Vampires Save the Night by Hugh Alan

Author:Hugh Alan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: RABuchanan

Ruin on the Mountain

By Chad A. B. Wilson

The putrid smell of rot and decay filled the room. Rolo sat far from the Magnate, remembering the face of the man he had served for nearly ten years, and compassion and fear mixed inside him. The Magnate had been stern and cynical, but he had listened to counsel, and Rolo respected him. But now the Magnate was dying. He would not regain consciousness. He lay there, his breaths ragged, his chest heaving in random intervals. His death meant change.

And war.

Rolo had not been there when the Magnate had fallen and broken his leg, but he’d watched the old man’s two closest friends carry his uncle back to the hall. The Magnate didn’t scream. He was pissed at being carried, and he kept yelling that he could walk, though he obviously could not. The bone protruded from the skin and all of the men were covered in blood. Not the blood of a kill that would feed the Tribean, but the blood of the Magnate himself. The healer could not set the bone, and the fever came, and the wound festered.

Embittered, the Magnate drank the liquid fire and laughed meanly, becoming even more cynical than before. The Magnate never directed his bitter humor at Rolo, only toward Rolo’s father — the Magnate’s brother, Baugulf. He and old Morven had been there and carried the Magnate back. They joked about the Magnate’s clumsiness on the mountain, the fall that had sent him down the mountainside, and how they would have nothing to eat but vegetables because the Magnate had prevented a kill.

Rolo sat on one side of the Magnate’s small chambers just outside the main common room. He didn’t join in the somber banter between Baugulf and old Morven, who stayed by the dying Magnate’s blood-stained bed. The Magnate’s young wife sat on the other side of the bed — silent, like Rolo.

Rolo was young; he knew his place, even though the Magnate had chosen him as Cambellarius when Rolo was fifteen. At that time, Rolo was already a skilled hunter and known for his wise counsel. Cynbel, officially the tanist and the Magnate’s son and heir, hated that Rolo had become the Cambellarius. But the liquid fire and Cynbel’s consorts kept the heir entertained, preventing him from too much fussing. Cynbel was a conceited imbecile, there was no doubt, but the man was also the heir. Now that the Magnate was dying, Rolo’s father, Baugulf, could be a problem. Rolo did not know what his father would do. Equally uncertain was Rolo’s own role. As the Cambellarius, he served the Magnate, not the tanist, and he didn’t know if his allegiance was bound to the office, the heir, or to the more qualified.

And, truth be told, his father was the more qualified.

“He’s dead,” his father stated.

“The Tribean will live,” old Morven said.

“The Mountain lives,” Rolo replied.

The Magnate’s wife looked at her husband, seeming more curious than sad. She was his second wife after the death of the tanist’s mother.

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