She came to a halt, looked back. “But my babies are men.” she said, slowly and dangerously. “And that’s all they are.”
“Of course, of course,” Jasef waved her away. “On you go, Nana Kiklu! Be about Lardis’s errand. Yes, yes, and we shall keep your secret, which no one else knows … Nor shall they ever … Only men, your babies, only men …” But to himself:
What, only men, Nana? Spawn of the Necroscope, the hell-lander Harry Keogh? And only men? Ah, I wonder. I wonder …
Two of the brothers Romani were off hunting in the forests; Kirk Lisescu was fishing; none of them returned to Settlement until mid-morning, by which time their movements were slow and tired. By then, too, Lardis had grown disenchanted waiting for them, and had come down from his house to discover for himself what was the delay. His arrival coincided with that of a weary, travel-worn party of terrified Gypsies from the eastern foothills—survivors of a Wamphyri raid!
That last took a little time to sink in, but when finally it did …
… Then the fact of it hit Settlement like a thunderbolt—stunningly! Even Lardis, who had received at least some prior warning, was shocked. And if in the past there had been times when he’d doubted the veracity of old Jasef Karis’s telepathic skills, well, his doubting days were over.
Lardis talked a while with one of the seven survivors, a man of about his own age. Plainly he had been fit and strong, but now was mazed and mumbling. “When did they strike? When?” Lardis shook the other, but gently.
“Two, maybe three hours after sundown,” the man answered, his face hollow and haggard. “Earlier, some of the children had wandered home in the twilight; they’d been chasing goats in the peaks; said they’d seen many lights in Karenstack. Perhaps we should have been warned. But it’s rumoured the Lady Karen is dead, and these were only children. They could be mistaken.”
“Where were you? Where?” Lardis shook him again.
“Beyond the Great Pass,” the other gave a start, blinked rapidly, “on a plateau under the peaks …” His eyes fastened on Lardis’s, seemed for a moment to gaze into his soul, and in the next glazed over again. But somehow he managed to continue:
“Two years ago, we went into the heights and found a lake there. There was good fishing, goats in the peaks, game on the wooded slopes. We are—or we were—the Szgany Scorpi. Emil Scorpi, my father, was our leader. There were thirty of us … then. And now, only seven. We built homes for ourselves in the woods around the lake. Our boats were on the water. At night, under the first stars, we’d sit round our fires on the shore, cook our fish, eat together. Why not? For there was nothing to fear. All of the great aeries lay broken on Starside: Wenstack, Menorstack, Glutstack—all tumbled and lying in ruins. Only Karenstack remained, and they said Karen was dead. Maybe she is, what odds? It wasn’t the Lady Karen who fell on us …”
Lardis groaned and nodded. “Shaithis, aye.”
The young survivor grabbed his arm. “Yes, Shaithis … and one other! I saw him! He isn’t a man!”
“Not a man?” Lardis frowned. “No, of course not. None of them are. Wamphyri!”
“But even the Wamphyri were once men,” the other insisted. “They are like men. Except this one … was not.”
Now Lardis remembered. Jasef had not been clear on this point. “What was he like?”
The other’s throat bobbed. He shook his head, failed to find words. “A … a slug,” he finally gasped. “Or a leech, upright, big as a man. But ridgy as a lizard, cowled, and his eyes burning like embers under the hood. A weird worm, a snake, a slug …”
“His name?” The hairs had stiffened on the back of Lardis’s neck.
The survivor nodded. “I … I heard what Shaithis called him. It was Shaitan!”
Shaitan! A gasp escaped Lardis before he could check it. Shaitan: first of all the Wamphyri! But how was it possible? Shaitan was a legend, the darkest of all Szgany legends.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said the other. “But I saw what I saw. One was a Lord, but there was also the great slug. I heard them conversing. Shaithis was the manlike one, whom I heard call the other—him, it, whatever—by the terrible name of Shaitan. As for the rest of what I saw, before I fled like a coward with the others, don’t ask me. This much I’ll tell you, and no more: their warrior creatures were lean and hungry, and not just for food! It was a nightmare! My mother! My sisters! The Wamphyri have bred monsters with the parts of men!”
