The Last Aerie (51 page)

As for Glina: she’d never in her wildest dreams imagined it could be like this with any man; and of course it couldn’t, for Nestor was much more than a man. He was Wamphyri! And what woman will ever go lusting after men, once she has had a vampire … or after he has had her?

Upon a time (it seemed an age) Glina had seduced him. Now she, in turn, was seduced. By his voice, his eyes, his hands, his body. She was (of course) enthralled. And she knew that if she couldn’t have him—have this, which he had showed her—then she would destroy herself utterly. And so she determined that she
would
have it, and be his mistress in Suckscar.

But what Glina didn’t know was this: that of all his mistresses she would only be one.

And what Nestor didn’t know and never discovered was this: that Wratha the Risen had seen him with Glina …

Wratha’s raid on Sunside had been disastrous.

Plotted in anger and badly executed as a result, the outcome had been no better than last time. For the previous raid had also been against ruined Settlement, and it had worked out expensive indeed: she had lost one lieutenant dead and another seriously wounded, a newly-weened flyer destroyed, and a small aerial warrior decoyed, brought down, deflated and burned. As a result of which Wrathspire had been depleted and Wratha the Risen had vowed revenge on the Szgany Lidesci, whose name had become a curse throughout Wrathstack in its entirety.

For Wratha wasn’t the only one who had been frustrated in her attempts to raid on Settlement. The other Lords were in the same fix; try as they might, they could never go anywhere near the place with impunity but suffered losses at every turn. For the erstwhile inhabitants of Settlement—a town which Wratha and her renegades, as they’d termed themselves then, had tried to destroy on their very first excursion out of the last aerie—had proved a difficult lot to cow. Indeed difficult wasn’t the word for it: they were impossible!

Fighters born, their leader was a man who seemed as crafty and merciless as the Wamphyri themselves. His name was Lardis Lidesci, which was also a curse on Wratha’s lips. He set traps for flyers, decoys for warriors, and had crossbows and devastating explosive weapons which fired lethal silver pellets to penetrate and poison vampire flesh.

And tonight’s raid? Another flyer pierced through its neck with a bolt from a giant crossbow; its lieutenant rider knocked out of his saddle and doubtless dealt with by the defenders of that tottering, derelict pile; the flyer itself shrilling like the wind off the Icelands in Wrathspire’s turrets, raining its vital fluids, finally crashing in the Sunside foothills … a total loss. And never a captive taken, nor a single changeling thrall who ever made it out of the region to come shambling and mewling over the boulder plains before sunup, and nothing to show for this humiliation except perhaps in Wratha’s vampire heart: her absolute determination that one day she’d bring the Szgany Lidesci—Lardis included,
especially
him—to their knees!

As for Settlement itself:

The town stood (or slumped, now) at the base of Sunside’s foothills some eighty-odd miles west of the great pass. It had been a thriving community when Wratha and the others came fleeing here out of the east from Turgosheim beyond the Great Red Waste. But flying out from the last aerie on that initial raid, they’d first hit Twin Fords, a neighbouring town, then Settlement, and reduced them to so much rubble. It should have been total victory, followed by utter subjugation of the Szgany and eventually a free run of Sunside such as that enjoyed by Vormulac Unsleep and his vampire colleagues in Turgosheim. It
should
have been like that, but wasn’t. For during the course of those vicious preemptive strikes, Wratha and her raiders had themselves been taken by surprise—when the humans hit back!

In Turgosheim’s Sunside it had been very different. There the Szgany were docile, cowed, supplicant creatures. Sullenly but without any real objection, they had given to the Wamphyri and would never dare refuse them or even hint at fighting back. So that Turgosheim’s Lords had been able to use Sunside and its inhabitants like a vast larder to plunder at will, and had even operated a tithe-system designed to ensure a fair split of the spoils; not only of human spoils, but of all good things out of Sunside. For there in the east even the so-called “free” men of the Szgany spun cloth and forged for their masters; they fashioned their clothes and weapons for them; they farmed, hunted and gathered for them … and they bred for them, of course.

But the Wamphyri of Turgosheim had been greedy, destructive masters; to a man, they’d lived for today without a thought for tomorrow. And over the course of hundreds of years Wamphyri depredations had cut Szgany stock to the bone, until the inhabitants of Turgosheim’s Sunside had been little more than grubby animals. They
were
human, but had been debased almost to extinction as members of that race. And if blood is truly the life, theirs was a trickle thin as water, growing thinner with each new tithe.

