Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (48 page)

Klaus Lankari sent two thralls to investigate. These were bold, burgeoning lads who aspired to lieutenants … the result was the same. By now Shaitan the Unborn himself was interested; he watched and ‘listened’ keenly from afar, as Hengor Hagi flew out with his chief lieutenant from Hengstack. Ah, but the Gust was careful to remain airborne as his man Emil landed in soft, sliding scree at the base of Radu’s aerie, and continued afoot to put matters right. But shortly:
My Lord?
Emil Hagisman sent, with a slight but patently nervous tremor in his Gust-orientated, feeble mental probe.

Aye?
The Gust circled on a flyer that was all muscle and manta wing, to take his great weight.
What’s the word?

My Lord, a man is with the recruits who says he is Wamphyri. In fact he has the looks, and I smell it on him. This one has a mature leech!

Oh, really? Swamp-bom, was he? With no egg-sire? So he’s Wamphyri, so what? He hasn’t ascended; we haven’t accepted him. Not yet,
anyway. Nor are we likely to, since he’s a thief! The recruits you speak of belong to me, to the Ferenczys, to Klaus Lankari and the
Drakuls. What, is he herding them for us - if so, well, that’s damned kind of him! But it’s another matter if he intends to
keep them for himself.

But now a different ‘voice’ joined in, that of Radu.
Hengor, I can do many things for myself, including speak! I don’t need an interpreter. I have
a leech; I’m “swamp-bom”, aye, if that’s the term, but that was some time ago. Oh, I know: this stack I’ve chosen for myself isn’t
nearly as grand as some of your soaring aeries, but it’s a start and I
wil
ascend! If I need your recognition, then I’ll wait for it. If
it’s not forthcoming … well, I’m here anyway! Meanwhile, what’s mine is mine. Nor ami a thief in respect of these thralls: a middling lot
at best! I need them for now,

that’s al. But in due time I’ll gladly repay whatever and whoever I owe, with interest.

Oh, indeed?
The Gust sent back. So
you take and then say you’ve merely borrowed, eh? And the flyers you’ve commandeered, are those yours, too?

For now, until I’ve learned the way of making my own. And that includes this one of yours … but I’ll give you your man Emil back. He’s loyal to a fault, and
therefore useless to me.

Really?
Hengor couldn’t make up his mind to roar his rage or laugh out loud! But he found himself liking this one -his audacity, anyway -without that he’d even met him as yet.
And if I sent another flyer for Emil Hagisman, will you keep
that, too?

(A mental shrug, and):
He can fly or he can walk. That’s your problem.

Do you know,
said Hengor, beginning to enjoy this now, in the perverse fashion of the Wamphyri,
but without ever meeting
you in the flesh, already I like your colours. And I fancy I’ll like them even more -when I use them to decorate the walls of my great hall in
Hengstack!

Have I slighted you?
(Radu’s voice showed mild surprise - feigned, of course).
Then come down and let’s settle it.

Wel, bugger me backwards!
the other burst out, but he was no longer amused.
A challenge, is it? Listen, upstart: between the
Ferenczys, Drakuls, Klaus Lankari and myself, we have four hundred men, thirty-two flyers and seven fighting beasts! How do
you think you and your handful of fools would fare against those odds, eh?

Badly,
Radu answered,
which is why I’ve taken the time to parley.

But here yet another mental voice in Starside’s aether, a voice as powerful and authoritative as it was sinister, interrupted and came between the two; the voice of Lord Shaitan the Unborn: the devil himself!

What’s al this about a swamp-bom Lord, Hengor Hagi? Do you frown on a man because he had no egg-sire? Is a spore any less than an egg or a leech? Now,
let’s face it: whether a vampire is born of a woman, or changed by a spore or a leech, or by a bite, we’re al of the one source, the one origin, which is the swamp.

It’s not the
route
we take, which is a decision of fate, but the
geting here
that counts. Wel, so this one has got here …

Hengor seemed more than a litle surprised.
What, and do you accept him, Lord Shaitan? On his word alone? Why, we don’t know what we
have here! But a thief and a loudmouth upstart - we know these things for sure!