After that: Lardis asked no more questions of these ragtag remnants of the Szgany Scorpi, but went about Settlement seeing to its defences. A guard from now on, on the catwalks and in the towers, and no more sending men west to man the vampire frontier. No, for now the threat was closer to home; and now, too, Lardis thanked whichever lucky stars shone down on him that he’d been outvoted that time during the construction of Settlement, when the other council members had insisted upon huge weapons built into the very walls.
Catapults armed with boulders girdled in spiked chains; great crossbows to fire bolts hewn from entire trees outwards into the cleared area around Settlement; trenches covered over with tentlike frameworks of coarse hide, painted in imitation of small warrior creatures and supported by sharp-pointed pine stanchions. Any enemy warrior, spying one of these grotesque semblances, would attack at once and doubtless impale himself; and men, safe in the trench below, would leap out, hurl their oil, set fire to the monster where he writhed and roared!
While all of these devices were still in place, they nevertheless required attention. Frayed ropes to be seen to, and if necessary replaced; the great crossbows must be loaded, their launching tillers greased; children had played at climbing in the frames of the lures and broken them in places. All to be put back to rights. So that as Settlement recovered from its shock, there was plenty of work for everyone.
It was like slipping from a tranquil dream into a living nightmare, the old horror resurgent after a brief respite. It was the Wamphyri! And sloth fell from the Szgany Lidesci like the shucked-off skin of a snake, so that they emerged startled but fresh, alert, agile. And very, very afraid.
Lardis called a council meeting, revoked the powers of his fellow councillors, declared himself leader as of old. Councils are useful when times are peaceful, but in times of war a tribe needs a leader. None was better qualified than Lardis. In fact, since he’d never relinquished his position, this was simply his quick and efficient way of re-establishing his authority. And no one argued the point.
He made arrangements:
Two-thirds of the able-bodied men would stay in Settlement; the remainder and all of the women and children were to disperse into the woods to the west, far beyond Sanctuary Rock and even so far as Mirlu Township. Runners would meanwhile pass on the warning to the Szgany Mirlu, who in turn would relay it to Tireni Scarp. Lardis’s own party of fighting men were to accompany him to the garden overlooking Starside, where he hoped to form an alliance with Karen and Harry Dweller-sire.
Most of Sunside’s “morning” of twenty-five hours duration was used up by the time Lardis was satisfied with his arrangements. The “day” of seventy-five hours and “evening” of twenty-five would be consumed during the various phases of the climb and the rest periods between. For the trek into the mountains, along the high trails and through the passes, would be a long one … which was probably just as well.
For such as the three in the garden were, it was unlikely they’d be abroad during sunup …
Lardis called in at his house on the first leg of the trek. He told Lissa what was happening, kissed Jason, sent them off down to Settlement. There they’d join up with Nana Kiklu and her boys, old Jasef, and one younger, more capable man, before heading into the comparative safety of the forest.
Lardis watched wife and child begin their descent, studied for a moment the hivelike hustle and bustle of Settlement, finally turned to his five companions.
“Well,” he said, “and so it’s come to this. But we’ve all been here before, right? And
this is nothing new to the Szgany Lidesci. However, if any one of you would rather stay with his family, take care of his own, let’s hear it now. You know that it won’t be held against you. Ours is a job for volunteers.”
They merely looked at him, waiting.
And Lardis nodded his satisfaction. “That’s it, then. Let’s go.”
As the six set out, the great golden ball of the sun was gradually, oh so slowly closing with the highest point in its low southern arc …
They toiled upwards for six hours, through the foothills and into the first scarps, then collapsed with fatigue among cliff-hanging trees which gave them shade from the glaring sun. There they slept; later they ate; the sun seemed to hover, and moved a little to the east. With about sixty solid hours of daylight remaining before the “evening” and twilight, Lardis was not displeased with their progress.
