unannounced.'
Then they clasped forearms, and through the trees Nathan could feel Eleni's eyes upon him until he passed from sight into the undergrowth…
He searched the river bank until the middle of the afternoon, when the ground on his side of the river turned into a bog and became impassable, and the overhanging branches were so full of creepers and rank, secondary foliage that the water was shaded, dappled, opaque. If his brother was down there, there could be no finding him now. As for burying him: Nestor would be buried already, in the weeds which had been part of Nathan's 'dream'.
Now, too, Nathan must decide what to do. Earlier, he had seemed to feel something for Eleni Sintana. Or perhaps he had simply felt it for himself: a yawning void, an aching need. In any case, he had a choice: join the Szgany Sintana in whatever future would be theirs, or return to Settlement and be Lardis Lidesci's son, replacing the one he'd lost. Whichever he chose to be — husband to Eleni, or a son to Lardis — he would be a replacement, not the real thing; and he would always know that he was the second choice.
Settlement seemed a long way off from Nathan, and he knew it could never feel the same if he went back there. If a girl passed by he would look at her, hoping it was Misha. When the women stamped their feet and snapped their fingers thus and so in the dance, he would think of his mother. And if some brash youth came striding, laughing along the road, it would always be Nestor from this time forward. No, the town would be full of ghosts now; indeed, Settlement itself would be a ghost.
But Eleni Sintana was warm and alive…
And what of his vow against the Wamphyri? All very well, when there was a chance that Nestor lived. Together, united under a banner of vengeance, the two of them could have fought alongside Lardis Lidesci and taken whatever revenge was available to them, before they too paid the price. They could have, but no longer. For Nestor was drowned and cold. And again the thought came to Nathan: Eleni is warm and alive.
It was a little more than half-way through the afternoon; there were still some twenty-five hours of full daylight left, and five or six more of twilight; Nathan was feeling worn out, as low as he had ever felt, and quite at the end of his tether. Over a period of time which would equal almost four days in the time-frame of the world beyond the Starside Gate — of which as yet Nathan knew nothing other than that it was there — he'd managed to snatch only a few hours sleep. Now he must sleep, and sleep his fill, before heading south for… for the encampment of the Szgany Sintana, where the forest met the savannah.
Back up the river he had passed a tiny sandy island with a few reeds, shrubs and trees. Now he made his weary way back there, waded out to the island, curled up under a bush half in the shade, and almost at once fell into an exhausted, dreamless sleep. His last conscious thought as the darkness came down was that he would sleep for a good seven or eight hours, and still have plenty of time to trek to Nikha's camp before sundown.
But the fact was that both physically and mentally Nathan was far more depleted than he thought. And while he slept… on Starside the vampire plague-bearers were wide awake, active, and filled to overflowing with their loathsome poisons, their unspeakable ambitions…
Though as yet the rays of a slowly setting sun continued to paint the higher peaks of the barrier range a dazzling gold, its cleansing glare had lifted from the face of that one remaining aerie, whose name upon a time was Karenstack. And in the hour of the sun's passing, Wratha the Risen had called a meeting in her vertiginous apartments; several of her familiar bats had been dispatched into the stack's lower levels, where Wratha's renegades understood their messages far better than men understand the whining of dogs. And now the changeling vampire Lords attended her, however sullenly.
They had all been up and about since the arrival of their first new thralls out of Sunside: allotting quarters, 'victualling' their beasts, choosing lieutenants and instructing them in their duties, apportioning work to commoner thralls… and last but not least, sating themselves, of course. Which surely accounted for Canker Canison's ravaged look, for where females were concerned he was ever the Great Dog. In Settlement he had excelled himself: at least two thirds of his recruits from the Szgany Lidesci were women.
But even in Canker's case the choosing of new lieutenants had taken priority for a while; for with the single exception of Gorvi the Guile, all of the Lords and the Lady too had lost their right-hand men in the first raids on Twin Fords and Settlement. In Turgosheim's Sunside it would have been unthinkable, and here it was a major setback which not even Wratha had anticipated. Of the six of them, Gorvi had been the fortunate one; or… could it be that his lieutenant had learned something of the wiles of his master? Whichever, he had survived, and the one thing Gorvi lacked now was a warrior.
