A pity he couldn’t swim. Could he hide beneath the water and move downstream that way? Or would he freeze? Or were there vampires too close, and would the smell be too much for him? For the vampire woman’s scent was still in his mind if not his nose.
Were there River People about? He was willing to ask for help.
Mist blew across his view, a fine rain washed him, and a voice in the mist whispered in his ear. “So you really were as strong as you thought.”
Tegger snorted.
Silence.
Tegger was coming to believe that Whisper was a machine, something left over from before the Fall of the Cities. Or else a wayspirit who had dreadful secrets. Whisper didn’t answer questions about Whisper.
Ask instead—”Is there a way to make the Floater fall on the Shadow Nest?”
The whisperer said, “I know of none.”
“My father told me. The City Builders made lightning to flow through silver threads for their power. We could turn it off! Find the threads, rip them out!”
Whisper said, “Floater plates don’t use power to float, though power was needed to make them. They were made to repel the scrith, the floor of the Arch, and that is what they do.”
It was impossible, then. It had always been impossible. In some bitterness Tegger said, “You know so much. You hide so much. Are you a Ghoul?”
Silence.
One might consider that distance means nothing to a wayspirit. Or that a madman’s imagination is as quick as thought. Or if Gleaners run faster than Reds, faster than Tegger at a dead scared run, then something else might run faster than Gleaners.
But Ghouls could not. Whatever else he was, though Ghouls were as elusive as Whisper, Whisper was not a Ghoul.
The mist drifted, revealed and concealed. It was full dark, or very near. Through gaps in the clouds Tegger could catch an occasional vertical blue-white glare, the Arch still unchanged, whatever happened to his universe.
The activity beneath the floating mass was increasing, Tegger thought. It was certainly growing darker. Vampires would be waking. Tegger said, “We should hide.”
“I see a place, but it might not help you.”
“Why not?” Tegger asked, and was instantly aware of the sweat running freely down his arms. Much of that was rain; still, his own smell would attract vampires for a daywalk’s distance.
He waited while the mist closed in-and heard no more from Whisper. On hands and toes, then, he moved down to the river. He drew his sword before he waded in. No telling what lived in the brown water. If a fish brushed him, he might find his dinner.
He stopped as water brushed his kilt. Valavirgillin’s rag, should he get it wet?
He pulled it free of his kilt. It was filmy stuff, very finely woven, very strong. He’d seen his hand through it earlier, though it was too dark now. He’d noticed it because it was cold; but it wasn’t cold at all an instant after he stuffed it in his kilt. During a halfday of running he’d forgotten all about it.
He let a corner dip into the river.
It wasn’t dissolving. Good. But the upper corner in his fingers was as cold, instantly, as the river washing past his legs.
He submerged himself. Rubbed himself with moss, climbed out fast, dried himself fast. Running had kept him warm in the wind and rain, but he wasn’t running now. There was a poncho in his pack, and the firestarter.
Vala’s cloth was like a pipe for heat and cold. What would happen—”Whisper, what if I put a corner of Valavirgillin’s cloth in a fire? Would it burn? Would it be too hot to hold?”
There was nowhere Whisper might be on this bare mud.
His own mind told him he’d be crazy to build a fire. Hominids used fire. Vampires, no matter how stupid, would learn to seek fire. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder.
He toweled his face, and pulled the towel away in time to see six vampires running at him across the mud.
They didn’t sing. They didn’t posture, didn’t implore with their bodies. They came fast. Tegger snatched up his sword.
A sword didn’t frighten them. They were pacing each other; spreading out a little, attacking as a pack. Tegger ran to the left and slashed, slashed. Two fell back with haphazard wounds, enough to put them out, Tegger thought, but he was too busy to look. The other four had him encircled.
He half rested, turning in a step-stop motion, his sword held vertical, reversing himself, reversing. He and his friends had played this game with sticks when they were children. Their elders had fought Grass Giants this way.
Two wounded were crawling away, uphill toward the shadow. The remaining three men and one woman circled him.
He hadn’t known-none of the vampire hunters had known-that when vampires outnumbered their prey six to one, they didn’t bother with lures or song or even scent. They just attacked.
He must reach the cruisers, if he lived. Tell them. Even if he must face Warvia again. Warvia.
The vampires didn’t seem to be in any hurry. No reason why they should be. More were trickling down from the Shadow Nest. More yet would be returning from the lands beyond the mountains. Darkness was falling.
“Whisper!” he screamed. “Hide me!”
Nothing. The rain had stopped. He was on a wide mud flat. This time there really was no place for a wayspirit to hide.
The scent. It wasn’t strong, but it was getting into his head and it wasn’t coming out. He remembered the other vampire, remembered killing her, killing her for not being Warvia. His mind was going, and there was no reason why he should wait.
And the woman spread her arms for him, imploring.
Tegger jumped backward, turning, sword swinging. Yes! The men were coming at his back, converging while she held his mind prisoner. His blade swiped across their eyes-he missed the second clean-came back and stabbed economically into that one’s throat. He jabbed back blindly at where the woman should be. She slammed into him with his sword through her to the hilt, knocking him off balance, her teeth slashing at his biceps. He curled her away one-handed. He could hear himself screaming.
One man was crawling backward, leaving his life’s blood behind. One seemed blinded. The third brushed blood from his eyes and saw Tegger as Tegger reached for him. Then Tegger’s hands were on his throat and Tegger’s weight was driving him into the mud.
The rest was a fog. The man gripped Tegger’s shoulders and tried to pull Tegger close to his teeth. Tegger shook him like a rat while he strangled him. The woman had almost reached the river when Tegger reached her and took back his sword. He stepped too close to one who should have been dead, felt teeth close in his ankle, stabbed down and kept walking. The blinded one came toward him, sniffing. Tegger took three swings with a blade dulled as blunt as a club, before the head came off. He could hear himself snuffling like a sick herdbeast.
In the shifting fog he could see shapes moving down from the Shadow Nest.
“Whisper! Hide me!”
Whisper spoke, but not in a whisper. “Run toward me!” The voice was a whipcrack command with just a trace of speech impediment, coming from far downstream, straight toward the Shadow Nest.
Tegger ran. He was a hundred paces along when the voice spoke again, much closer now. “Out into the river!”
Tegger veered left, into the water, toward the voice of Whisper. Was there something out there? In the rain and the dark was a shadow on the fog, a shadow too big to be solid. And a strip of darkness… an island?
