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

incumbents called Moupho Aide Ferenc Yaborov, a mouthful they invariably shortened to Ferenc,
which they made to sound like 'Ferengi'. It meant 'Place of the Old One', or 'of the Old Ferengi',
and the gypsies spoke of it in lowered tones and with a deal of respect.


There were maybe a hundred men there, some thirty women and as many children. Half of the
men were trappers passing through, or prospective settlers uprooted by Pechenegi raids, on their
way to find homes further north. Many of the latter group had their families with them. The
remainder were either peasant inhabitants of Ferengi Yaborov, or gypsies come here to winter it
out. They'd been coming since time immemorial, apparently, for 'the old devil' who was Boyar here
was good to them and turned none away. Indeed, in times of hardship he'd even been known to
supply his wandering occasional tenants with food from his own larder and wine from his cellars.


Thibor, asking about food and drink for himself and the others, was shown a house of timbers
set in a stand of pines. It was an inn of sorts, with tiny rooms up in the rafters which could only be
reached by rope ladders; the ladders were drawn up when the boarder wished to sleep. Down
below there were wooden tables and stools, and at one end of the large room a bar stocked with
small kegs of plum brandy and buckets of sweet ale. One wall was built half of stone, where burned
a fire in the base of a huge chimney. On the fire was an iron pot of goulash giving out a heavy
paprika reek. Onions dangled in bunches from nails in the wall close to the fire; likewise huge
coarse-skinned sausages; black bread stood in loaves on the tables, baked in a stone oven to one
side of the fire.


A man, his wife and one scruffy son ran the place; gypsies, Thibor guessed, who'd chosen to
settle here. They could have done better, he thought, feeling cold in the shadows of the looming
rocks, the mountains whose presence could be felt even indoors. It was a gloomy place this,
frowning and foreboding.


The Wallach had told his men to speak to no one, but as they put away their gear, ate and
drank, spoke in muffled tones to each other, he himself shared a jug of brandy with his host. 'Who
are you?' that gnarled old man asked him.


'Do you ask what I have been and where I have been?' Thibor answered. 'That's easier to tell
than who I am.'


'Tell it then, if you feel like talking.'


Thibor smiled and sipped brandy. 'I was a young boy under the Carpatii. My father was an
Ungar who wandered into the borders of the southern steppe to farm - him and his brothers and kin
and their families. I'll be brief: came the Pechenegi, all was uprooted, our settlement destroyed.
Since then I've wandered, fought the barbarian for payment and what little I could find on his body,
done what I could where and whenever. Now I'll be a trapper. I've seen the mountains, the steppe,
the forests. Farming's a hard life and blood-letting makes a man bitter. But in the towns and cities
there's money to be had from furs. You've roamed a bit yourself, I'll vow?'