Blood Brothers Page 31

  In the near-distance, amid smoky, flame-shot ruins close to Settlement’s east wall, a last lone flyer flopped up hugely on to a pile of rubble and craned its swaying head towards the sky. Pausing to watch, Nestor was vaguely aware of a rider in the saddle where the creature’s neck widened into its back. But in another moment the flyer had thrust itself forward and aloft on powerful coiled-spring launching members, and rising up from the ruins it banked in a wide circle over the town and rapidly gained height. Feeling its shadow on him as it passed overhead, Nestor gaped at its massive diamond shape flowing black against the stars, and wondered at its meaning.

  Then, slack-jawed, with his head tilted back at an angle and his half-vacant eyes still fixed on the alien shape in the sky, he continued his shambling walk through the reeking smoke and scattered rubble; until his path was obstructed and he felt something splash wet and warm against his torn trousers.

  Sprawled at his feet, he saw the shattered body of a man whose face had been flensed from the bone. A dark red fountain was spurting in bursts from his savaged throat; but even as Nestor considered the meaning of this, so the crimson fountain grew spasmodic, lost height and gurgled out of existence. And with it the man’s life.

  But it had been only one life, and this was only one body among many. Looking around, Nestor could see plenty of others, almost all of them lying very still.

  And so he came to the old meeting place, that great open space which stood off-centre in Settlement, a little closer to the east wall than the west, and there discovered life in the midst of all this death. But not immediately.

  First:

  The East Gate was burning. Yellow and orange flames were leaping high over the stockade wall, where the gate seemed to have been set on fire deliberately. The wide path from the gate to the gathering place was strewn with bodies; Nestor dimly recalled, however, that there had been a crowd here. Well, while the corpses were a great many, still they would not have made a crowd. So some had escaped, anyway. But from what?

  Wamphyri! said a voice in the back of his mind.

  But another said: Impossible, for they are no more!

  And a third, his own, insisted: But I am the Lord Nestor!

  The smoke was clearing now and the vampire-spawned mist evaporating, sinking into the earth. People were starting to come out of hiding, stumbling among the dead, crying out and tearing their hair as they discovered dead friends, lovers, relatives. Central in the open space, where tables lay overturned and the ground was strewn with the spoiled makings of a feast, a young man, Nestor’s senior by five or six years, stood over the body of his girl and tore his shirt open, beat his breast, screamed his agony. She had been stripped naked, torn, ravaged, brutalized.

  Stepping closer, Nestor stared at the man and believed he knew him … from somewhere. And a frown creased his forehead as he wondered how it was he knew so much yet understood so little. Then he saw the rise and fall of the girl’s bruised breasts and noticed a slight movement of her hand. And as her head lolled in Nestor’s direction, he saw a strange wan smile upon her sleeping or unconscious face.

  He moved closer still, touched the sobbing man on the arm and said, “She isn’t dead.”

  Wild-eyed, the other turned on him, grabbed him up with a furious strength, shook him like a rag doll. “Of course she’s not dead, you fool—you bloody fool! She’s worse than dead!” He thrust Nestor away and fell to his knees beside the girl.

  Nestor stood there—still frowning, still mazed—and repeated the other’s words: “Worse than dead?”

  The man looked up, peered at him through red-rimmed eyes, and finally nodded. “Ah, I know you now, Nestor Kiklu, covered in dirt. But you’re one of the lucky ones, born at the end of it. You’re too young to know; you don’t remember how it was, and so can’t see how it must be again. But I do remember, and only too well! I was only six years old when the Wamphyri raided on Sanctuary Rock. Afterwards, I saw my father drive a stake through my mother’s heart, watched him cut off her head, and burn her on a fire. That’s how it was then and … and how it must be now.” He hung his head and fell sobbing on the girl, covering her nakedness.

  There were more men in the open space now, a handful, but these were different, older, harder men. They had grown hard in their young days, spent in the shadow of the Wamphyri, and were now filled with some grim purpose. Nestor seemed instinctively to know these things, and felt he should know the men, too, but their names wouldn’t come. They were hurrying towards the east wall, where colleagues on the high wooden catwalk beckoned to them, urging them on.

