lay sprawled, the distant screams of the dead and the dying, and other sounds which could only translate as inhuman.. laughter? Unless all of these elements were figments of his imagination, and Nathan himself a raving madman, it could only add up to one thing: the Wamphyri were back! And they were here even now, in Settlement!
Which prompted other questions: how long had he been unconscious? Minutes, he suspected, a handful at most. And what of Misha, and his mother… and Nestor?
Nathan dragged himself upright, clambered shakily out of the debris of the barn — and back into it at once! For out there, maybe fifty yards towards the town centre, he'd seen the incredible bulk of a warrior hurl itself against a barter house and reduce it to so much rubble. And overhead, a huge, kite-shaped flying thing had arched its wings as it came down like some weird leaf into the main street.
Someone moaned in the litter of timber and straw at Nathan's feet: Misha!
He tore at the rubbish, hurling it aside, and stared down at Nestor's face, all bruised and bloodied. He was stretched our flat, unconscious, three-quarters buried; but it was his moan Nathan had heard, not Misha's. And even as he looked at him, so Nestor moaned again. But there in the rubble beside him… a slender white arm. And this time it must be Misha!
Trying not to bury Nestor deeper yet, Nathan dug her out. He slapped her face, gathered her up in his arms, whispered her name urgently in her ear. She was wan, dusty, pale in the starlight falling through wispy smoke and gut-wrenching stench. He couldn't tell if she was breathing or not.
In the near-distance, the Wamphyri warrior roared as it moved inwards towards the town centre. Nathan looked around. The stockade fence was buckled outwards behind what had been his mother's house. There was a gap there, where the great wooden uprights had been wrenched apart. And beyond the gap, the dark forest. The darkness had never seemed so welcoming.
Nathan saw how it must be, what he must do: first carry Misha to safety, then search for his mother, who was probably buried in the ruins of the house, finally come back one last time for Nestor.
He picked Misha up and staggered from the ruins towards the break in the stockade fence. But half-way there he heard a panting and a patter of feet and looked back. A great wolf-shape — obviously one of Settlement's trained animals — had come from the direction of the main street and seemed to be making straight for him, seeking human company. All very well, but Nathan would have problems enough saving the girl he loved and his family, without having to worry about…
Nathan's eyes went wide, wider. The 'wolf seemed to be enveloped in a drifting cloud of mist, and one of its forepaws was bulky with something that made a dull glitter. More biped than quadruped — loping towards him at an aggressive, forward-leaning angle — it only went to all fours in order to sniff the earth and turn its great ears this way and that, listening. Worse: its eyes were scarlet and glowed like lamps in the dark, and to cover its hindquarters it wore belted leather trousers!
And now Nathan saw that it wasn't coming through the mist, but that the mist was issuing from it!
He had heard all the campfire stories of the old Wamphyri — their powers, hybridisms, animalisms — and knew what he was facing. And of course knew that he was a dead man.
Canker Canison came loping, reared up snarling, as tall and taller than Nathan…!
Nathan tried one last time to stand Misha on her own two feet and shake her awake, to no avail. He held up a hand, uselessly, to ward the dog-, fox-, wolf-thing off. Canker came to a halt and leaned forward. He sniffed at Nathan, then at the girl in his arms, and cocked his head on one side, questioningly. And: 'Yours?' he growled.
Nathan held Misha back from the monster; Canker laughed, caught him by the scruff of the neck and hurled him brutally aside, against the stockade wall. Unsupported, Misha crumpled to her knees. Canker caught her up, sniffed at her again, and snatched her rags of clothing from her in a moment.
And as Nathan slumped to a heap in the long grasses at the base of the damaged wall — even as his eyes glazed over and he passed out — he was aware of Canker's eyes on him and his writhing muzzle, and the spray of foam coughing from his jaws as he laughed again and said: 'No, not yours — mine!'
What he did not see or hear, because he was already unconscious, was the scream of a terrified woman running through the streets: the way Canker let Misha fall to go chasing after her, and his grunted philosophy:
'Better a live one than one half-dead.' And his half-bark, half-shout — 'Wait my pretty, for Canker's coming!'
— as he plunged after his doomed, demented victim…
The pain and the anger…
And not only inside, but outside, too.
It was an hour later and Nestor's turn to come awake
— slowly at first, then with a sickening rush! And like Nathan before him, he too woke up from a dream to a nightmare. Except where Nathan had remembered everything, Nestor remembered very little: a handful of scattered, uncertain fragments of what had gone before. Mainly he remembered the pain and the anger, both of which were still present, though whether they sprang from dream or reality or both, he was unable to say.
Three-quarters buried in rubble, dust, straw, his body was one huge ache. His face was a mess and some of his teeth were loose; at the back of his head, above his right ear, an area of his skull felt soft, crushed. When he put up a tentative, trembling exploratory hand through the debris to touch it, agonizing lances of white light shot off into his brain. Something shifted and grated under his probing: the fractured bone of his skull, indenting a little from the pressure of his fingers.
He asked himself the same question that his brother had asked: what had happened? But unlike Nathan, he had no answer. Not yet.
He pushed at wooden boards pressing down on him, shoved them aside, choked as dust and stench fell on him from above. But framed in the gap he could see the stars up there, drifting smoke, and strange dark diamond shapes that soared in the sky. And he could hear a throbbing, sputtering rumble, fading into the distance.
Yes, and other sounds: faint, far cries… moaning… sobbing… someone shouting a name over and over again, desperately and yet without hope.
Nestor kicked at the rubble, extricated his arms, dragged himself into a seated position and shoved the clutter from his legs. He looked around, at first without seeing or recognizing anything; there was nothing here that his glazed eyes and stunned mind were prepared to take in. No, there was something: the tall stockade fence, which for a moment focused his attention. But even that was different, gapped in places and leaning outwards a little.
He stood up, staggered, stepped from the debris. Whatever had happened here, his clothing seemed to have been ripped half from him! Automatically, fumblingly — like a man flicking dust from his cuffs after a hard fall — he made adjustments to his trousers, his leather shirt. And slowly, reeling a little, he headed for the town centre, away from the rubble of his mother's house.
His mother's house?
Now where had that thought come from? And turning to look back at the freshly made chaos — at the black, jutting, splintered timbers and smoking mounds of debris, under a dark shroud of still settling dust — he slowly shook his head. No, for his mother's house had been a warm and welcoming place. Hadn't it?
Along the way, voices continued to cry out from shattered buildings; people stumbled like ghosts here and there, calling for help, or for lost families; flames gouted up where hearth fires turned ruined homes to funeral pyres. There was nothing Nestor could do about any of this, for there were far too many people in need of help. And anyway he needed help himself.
He began to remember names and fractured, jumbled fragments of conversation: Jason, Misha, Nathan, Lardis, Andrei… Nestor?
Jason: 'What will you do?'
Nestor, growling: 'It's Misha's choice. With or without her, I'll go. But be sure I'll be back one day.'
Misha, afraid: 'Because… because he needed someone! And I was the only one who cared. But Nestor… why are you doing this?'
Nestor, determinedly: 'When your father and brothers learn what's happened, then they'll kill me!'
Misha, astonished: 'No, they may not, for you are the Lord Nestor!'
Nestor: 'Of course! And I fear no man, for I am Wamphyri!'
Nathan: (But here there was nothing, no words at all but a cataract of numbers foaming down the falls of Nestor's mind and forming endless, meaningless patterns there, one of which was a weird figure-of-eight symbol
