haggard. 'Earlier, some of the children had wandered home in the twilight; they'd been chasing goats in the peaks; said they'd seen many lights in Karenstack. Perhaps we should have been warned. But it's rumoured the Lady Karen is dead, and these were only children. They could be mistaken.'
'Where were you? Where?' Lardis shook him again.
'Beyond the Great Pass,' the other gave a start, blinked rapidly, 'on a plateau under the peaks ...' His eyes fastened on Lardis's, seemed for a moment to gaze into his soul, and in the next glazed over again. But somehow he managed to continue: Two years ago, we went into the heights and found a lake there. There was good fishing, goats in the peaks, game on the wooded slopes. We are - or we were - the Szgany Scorpi. Emil Scorpi, my father, was our leader. There were thirty of us ... then. And now, only seven. We built homes for ourselves in the woods around the lake. Our boats were on the water. At night, under the first stars, we'd sit round our fires on the shore, cook our fish, eat together. Why not? For there was nothing to fear. All of the great aeries lay broken on Starside: Wenstack, Menorstack, Glutstack - all tumbled and lying in ruins. Only Karenstack remained, and they said Karen was dead. Maybe she is, what odds? It wasn't the Lady Karen who fell on us ...'
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
Lardis groaned and nodded. 'Shaithis, aye.'
The young survivor grabbed his arm. 'Yes, Shaithis ... and one other! I saw him! He isn't a man!'
'Not a man?' Lardis frowned. 'No, of course not. None of them are. Wamphyri!'
'But even the Wamphyri were once men,' the other insisted. 'They are like men. Except this one ... was not.'
Now Lardis remembered. Jasef had not been clear on this point. 'What was he like?'
The other's throat bobbed. He shook his head, failed to find words. 'A ... a slug,' he finally gasped. 'Or a leech, upright, big as a man. But ridgy as a lizard, cowled, and his eyes burning like embers under the hood. A weird worm, a snake, a slug ...'
'His name?' The hairs had stiffened on the back of Lardis's neck.
The survivor nodded. 'I ... I heard what Shaithis called him. It was Shaitan!'
Shaitan! A gasp escaped Lardis before he could check it. Shaitan: first of all the Wamphyri! But how was it possible? Shaitan was a legend, the darkest of all Szgany legends.
'I know what you're thinking,' said the other. 'But I saw what I saw. One was a Lord, but there was also the great slug. I heard them conversing. Shaithis was the manlike one, whom I heard call the other - him, it, whatever - by the terrible name of Shaitan. As for the rest of what I saw, before I fled like a coward with the others, don't ask me. This much I'll tell you, and no more: their warrior creatures were lean and hungry, and not just for food! It was a nightmare! My mother! My sisters! The Wamphyri have bred monsters with the parts of men!'
After that: Lardis asked no more questions of these ragtag remnants of the Szgany Scorpi, but went about Settlement seeing to its defences. A guard from now on, on the catwalks and in the towers, and no more sending men west to man the vampire frontier. No, for now the threat was closer to home; and now, too, Lardis thanked whichever lucky stars shone down on him that he'd been outvoted that time during the construction of Settlement, when the other council members had insisted upon huge weapons built into the very walls.
Catapults armed with boulders girdled in spiked chains; great crossbows to fire bolts hewn from entire trees outwards into the cleared area around Settlement; trenches covered over with tentlike frameworks of coarse hide, painted in imitation of small warrior creatures and supported by sharp-pointed pine stanchions. Any enemy warrior, spying one of these grotesque semblances, would attack at once and doubtless impale himself; and men, safe in the trench below, would leap out, hurl their oil, set fire to the monster where he writhed and roared!
While all of these devices were still in place, they nevertheless required attention. Frayed ropes to be seen to, and if necessary replaced; the great crossbows must be loaded, their launching tillers greased; children had played at climbing in the frames of the lures and broken them in