E-Branch - Invaders Part 30

His suffering was more mental than physical, I fancy.

'There were bears in some profusion, many with cubs, and even a fox or two, snowy white where they scavenged for sprats at the water's rim. And great fishes as big as warriors spouting in the sea. "Mo re than sufficient of food," said Malinari, "to fuel us on our jo urney home."

'And Szwart wanted to know: "What has happened here?" '"A freak in the weather," my master told him. "It is the only answer. And it is our freedom to return to Starside!"

'"We were banished," said Vavara, who had been a hag, but already was regaining much of her former beauty.

'"Aye, long and long ago," said Malinari. And he took her down to the ice-house in the ribs of our long-extinct warrior.

Gnawed on by bears, wolves, foxes, whatever, its bones had collapsed to nothing and lay flat to the cold slurry. And: "A hundred years," said Malinari. "Or two, or three - or maybe more! And our enemies in Starside? Killed off by now in their bloodwars. And that diseased old tyrant, Dramal Doombody: by now he is no more, sloughed away to rot and ruin. But we, the forgotten of Starside, go on. We are survivors, Vavara.

And we shall return!"

'And we did. But before then w e flew west to explore Shaitan the Unborn's fire-mountain. This was only made possible by his absence; Malinari no longer sensed his presence in the extinct volcano, and the smoke of his fires no longer rose up. We found mighty vats of plasma; once frozen, they were now rancid, crawling with maggots, and gave offence. These and other signs of fairly recent habitation told of a Being not long moved on.

' "It seems that he, too, has returned into Starside," was Lord Szwart's opinion.

'But be that as it may, we ne ver found him there ...'

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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

Nathan's War In the sump of the once-refuge (and yet not really there, for in fact Jake Cutter was asleep and uneasily dreaming in a jetcopter speeding east towards Brisbane across the vastly sprawling Simpson Desert) Harry Keogh's deadspeak voice once again startled Jakefrom the weird reverie induced by Korath MindsthralTs story: You've done well, Korath, and we are almost finished now, Harry said. Almost? The vampire answered gloomily, by now perhaps resignedly. What more can you possibly want of me?

Well, we know what you failed to find when you returned to Starside, the ex-Necroscope, or rather his revenant - or, better still, this facet of him - answered. You didn't find Shaitan or any others of the Wamphyri, and you certainly didn't find their aeries! Instead you found the hollow stumps of those once-great stacks, which you, your master, and Us colleagues were obliged to use as temporary dwelling places.

Then, once again, you commenced raiding on Sunside's Szgany. You can take it from there.

But it scarcely seems worthwhile, Korath protested. For it appears you already know it all!

Not all of it. (The shake of an incorporeal head.) How didMalinari and the others fair on Sunside,for instance? We would like to know how the Szgany ... welcomed them? Also, we want to know what made those three Great Vampires desert Starside, risk their necks by venturing into the ill-omened subterranean Gate, and come here. And since you were involved, who better to ask?

Very well, Korath grated, his patience all but used up. If it would please you- -It would, Harry told him. And it would serve to keep us here a while longer at least.

Then, with a sigh, Korath put the finis.h.i.+ng touches to his tale: 'We flew home, to what had been our home. You are correct: the aeries were gone, like vast stone corpses fallen on the barren boulder plains. And arriving in the hour before sunup, we were obliged to find shelter in their shattered stumps.

'The desmodus colonies were still there, and we found ourselves greeted by descendants of the descendants of our former familiars. At least they were the same! And like the bats themselves, we sheltered from the sun (which seemed to rise marginally higher in the sky) in their lowly crumbling caverns in the echoing bas.e.m.e.nt levels of the shattered stacks.

'Night came, and with it the fear that perhaps the Szgany were no more: that they, too, might have succ.u.mbed to whatever disaster had befallen here. But when we flew to the higher ridges of the barrier mountains and looked down on Sunside- '-Ah! But the Szgany were there, and in such numbers!

'Their campfires - and in many cases more permanent town or settlement fires - lit the night like so many glow-worms in the dark of forests which, in our time, had not seen so much as a night-light, but only the tell-tale smoke of cottage or caravan stoves! And here they were all joyous, juicy, and fearless, our beloved Szgany of Sunside. The sounds of their music drifted up to our keen vampire ears, and the smells of their cooking - and of them - to our wide, straining nostrils. Ah, that was a beautiful moment!

