Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (42 page)

He made his way out onto the dangerous sloping surface of the sliding scree, and patiently dug her free. And with every passing moment the treacherous rocks could have slipped and falen away, grinding both of them into oblivion; or the bitch could have turned on him and grabbed his throat. But the mountain held its breath, and the she-wolf made no such vicious protest; finaly Radu put a rope round her chest and dragged her to one side—

—At which the scree jumble gave a shudder and a mighty groan, and avalanched down onto Sunside!

Wel, maybe she knew Radu had saved her life. But whether or no, she let him splint her paw, and accepted cooked food out of his hand when he shot and roasted a rabbit. And a day later, when Radu thought she could probably make it on her own and set off west again, the she-wolf came hobbling after him. For while her pack had forsaken her, this man had not, and she would not forsake him. After that, going from strength to strength, eventualy she was fuly recovered.

From which time on there were two of them.

In Radu’s entire life, this incident was one of the very few good things that had ever happened to him. Who could have guessed that it would result in the very worst thing of al?

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II

CHANGELING!

In Radu’s dreams, his father and sister lived again, and walked and talked with him, reminding him of his past. Waking was invariably a bad time, when suddenly he would know that they were dead, of course, and discover himself a loner. And but for the company of Singer (so named for the fact that when Radu sang to himself of an evening, she would join in to serenade the moon), he suspected he might very easily lose his mind. Nor would he be the first loner to go mad from the solitude of his ways.

But Singer was there, hunting with and for Radu, constantly by his side, more of a friend and companion than any human creature he had ever known, except for the mother he had loved for so short a time, and his family which was no more. But despite the presence of the white she-wolf, ever more frequently he would find himself dwelling upon the fate of his father and sister, and the fact that he’d been thwarted in the hour of his vengeance. At the time, two for two had seemed satisfactory … now he felt the scales had been weighted again him, and knew how he’d been cheated.

Looking down on western Sunside from the heights where the barrier mountains commenced to crumble to the swamps, he would fancy he saw the fires of Zirescu encampments. And despite his Szgany vow to be gone from the western forests forever, he would feel this oh so strong compulsion to return, for however brief and bloody a time …

He was a man full-grown now, firm in all his limbs, still lean but springy as a sapling, swift as a bolt from a crossbow and just as deadly a hunter, no less than his lupine companion. And he wondered how fat and idle were grown the Zirescu twins, Ion and Lexandru, and their loathsome father, Giorga; and how long, tall and pimply the Ferenczys brothers, Rakhi and Lagula? Perhaps Giorga was dead; Radu hoped so. But strangely, he hoped the Zirescu twins and the Ferenczy brothers yet lived. And when thoughts like that came to him, then he would run

with Singer, and hunt to take his mind off things.

Until eventually, weary of the mountain heights in spite of all their grandeur (and perhaps afraid of his feelings when he looked down on western Sunside), he sought new horizons, new scenes and sensations. The far western lowlands lay mainly unexplored; Radu fancied there must be havens in the green fringes, where birds sang and creatures played, and fishes leaped in the cool clear water before it all ran to swamp.

But in any case he dreamed of the dark and misted forests he’d known as a boy, and once more walked with his father, sister and mother (despite that she had died when Magda was born) along old Szgany trails, and so would go down into the unknown badlands. If he dared, he would prefer to go down into the Sunside of his childhood, however unhappy that had been, but could not for reasons already explained. At the moment he was an outlaw, true, but to the best of his knowledge men didn’t seek him for his life. All of which could change if he deliberately set himself against the Zirescus. And so it was the badlands, which were not named that way for nothing.

At first, all seemed well. Streams fell from on high, cascading into cool, misted depths, and Radu and Singer swam where the falls had formed basins in centuries-hollowed rocks. Vines and hybrid flowers flourished in the spray from the waters and the sunlight streaming from Sunside, and in fertile valleys between black, eroded spurs the foliage was lush and filled with living things. But then, as the course of their descent turned away from Sunside, abruptly things changed.

