The Last Aerie (46 page)

“When I sleep, then I drink … occasionally.”

“But carefully, eh? That Carmen incident taught you a lesson, it seems.”

“Perhaps it did,” said Nestor.

“Huh!”
the dog-Lord grunted. “Then what is this malaise? Do you know its source?”

“No,” Nestor lied. And feeling Canker’s thoughts nibbling at his own, he changed the subject. “So tell me, my friend, how goes it with your moon music? A whole year gone by, and still you’re hard at it.”

Canker was distracted from his own line of questioning. “My music? My instrument? Hard at it? Too true! This music is no easy thing. But it comes, it comes. Have you not heard me, in the sunup when the others are fast asleep? Surely you recognized the tune you gave me?”

“I’ve heard you,” Nestor nodded wryly, “and I’ve no doubt that Wratha and the others have, too, when we
should
have been asleep! As for knowing your tune: I knew it, vaguely.”

“Oh—hah-
ha!
” Canker capered wildly, threw back his head and laughed. “And have I disturbed you, then? Good, excellent! Not so good that I have ruined your sleep—no, of course not, never that—but wonderful if I’ve managed to disturb the rest of them. It’s my image, you see. For I’m a madman and mischiefmaker. We have to keep up appearances.”

Nestor managed a grin. “Well then, away with you and practise. Later we’ll fly out and do a little raiding on Sunside—but just the two of us, for as yet I’m jealous of this talent of mine and guard it well. And later, we’ll seek out some old Szgany burial place, where you shall see what you shall see.”

“Agreed!” Canker yelped, as Nestor patted him fondly on his furred and sloping back. And then the necromancer saw him out of Suckscar, accompanying the dog-Lord until at the last he loped out of sight, down and around the spiraling stairwell that descended into Mangemanse.

But as soon as Canker was gone—

Nestor returned to his brooding, to his … malaise? And indeed he knew its source. Somewhere in the world—far away, perhaps, but there nevertheless—his olden enemy out of Sunside lived on. That was the source of his disquiet. He
knew
that his enemy was alive just as surely as he recognized the pattern of the numbers vortex swirling in his head, that whirlwind rush of metaphysical symbols which was his enemy’s cloaking device, with which he kept his secret mind shielded.

It rarely bothered Nestor in the dark of night, when he was up and prowling, or hunting on Sunside, or running Suckscar to his own design; but during the fear-fraught hours of seething sunlight on the barrier mountains, when Wrathstack slept and the furnace sun’s bright and lethal rays burned on the Lady Wratha’s highest turrets and towers—then he felt it.

At first it would be in his dreams, which in themselves were a swirl of misty unmemory, or half-memory, of things he really did not
wish
to remember; but coming awake and as his dreams faded to wraiths, still the hated numbers vortex would linger on. Faint, ah, faint, but real for all that. And lying awake in his bed with his sleeping vampire women, as the cold sweat beaded his flesh and his nerves jangled with each smallest creak of a baffle or wailing of wind beyond his windows, then he would know that his olden enemy lived on. Moreover, he also knew that while for the moment that enemy was far removed, one day he would surely return …

In a way he dreaded that day, without knowing why, but in another way he longed for it. For he would never be free of the numbers vortex until he was free of his enemy, who and whatever he was.

But that was only one source of Nestor’s malaise, and the truth of it was that there was another. A need—a gap, a void in his existence—which required filling. For Canker had been partly right to question him about women. But there was a
certain
woman he had not questioned him about, because he had not known. Only Nestor himself knew, and he was loath to admit it. For after all, she’d made a fool of him once already.

And yet … in his dreams, all too frequently, she seemed to call to him, and he felt her lure even in his waking hours; so that occasionally, musing, he would find himself (if only in his mind, in the eye of his memory) up there again on Wrathspire’s roof, his lips on hers and her breast in his hand.

