Deadspawn

The Ferenc nodded his grotesque head. 'Suits me. But how we've come down in the world, eh?'

As they set off along the ledge, Arkis said, 'Come down? How so?'

The Ferenc shrugged. 'Just look at us. Three Lords - or ex-Lords - of the Wamphyri, stripped of most of our powers, going like frightened children in a huddled group to explore strange new regions. And afraid of what might jump out on us!'

'Afraid?' Arkis puffed himself up. 'Speak for yourself!'

The Ferenc sighed and said simply, 'But I saw the thing that lanced the Great Boil, remember?'

At that moment it grew darker and the three paused to glance speculatively, apprehensively at each other. A thin cloud layer had drifted in to cover the higher reaches of the cone. The first small flakes of snow began to drift down and coat the ledge.

Arkis looked at the sky all about. 'One cloud?' He voiced his thoughts out loud. 'Which just happened to form here? A vampire mist, d'you think?'

'Obviously,' said the Ferenc. 'Whoever dwells here, he's sensed us coming and seeks to make it harder for us. He makes his lair more obscure, and the way to it more difficult.'

'Which means we're on the right track,' Shaithis added. He set off again along the ledge, and behind him the others almost automatically followed on.

'Huh!' Arkis grunted. 'Well, at least your premonitions were good. Perhaps too good. It seems to me this one has the edge on us. He sees and knows all while we remain in the dark, as it were.' He swatted at a small white bat which flitted too close.

And the Ferenc's eyes went wide as he gave a small start and burst out, 'His albinos! His bats! We should have known. That's how he tracks our course. The midges pursue us like fleas after a wolf cub!'

Shaithis nodded sagely. 'I had suspected as much. They're his minions no less than Desmodus and his small black cousins were ours back on Starside. They scan our whereabouts and circumstances, reporting all back to ... whoever.'

Arkis gaped and grasped his arm, drawing him to a halt. 'You suspected these things and said nothing?'

'A suspicion is only a suspicion until it's an established fact,' Shaithis answered, angrily shrugging away the other's restraining hand. 'And anyway, it makes a very important point and gives us an insight into his circumstances.'

'Eh? Insight? Circumstances? What are you on about? What point does it make?'

'Why, that the cone's master fears us! Bats to report our movements; a snowfall to hinder us; a sword-snouted creature guarding his hive, as the soldier bees of Sunside guard their honey? Oh, yes, he fears us - which in turn means that he's vulnerable.' And to himself: Good reckoning - perhaps he really is. But still I'll take my chances with him. At least we have this much in common: our intelligence.

And at once, gurgling in Shaithis's mind: And our blood, my son. Don't forget our blood!

Again, at once, the Ferenc snapped, 'What?' His huge head swung round in Shaithis's direction, and his eyes glared under gathered black brows. 'What was that? Did you say - or think - something just then, Shaithis?'

Shaithis hid his momentary panic behind bland innocence. 'Eh?' He raised an eyebrow. 'Say something? Think something? What's on your mind, Fess?' And as the Ferenc and Arkis scanned nervously all about, he sent a triple-shielded thought: Twice you've almost given me away, Shaitan. Do you think this is a game? If there's so much as a hint of what I'm up to, I'm a goner!

The Ferenc scowled. 'On my mind? No, nothing on my mind, except to get finished with this, that's all.' He straightened from his half-crouch. 'So what say you: do we go on, or do we call it a day? Is he vulnerable, this master of the volcano, or are we even more so? It's a nervy business, this climbing in the snow, not knowing what's waiting for us.'

Shaitan came whispering into Shaithis's mind:

Get on with it; bring them in; bring them to me! Do it quickly. For he's no fool, this giant. He's sensitive and we've both underestimated him. You'll need to watch him - and carefully.

'I've noticed,' said Shaithis to the others, almost conversationally, 'how the small albinos come and go from the west. So I say we stick to the ledge and see where it goes.'

'No!' the Ferenc growled. 'Something's wrong, I'm sure of it.'

Shaithis looked at him, then at Arkis. 'Do you wish to go down again? Have we wasted all our time and effort? Has a cloaking vampire mist entirely unnerved you? But our enemy wouldn't have issued it unless we had unnerved him!'

Arkis said, 'I'm with the Ferenc.'

Shaithis shrugged. 'Then I go on alone.'

'Eh?' The Ferenc stared hard at him. 'Then be sure you go to your death.'

'How so? Is this the place where Volse was taken?'

'No, that was on the other side, but...'

'Then I'll take my chances.'

Arkis said, 'Alone?'

Shaithis shrugged. 'Which is worse, to die now or later? Better to do it here, I think, locked in combat, than locked in the ice with something drilling its way to my heart.' And then, suddenly, as if he'd run out of patience, he hissed at both of them: There are three of us, remember! Three "great" - hah! - Wamphyri Lords against... what? An unknown being who quite obviously fears us almost as much as we - as you - fear him.' And he turned away from them.

'Shaithis!' the Ferenc called after him in a tone half-angry, half-admiring.

'Enough,' Shaithis snapped over his shoulder. 'I've done with you. If I win through all is mine. And if I lose -well, at least I'll die as I've lived, Wamphyri!'

He continued along the ledge, and without looking back sensed the eyes of the two following him. Then: 'We're with you,' came the Ferenc's final decision, but still Shaithis stared straight ahead. And at last he heard Arkis's voice, too, calling out: 'Shaithis, wait for us!'

He did no such thing but hurried on that much faster, so that now they must scramble to catch up. And with the pair hot on his heels so he came upon the mouth of the first cave even as Shaitan had forewarned. Here, because it would be expected of him, Shaithis paused. Breathing heavily, the others saw the dark cavern entrance into which he concentrated his gaze.

'A way in, d'you think?' said Arkis, but none too eagerly.

Shaithis stared harder yet into the cave's gloomy interior, then made a show of carefully backing away from it. 'Obviously so,' he said. 'Perhaps too obviously...' And to the Ferenc: 'What say you, Fess? For it's amply apparent that the cold of these climes has focused your awareness to a fault. Is this a safe way to go or not? Myself, I think not. It seems to me that far back in the cavern something stirs. I sense a thing of great bulk but limited intelligence, yet stealthy, too.' Which was, of course, the Ferenc's own description of a sword-snout. And as Shaithis had hoped might be the case, it put a picture of just such a creature into the giant's mind.

Fess thrust forward his great head into the cave, glared into its depths and wrinkled his snoutlike nose. And, 'Aye,' he growled in a little while, 'I sense it, too. And indeed this could well be a way in, for the cone's master has guarded it with a bloodbeast.'

Shaithis nodded. 'Or maybe with the bloodbeast?'

'Eh?' said Arkis.

'Perhaps he has only the one creature,' said Shaithis. 'For if there were a pair, then Fess here might well have been taken at the same time as Volse.'

'But what does that matter now?' Fess shrugged. 'Even on its own, this thing is a monster. Are you suggesting we might go against it? Madness! One of us would surely die - possibly two, even all of us - or at least end up sorely wounded before this thing succumbed. I saw it strike three times in as many seconds, unerringly, and ram Volse through and through like a fish on a Traveller's spear. Why, he didn't even know what hit him!'