Overhead, the last of the Wamphyri were silently flying north, heading out across the icelands for those dark regions on the roof of the world, where the sun never shone at all. When his flyer was ready, then Shaithis would join them there. The legends had it that if one crossed the polar cap and kept going, then he’d find more mountains, new territories to conquer. No one in living memory had tested the legends, however, for the great stacks had been the places of the Wamphyri, their immemorial homes. But . . . that was yesterday. And now it appeared that the legends were to be tested in full. So be it.
As Shaithis went to descend a shattered stairwell, his good eye detected a movement in the rubble and he heard a muffled moan. Someone here, alive, in the ruins of his aerie?
Shaithis picked his way over tumbled blocks of stone and bony debris, came to a tangle of shiny cartilage and fractured rock where a hand and arm protruded from a gap. The hand groped blindly about, clawed uselessly at rough stone. From below came a half-conscious moaning.
For a moment Shaithis was puzzled; a Lord, even the lowliest lieutenant, would have dug his way out by now. But eventually he smiled a grim smile and nodded his recognition of the trapped man. ‘Karl!’ The vampire’s false smile disappeared as quickly as it had come. ‘Hell-lander. Ah, but I’ve several large scores to settle with hell-landers!’
He tore away blocks of stone and weirdly fused cartilage masses, reached down into darkness and drew Vyotsky out. His handling of the Russian wasn’t gentle, especially since both of Vyotsky’s legs were broken below the knees. He cried out: ‘No, no! Oh, God – my legs!’
Shaithis shook him mercilessly until his agonized eyes popped open. ‘Your legs?’ he hissed. ‘Your legs? Man, look at me!’ He sat Vyotsky down on a flat stone surface, let fall his cloak to expose his ravaged body, slowly turned in a circle for the other’s inspection. Trembling in his own extreme of pain, still the Russian winced at the extent of Shaithis’s injuries. ‘Aye,’ Shaithis agreed. ‘Pretty, isn’t it?’
Vyotsky said nothing, continued to hold himself upright where he sat by pressing down on the rock’s surface with the flats of his spread palms. In this way he kept pressure off his trembling, jelly legs.
‘Now, Karl,’ said Shaithis, facing him squarely. ‘It seems to me that I remember a conversation we had, that time when we almost caught your fellow hell-landers, before The Dweller’s intervention. You remember?’
Vyotsky said nothing, wished he could faint but in any case knew that he didn’t dare do so. His agony was great, but if he collapsed now the odds were that he’d never wake up again. He gasped, closed his eyes as a fresh wave of pain burned upwards through his body from his shattered legs.
‘You don’t remember?’ said Shaithis, in mock surprise. He lifted his gauntlet, clenched and unclenched his hand, opened the weapon wide so that the Russian could see its dozens of cutting edges. A single blow from that would flense a man’s entire face, Vyotsky knew, or crush his skull like an eggshell. ‘Well, I do remember,’ the vampire Lord continued, ‘and it seems to me I warned you then what I would do if you should ever again attempt to flee from me. I said I would give you to my favourite warrior, all except your heart which I would eat myself. Surely you remember that?’
Vyotsky’s eyes were wide now and his lips trembled to match his straining arms.
‘Alas,’ said Shaithis, ‘but I no longer have a warrior and so can’t keep my promise. But I would, you may believe me! Except, of course, we do not know that you were fleeing. Ah, but I also remember telling Gustan that he was to carry you with him upon his flyer when we went to sack The Dweller’s garden. Could it be that Gustan forgot my command? A shame, for I so wanted you to be there – to witness the way I would have dealt with the woman Zek and the man Jazz. On the other hand . . . perhaps you were hiding, waiting for us to leave before making a break for it?’