weapons, aiming them.
'Canker takes women for one thing only,' Vratza gurgled. 'To use them. And when he has used them - in whichever of the many ways he favours - then he worries them, as a wolf among goats!'
'Be quiet!' Lardis roared.
A crossbow thrummed and its bolt took Vratza close to the heart, burying itself in his torn and bloody chest until only the flight protruded. He jerked massively and coughed up blood, then sucked at the air - and continued to speak! And with his voice rising to a shriek, and finally a gale of mad laughter, he said:
'Boy, do you see this shaft in me, how it tears me? So she is torn, even now. And Canker's shaft is just as vicious. Be sure he'll fuck her heart out! Oh - ha, ha, haaaaa!'
Nathan staggered to and fro, his face pale as a papery wasp's nest, with dark punched holes for eyes and mouth. And as a second bolt joined the first (though still not on target, for the men were shooting in haste to shut Vratza up, and so missing their aim), the youth whispered:
'And now ... now I want you to die.'
Kirk Lisescu granted Nathan's wish. Twin blasts, coming in quick succession, turned the vampire's head to pulp as silver shot removed any last trace of a face.
Blood flew in gouts and splashes; booming echoes came back thunderously, first from the stockade's walls, then from the hills; Lardis dragged Nathan roughly aside, out of the red rain. 'You don't want that on you,' he gasped. 'What? Even the air that bastard breathed is tainted!'
Again Nathan shook him off, then staggered away into the night to be sick. Once, hearing shouting, he looked back and saw the cross and the thing upon it as a black silhouette against the glow of the fires - but the silhouette was hideously mobile!
Vratza Wransthrall had told how he was close to becoming Wamphyri, and he'd been right. Undead meta-morphic flesh formed nests of writhing tentacles which sprang from his guts, chest, and all the massive parts of his body. Whipping and vibrating, they lashed themselves - lashed him - to the cross's upright and horizontal bar. But the men had lassoed both arms of the cross and were hauling on it furiously, until it leaned over and toppled into the fire-pit.
Nathan heard the hiss, saw white smoke or steam rising, which he knew would soon turn black. Lardis had it right: in an hour, Vratza would be reduced to a stench and a final puff of smoke. Nothing more would remain of him -
- Except, of course, that monstrous picture which he'd painted in Nathan's head. And that might very well last for a lifetime.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
Meanwhile, Nathan's stomach in its entirety desired to be out of him ...
Afterwards: Nathan went back to his mother's house and dug in the ruins. He wasn't satisfied that the searchers had done everything in their power. And in order to be absolutely certain, when he was finished with the house he laid bare the floor of the barn. And found nothing, not even a bloodstain.
He stood on the spot where he'd last seen Misha in the embrace of a snarling red-eyed fiend, hung his head, gritted his teeth, clenched his fists. But he didn't cry. No, he told himself, I'll shed no tears until I've shed his blood, taken his shaggy head, smeJJed the stench of his burning hide and seen his last black trace go drifting on the wind!
It was his Szgany vow.
He slept again, and before the dawn went to the Zanesti house where it stood undamaged. Misha's father and surviving brother were there, pale as ghosts, sitting in silence. Before, they hadn't much cared for Nathan; now, her father cradled his head and cried on it. But Nathan wouldn't. And Misha's brother (perhaps thoughtlessly, but surely he could be forgiven) said, 'She never knew a man; she'd been with no one; she wasn't even whole. Once, I would have killed the man who looked at her like that! And now I would kiss him - because Misha had loved him.' And he'd looked at Nathan, perhaps hopefully.
But the youth could only shake his head and say, 'Always remember, you have each other." Which, while he'd not intended it that way, caused them to see that Nathan had no one. Before they could say anything he left them and went looking for Lardis, only to discover that the old Lidesci had experienced the selfsame doubts and returned to his ruined cabin on the knoll.
Nathan joined him there, where Lardis had been at work again in the wreckage. He came across him sitting in what had been his garden, with eyes as vacant as his soul, staring south, waiting for the first glimmer of light to make a silver stain on the far faint curve which was the rim of the world. And when at last Lardis sensed him there, blinked life back into his eyes and looked at him, then Nathan said:
'What will you do, Lardis? Will it be as you told it to Vratza Wransthrall? Will you trek with your people, and turn them into Travellers as in the old days, to keep them from the Wamphyri?'
