Brian Lumley - Necroscope V - Deadspawn

He snatched back his hand and stumbled away from them. 'Damn your hearts!' he snarled, panting. 'But you've learned stealth, you two!'

'We've learned a great many things.' Volse Pinescu choked the words out past a huge scab of crusted pus which half-sealed his lips, impeding his speech. 'Not least how the "invincible" vampire army of Shaithis of the Wamphyri could be burned and blasted and crushed, its aeries destroyed, and its survivors banished like whipped dogs into eternal wastelands of ice!'

Volse's boil-festooned face turned purple with fury as he took a heavy, threatening step closer to Shaithis. But the Ferenc's temper was less volatile. With his great height and strength, and with his terrible hands, he didn't much need to work up a rage in himself. 'We've lost a great deal, Shaithis,' he rumbled. 'Since coming here it's dawned on us just how much. Aye, for this is a cold and lonely place.'

'Cold?' Shaithis blustered. 'What is cold to the Wamphyri? You'll get used to it.'

Volse strained his head forward aggressively, and a batch of boils on the left side of his neck burst and spurted their yellow pus on to the ice. 'Oh?' he gurgled. 'Like he got used to it, d'you mean?' He inclined his loathsomely decorated head sharply towards Kehrl Lugoz seated motionless as a mountain not three impenetrable feet away. 'Him and all the others we've found, encysted in their echoing fortresses of ice?'

'Others?' Shaithis looked uncertainly from Volse to the Ferenc, then back again.

'Dozens of them,' Fess Ferenc finally answered, nodding his huge, acromegalic head. 'All taken to the ice, clutching at straws, waiting out their time until some magical thaw shall come and free them into a land filled with life. Or until they die. For the cold of this place is not like the cold of Starside, Shaithis. Here it goes on for ever! Get used to it?' (Now he echoed Volse Pinescu). 'Resist it? Warm ourselves? Stoke up our internal fires against it? But fires need fuel — the blood is the life! And with what do we sustain ourselves while we're "getting used to it"? Blood cools, Shaithis, trickle by trickle, hour by hour. Limbs stiffen, and even the stoutest heart runs slow.'

Now Volse took it up. 'You ask: what is cold to the Wamphyri? Hah! How often were you cold on Starside, Shaithis? I'll tell you: never! The heat of the hunt kept you warm, the blaze of battle, the hot salt blood of trog or Traveller. Your bed was warm and welcoming at sunup, as were the breasts and buttocks of the lusty women who sucked the sting from your tail. All of these things you had to keep you warm. We all had them! And we had a "leader" who said to us: "Let's band together and take The Dweller's garden." And now what have we got?'

Shaithis looked at the Ferenc, who shrugged and said: 'We have been here longer than you. It is cold and we grow colder. Worse, we grow hungry…' His voice was now a growl.

Volse's hand touched the ugly gauntlet at his hip… tentatively… perhaps thoughtfully… it could mean anything. But Shaithis backed away.

And as the threatened Lord plunged his hand into his own gauntlet and flexed it there, displaying its gleaming knives, rasps and cutting edges, Fess Ferenc raised an eyebrow and rumbled: 'Two to one, Shaithis? Do you like such odds, then?'

'Not especially,' Shaithis hissed, 'but I'll make sure you lose at least as much blood as you drink! Where's the profit in that?'

Volse grunted, coughed up yellow phlegm and spat it out. 'I — say — it — would — be worth it!' He went into a crouch, and now he too wore his gauntlet.

But the Ferenc only relaxed, stepped aside, shrugged again and said: 'Fight if you wish, you two. Myself, I'd prefer to eat. Full bellies are less fierce, and brains with blood in them more capable of clever scheming.' His maxim might not fit men, but certainly it was applicable to the Wamphyri.

Volse, seeing he stood alone, thought twice. And: 'Hah!' he snorted, this time at the Ferenc. 'But it seems your mind schemes just as well when you're hungry, Fess! For if we were to fight, Shaithis and I, why, you'd sup on the loser — and so make yourself stronger than the winner!' He nodded and removed his gauntlet. 'I'm no such fool.'

The Ferenc scratched his jutting jaw and grinned, however grimly. 'Strange, but I had always considered you just such a fool…'

Shaithis, still wary, hung his own gauntlet at his belt, finally nodded and took out from his pouch a purple heart as big as his fist. 'Here, if you're so hungry.' And he tossed it. Volse snatched it from the air and closed slavering jaws upon it. But the Ferenc only shook his head.

'Red and spurting for me,' he said. 'While I can get it, anyway.'

Shaithis frowned and narrowed his eyes suspiciously as the giant started down the ice-steps. 'What's your plan?' he snapped. 'Who will you kill?'

'Not who but what,' the Ferenc answered over his shoulder. 'And I'll not kill it but merely deplete it little by little. I should think it's obvious.'

Shaithis and Volse went skidding after him. 'What?' Volse questioned round a mouthful of bear heart. 'Something's obvious?'

The Ferenc glanced back at him. 'What did you eat when you crashed your exhausted flyer here?' he said.

'Ah-hah!' Volse spat out chunks of cold dark flesh.

'What?' Shaithis grabbed the Ferenc's huge shoulder. 'Are you talking about my flyer? Would you maroon me here for ever?'

The Ferenc paused, turned, looked him straight in the eye. Two steps lower than Shaithis, still the giant looked him in the eye. 'And why not?' he answered. 'Since it seems to me that you're the reason we're all marooned here?'

'No!' Shaithis spat at him, and stabbed again for his gauntlet — and the Ferenc at once swept him from the stairs!

Shaithis fell. Too depleted and restricted for metamorphosis into an airfoil, he could only grit his teeth and wait for gravity to do its worst. On the way down he struck several ice-ledges but suffered no real damage, until at the last he crashed down on his shoulder and chest — in snow! Merciful snow!

Blown in through an arched ice-window, the drift was three or four feet deep with a thick crust of ice. Shaithis crunched through the latter, compressed the former, wrenched his right shoulder and broke a pair of recently healed ribs. And then he lay there in his agony and cursed Fess Ferenc from the depths of his black heart!

Curse me all you will, Shaithis. The Ferenc had heard him. But I'm sure you'll think better of it. Of course you will, for it was you or your flyer, after all. Volse would have chosen you: for there's a vampire in you! Ah, the very essence! But personally, I think it were better if you live. A little while longer, at least.

Shaithis stood up, staggered away, looked for a place to hide. He allowed his hurt to wash over him, deliberately conjuring all the agonies of his crash on Starside, when he'd broken his body and face, and of his fight with the she-bears, to add to the pain of this latest tumble. And these were the false impressions of severe damage which he let flood out of him, to be picked up and (hopefully) wrongly translated by the Ferenc's vampire mind. Volse might conceivably read them, too, but Shaithis doubted it. The boil-fancier was a dullard, too much obsessed with the manufacture of abscesses.

What? the Ferenc seemed surprised, however uncaring. That much pain? Did you crash down face-first, Shaithis? He offered a grim mental chuckle. Well, and now you know how I've felt all this time, for your face has always been hurtful to me!

Aye, (Shaithis could not restrain himself), laugh long and loud, Fess Ferenc! But remember: he who laughs last…