Phase two saw them traversing a series of misted lesser scarps made treacherous by waterfalls, and skirting several boggy, steamy false plateaux of sedge, reeds and tough creepers, before the ground dried out and started sharply upwards again. The going was much harder here; taking longer to cover a shorter distance proved frustrating and wearisome. But eventually they made camp, fed themselves from their supplies, took their second sleep period at the foot of steep cliffs where an ancient fault cut a narrow and precarious causeway to the top. When they awakened it was plain that the sun had already commenced its not quite interminable descent.
Climbing the causeway, now they were up into the mountains proper. Sunside’s levels had been left far behind, almost lost in a faintly purple haze of depth and distance where only the glittering snakes of rivers showed through a grey-green canopy of forest. Further south, at the curving rim of the world, the furnace deserts formed a searing yellow band across the entire east-west horizon; way up ahead, the mountain peaks seemed hidden behind wave upon wave of ridges and false summits.
Already it seemed they had climbed forever, and a like distance yet to go. But Lardis was not dismayed; his directional instinct told him that he was on course; he recognized many mountain features. If all continued to go according to plan, they’d be passing between the ultimate peaks even as twilight darkened towards night.
Which was precisely where all ceased to go according to plan …
Climbing an easy, rocky ridge towards a new summit, Ion Romani was last in line. Where the others had passed without incident, he disturbed a stone which harboured a small, sleeping snake. The creature hissed, emerged from its hiding place and bit him; he reared back from it, missed his footing, went sliding and skittering down a tearing flank of sharp stone to a shallow fall on to a bed of boulders. He landed awkwardly and broke his arm, and so made himself useless for any more trekking.
They dressed the moaning Ion’s wounds as best they could, made a sling for his arm, divided up their provisions. Franci Romani would stay with his younger brother, deal with his snake fever when it came on, eventually discover for them an easier, more gradual descent to Settlement. In all the incident wasted three hours of valuable time, leaving only four men to continue the expedition …
Later:
A spiral of frothy clouds, lured south from the peaks by thermals rising off the distant deserts, afforded intermittent relief from the sun’s glare; a promising goat track ended disappointingly in sheer, unscalable cliffs, so that a new route must be found; for the toiling men, time’s passing became a meaningless blur as hours slipped by in straining, swearing, sweaty procession. Finally, with every muscle in every limb a fiery ache, Lardis called a halt some three hundred feet below the tree-line.
In the time frame of another world of men, two and a half days had passed since they set out upon their climb. This was their last chance to sleep, and then cover more ground before the twilight came down. Already the sun was settling towards the south-easterly horizon.
… They set no watch and overslept, and Lardis woke up ill-tempered and creaking in every joint. He feared that four years of easy living had sucked all of the energy out of him, and was angry to discover this weakness now, just when he most needed his great strength. With the sun an orange hemisphere clinging to the rim of the world, and the preternatural hush of twilight already settling, he urged his men to greater efforts as they climbed up through the last trees and into the winding passes and trails between the peaks. Bird song faded into the hooting of owls; the moon raced headlong, tumbling on high; out of the west, the first wolf howled a lone appreciation of his fleet, sky-floating mistress.
But at last the four struck upon a trail recognized of old, and Lardis was able to state with some certainty that from now on the going would be easier. Nine more hours should see them up the last rise, through the final pass to what was once The Dweller’s Starside garden where … where they would see what they would see.
Except that they were to see it, and know the worst, long before then …
Half-way through the peaks and with the twilight fading into night, as the four proceeded cautiously along the dried-out bed of an ancient watercourse, suddenly Lardis felt a leaden weight on his heart and a clammy chill in his soul. He knew the sensation of old: a legacy of talented Gypsy forebears. At the same time, as if at a signal, the distant howling of wolves tapered down into uneasy ululations and ceased, and the small mountain owls where they called to each other across high-walled ravines likewise fell silent.