Lardisshookhishead.'Some will moveon,'he answered, gruffly. 'Can you blame them? But I will stay here. Not "here", you understand, but in Settlement. And I fancy a good many will stay with me. Maybe that way, by adopting at least this one of the Wamphyri's methods, we'll defeat them in the end.' 'By adopting their methods?'
Lardis nodded. 'When the Wamphyri have something, they fight to keep it. Especially territory. They are fiercely territorial, Nathan. In the old days, most of their wars were for territory, for the great aeries, the Starside stacks. Oh, they were for blood, too, and for the sheer hell of it; but mainly they were about territory. It's what drove them to go against The Dweller, and why they were destroyed. And now, finally, it's why they've returned.'
'And how will you keep Settlement?' 'By defending it! This sunup you'll see activity as never before in Settlement. So much to do ... I shouldn't be sitting here ... I must get on down!' He stood up.
Nathan touched his arm. 'I won't be seeing it,' he said, shaking his blond head. 'I'm heading east.' Lardis was disappointed. 'You're deserting me?' 'Never that,' the other answered. 'I came to find out what you would do so that eventually I'd know where to find you. But first I must find Nestor.'
'Nestor?' Lardis's eyebrows peaked. 'Why, anyone would think you weren't there last night! Nestor's gone into Starside, Nathan, in the mouth of a flyer. Look, I've no time for this and so must speak plainly: Nestor's dead, or worse than dead! Can't you get that into your head?'
Nathan followed him down the first flight of steps cut in the steep side of the knoll. 'But you wounded the flyer with a bolt from one of the great crossbows,' he replied. 'What if it crashed? In fact, I dreamed that it crashed - on the wooded slopes over Twin Fords.'
Lardis turned to him. 'You dreamed it? What, and are you a seer? Since when?'
A seer? Am I? Nathan wondered. No, I don't think so. But my wolves talk to me, and sometimes I hear the dead whispering in their graves ...
He shrugged. 'No, I'm no seer - but I know how to hope when hope is all that's left. And I fancy you do, too, Lardis. Isn't that why you came back up here: to dig again where you have already delved enough, even knowing you'd find nothing?'
After a moment Lardis sighed and nodded, turned away and continued on down. 'Then you have to go,' he said. 'Except - if your star is good to you, and likewise mine to me - you'll promise to come back one day and be my son.'
'I feel I'm that already,' said Nathan, lying yet at one and the same time, and however paradoxically, remaining sincere. For certainly the old Lidesci had been as much a father to him as any he had ever known. And yet behind Lardis's back where Nathan couldn't be seen, he frowned wonderingly. Because just for a moment then he'd seemed to remember something else from last night's dream ... something which his wolves had told to him? Some connection between his father - his real father, Hzak Kiklu - and theirs? Some blood relationship between the two? And was that why they called him uncle?
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
Still unseen, Nathan shook his head in bewilderment. But how could that be? For quite obviously, their father had been a wolf!
It was all very mysterious and puzzling. But then, that was frequently the way of it with Nathan's dreams: some things appeared as real and solid as the ground under his feet, while others were vague and ephemeral as ripples on a pool, or frost on the high peaks before the dawn. Some things he remembered, and others he was glad to forget, mainly because he couldn't understand them. Best to fasten on what he perceived as real, he supposed, and leave the fanciful stuff to its own devices.
It was a mistake, but all men make them. Especially when they are under pressure. And Nathan was no exception .. .
In the hours after dawn, as Nathan trekked for Twin Fords, the thought or question would frequently recur: But why would they take my mother?
He would understand - and detest his understanding of it - if she had been raped, vampirized, murdered out of hand. For after all, so many had been. But taken? Nana Kiklu was no mere girl. On the other hand, she was or had been a warm and beautiful woman. Her sons had always thought so anyway, and without prejudice - especially Nathan.
But . .. did the Wamphyri take people indiscriminately? Were they so insensitive of human life that they would simply take, defile, use or waste whatever, whoever, was available? Perhaps they were and did.
Or perhaps it was just that they followed a simpler set of rules: blood is blood, and flesh is merely flesh. For when a hunter is hungry, is he concerned that the rabbit he shoots should have pleasing marks? Does he really care if it is past its prime? And what about the sandal-maker? What difference does it make to him which beast supplies the leather for his sandals, as long as it's supple, hard-wearing stuff?
