E-Branch: Invaders by Brian Lumley

Author:Brian Lumley [Lumley, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Alternate worlds, General, Vampires, Fiction
ISBN: 9780340739181
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Educational
Published: 1999-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

men and the sobbing of their sons could be heard in and around the camp, as one by one the various listed "names" were informed of their misfortune by Dinu's tithe-takers.

'Some were already known, of course: the troublemakers in their cages, and outsiders who had wandered inadvertently onto Vadastra territory. But the three males, three females, and six infants of the clan itself, their naming was left to last, for the reasons stated. Then they were gathered in by Dinu's bully boys, chained and gagged before they could voice any great complaint or cause commotion, and tethered to await the coming of the tithesmen and their vampire master, Lord Nephran Malinari. As for the babies: they were wrapped in bundles on the trestle tables, along with the other wines, victuals, and sweetmeats.

'Myself: I was with Nadia, "safe" in my father's caravan. From peepholes in the withe walls, silently and scarce breathing, we watched and waited as instructed. For my father liked to keep his prized ones (I still find the idea of "loved ones" hard to envisage) well out of sight of the Wamphyri, so as not to arouse their interest. Likewise Nadia's mother, Melana Zetra; Dinu had advised her to remain out of sight, hidden in her caravan, lest being comely she attract unwanted attention.

'And in the fifth hour after sundown they came. 'The skies had been clear, as told, and only a warm breeze, like the breath of the dreaming forest, to tease the flames of the campfires and stir the branches of the trees about the central clearing. But the Wamphyri have their own weird ways with nature; they work their will on air, earth, and water as acid works on metals, etching them to their design.

'We had seen it all before: the mist gathering on the high peaks and rolling down like some vaporous avalanche, all milky-white in the moonlight. The sudden flurry of cold air down from the barrier mountains, beating on the flames of our fires as if to smother them, and lashing the gentler winds of the forest to frenzied flight. And suddenly, from behind the peaks, the first stain of dark clouds writhing blindly out of the north,

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