Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (47 page)

But no sooner was he settled in the back of a shallow cave, where a single stratum of soft rock had weathered out from the face of the cliff, than he heard a panting and scrabbling from beyond the rim of his shelter. It was a man in full flight, exhausted from his exertions and hoarse from the terror of pursuit. Dried up and beginning to blister even in the first faint rays from the southern horizon, he came stumbling, croaking his relief, into Radu’s cave.

Hidden in a dark corner, Radu shielded the luminous yelow glare of his eyes and waited until the man - a ragged-looking Sunsider, possibly a loner - had himself under partial control at least. And when the other’s panting had slowed and his whimpering ceased, then, speaking softly, Radu asked: ‘Who pursues you, and why?’

At the first word the other had jumped a foot, gasped out loud, spun about where he sat upon the dusty floor. ‘What?’ he croaked. ‘Who?’

And then he saw Radu’s eyes, and the dark shape of a man sprawled on a bed of heather in the back of the cave. Radu’s crossbow was loaded; aiming it at the man, he eased himself erect - or partly erect, because of the low ceiling - and went to where the newcomer cringed against the wal of the cave. The man seemed speechless; his throat throbbed and his Adam’s apple went up and down, but he merely gurgled. And finaly he pointed at Radu’s face, at his eyes.

‘Eh?’ Radu growled, rapidly losing his patience. He wanted to know what was going on here. If this man was a fugitive, he wanted to know why, from what cause. ‘Are you deaf or daft, or both? I asked why are you running?’

‘Y-you,
ask that?’ Finaly the other had found his voice.

And perhaps Radu understood at that. He narrowed his feral eyes, sniffed his suspicion. ‘Are you a Ferenczy, is that it? Have you heard about me and what I’ve done, and what I’ll do!’ He pointed his crossbow direct at the other’s throat. But even in the act of speaking the words, he knew he was mistaken. The Ferenczys had become an obsession with him, that was al.

‘A F-Ferenczy?’ The fugitive frowned. ‘No, I’m a Romani - Bela Romani, of the Szgany Mirlu. Or I was … ” And now the sob was back in his voice.

‘Are you an outcast then? What, a leper?’ The Zirescus had used to banish anyone even suspected of leprosy. And they’d put a bolt through him and burn his body if he tried to return!

‘Leprosy?’ The other looked at Radu through haggard, red-rimmed eyes. ‘Ah, no. Worse than that!’

Radu backed off a pace. What? Could anything be worse than leprosy? ‘Explain!’ he barked.

‘Who …
what
are you?’ Now it was Bela Romani’s turn to be curious. ‘A loner? A wild man of the mountains? Where have you been that you don’t … don’t
know
of these things?’

‘Of what things?’ Radu was exasperated. ‘Enough of riddles! Can’t you explain yourself?’

The other crouched back away from him. ‘I’m speaking of… of the Wamphyri!’ But the
way
he spoke that last word, or name!

‘Wamphyri?’ Radu repeated him, and frowned. ‘Who are they?’

The other licked his lips and shook his head. ‘But you … your eyes! Are you saying that you’re not… not one of them?’

And for the first time Radu pondered it. He was more than a mere man, for sure. But Wamphyri? ‘Tel me about them,’ he gave a nod of his huge grey wolfish head. And Bela Romani told him:

It had started in the east, beyond the great pass into Starside and the barren boulder plains. There were rearing stacks out on those plains, vast carved butes, some a kilometre high, either weathered from the

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mountains over countless millennia or thrust up from below by some colossal, forgotten prehistoric upheaval. The boulder plains were empty of life, cold and dead, for which reason men never went there.

Or at least, that was how it had used to be; neither the Szgany nor any other beings had dwelled there, except leathery trog unmen in caverns under the barrier mountains. But for some years now there’d been rumours of lights in those rearing rock castles, and grey smoke issuing from fissure chimneys, and flying things that soared in the winds off the northern Icelands, around the summits of those mighty aeries of… of what?

And a hundred sunups ago the first of
Them
had come raiding on the Szgany camps. They came in search of provisions for their manses in the towering stacks, thrall recruits for their aeries, and fodder for their beasts. But they themselves, the Wamphyri, were the greatest beasts of all: bloodbeasts out of Starside!

