"Brian Lumley - Necroscope 2 - Wamphyri!" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

'Are you saying you want this Ferenczy taken from his castle and brought to you in Kiev?'


'Too late for that, Thibor. He has shown how he "respects" me. How then should I respect
him? No, I want him dead! His lands then fall to me, his castle on the heights, his household and
serfs. And his death will be an example to others who might think to stand apart.'


Then you don't want his thumbs but his head!' Thibor's chuckle was throaty, without humour.


'I want his head, his heart, and his standard. And I want to burn all three on a bonfire right
here in Kiev!'


'His standard? He has a symbol, then, this Ferenczy? Might I enquire the nature of this
blazon?'


'By all means,' said the prince, his grey eyes suddenly thoughtful. He lowered his voice, cast
about in the dusk for a moment, as if to be doubly sure that no one heard. 'His mark is the horned
head of a devil, with a forked tongue that drips gouts of blood...'


'Blood!'


'Gouts of blood soaking into the black earth.' The sun had touched the horizon and was
burning red there like... like a great gout of blood. Soon the earth would swallow it up. The old
Thing in the ground trembled again; its husk of leather and bone slowly cracked open like a
desiccated sponge to receive the earth's tribute, the blood that soaked through leaf-mould and roots
and black, centuried soil down to where the thousand-year-old Thibor-creature lay in his shallow
grave.


Subconsciously Thibor sensed the seeping blood and knew, in the way all dreamers 'know',
that it was only part of the dream. It would be a different matter when the sun had set and the
seepage actually touched him, but for now he ignored it, returned to that time at the turn of the tenth
century when he'd been merely human and had gone up into the Khorvaty on a mission of murder...


They had travelled as trappers, Thibor and his seven, as Wallachians who followed the
Carpathian curve on a trek designed to get them deep into the northern forests by the onset of
winter. In fact they had simply come from Kiev through Kolomyya and so to the mountains, but
they'd taken all the paraphernalia of the trapper with them, to substantiate their story. It had taken
them three weeks of steady riding to reach the place in the very lee of the sheer mountains, (a
'village', consisting of a handful of stone houses built into the hillside, half-a-dozen semi-permanent
cabins, and a smattering of gypsy tents of cured skins with the fur inside) which the current