a background hiss and shiver of mental static, he also heard the rustling of a thousand pairs of mummied hands all being wrung together. And so in the moment before they sensed him, he became aware that their fear was no nebulous thing but in fact very tangible.
This much he learned, and no more. For as soon as they knew he was there ...
... Their thoughts shrank back at once, were withdrawn, cut off, and there was only a shocked, reverberating silence in the otherwise empty mental ether. It was as sudden as that, giving Nathan no time to probe any deeper into the problem; but at least he thought he knew how they had sensed him so quickly: because they had been alert as never before, almost as if they were expecting some ... intrusion? The only thing that worried him about it, was how in the end he'd sensed that they identified him with the source of their terror!
And finally, before their withdrawal, there had been the name of that terror, which at the last was whispered from the tips of a thousand shrivelled tongues, or tongues long turned to dust: Wamphyri!
But why should that be - how could it be - that these long defunct legions of the teeming dead feared the Wamphyri, who were themselves dead and gone forever?
Nathan knew he would find no answer to that here, not yet, not now that the dead had fallen silent. And so he left them to return to their whispered conversations, and rose up from his dreams to seek the answer elsewhere ...
... Rose up from dreams, to nightmare! To a memory complete with every detail of what had gone before, except the answer to the question: what had happened here? But in his first few waking moments Nathan knew he had that, too, for the dead had already supplied it.
It was a fact, all too hideously reinforced by the alien stench of warrior exhaust gases, the rubble in which he lay sprawled, the distant screams of the dead and the dying, and other sounds which could only translate as inhuman . .. laughter? Unless all of these elements were figments of his imagination, and Nathan himself a raving madman, it could only add up to one thing: the Wamphyri were back! And they were here even now, in Settlement!
Which prompted other questions: how long had he been unconscious? Minutes, he suspected, a handful at most. And what of Misha, and his mother ... and Nestor?
Nathan dragged himself upright, clambered shakily out of the debris of the barn - and back into it at once! For out there, maybe fifty yards towards the town centre, he'd seen the incredible bulk of a warrior hurl itself against a barter house and reduce it to so much rubble. And overhead, a huge, kite-shaped flying thing had arched its wings as it came down like some weird leaf into the main street.
Someone moaned in the litter of timber and straw at Nathan's feet: Misha!
He tore at the rubbish, hurling it aside, and stared down at Nestor's face, all bruised and bloodied. He was stretched our flat, unconscious, three-quarters buried; but it was his moan Nathan had heard, not Misha's. And even as he looked at him, so Nestor moaned again. But there in the rubble beside him ... a slender white arm. And this time it must be Misha!
Trying not to bury Nestor deeper yet, Nathan dug her out. He slapped her face, gathered her up in his arms, whispered her name urgently in her ear. She was wan, dusty, pale in the starlight falling through wispy smoke and gut-wrenching stench. He couldn't tell if she was breathing or not.
In the near-distance, the Wamphyri warrior roared as it moved inwards towards the town centre. Nathan looked around. The stockade fence was buckled outwards behind what had been his mother's house. There was a gap there, where the great wooden uprights had been wrenched apart. And beyond the gap, the dark forest. The darkness had never seemed so welcoming.
Nathan saw how it must be, what he must do: first carry Misha to safety, then search for his mother, who was probably buried in the ruins of the house, finally come back one last time for Nestor.
He picked Misha up and staggered from the ruins towards the break in the stockade fence. But half-way there he heard a panting and a patter of feet and looked back. A great wolf-shape - obviously one