Huge men all, the Wamphyri looked human but were mhuman. Their strength was unbelievable! They took strong Szgany youths for their lieutenants and thralls, and beautiful girls as their odalisques. Chiefest among them was One whose nature had rapidly become a byword for everything evil: Shaitan the Unborn! He was beautiful as a golden man, but deep and dark as the swamps that spawned him. And his lust was insatiable.

At first Shaitan had restricted his raids to regions east of the great pass, and had set up tribes of Szgany supplicants there. But as other monstrous Lords had ascended to their aeries, and the needs of the Wamphyri had doubled and redoubled, so the raids had spilled over from the eastern lands into Zestos, Lidesci, Tireni, and Mirlu territories west of the pass, and sometimes to points even further west. But the Szgany Zestos, the Lidescis, Tirenis, Mirlus, were not supplicants; they fought back! And now during the daylight hours they travelled - they had
become
Travellers - as a matter of survival, and not merely to beat the bounds. But during the nights:

‘We hid in deep caves or in the woods, with never a fire for comfort or light,’ Bela continued. ‘But still the Wamphyri would find us. Last night - following immediately on the evening twilight - they found us again! There was some fighting, but what can men do against
Them?
The Szgany Mirlu scattered … I ran, too, into the woods! But I was caught anyway.

‘Hengor “the Gust” Hagi, a blood-soaked barrel of a man, got me, clubbed me unconscious, drank blood from my veins and infected me with his poisons. When I came to in the twilight before the dawn, I remembered his instructions as in a dream: that I must go to him in Starside, and be his thrall in Hengstack.
Never!
I would return to my wife and children, and be a Mirlu! Oh, really?
Hah!

‘I was -1
am -
a vampire creature, in thrall to Hengor the Gust! The

sun is my mortal enemy, the night my only friend. As the poisons take hold, so my condition will worsen. I tried to return to the Mirlus; they saw the mark of Hengor’s bite on my neck; now if they find me - they’ll kill me! But you, your looks,’ Bela turned imploringly to Radu. ‘We are the same, I’m sure. Except… you seem to have learned to live with it!’

Radu shook his head. ‘I don’t know. But one thing is certain: I won’t die with it! While you were talking, I was listening, but not as you listen. And you’re right: Mirlu hunters are coming. And this cave … is mine. I was here first.’

Bela’s eyes went wild in a moment. Drawing his lips back from snarling needle teeth, he made to spring at Radu—

—Who simply caught him up in one hand, dragged him to the mouth of the cave and tossed him out!

The entrance was fringed with a little undergrowth and a few trees, and the sunlight didn’t strike at Bela immediately. He tried to stay in the shade, searched for a way up the cliff. There was a goat track; he might even make it! He scrambled up above the tree level, and so came into view of the men who had followed him up through the scree jumbles of the foothills.

Crossbows twanged and bolts buzzed like angry wasps. Radu saw it all: the way the fugitive was swatted like a fly against the cliff, his feet sliding on the narrow track, his back arching like a bow, as he was struck time and time again. His body crumpling, then toppling, and turning lazily end over end, and slamming down hard into the sharp rubble and scree at the foot of the cliffs.

Anyone would think that would be enough, that Bela’s pursuers would be satisfied; apparently they weren’t. They took his body, drove a stake through his heart and cut off his head, and built a fire to burn him to ashes! Which apparently
was
enough. It would have to be, for there was nothing left of him. It took a while but finally the men left, and Radu crept back into his cave to sleep in safety from the sun.

Getting to sleep took a while, too, for there was a great deal on Radu’s mind. Yet somehow, while he slept, a good many problems were resolved. And it might even be said that he resolved some of them himself…

In the twilight before the true night Radu awakened, felt the lure of the fading moon and left his cave to worship a while. And as his eerie, ululant howling echoed up into the mountain heights and down into Sunside, he knew. Knew finally and for certain that he
was
Wamphyri! An eater of men, aye, a Great Vampire. But more than this: he was a werewolf! A man half-human, half-wolf, with the brain of the one and al the speed and cunning and killer instinct of the other. And if changeling men - mere men! - could make it on Starside, where the sun never

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shone, and be Lords and masters of the great aeries there, then what of Radu? And so, turning his back on Sunside (for now, at least), he climbed for the peaks and headed for Starside and the destiny that waited for him there.

