For on the long trek home he had slept and dreamed, and all of Lardis’s dreams were nightmares, from which he would start snarling awake, wide-eyed and panting. Until, even in his waking hours, at last the four who travelled with him had heard him muttering: “Bats, aye—the great Desmodus bats of Starside.” And they had seen him nodding his head furiously.
“What ails you?” Andrei Romani had wanted to know, as they approached Settlement in the hour before evening twilight. The youths had gone on ahead, to meet up with their young friends about the campfires—Nestor and Jason to dance a while perhaps, to enjoy the music, good cooking, company, conversation: to be Szgany—and Nathan to seek out and be with his mother.
“Nothing ails me!” Lardis had snapped. And then, almost in the same breath: “Well, if you must know, my dreams ail me. And the mists. And the smoke from all those fires up ahead. And all the busy sounds of Settlement, which are a tumult even here, almost a mile away! What? Has all the caution gone out of the world? Do they tempt fate? Don’t they know the hour, and that soon it will be sundown?”
He glanced all about, at the ground mist and the shadowy forest, finally at Andrei, who gazed back at him in amazement. And: “Where is the watch?” Lardis continued. “We haven’t even been challenged! We’ve seen neither man, youth nor wolf, despite that we crossed into Lidesci territory well over an hour ago!”
Andrei’s astonishment, and his concern, were very genuine now. “The watch?” he repeated. “Man, you stood the watch down all of ten years ago! But the markers which define your boundaries are well maintained, and we haven’t had a border dispute in … oh, I can’t remember! So why now, after all this time, do we suddenly need a watch?”
Lardis blinked his fierce brown eyes and something of the passion went out of them. He blinked again, frowned and shook his head. “I … I actually did that? I stood down the watch? Yes … yes, of course I did.” For a single moment he looked shaken, confused, lost—
—But in the next the passion was back, and with it all the grim determination of his youth. He glanced knowingly at the darkening sky, where the first stars glittered like blue ice chips over Starside beyond the barrier range, sniffed suspiciously at the evening air, stared piercingly at a ground mist rising out of the woods. And: “Great fool that I’ve been,” he growled, as if he couldn’t believe it, “I stood the watch down! … And now must start it up again!”
Andrei Romani recognized it: that visionary fire in Lardis which had made him a great leader of the Szgany in a time when leaders were few and far between. But where once it had inspired men, now it caused a shiver to travel the length of Andrei’s spine. “What is it, Lardis?” he husked, gripping the other’s arm. “What did you see from that bluff in the great pass? I know you as well as any man, and you’ve not been the same since you climbed up there to watch the sun burning on Karenstack’s face.”
Lardis felt Andrei’s fingers digging into his arm, paused in his striding and turned to face him. His eyes held Andrei’s as in a vice as he answered: “I don’t know what I saw, except that it frightened me and straightened out my addled senses. Or else addled them more yet.” He pulled himself free, turned and headed for Settlement as before.
Andrei frowned after him, then hurried to catch up. “But you did see something?”
“Bats,” Lardis growled. “Starside’s great bats. That’s what I took them for, what I’ve been telling myself they were ever since. Certainly they could have been, for I merely glimpsed them—a scattering of dots in the sky around Karenstack—which made no impression until after I’d started on my way down again. Well, and I know my eyes aren’t all they used to be. But on the other hand, and if they weren’t bats … then what were they?”
Andrei’s shrug tried hard to be careless but didn’t quite make it. “But they were,” he said. “It’s just that you’ve been letting the old times crowd too close in your memory. Perhaps it’s a warning: that you should give it a rest and quit trekking into Starside every fifty sunups or so. After all, you’re not as young as you used to be.”
“No, and neither are you!” Lardis snapped. “If you’re so sure of what I didn’t see, then why is your voice so anxious, eh? Who are you trying to convince, Andrei, me or yourself? But I’ll tell you this …” He broke his striding and rounded on the other. “Since then it’s like I’ve been asleep and I’m only now waking up. And my sleep had dulled senses which are only now coming alive. I can see, hear, feel, smell—I can remember—things! Things which I thought had gone forever.”
