time aplenty!'
'But to see what?' Andrei gloomed. To discover ... what? Hah! The worst, perhaps.'
Lardis gave a grunt and for a little while was silent.
The boles of tall, straight pines loomed out of the darkness below; along a track dappled with starlight, feral eyes gleamed silver and sentient; the grey brother waited patient and passionless while the four gained on him, then turned and headed east. They followed as close as possible in his tracks where he chose the least cluttered, most direct route through the straggling trees.
But while the wolf's passions were at an ebb, Lardis's were still flowing strong. He thought of Lissa and Jason on Sunside, the Szgany Lidesci in its entirety, all of the Traveller tribes in their various camps and townships across the barrier mountains. And then he thought of the horror of the Wamphyri, which he'd once considered over and done with.
But no, it wouldn't be over until it was over ...
Until it was finished ...
Finished utterly!
And at last Lardis's passions got the better of him.
'Whichever way it goes,' he ground out his Szgany vow from between clenched teeth, 'I'll see them dead! Beheaded, staked out, pegged down - spreadeagled in clean yellow sunlight - and steamed away in smoke and stink!'
His words were hot as hell, fiercely spoken: a growl of hatred, a promise, a threat, so that his men knew it was his vow. But it wasn't over yet.
'So far there are only the two of them,' Lardis finally continued. 'Two that we know of for sure, though they'll make lieutenants soon enough. Ah, but they are Wamphyri! And where can they go at sunup, eh? Where else but Karenstack, the last aerie! So mark well my words: if Harry and Karen are done for and we're left to fight on alone, and if Shaithis and his lot take up residence in that last great pesthole of a stack ... then that's where we'll finish this thing. Not in the next sunup, no, nor even the one after that - but maybe in the next!'
"Ware, Lardis!' Andrei cautioned. 'Is this your vow?'
'It is,' Lardis answered, nodding his head in the gloom of the trees. 'It's mine, yours - it's that of all the men of the Szgany Lidesci! Now listen:
'Their works, the terrible works of the Wamphyri, take time. Time to take men and make them lieutenants, and time to make monsters from the flesh of Travellers and trogs. Two or three sunups are nothing, not time enough. But in Karenstack they'll think themselves secure. What? And who would dare to attack them on their own ground? We will, that's who!'
Peder Szekarly was astonished. 'Go against the Wamphyri, on Starside?' he whispered.
'During sunup, aye,' Lardis replied. 'With crossbows and sharp staves, hammers and stakes! With kneblasch, silver, and The Dweller's shotguns.'
'What?' said Kirk Lisescu, his voice hushed. Toys against the Wamphryi? And what about their warriors?'
'But their fighting creatures are vampires no less than the Wamphyri themselves!' Lardis replied, grabbing Kirk's arm for emphasis. 'We'll go there with our mirrors, given to us by The Dweller; we'll set fire to the drapes at the stack's doorways and lower windows; we'll reflect the sun's cleansing rays deep into the foul darkness. That's how we'll do it! Who would know the way better than us? Why, it was The Dweller and his father who showed us how! Well, and now it will be our turn.'
'Tear down the mountains!' Andrei Romani snarled aloud to match the spirit of the other's vision. And then (but a little less vigorously), 'But let's hope it won't come to that. After all, we could be wrong ... maybe it's not such a hopeless case ... it's a fact that Karen and the hell-lander are - or were - enormous powers in their own right.'
Andrei could hardly know it but his qualifying 'were' was close to the mark. For even as the four men set out upon their timber-line trek, far to the east, in the region of the glaring hell-lands Gate, Harry Keogh and the Lady Karen were already Shaithis's prisoners.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
Which is to say, they were as good as dead ...
Events followed slowly and seemed of little consequence, yet later would become concertinaed in Lardis's memory, each one hastening after the last, assuming varying degrees of importance.
After six hours trekking along the timber-line, the four were so exhausted they had to pause, eat, sleep, allow their aching muscles time for replenishment. They awakened with