'And Malinari said: "The Wamphyri are gone. We three alone of all the Great Vampires survive." (He excluded me, of course.) Do you see, Vavara? We are survivors, the only survivors! And so I was right."

' "And now we go down," whispered Szwart, "to the feast!"

'But: "Ah, no, not so," said The Mind, holding up a cautionary 346 347.

hand. "Those tribes down there, they do not know we are back.

If we raid here, now, then they will know. And next time will be that much harder. But we have aeries to build and furnish, lieutenants and thralls to recruit, warrior creatures and flyers to breed in our vats - hah! When we have first discovered or dug vats, in the wreckage of those shattered stumps!

' "Also, you must ask yourself what happened here. Did the Wamphyri destroy themselves or were they destroyed? And if the latter, by whom? The Szgany? Ah, no, Lord Szwart, having survived the Icelands, I am in no great hurry to show myself here. For my thoughts have gone out and found an odd sense of security and freedom in the Szgany. Why, they are unafraid!

Perhaps because they no longer have reason to be afraid.

Which in turn might mean that we do. Wherefore we must be cautious and first discover the secret of these changes in the scheme of things."

' "So what would you suggest?"

Szwart hi ssed. "That we sit here all night and admire their fires?"

'Malinari shook his head. "Those tribes down there, close- packed in this central area of Sunside. If we raid on one, then by morning all of them will know. And we need time to re- establish ourselves. So this is what we will do. Tonight we split up. Vavara raids in the far west, you in the east, but this side of the great pa.s.s. I shall raid beyond the pa.s.s. And we glut, aye, but mainly we recruit - we recruitfuriously, taking as many as we can. We share our spoils equally, building together, allies by circ.u.mstance as we have always been. This way, gradually, we shall discover what's what here: how things stand, and why they seem so different now. Is it agreed?"

'After some small haggling it was so agreed, and as Malinari had decreed we recruited "furiously". We converted men into thralls, from whose ranks we chose lieutenants; these were soon able to make more thralls - and so on. And we stockpiled drink and foodstuffs (aye, and other good stuff) out of Sunside, and put a task force to work digging in the rubble- strewn stumps of the old fallen stacks, building walls around our chosen habitations and roofing them over.

'During all of this construction, occasionally our workers would uncover vats, gas-beast chambers, or coc.o.o.ned matter from yesteryear. Of course, the greater ma.s.s of the once-living material was putrid, no longer usable; some of it, however, contained a spark and was digestible, a.s.similable by newer, fresher material out of Sunside. And so we progressed.

'But time pa.s.sed, and word of our presence also pa.s.sed - from tribe to tribe and clan to clan - until all the peoples of Sunside knew that the Wamphyri were back in Starside. It didn't take long, say ten or twelve sundowns.

'Meanwhile we had recruited some eight hundred men, women, and children. Moreover, deep beneath the foundations of a toppled aerie, our workers had discovered a cache of well- preserved metamorphic liquids requiring little more than imprinting-an infusion of essence and a few nodes of rudimentary intelligence - to stimulate growth. And now we could fill the vats with vampiric life. 'First we made flyers, successfully! And later we tried for warriors, but that was when the trouble started. It was a tribe known for its aggressive nature in the olden times, and no less ferocious now: the Szgany Lidesci, whose territory lay midwest of Sunside in fertile forests under cavern-riddled foothills.

'Apparently the Lidescis had found a hero, a youth or man called Nathan Kiklu, who had ventured into forbidden places and returned with awesome weapons. It was a story we heard over and over again from thralls recruited in Sunside: how this Nathan's brother had been Wamphyri - Lord Nestor, of an aerie so mighty it could only have been Dramstack, or whatever it was called in his time - and how he had contrived to hurl his Szgany sibling into the Hel l-Lands Gate.

'Well, the Gate was a legend; in our time it had been used as a punishment, and no man or creature who entered, "banished"

into the white glare of the Starside Gate, had ever returned to tell of his adventures. But that was then and this was now, and for a 348.

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certainty this Nathan was extant; all too soon, we would begin to experience his works at first hand.

'He was of the Szgany Lidesci. No longer nomadic, the Lidescis had built a sprawling town or fortification called Settlement. And the first time we raided on them - which was also the last time - ah, but then we discovered the meaning of "awesome weapons!"

