Andrei were asleep when the searchers found Nathan and brought him in along with five more. By then sundown was one-third spent, and Nathan had lain unconscious in the grass at the foot of the west wall for more than nine hours. He was still unconscious when they dumped him unceremoniously on his back on a huge plank table salvaged from the wreckage at the site of the meeting place. This was where the survivors were being examined - all the survivors - to see if they really were survivors.
Between times, a lot had happened and was still happening. After the attack - after Wratha and her henchmen had done their worst, taken the best, destroyed what they could of the rest and left - then Lardis had taken charge, issued hurried instructions, finally rushed at killing speed up to his cabin on the knoll, where he'd hoped against hope to find his wife and son waiting and unharmed.
But he had doubted it. For he knew that Lissa always kept lamps burning in the cabin's windows when he was away, to guide him home, and he hadn't seen Jason since he and the Kiklu boys had gone on ahead into the town. That soft glow, from Lissa's lamps, could be seen for miles around - as indeed Lardis had seen it through the treetops during his and Andrei's approach to Settlement, but as he no longer saw it - burning up there against the dark flank of the mountains. And as he had driven himself like a madman up the steep side of the knoll, so he'd wondered who or what else had seen that glow, and why his son hadn't come back down when he heard the uproar and saw parts of the town burning.
It could be, of course, that Lissa had seen a suspicious mist on the slopes and stifled the lamps, and that then she'd restricted Jason to the house. It could be ...
... But it wasn't. For when finally Lardis had got there it was to find his place in ruins. Following which he'd spent a back-breaking hour digging in the rubble, finding neither Lissa nor Jason. In a way it had been a relief: at least they were - or might still be - alive! But it was also the greatest tragedy of Lardis's life. For he didn't know where or in what circumstances they lived.
Taken by the Wamphyri? To be used by them, slaughtered by them, perhaps even ... altered, by them? That hadn't borne thinking about. And so for a while he'd thought nothing but sat there in dumb silence, amidst the ruins, already grieving or preparing to grieve their loss. So that by the time Andrei came to sit with him -saying nothing but simply being there in silent commiseration - Lardis's unspoken agony was already turning outwards, to everlasting hatred and cold fury.
But even so, and for all that his loss was great, he had known he wasn't the only one. And when finally he'd looked at Andrei, to inquire in that gravelly voice of his, 'Well?' ... then his friend and ally of so many years had known that the old Lardis was back. And nodding grimly he'd told him:
'In the old days you were iron, my friend. Now it's time to be iron again. For we're ready, down there.'
Then Lardis had come to his feet, straightened his back and shrugged off his weariness. And: 'Then let's be at it,' he'd said, as simply as that.
But half-way down, pausing briefly, he'd begged Andrei's forgiveness for striking him; also for the fact that he'd been deep in the woods - alone and lonely, bitter and raging, far beyond the South Gate - when the Wamphyri had struck so devastatingly at Settlement. To which the other had answered:
'You have it, and on both counts, but only if you will forgive me: that I ever doubted you ...'
Since when, the pair had done or directed what must be done, between times catching up on a little sleep; the latter out of sheer exhaustion. Mercifully their weariness was as much mental as physical, so that they hadn't dreamed; otherwise their task might be impossible. Work such as this did not make for easy dreaming. And so they were asleep, in a hastily erected tent close to the meeting place, when Nathan Kiklu and five others were brought out of the darkness into the light from the lamps and the blazing central fire.