Deadspeak by Brian Lumley

Author:Brian Lumley [Lumley, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf

10

Bloodson

Thibor the Wallach, that cursed ingrate - to whom I had given my egg, name and banner, and into whose hands I had bequeathed my castle, lands and Wamphyri powers -had injured me sorely.

Thrown down burning from the walls of my castle, I experienced the ultimate agonies. A myriad minion bats fluttered to me as I fell, were scorched and died for their troubles, but dampened my flames not at all. I crashed through trees and shrubs, and pinwheeled aflame down the sides of the gorge to the very bottom. But my fall had been broken in part by the foliage, and I came to rest in a shallow pool which alone saved my melting Wamphyri flesh.

As close to true death as a vampire might come and remain undead, I put out a desperate call to my faithful Gypsies where they camped in the valley. They came, lifted my body from the still, salving water and cared for it, and carried me west over the mountains into Hungary. Protecting me from jars and jolts, hiding me from potential enemies, keeping me safe from the sun's searing rays, at last they brought me to a place of rest. Aye, and it was a long rest: a time of enforced retirement, for recuperation, for the reshaping of my broken body; a long, long rest indeed!

For how Thibor had hurt me! All bones broken, back and neck, skull and limbs; chest caved in, heart and lungs amangle; skin flayed by boulders and sharp branches, and seared with fire... even the vampire in me was burned, bruised and battered. A month in the healing? A year? Nay, an hundred years!

My long convalescence was spent in an inaccessible mountain retreat, and all the while my Szgany tended me, and their sons, and their sons. Aye, and their sweet, firm-breasted daughters, too. Slowly the vampire in me healed itself, and then healed me. Wamphyri, I walked again, practised my arts, made myself wiser, stronger, more awesome than ever before. And eventually I went abroad from my aerie and made plans for my life's adventure.

Ah, but it was a terrible world in which I emerged, with wars everywhere, great suffering, famines, pestilence! Terrible, aye, but the stuff of life to me - for I was Wamphyri!

I found myself the ruins of a keep in the border with Wallachia and used the tumbled stones to build a small castle there. Almost impregnable within its walls, I set myself up as a Boyar of some means. I led a mixed body of Szgany, Hungarians and local Wallachs, housed them and paid them good wages, was soon accepted as a landowner and leader. And so I became a small power in the land.

As for Wallachia: I avoided venturing there, mainly. For there was one in Wallachia whose strength and cruelties were already renowned: a mercenary Voevod named Thibor, who fought for the Wallach princelings. I did not wish to meet this one (who should by rights be keeping guard over

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