given credit for. Will you and he get together now?'
She looked at her father and Varna shrugged. 'The choice is yours, daughter. But it's true the lad came looking for you, and I have to admit, he seemed a likely son-in-law to me.'
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
Nicolae nodded, and added: Til have him for a brother, certainly.'
'Good!' Lardis clasped Varna's broad forearm.
Then: It was as if the old Lidesci had woken up from a nightmare. He straightened up and squared his shoulders, as if to throw off some great invisible weight, and to Varna and Nicolae said: They could use your help repairing the stockade, for it's heavy work. And then the great catapults and crossbows need bringing up to scratch. Also, Dimi Petrescu is convinced he can duplicate the black, explosive powder from The Dweller's shells and grenades. Old Dimi's been working at it for eighteen years, on and off, but he's very weary now and needs the strength of others to make purest charcoal, break rocks, and grind sulphur and iron into dust."
He nodded. 'So ... it's a long day ahead, lads, but you can't say it hasn't started well enough. All we have to do is keep it rolling, right?' And to Misha:
'Girl, the way I see it you've done more than your fair share already. Yet now I'll ask you to do one more thing. If I get a couple or three likely lads together and arm them, can you lead them back to the leper colony, and so bring Lissa and Nana Kiklu safely home? I ask this of you, Misha, in order to save time. You know the whole story, you're sympathetic, and so the women will have word of their sons from another woman. What do you say?'
And as he'd known she would, Misha nodded and said, 'Just bring me my escort, and I'm ready ...'
Within the half-hour she was on her way back through the woods with Lardis's 'likely lads': three tried and trusted friends. The way was fairly easy going; as the crow flies it was maybe seven miles, nine if you counted the winding trail. Misha knew all the shortcuts, however, and also the shallow fording places across the many streams. Last night in the darkness, with only star- and occasional moonlight to see by, Nana Kiklu had provided the strength and will, but Misha had been their guide.
Then it had taken five hours; now, as she'd already discovered, it would take less than two and a half to retrace her steps. By then, too, Lardis's runner should be catching up with Nathan on the approaches to Twin Fords. Such was the span of Sunside's day - more than one hundred and twenty hours - that with luck the two should be together again a third of the way through the morning. By then she would be very tired, but for now thoughts of Nathan sped Misha on her way.
While at the leper colony: Nana and Lissa were camped less than a hundred yards from the colony proper, at the edge of the forest where it gave way to rolling savannah, then scrub, and finally the mainly uninhabitable desert wastes known collectively as the Furnace Lands. Out there, only ten to fifteen miles south of the leper colony, there was nothing much worth mentioning: sand, scorched earth, rockpiles; snakes, scorpions, and other poisonous creatures; a scattered handful of aborigine tribes. Of the latter: In the old days when the Szgany had been true Travellers, these primitive desert nomads - who seemed no further advanced along the evolutionary trail than Star-side's trogs - had sometimes bartered with men. They would meet at high sunup, in the dry savannah margins between desert and forest, to trade fancy lizard leathers and healing salts for Szgany knives and knick-knacks, wines, gourds and garlic. And now, here at the rim of Lidesci territory, the nomads traded just as in the old days; except now they traded with the lepers. Nana Kiklu knew this for a fact; for, far out on the savannah, she'd noticed a tall springy pole with a fluttering rag pennant, like a fly on the face of the sun.
As a girl, travelling with a small tribe, she'd seen just such markers before and knew that the listlessly flapping pennant indicated a nomad trading place. She supposed it was just as well that the lepers had some sort of trade, even with the mysterious, little known or understood nomads; for certainly the