A malaise? No, it was the lingering after-images of dreams such as these that distracted him. The conflict of his desires. On the one hand, revenge on his enemy. And on the other, Wratha the Risen: the thought of their steam rising up from a bed made sodden by their juices …

That same sundown, an hour after the sun’s true setting—when the ethereal fan of pink and golden spokes which was its aftermath wheeled in the sky over Sun-side and melted to an amethyst glow, and the night crept in, and stars clustered like nuggets of ice frozen in their eternal configurations, and the Icelands aurora fluttered its banners across all the northern skies—then the Wamphyri flew to Sunside. Not only Nestor Lichloathe and Canker Canison, but all of them.

Taking their senior men with them and leaving lesser lieutenants and thralls in charge of their manses, they set out from Wrathstack to raid on the Szgany. They left in the space of the same hour but in small parties, not en masse; the time lay well in the past when they had worked as a single unit under Wratha.

Nor were their parties uniform: the Guile’s lot flew south and a little east, and was composed of Gorvi himself, three lieutenants and two small aerial warriors. The Killglance brothers headed due south, and took only their chief lieutenants along with them; they would seek their prey in roughly the same area where Wran and Vasagi the Suck had fought their unequal duel. And the Lady Wratha flew westwards with only two of her men, and used the glaring hell-lands Gate as her marker where she sped for the soaring spires and plateaus which were her favourite vantage points, from which she would choose her target.

As for Canker and Nestor: they made for the great pass a little to the east of the hemisphere Gate, a dogleg gorge that split the barrier mountains to their roots, passing north to south right through them. If they were fortunate enough to recruit a handful of thralls beyond the pass, then their victims would find it an easy route to follow home to the last aerie.

And gliding on a tail-wind, they conversed as they went:

An even, two-way split,
Canker grunted in Nestor’s mind.
We work together and share the spoils equally.

Of course
. The other agreed, but with this rider:
And if there are women, we split them equally, too.

Split them? Indeed I will!
the dog-Lord laughed obscenely for a moment, then sobered.
But yes, I understand, and I’m more than pleased with that arrangement. Damn, I have a few too many bitches in Mangemanse already! And when I’m away,
like now, all they can do is squabble. They fight for my affections, Nestor.

Nestor doubted it but said nothing. More likely Canker’s women fought to determine who would stay out of his bed! (This was a thought which the necromancer kept to himself.) But forget Mangemanse, for the fact of it was that Suckscar did go a little short on women, and Nestor had lieutenants and thralls other than himself to consider. For if a man is not happy he will scheme and plot, eventually get himself in serious, even terminal trouble, and so deplete the aerie. On the other hand, genuine happiness as such is scarcely the province of vampire thralls, but … at least their loads might be made a little easier to bear.

This last thought had escaped him and been picked up by Canker. “Too true!” the dog-Lord called through the blustery air, slicing it with his bark. “You have to keep them happy. For you can be sure there are those among ‘em who’ll be lusting after your women even now—aye, and lusting after Suckscar, too! There must be, else nothing would ever change and no one ever ascend.”

Nestor nodded and answered grimly, “Indeed, for it’s the getting there that counts.”

“Right!” Canker howled. “And without new blood—among the Wamphyri, I mean—we’d all stagnate and become doddering old cripples like the lot we left behind in Turgosheim.”

“You must tell me about them some time,” Nestor answered. “The full story. But for now … let’s keep the noise down. A few more miles and we’re through the pass, so from here on in silence is the order of the day.”

As you will
. Canker fell silent a moment. Until:
Ah! But can’t you just smell ‘em from here, Nestor? Szgany! Meat on the hoof—sweet blood, hot and surging—young breasts and buttocks and cunt galore! Me? Why, I’ll risk the odd crossbow bolt any old time, to fire a few shots from my own weapon.

Your “image”?
Nestor’s sarcasm dripped, but Canker chose to ignore it.

No lad, not this time, he answered. Not my image but my lust. I want to be into a fresh, untainted woman. Or several!

You’re a lech
, said Nestor, but without malice.
A satyr.

Not a bit of it
, Canker grinned across at him.
I’m Wamphyri! And so are you …

The Sunside end of the pass was in sight, and beyond it a far horizon still stained with strips of dying colour: dun orange, a pale, dirty yellow, and amethyst. Nestor and Canker ordered their flyers up, up, until they rode with a knot of dark clouds scudding south. Should they be seen from the ground, they’d be just two more clouds chasing the fallen sun.

