The Last Aerie (60 page)

And reveling in each other’s juices, the thought occurred to both of them together: that if the blood was the life, then surely the milk was its spice …

They slept long and long, but Wratha was first to come awake. Then, stroking him where he lay on his back, listening to his heartbeat, his breathing, and feeling the slow rise and fall of his massive chest, she wondered again: love?

Was it possible, between vampires? Between members of the Wamphyri? She knew it had happened to others, yes, but to Wratha? What if the feelings she felt now deep inside were merely fleeting, insubstantial things? Well, so be it. Ah, but what if Nestor’s feelings were the same? One thing for the Lady Wratha to reject a lover, but to
be
rejected?

He was moaning in his sleep, tossing and turning a little, perhaps beginning to come awake. She had never stayed with him before, in his mind, to the point of waking. Previously, she’d entered and inserted her erotic pictures—dreams of herself, the two of them together, as now they had been together—and departed. Or on occasion she’d spied on his own lustful dreaming to discover his preferences. But now …

What was it that disturbed him?

She glanced into his mind—but too late! He was coming awake, right now.

And all she got was a single word, a name, but a name that glowed in his mind like an iron in a fire: Misha.

A girl’s name …

And Wratha wondered
: Is this the unknown Other? Nestor’s unrequited love out of Sunside?
But no need to wonder, for she knew it was.

He yawned and sat up. “Wratha?” He looked at her, reached for her—but she was up and out of bed, slipping into a robe. “Wratha? Is something wrong?”

He was sleepy, but perhaps he’d glimpsed her eyes.

“Wrong?” she almost ran into her dressing-room. “Why, no. What could be wrong?” But in her mirrors the Lady saw what was wrong. And fitting a curved bone scarp to her brow, turquoise earrings in the lobes of her conch ears, and sapphire discs to her cheeks, she sought to disguise the evidence of her wrath: the way her eyes bulged, and their crimson, hell-fire glare!

Misha!

It took all of five minutes to lock the name out of her head. And another five to cool the incredible fires racing in her vampire blood. And:
Love?
she wondered again, but kept the thought to herself.
Or should it be hate?
Or was the dividing line between the two too narrow?

But she knew the name of that dividing line well enough.

It was jealousy!

VII

Wratha’s New Raiders

That the dog-Lord Canker Canison was crazy in his fashion, and deranged as any feral creature who falls under the influence of the full and hurtling moon, was not to be denied; but as Nestor had pointed out to his vampire lover in her bed, at other times and in other ways Canker was sane as could be and might even be considered wise. As now, for instance.

For when it came to a choice of allies, the Lord of Mangemanse had neither time nor kind words for Wran and Spiro Killglance, his closest neighbours, and he was equally disdainful of Gorvi the Guile down in the aerie’s shadowy sump. But sane or crazy, the overriding factor in his decision was this: that the necromancer Lord Nestor Lichloathe had seen fit to join up with Wratha in her scheming, and if it was good enough for him it was good enough for Canker. Such was the dog-Lord’s affection for his young friend, let Nestor merely suggest something … it was done.

At a meeting in Wrathspire, the three devised a strategy: tactics of a sort against the Szgany. And in the next sundown, taking their warriors, lieutenants, and even aspirant lieutenants with them, they put it into practice and went raiding
en masse
on Sunside.

And it was a raid to remember!

Wratha had no knowledge of warfare, and neither Canker nor Nestor was any better equipped. And so their plan was simple: one party to flush the Szgany out; one to form a gantlet like a net, wide at the entrance and narrowing to a tight neck; and a third lying in ambush, to block any escape and turn the prey back into the killing zone.