But on the other hand, the Wamphyri were or had been men, and the 'beasts' they hunted were likewise men - and women! So that they didn't just hunt for meat, or even for stuff to fashion into monstrous undead creatures, but for ... other reasons, too. And so Nathan would always come back to that, and end up wondering if Nana shared the same fate as Misha Zanesti. If Nana had been taken.
And if she hadn't? Then what had happened to his mother, and where was she now?
Nathan had seen a monstrous, massively armoured warrior creature ravaging destructively in the streets of Settlement, and knew that these Wamphyri fighting beasts were carnivores, indeed vampires in their own right. Maybe that was the answer: a horrific answer, to be sure, but a quick end at least. Could it be that the same monster which flattened their home had also snatched up his mother? If so, she would have been dead instantly. But never a trace of her, nothing, not even (Nathan was obliged to consider it, however flinch-ingly) a splash of red.
The same for Misha; except that with Vratza Wrans-thrall's deliberately cruel picture still burning in Nathan's all-too-vivid imagination - and Canker Cani-son's slavering dog-voice reverberating in the vaults of his memory - he suspected or feared even worse for Misha! And however much he loathed himself for thinking it, he could only wish her dead.
Striding east along an old Traveller trail, he found himself thinking back an hour or two, to when he and Lardis had climbed down from the house on the knoll into Settlement. Lardis's band of old comrades had been waiting for him there, with all of Settlement's citizens -those that remained, anyway - gathered together at the central meeting place to hear his words. What Lardis had said to them then had been simple and to the point, and entirely typical of him:
'All is as it was twenty years ago,' he had said. 'The Wamphyri are back, and we are their sport, their food, their cattle. The townships will soon be broken down, and all the Szgany sundered, scattered into small groups throughout the length and breadth of Sunside. So they, the Wamphyri, would have it. But there are differences.
'Now we have made our homes here in Settlement, and we travel no more. This is our place, built with our own strong hands - with which we must likewise defend it! And our hands are strong, even against the Wamphyri! Last night ....e were taken by surprise. Next time it will be different, when we'll make these creatures pay - and heavily! For as I've as good as said, it's my intention to face up to them. That's my intention, yes ...
'You, however, have a choice. For I make no bones about it, the risks will be great and I won't ask anyone to stay who isn't willing to face up to it. Men will die, of that you may be sure - but so will Wamphyri! And so the choice is simple:
'Go off on your own and become Travellers, if that's how you see your future, and I'll make no objection. Live as best you may and as once we lived, never knowing what the next sundown has in store for you. You are welcome to wander wherever you will in those lands bounded by my markers. Except I would tell you this: when sundown comes, and if you're in the vicinity of Settlement, don't come here looking for succour. Those who fight for it are welcome to it, but those who desert me are gone for good.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
'Now, I see that some have already moved on. Well, and I wish them luck. But any more of you who would join them, do so now. I see no profit in talking to people who'll pay me no heed anyway ...' Then Lardis had waited a while, but none had stirred. Those who would go had already left. And so at last he had continued:
'Very well. And this is what I want of you:
'You men, you take your orders from me. Likewise you women. If you lost a wife or husband last night, don't mourn but find a new one. If you lost a son or daughter, don't mourn but hate! And let your hatred be your strength.
'You old ones, sick ones who can't work or help ... you can work, you must help! No, not by furious fighting or hard labour but in those areas where your help is most needed: in keeping the fires, harvesting the fruits of the forest, tending the animals. For it's you who must feed the builders and fighters, and when they've time to rest make sure they do so in comfort, or whatever of comfort is available. For we all have our parts to play.
'Now, to the tasks ...' And he had gone on to list them.
Nathan had been witness to all of this; he'd listened to everything the old Lidesci had said, and his admiration was boundless.
And Lardis was inspired; he forgot nothing; so that in something less than half an hour, Settlement was more abustle than at any time in all of fourteen years. And its people were doing exactly what they had done then: preparing for war! Which left Nathan feeling like a deserter, for he knew that soon he would be out of it.
He had mentioned this to Lardis, who told him: 'Son, you have your reasons which you've explained well enough. And still I say come back one day, to where there'll always be a place for you. But before you go ..." He'd called for Ion Romani, who had got together a final list of all the night's victims.