More stars had blinked into being. Again Lardis sniffed the night air, glared at the rising mist. “Come on!” he said, striding harder yet for Settlement. “And say no more. If I’m wrong—and I pray that I am wrong—then I’m nothing more than an old fool, frightened of my own shadow. Ah, but if I’m right… We have family and friends in the town, Andrei, and the long night is only just beginning!”
Together now, Lardis and Andrei, and breathlessly silent in the deepening shadows of the forest’s fringe. And for all that they were tired where they followed sounds of laughter and music, smells of wood smoke and cooking fires, still they hurried. Hurried, yes; for as one man they were suddenly aware that those same sounds and smells were permeating the night air, rising through the wooded slopes into the peaks of the barrier range. And they were also aware that the campfires would be blazing like … like beacons.
But more than that, they were aware of all the life in Settlement. And of all the hot Szgany blood …
In the town, Jason Lidesci and Nestor Kiklu had gone one way, and Nathan Kiklu the other. The pair to the campfires, which burned through the night in the gathering places, and the one to his mother’s house against the stockade wall.
In the central open space, a public place where the main fire and many lesser cooking-fires burned—where tables and chairs had already been laid out in preparation for Lardis’s and the others’ return, for the Szgany Lidesci rarely missed an opportunity to celebrate—Jason and Nestor had received a boisterous welcome from their friends, and then exchanged more sober greetings and information with the town’s elder citizens and dignitaries.
The latter had wanted to know how the trip had gone? And where was Lardis now—and Andrei Romani?—how far behind the younger, fleeter members of the party? What news from the other towns and villages to the east? And so forth. Jason and Nestor had restricted their answers; everyone knew that Lardis and Andrei would want to tell everything in their own way, in their own good time. Indeed, the story-telling would form a major part of the celebrations.
Finding chairs in the quiet corner of an old stone wall, finally the two settled down with a jar of wine and a pair of small silver goblets between them. They weren’t important now; Lardis Lidesci and Andrei Romani were the important ones, and their arrival imminent. Between times, Jason and Nestor could talk.
“My father sometimes worries me,” Jason admitted, having washed the trail’s dust from his throat with a gulp of sweet wine.
And: “Huh!” Nestor grunted. “You should have my problems, for my brother worries me all the time!” His voice was at once sour, a sure sign that the conversation had returned to Nathan.
Jason was hardly taken aback. “You’re too hard on him,” he said.
“You think so?” Nestor raised an eyebrow. Eighteen months Jason’s senior, he considered Lardis’s son clever but naive; hardly the right kind of man to inherit the leadership of the clan when that time came, and never strong enough to hold it together and make it a power in the world. There was too much of the thinker in him, too little of the doer. “But Nathan’s not too hard on me, right?”
“Nathan, hard?” Now Jason was taken aback. “But he’s soft as a child!”
Nestor nodded. “He is a child, in some things, aye. And in some ways he’s an idiot, despite what your father thinks! But I’m his brother and so know him better than anyone, and there’s another, weirder side to him.”
“Oh?”
&n
bsp; “We’re twins, as you know,” Nestor nodded. “Not identical, no, but still our kinship goes deeper than ordinary flesh and blood. Far deeper.” He nodded again but angrily, even savagely. “I mean, I wouldn’t mind Nathan dreaming all the strange things he dreams, or blame him for living in his daydreams—just so long as he’d leave me out of them!”
“But how are you part of them?” Jason was puzzled. “In what way do they concern you? Why, I’ve never met brothers more dissimilar than you two!”
“Huh!” Nestor grunted again. “But up here,” he tapped his forehead, “in our minds, we’re not that dissimilar.” He leaned closer. “Listen, and I’ll tell you how it’s been for as long as I can remember.” He got his thoughts in order, then:
“Among other things,” he began, “my brother dreams of numbers. Great waves of numbers, all meaningless, swirling in his head like a river in flood! There’s this—oh, I don’t know—this fabulous ‘secret’ behind them, which he seeks to discover, except he hasn’t a clue where to begin. And so in his sleep he goes through the numbers again and again, endlessly searching them for their secret meaning. All very well, and I’d have no complaint—if only he would keep his dreams to himself!”
