polished, the pipes flushed to discover the leaks, and all repairs made safe.'
Wratha nodded. 'Well, in one more sundown - two at most - we should have thralls enough for all such work. Meanwhile, we'll have to live with it. Ah, but as I recall, luxuries were also scarce in Turgosheim!' And to Canker:
'How about you? Do you have complaints, too?'
He shook his head, set his mane flying. 'None!' he barked. 'I have a small but useful workshop, a launching-bay, and veritable mazes of apartments on all levels. My windows are wide and face north, with suitable balconies from which I may ogle the moon. When I sing ... the walls reverberate with choruses all their own, and my rooms are filled with sound! All I need now is a bitch to warm my bed, a bone to sharpen my teeth on, and I shall be content!'
'You shall have all of that and more,' Wratha nodded, and turned to Vasagi the Suck. 'Last, but by no means least?'
Vasagi had no voice as such. Below his dark, flattened, convoluted nose his face was a trunk of pale pink flesh which tapered into a quivering proboscis. But the Suck had developed his sign-language to an extraordinary degree; there was meaning in his slightest glance, each turn and tilt of his head, every wrinkle of his forehead or flutter of his long, tapering fingers. So that between this and his telepathy, which was an art shared by all of the Wamphyri to one degree or another, his 'voice' was as clear as any other's and clearer than most.
I have no complaints, he answered as 'simply' as that, with a complicated shrug that said it for him. Except Wratha could swear that she also 'heard' him say: However, and if or when I do have complaints, then you shall hear of them first, Lady.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
If there was a threat in it, she ignored it for the moment. But she would not forget it. Meanwhile, there was enough to keep everyone occupied.
'Mount up!' Wratha cried. 'Up, all, and into the air -warriors, too! The sun is off the peaks and it's twilight on Sunside. And now, if Maglore has it right, we shall see what no one else has seen for all of fourteen years.'
With which they had headed west over the boulder plains, then south across the mouth of the great pass and the glowing hemisphere of the legendary hell-lands Gate, finally to this very plateau where now -
- Where now Wratha's renegades landed and joined her on the rim. And as they returned to earth and the present, so did the Lady's thoughts ...
There!' she said, pointing. 'Look there!'
Below them, maybe three miles distant in the lee of the twilight mountains, a Szgany town or more properly a village stood on slightly elevated ground between twin streams which tumbled down from the heights. Southwards, the streams joined up and formed a river through the forest; to east and west, at ancient fording places, stout wooden bridges spanned the cascading waters. The lands thus enclosed, between mountains on the one hand, streams on the other, were sufficient to support the township.
Szgany! Vasagi's facial anomaly quivered his anticipation.
'Women!' Canker fell to his knees and might have offered up thanks to the moon in his fashion, but Wratha stopped him with a glance.
Thralls galore!' Gorvi's whisper oozed his delight. 'And fresh lieutenants to oversee them in their duties.'
'Flesh for the shaping,' Spiro scowled. The first small nucleus of our army. But a town as big as this? Why, Turgosheim never saw the like!'
'And all ours,' Wratha nodded. 'But I think you'll find this a small place, compared with what's waiting out there!' She threw her arms wide as if to enclose all of Sunside, and their greedy scarlet eyes took in something of its span: The curved horizons to east and west, and between them a dozen and more campfires clearly visible, dotting the darkening land like glowworms as far as the eye could see. Broad forests lying dark to the south, and beyond them furnace deserts, cooling now under banded amethyst skies. In all, a vast expanse.
'How many of them?' Wran, who was normally silent except in a passion, spoke up. The Szgany, I mean. Ten thousand, do you think?'
'What?' Wratha smiled at him. 'Why, even in Turgosheim's Sunside there are that many! No ... fifty thousand, and more!'
Spiro gripped his brother's arm. 'Just think, Wran! Fifty thou ...!' But the