Oh?
(Now Shaitan’s mental voice was a sneer).
But aren’t we all thieves? Don’t we
al
steal, out of Sunside? As for his
braggart’s mouth: is it any bigger than your own? Or mine? Or anyone’s? Nor is his status suspect: we most certainly
do
know what we have
here: a Lord of the Wamphyri, and one to watch out for, it’s obvious! But if you disagree, take
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a look at the evidence. He plays a decent word-game - better than you, Hengor, for it was you who lost your temper! Also, your own man says
he has a leech; neither spore, egg, nor mark on his neck but a mature leech!
And
he has made his way into Starside to occupy his own aerie;
oh, a hovel of a place, granted
… as
yet! So there you have it: he
must
be a Lord. Moreover, he has mentalism, which many of our
colleagues lack, or possess to a lesser degree. But this one’s mentalism is a power; I felt it!

Shaitan grew thoughtfully quiet, perhaps inviting comment, and the telepathic aether came alive in a moment:
Klaus Lankari now speaks,
said a wooden, almost mechanical, yet somehow doom-fraught voice.
What’s to be
done? Something must be done, for this newcomer appears to have taken a thrall of mine, which I recruited in
Sunside.
Klaus was an ex-loner, not much known for quick-thinking. But he
was
a great and monstrous destroyer of life and drinker of blood.

He has men of ours, too,
the Drakuls spoke up, in voices that hissed their telepathic venom.
Is he to simply keep them, and get away with it? We say let’s take
them back, right now, and him, too! So he has a leech -so what?

Al the beter, in fact,
said the Gust.
For there’s nothing quite like the juice of another vampire - especialy his leech! And since I’m closest, I lay claim to it!

And finally Radu’s turn again.
What? Don’t the Ferenczys have anything to say? Don’t they want their peck at me, too? If so,
well fine, for I certainly want my peck at them!
There, it was out in the open, his hatred - the blood feud - between him and the Ferenczys. And better to do it this way, bold and swaggering, as befitted the image Radu would convey. For there was that in their voices (and in his own dark heart) that told him it
was
their way, the way of the Wamphyri.

They seemed to take pleasure in words: perverse, convoluted argument and contradictions. Not so strange, really; why, they were themselves contradictions - of Nature!

But so was Radu, and just as devious as the worst of them. He had flyers now and could ride them in a fashion; if he were attacked in force he could flee to the barrier mountains, find a place to hide and consider his position. And he would take a handful of thralls with him, and so retain at least the nucleus of an aerie. Thus his braggadocio wasn’t all it might seem. He wasn’t about to stand and fight a veritable horde of Wamphyri Lords and their followers, but he
was

ready for flight at a moment’s notice!

As it happened, the way he’d acted was the best thing he could have done, said, thought. Shaitan the Unborn was fascinated, intrigued; it set his own more than devious mind working overtime. What, some bad blood between this one and the Ferenczys? The brothers were fairly recent among the Wamphyri, true, but already they posed a threat; they were like stormclouds on Shaitan’s horizon, roiling and issuing stabs of lightning, and inevitably heading his way.

For one thing there were two of them, and as a team they were closer far than the Drakuls. Shaitan remembered how they had ascended:

Two years ago Lord Petre Stakis had taken a small party of lieutenants, thralls, and an aerial warrior west along the spine of the barrier mountains and down into previously unexplored regions of Sunside. Unexplored, aye … Odd, then, that he should receive such a warm welcome! But such appeared to be the case. For it seemed that the Szgany of those western parts had been ready, waiting and prepared for just such an invasion - or for something in the nature of an invasion, at least! The Ferenczy brothers had been members (indeed, they’d been the recently elected leaders) of the same tribe, formerly the Szgany Zirescu. And that night… well, Lord Stakis had been unfortunate, to say the least.

