But even at best, it's still two against five ...'
Andrei Romani shook his head in dismay and stated, quite simply, 'They're done for, finished!'
Lardis scowled at him. 'If they are, then be sure we won't last much longer - or fare any better!'
He looked out again over Starside, scanning the horizon from the eastern boulder plains inwards to the mountains. The larger cluster of airborne specks was beginning to descend, elongating into a straggling line; the smaller party, consisting of two flyers with a lone warrior in pursuit, was also losing altitude where it skirted the lower peaks. Even as he continued to watch, this secondary group of three disappeared behind a distant jut of crags.
Lardis clambered back down to the garden. 'Come on!' he growled.
Recognizing the urgency in his voice but failing to see the point of it, the others followed him down. 'Come on where?' Peder Szekarly wanted to know. He was somewhat recovered from his poisoning now but still felt he could sleep right through sundown.
At the foot of the crags Lardis turned to him. 'East along the high ridges, where else? However far is necessary to fathom the outcome of that fight. Guess-work isn't good enough - we've got to know which way it went! The future of the Szgany, every man, woman and child of us, hangs in the balance.'
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
He turned abruptly and made as if to head for the garden's upward sloping eastern flank ... and just as suddenly the shadows came alive with a massed, furtive creeping motion! Lardis and his three froze. They'd heard nothing, yet found themselves surrounded. But by what? Had Shaithis and the slug-being out of the Icelands left something behind to act as a rearguard? How many things had they left here?
'My father would be ... it would please him,' came a low, faltering voice from the darkness, one which coughed, growled, and was scarcely human at all. 'Please him to know ... to know that he still has ... has friends among the Szgany.'
Legend had it that in the long ago the olden Travellers had owned to a benevolent God. More recently, however, they had only recognized demons ... called Wamphyri! Not that anyone ever prayed to them, nor yet used their name as a curse; let it suffice that they were a curse! So that when it came to praying, the Szgany usually held to the sun; not as a form of true deity, but as a symbol of good fortune. Or, if a man had been born during sundown, he might give thanks to whichever star had been overhead at the hour of his birth. Lardis Lidesci was hardly superstitious; at the moment of the voice out of darkness he couldn't have said if his star was in the sky or not - but he hoped it was!
Flanking Lardis on the left, Peder Szekarly nocked his crossbow; on the other side, Andrei Romani snapped shut his shotgun; both aimed into the shadows. A little apart, Kirk Lisescu frantically shoved shells into his double breech.
But: 'Don't! ' Lardis warned them. The grey brothers are all about us, and that was their leader speaking.' The others must give Lardis his due: if anyone would recognize that awful voice, it was surely him. Similarly, he who had been The Dweller knew Lardis. He came padding forward out of the shadows - a great grey wolf!
Eyes aslant, yellow, feral - and crimson in their cores - Harry Wolfson paused half in darkness. But his hands were visible in the starlight...
He looked at Lardis and cocked his head a little on one side, inquiringly. And the look on his face was never seen on the face of a dog as he half-said, half-snarled, 'I ... know you. Come talk to me, where my gentle mother sleeps under the stones.' He began to turn away, paused and looked back. 'But only you. Your men ... they will wait here.'
'Lardis!' Kirk Lisescu snapped shut his weapon, began to crouch down.
'I said don't!" Lardis barked, as fifty pairs of yellow eyes blinked and moved nervously in the shadows. 'Only let a man of you shoot one of these, I swear I'll kill him with my bare hands!'
'No,' Harry Wolfson coughed at once, 'you wouldn't have to. The grey brotherhood takes care of its own. So put down your ... your weapon, yes ... and come talk.'
At the cairn, the great wolf was silent for long moments. He nuzzled