  Nestor followed in their wake, but more slowly, and tried to understand what one of the men on the catwalk was shouting to them. In the still night air—with only the dazed, bewildered, trembling voices of other survivors, and the whoosh and crackle of the fires to compete with—his words carried over the open area loud and clear. And for all that they were hard words, still there was a catch and even a sob in his familiar voice:

  “Too late now, you dullards!” he cried. “Didn’t I try to warn you? You know I did. What? And you took me for a madman! And now … now I think I am a madman! But all those years of building, of being prepared, gone up in smoke, gone for nothing. And all this good Szgany blood, spilled and wasted, and unavenged …”

  And at last Nestor remembered him: Lardis Lidesci, whom even the Wamphyri had respected, upon a time. And beside him on the catwalk, Andrei Romani; between them they’d wound back the loading gear of a giant crossbow, and manhandled a great ironwood bolt with a barbed, silver-tipped harpoon into its groove on the massive tiller. Men’s work for sure, but they were men.

  So were the others on the ground, whose names now sprang into Nestor’s mind:

  They were Andrei Romani’s brothers, Ion and Franci, and the small wiry one was the hunter of wild boars, called Kirk Lisescu. Together with Lardis, these men had been legendary fighters in the days when the Wamphyri came a-hunting on Sunside and the Szgany dwelled in terror; even now Kirk Lisescu carried a weapon from those times, a “shotgun” out of another world. But Nestor knew that except in dreams all such things were over and done with long ago.

  Weren’t they?

  While he puzzled at it, the men had moved on towards the east wall. But up on the catwalk Lardis was shouting again and pointing at the sky—over Nestor! And now, shutting out the stars, a shadow fell on him.

  He looked up, at the lone flyer where it side-slipped to and fro, deliberately stalling itself and losing height. For a moment it seemed poised there, like a hawk on the wing, before lowering its head, arching its membrane wings and sliding into a swooping dive. It was heading directly for the bereft young man where he sobbed over his ravaged love. And its rider was lying far forward in his saddle, reaching out along the creature’s neck, directing its actions with voice and mind both.

  Suddenly something snapped into place in Nestor’s befuddled mind. For if this was a dream it had gone badly wrong. And if it was his dream, then he should have at least a measure of control over it. He started lurchingly back towards the ragged figure crouching over the girl in the centre of the open area, and as he ran he shouted a warning: “Look out! You there, look out!”

  The man looked up, saw Nestor running towards him, and beyond him the others bringing their weapons to bear, apparently on him! Then he glanced over his shoulder at the thing swooping out of the sky, gasped some inarticulate denial, and made a dive for the shallow gouge of an empty fire-pit. As he disappeared from view the flyer veered left and right indecisively, then stretched out its neck and came straight on—for Nestor!

  Coming to a skidding halt, suddenly Nestor sensed that this was more than a nightmare. It was real, and the reality gathering impetus, rushing closer with every thudding heartbeat. He glanced all about, saw open space on every side and nowhere to take cover. From behind him someone yelled, “Get down!” And a crossbow bolt zipped overhead. Then …

  … The flyer was almost upon him, and the underside of its
neck where it widened into the flat corrugated belly was splitting open into a great mouth or pouch lined with cartilage barbs! Nestor turned, began to run, felt a rush of foul air as the flyer closed with the earth to float inches over its surface. And in another moment the fleshy scoop of its pouch had lifted him off his feet and folded him inside.

  As darkness closed in, he saw twin flashes of fire from the muzzle of Kirk Lisescu’s shotgun; up on the stockade catwalk, Lardis Lidesci and Andrei Romani were frantically traversing the great crossbow inwards. Then … cartilage hooks caught in Nestor’s clothing, and clammy darkness compressed him.