The warmth from the sun lancing overhead was still present, but now the rising mist was dark and dank, no longer silver-edged and glowing. The shrubbery was lush and tangled, but there were fewer and smaller flowers; the nights were cold, and Singer full of some strange uneasiness of spirit. Radu supposed it was because they had turned their faces from Sunside, and at his earliest opportunity turned south again while yet continuing his descent. The freshness of the heights never returned, however, and down in the western bottoms, where the mountains crumbled to a desert of mud, Radu found no such green fringes as he’d hoped for and never a haven to mention.

What he did find was a marshy bogland of fallen, rotting trees and low, thick-leaved, flabby grey shrubs, under an evil miasma which rose as a mist from the apparently endless swamps. Of croaking, hopping things there were plenty, and of snapping lizardlike things, too, but of the clean, warm-blooded life of Sunside’s forests … never a sign, except for the occasional slumped, black, unrecognizable carcass, rapidly turning to rot and becoming one with the swamp. It was like a different world, even a dawnworld, whose dwellers were primal creatures out of time. And in the swampy margins were toadstools as black as tar, bursting

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underfoot and sending up clouds of red spores to drift in the foggy reek. It was as if the very air was poisonous, and something warned Radu to fasten a rag over his nose and mouth; but Singer went on all fours like the wild dog she was, drinking the water between patches of scum and breathing the spore-laden air. Then, as they began a retreat towards higher ground, they saw a ragged, mud-streaked fox stumbling in the mire, all bleary-eyed and three-quarters done for.

Radu was loath to waste a bolt on this poor emaciated creature, yet knew it would be a mercy to put it out of its misery. In the time he’d spent with Singer, some two years now, he had trained her in the hunt (though truth to tell, in certain aspects she had trained him!) Now he told her: ‘See to it!’ Which was the order to kill.

Leaping out into the mud, she came upon the fox at once, to break his neck in her jaws. And shaking the poor thing, she let it fall on its side. That should have been enough, but in the next moment … an amazing thing! For the jaws of the fox yawned open and it snapped at Singer’s face, and what with the spray of flying mud, and the snarling, snapping, and threshing of their heads where their jaws seemed locked, it appeared to Radu watching from the bank that something passed between them, from fox to wolf. Or it could have been that Singer had ripped out the fox’s tongue to swallow it whole! Whichever, that signalled the end of it; the fox sprayed red from his mouth, sank down into the mud and gave up the ghost.

But it was not the end of it for Singer. Leaping to firm ground, she sprang this way and that, coughed and choked, and bounded in the air, until finally she collapsed. Unconscious, she lay with her sides heaving, then grew still, and only the faintest of heartbeats to let her master know she yet lived.

Dismayed, Radu sat with Singer a while, there by the rim of the swamp, with her head in his lap and her tongue lolling, until it appeared she wouldn’t die. Then, draping her over his shoulders, he carried her out of that place, and in an hour or so she struggled to be put down. Shortly after that, to Radu’s great relief, she seemed as good as new. She
seemed
that way, at least …

They explored for an afternoon and an evening - that was all, but more than enough in that place - before Radu headed south and a little east, to skirt the barrier mountains into Sunside. He knew it to be a route which must take him into Zirescu territory sooner or later, but by then he would have climbed back up into the mountain heights and so put temptation behind him. So he thought.

And when the ominous twilight failed and the long night fell at last, because the region was strange to Radu and possibly dangerous with hitherto unknown hazards, and the swamps alive with mosquitoes and other flying things, he found a cave in an outcrop at the foot of the

mountains and built a fire in the entrance to keep injurious insects and other creatures at bay; behind which he and the now strangely withdrawn she-wolf sheltered and prepared for sleep …

… When down from the heights echoed a distant howling in praise of a blotchy yellow moon tumbling through the murky sky. And though Singer’s nose lifted and her eyes lit with recognition, still she made no reply to the songs of the grey brothers on the mountain flanks. And even when Radu sang a low tune to himself (as he was wont to do in strange places), Singer held back from joining in; not even a growl escaped her, or a yawn of her long-jawed, soft-leather mouth. So that all in al Radu considered it weird, but perhaps a mood was on her, which in a place like this he could understand well enough …

During the night on those several occasions when Radu woke up to toss branches on the fire, stretch his legs or relieve himself, he discovered Singer awake, silent, staring out past the slow-burning fire into the night, or whining low in her throat, or shaking her head from some unknown irritation and pawing at the earth where she stood in the entrance of the cave.

