'What will you do, Lardis? Will it be as you told it to Vratza Wransthrall? Will you trek with your people, and turn them into Travellers as in the old days, to keep them from the Wamphyri?'
Lardis shook his head. 'Some will move on,' he answered, gruffly. 'Can you blame them? But I will stay here. Not "here", you understand, but in Settlement. And I fancy a good many will stay with me. Maybe that way, by adopting at least this one of the Wamphyri's methods, we'll defeat them in the end.' 'By adopting their methods?'
Lardis nodded. 'When the Wamphyri have something, they fight to keep it. Especially territory. They are fiercely territorial, Nathan. In the old days, most of their wars were for territory, for the great aeries, the Starside stacks. Oh, they were for blood, too, and for the sheer hell of it; but mainly they were about territory. It's what drove them to go against The Dweller, and why they were destroyed. And now, finally, it's why they've returned.'
'And how will you keep Settlement?' 'By defending it! This sunup you'll see activity as never before in Settlement. So much to do… I shouldn't be sitting here… I must get on down!' He stood up.
Nathan touched his arm. 'I won't be seeing it,' he said, shaking his blond head. 'I'm heading east.' Lardis was disappointed. 'You're deserting me?' 'Never that,' the other answered. 'I came to find out what you would do so that eventually I'd know where to find you. But first I must find Nestor.'
'Nestor?' Lardis's eyebrows peaked. 'Why, anyone would think you weren't there last night! Nestor's gone into Starside, Nathan, in the mouth of a flyer. Look, I've no time for this and so must speak plainly: Nestor's dead, or worse than dead! Can't you get that into your head?'
Nathan followed him down the first flight of steps cut in the steep side of the knoll. 'But you wounded the flyer with a bolt from one of the great crossbows,' he replied. 'What if it crashed? In fact, I dreamed that it crashed — on the wooded slopes over Twin Fords.'
Lardis turned to him. 'You dreamed it? What, and are you a seer? Since when?'
A seer? Am I? Nathan wondered. No, I don't think so. But my wolves talk to me, and sometimes I hear the dead whispering in their graves…
He shrugged. 'No, I'm no seer — but I know how to hope when hope is all that's left. And I fancy you do, too, Lardis. Isn't that why you came back up here: to dig again where you have already delved enough, even knowing you'd find nothing?'
After a moment Lardis sighed and nodded, turned away and continued on down. 'Then you have to go,' he said. 'Except — if your star is good to you, and likewise mine to me — you'll promise to come back one day and be my son.'
'I feel I'm that already,' said Nathan, lying yet at one and the same time, and however paradoxically, remaining sincere. For certainly the old Lidesci had been as much a father to him as any he had ever known. And yet behind Lardis's back where Nathan couldn't be seen, he frowned wonderingly. Because just for a moment then he'd seemed to remember something else from last night's dream… something which his wolves had told to him? Some connection between his father — his real father, Hzak Kiklu — and theirs? Some blood relationship between the two? And was that why they called him uncle?
Still unseen, Nathan shook his head in bewilderment. But how could that be? For quite obviously, their father had been a wolf!
It was all very mysterious and puzzling. But then, that was frequently the way of it with Nathan's dreams: some things appeared as real and solid as the ground under his feet, while others were vague and ephemeral as ripples on a pool, or frost on the high peaks before the dawn. Some things he remembered, and others he was glad to forget, mainly because he couldn't understand them. Best to fasten on what he perceived as real, he supposed, and leave the fanciful stuff to its own devices.
It was a mistake, but all men make them. Especially when they are under pressure. And Nathan was no exception..
In the hours after dawn, as Nathan trekked for Twin Fords, the thought or question would frequently recur: But why would they take my mother?
He would understand — and detest his understanding of it — if she had been raped, vampirized, murdered out of hand. For after all, so many had been. But taken? Nana Kiklu was no mere girl. On the other hand, she was or had been a warm and beautiful woman. Her sons had always thought so anyway, and without prejudice — especially Nathan.
But.. did the Wamphyri take people indiscriminately? Were they so insensitive of human life that they would simply take, defile, use or waste whatever, whoever, was available? Perhaps they were and did.
Or perhaps it was just that they followed a simpler set of rules: blood is blood, and flesh is merely flesh. For when a hunter is hungry, is he concerned that the rabbit he shoots should have pleasing marks? Does he really care if it is past its prime? And what about the sandal-maker? What difference does it make to him which beast supplies the leather for his sandals, as long as it's supple, hard-wearing stuff?
But on the other hand, the Wamphyri were or had been men, and the 'beasts' they hunted were likewise men — and women! So that they didn't just hunt for meat, or even for stuff to fashion into monstrous undead creatures, but for… other reasons, too. And so Nathan would always come back to that, and end up wondering if Nana shared the same fate as Misha Zanesti. If Nana had been taken.
And if she hadn't? Then what had happened to his mother, and where was she now?
Nathan had seen a monstrous, massively armoured warrior creature ravaging destructively in the streets of Settlement, and knew that these Wamphyri fighting beasts were carnivores, indeed vampires in their own right. Maybe that was the answer: a horrific answer, to be sure, but a quick end at least. Could it be that the same monster which flattened their home had also snatched up his mother? If so, she would have been dead instantly. But never a trace of her, nothing, not even (Nathan was obliged to consider it, however flinchingly) a splash of red.
The same for Misha; except that with Vratza Wransthrall's deliberately cruel picture still burning in Nathan's all-too-vivid imagination — and Canker Canison's slavering dog-voice reverberating in the vaults of his memory — he suspected or feared even worse for Misha! And however much he loathed himself for thinking it, he could only wish her dead.
Striding east along an old Traveller trail, he found himself thinking back an hour or two, to when he and Lardis had climbed down from the house on the knoll into Settlement. Lardis's band of old comrades had been waiting for him there, with all of Settlement's citizens — those that remained, anyway — gathered together at the central meeting place to hear his words. What Lardis had said to them then had been simple and to the point, and entirely typical of him:
'All is as it was twenty years ago,' he had said. 'The Wamphyri are back, and we are their sport, their food, their cattle. The townships will soon be broken down, and all the Szgany sundered, scattered into small groups throughout the length and breadth of Sunside. So they, the Wamphyri, would have it. But there are differences.
'Now we have made our homes here in Settlement, and we travel no more. This is our place, built with our own strong hands — with which we must likewise defend it! And our hands are strong, even against the Wamphyri! Last night….e were taken by surprise. Next time it will be different, when we'll make these creatures pay — and heavily! For as I've as good as said, it's my intention to face up to them. That's my intention, yes…
'You, however, have a choice. For I make no bones about it, the risks will be great and I won't ask anyone to stay who isn't willing to face up to it. Men will die, of that you may be sure — but so will Wamphyri! And so the choice is simple: