little until they fell twitching to the ground. And kneeling, he would fasten his teeth in their necks to taste their blood, which served to transfuse his own blood's monstrous fever into them. So he dealt death and undeath to a score of victims in as many moments.
And 'dying', they all sensed the instructions of Wran's hideous vampire mind, which spoke to them as one body although they were many: When you rise up and come to me in my manse in Starside, bring me your goods and chattels, which are now mine. Only remember: come before the sun is risen! For your Szgany flesh is as a soft metal beside the fire of the sun, and what has been forged may be melted. Aye, and what I have made can be unmade forever.
Within the hour he killed sixty like this, men, women and youths, of which less than one third would make it to Starside. For before they could escape from the sun, first they must escape from the raid's survivors; and of course, there would be some who woke up too late, or not at all, but slept on with stakes in their hearts until they were burned. In its way, it was not unlike a process of natural — or unnatural — selection.
Spiro's way was simpler than his brother's: he snatched up people where they fled through his mist and bit their faces, then struck them down with hands like hammers. Pain and shock did the rest. They would not die but wake up with sore heads and strange cravings, and hear the message which he'd left in their changeling minds.
As for Canker: to the terrified people streaming out of the stricken town, he must seem like a tame wolf who fled with them. But he was not a wolf and he was not tame. Loping among them on all fours, he chose only the fleetest, and for every male he chose a female. He was tempted.. there were plump young beauties here… but like Wran the Rage, Canker, too, remembered Wratha's words. Why waste his energies now in the cold comfort of the streets, when he'd be using all these women later in whichever way he chose and to his heart's content? — those of them who made it, anyway. His brand would be unmistakable when he saw it: they would be limping where he'd savaged their legs to bring them down, and chewed a little in the junction of neck and shoulder.
Gorvi the Guile crouched in the arch of a mist-wreathed doorway, from where he called out softly, urgently to people rushing by: 'Quickly, there's safety within!' Upon entering, they stumbled over the sprawled heap formed of previous victims, saw the smoking blobs of sulphur which were his sunken eyes, and at the last felt the needles of his gleaming teeth.
Vasagi the Suck waited around a corner, grabbed up any who passed too close, and stabbed them deep in their ears — even to their brains — with his darting, spurting proboscis. For Vasagi, all was accomplished in this one, simple, flowing action; if he desired it, his toll might be huge. But he did not. And his message to the undead was likewise simple: It was Vasagi the Suck who tasted your brains and bent them to his will. Report to me on Starside. You will know me by my face, which is unique.
So the six and their shadowing lieutenants advanced into the town, leaving death and undeath in their wake. And each of them was like a plague in his own right, except Wratha.
She wore her gauntlet, but only for protection. And killing no one, her method was the simplest of all. Stepping close on the heels of the others where they went, flitting from one to the next as they advanced, she would go to certain of their male victims and touch them, saying: I am Wratha. He who killed you is to me what you were to him: nothing! Where/ore you are mine. When you come into Starside, be sure you come unto me.
So she recruited her thralls, all of them men or youths. But still she did not see herself as a thief. No, for as the leader of the pack, in order to ensure that all went well for the rest of them, she needed her wits about her. Personally, she could not afford the additional distraction of the kill. Thus Wratha excused herself.
And indeed all went very well, for a while…
… Until the six and their lieutenants came together in an open space where the fires burned in the town's centre. And face to face, with the warrior stench fading and only their own mist draping them, victory shone from their redly luminous eyes. It had been almost too easy. It had been too easy!
For suddenly, a voice from behind snarled: 'Murdering — bastard — things!' And human, Szgany, the voice itself was a threat. Whirling as one, falling to defensive half-crouches, the twelve turned outwards. Behind them in a ring, a dozen or more men of the village hemmed them in. But these were mature, experienced men: men of the old days. Their faces were filled with horror, hatred, and resolution; they carried crossbows, loaded and aimed.