  Squirming and choking, denied freedom of movement and deprived of air and light, he breathed in vile gases which worked on him like an anaesthetic, blacking him out. The last things he felt were a massive shuddering thud, followed by a contraction of the creature’s flesh around him and its violent aerial swerving.

  Then his limbs turned to lead as the flyer fought desperately for altitude …

  PART FIVE:

  Vampires—The Sundered Tribes—The Search

  I

  Lardis and Andrei were asleep when the searchers found Nathan and brought him in along with five more. By then sundown was one-third spent, and Nathan had lain unconscious in the grass at the foot of the west wall for more than nine hours. He was still unconscious when they dumped him unceremoniously on his back on a huge plank table salvaged from the wreckage at the site of the meeting place. This was where the survivors were being examined—all the survivors—to see if they really were survivors.

  Between times, a lot had happened and was still happening. After the attack—after Wratha and her henchmen had done their worst, taken the best, destroyed what they could of the rest and left—then Lardis had taken charge, issued hurried instructions, finally rushed at killing speed up to his cabin on the knoll, where he’d hoped against hope to find his wife and son waiting and unharmed.

  But he had doubted it. For he knew that Lissa always kept lamps burning in the cabin’s windows when he was away, to guide him home, and he hadn’t seen Jason since he and the Kiklu boys had gone on ahead into the town. That soft glow, from Lissa’s lamps, could be seen for miles around—as indeed Lardis had seen it through the treetops during his and Andrei’s approach to Settlement, but as he no longer saw it—burning up there against the dark flank of the mountains. And as he had driven himself like a madman up the steep side of the knoll, so he’d wondered who or what else had seen that glow, and why his son hadn’t come back down when he heard the uproar and saw parts of the town burning.

  It could be, of course, that Lissa had seen a suspicious mist on the slopes and stifled the lamps, and that then she’d restricted Jason to the house. It could be …

  … But it wasn’t. For when finally Lardis had got there it was to find his place in ruins. Following which he’d spent a back-breaking hour digging in the rubble, finding neither Lissa nor Jason. In a way it had been a relief: at least they were—or might still be—alive! But it was also the greatest tragedy of Lardis’s life. For he didn’t know where or in what circumstances they lived.

  Taken by the Wamphyri? To be used by them, slaughtered by them, perhaps even … altered, by them? That hadn’t borne thinking about. And so for a while he’d thought nothing but sat there in dumb silence, amidst the ruins, already grieving or preparing to grieve their loss. So that by the time Andrei came to sit with him—saying nothing but simply being there in silent commiseration—Lardis’s unspoken agony was already turning outwards, to everlasting hatred and cold fury.

  But even so, and for all that his loss was great, he had known he wasn’t the only one. And when finally he’d looked at Andrei, to inquire in that gravelly voice of his, “Well?” … then his friend and ally of so many years had known that the old Lardis was back. And nodding grimly he’d told him:

  “In the old days you were iron, my friend. Now it’s time to be iron again. For we’re ready, down there.”

  Then Lardis had come to his feet, straightened his back and shrugged off his weariness. And: “Then let’s be at it,” he’d said, as simply as that.

  But half-way down, pausing briefly, he’d begged Andrei’s forgiveness for striking him; also for the fact that he’d been deep in the woods—alone and lonely, bitter and raging, far beyond the South Gate—when the Wamphyri had struck so devastatingly at Settlement. To which the other had answered:

  “You have it, and on both counts, but only if you will forgive me: that I ever doubted you …”

  Since when, the pair had done or directed what must be done, between times catching up on a little sleep; the latter out of sheer exhaustion. Mercifully their weariness was as much mental as physical, so that they hadn’t dreamed; otherwise their task might be impossible. Work such as this did not make for easy dreaming. And so they were asleep, in a hastily erected tent close to the meeting place, when Nathan Kiklu and five others were brought out of the darkness into the light from the lamps and the blazing central fire.

  It was nothing new to Lardis and Andrei, this process of screening, the investigation or inquisition of the injured in the wake of a Wamphyri raid; in the old days they had seen plenty of this. But the last raid had been eighteen years ago and they were no longer inured to it. Of course, the friends and families of those they examined were invariably present, their dark Szgany eyes soulful in the flickering firelight, mutely questioning the examiners in their turn.