'Our warriors - which were far more complicated constructs than flyers - were not waxed as yet. We went in with a force of flyers and thrall riders, and a handful of lieutenants to guide the men into battle. Except it wasn't planned as a battle but a rout, when the Szgany would flee and we would pick off the hindmost. Vavara and Malinari between them mad e a mist (Szwart was above such devices when he could avoid them; since he could simply merge into the night, he deemed mists unsporting and indeed unnecessary deceptions). But be that is it may, the mist rolled down out of the foothills to swallow Settlement whole. We could see the fitful glow of the Lidescis' communal fires deep in its clammy heart.

'Then our flyers launched and settled towards the town ... and flew straight into the teeth of h.e.l.l!

'Fortunately, we leaders were not in the forefront of this offensive; instead, alerted by my master who was suspicious, we had held back to observe the initial Lidesci reaction. For when Malinari had sent his telepathic probes deep into the mist over Settlement, he had sensed something strange - a mental silence, an awareness, a threat. And he was right.

'The night came alive with deafening explosions, brilliant flashes of light and shrill screams - not Szgany screams!

These were the shrieks of our thralls, and the hissing death- cries of stricken flyers. And echoing up to us from Settlement's wooden walls came sharp, spitting cracks of sound one after the other, like stones breaking in a fire or saplings snapping in an avalanche. And great, dazzling b.a.l.l.s of fire came soaring up out of the mist into a body of flyers that was still descending.

Wherever they hit, destruction followed: flyers bursting into flame and blazing thralls leaping from their saddles!

'And finally more aerial fireb.a.l.l.s: this time aimed at us, where we looked on in utter disbelief from our "safe" foothills ridge.

Then: '"Enough!" And uttering a curse, Szwart spurred his mount aloft and climbed into the night. A true fly-the-light, he had seen and suffered all he could bear; now he retreated from the blinding flares of man-made fireb.a.l.l.s.

'Malinari and Vavara, they used Wamphyri mentalism to call off what handfuls remained of our forces, many of whom were too badly damaged to make it back across the barrier mountains into Starside. And as that sorry, scorched and blistered rabble came limping through the mist - glad to escape from the roil and the reek - so we launched and rose on sulphur thermals, and headed for home ...

'... And for the surprise of our lives!

'As we fell towards the triangle of rubble wherein we had commenced to build our new empire, we saw what could not be - such devastation! Our central gas-beast chambers, blown asunder, and their occupants in tatters all strewn about, exploded in the blast of their own gases! And warrior vats ablaze with liquid fire that burned blue to melt the mewling monsters! And even as we circled overhead in stunned amaze, a thunderous explosion that tossed shattered vampire thralls and debris aloft over the battlement walls of one of Malinari's unfinished constructions (a warrior pen, which never would be finished now), bursting the walls themselves outwards with its force!

'We landed hurriedly, in unaccustomed disarray, and without ceremony my master and his colleagues hurled themselves in their fury upon those thralls who had been left behind to mind our works. But before a single question could be fired, a single thrall executed: ' "Ho, there!" A strange voice from on high-but not the harsh 350.

tones, warning growl or threatening hiss of the Wamphyri. No, this was the voice of a young man, and entirely human.

'He stood on the ledge of a shattered stump, his back to the sheer rock wall. There was no way up from his position and none down, not without he encounter the Wamphyri or their lieutenants and thralls. And he was tall but slight, with nothing of the bulk of a vampire or the leaden look of a Lord. He was, quite literally, a man - Szgany.

'"Who are you?" said Malinari. "This Nathan, perhaps? And is this your work? If so you are a dead man!" I felt my master concentrating, the waves of animosity beating out from him, to enter the stranger's mind and befuddle it.

'But young as he was, and obviously mad (or perhaps not?) he only smiled a knowing smile, shook his head, and said, "Ah, no, my mentalist friend - my mind is s.h.i.+elded. And if Maglore the Mage could not get to me, what chance have you?

And you're right: I am Nathan, and this is my work. Nor have you seen the last of it."

'Malinari ge stured (wi th his mind); thralls crept towards the broken stairway that led to Nathan's position. He glanced at them, saw them coming, appeared to ignore them.' Meanwhile, the voluptuous Vavara had stepped forward. She was almost physically aglow and issued her ultimate aura of feminine allure. Her mouth blew a kiss and a promise in Nathan's direction; she smiled up at him on his ledge - the knowing smile of a wh.o.r.e, yet one to cut into a man's soul, if he had one - and lit the night with the l.u.s.tful heat of her jewel-green, crimson-cored eyes.