It was just one of several reasons why Wratha and the others had fled out of Turgosheim in the first place: so that they might give free rein to Wamphyri passions in pastures new. But there were other reasons, too. There had seemed no future in Turgosheim, where the upper echelon was so firmly ensconced as to be irremovable, while the lower orders were falling into a gradual decline, just like the people they victimized.

But far to the west:

Rumours had told of a vast and sprawling land of plenty, of milk and honey and rich red blood! And these were rumours which the Lady Wratha couldn’t ignore. Determined to discover the truth of it for herself, also to escape from Turgosheim’s claustrophobic constraints, she had drawn together a crew of malcontents much like herself: Vasagi the Suck, Wran the Rage and his brother Spiro Killglance, Gorvi the Guile, and Canker Canison; and all of them had commenced in secret to make flyers and forbidden aerial warriors like none seen before, all with stamina enough to carry them and their makers over the Great Red Waste into the west.

So they had arrived here with their lieutenants some eighteen months ago, and had at once begun raiding on Sunside to improve their lot in the last aerie of the Wamphyri. At first they had worked as a team, but that hadn’t lasted. Arguments had split them up; old scars had started itching anew; old scores still required settling. That was why Wran and Vasagi had fought their duel on Sunside, from which only Wran had returned. But other feuds were in the offing, Wratha was sure. Vasagi had been an ally of sorts, and now he was no more. And for all that Wratha was strong and her manse secure, still she knew that she was a woman while the others were all men. Well, men of sorts …

It had been to strengthen her hand—and also to avenge herself—that Wratha had launched this latest raid on Settlement; she’d needed strong Lidesci blood for her men and beasts, and a handful of Lidesci thralls wouldn’t go amiss in Wrathspire, either. Failing, and finding herself depleted yet again, she’d ordered her creatures home while she herself rode a high wild wind and raged into the night. And anyone who had seen her would know why men were careful in their dealings with the Lady Wratha. Except no one had seen her.

But as Wratha had calmed herself and descended from the turbulence of upper air to float on the blustery thermals over the high crags, she had seen Nestor and Glina. Then, using her mentalism to explore Nestor’s mind—knowing what he was doing and how he was enjoying it—she’d barely been able to control a second bout of furious raging. Nestor was with some chit out of Sunside, some Szgany slut, filling her to brimming. He was with … a mere
girl
, when he could have been with Wratha!

Withdrawing from the lurid churning and throbbing of his mind (but carefully, so that he would never suspect she’d been there) at first she turned her flyer’s head towards the highest peaks and Starside. But in another moment, gritting her teeth and giving a vicious jerk on the reins, she turned back. And in the dark and seething quagmire of her undead mind, only one thought now:

This … this
Nestor!
And despite herself, she had to know more about him and the way he was with women.

Landing her flyer some hundred yards away, knowing that the wind’s bluster would cover the slither of scree as the hovering beast touched down, Wratha dismounted and hurried to the saddle where she’d seen them together in the heather. And keeping her mind tightly guarded, peering through a gap where jagged fangs of rock leaned together, she spied upon the … the lovers?

And how many times had she spied on him from her high windows, going out upon his flyer to practice? And how often had she insinuated herself into his mind, watching him at work and at play? He had his women—of course he did: he was Wamphyri!—but he rarely enjoyed them. Indeed, he was with them much as Wratha was with her love-thralls: utterly bored. She’d sent out thoughts to lure him when he was asleep; she’d planted pictures of herself in his mind, and she had used her vampire art to beguile and fascinate him … to no avail, for he was naive. Not naive as a man, no, but as a Lord of the Wamphyri, certainly.

And oh, this fine young body, this oh so
beautiful
body, all muscle and fire and energy—all wasted on such as this! Wratha could laugh, but instead felt like crying … and was at once outraged by the very idea. What, Wratha the Risen, bawling over a man like some Sunside peasant girl? At her age and with all of her experience? No man—not one,
none
of them—had ever been worth the effort. But this one … could it be that he was?

But no, he wasn’t, it was just the way he enjoyed coupling with this slut. It was his pleasure. It was the tingle she had felt in his blood. It was that he wasn’t making love to Wratha!