  But if the horror wasn’t now, at the direction of free men—men who were still their own men—then it would only come later, and from a different source entirely. And all of them knew it.

  Coming to the table, Lardis shivered under the blanket round his shoulders and tied a knot in its corners under his chin. The accidental fires had been put out hours ago, since when the night had grown chilly … or maybe it was just him. At least the stink of monsters had cleared away now. He glanced up at the mountains—blue-edged with starshine; no mist on the peaks now. In any case, the Wamphyri rarely struck twice in the same place, not in the space of a single sundown. And usually their raids followed fast on the setting sun, when they were most hungry.

  It seemed unreal: to remember all of these things now. And to know how very necessary it was that he remember them.

  The first figure on the table was that of a woman in the middle of her life, maybe thirty-six years old. Lardis shook himself awake, rubbed sleep from his eyes and stared hard at her face. He knew her: Alizia Gito. Her man was three years dead; he’d broken his back in a fall while hunting in the mountains.

  Upon the index finger of Lardis’s left hand, he wore a ring of gold set with a large, flat, reflective stone. Holding this over her open mouth, he watched for signs of breathing, the filming of the polished stone. Patiently he waited, and was rewarded when the stone’s glitter faded to an opaque moistness. She breathed, but very slowly and faintly. As yet this proved nothing, except that she lived. Lardis had seen people dying before, and knew how their breathing was wont to fade away like this. Ah, but he also understood how well undeath could imitate life!

  Alizia’s face was very badly bruised and her jaw looked broken, but she had no wounds that Lardis could see: no cuts, and her neck was unmarked. He called forward two older women. “Strip her—”

  —And a haggard young man stepped forward, a growl rumbling in his throat as he grasped Lardis’s arm. Lardis looked him in the eye, unflinchingly, and continued: “—but let her keep her dignity, what’s left to the poor woman. Put a blanket over her.”

  The young man was Nico, one of Alizia’s sons, about seventeen years old. Lardis recognized him, and now asked after his younger brother. “Vladi?”

  Nico released Lardis’s arm, shook his head. His eyes were very bright with unspilled tears. “Taken,” he reported, with a gulp. “I was in hiding under a cart. Towards the end of it I looked out, saw one of them knock Vladi on the head, toss him into the saddle of a flyer and make off with him. I found my mother later. Is she …?”
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  “I don’t know,” Lardis could only shrug and shake his head. “I have to look under this blanket to find out. Listen, I’ve looked at a lot of women tonight. It means nothing to me, but I know it means a lot to you. We can look together, if you like?” He put an arm across the other’s slumped shoulders. And they looked.

  Alizia was naked now; she’d been half-naked anyway. Lardis saw … obvious signs, but he had to be sure. “Nico, I want to touch her, turn her over,” he said. “Can you help me?” Very carefully, they turned her face down. There were indentations in her thighs and buttocks, deep as claw marks, some of them bleeding.

  Lardis shuddered and let the blanket fall. His face was working as he stepped back a little, nodding to three men who waited at a discreet distance. One of them was Andrei Romani.

  “No!” said Nico, his voice the merest gasp, a breath of air.

  Lardis caught him by the arm, held him back. The executioners—three merciful killers—came forward very quickly. Nico screamed high and shrill, but Lardis trapped his neck in a powerful armlock and turned his face away.

  The three lifted Alizia in her blanket and carried her to the very end of the table. And there they hammered a stake through her heart. The sound was meaty, soggy,and crunching where ribs splintered. “But she’s alive, she’s alive!” Nico was gurgling. “She’s my mother! I came out of her!”

  “Yes,” Lardis told him through gritted teeth, holding him even tighter, “but what’s in her now must stay there. She’s no longer the mother you knew but a foul, undead thing. But you’re lucky, for soon she’ll be clean and merely dead. So forgive us if you can, and be thankful.”