“What?”
Nestor nodded. “Don’t ask me how, but I “hear” his dreams! I can see him, feel him there in my head, lost in these damned numbers! Now to me, a number is the count of fish I’ve caught, division is the share-out after a day’s hunting, and multiplication is what rabbits do. As for schooling: I got as much of that as I need—and all I can use—when I was a child. So, if I can’t work something out on my fingers and toes, then I’m not interested in it. I’m not one of these so-called “wise men” who tinker with runes and scratch on slates to keep records and histories, or work out the distance to the moon, which they say is another world. I won’t be around when the things we do today are history, and as for the distance to the moon: what possible use in knowing that, except to the wolves who sing to her?”
Jason was fascinated. “You really hear his dreams?”
“Not all of them,” Nestor shrugged, concerned now that perhaps he was saying too much. “For his mind is deep, like a well, and there’s a lot he keeps hidden. Even so, it’s full of faraway worlds and dead people … and numbers, of course! Not that I’d pry, you understand, for if it was up to me I’d have nothing at all to do with Nathan’s damned dreams and fancies! But I can’t control it. His dreams find their way into mine, so that he’s just as big a pest asleep as when he’s awake!”
Puzzled, Jason shook his head. “But how can you be sure? How do you know you share the same dreams? Has he told you? A rare event that, for he scarcely speaks at all!”
“He doesn’t have to,” Nestor was tired of the subject now. “I only have to wake up in the middle of the night in our room, and look at him sleeping there, and I know. Now and then, not very often, I can read his mind as clearly as the spoor of a wild pig. Read it, and hate it!”
“Hate it?” Again Jason was astonished, by the fire in the other’s voice, and by his passion. “Hate your brother’s mind? But why? Is he devious?”
But Nestor merely scowled, shook his head, and finally sighed. “What, Nathan, devious? No, I hate it because he’s as gentle and trusting as the doves nesting in the eaves!”
Jason found it all very hard to understand, and not least Nestor’s curiously mixed emotions. “You share your brother’s dreams and read his thoughts,” he shook his head in wonder of it. “Well, the way I see it, it can mean only one thing: that you are true Szgany, Nestor, both of you! For there are mysteries in our blood which even we can’t understand. Why, there could even be something of the Wamphyri in you—!” He quickly held up a hand to ward off any protest (though in fact Nestor would be the last to take offence at his remark). “—As there is in most of us, naturally. For in the old days the Wamphyri were like a plague among us, and there are throwbacks even now. My father believes it’s the source of all Szgany mysticism: the power of fortune-tellers who read dreams and palms, and seers who scry afar.”
Nestor pulled a face. “You really believe in such stuff?” Obviously Jason was even more naive than he’d suspected. “Can you show me one genuine—what, mystic?—in all Settlement? And am I, Nestor Kiklu, a mystic? Not likely, nor would I want to be. No, it’s simply that we shared our mother’s womb, were born together, and brought up almost as one. Except we’re not one but entirely different. And finally … I’ve had enough of him.”
“Of your own brother?”
“Yes,” Nestor answered. “Of the trouble he’s been to me, and the trouble still to come.”
“Ah!” said Jason. For he believed he understood something of that, at least.
Nestor frowned at him. “Ah?”
Jason saw his mistake at once and tried to change the subject. “Back on Starside, you said that Nathan was neither deaf nor daft. And yet a moment ago you called him an idiot. Something doesn’t match up.”
Now Nestor scowled. “A lot doesn’t match up,” he answered. “Like the way you’re avoiding saying what’s on your mind! Now out with it.”
Jason grimaced, shrugged awkwardly. And: “Misha,” he said. A single word, a name, which felt like a great weight rolling off his tongue. Nestor was a hard one; his hands were hard; it wouldn’t be the first time he had broken lips just for speaking that name.
The other sat up straighter, pulled air into his chest, let a little of it come growling out. “What of her?” Nestor’s young voice was all gravel now, a man’s voice, threatening and inquiring in one. Indeed, a jealous voice.
