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space where the Russian had been trapped - and this time he drew out Vyotsky's
SMG, and a leather sack containing provisions.
Again Vyotsky moaned out load, closing his eyes and swaying where he sat
racked with pain. But Shaithis only burst out laughing, slapping his thigh as
at some rich joke -
then abruptly stopped laughing, reached out with his gauntlet and slapped
Vyotsky across the knees. For Shaithis - by his standards - the blow was the
merest tap, light as the touch of a feather. It ripped open Vyotsky's
combat-suit trousers, tore away his kneecaps in a red welter. He did faint
then, toppling sideways off the flat stone. But
Shaithis caught him up before he could further injure himself. Then -
Without further pause the vampire tossed him over his good shoulder - and
proceeded with him down into the black bowels of his workshops . . .
Below, it was not as bad as Shaithis had thought it might be. Parts of the
stone and cartilage ceiling had collapsed here and there, and several of the
protoplasmic things in their deep pits had been blocked in, so that their
mindless cries were made faint by masses of fallen stone, but in the main all
was in order. The larger vats were undamaged, and Shaithis's new flyer
uninjured. It mewled when it saw him, bending its glistening, spatulate,
armoured head in his direction. Soon the liquids in its vat would all be
absorbed into it, and then its skin would form into membranous leather. After
that a training flight, and finally Shaithis would be ready to undertake his
great journey northwards.
Before then, however, there was one last task he must perform, one final act
of vengeance in this place. He had admitted to the hell-lander Karl Vyotsky
that his warriors were all dead. Well, and so they were - but that was not to
say he couldn't make another. Indeed, the making of warriors and other beasts
was an art of the Wamphyri, and certainly Shaithis was a great artist.
Moreover, he had the necessary materials right here. Ah, but this one would be
the warrior!
In a recent experiment, Shaithis had created a small creature of such
primitive slyness and insidious vileness that his creation had surprised even
him. The small mind of a trog, with some subtle alterations, had governed the
thing - if governed was the word - while its principal physical component had
not been man-flesh but that of wild creatures. The tissues of a great bat and
a feral wolf had featured strongly, together with protoplasmic flesh from
Shaithis's pit-things. But twice the creature had escaped, which in the end
prompted him to put it down and have done with it.
Indeed, it would not have been prudent to let it live -not here, anyway - not
and chance the other Wamphyri Lords learning of it. For while Nature often
gave wild creatures a vampire egg, it was generally deemed unseemly for the
Wamphyri themselves to perform such experiments.
And yet Shaithis had done just that. Slighted by a lesser Lord, he'd
challenged and killed him, and so earned the right to burn his remains.
Instead he had brought the body here to his workshop, cut out the vampire
within and transplanted its egg into his creature! But when he saw how
uncontrollable was the thing, then he'd sent it through the
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Gate. It had seemed to him a grand jest: that his creature should take its own
brand of hell with it into the hell-lands.
Ah, but that was before he realized just how hellish the hell-lands were!
Shaithis little doubted now but that all his troubles stemmed from that
unknown place beyond the shining sphere-gate; perhaps even The Dweller himself
had his origin there. Which was why he would now create the WARRIOR of all
warriors! And, who could say, perhaps it might even be the last warrior? Aye,
and when they saw what he had sent them, then the wizards of that world would
think again before sending their hirelings adventuring here.
So thinking, Shaithis tossed Karl Vyotsky's limp form down onto the great slab
of stone which was his workbench, then went to fetch the other ingredients of
his work and certain instruments with which to fuse them . . .
It was a long job; sunup came and went, and a new sundown was beginning;
finally Shaithis was done. He inspected with some satisfaction the thing
heaving and hissing where it waxed in its enormous trench of a vat, striding
down the length of it and admiring the rapid formation of a deadly array of
weapons. Then, into its groping, vestigial mind, he implanted those commands
which would form its one aim, its single goal in life, and left it to fend for
itself. Emerging in a very little while, the warrior would discover the
pit-things and devour them, and find its way out of here. The exit might well
be too small for it by then, but Shaithis could not doubt that this warrior
would make it bigger.
In the interim he had tested his flyer; the beast was better than any before
it, fit steed for the long journey ahead. First, however, Shaithis would gaze
once more upon the face of that mother of all treachery, the beautiful face of
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