Deadspawn

- Suddenly Shaithis remembered his flyer, which he'd left feeding! If someone should find it out there...

He reached out his mind to the creature, discovered it gorging still, cursed long and loud but this time silently and to himself. He'd never get the beast aloft now. But at least he could send it away from here.

Go! he commanded it. Flop, waddle, squirm, slither, but go! Westward, half a mile at least, and there hide. As best you can, anyway. And in his mind he felt the stupid creature moving instantly to obey him.

Then, satisfied that the flyer would put distance between itself, Volse's dead creature, and what - or whoever else might possibly be in the vicinity, Shaithis returned to the problem at hand. Earlier, the old thing in the ice had been awakened by a fall of icicles. So be it.

Exploring an upper terrace, the vampire Lord found a vast spout of ice like a frozen waterfall, and at its fringe many lesser formations. One of these icicles, some four feet long and nine inches through its stem, he snapped off and carried back to the ice-encased husk of Kehrl Lugoz. Since the petrified old fool couldn't be roused by mental means, let him start awake at the entirely physical shattering of this great blade of ice against his sheath.

Fully absorbed in his task, Shaithis failed to detect the furtive approach of others up the ice staircase. He 'shouted' telepathically at the frozen, ice-distorted figure where it sat: KEHRL LUGOZ, WAKE UP! Then swung back his icicle hammer to smash it against the face of Lugoz's sheath. But the great icicle refused to swing, because something was impeding it!

Hissing and spitting his shock from the red-ribbed vault of his throat out over the glistening, vibrating arch of his forked tongue - eyes bulging and crimson, and with his less than human features instinctively flowing into a fearsomely inhuman wolf-mask - Shaithis glanced back over his shoulder, then dropped the great icicle and reached for his gauntlet. But in that same instant a huge talon of a hand fell upon his wrist and trapped it, and Shaithis stared into the grim grey faces of two fellow survivors from the battle for The Dweller's garden: Fess Ferenc and Volse Pinescu!

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?'