Now the hunt was on, for down below was Szgany territory. And as Nestor led the way and sped out with the clouds over the forest, so Canker inquired:
And just
where do you think you’re taking me? Man, these woods are dense, and the Szgany know them a damn sight better than we do! We should stick to the fringes, look for their fires. And where in hell do we land? And having landed, from where do we launch? I mean, I know you’re no novice, that you’ve done all this before, but you’re listening to the voice of real experience here. Seventy years of it. And I tell you we should—

—Shhh!
Nestor hushed him.
Let me think. It’s this way, if my memory serves me right.
Aye, this way!

What is this way?
Canker demanded.

Meat on the hoof
, Nestor told him.
And everything else you mentioned.
A woman for you—neither virginal nor young, but untainted certainly—and another for me. And the blood of a good strong man to boot. You can have both the man and his wife, and I shall have their daughter. Not the best of thralls, to be sure, but there’s always the provisioning.

You know this
for a certainty?
Canker was eager now.
That these people are here, I mean?
But he could tell that indeed Nestor knew it for a certainty.

I know it. Down there, maybe
four, five miles ahead, a cabin in the woods, all secret and hidden away. Their fire is out by now but its smoke will linger a while. In a minute or two you’ll sniff it out with that great wolf’s snout of yours. That is, now that you know it’s there to be sniffed.

Huh!
Canker grunted in Nestor’s mind, and complained
: But the wind’s in the wrong direction. Still,
if there’s smoke to be smelled, be sure that Canker will smell it!

Ahead, a river uncoiled from the night like a silver snake glinting in the starlight. And Nestor remembered a time when he had very nearly drowned in that same river. Only Brad Berea had saved him, and returned him to life in the warmth and security of his cabin in the woods. Except … Brad had been unkind to him, too, at times, and his wife Irma was often surly and grudging; she’d even begrudged Nestor his food, despite that he’d hunted for all of them. Only Glina had truly felt for Nestor, and they had been lovers a while.

Well, they’d shared sex, at least. But love? No, for Nestor already had a love … or would have had if his olden, forgotten enemy had not stolen her away. But Glina would make a good bed-warmer in Suckscar, be sure, and certainly she could teach some of the other women in Nestor’s harem how to relieve a man of his juices.

There was no pity in Nestor now. In fact, it puzzled him why he’d held off all this time, knowing where the Bereas were and all. Perhaps it was that for a while he had felt something of pity—for Glina at least, if not for her parents. But that was then and this was now, and pity and all such emotions were Szgany failings, not Wamphyri.

Smoke!
Canker cried in Nestor’s mind.
A whiff of it,
anyway, lingering on from the evening meal. Aye, and food smells, too, from the same source. Nestor, we’ve passed over them!

I know it
, Nestor replied.
Now then, search for a knoll or cliff. That’s where we’ll land, and from there go on
afoot.

Keen Wamphyri eyes scanned the night, and Canker sent his wolf senses vibrating outwards from him like the unheard locating call of a bat into the darkness. And:

Over there, to the west.
He leaned his flyer westwards.
A knoll, mainly bald, rising out of the woods. It should suit our purpose.

I remember it
, Nestor answered.
I’ve
hunted there upon a time. Rabbits and the occasional goat.

Ah, but rarer meat tonight!
Canker chuckled. And in the next moment he was businesslike again:
Very well, let’s be at it…

Wamphyri senses guiding them safely down, they landed on the knoll in a swirling ground mist and settled to the rounded summit in twin slithers of sliding scree and crushed creepers. And leaving their beasts nodding there, but with easy access to flight, they descended the knoll by its eastern face.

Then a short, silent, gliding trip through the gloom of the woods, Nestor moving like a shadow, tree to tree, and Canker loping, leaning forwards, stepping so light that never a twig was broken. A mile and a half, and:

We’re there.
Nestor’s mental voice was like a waft of cold air in Canker’s mind.