His warrior had developed a temporary fault, which caused it to land badly in the mountain peaks. Leaving two of his lieutenants to see what could be done, Stakis had gone on with his reduced force, homed in on the smoke of a Szgany campfire, and landed in the lower foothills. On foot and engaged by a ferocious fighting force under Rakhi and Lagula, Stakis had been shot once through the eye and twice through the heart. His leech had reckoned he was done for, and made ready to exit his body; the Ferenczys had been on hand and would make perfect hosts.

But even in his death throes, still Stakis was a force to be reckoned with. Grabbing Rakhi when he drew close to inspect his body, Stakis savaged him, transfusing essence of his blood into Rakhi’s system. Lagula, seeing his brother grappling for his life with a ‘dead’ man, set about Stakis with a machete and decapitated him - and likewise fatally injured his leech, which at that very moment was attempting to make an exit through its host’s throat! Dying, the leech issued an egg which transferred to Lagula. Thus Lagula was Wamphyri, and his brother a vampire in the making. Two birds with one stone, as it were!

So much Lord Shaitan had had from a spy of his among Stakis’s thralls. The rest of the story - how the Ferenczys had holed-up in the dark woods, slept the Sleep of Change, and the next night set about ‘recruiting’ as many of the former Zirescus as they could find; and how they’d then made their way back to Starside in a body - was unimportant.

The rules of the game were as simple as Shaitan himself had made them: it wasn’t the route men took but the getting there that counted.

Well, they had got here, since when they’d made their presence felt… almost as a thorn in Shaitan’s side! He was sure they worked against him, or would if given the opportunity. He was glad that they had no mentalism to speak of, which was the reason of course that they

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hadn’t been privy to what was going on here. And now the coming of this one, and bad blood between them, or so it would appear. Al in al an interesting situation, and something to be fostered. For if the newcomer and the Ferenczys were at each other’s throats, they wouldn’t have the time to be at Shaitan’s. Which was why he now proposed a solution to the problem posed by Radu:

Hear me out,
he said.
Let’s give this one the benefit of the doubt. He says he’l repay your losses. Very wel, and if he forgets his promise, time enough then to
sort maters out, and take back - and take
al -
of what he’s accrued. Except… we cannot continue to think of him as he. Among the Wamphyri, I am the only
He,
the first and only Lord of Lords. You, stranger, do you accept that? If so, tell us your name, and how you come to be here.

And Radu answered:
My only desire is to be accepted among my peers. Since you appear to be the greatest of them, be sure I’ll agree to anything you propose -
on the understanding that you leave me the means to live and prosper, of course! My name and status: I’m Lord Radu Lykan, who fused with a leech in the
swamplands far to the west.

Al of which seems only right and reasonable to me,
the unseen Shaitan answered, eager to be done with the preliminaries.
Very wel, then we will trust you -
but it’s a trust you must repay in kind. If I were to ofer you audience in Shaitanstack, would you attend me, come up to my manse and enter of
your own free will?

Previously, there had been a subdued but very real background ‘babble’ in the psychic aether; now, as Shaitan made his invitation, this faded to an almost electric air of expectancy, a
hush
as of held breath. And Radu sensed that the question of free wil was of vast importance to the Lords - as indeed, for some ill-defined reason, it was to him. In effect, Lord Shaitan had offered him the ultimate test, (or ultimate challenge?) and if nothing else, Radu’s answer would decide his suitability one way or the other. Which was why he said:

My Lord, merely tell me the hour of my audience, guarantee my safe access and egress, and give me a route …?

And:
A lot of’merelys’!
Shaitan answered.
But… so be it.
And so it would be …

The time was set: three hours before dawn. That was Shaitan’s choice, of course, and a good one for him. That close to sunup, he could be sure that the affair wouldn’t be a long one, therefore that it wouldn’t get too heated. For of course this was to be more than any mere audience: it would be in its way a reception for the newly ascended Lord Lykan. While Shaitan had failed to mention it to Radu, the other principal Lords - and at least two of the Ladies - would also be there. Indeed they would demand invitations, ostensibly as a matter of protocol, but mainly to ensure that no deal would be struck between Shaitan and the stranger without their knowledge. With the Wamphyri, suspicion was a way of life … not to mention a way of undeath and true death.