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He glanced back over his shoulder. The pre-dawn mist was rising, obscuring the trail. No sign of the creatures perched on the hillside now; they were there, of course, but had disappeared utterly in mist and gloom. This fool at his fire was surely unaware of them. But the Wamphyri must return soon. And Nestor had no doubt but that they would be aware of him!
The man had food; Nestor was hungry; he could warn him, share his breakfast. And no treachery to the Wamphyri, his own kind, in this. He was an outcast after all. And his appearance would fool this loner even as it had fooled Brad Berea. But in any case, best to take precautions.
Nestor's crossbow was ready, loaded. Taking care to avoid loose pebbles which might be dislodged, he climbed down boulder to boulder; while below him the fool at the fire coughed where he turned his spit, grunting and grumbling to himself as if he were the only man in the world! Nestor got close, very close, until suddenly the hunched figure fell silent and sniffed the air, looked up and began to turn his head.
The man would be armed; Nestor didn't want another bolt in him; he ducked down behind rocks, waited, gradually nerved himself to look out, even to cry out, and so warn the other of his presence. The mist was thickening, and it had a slimy feel to it. Nestor felt his flesh creeping as he looked out between a 'V in the rocks.
The loner was still there, crouched down. But -
- He was no longer alone!
Emerging from a dark copse to one side, and flowing like some swift and deadly shadow over the mist-wreathed ground, a second figure approached him. But there could be no mistaking this one - or his intentions. He was Wamphyri, and his mind was full of murder! Even in silhouette and little more than a dark blot, still his face was freakish; a jutting bulge of a head with a stunted, vibrating tentacle extended towards his victim.
Nestor scarcely required it, but as if to finally prove this creature's nature it glanced at him - the merest glance - where it sped silent as smoke to its target. Its eyes were red as coals, burning in the hideously misshapen, quivering mask of its face!
Unable to contain himself - jerking with an involuntary, spastic movement - Nestor stood up, and a pebble was squeezed out from beneath his sandal! The man at the fire heard it clattering in the rocks; he swivelled on his heel, came to his feet in one smoothly flowing movement. But in so doing he turned his back on the thing bearing down upon him!
Without conscious thought - all instinct - Nestor cried out a warning, aimed his crossbow, discharged the weapon at the vampire. It seemed he knew, again by instinct, where his loyalties lay. He reacted as a Traveller, Szgany, and not the changeling that he thought he was. Or perhaps it wasn't as complex as that. Maybe it was simply that when the tentacle-faced monster had looked at him with its scarlet eyes, Nestor had known that he was next!
Almost within striking distance of his intended victim, the vampire Lord was hit in the neck, sent staggering. And as Nestor lost his footing and came sliding over the dome of the last great boulder to crash down on his back, so the would-be 'victim' snatched up a brand and turned towards his attacker. Nestor lay there on his back, winded, gaping at the two. For now in the full firelight he could clearly see his mistake: that both of these creatures were Wamphyri!
II The Wamphyri Lords Wran (the Rage) Killglance and Vasagi the Suck glared at each other red-eyed across Nestor where he lay on his back, winded. They ignored him; they would not let him distract them from their quarrel, their duel, their mutual hatred. Now that he had shot his bolt he was nothing to them anyway. But from Nestor's point of view, they were awesome, huge -and hugely malevolent.
Treacherous bastard!' Wran snarled at Vasagi, waving his sputtering brand in the other's hideous face and kicking Nestor out of the way. 'So, you thought to come upon me under cover of this fool's blundering approach, eh? What, and did you think it likely I'd mistake his clatter for your own oily slither?' (In point of fact he had done just that.)
Vasagi's wet, glistening siphon was like the piston shaft of some alien penis; it made an almost sexual, sucking sound as it slid in and out of its sheath in the tip of his defensively mobile trunk or tentacle. He tugged at Nestor's bolt, which had penetrated the base of his thick, corded neck above his left shoulder and emerged at the back, having missed the spinal column by a hair's-breadth. He made no answer that Nestor could hear, but Wran the Rage heard it well enough: Killglance, you spotted dog! OnJy good fortune and this Szgany scum together saved you from my single, clean, killing thrust. So now you face my gauntlet -before I ram my probe deep in your spine, to drain your cringing leech.'
He was more voluble than was his wont; it was bluff and Wran knew it; Vasagi dared not let him see the true colour of his secret thoughts. His wound was not serious: an inconvenience, at worst. But even a bee sting can swing the balance of a fight, and the youth's bolt was more than a bee sting. Wran knew that the Suck was off balance, so why prolong it?
Holding the blazing firebrand awkwardly in his left hand, he flicked back his cloak from his right side and so displayed his gauntlet. It glittered red and yellow in the firelight as he flexed his hand within its metal sheath. Vasagi feinted to the left, the right; his movements were quicksilver; even with the ironwood bolt skewering his neck at an angle from side to back, still he was no mean opponent.
Still sprawling on his back but no longer winded, Nestor attempted to scramble away from the two. But the Suck was moving in the same direction. As Vasagi made a lunge at Wran, his feet got tangled in Nestor's threshing legs. That was the opening Wran needed. While Vasagi stumbled he moved in, hurled his torch into the Suck's writhing face and shrinking eyes, grasping his facial anomaly behind the wad of muscle which propelled its siphon. And with Vasagi's gauntlet tearing his back open to the ribs, Wran aimed a blow at his enemy's proboscis.
Wran's mind telegraphed his grisly intention; Vasagi saw it coming; he had no answer except to scream a desperate mental denial: Nooooo!
Such was the force of the Suck's telepathic terror that even Nestor heard it. With Harry Keogh's blood ru
While Vasagi had somehow avoided his enemy's first blow, still Wran had not relinquished his hold on the Suck's proboscis. Now the Rage flexed his metal-clad hand in a certain way, and in the moment before he struck a razor spine like the curved frill on a lizard's back sprang erect from his gauntlet's knuckles to Wran's wrist. And Nestor saw the rest of it as a blur of bloody motion.
Wran's gauntlet sliced into the Suck's shuddering snout and cut it half-way through, and with a tearing, sawing, snatching action, Wran quickly completed the job. Then he stepped back a pace to toss the severed trunk and its siphon tip hissing into the fire, and laughed at Vasagi where he staggered to and fro, clawing at his crimson face.
Despite Wran's own agony - the fact that the back of his cloak had been torn open, and bloody tatters of meat hung from his gouged ribs - he laughed! 'Ah, and what shall they call you now?' he crowed. 'Vasagi the Slobber?'
Vasagi's face spurted blood from the sleeve of raw flesh which had housed his probe. His pain was greater than Wran's, so much so that tears of agony started out of eyes half-blind from the other's torch-thrust. He held out his gauntlet before him, waving it to and fro like a blind man's stick. But there was no mercy in Wran the Rage. Still baying with laughter, he moved in and snatched up the blazing brand again. Vasagi turned to flee, stumbled blindly over sharp, jutting rocks, and went down.