'Tipping back her hood and opening her collar, she shook out her raven hair, then let her long, bat-fur cloak fall open. Her blouse was a simple band of cloth crossing from shoulder to waist, cupping one breast and leaving the other bare. Her flesh was marble in moon and starlight, and that proud, naked, stiff- tipped breast shone with the oils she used. She twirled to send her skirt of ropes flying, then came to an abrupt halt.

Tantalizing she stood, with her cloak poised on the air and the ropes of her skirt outflung.

Her st.u.r.dy legs were spread wide, thighs like pillars, b.u.t.tocks as round as an apple, dark-tufted in its dimple where the stem has been plucked and a leaf or two remain. And I stood there drooling my l.u.s.t, for I had grown just such a stem as might replace it! Then Vavara's cloak floated back into position and she was covered. But the picture stayed printed on every eye.

'I felt my blood pounding; I might myself have rushed upon her - to my doom - but Malinari's hand was on my shoulder; he held me back. And this tall, pale Szgany whelp, this Nathan, he looked down on the priestess of l.u.s.t, looked down on Vavara...

and curled his lip!

'Vavara was astonished; she felt her aura repelled as this mere man scorned her, saying, "As for you: you should know that I have been tempted by real Ladies! My mind is closed to you no less than to the mentalist there. And by the way, I know all of you. You: Vavara, Malinari, and Szwart. You were legends and now you are reality, come back from the Icelands. But if I were you I would return there, and now. There's nothing for you here but the true death. And like my father before me, who brought down these evil stacks to shatter into pieces on the boulder plains, so shall I bring you down. That is my vow, as a man of the Szgany Lidesci."

'Through all of this, Szwart had melted himself to a dark shadow on the strewn rubble. Now, flowing like a black and sentient lichen - a living stain - he moved towards the crumbling stairway. By now, too, Malinari's thralls had climbed halfway up, which was as far as they would ever get.

' "And you, Szwart," said the youth from on high, perhaps fifty feet up the stony skeleton of that ancient stairway. "Do you think to sweep over and devour me? As the legend goes, you are akin to the night and can disappear into it. But you and I know that men - and monsters - cannot simply disappear.

It's true, Szwart, isn't it?" While he spoke he took something from his Szgany jerkin, twisted it in his hands, lobbed it down, to bounce from step to step. And he said, "Well, perhaps it's true for you, at least. But as for me: I must be on my way. You may not see me, but you'll 352.

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definitely be hearing from me." So saying, he stepped back into the shadows where the wall angled.

'Lord Szwart flowed over the top of the wall where Nathan had stood, and onto the ledge from which he'd taunted all three of the Wamphyri. Szwart's darkness gathered there, s.h.i.+fting and seething, then rolled on into the selfsame shadows that hid the madman from view. And I knew that it was the end for Nathan Kiklu, whoever he had been. Lord Szwart's protoplasm would envelop him; its strange, metamorphic acids would work on him; he would shrink, devolve, and dissolve to become one with night's master. Or rather, his liquefied flesh would add to Szwart's bulk for a while, until it was converted into fuel.

'The egg-shaped item that Nathan had thrown bounced again, into the group of three climbing thralls. And there it exploded in a flash of light as bright an d momentar ily brighter than the sun itself! Light, heat, and a blast of alien energy that lacerated the flesh of the unfortunate thralls and blew them off the stone stairway, down into the rubble. They were in pieces, dead before they hit bottom. And Szwart hissing and shrieking, reeling on the high stairs where he tried to regain his man-shape, failed, and collapsed again to a slithering stain. 'All of this shocking, aye, but none so much as what Lord Szwart called out to us as finally he reformed, shaping himself into an airfoil and launching in search of some night-dark place in which to regain his composure: '"He was not there!" he shrilled. "He is not here! No man, that one, but a ghost! Perhaps the spirit of all the Szgany we ever took in our lives, all combined in one vengeful ghost!"

'And Malinari turned to Vavara and said, "Szwart is right. Not that Nathan is a ghost, but that he's no longer here. For a moment I touched his mind - real in the field of my probes, as real as the s.h.i.+elds he raised against me - and in the next moment, gone! So if you think we have seen awesome weapons at work this night, well, now we have seen a real weapon: the man Nathan himself.