How it worked:

The three and their forces crossed the barrier mountains just an hour after the true sundown. Their crossing point lay midway between the hell-lands Gate on Starside and Settlement on Sunside, which is to say some forty miles west of the Starside mouth of the Great Pass. Then, while Canker and his pack landed, rested up and waited in the higher Sunside foothills, Nestor, Wratha and theirs split into two groups and headed out across the Sunside forest belt. Wratha angled west while Nestor skewed east, so that when they straightened out to fly parallel they were perhaps two miles apart. And staying well below the clouds, they knew they would be amply visible, and the rumble and sputter of their warriors plainly audible to Szgany on the ground.

Any Traveller groups directly beneath the two aerial parties would go to earth, freeze, suffer the gut-wrenching stench of warrior exhaust gasses settling from the night sky, and wait for the terror on high to pass. But as soon as they thought it was safe to move, then they’d break cover, split up, seek safer hiding places. Some would be lucky and relocate themselves outside the entrapment zone, but others less fortunate would run inwards and right into it…

Along the route south—as the twin clouds of ill-omen which were Wratha, Nestor and their parties pulsed like a two-pronged pestilence in the sky—they ordered down warriors or the occasional flyer and rider, to occupy vantage points in the forest and find themselves good relaunching sites, thus forming a gantlet. And so the net extended itself south.

Four or five miles out over the forest, the two parties performed an aerial pincer movement and joined up in one body. Then, except for Nestor and Wratha themselves, and their first lieutenants, the remaining flyers landed their riders without touching down, and lifted off with empty saddles. And while on high the Lord and Lady turned their mounts about-face and flew north down the center of the gantlet, so their thralls on the ground began forging through the woods for the barrier mountains, ensuring that they made as much noise as possible along the way.

Within the gantlet, panicking Szgany groups were driven in the same direction, by the bellowing of vampire thralls to the rear and the hissing of monsters on the flanks. The night seemed filled with menace: nodding flyers and belching, amorphous, armour-plated warriors were everywhere, and strutting lieutenants were wont to loom large out of the darkness.

Meanwhile—

Canker and his pack had come down from the foothills to set up their ambush in the bottleneck, among boulders and rocky outcrops where some ancient upheaval had shattered the forest’s floor. And while he waited, so the dog-Lord conjured a thin vampire mist from his own body, and called up a ground mist out of the earth to swirl all about and give his forces cover …

While returning out of the south:

Wratha and Nestor, performing low, lazy, north-drifting circles overhead, used their mentalism to order men and monsters in from the flanks, tightening the net. The trapped Szgany parties fled north, began to meet up with each other and shoal like panicked fish. Colliding, they milled left and right, met up with nightmares in bo th directions, and so continued to run ragged and panting along the one safe-seeming route. But after four and a half miles of forest they were on their last legs.

They saw flyers descending out of the night sky and were terrified; the flyers had no riders, but the trapped Travellers couldn’t know that. Warriors trampled, hissed and roared in the undergrowth; the black shadows of manta shapes flowed silently over starlit glades; vampire voices shouted orders.

While from on high, Wratha sent to Canker:
Now!

And Nestor, to the small encircling force of thralls and lieutenants on the ground:
Now!

Then, as the carnage commenced, so he and Wratha descended, landed their beasts, and joined in the free-for-all. But it was a short-lived affair. Something less than forty Travellers—men, women, and children—had been caught in the vampire net; seeing there was no way out, a handful of them tried to fight back.

The men had crossbows. Silver-tipped, kneblasch-soaked bolts zipped in the dark, most of them uselessly; razor-honed machetes flashed in starlight, but the arms which wielded them contained neither strength nor hope; ironwood stakes sharpened to needle points were grasped in slippery, trembling fists. Against powerful vampire thralls, leather-clad lieutenants, the Wamphyri themselves—against gauntlets, night-seeing eyes and metamorphic flesh—they were as nothing. The Szgany were utterly exhausted; the lingering stench of warriors sickened them; their aim was off.

