Blown to pieces, the two hadn’t been able to do much until now; but finally Quint’s arms — only his arms — had dragged themselves up from below, and Felix’s upper torso, limbless, had wriggled its way out of the castle’s debris. As the arms of Quint came up over the rim and grabbed Dolgikh, and as Felix’s severed, sluglike cadaver wriggled into view and began to bite at him, so he gave up. He drew air for one last scream, filled his lungs to brimming — and the scream simply died on his lips, the merest gurgle of sound. Then he closed his eyes and sighed, and all of the air whooshed out of him.
But they made sure anyway, and with one last effort dragged him over the edge into space. His body pin-wheeled down the face of the cliff, bounding from one projection to the next, all the way to the bottom.
Harry uncovered Zek’s head, said, ‘He’s finished —Dolgikh, I mean.’
‘I know,’ she answered with a half-sob. ‘I read it in your mind. And Harry, it’s cold in there . .
He gave a grim nod.
Haarrry? A distant voice came to him as he released her — one that only he and the dead could hear — one he knew and had thought never to hear again. Do you hear me, Haarrry?
1 hear you, Faethor of the Wamphyri, he answered. What is it you want?
Noooo — it’s what you want, Haarrry. You want Ivan Gerenko dead. Well, now I give you his life.
Harry was puzzled. I haven’t asked any favours of you, not this time.
But they did. Faethor’s voice was a grim chuckle. The dead!
Now Felix Krakovitch spoke up from the bottom of the gorge: I asked him to help, Harry. I knew you couldn’t kill Gerenko, no more than we can. Not directly. But indirectly. .
I don’t understand. Harry shook his head.
Then look up at the ridge there, over the ledge, said Faethor.
Harry looked. Silhouetted against the dying day, a straggling line of scarecrow figures stood silent on the high, precarious ridge. They were fretted, skeletal, crumbling — but they stood there and awaited the Old Ferengi’s command. My ever faithful, my Szgany! said Faethor, that once-mightiest of all the Wamphyri. They have been coming here for centuries — coming here, waiting for me, dying and being buried here — but I never returned. Over them, whose blood is my blood, my power is as great as yours is over the commoner dead, Harry Keogh. And so I have called them up.
But why? Harry demanded. You owe me nothing now, Faethor.
I loved these lands, the vampire answered. Perhaps you cannot understand that, but if I ever loved it was this land, this place. Thibor could tell you how much I loved it.
Now Harry understood. Gerenko . . . invaded your territory!
The vampire’s growl was deep and merciless. He sent a man here who was responsible for reducing my house to dust! My last vestige on earth! And now there is nothing to show that I ever existed at all! How then shall I reward him? Ahhh! But how did I reward Thibor?
Harry saw what was coming. You buried Thibor, he answered.
So be it! cried Faethor. And he gave the Szgany on the ridge his final command — that they throw themselves down!
Half-way along the ledge, Ivan Gerenko heard the clattering of ancient, leather-clad bones and fearfully looked up. Down from that high place they fell, breaking up as they came; skulls and scraps of bone and flaps of fretted flesh, a rain of dead things that might drown him in mummied remains.
‘You can’t hurt me!’ Gerenko gibbered, covering his wrinkled head as the first ghastly fragments thudded down onto the ledge. ‘Not even dead men. . . can. . . hurt me?’
But it wasn’t their intention to hurt him; they didn’t even know he was there; they’d simply obeyed Faethor and hurled themselves down. And after that it was out of their hands, those of them who had hands. The clattering cascade continued, echoing loudly; and over and above the pelting of gristly bones, now there swelled a new sound: a terrible grumbling and groaning, but in no way the groaning of the dead. They were the groans of riven rock, of sliding shale and scree and accumulated debris. Avalanche!