'Szwart's Darkspire proved the most obstinate of Dramal's targets, and Szwart's men the most furious fighters. For there was something of Szwart himself in all his creatures. His warriors in the stony rubble at Darkspire's foot were night-black things that could not be seen by foot-soldiers until too late; his men manning the gantlets never retreated but fought to the death; others where they fed the corbel chutes — in the event that
blazing fluids or white-hot-boulder ammunition should run low — would hurl themselves down on the invading hordes rather than quit the machicolation. Such dedication!… but a rather simple explanation. Men and monsters both, they had been given a choice: deal with the enemy, or be dealt with by Szwart.
'Well, there you go… the picture I paint is inadequate, but you require that I make a speedy end of it. We fought well, but a losing battle. Three stacks against the combined might of Starside? Still, I suppose it had to be. Avarice, bloodlust and territorial expansion: such things are life itself, or undeath, or the true death, to the Wamphyri. But at least we were spared the true death. Had we died in battle, then that were something else. But we didn't. When the end was inevitable and we huddled in the blazing bulk of Malstack — Szwart blinded by the fires, Vavara smudged, bloodied and wilting, and Malinari almost mindless from the sheer force of the telepathic demands he had made on his last few defenders — finally Dramal called for our surrender. What else could we do but accept? Following which, and in short order, we were spat upon, buffeted, generally humiliated, and banished.
'We were allowed one small warrior for escort, our flyers, and a handful of lieutenant and thrall survivors. That was all. Not much by way of a retinue, but beggars can't be choosers.
'And so we headed north for the Icelands, at first a distant shimmer, and then a hazy grey blanket that flickered on a horizon warped by weaving auroras and ice-chip stars. And from the moment of setting out, not one of us knew if we would make it or plummet into some frozen ocean and drown. But make it we did…
'Below us the landscape changed, however slowly:
'First the bitter, white-rimed earth; then the blue-grey lakes, whose cold and sluggish waves seemed to crawl to shore; finally the endless white drifts that went on and on as far as the eyes could see, sprawling ever northwards. The snow wasn't entirely strange to us; we had seen it before, however rarely, on the higher ridges of the barrier mountains — but never like this! No earth showed through; we could not know if we crossed land or iced-over ocean deeps. We fed ourselves and our beasts on the blood and flesh of great white bears — and only occasionally on thralls — and forged on. We had no other choice; if we tried to sneak back into Starside, that would mean the true death for all of us.
'It was hard. When there were no bears we sipped sparingly from the stoppered spines of our flyers. One of Vavara's lieutenants let his greed get the better of him; when his exhausted flyer spiralled down to an icy hummock, we followed him down to feed. We fed on him, too, for without his flyer he wasn't going anywhere.
'Another time, a blizzard came up. We could not afford the energy required to climb above it. Landing, we sheltered behind the bulk of the warrior, one of Malinari's. Then it was that my master took from me — took more than was good for me, so that I was weakened. But at the same time I received of his strong vampire essence, which helped in my survival — the tenacity of the Great Vampire, aye.
'Where the auroras soared highest, we came upon mountains; a lesser range than the barrier mountains of Sunside/Starside — and never a tree to be seen — but with crags, gulleys, and ice-castles, even rivers of ice, frozen in position on the mountain slopes! And if nothing else, the endless boredom of our passage over this white wilderness was broken.
'But we were broken, too, and exhausted we put down. Worst hit by the journey, Malinari's warrior was ready to give up the ghost. We saw to it that the beast didn't go to waste. Only its bones would be left, where for a while its ribcage would form the frame of an ice-house that we would build. But before then, while still the warrior's shrivelled flesh provided sustenance, we had time and strength for exploration.
'To the south a crack of fuzzy light showed on the horizon:
sunup on Sunside, so faint and distant that even Szwart made no complaint! And making use of what little warmth it brought, the four of us — Szwart and Vavara, Malinari and myself— flew off to investigate the range of ice-draped mountains. My master and I, we headed west, Vavara and Szwart went east. When total darkness crept in again and the writhing auroras returned, we would join up and make report at the carcass of the warrior. The rest of our men and beasts (four junior lieutenants and their flyers, for there were no more thralls left) would live off the carcass until we got back. In the bitter cold, the warrior's meat would keep for long and long…
'We flew for many a mile, Malinari gaunt where he sat tall in his ornate saddle only a wingspan's distance from my own flyer. Gaunt and silent, aye, so that I wondered what he was thinking — perhaps that he was hungry, and that he had had enough of stinking warrior meat!
'And indeed The Mind was thinking, though mercifully his thoughts were not of me. No, for I could feel them, probing out and ahead of us, searching for other lives in this white waste. And he pointed, and called out to me:
'"That way: an ocean where mighty fishes cruise the deeps, only surfacing to break the thin ice and breathe. But these are great hot-blooded things, and never a Szgany hook and line that could pull them forth!" Then he shook his head, and said: "This place — this land, these mountains at least — are cold and barren, and yet…" And he frowned.
'"Master?" I said.
'"Something…" he answered, still frowning. "Something up ahead."
'And in another mile or so… smoke, a distant puff! Several puffs, and a smudge, going up. And still we flitted across the wind-carved ice-castles and frozen fangs of the mountains.
'But now Malinari's concentration was rapt on that column of fire-smoke rising ahead. I saw what he saw, or so I thought: a fire-mountain, black against white, where the snow had melted from its flanks.
'Then, suddenly, Malinari hauled on his reins, rose up and to one side and climbed in a spiral. I quickly joined him, but when I might have questioned him — or rather, as my mind framed its concern — he held up a hand to silence me. And now his mental probes were venting in such powerful bursts from Malinari's mind that I could "hear" his questions, which he asked of some unseen other:
' "Who are you, in the mountain there? What do you here? Is this your territory, and if so by what right? By right of conquest, or simply because you are here?"
'And the answer came back with such force, in such a doomful cadence that we knew, my master and I, this was no middling intelligence or power which he had discovered:
'"It is my territory because it is mine. That is my right. If you dispute it, then come on by all means. I have creatures to shatter you in pieces. Or go away, and I shall perhaps leave you in peace — and in one piece. As to who I am: I am who I am. As to what I was: I was the first, even though I may not be the last. I have been here a thousand years, which is my sole right to this place and sufficient. So begone!"