'Of course, else I'd not require assistance from you.'
'Hah!' Arkis cried. 'I might have known it! Something for nothing? What? Think again, Arkis my lad. This is the Grand Lord Shaithis you're talking to. Oh, let's be friends, Arkis — because I've need of you!'
'So be it.' Shaithis shrugged. 'I merely envisaged a joint venture which would furnish joint returns, that's all. Equal shares. But something for nothing? What, and did you think this was Sunside at sundown, with plenty of sweet Traveller game afoot?' He made as if to turn away. 'Starve, then.'
'Wait!' The other took a pace closer. And in a more reasonable tone: 'What's your plan?'
'None,' said Shaithis, 'except to eat.'
'Eh?'
Shaithis's turn to sigh. 'Listen, and I'll ask you again: can they guard two flyers, Volse and the Ferenc?'
'Certainly — a man to each.'
'But we are two men!'
'And if they're both together?'
'Then one beast goes unguarded! Has the cold numbed your once agile brain, Arkis?' (That last was a lie, but a little flattery wouldn't hurt.)
'Hmm!' The leper's son thought about it for a moment, then scowled and stabbed a finger at Shaithis. 'Very well — but if we come upon Volse Pinescu on his own, we kill him. And I want his heart! Is it a deal?'
'Agreed,' said Shaithis. 'Actually, I should think it's the only part worth eating.'
'Hah!' Arkis snorted. And: 'Har, har! Oh, ha — ha — haaa.r he laughed, in his way.
And: Go on, laugh, Shaithis kept his thoughts hidden. But when Volse and Fess are done for, you're next, bone-brain! And out loud: 'Now guard your thoughts. We go out onto the ice…'
Volse Pinescu's flyer was rimed with frost, stiff as a board.
Still Arkis Leperson would have set to, but Shaithis
cautioned him: 'Let's not waste valuable time here. What?
Why, you'd wear those tusks of yours to stumps on this!' Arkis turned to him with a scowl. 'It's food, isn't it?' 'Aye.' Shaithis nodded. 'And half a mile over there a lot more of it — but thick, red and flowing in juicy pipes. Good beasts I breed, Arkis, of the finest flesh. Now listen: do you sense our enemies? No? Neither do I. So today they're not doing much guarding, right?'
Arkis sniffed the icy air. 'It worries me. What are they up to, d'you suppose?'
Time for supposing after we've filled our bellies.' Shaithis had already set off across the blue foxfire ice. And Arkis came shambling after. Shaithis glanced back once and nodded, then faced forward and grinned his sly grin as of old. Ever the leader, Shaithis, and how easy once more to take up the mantle. And behind him Arkis Leperson, like a dog to heel…
A wind came up.
While Shaithis and Arkis Leperson, called Diredeath, sat in a cave carved by Volse and Fess in the underbelly of Shaithis's flyer and sipped the feebly pulsing juices of that now insensate beast, the radiant stars were blotted out by dark, scudding clouds. Snow came down in a shortlived blizzard, which loaned the ice a thin, soft coating.
When the wind died down again the cannibalized flyer was dead and its arteries already stiffening. 'Cold fare from this time forward,' commented Shaithis, sticking up his head to spy out the land around. He looked towards the spine of volcanic peaks. Then looked again. And frowned his concern.
'Arkis, what do you make of this?'
Arkis stood up, belched noisomely, looked where Shaithis pointed. 'Eh? That? A whirlwind, a snow-devil, the last flurry in the wake of the storm. What's this great fascination with Nature, Shaithis?'
'Fascination? With what's natural, none whatsoever. With what's unnatural, plenty! Especially in a place like this.'
'Unnatural?'
'By Nature's mundane standards, aye, if not by those of the Wamphyri.' He continued to study the phenomenon: a whirling cloud of snow forming a squat cylinder twenty feet high and the same in diameter. Something seemed to move in its heart, like a tadpole in a jelly egg, and the whole — device? — making a beeline their way. It threw off whips of snow which quickly settled to the ground without diminishing the central mass.
