The Source by Brian Lumley

‘Oh?’ Jazz took that in, nodded again. ‘You mean just to be absolutely sure, right?’

Her answer contained no trace of humour. ‘That’s right,’ she said, ‘to be absolutely sure. Vampires are hard things to kill, Jazz.’

He shook his head, thought: God, you’re a cool one!

‘No, I’m not,’ she clasped his hand tightly – very tightly – in her own. ‘It’s just that I’ve been here longer than you, that’s all . . .’

Lardis Lidesci wasn’t what Jazz had expected. He was maybe five-eight tall, long-haired, gangling in the arms as Jazz himself but built like a rhino as opposed to Jazz’s cat. He was young, too – younger by three or four years than Jazz – and, in sharp contrast to his squat shape, he seemed surprisingly agile. This agility of Lardis’s wasn’t only physical; his intelligence was patent in every brown wrinkle of his face, which was expressive and had more than its share of laughter-lines. Open and frank, Lardis’s round face framed in dark, flowing hair had slanted, bushy eyebrows, a flattened nose, and a wide mouth full of strong if uneven teeth. His brown eyes held nothing of malice; indeed, they were usually smiling, but they could also turn very thoughtful. On the Earth Jazz and Zek had left behind he’d have made a professional wrestler; certainly he looked like one. Among his people here in this vampire-ruled environment beyond the Gate he was a natural leader, and the great majority of his five-hundred-strong ‘tribe’ rallied behind him all the way. Arlek had been a rare exception which proved the value of Lardis’s rule, and Arlek was no more.

Since taking on the job of leader from his father five years ago when the elder Lidesci had grown crippled with some arthritic disease, Lardis had succeeded in keeping his Travellers free and secure from the ever-present Wamphyri threat; so that the tribe had grown and expanded, absorbing other smaller Gypsy groups into itself. Not nearly as large or strong as many of the eastern tribes, still Lardis’s people had a record for safety which was the envy of all the Travellers: namely that since he became leader, the Wamphyri had not once ravaged successfully amongst them. There were several reasons for this.

One of these stemmed from that fundamental difference between Lardis and Arlek, which was so strong that it had now resulted in the latter’s permanent removal. Lardis did not believe that the Wamphyri were the natural Lords and Masters of this sphere, or that the time must come when a devastating raid would decimate his tribe. He would not give in to the Wamphyri, would not placate them in any way. Other Traveller tribes had tried this in the past, were trying it even now, and it had never worked. Gorgan Lidesci, Lardis’s father, still talked of the fate of his first tribe, when he himself had been a mere boy.

In those days, for a time, there had been a measure of peace among the Wamphyri; this had enabled the vampire Lords to consolidate their forces and commence raiding far more effectively and in overwhelming numbers. Gor-gan’s tribe, a large one and governed by a Council of Elders, had attempted to make a deal with the Wamphyri, to come to a mutually satisfactory ‘arrangement’ with them. Before each sundown a raiding party would go out from Gorgan’s people to make captives of men and women of lesser Traveller groups. Since such minor groups might be as small as two- or three-family units, ranging up to the strength of small tribes of perhaps forty adults, and since they were scattered all along the Sunside flank of the mountains, there was little difficulty in obtaining, before each sundown, a ‘tithe’ of about a hundred people. These were kept imprisoned through the long nights, so that in the event of a Wamphyri raid they could be offered in appeasement. The belief among the elderly leaders of Gorgan’s tribe was simply this: that so long as the Wamphyri could find ready-made tribute, they would not have need to glut themselves on the tithe-paying people of the tribe: they would not bite, as it were, the hands that fed them.