Seeing the fear in Misha's eyes, Nestor flinched inside, in his guts. Perhaps for her part she felt the change in him, which came and passed in a moment. And: 'Why?' she panted, as he completed the work on her underclothes. 'Nestor, why?'
He began to come down on her, his hand behind and under her, opening her up. 'When your father and brothers know,' he husked, 'they'll either kill me or see to it that we're married. Whichever, it will be decisive.'
His mouth closed on hers; she felt his manhood throbbing, thrusting, searching her out, and wondered: Married? Then why didn't you just ask me? For after all, she had always known it would be one of them, Nestor or Nathan. She hadn't known which one, that was all. Now she did, and it wasn't Nestor.
But maybe she knew too late…
Nana Kiklu kneeled by her stone fireplace and chopped a few last vegetable ingredients into the stew bubbling in a copper pan. Her boys would be in soon, Nestor from the welcoming party and Nathan back from walking Misha home. They might have eaten already, but with their appetites it would make little difference. And home cooking was always best.
Nana smiled as she thought of Misha: that girl was really smitten with her boys. But then, she always had been. Sooner or later she would make her choice, and Nana hoped… but no, she must be impartial, and certainly she loved them both and had no favourite. But Nathan, Nathan…
The smile fell from her comely face, became a frown, and she sighed. If not Misha Zanesti, then who would take Nathan? And if it was him, then what of Nestor? For they had grown up together, all three, so that whichever way it went the choosing would be painful and the parting of the ways hard.
And again Nana thought: Nathan, ah, Nathan!
Misha understood him and his ways; something of them, anyway. And as for Nana: she, of course, understood them only too well! She need only look at him to see his father, Harry Keogh, called Dwellersire, looking back at her. Fortunate that no one had ever noticed or remarked upon it; but times had been hard in those days, when people had enough to do minding their own business without minding the business of others. And Nathan's differences hadn't become really marked until he was five, in the year after the last great battle, which had destroyed his alien father along with the first and last of the Wamphyri.
On occasion, infrequently, Nana had seen Lardis Lidesci look strangely, wonderingly at Nathan. But even if he suspected, Lardis would never say anything. He had always been the strong one, Lardis: the protector. And anyway, he got along well with Nathan and liked him; that is to say, he got on as well as could be expected with someone who kept so far apart.
Nathan had always kept himself apart, yes, except from Misha, of course… And now Nana was back to that.
Finished with her vegetables, she sighed again, stood up, crossed to the window and looked out. Twilight was quickly fading into night now; the stars were very bright over the barrier range, and a mist was rolling down off the mountains and across the lower slopes. In the old days a mist like that would have sent shivers down Nana's spine, but no more. And her mind went back all of eighteen years and more to just such times — and one night in particular — in The Dweller's garden on Starside. What she had done then… maybe it had been a mistake, maybe not, but her boys were the result and she wouldn't change that.
Nestor and Nathan: they'd never known their true father; which, considering what came later, was probably just as well. But for all that Harry had been (and must now forever remain) a stranger to them, the one unknown factor in their young lives, still he'd left his mark on them, and especially on Nathan. Oh, Harry Dwellersire had marked both of her sons, Nana knew, but in Nathan it burned like a brand.
Burned! She sniffed the air and went back to the fire. For that would never do, to let her good stew burn. But in the pot, the water was deep, simmering, not boiling over at all. And so the smell must be something else entirely. A smell at first, and now… a sound, which Nana remembered.
Impossible!
She flew to the window. Out there, the mist was leprous white in moon-and starlight, undulating, thickly concentrated where it lay on the foothills and sent tendrils creeping over the north wall and through gaps in the stockade's inner planking. Nana had never seen a mist like it. No, she had, she had! But there are certain things you daren't recall, and this mist was one of them.
The sound came again — a sputtering roar — and a shadow blotting out the stars where it passed overhead. And drifting down from the darkness and the night, that nameless reek, that stench from memory, that impossible smell. Utterly impossible! But if that were so…
… Then what was the meaning of the sudden, near — distant tumult which Nana now heard rising out of the town? What was all that shouting? What were those hoarse, terrified, Szgany voices screaming?
No need to ask, for she knew the answer well enough. 'Wamphyri! Wamphyri!'
And as the throbbing sputter of propulsors sounded again, closer, shaking the house, the one thought in Nana's mind was for her boys and the girl they loved: Nathan! Nestor! Misha!
She ran to the door and threw it open.
Nathan! Nestor! Misha!
The bellowing of warriors seemed to sound from every quarter, and the sickening stench of their exhaust vapours touched and tainted everything. Nathan! Nestor! Misha!
Something unbelievable, monstrous, armoured, fell out of the sky, directly on to Nana's house. Along with the adjacent houses, her place collapsed into dust, debris, ruins, like a ripe puffball when you step on it. Shattered, the door flew from its leather hinges and knocked Nana down in the billowing dust of the street. But even as she dragged herself away from the hissing and the bellowing — and now the screaming, which rose up out of the smoking rubble of the nearby buildings — still she repeated, over and over:
'Nathan! Nestor! Misha!' And wondered, would she ever see them again?
Five minutes earlier, in the barn: Misha felt Nestor beginning to enter her, and in desperation gasped, 'Let me… let me help you.'
He lifted his face from her breasts and stared at her disbelievingly. But then, as she reached down a hand between their bodies, he could only grunt an astonished, 'What?'
Certainly Nestor could use help; not only was his drunkenness a handicap in its own right, he was also inexperienced. For all his swaggering and boasting among Settlement's youths, and his apparent familiarity with certain of the village girls, he was a virgin no less than Misha herself. Indeed, more so, for she at least seemed to know something.
She caught him up where he jerked and strained, and tightened her slender hand to a yoke around the neck of his pulsing member. As she began to work at him he murmured, 'Ah!' and rose up from her a little, to allow her more freedom. Never releasing him for a moment but continuing to gratify his flesh, she at once took the opportunity to roll him on to his back.
He was young and full of lust; her hand was a warm engine of pleasure, squeezing and pumping at him; it couldn't last.
Aching to touch her, tug at her, feel the warm resilience of her perspiring breasts, he reached out a trembling hand — but too late. And as his fluids geysered and splashed down in long, hot pulses on to his belly, so Nestor groaned and flopped back in the hay. But even lying there in a mixture of mindless ecstasy and empty frustration, still he sensed her straightening her clothing and drawing away from him. And as his tottering senses found their own level, suddenly he wondered: How? How had she known what to do?
And trapping her wrist before she could stand up and run from him, his question was written there on his face plain for her to see. As was the answer on hers.
'Nathan!' he snarled then, as she snatched her hand away, got to her feet and backed off. He made to get after her, came to his knees. If she'd learned that much from his not-so-dumb brother, then obviously she knew all of it. And now more than ever, Nestor desired to be into her. If only for the hell of it.