Shaithis nodded; he knew what it was; 'Fess Ferenc,' he whispered, grimly.
'What, Fess?' Arkis gaped at the thing, now only a hundred yards away across the shining ice, coming at walking pace and beginning to thin out a little. 'How, Fess?'
'That's a vampire mist,' said Shaithis, donning his gauntlet. 'On Starside it would creep, flow, drift outwards from him. Here it turns to snow! Fess was a fine mist-maker… his great mass. During the hunt, I've seen him cover an entire hillside.'
They both threw out their vampire senses towards the weird, earthbound cloud. Only one creature inside it; the Ferenc, aye, but weary as never before. He hadn't the strength to hide himself. 'Ah-hahr growled Arkis. 'We have him!'
'But let's first discover what goes on,' Shaithis cautioned him.
'Isn't it obvious what goes on?' The Leper's son was scowling again. 'Why, he's finally burst that monstrous boil Volse Pinescu, but in the fight depleted himself. So now he's at our mercy, of which I have precious little.'
Twenty paces away the cloud fell as a final flurry and Fess stood there, naked! Entirely naked, and not only of his snow-cloud cover. Arkis gawped but Shaithis called out: 'Well, Fess, and how fortunes change, eh?'
'It would seem so.' The other's deep bass voice echoed over the ice-plain. But there was a shiver in it; he was freezing. And yet under one arm he carried his clothes in a bundle. Shaithis couldn't see the sense of it. There must be a story here and he wanted to know it.
Arkis sensed Shaithis's curiosity. 'Me, I'm not interested,' he snarled. 'I say we kill him now!'
'You say too much,' Shaithis hissed. 'You think only of your own survival, now, without a thought for the future. Myself, I think of my continued survival, now and however long I may sustain it. So you bide your time or our partnership ends here.'
'Am I to die?' The Ferenc stood tall, glooming on Shaithis across that short distance. 'If so then get it over with, for I've no wish to turn to a block of ice.' But he threw down his clothes and hunched forward a little, and his talons were sharp as razors hanging at his sides.
'It seems I have the advantage,' said Shaithis. 'Also a score to settle. You caused me not a little pain.' The Ferenc made no answer. 'However,' Shaithis continued, 'we may yet come to an agreement. As you see, Arkis and I have formed a team of our own: safety in numbers, you know? But two against the Icelands? The odds are too high. Three of us might fare better.'
'Some kind of trick?' Fess couldn't believe it. If their roles had been reversed Shaithis would have been already dead.
'No trick.' Shaithis shook his head. 'Like Diredeath here you have knowledge of this place. And just as the blood is the life, so is knowledge. That has always been my conviction. To fight among ourselves is to die. Sharing knowledge — pooling our resources — we might yet survive.'
'Say on,' said Fess, his voice more shivery than ever.
'Nothing more to say.' Shaithis shook his head. 'Come out of the cold and replenish yourself, and tell us what's happened that you go naked as a babe in such a place, hidden in a weird and very unsubtle mist. Aye, and then perhaps you'd advise us on the whereabouts of the unlovely Volse Pinescu, your erstwhile companion.'
The Ferenc had no choice. Flee and they would catch him, for they were well fuelled. Stand still and freeze, and they'd thaw him out and eat him. Go forward and talk, and… perhaps he could yet make his peace with Shaithis. As for Arkis, that one was something else.
He came on, got down in the lee of the stiffening flyer, tore a vein from the wall of flesh and bit through it. Nothing was forthcoming (the creature's blood was finished or frozen in the outer regions of its bulk) so he merely stripped the pipe down with his teeth and swallowed the pulp. It was sustenance if nothing else. Between mouthfuls he commented, 'Perhaps we should have stayed on Starside. At least The Dweller would have made a quick end of it.'