Scrawled upon a piece of bark were the sigils of those whom the Wamphyri had been seen to steal away, those who had been found slaughtered or changed, and those who were simply missing. Of the latter: by now a small number would be vampire thralls, hiding from the sun in the woods or the depths of mountain caves, waiting for the night when they could make for Star-side.
And of course there were also marks for Nana Kiklu and Misha Zanesti. They were shown as missing, too, as was Nestor. And Nathan had known that Lardis didn't have the heart to show the three as he believed them to be, dead and gone forever. No, for his own wife and son were similarly listed.
Then Lardis and Nathan had embraced, and the latter had gathered up his small bag of things and left Settlement for Twin Fords...
Nestor would remember very little of his brief flight in the fetid pouch of the stricken flyer. Even if he'd remained conscious during the trip (impossible, for the creature's gases were noxious and anaesthetizing, and it was only by a tremendous effort of will that he had stayed upright and mobile in the first place, before being taken), still he would remember very little; just darkness and clammy reek, and flexible cartilage hooks fixing him firmly in place in the pouch's confines.
As for the beast's rapid and erratic descent from mountain peaks it had neither the strength nor the altitude to surmount - the way the massive bolt lodged deep in its body snagged in the green canopy of trees to set it spinning, crashing through pine branches and brambly undergrowth, finally to come to rest shudder-ingly on a steep wooded slope over Twin Fords; and Nestor's subsequent partial ejection from the gaping slit of the pouch - he would remember nothing whatsoever of that.
The wonder was that he lived through any of it, let alone all of it ... and yet perhaps not such a wonder after all. For the flyer was of vampire stuff; Nestor had breathed the essence of its body; the oils of its man-trap pouch had got into his various scrapes and gouges. Insufficient to change him substantially, but perhaps enough to assist in his healing. That and his youth, his great strength, his will to survive - all of these things had combined to pull him through.
But healing takes time, and the greatest healer of all is sleep. Up there on the hillside over the ravaged town of Twin Fords - where the leaping, cleansing flames of funeral pyres blazed up in the night, and gaunt-eyed people went stumbling through horror and chaos in the wake of Wratha's raid, much as they did in Settlement -Nestor slept. It was the sleep of exhaustion, of traumatic physical damage, of the poisons in his system which on the one hand deadened him, and on the other supported and repaired his damaged functions. And so it was a healing sleep. It would help towards healing his body, at least...
Even so, he might have died from exposure. But the grotesque flyer was still feebly alive, its body was still warm, and only Nestor's head, shoulders and one arm dangled from the palpitating flap of its pouch. The rest of him remained inside, as yet 'unborn', in a metamor-phic womb of cartilage and quivering, insensate flesh. And all through the night the creature leaked its fluids and its life into the loamy soil, and its remaining warmth into Nestor. So that he lived.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
He lived and slept through the longest night of his life, and awoke in the hours before dawn to wriggle free of the flyer's pouch and fall a few harmless inches into springy moss and soft leaf-mould. And with the creature's broken body supported on the shattered stumps of pines, forming a sagging, diamond-shaped ceiling overhead, there he lay for a long time recovering his reeling senses. Some of them, at least.
But the one which had suffered most, and one of the most basic and important at that, was memory. So that when finally Nestor could find the strength to crawl away, sit up and examine the sources of his aches and pains, the one facet of being which he could not examine was his past. Not in any great detail. Misty faces were there, only half-recognized, distorted and grimacing in his mind's eye; scenes out of his childhood, and the early years of emerging manhood; even something of the violence of his most recent past. But all of it so vague, disjointed and kaleidoscopic that it was impossible, even painful, to piece together. And Nestor had had quite enough of pain.
The one incontestable 'fact1 - the one answer which surfaced time and time again whenever he considered the question of identity and being - was the repetitive phrase: 'I am the Lord Nestor.' So that in a little while he knew who he was at least. But what sort of a Lord was he?
Physically: his skull still felt soft at the back, where plates of fractured bone were agonizingly mobile under an area of rough, puffy skin and subcutaneous fluids; but at least he could touch himself there without feeling sick. Apart from a slight blurriness of vision, his eyesight seemed sound in the pre-dawn light. Other than his lumpy, tender face - his nose which was definitely hooked now and still sore where the bone was knitting, split lips, and several loose teeth - no bones appeared broken in his limbs or body. In short, he knew that whatever he had survived, he would probably continue to survive it. Certainly he was hungry and thirsty for two men, and a good appetite is usually indicative of good health.