But all of this bears thinking about, and I shall give it my gravest consideration."

'And despite that The Mind had chosen his words carefully, perhaps because he felt he must retain at least a measure of control, still his sprouting scythe teeth were awash in his own blood where he ground them deep into his lips and riven gums ...

'And Malinari did give it his gravest consideration, as did we all; but no amount of thinking could compensate for our losses, or dream up a successful defence against future depredations by the demon Nathan. Thus that entire night was a disaster, and no guarantee that things were ever going to get any better.

'We went subterranean. Unthinkable, eh - that the Wamphyri should ever flee from a man? From the sun, aye, but not from a single man! - yet such was the case. If we could not build on high, then we must build below, where the stumps of the toppled stacks were riddled with tunnels, caverns, and places which, in the olden times, were only ever fit for bats and beetles.

'And despite that our work force was reduced - our flyers, too, and our warriors boiled in their vats - still we had several hundreds of thralls and provisions aplenty.

'The thralls were put to work; they cleared the debris from ancient diggings, moved our provisions to safety, and built defensive positions on the surface. New vats of metamorphosis were discovered or dug, into which we sacrificed a third of our manpower, the raw materials of our future flyers and warriors.

And we commenced keeping a watch ... can you believe it? The Wamphyri, vigilant against any further sabotage attempts by this mere man! Moreover, it was more rigidly enforced than any watch that our vanished ancestors had ever kept against each other.

'But this last was a necessity, for from then on, whenever we raided against the Szgany, we could be sure that retaliation would follow hot on our heels. And Nathan Kiklu - man or ghost or whatever he was - he was everywhere. If we raided in the far western reaches of Sunside, he would soon be there with a party 355.

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of Lidesci fighters, with "guns," "grenades" and "rockets", setting fire to the wings of our flyers, blinding them with silver shot, and knocking our thralls out of their saddles before they could even touch down! Thus, for every man we recruited in Sunside, one of ours was killed by Nathan and his Szgany soldiers. And every forward step was followed by one to the rear.

'East, west, wherever we struck, Nathan and his men could be there in a trice. How? It was beyond us. Moreover, lie would snipe on us from afar, and shoot our thralls dead in their defensive or watchtower positions. Until my master and his colleagues were obliged to devise a new strategy.

'Instead of inhabiting just one central area of Starside's olden ruins, now we spread out and stationed men in every shattered stump and heap of rubble. For one thing was certain: whoever or whatever Nathan was, and for all that he could appear almost magically, anywhere, in extremely short order, he couldn't possibly be everywhere at once.' And so we maintained something of our equilibrium, despite that we made little progress ...

'One night my master flew out alone. Returning shortly, he complained bitterly that: "This d.a.m.ned Szgany b.a.s.t.a.r.d - he has spies in the barrier mountains! Hah! That is how he knows where we will raid: they watch us fly up from the boulder plains, the direction we take, then make report to him. I tracked them with my mentalism - which is how I discovered theirs!"

' "What? They are thought-thieves, these men?" Vavara found it hard to believe. "Mentalists?"

'Malinari laughed like a madman, and answered, "Even as we are mentalists, aye. So says Malinari the Mind, the greatest of them all. But... they are not men!"

' "Not men?" And now Szwart was baffled. "Not men, you say? Then what - trogs?"

'Malinari gave a wild shake of his head and waved his arms in consternation. "Not trogs, no - but dogs!"ht said. "Wolves of the wild that think like men. Stranger still, they call this Nathan uncle! He is their kin!"

' "Then he is a dog-Lord!" said Vavara. "It's the only possible solution. This hated enemy of ours is Wamphyri! He dwells in the mountain heights, rules on Sunside, and keeps the Szgany for himself. His needs are so slight that the tribes suffer him for his protection. I must be right. Nathan is a changeling."

'And Szwart said, "But a dog-Lord? With powers such as he commands? And as for suffering him for his protection - against what? What was there before we came?"

'My master threw up his hands, crying, "I don't know! I no longer know anything ... except that I am sick to death of this Nathan, of this ruined place, and of all this endless work performed without reward. This work that gets us nowhere ..."

'We took to raiding separately but simultaneously in locations far apart, and we covered our movements with great stealth.