Far more worrying, on the last such occasion, she was on her belly close by, forepaws outstretched in Radu’s direction, peering at him intently through her feral - or sick? - yellow triangular eyes. Following which he felt it prudent to remain awake, and sat by the fire until the twilight before the dawn, then moved on with all speed towards the risen but as yet hidden sun somewhere on the far flank of the crumbling mountains. And it has to be said that Radu was glad the night was over …

As the Sunside/Starside nights are long, the days are longer still. But the territory was unknown to Radu, the rotting rock of the lower mountains was treacherous
(so
that he must go with care and patience), and there always seemed to be a new, higher ridge behind whichever false plateau he had just negotiated.

For he had made up his mind that instead of skirting the mountains, he would cut diagonally across their lower ramparts and so arrive in the western part of Sunside already aloft and in the heights. But because of the dangers and arduous nature of the route (which seemed far more difficult than the one by which he’d descended to the swamps), it wasn’t until the twilight before the night, and after several camps, that at last he arrived over Sunside; and even then not nearly as high on the mountain flanks as he had intended.

The twilight before the night: a dull orange afterglow slowly fading over the far furnace desert, and the sky to the south banded from amethyst on the horizon to a dark indigo in the vault of the sky, where several stars were already evident. While over Starside the skies were

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long since jet, whose stars seemed like chunks of ice frozen in their orbits; but Starside itself was obscured by virtue of the mountain peaks. A myriad of Sunside’s tiny bats, along with a handful of a larger species,
whooshed
and whirred on the air where they hunted, while down in the woods the scattered fires of Szgany camps lit the night, sending aromatic odours drifting on thermals of their own making.

And there was a conflict of longings in Radu hard to describe: the need to be among men again, oh yes - but good men, brothers, men he could trust - and the need to avoid them at all costs, for this was surely Zirescu territory. The need to sit in the glow and warmth of a campfire, and chew on a joint of meat with its juices hot and dripping, washed down with a jug of good Szgany wine … and the dark desire to glimpse a startled face by starlight (that of Ion or Lexandru, perhaps? Or Rakhi or Lagula?) and squeeze off an ironwood bolt at point-blank range. Oh, a medley of longings, wishes, desires and urges; but the certain knowledge, too, that to surrender to them must bring about the worst possible result, when he would not only be a loner but an outcast, too, from all men and for the rest of his days.

Well, and wasn’t that his way? And wouldn’t it suit him well enough? To be a loner, yes, but not to be pursued as a murderer, when in fact he would be an avenger of the weeping dead. (For in Radu’s mind and memory, and in his dreams, his father and sister were given to weeping, causing him to cry, too).

And so, as always, he put it from his mind, climbing up into the mountains while yet there was the light for it. And Singer with him as ever, but a Singer changed now and almost unknown to him. For now when she hunted the great white she-wolf kept her kill, and now when he would hug her she backed off from him, whining and showing her fangs. And whatever it was that was at odds between them, Radu knew that the difference wasn’t in him.

Not yet, at least …

It happened quickly. Radu made camp that night in a delve in a cliff high over the foothills, where a great boulder had weathered free of the bedrock, rolled away and left a hollow behind. Scarcely a cave, still it was dry and would shelter him if the rains came. Soft heather made a passable bed, and a cured skin was his blanket; it would suffice. Normally he would have Singer, too, to snuggle close and keep him warm. But the she-wolf didn’t want that now, and truth to tell, neither did Radu. She had a look about her, a light in her eyes, a flattening of her ears, that warned of further changes in the offing—