With this in mind he looked down on the fires in Twin Fords and the black smoke hanging like a pall over the town, and wondered if he'd find breakfast there. Probably, because after all he was a Lord. Also, he wondered if he would find some answers, clues as to his and the world's circumstances in general.
As for the three-quarters dead flyer: Nestor had seen its grotesque carcass as a hugely anomalous lump in the darkness of the trees: a sprawling blanket or tent of skins, or more likely a tangled platform of fallen branches. He had considered it no further than that.
Its true nature - the fact that it had transported him to this place, and that he had emerged from it - these things were entirely forgotten. But as twilight brightened into dawn and the rising sun lit up the peaks, and its golden light fell like a slowly descending curtain towards the tree-line, so he had cause to regard the creature anew. For now the thing in the trees was most definitely alive!
It tried to arch its broken wings, craned a prehistoric neck for the sky, and cried out in a hissing, clacking voice. But the shattered pines had pierced its membranous wings and crushed their fragile alveolate bones, and all its energy had drained away along with its fluids. Pinned down, grounded and broken, the creature could only despair its fate, for the vampire stuff in it sensed the sunrise as surely as a lodestone senses north, except the flyer wasn't attracted but repulsed. Or would be, if it still had the power of flight.
Walking unsteadily, gingerly around the perimeter of the triangular stand of pines at the rim of the bluff where the flyer had crashed down, Nestor observed the slate-grey, leathery skin of the thing; its long neck and spatulate head, and dull, near-vacant eyes. Despite that its head was huge, blunt and acromegalic, still there was something vaguely, disturbingly human about it; but nothing remotely human about the tentacular thrusters which it drove into the pine-needle floor each time it arched its torn manta wings, as if to assist in launching itself into flight. These reminded Nestor of nothing so much as a nest of giant maggots erupting from the belly of some dead thing.
And at the base of its neck, where its back widened out into swept-back wings ... was that some kind of saddle?
He might have climbed back under the canopy of the trees to make a closer inspection, but such were the thing's struggles that he feared it might flop down on top of him; and so he held back. At which point the jagged rim of sunlight creeping down across the tree-line fell squarely upon the creature - to devour it!
So it seemed to Nestor.
For the pines filled with stench and steam at once, as the doomed flyer's skin shrivelled and turned from slate-grey to the unwholesome blue of corruption and the texture of crumbling pumice. Its flesh quaked, bloated, split open in a dozen places, out of which its smoking fats ran like water! Then the thing screamed -a sound so thin, high and penetrating that it sliced like a sharp edge of ice on Nestor's nerves - and commenced a shuddering vibration which only ceased when several of the shattered pines were displaced and the flyer slumped down between them to the forest's floor.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
And there the sun continued its cleansing work, blazing through the trees to reduce the monster to so much glue and blackly smouldering gristle. But in a little while it became obvious that this would take hours, and what with the poisonous odour and disgusting mess, Nestor didn't wait for the end.
But in his mind's eye, now more visions were waking; and as he began to climb down the wooded slope towards the near-distant town - and as a waft of foulness reached down to him from the dissolving flyer - he 'remembered' a previous rush of reeking air ...
.. .Wind in his hair, yes, and dark diamond shapes adrift on the updrafts under glittering ice-chip stars -flyers just like that one back there, with riders proud and terrifying in saddles upon their backs - and a distant cry of horror faint on the morning air, but fading now as the scene itself faded back into vaults of memory. 'Wamphyri!'
Wamphyri? The cry had been real, carrying to him from the town in the 'V of the rivers; but the Lord Nestor ignored it in deference to its evocation.
He paused, looked back and up the slope to where smoke and steam continued to pour from the pines, spilling out of them like a slow-motion waterfall over the rim of the bluff. Had that been his flyer back there? But that couldn't possibly be, for here he stood in sunlight and felt no harm.
But at the same time ... did he still feel comlortabJe in the sun's warm rays? Had he ever?
Lord Nestor of the Wamphyri...
It seemed like a dream, some game which he'd played as a child, but he remembered now how he had hunted his human prey in the deep forests, sniffing them out, searching for them with all of his vampire senses alert! Except... where were his vampire senses now?
A vampire - indeed, Wamphyri - was he? He shrank down a little from the sun, which paid him no heed but burned, as ever, benevolently on the southern horizon.