“As children you three were inseparable,” Jason said, hurriedly. “All four of us together, all the hours of the day. Me, I was a friend. But you and Nathan, she loved both of you. She still does, I’m sure.”
Nestor slumped down again. “So am I,” he answered, perhaps morosely. “And that can’t be. And you’re right, of course, for that’s the trouble in store: Misha. She loves us both, but who the most? If it’s me, then it’s because I’m a man and can look after her. If it’s Nathan, then it’s because he’s still a child and needs looking after! Well, a real rival wouldn’t be much of a problem. I could deal with that. But Nathan? My ridiculous, speechless—or at best stuttering—pale-faced, corn-cropped brother?”
Jason nodded. “I see now why you’ve gone your own ways. I saw it begin—oh, four, five years ago?—but didn’t really understand what it was.”
Nestor, caught up in his own thoughts, scarcely heard him. There have been times,” he burst out, “when I might have taken her—even by force!” (Jason looked startled, shocked.) “Maybe I should have. It might have settled things there and then. But Nathan … Nathan … damn him.” I know he only has to smile at her, just smile, and … and …”
Jason stared at him. “And does he know it, d’you think?”
Nestor sat up again and tossed back his wine in one. “No,” he said. “Not an inkling. And now you know why I consider him an idiot. For all his dreaming of other places, and his endless quest for meaning in a handful of numbers, where she’s concerned he can’t add two and two! And if he could—or if he ever does—what then? If I can’t live with him as he is now, how could I ever live with both of them together? What, Misha and Nathan? And who would look the dumb one then?”
“What will you do?” Jason’s concern for his father was all but forgotten now.
Nestor poured more wine into their goblets, then snatched up and drank his own as if it were water. “Ask her to be mine, and soon,” he answered. “No, tell her she’s going to be mine!”
“And if she says no?”
“Then I’m gone, out of Settlement, away from the Szgany Lidesci forever. What opportunity for me here? You’re the next chief of the tribe. And shall I be a hunter all my days, grow old by the campfire, and sit there telling stories like your father? Forgive me, Jason, but I see little profit in that. And anyway, what stories would I have to tell? How one day I caught a fish
, put a bolt through a rabbit, and skewered a wolf where he crept up on my animals? No, the days of adventure went with the Wamphryi. But me, I wish they were back, and I always have! What good in being strong in a world where even the weakest is my equal? I feel I’ve a name to make for myself, but how? And where? Not here, for sure. And not without Misha …”
“You’re ambitious,” Jason told him, his eyes narrow now.
“And is that wrong?”
“You don’t much like it that I’ll be chief one day.”
Abruptly, Nestor stood up, swayed a little, clutched at the table to steady himself. The trek had been long and he was tired—they were both tired—and the wine was strong. “Maybe I don’t much like anything about Settlement any more,” the words came slurring out. “Maybe I should leave come what may. There are places to the west, and new territories far to the east. It’s rumoured there’s even a place beyond the farthest wasteland. But frontiers are few, and time is wasting.”
“You’ll take Misha and go?”
Nestor snorted and shook his head. “No, for her brothers are big lads, both of them! So for the moment it has to be her choice. But with or without her, still I’ll go. And if it’s the latter, then be sure I’ll be back one day.”
Now Jason stood up, but only to take a pace to the rear. “Be sure you’ll be back? But why do you make it sound like a threat? What, will you bring an army with you? To steal Misha? Or … do you also covet my father’s territory?”
“Are you worried?” Nestor scowled. “For Lardis? But it’s you who’ll likely be chief by then.”
“And should I be afraid of an old friend?” Jason’s look was sour as Nestor’s now. “Aye, and maybe I should.” He shrugged and turned away. “Anyway, it’s high time I was home. My mother will be waiting up for me.”
For a moment Nestor’s expression changed, softened; but then he stiffened his back, and turned it on Jason where the other moved off abruptly towards the North Gate and the dark foothills. And as that young friend of his childhood went off, disturbed and soured by their conversation, so Nestor chewed his lip and glanced all around, perhaps to avoid calling out after him …