"Lumley, Brian - Vampire World 2 - The Last Aerie" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)
- until Nestor turned and cautioned it: Be quiet.' Did I not say that these men were with me?
And as the thing fell silent and shrank back, so the four proceeded down into Suckscar ...
At the end of the short corridor, two more of Vasagi's creatures were tethered in niches set back a little from the main passage. They were not too unlike Wratha's personal guardians: brutal, ferocious things that howled and gibbered, tearing at their chains as Nestor and the others came into view. Their new master spoke to them at once, saying:
'I am the Lord Nestor of the Wamphyri. Vasagi's egg
- and all of Vasagi's things - are mine. Now what is this commotion? Desist ... or suffer!' It was enough; the warriors sniffed him out and at once fell silent, shuffling uncomfortably in their places.
Wran and Spiro were frankly astonished. Being Wamphyri, of course they too could have calmed the beasts ... given sufficient time to threaten, cajole, and work on them. But Nestor had no experience of such things; even with Vasagi's egg, still he was a newcomer here; and yet he instinctively, almost automatically fitted into place. 'Yes,' Wran told him, 'I think you'll do very well indeed, in Suckscar.' But his scarlet eyes were shrouded. For it seemed to Wran that perhaps Nestor would do just a little too well here ...
Thralls and lieutenants alike had heard the rowing warriors. Two of the latter came at the run just as Nestor and the others entered Suckscar's main hall. They were massive men, as are all the chosen lieutenants of the Wamphyri, so that Nestor felt dwarfed
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between his three companions and these newcomers. But the lieutenants, seeing Canker, Wran and Spiro, skidded to a halt, looked at each other, and approached more cautiously.
While they were still out of earshot, Canker whined, 'Now comes the real test. For these are not dumb beasts but men, and they have brains that think. Better let me handle it, for now at least.'
'Who goes there?' said one, the biggest of the two. 'You Lords are trespassers! Unless Gore Sucksthrall accompanies you - and possibly even then - you have no business here. Vasagi would never have deigned to invite you.' He pointed at Nestor and scowled. 'And what, pray, is that?'
Despite Canker's warning, Nestor narrowed his eyes and made to step forward; but the dog-thing got in his way. 'You lads had better listen,' he coughed. The Suck's no more, for Wran the Rage killed him. Which I don't need to tell you, for I'm sure someone at least must have been at a window, waiting for Vasagi to return out of Sunside. Ah, but while the Suck is gone, his egg goes on, for it fled into Nestor here - or the Lord Nestor, to you.'
Their mouths fell open. But after a moment the bigger one spoke up again. 'Oh, really? And this one's come to claim Suckscar, right? Well, Lords Canker, Wran, Spiro, no disrespect to you, but I am Zahar, Third-in-Command in Suckscar after Gore. And I say to you that I myself could eat this one!' He prodded Nestor in the chest with a hard finger. 'And as for when Gore Sucksthrall sees him ...'
He threw back his head and laughed, and went to prod Nestor again. But Nestor was lightning fast; he caught the offending finger in a clenched fist and bent it back all in one movement, so that it broke with a
loud crack! Then, as Zahar howled and fell to his knees, Nestor kicked him as hard as he could in the throat, which served to silence him and send him sprawling. In another moment, Nestor was down beside him on one knee, pinning his topknot to the stone floor; and in the next the sharp point of Nestor's six-inch knife was pricking the bulge of the lieutenant's throbbing Adam's apple.
Before, the knife in Nestor's belt had seemed barely significant; a piffling toothpick, the Wamphyri Lords and Lady had ignored it. Like his crossbow, he wouldn't dare consider using it against such as them. Ah, but their thralls were a different matter!
'Gore Sucksthrall is dead!' Nestor snarled. 'I killed him! Now swear allegiance to me - and at once - or follow him into eternity!'
'Gak ... gak ... urk1' said Zahar, holding up a trembling hand and arm. It might have been threatening or pleading, that hand, for it was the one with a dangling digit; whichever, Nestor couldn't take any chances. He slashed at the tendons in the joint of the elbow, which showed through where leather sleeves came together, and the arm flopped uselessly to the floor. And fast as thought, Nestor caught the crippled hand and took the finger, so that its stump had barely started to spurt as he came lithely to his feet.
Zahar writhed like a crippled snake on the floor, hissing and coughing but making no sensible noises whatsoever. His inability to answer made no difference, for as Nestor now told him: 'Good! Then you are now my man. Now watch!' And he deliberately gashed his own thumb, and let the blood drip into the joint of Zahar's arm and onto his bloody hand. 'See now: blood of my own Wamphyri flesh. The power of renewal, so that your arm may heal itself and your hand be whole
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Nestor turned his back on the writhing, crippled Zahar and faced the second of the two. And he saw how Canker ' ad held him back, when he might have come to Zah^; s aid. Then, raising an eyebrow, as if in faint surprise, Nestor said: 'What's this? Do you molest a man of mine, Canker?' Canker released the lieutenant at once, and Nestor offered his hand and forearm in the old Szgany greeting.
