And if Gorvi's promise of a few minutes ago had ever registered at all, it was now forgotten - wiped out, obliterated from the monster's one-track mind - in the brief but passionate rapture of its feeding-frenzy. For these 'tidbits' neither screamed nor made any sound at all when they were crunched. But their flesh was soft and succulent for all that.
While his construct refuelled itself, the Guile returned thoughtfully to his nodding flyer, climbed into the saddle and urged the beast aloft. So far the night was a disaster. First, in Guilesump, there had been several unforeseen administrative tasks: morbid fluids to draw off from a stillborn warrior lest the thing go rancid in its vat; quarrelsome thralls to cow; an ill-tempered woman to chastise. (Well, these things would form the substance of Gorvi's excuse, at least, if ever Wratha and the other Lords should find fault with him or query his tardiness. But that was unlikely; for knowing he would be 'delayed', Gorvi had dispatched not only Turgis but others of his lieutenants and a good many aspirant thralls ahead of him to join the Lords and Lady in this their joint venture: an all-out attack on the Szgany Lidesci.)
But .. . he'd felt uneasy about tonight's mass raid right from the start. What, to join up with Nestor and Canker, both of whom hated him, Wratha who despised him, and the Killglance twins who were mad, on this less than predictable soiree (more likely a bloody campaign) against the resourceful Lidescis? It had been, indeed, more than a feeling of uneasiness: rather an aura of foreboding, a doom-laden atmosphere hanging over Wrathstack itself, ever since the so-called 'Lady' had broached the thing, this onslaught against the Szgany Lidesci. Or perhaps it was simply that dwelling in the stack's 'basement', as it were - in Guilesump, level with the scree jumbles and so open to attack from the ground - Gorvi had come to feel more and more vulnerable. Whichever, tonight he'd held back, determined to be last into the field of battle.
Huh! Much good it had done him, for now this. And perhaps this, too, was an omen, a warning that he was as well out of it. And certainly he was out of it; for there was no way he would join in any grand battle without a strong force of lieutenants, thralls and warriors about him. Not for the sake of the battle itself, at least. Oh, let the others seek glory all they would . .. Gorvi could do without battle-scars! What, cowardice? No, never, for he was Wamphyri! But he was also the Guile, and he well deserved his name.
Wherefore he would watch the others a while and see which way it went; and however it went, at the end of the night Gorvi would have his own tale to tell: of how he had quashed a sneak attack on the last aerie, while Canker and Nestor and the rest were rutting, counting coup and glutting themselves on Sunside booty. And aye, this way he'd yet be a hero in his own right!
Sunside, he ordered his flyer as it gained height. Cross the dome of the hell-lands Gate, climb on the wind off the Icelands, and follow the foothills west. Then up into the western peaks and through them, and down on to Sunside's flank. There we'll land in the foothills and see what we shall see .. .
From their vantage point on the flat-topped bluff in the mouth of the great pass, Nathan, Trask, Chung and Anna Marie - all four of them together - had watched Gorvi's take-off and had seen him set his course west. Down on the boulder plains, however, his damaged warrior was still very much in evidence; its roaring and grunting echoed up to them, and puffs of exhaust gases rose like vile smoke rings from its venting.
The four couldn't know it, but the bodies of the vampire Lord's lieutenants were even now undergoing a process of digestion, their leather gear and all. But they had merely whetted the warrior's appetite and his attention was now centered upon the vastly sprawled corpses of the flyers. Both were as 'dead' as undead vampire things can be, despite that they had that in their blood which would keep them 'alive' for a long time yet. But since a good deal of that blood had been spilled, the flyers were dead to all intents and purposes. Depleted, dead .. . and deserted. But the warrior was mindful of Gorvi's last command - that it must not glut itself - and dared not disobey it. The creature felt very little of and understood even less about physical pain; but even as an 'infant' or unformed thing still waxing in the morbid fluids of its vat womb, it had felt the sting of its master's corrective mind-darts, and knew how he could bring all of its functions to a shuddering, cringing halt with just a single stab.
So the flyers were out of the question, and meanwhile the warrior had clear instructions which it must follow as a t duty to Gorvi the Guile, its master, and to Guilesump, his manse: to rest a while, replenish its gas-bladders and propulsive system, and let its metamorphism seal the holes in its membranous aerial mantle. Then to fly back to the last aerie and its pen in the stem of the stack. And since sleep is the best way of conserving energy and the greatest aid to any healing process - for vampire flesh no less than human -the monster closed its eyes, slowed its metabolism, shut down the bulk of its sensory apparatus, and slept.
Only two 'scanners' remained active, and then barely: a pseudo-eye in the thing's blunt prow skull, and another at the base of a spine in its flail-like rudder. Linked to the rudimentary brain, these would keep watch. Any abrupt or inexplicable change in the warrior's immediate surroundings, and it would come snarling awake!
Nathan knew that much, at least, for he'd learned a lot about Wamphyri warriors and guardian creatures in Tur-gosheim. And now, atop the bluff, he asked Trask and Chung: 'I take it you left the weapons hidden away in those boulders?' The two men glanced at each other, could only shrug. And Trask said:
'We couldn't go on the offensive and look after the weapons. Survival had to come first, Nathan.'
The other's nod. 'I understand, of course. But until that warrior heals itself and moves off - which could easily take as long as the rest of this sundown, or three days Earth-time - I daren't go back for the guns. So we have to make do with what we've got.'
'But our friends the cavers took their loads with them,' Chung pointed out. 'Er, wherever you took them, I mean.'
Again, Nathan's nod. 'Right. But before I can go back for them, I have to carry you to safety in Sunside. Or what should be safety, except .. . well, it's night now. And so I have one or two things to check out before I can move you. It shouldn't take too long, but until I'm done you must keep a low profile and wait for me here.'