Sweet Silver Blues

41

After pausing at a brackish stream to water and gather firewood, we scrambled up several hundred feet of scree around the knees of a monster monolith of a butte and made camp in a pocket that couldn't be approached in silence by a mouse. The view was excellent. None of us, with our varied eyes, or even with the spyglass, could see anything moving in the twilight.

We settled down to a small, sheltered fire. Being in the mood myself, we broached one of the baby kegs and passed it around. It held only enough for a good draft each for me, Zeck Zack, Dojango, and sips for the grolls. "Yech!" was my assessment. "Drinking that was the second mistake I've made in this life."

"I won't be so forward as to ask what the other might have been," Morley said, "suspecting it might have been being born." He smirked. "I presume beer jostled on the back of a pack animal in the hot sun loses something."

"You might say. What possessed you, Dojango?"

"A slick-talking salesman."

We sat around the fire after eating, mostly watching it die down, occasionally assaying a story or a joke, but largely tossing out notions about how we might deal with the unicorns if it came to that. I didn't contribute much. I'd begun to fret about my revelation.

Something must have gone wrong. There had been time for them to reach the nest, I felt. Had the bloodslave betrayed himself? Had he been found out?

Without him prospects were poor. We could wander the Cantard looking until we were old men.

At some point I would have to admit defeat and head north with my false affidavit. I supposed we'd give up when our stores were depleted to just enough for the overland journey to Taelreef, the friendly port nearest us after Full Harbor. Going back into the shadow of the major's claw seemed plain foolhardy from there in the desert.

One of the grolls was telling Morley a story. Morley kept snickering. I ignored them and began drowsing.

"Hey. Garrett. You got to hear this story Doris just told me. It'll tear you up."

I scowled and opened my eyes. The fire had died to sullen red coals casting little useful light. Even so, I could see that Morley's words didn't fit his expression. "Another one of those long-winded shaggy-dog fables about how the fox tricked the bear out of berries, then ate them and got the runs and diarrheaed himself to death?" That had been the most accessible of the grollish stories so far, and even it had lacked a clear point or moral.

"No. You'll get this one right away. And even if you don't, laugh a lot so you don't hurt his feelings."

"If we must, we must."

"We must." He moved over beside me. In a low voice, he said, "It starts out like this. We're being watched by two of the night people. Laugh."

I managed, without looking around. Sometimes I do all right.

Doris called something to Marsha, who responded with hearty grollish laughter. It sounded like they had bet on my response and Marsha had won.

"Doris and Marsha are going to jump them. Maybe they can handle them, maybe they can't. Don't look around. When I'm done telling the story, we're going to get up and walk toward Doris. Chuckle and nod."

"I think I can manage without the stage directions." I chuckled and nodded.

"When Doris moves, you follow him and do whatever needs doing. I'll go with Marsha."

"Dojango?" I slapped my knee and guffawed.

"He watches the centaur."

Zeck Zack had backed himself into a tight place where nothing could come at him from behind. His legs were folded under him; his chin rested upon his folded arms; he appeared to be sound asleep.

"Ready?" Morley asked.

I put on my hero face that said I was a fearless old vampire killer from way back. "Lead on, my man. I'm right behind you."

"Big laugh."

I hee-hawed like it was the one about the bride who didn't know the bird had to be cleaned before it went into the roaster. Morley pasted a grin on and rose. I did so too, and tried shaking some of the stiffness out of my legs. We walked toward Doris.

Doris and Marsha moved with astonishing swiftness. I had run only two steps when I glimpsed a dark flutter among the rocks. Doris hit it. A great thrashing and flailing started. Another broke out behind me. I didn't look back.

When I got there, Doris had the vampire in a fierce bear hug, facing away from him. Sinews popped and crackled. Strong as he was, the groll was having trouble keeping the hold. Blood leaked from talon slashes on his hide. The blood smell maddened the vampire further. His fangs ripped the air an inch from the groll's arm.

Let that devil sink one and Doris was done for. It would inject a soporific venom capable of felling a mastodon.

I stood with a knife in one hand and silver half mark in the other, wondering what to do. Whenever a foot flailed out at me, I tried to cut the tendon above the heel.

Suddenly there was a flicker of light. Dojango was feeding the fire.

Doris pushed the vampire's ankles between his knees. I flung forward, trying to drive my blade into one of the devil's knees, to hobble it. It twisted half an inch. My point hit bone and cut downward through flesh harder than summer sausage.

A wound to the bone, a foot long, and when I was done about three drops of liquid leaked out. The vampire loosed one flat, shrill keen of pain and rage. Its eyes burned down at me, trying to catch mine with their deadly hypnotic gaze.

I slammed the half mark into the wound before it could start healing.

It was done so quickly, deftly, and instinctively that even now it amazes me.

The vampire froze for many seconds. Then dead lips peeled back and loosed a howl that terrified the stones and must have been audible twenty miles away; immortality betrayed. I clamped both hands on the wound to keep the coin in place. The night beast bent back like a man in the last throes of tetanus, hissed, gurgled, shook so violently we barely held on.

The flesh beneath my hands began to soften. Around the coin it turned to jelly. It oozed between my fingers.

Doris threw the thing down. The fire painted his great green face in light and shadow patches of hatred. The vampire lay among the rocks, still hissing, clawing at its leg. It was a very strong one. The poison should have finished it sooner. But they're all strong, or they couldn't be what they are.

Doris snagged a boulder twice as long as me and smashed the thing's head.

For several seconds I watched flesh turn to jelly and slide off bones. Then, as though the vampire's end was a signal, my revelation came.

I knew a direction.

When daylight came...

If daylight came. Morley and Marsha were embattled still. Doris was on his way to help. He collected his ten-foot club as he went. I shook all over and went to help myself.

Somehow, as we approached, the second vampire broke loose. It hit the ground, then hurled itself through the air in one of those hundred-foot bounds that have led the ignorant to believe they can fly.

The leap brought it straight toward me.

I don't think it was intentional. I think it jumped blind, with the fire in its eyes. But he saw me as he came. His mouth opened, his fangs gleamed, his eyes flared, his claws reached...

"He" or "it"? It had been male when it was alive. It could still sire its own kind. But did it deserve... ?

Doris's club met him with a solid whump! The vampire arced right back the way he had come and fell at Marsha's feet. Marsha bounced a boulder off him before he could move—if he could have moved.

I didn't go on. I headed for the fire and another of those skunky kegs and hopefully some unsober reflection.

Dojango was shaking worse than I was, but he was on the job, feeding the fire with one hand, keeping a crossbow aimed at Zeck Zack with the other. He didn't look up to see who or what was coming toward him.

Another twenty-mile shriek shredded the fabric of the night.