'Who goes there?' said one, the biggest of the two. 'You Lords are trespassers! Unless Gore Sucksthrall accompanies you - and possibly even then - you have no business here. Vasagi would never have deigned to invite you.' He pointed at Nestor and scowled. 'And what, pray, is that?'
Despite Canker's warning, Nestor narrowed his eyes and made to step forward; but the dog-thing got in his way. 'You lads had better listen,' he coughed. The Suck's no more, for Wran the Rage killed him. Which I don't need to tell you, for I'm sure someone at least must have been at a window, waiting for Vasagi to return out of Sunside. Ah, but while the Suck is gone, his egg goes on, for it fled into Nestor here - or the Lord Nestor, to you.'
Their mouths fell open. But after a moment the bigger one spoke up again. 'Oh, really? And this one's come to claim Suckscar, right? Well, Lords Canker, Wran, Spiro, no disrespect to you, but I am Zahar, Third-in-Command in Suckscar after Gore. And I say to you that I myself could eat this one!' He prodded Nestor in the chest with a hard finger. 'And as for when Gore Sucksthrall sees him ...'
He threw back his head and laughed, and went to prod Nestor again. But Nestor was lightning fast; he caught the offending finger in a clenched fist and bent it back all in one movement, so that it broke with a loud crack! Then, as Zahar howled and fell to his knees, Nestor kicked him as hard as he could in the throat, which served to silence him and send him sprawling. In another moment, Nestor was down beside him on one knee, pinning his topknot to the stone floor; and in the next the sharp point of Nestor's six-inch knife was pricking the bulge of the lieutenant's throbbing Adam's apple.
Before, the knife in Nestor's belt had seemed barely significant; a piffling toothpick, the Wamphyri Lords and Lady had ignored it. Like his crossbow, he wouldn't dare consider using it against such as them. Ah, but their thralls were a different matter!
'Gore Sucksthrall is dead!' Nestor snarled. 'I killed him! Now swear allegiance to me - and at once - or follow him into eternity!'
'Gak ... gak ... urk1' said Zahar, holding up a trembling hand and arm. It might have been threatening or pleading, that hand, for it was the one with a dangling digit; whichever, Nestor couldn't take any chances. He slashed at the tendons in the joint of the elbow, which showed through where leather sleeves came together, and the arm flopped uselessly to the floor. And fast as thought, Nestor caught the crippled hand and took the finger, so that its stump had barely started to spurt as he came lithely to his feet.
Zahar writhed like a crippled snake on the floor, hissing and coughing but making no sensible noises whatsoever. His inability to answer made no difference, for as Nestor now told him: 'Good! Then you are now my man. Now watch!' And he deliberately gashed his own thumb, and let the blood drip into the joint of Zahar's arm and onto his bloody hand. 'See now: blood of my own Wamphyri flesh. The power of renewal, so that your arm may heal itself and your hand be whole again. Why, I have even honoured you, Zahar; you could as well be a bloodson . .. well, of sorts! But my bloodson and not Vasagi's, for Vasagi is no more. And so a fatherly word of warning: from this time forward cower as you approach me! And when you stand in my presence, be sure to make no threatening movements. For if you do, the first will be the last. Remember: even now you would be dead, except I need you to run my manse.'
Nestor turned his back on the writhing, crippled Zahar and faced the second of the two. And he saw how Canker ' ad held him back, when he might have come to Zah^; s aid. Then, raising an eyebrow, as if in faint surprise, Nestor said: 'What's this? Do you molest a man of mine, Canker?' Canker released the lieutenant at once, and Nestor offered his hand and forearm in the old Szgany greeting.
The other was young, not long out of Sunside; but already he was inches taller than Nestor, broad, well-muscled, grey of flesh and feral-eyed: a vampire in his own right. Not Wamphyri, no, but given a hundred years he might be. If he lived. He spoke up, but falter-ingly: 'I'm Grig Sucksthrall... or I was.'
He sensed the authority in Nestor - and possibly the presence of Vasagi's egg, too - and was awed and disadvantaged by the hot eyes of so many Lords looking on. Then, remembering the ways of Sunside, he fum-blingly went to grasp Nestor's preferred forearm. But no, Nestor grasped Grig's hand instead and pressed Zahar's severed digit into his palm. And as Grig's jaw dropped, Nestor told him:
'Eat it! Accept my food and live, and take shelter with me in Suckscar - or deny me now and suffer the consequences. But what's this? Do you tremble? Ah, don't worry! I shall not kill you but set you free on the
boulder plains, to take your chances with the lowest of the low and live like a trog in a crevice. How shall it be?'
Grig looked at the bloody finger in his grey hand, then at Zahar who had struggled to a seated position, where now he was bent forward, rocking himself to and fro and moaning. And finally: 'Lord,' he told Nestor, 'Zahar is my friend ...!'
'Friend? Friend?" Nestor looked astonished. 'And am I to be known as the Lord Nestor, who gives shelter to friends? No, I desire no friends in my house but only thralls and obedient lieutenants - who eat or go hungry at my command!' He stared hard, severely at the other. 'For the last time, then: what's it to be?'