The other was young, not long out of Sunside; but already he was inches taller than Nestor, broad, well-muscled, grey of flesh and feral-eyed: a vampire in his own right. Not Wamphyri, no, but given a hundred years he might be. If he lived. He spoke up, but falter-ingly: 'I'm Grig Sucksthrall... or I was.'
He sensed the authority in Nestor - and possibly the presence of Vasagi's egg, too -- and was awed and disadvantaged by the hot eyes of so many Lords looking on. Then, remembering the ways of Sunside, he fum-blingly went to grasp Nestor's preferred forearm. But no, Nestor grasped Grig's hand instead and pressed Zahar's severed digit into his palm. And as Grig's jaw dropped, Nestor told him:
'Eat it! Accept my food and live, and take shelter with me in Suckscar - or deny me now and suffer the consequences. But what's this? Do you tremble? Ah, don't worry! I shall not kill you but set you free on the
boulder plains, to take your chances with the lowest of the low and live like a trog in a crevice. How shall it be?'
Grig looked at the bloody finger in his grey hand, then at Zahar who had struggled to a seated position, where now he was bent forward, rocking himself to and fro and moaning. And finally: 'Lord,' he told Nestor, 'Zahar is my friend ...!'
'Friend? Friend?" Nestor looked astonished. 'And am I to be known as the Lord Nestor, who gives shelter to friends? No, I desire no friends in my house but only thralls and obedient lieutenants - who eat or go hungry at my command!' He stared hard, severely at the other. 'For the last time, then: what's it to be?'
There and then Grig ate Zahar's finger. And because Nestor held his gaze the while, he scarcely grimaced at all...
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IV Suckscar
Nestor sent Grig and Zahar off to tend to the^ latter's damaged hand and arm. And then the four Lords explored Suckscar.
Wran, Spiro, and Canker had all been here before -but just the once - the day they arrived here along with Wratha, Vasagi and their lieutenants, a handful of flyers and another of warriors, out of the east. Then, mainly at Wratha's direction or insistence (the great stack had been sorely in need of repairs and maintenance, which she'd wanted set to rights at once), they'd moved in and laid claim to the various levels. And Suckscar had become Vasagi's.
He had named the five levels which made up his section of the stack out of admiration for their dramatic external appearance: they were deeply scarred from front to back (or south to north) with massive downward slanting gouges, almost as if the sun rising over the barrier mountains had steamed their outer layers away like vampire flesh. But in fact the sun had never risen so high as to light on Suckscar's levels; it was simply the result of the natural tilt of the rock layers, which were somewhat softer here, and the weathering of centuries and even millennia. Now these five levels, set immediately over Canker Canison's Mangemanse, belonged to Nestor, and he explored them eagerly.
In the first level he saw the great communal hall,
where common thralls dwelled in caverns in the outer immensity of the perimeter wall, and a sweeping rock-hewn staircase the width of the hall itself led up to Vasagi the Suck's once-private chambers. At the top and to the sides of the staircase were warriors or guardians of a unique design, which in function were similar to the creature in the stairwell encountered during the descent from Wratha's landing-bays. They looked like thick brown rugs sewn up from the skins of bears, but rugs don't creep.
As Nestor had climbed the stairs, so these creatures had flowed inwards along the upper steps, closing on him. But their stealth was such that when, half-way up, he paused to stare at them ... the things were only rugs again! At which Canker Canison, who accompanied Nestor, had sniffed the air and gone more cautiously, pointing out: 'More of the Suck's things, aye. He was a master of metamorphism, that one ...'
Then Nestor had climbed diagonally, almost threateningly, towards the closest of the two guardians, commanding it: Come on then, and we'll see what manner of creature you are/ And creepingly, silently, the creature had flowed down from above; likewise its twin on the other side, converging on him ...
... Until the last moment, when suddenly they reared up! And then Nestor saw just how thick they were: like doughy blankets of flesh - like great bears, yes, but with their skeletal frames extruded and their flesh spread out, thick in the centre and thin as membrane at the edges - with great bands of grey muscle rippling on the underside. And bearlike in their general structuring, too, except their legs and arms were boneless, supported only by springy cartilage; but sufficiently agile to lift and thrust themselves upon hapless victims.
More: Nestor saw their mouths. Like the guardian in
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the stairwell, they had more than sufficient of those; or precisely sufficient, considering Vasagi's purpose in creating them. For all these creatures consisted of was mouth, stomach and crushing muscle, and tiny red eyes, hidden in the topside fur. The mouths were many, small, red and suctorial, without teeth that Nestor could see; or if they were toothed then these were small and inconspicuous; but the drool which they issued smoked where it touched stone, so that Nestor knew it was acidic. And then he understood.
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