Canker’s thralls—his “hounds”—rounded them up. Loping among them like one of their own wolves, they scarcely saw the dog-Lord himself until they felt his bite in arm or thigh, or he reared up to snarl and spray saliva, and smash his fist stunningly into the side of a victim’s head. Anyone seen to be carrying a crossbow … was a dead man. Canker’s, Nestor’s and Wratha’s gauntlets seemed painted scarlet. Women and children were herded to one side, but men were knocked down and vampirized at once.

Two minutes, three, and it was all over.

Eight men, one woman and two thralls had died in the fray, both of the latter with bolts dead center in their hearts. One of Wratha’s senior lieutenants had suffered machete slashes to his chest and shoulder; his leathers had protected him; he was on his feet and would survive. Two of the dog-Lord’s “hounds” had been stabbed with ironwood stakes, but not deeply.

Of the twenty-seven Szgany survivors, thirteen were men or boys, and three of these were greypates. Since the old men had little or no value except as meat, Wratha ordered their immediate execution. Their bodies, along with the other dead, went to fuel the warriors. The rest of the males, those who had not yet been recruited in the accustomed fashion, were now bled. Wratha and the Lords claimed the first of these bloody fruits, naturally, followed by their lieutenants and thralls.

Most of the men thus infected fell at once into their vampire sleep; those who did not were ordered into the mountains, to cross into Starside before sunup. Then it was the turn of the fourteen women and girls.

These had been split into three fairly balanced groups, two fives and a four. The Lady Wratha took the smallest share of the get in females and turned her senior and junior lieutenants loose on the shivering, ragged quartet. There’s more than one way to vampirize a woman, and her men had done exceedingly well this night. It was Wratha’s idea of a small reward.

Watching the mass rape—the swift and merciless shredding of garments, the naked, cringing girl-flesh, the twining, spastically jerking limbs and thrusting of tightly knotted buttocks, and all the mauling, gasping and sobbing—Nestor had to admire Wratha’s style; her men would remember and be grateful. Learning from it, he set his own lads loose on his get of five, and stood close to Wratha where each of them recognized the other’s excitement. And looking forward to their time together, they knew how good it was going to be in Wratha’s bed at sunup.

As for Canker: where women were concerned, no mere thrall came before him! He took each of his five in turn, and rapidly, but saved himself for the last one, a girl of no more than fifteen years, who he took from the rear like the dog he was. And finishing with each he tossed them to his men, howling: “Don’t let them go wanting, lads! Let them know what is their lot, in Mangemanse!”

In a little while it was over. The worst of the raping at least…

Then Canker’s lieutenants built a fire and the two sweetest, youngest children were butchered for roasting. It was by way of a celebration. Shortly, the vampire thralls sat around in red-flickering light and ate smoking flesh, while those of them who still had the urge and the wherewithal dragged half-stunned women away into the bushes to shag them.

Then to the final count, when it was calculated that the total remaining get was twenty-two, five of which were already en route across the mountains for Starside and the last aerie. Most of the females would go on the backs of flyers, and the rest would follow on foot. All of them should make it. Wratha would claim eight all told, and seven each to Nestor and Canker. It had been an excellent raid, and as yet only seven or eight hours into sundown.

“What now?” Nestor asked Wratha where she sat by the fire, her scarlet eyes made golden by its glow.

“Now?” She looked up at him and her gaze might almost be vacant. But then in a moment the glow beneath her scarp blazed up brighter, and her voice more animated as she answered: “Now we unload this lot in our manses … and then we come back for more!”

“What, tonight?”

“Why not? We’ve been asleep for far too long, all of us. And if my plan to galvanize the stack is to work, then we need to show Gorvi, Wran and Spiro that we mean business. Can’t you just see their eyes popping when they see this lot? They’ll be over here as quick as it takes to tell, trying their damnedest to catch up with us. And I want them to! If I can’t make them work with me, then let them think they’re working against me, just as long as it’s to the same end. For you’d better believe me, Nestor, time is running out. I feel it in the wind out of the east: Turgosheim is stirring and it won’t be long now.”