There, it was out: she fancied him. No, she actually lusted after him! Before, there had been plenty of time; she had known that Nestor would come to her eventually; following which she would soon tire of him and send him away. But now …

Time had run out. He had not come to her. He had taken a woman who pleased him. A dull, stupid, even plain Szgany bitch, but she
pleased
him! And Wratha felt pangs she had never known before, which might be the acid burn of jealousy, or possibly the bittersweet sting of … love? Yes, perhaps even that. But true love was so rare among the Wamphyri it was almost unheard of. And yet Wratha had heard of it, had even seen it for herself.

Back in Turgosheim the great Lord Vormulac Taintspore, called Unsleep, was
still
in love, despite that his lady had died seventy and more years ago, and he had not slept for all of that time. Such was Vormulac’s devotion that he’d kept his manse, melancholy Vormspire, like a mausoleum to her memory.

Then there had been Karl the Crag’s love for Wratha, which had destroyed him in the end. It had to, for she’d been ambitious then as she was now, and with Karl in the way could never have ascended into the circle of Ladies. But instances such as this were rare, indeed singular.

And with all of these thoughts and plenty of others in her head she watched them coupling, and with every jerk of Nestor’s buttocks or gasp of joy or sweetest pain from Glina, her eyes protruded a little more from her head and the figured bone scarp upon her brow burned crimson from their glare. Wratha saw the ways he took her, the sheer inexhaustible
power
of the need driving him on, and knew that no man—not even Karl the Crag—had ever taken her like this.

It was his youth and his passion and his lust, and it was every erotic dream he had ever dreamed; all of it bursting out of him now, amplified by his vampire leech to previously inaccessible,
un
dreamed heights. And:

If he is not
careful,
Wratha thought,
he might easily fuck that girl to death!
(Ah, but Nestor knew what that would mean, and it was not a mistake he’d make twice.)

Wratha’s nipples were hard as callouses yet sensitive as open sores where almost unconsciously she squeezed them through her robe, and she felt the bud of her sex stiffening to a small finger as her hand stole down to her mass of black ringlets and into the cleft of love. And Wratha the Risen—even the Lady Wratha herself stood trembling, panting and masturbating as she watched Nestor shudder to a climax, the way his seed spurted from the corners of Glina’s mouth.

Then, it was over. Nestor fell back and lay sprawled on the heather; Glina took up an infant, hugged it to her bruised breasts, covered herself and the child with furs and curled up to sleep. They were like young animals, making love until they were exhausted and then sleeping it off. And suddenly the Lady Wratha was exhausted, too. She had brought herself to orgasm, right along with Nestor, but all it had left in her was a dull ache, by no means the relief which had blossomed like a weird night orchid in his mind and body.

Again Wratha felt like crying, the furious sting of tears trying to be shed, and again she detested herself for it; but the reflected blaze of her eyes under their scarp of bone was lacklustre now, like a lamp turned low. And so, before vastly enhanced Wamphyri emotions could make a fool of her entirely, she backed out of her hiding-place, returned to her flyer and launched for Wrathstack.

But even as she climbed aloft and sped for that last lone fang of rock against its backdrop of diamond stars, blue-sheen horizon and shifting, sighing auroral curtain, Wratha knew in her heart that nothing would be quite the same from this time forward. Because for the very first time in her too-long life and undeath, she was sure that she actually did have a heart after all…

In Suckscar that sundown (a “night” which lasted as long as three days in an unsuspected world beyond the so-called hell-lands Gate), Nestor made Glina his first woman. But first he waited until the fever had gone out of her and her eyes took on that unmistakable feral look.

And the fact of it was, her vampirism enhanced her; not to the fantastic extent of Wamphyri enhancement and metamorphism, but it did lend her a certain elegance of motion in place of the clumsiness she’d displayed before, and a sort of sensual intelligence or self-awareness which her master found disconcerting in a girl who had been so dull. She was his thrall now—a vampire, yes—but paradoxically, there seemed a lot more of the Gypsy in her, too, than was previously apparent. His bite—which changed other women into blood-lusting creatures, none of whom could ever be trusted entirely, certainly not in their instincts and thoughts—had changed a mainly naive girl more truly into a woman. She had been, in Canker Canison’s eyes, “a dumpling”; she still was, but was now more nearly edible.