The Oldest Living Vampire on the Prowl (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 2) by Duncan Joseph

Author:Duncan, Joseph [Duncan, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Cobra E-books
Published: 2013-11-26T05:00:00+00:00

4

After that, our journey continued without incident, and we came at last into the country of the Ground Scratchers.

Very soon after entering their territory, I had to agree with Ilio’s uncle. The Ground Scratchers were a strange people. The homes we passed were odd-shaped huts made of timber and thatch. They were much larger than the dome-shaped tents I’d lived in as a man, with peaked roofs and waist-high openings in the walls through which their occupants could peer outside. Some of the openings were decorated with beaded hangings or weaves, which the humans had to push aside if they wanted to look out. These thatched huts looked very sophisticated to me. I was impressed by the ingenuity their complex construction represented. Humanity had made great advances during my long sleep in the ice!

Surrounding the dwellings were broad yards studded with conical wooden structures. The wooden stakes were angled toward a common center and lashed together with twine, with vines twisted all around and through them. Strange green vegetables bobbed from the stems of the plants.

In the bare dirt yards between these strange vegetable cages, haggard men and women with short-cropped hair clawed at the earth with long wooden tools. Stone blades were lashed onto the ends of the handles, and they tirelessly thrust these triangular shaped blades into the ground and raked the crumbly soil back toward their feet.

We observed the humans working from a little distance, puzzled by their behavior. Whatever task they were set upon, it must have been quite important, for they worked without ceasing, and all the while, other humans in brightly colored garments watched over them, doing nothing but occasionally barking an order or slashing the bent back of one of the laborers with a switch.

“See how they scratch at the ground?” Ilio whispered to me. “It’s like my uncle said.”

“Very peculiar,” I replied. “Why are they scratching the dirt like that?”

Ilio shrugged. “They worship a goddess who lives in the earth. I guess they’re scratching her back.”

I snorted. “Why? Does she have fleas?”

A few of the laborers took notice of our presence and stopped to ogle us, but they returned to their duties without accosting us, bending quickly to their work when their overseer barked at them.

The presence of so many humans gave me pause, but I sensed no malice in their glances. They seemed only tired and resigned. They smelled of sweat and dirt and a palpable sense of fatalism.

The stern men supervising their labor, on the other hand, pretended not to notice us.

We moved on, making our way up a steep hill. We were in no hurry, just wandering in a lackadaisical manner, taking in the sights like any other tourists would, regardless of the era. We were following a well-worn path that meandered in between the strange, peaked houses and the bare dirt yards where the laborers so diligently toiled. Here and there, men and women tended to fruit trees, and on a distant hillside, a group of humans labored in a field of flax, plucking some part of the stalk and stuffing it in their baskets.

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