Изменить стиль (Регистрация необходима)
Закрыть

'And this is just a very tasteless display,' she said.

'She doesn't act like a vampire,' said a man. 'She doesn't look like one. And she did fight the others.'

' We saw that one bite her!' said a woman.

'Bad aim in poor light,' said Agnes, knowing that it wasn't. There was a hunger welling up. It was not like the black urge she'd felt in the dark, but sharp and urgent all the same. She had to give in to it.

'I'd kill for a cup of tea,' she added.

That seemed to clinch it. Tea wasn't the liquid usually associated with vampires.

'And for goodness' sake let me shake some of these poppyseeds out,' she went on, adjusting her bosom. 'I feel like a wholemeal loaf.'

They moved aside as she swung her legs off the table, which now meant that she could see the vampire lying on the floor. She nearly thought of it as the other vampire.

It was a man wearing a long frock coat and a fancy waistcoat, both covered in mud and blood; there was a stake through his heart. Further identification, though, would have to await finding where they'd put his head.

'I see you got one, then,' she said, trying not to, be sick.

'Got two,' said the man with the hammer. 'Set fire to the other one. They killed the mayor and Mr Vlack.'

'You mean the rest got away?' said Agnes.

'Yes. They're still strong but they can't fly much.'

Agnes indicated the headless vampire. 'Er... is that one Vlad?' she said.

'Which one was he?'

'The one that... bit me. Tried to bite me,' she corrected herself.

'We can check. Piotr, show her the head.'

A young man obediently went to the fireplace, pulled on a glove, lifted the lid of a big saucepan and held up a head by its hair.

'That's not Vlad,' said Agnes, swallowing. No, said Perdita, Vlad was taller.

'They'll be heading back to their castle,' said Piotr. 'On foot! You should see them trying to fly! It's like watching chickens panicking.'

'The castle...'said Agnes.

'They'll have to make it before cock-crow,' said Piotr, with some satisfaction. 'And they can't cut through the woods, 'cos of the werewolves.'

'What? I thought werewolves and vampires would get along fine,' said Agnes.

'Oh, maybe it looks like that,' said Piotr. 'But they're watching one another all the time to see who's going to be the first to blink.' He looked around the room. 'We don't mind the werewolves,' he went on, to general agreement. 'They leave us alone most of the time because we don't run fast enough to be interesting.'

He looked Agnes up and down.

'What was it you did to the vampires?' he said.

'Me? I didn't do- I don't know,' said Agnes.

'They couldn't even bite us properly.'

'And they were squabbling like kids when they left,' said the man with the mallet.

'You've got a pointy hat,' said Piotr. 'Did you put a spell on them?'

'I- I don't know. I really don't.' And then natural honesty met witchcraft. One aspect of witchcraft is the craftiness, and it's seldom unwise to take the credit for unexplained but fortuitous events. 'I may have done,' she added.

'Well, we're going after them,' said Piotr.

'Won't they have got well away?'

'We can cut through the woods.'

Blood tinted the rain that ran off the wound on Jason Ogg's shoulder. He dabbed at it with a cloth.

'Reckon I'll be hammerin' left-handed for a week or two,' he said, wincing.

'They got very good fields of fire,' said Shawn, who had taken refuge behind the beer barrel used so recently to wet the baby's head. 'I mean, it's a castle. A frontal attack simply won't work.'

He sighed, and shielded his guttering candle to keep the wind from blowing it out. They'd tried a frontal attack nevertheless, and the only reason no one had been killed was that the drink seemed to be flowing freely within the keep. As it was, one or two people would be limping for a while. Then they'd tried what Jason persisted in referring to as a backal attack, but there were arrow slots even over the kitchens. One man creeping up to the walls very slowly — a sidle attack, as Shawn had thought of it — had worked, but since all the doors were very solidly barred this had just meant that he'd stood there feeling like a fool.

He was trying to find some help in the ancient military journals of General Tacticus, whose intelligent campaigning had been so successful that he'd lent his very name to the detailed prosecution of martial endeavour, and had actually found a section headed What to Do If One Army Occupies a Well-fortified and Superior Ground and the Other Does Not, but since the first sentence read 'Endeavour to be the one inside' he'd rather lost heart.

The rest of the Lancre militia cowered behind buttresses and upturned carts, waiting for him to lead them.

There was a respectful clang as Big Jim Beef, who was acting as cover for two other part-time soldiers, saluted his commander.

'I reckon,' he ventured, 'dat if we got big fires goin' in frun' of the doors we could smoke dem out.'

'Good idea,' said Jason.

'That's the King's door,' Shawn protested. 'He's already been a bit sharp with me for not cleaning the privy pit this week-'

'He can send Mum the bill.'

'That's seditious talk, Jason! I could have you arr- I could arr- Mum would have something to say about you talking like that!'

'Where is the King, anyway?' said Darren Ogg. 'Sittin' back and lettin' Mum sort everything out while we get shot at?'

'You know he's got a weak chest,' said Shawn. 'He does very well considering he-'

He stopped as a sound rolled out across the countryside. It had a hoarse, primal quality, the sound of an animal who is in pain but also intends to pass it on as soon as possible. The men looked around nervously.

Verence came thundering through the gates.

Shawn recognized him only by the embroidery on his nightshirt and his fluffy slippers. He held a long sword over his head in both hands and was running straight for the door of the keep, trailing a scream behind him.

The sword struck the wood. Shawn heard the whole door shudder.

'He's gone mad!' shouted Darren. 'Let's grab the poor creature before he gets shot!'

A couple of them scurried across to the struggling King, who was standing horizontally on the door in an effort to get the sword out.

'Now, see here, your maj- Aargh!'

'Ach, tak a faceful o'heid!'

Darren staggered back, clutching at his face.

Little shapes swarmed across the courtyard after the King, like some kind of plague.

'Gibbins!'

'Fackle!'

'Nac mac Feegle!'

There was another scream as Jason, trying to restrain his monarch's enthusiasm, found that while the touch of a monarch may indeed cure certain scalp conditions, the scalp of a king itself is capable of spreading someone's nose into an interesting flat shape.

Arrows thudded into the ground around them.

Shawn grabbed Big Jim. 'They're all going to get shot, drink or not!' he shouted above the din. 'You come with me!'

'What we gonna do?'

'Clean the privies!'

The troll scuttled after him as he edged his way around the keep, to where the Gong Tower loomed against the night in all its odoriferous splendour. It was the bane of Shawn's life. All the keep's garderobes discharged into it. One of his jobs was to clean it out and take the contents to the pits in the gardens where Verence's efforts at composting were gradually turning them into, well, Lancre.[13] But now that the castle was a lot busier than it used to be his weekly efforts with shovel and wheelbarrow weren't the peaceful and solitary interludes they had been. Of course he'd let the job sort of... pile up these last few weeks, but did they expect him to do everything?

He waved Big Jim towards the door at the bottom of the tower. Fortunately, trolls have not much interest in organic odours, although they can easily distinguish types of limestone by smell.

59
{"b":"88961","o":1}
Для правильной работы Литмира используйте только последние версии браузеров: Opera, Firefox, Chrome
В других браузерах работа Литмира не гарантируется!
Ваша дата определена как 25 февраля 2014, 13:42
ТехнологииПопросить модератораПравила сайта и форума
Рейтинг@Mail.ru server monitor