Scarcely breathing, the four crouched down in the shadows of looming rocks and looked all about. Behind them, wan spokes of pink and yellow light probed the southern sky over Sunside like a fading fan. Sundown, yes … but not just another sundown. Lardis crouched lower still and pulled the others down with him. Fingers to his lips in the darkness, with a breathless hiss, he cautioned them to continued silence. And they waited …
Faint yellow patches turned powdery grey on the reflective flanks of the surrounding peaks; the velvet gloom settled that much deeper; there came a high-pitched, querulous squeaking, a sudden throb of membrane wings—bats! But there are bats and there are bats.
Lardis’s fiery Gypsy blood ran cold. His world had many bat species, not least the insectivores, like tiny winged mice. But these creatures which suddenly appeared out of the night to speed overhead in close groups of three, with their silhouettes etched blue in starshine, were of no such small, harmless variety. Full-grown adults, they were not unlike the Desmodus or true vampire of a world known to the Szgany only as the hell-lands—but the span of their wings was almost a metre tip to tip.
Despite the size of the creatures, and the fact that campfire legends were full of alleged attacks, Lardis knew that in themselves they were not especially dangerous; it was what they stood for which froze him to a statue. More than four years had passed since he had seen a swarm so intent, so full of purpose, but even as he’d known it then, so in his own instinctive way he knew just exactly what it meant now.
Familiars of the Wamphyri were abroad in the night skies again, winging ahead of their masters on an errand of utmost horror … searching!
But searching for what?
III
In four speeding arrowhead formations, three bats to a group, the nightmare familiars of the Wamphyri set the air throbbing overhead, disappearing without pause in the direction of Starside and The Dweller’s garden. Long moments stretched out, and only the cold stars for company in a sky darkening from amethyst over Sunside to indigo between the peaks. Lardis remained frozen, but Peder Szekarly, the youngest of his men, made as if to stand up. He lacked experience and didn’t share Lardis’s prescience in these matters.
Lardis felt the other shuffling impatiently, stretching a limb beside him; he reached out a hand and his hard fingers dug irresistibly into Peder’s shoulder, holding him down and still. And sensing the way their leader seemed to have shrunk down into himself, Lardis’s three crouched lower still, becoming one with the humped silhouettes of the boulders.
“Wha—?” Peder began to speak, his voice the merest whisper; but Lardis
at once cautioned him with hoarse, breathless whispers of his own:
“Say nothing! Do nothing! Neither move, breathe, nor yet think—or if you must, then think of silence, of sleep, of what it must have been like in your mother’s womb, with nothing to fear but being born! Do exactly as I tell you, if you want to live!”
It wasn’t the first time Peder had heard words such as these; they were cautions he’d learned as a child. For like every Traveller child before him, he’d been instructed in the art of silence: of not being heard, not being seen … of not being. And he remembered how his father had breathed just such words in his ear one monstrous night, and how at sunup he had neither father nor mother. It was so long ago, so terrible to remember, that he’d almost forgotten, that was all.
But now Peder Szekarly wanted very much to live; likewise his colleagues, who grew still as stones; and so the seconds lengthened into minutes.
Then, as time itself slowed and contracted down to now, so the night air thickened, turning leaden with an unspoken but tangible dread. It was as if the heartbeats of the four took on the volume of drums sounding against their ribs, so that each man believed the next must surely hear him—and prayed that nothing else would. And all four of them, they turned their heads and looked back the way they’d come. That was where the great bats had come from, and if their masters were with them …
They were, and in the next moment Lardis and the others saw them.
Dark blots, like gigantic kites, or curious leaves whose scalloped rims undulated in the breeze off Starside, they rose menacingly out of the smothering blanket of night. Up from the tree-line—up into the lesser peaks, and rising over them—up into the night sky, where they blotted out the clean stars with their foul, nightmare shapes.