While sleeping, Shaithis's thoughts had flowed inwards, an art in which he was adept; his dreams could not be 'heard' by any other. But during the transition from deep, healing sleep to waking they had escaped like a yawn, and someone had been close enough to hear it. Too close by far.
Shaithis allowed his mental probe to touch that of the other, and immediately snatched it back. Contact had been brief but recognition mutuaclass="underline" insufficient to detail specific identities, but enough that each creature was certain of the other's presence. Shaithis glanced this way and that. There was only one way out of his niche; if he was trapped then he was trapped; so be it.
Who is it? he sniffed the cold air with his bat's snout. Is it you, Fess, come for your supper? Or must I soil my good gauntlet in pus to tear out the loathsome heart of the odious Volse Pinescu?
And back came the answer, like an astonished gasp in the vampire's mind: Hah! Shaithis! You survived The Dweller's death-beams, then?
Arkis Leperson! Shaithis knew him at once. He breathed his relief, watched curiously for a moment while his breath fell as snow, then made for the exit. Along the way he flexed his muscles, swung his limbs, inhaled deeply and tested his ribs. All seemed in order. Pah! What had those minor dents and scratches been for wounds anyway? Repairs had been minimal; his vampire flesh had scarcely been overtaxed; he was left with an ache here, a bruise there.
Arkis stood close to the foot of the ice-staircase. He was squat for a Lord of the Wamphyri: scarcely more than six feet tall — ah, but a good three feet broad, too! A massive barrel of a man, his strength had been prodigious. Now: it seemed he'd lost a little weight. Shaithis moved towards him, closing the distance between with the easy, flowing glide of the vampire; sinister to ordinary men, but normal by Wamphyri standards. In another moment they were face to face.
'Well,' said Shaithis, 'and is it peace? Or are you too hungry to think straight? I'll be frank: I could use a friend. And by the look of you… huh! Our circumstances are much the same. The choice is yours, but I know where there's food!'
The other's entirely instinctive reaction was a single belched word: 'Food?' His eyes opened wide and his flaring, convoluted snout plumed ice-crystal breath.
Plainly Arkis was starving. Shaithis offered him a grim smile, took from his pouch the last piece of cold bear-heart and devoured half in a single bite, then tossed the rest to the leper's son — who snatched it from the air with a cry almost of pain. And without pause he crammed his mouth full.
Arkis had been sired by Morgis Griefcry out of a Traveller waif. She'd been a leper and her infection had taken Morgis in his member which (along with his lips, eyes and ears) had been among the first of his parts to slough. The disease had been like a fire in him, burning him faster than his vampire could replenish. Finally, with cries of grief echoing his name to the full, Morgis had taken a firebrand and hurled himself and his Traveller odalisque into a refuse pit whose accumulation of methane gas had done the rest. His suicide had left Arkis the youthful Lord and heir to a fine aerie. Even better, Arkis had not contracted his forebears' disease! Not yet, anyway. Perhaps he never would. It had all been many sundowns agone.
While Arkis ate, Shaithis studied him.
Squat in the body, Arkis's skull was likewise squat, as if it had been crushed down a little. His face seemed pushed out in front, and his bottom jaw farther yet, with boar's teeth curving upward over his fleshy upper lip. And yet the overall effect wasn't so much swinish as wolfish, especially with the inordinate length of his furred, tapering ears. Aye, somewhere in his lineage there'd been a grey one for sure. Moreover, he was lean as a wolf; well, by the standards of former times, at least. Now, eyes ablaze with the lust of feeding, upon however small a morsel, he nevertheless narrowed them to gaze on Shaithis. And when he was done: Til grant you it was a bite,' he grunted, 'but was that the food you promised?'
'I made no promises,' Shaithis answered. 'I stated a fact: I know where there's food — by the ton!'
'Ah!' the other grunted, and cocked his head on one side. 'Volse's flyer, d'you mean? Ah, but they guard it well, Volse and the Ferenc. It's a mousetrap, Shaithis; only approach their private pantry too closely and you'll end up in it! No chivalry here, my friend. Cold, crystallized meat can never taste as good as red juice of meat spurting from a severed artery! But… beggars can't be choosers. I have tried and failed; they're never too far away; I know they lust after my blood.'
'Are you reduced to this?' Shaithis raised a black, spiky eyebrow. 'Scavenging after each other?' He knew of course that they were; knew that he would be, too, soon enough. The 'chivalry' of the Wamphyri was at best a myth. But in any case, his insult — the word 'scavenging' — was lost on Arkis Leperson.
'Shaithis,' said the other, 'I've been here four, going on five sundowns; five auroral displays, anyway, which I reckon amounts to much the same thing. Reduced to hunting each other? Let me tell you that if it moves I'll hunt it! I had bats by the handful at first: squeezed 'em to pulp so they'd drip into my mouth — then ate the pulp, too! — but now they won't come anywhere near me. They have minds of their own, these tiny albinos. Right now, I'm on my way to see the shrivelled old granddad frozen in the ice up top. I'd have tried to get at him before, if I was desperate enough — which now I am! So don't talk to me about being reduced to this or that. We're all reduced, Shaithis, and you no less than anyone else!'
So maybe Shaithis's insult had got through after all. That came as something of a surprise; the leper's son had always seemed such a dullard. Perhaps the cold had sharpened his wits.
'Arkis,' Shaithis said, 'there are two of us now and we've shared food. That's good, for it strikes me we'll do better as a team. While you've been here you've learned things and must know many of the pitfalls. Such knowledge has value. Also, the disgusting Volse Pinescu and gigantic Fess Ferenc will think twice before coming on the two of us together. Now, what say we leave this echoing shell of ice and find our breakfast?'
The leper's son sighed his impatience, which angered Shaithis a little: he wasn't used to dull, squat creatures playing the equal with him. 'Now let me repeat myself,' Arkis grunted. 'They guard Volse's flyer, and guard it well! They're likewise well-fuelled, which we're not. And as you yourself have just this minute pointed out, the Ferenc's a bloody giant!'
Shaithis flared his nostrils and for a moment thought to leave the fool to his own devices. Except that would also mean leaving him to the tender mercies of the others — eventually. And Shaithis wanted Arkis for himself — eventually. But these were thoughts he steered inwards, lest Arkis hear them. 'And can they guard two beasts?' he said. 'And did you think I'd walked here, Arkis Diredeath?' (the idiot's other name).
It stopped Arkis dead. 'Eh? Another flyer? I haven't seen it. But then, I've not dared venture too far out on the ice lest they see me! Where then, this flyer?'
'Where I sent it,' said Shaithis. 'Still good and fresh and… wait a moment — ' He sent out a beast-oriented thought: Do you hear me? — and in return sensed life flickering still, but burning very low. 'Aye, and not yet bled to death. Not quite.'
'They know it's there, that great vat of filth and the Ferenc?'