Ah, but the makings were to hand in the shape of a procession of dazed Szgany thralls drawn irresistibly out of Sunside and across the boulder plains to the last aerie, all bemoaning their fate even as they came shuffling through the lengthening shadows of the barrier range. The Guile had wasted no time; in the bowels of the stack his vats were seething even now, where altered metamorphic flesh shaped itself to Gorvi's design.
Canker, too (once he'd inspected his get, chosen his men and rutted among his new harem), had set to work at the vats. In just nine or ten sundowns he would have a warrior to beggar the one which he'd lost over the Great Red Waste! And in thirty more there would be a litter of yelping bloodsons to replace the ones left to their fate in Mangemanse.
And so the Lords had been busy when Wratha's great bats called them to attend her. But since they desired words with the Lady anyway, it seemed as good a time as any.
Gorvi, Wran the Rage and Spiro Killglance took the easy route up from their freshly peopled manses, and landed their flyers in Wratha's spacious bays. Canker and Vasagi the Suck, situated that much closer, climbed the stack's internal staircases of hewn stone and grafted cartilage. However they chose to come, upon arrival they all greeted Wratha in the same way: with surly, suspicious, even angry stares and glances. She had anticipated no less and was ready for them.
'So, all goes reasonably well,' she started without preamble, speaking to them from where she sat in the gaping jaws of a huge bone-throne at the head of a table in the largest of her several halls. 'Our new thralls attend us, and though they are fewer than we bargained for their blood is good and strong and fresh: superior in every way to our get of tithelings in Turgosheim. At least we can all agree on that, I think.' The way she expressed herself indicated her presentiment of trouble.
'As far as you go you state hard facts,' Gorvi answered at once, his voice a sly, oily, accusing gurgle. 'Alas, you don't go far enough. And the hardest fact of all is the one you choose not to mention.'
The five were seated with her: Vasagi and Gorvi on one side of the table, Canker and the brothers Killglance on the other. Wratha was dressed in her robe of bat-fur ropes. She had chosen to look like some wanton young Gypsy: precocious, provocative, proud of the power which her sex gave her over men. It was her way of distracting them from their course, their argument. But now she saw that it might not be enough. These Lords had taken their fill of women; for now, there was no lust left in them.
Putting all posing and posturing aside she sat up straight, pulled a wry face and uttered an exaggerated sigh. 'So, here we are,' she said. 'Right at the onset of our great adventure, and already you find something to complain about, Gorvi. Better, I think, if they'd named you Gorvi the Grouch!'
'What you think becomes less important moment to moment!' Gorvi snarled. He stood up and put his knuckles on the table, hunching his shoulders and thrusting his head forward like a great carrion bird. 'Wratha, you are a thief!'
His words seemed to freeze her… for perhaps a second. Then she reached up and lifted the bone scarp upon her brow, until her eyes were no longer in shadow. And in a moment her image of true life had fallen away and her flesh was grey as undeath. Her nose became ridged and convoluted, with black, flaring nostrils, and her top lip curled back a little in the right-hand corner, displaying a gleaming fang. And:
'A thief?' she hissed.
Before matters could deteriorate further, Vasagi flowed to his feet and put himself between Gorvi and the Lady. The Suck was extremely susceptible to kneblasch — even more so than the others — and knew Wratha's mind and therefore her temper better than them. She considered this her place now; only subject her to too many 'insults' in her own aerie… she would very likely stink them all right out of here into their sickbeds, so making an end of their complaints. Well, for the moment Vasagi had enough of healing pains. If that bolt which he took in his side last night had been dipped in kneblasch… even Vasagi, with all of his powers of metamorphism, would have been in trouble then! It didn't bear thinking about.
So, time now to make their point — merely that, and delicately if at all possible — so that at least she would