And there was such a monstrous joy in Radu - the joy of darkling knowledge, the hideous
anticipation
of living off the life-blood of others - that he could scarcely contain it. For Bela Romani had had it quite wrong, and Radu wasn’t like him at al. Oh, the same fever was in his blood, certainly, but where Bela had been a mere thral infected with the disease of vampirism, Radu
was
that disease! By virtue of his parasite he
was
Lord Radu Lykan! And he knew it.

For weling up from deep within his werewolf body and vampire heart, it was as if he heard the first discordant notes of a strange, savage, and wonderful song.

And
how
that silent song of blood and eternity thriled him to his core, when at last he came padding, panting through a high mountain pass, and finaly gazed down on Starside.

Starside, aye. And faint with distance yet darkly foreboding against a backdrop of writhing northern auroras, there in the cold blue light of the Northstar … the mist-wreathed stacks of the vampire Lords! But however awesomely bleak, the scene wasn’t weird or cold to Radu. Indeed it felt… familiar? No, much more than that: it felt like home!

And as he turned his face to the sky and vanishing moon, and gave voice from a throbbing throat, it seemed to Radu that even his howling carried a new note and was more surely a song, albeit a song that was awesome and terrible:

Wamphyri!
Wamphyyyyri…!

IV

EXILED - TO EARTH!

Going down from the heights of the barrier mountains into Starside, Radu came upon a ragged handful of pitiful ‘survivors’ of last night’s vampire raid: men of the Mirlus, like Bela Romani, and of the Szgany Tireni and Szgany Zestos. He told them who he was and what he intended to do: lay claim to an aerie among the several as yet vacant stacks, and people it with thrals of his own. They were reluctant to join him; they ‘belonged’ to Hengor “the Gust” Hagi, or Lord Lankari, or the Drakul brothers, or - Lord Lagula Ferenczy!?

What? Lagula, a Lord of the Wamphyri? But… the
same
Lagula? Wel, Radu must wait and see. But meanwhile he offered the vampirized group a choice: he would guarantee them his personal ‘protection’, swear them to his service, and proceed with them across the boulder plains … or they could die the true death right here in these barren foothills, with crossbow bolts skewering their poor decapitated bodies. And without more ado they went with Radu.

Their presence was observed; giant Desmodus bats from the various aeries reported their progress; they were in any event ‘poor quality’ thrals who had not warranted transportation on the backs or in the bely pouches of their masters’ flyers. But when they headed for a middling, unoccupied stack in the outer circle of great upthrusting aeries,
that
atracted rather more atention. Too late to do anything about it, however, for Radu and his folowers had taken al of the long Starside night to come across the mountains and boulder plains, and already the sun was burning on the higher ramparts of the greater stacks.

This was the time when the Lords slept, normaly in north-facing rooms on the permanently dark sides of their aeries. It was
not
a time when they would launch out on their flyers simply to investigate the odd behaviour of a handful of ‘branded’ thrals! Perhaps the thrals themselves were merely being cautious and taking shelter from the sunlight. Al wel and good; this was a sign of some inteligence among them at

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least! Come sundown they’d doubtless proceed to the stacks of their rightful Lords, who had recruited them in Sunside.

But they didn’t. Radu, less fearful of the sun than most vampire Lords, had put his men to work at once. They had inhabited a cave near the foot of the stack, fortified its entrance, found bolthole passageways onto other levels and down onto the boulder plains, and generally made themselves as ‘comfortable’ as possible. Cold comfort, true, but Radu was still learning the way of things.

And a lot more to learn yet, be sure …

Sundown, and Lord Egon Drakul sent a thrall and flyer to see what was what. He had beasts to feed and two of these errant thralls were his, destined for the provisioning of Drakstack. The thrall landed his mount at the foot of the suspect aerie, went striding into the scree jumbles, and disappeared. And in a little while, a strange, long-haired figure was seen seated awkwardly astride the flyer, putting it through its paces over the knobby dome of the new aerie! But what was this? Some raw recruit fresh out of Sunside, who yet fancied himself a Lord?