Wratha had half-expected it. Szgany herself upon a time, she knew there were always some who retaliated, who could not be crushed utterly: these people, for instance. In the old days this band — these wanderers, always on the move from place to place in their avoidance of Wamphyri raids — had not been supplicant; they'd not surrendered easily to Wamphyri oppression but fought back. And these men… they remembered how! Their bolts would be silver-tipped, steeped in kneblasch, deadly. There were long knives in their belts, and wooden stakes!
And: Come! Wratha called to her warrior. But in that same moment, the men began firing.
Wratha's lieutenant, a young man and very bloody, with a gauntlet which was clogged with red flesh (her restrictions had not applied to thrall watchdogs such as him), hurled himself in front of her — and took a bolt in his throat! He gagged, threw up his arms, was hurled back against her — to be grasped and held there by Wratha, as a shield.
The other lieutenants had acted in a like fashion, three covering their masters, the others leaping head-on to confront the threat. Bolts took one of them in mid-flight, skewered him and stretched him out, but the other got in among the would-be avengers. He struck left and right, his gauntlet spraying red, until silver-edged swords hissed to cut him down.
Vasagi the Suck's mental screech sawed at his colleagues' nerve-endings; he had been struck in the side, where his vampire flesh was now poisoned. A master of metamorphism, he would quickly shed the infected flesh and cure himself; but his cry served to galvanize his five Wamphyri colleagues to action.
Until then they had been stunned and immobilized by the attack, even Wratha, for in Turgosheim's Sunside it would have been impossible. But now:
'Wran,' Wratha cried, 'now you may rage all you will!'
Gorvi cursed where he issued a screening mist for all he was worth; Vasagi reeled and tore out the bolt from his side, hurling it down; the rest sprang to join their lieutenants in the fray.
The men of the village were reloading. One of them got off a frantic, lucky shot which took Canker's lieutenant in the heart. In the next moment Canker was on the crossbowman, tearing out his throat…
Wratha came face to face with a man just finished reloading who elevated his weapon point-blank against her breast. Even as he squeezed the trigger, her hand closed on the projecting head of the bolt. Ignoring the 'pain' of kneblasch and silver (she was partly immune, anyway), her fist clenched the bolt more tightly yet and her awesome vampire strength held it back. But the crossbow itself answered the laws of physics. Flying backwards, its thrumming wire sliced the man's windpipe like a razor, even as Wratha's gauntlet disembowelled him.
Gorvi's mist settled over everything, and Gorvi himself was central in it. His gauntlet turned one man's face to ruin, sheared through the rib-cage of another as if the bones were twigs. And the screams of the dead and dying were like music in the ears of the Wamphyri.
Through all of this Wran raged, and likewise his brother Spiro. So that they were still raging as Gorvi's mist cleared and it became apparent that nothing more threatened. Distantly, briefly, there sounded the patter of flying feet, but that was all. The dead lay where they had fallen.
As Wran and Spiro grew calm, so there sounded the stuttering throb of propulsors and Wratha's warrior, followed in short order by the others, began circling overhead. Gorvi the Guile looked from the warriors to the smoking red ruins of men where he stood among them, and said, wonderingly:
'So they did fight, after all…'
And with a nod, Wratha answered, 'A handful of them, who remembered the Old Wamphyri. But we must never tolerate resistance.'
They should pay for it!' Canker declared. 'Let's follow them, hunt them down!'
Wratha looked at Vasagi and her face framed a question. His eyes were wide with fury where he stood holding his side, but he shook his head and glanced at his warrior spurting over the rooftops. He sent a message, and the beast at once crashed down on a huddle of dwellings, shattering them outwards!
And: The Suck is right,' Wratha declared. 'Let the fools run and hide and think it over, and when they return discover the retribution of the Wamphyri!'
Her creature likewise crashed down, with more sod and timber buildings disappearing into rubble, and Wran and Spiro's warrior followed suit.
