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.
And leaving all of the monsters wallowing together in the town's debris, Wratha, her renegades, and their two remaining lieutenants returned to their flyers. Now the warriors would fuel themselves on the victims of the brief battle, human defenders and vampire lieutenants both. It should not occupy them for too long…
Later, airborne, Wratha said: All accomplished, except we've lost four lieutenants and failed to recruit more. So, we have a choice. We can wait and make new lieutenants from our thralls when they come over into Starside, or…
The others waited, and in a moment: Do you remember, she continued, I said that if all went well there might be a treat for you? They did, and she went on: Vasagi, are you up to it?
With telepathic perceptions sharper than the others, the Suck knew her mind. And: Yes, he answered, as brief as ever.
They rose up level with the peaks and Wratha pointed west. The night's still young, she said, and we have lieutenants to recruit. So let's see what else this marvellous Sunside has to offer, eh?
No one disagreed.
At about which time, and twenty miles away: The three more youthful members of Lardis Lidesci's party, returning home from their Starside trek, had gone on ahead into Settlement. But Lardis and Andrei Romani still had the better part of an hour to go before they in turn would enter through the town's East Gate…
Ill
Something less than an hour later, in Settlement: Attracted by a sudden commotion and surge in the crowd, Nestor Kiklu made his way through the milling people to discover what was going on. And he saw that he'd been right: it was Lardis Lidesci's voice making all the fuss. As for what it was all about: that remained to be discovered.
At the forward edge of the crowd, where the people who had come out to welcome Lardis home now held themselves back, shocked by their leader's outburst, Nestor felt himself swaying with an unaccustomed dizziness. Complementing the natural excitement of the night — that and his passion of a minute or two earlier, when he'd talked to Jason about Nathan and Misha — the Szgany wine was quickly going to his head. Reeling, he paused to lean against a cart, and became just one more slack-jawed witness in a sea of astonished faces.
For there at one of the old decoys Lardis stomped about in the tired, broken-down framework of torn, weathered skins and rotting wooden ribs — and raved! Ever faithful, Andrei Romani followed on behind his leader, trying to calm him down and imploring the crowd to hold back and not concern themselves; the old Lidesci was just worn out from the trek. But to Nestor and the rest, Lardis looked far less tired than…
'… Crazy!' some woman muttered, close by. 'He must have been drinking on the way in, and had a skinful. Why, listen to the man! Playing at being the Big Leader again, after so many years of doing nothing! What? But if his Lissa knew the state he was in, she'd be down here boxing his ears by now! But no, they have their fine cabin up on the knoll, well away from us common folk.'
Old bag! Nestor thought. He didn't think much of Lardis, but old sows like that were worse far. All the same, what on earth was Lardis up to?
'Lardis!' someone shouted from the crowd. 'Now what's all this about? Why, you sound like you've lost fifteen years out of your life, and gone back to the bad old days! As for these lures and all such rubbish: we abandoned their upkeep a lifetime ago. They should be stripped down for firewood. So what's all the fuss?'
Now Nestor began to understand, and to believe that maybe Lardis really was crazy; certainly he'd been acting strangely since they came back through the pass. In order to get a better idea of what was going on, he pushed himself upright and moved closer still.