That is for the warm ones. Now there is — or there was — only lust. When my master and his lieutenants hunted among the so-called 'free' tribes of Sunside, oh, then there was lust! Ahhhhhhh!
'But please forgive me my meandering mind. For I see that you do not wish to know that…
'As for this young girl whom I may or may not have loved, more anon. Let it suffice for now to say that she was my downfall. The first of them, anyway…
'Now understand, Malinari was not greedy — at least, not when the Wamphyri were at peace with one another and no bloodwar was raging — but he was ever choosy. His tithesmen, lieutenants all, knew that he wanted only the best out of Sunside. No curdled honey, bitter plums or scrawny beasts for Malinari, and no snaggle-tooth boys or bow-legged girls, either. And my father was always hard put to fix a 'fair' tithe. He might on rare occasion slip in a barrel of less-than-best plum brandy, a crippled shad or a brace or two of game left hanging just a day or so too long, but never anything outrageously offensive. And he was the same in his dealings with human flesh.
'Loners, if they saw our campfires in the night and came down from the barrier mountains to warm themselves, were ever welcomed. They would be given food and drink — aye, and a lot of the latter — before being tapped on the head and laid aside for the tithe. And if the cart or caravan of some lone traveller's family group should happen onto Vadastra territory, well, that was reckoned a bonus. For then fewer of our own would be needed for the list.
'We were some three hundred and eighty. The number rarely rose by more than a dozen or so, and when it did was as readily reduced. In any given year, perhaps fifty babies would be born; with any luck half would grow to adults while the rest would be borne away into Starside. My lord Nephran Malinari… was reputed to have a sweet tooth for basted infants.
'But I must not jump ahead of myself, for at that time he was not my Lord as such. Or rather, I was not as yet in thrall to him.
'Where was I? Ah, yes: the tithe:
'Married men who sired no children for a year or two were wont to find themselves shortlisted. And as for women who were barren: their future, or lack of such, was guaranteed. Likewise any troublemakers, of course. Thus the tribe maintained itself, barely, and the tithe saw to it that we were never too large or too small. Once in a three-month Malinari's tithesmen would come on their flyers over the mountains from Starside, and now and then the master himself would accompany them on their visits.
'And now to this girl, whom I may even have loved.
'My father kept her back from the tithe, for me. Alas that he had crossed so many of his own people, who suspected that he was biased in certain of his duties — in the quarterly drawing of the tithe-markers, for instance — and there were plenty who would have paid him back, who would like to have seen his loved ones on the list. Or rather his loved one, this selfsame Korath, whose poor mother had died giving birth to him.
'But the girl Nadia… she and her mother were gatherers, as were most of our women, and both of them were among the comeliest of Vadastra females. Nadia's father had been a talented hunter, until nine months agone when his marker came up in the draw. That had been that, if not quite as easy as that.
'For he was young and strong as a bull shad; he had to be knocked down, bound in all his limbs, and even gagged before he would be still! And because of accusations he'd made concerning my father — the way Dinu had looked at his wife — there might be some who suspected that their chief had 'fixed' certain matters in his own favour. Make of that what you will, but I won't deny that from then on Nadia's mother was Dinu's… or should I simply say that she submitted to Dinu, and leave it at that? But his? His property? His obedient woman? Ah, wait and see…
'The fact was that Melana Zetra had loved her husband, and when she was over the horror of his being taken in the tithe — and when she was close to my father, and after she had covertly investigated the way he worked the list — then she made up her mind to act. I cannot state Melana's reasons for doing what she next did; perhaps it was madness brought on by grief, but if so she had hidden her condition extremely well. Or then again, she may have been crazy like a fox and simply biding her time.
'My best theory is that she would be with her husband Banos again, regardless of the conditions, and had determined to sacrifice herself to that end. Banos had been taken by Malinari of the Wamphyri; now Melana would be taken also. But along the way she would settle a few old scores. The Szgany can be devious in their own right, and I cannot help but wonder if that is where the Wamphyri get it: is it perhaps in the blood? For the blood is the life, after all.
'But if this secretly incensed or maddened Melana would be with her husband in Starside, why not make it a family affair? What of her daughter, Nadia? Would she be safe on her own with the Szgany Vadastra, or better off in Starside with her mother and father? Being comely, it was unlikely she'd be fodder; why, given time she might even become a Lady! Could it be any worse to be undead with the Wamphyri than to live under the constant threat of being stolen away or eaten by the Wamphyri? And what of an informer? Might not he, or she — as a supplicant in the fullest, truest meaning of the word — gain favour in the red-litten lamps of their eyes? I suspect it was a mixture of all of these imponderables that motivated the maddened or scheming Melana to do what she did next.
'The time of the tithe was at hand, and Dinu Vadastra had calculated correctly that Malinari would come with his lieutenant tithesmen out of Starside. It had been some time since The Mind himself had deigned to venture forth from Malstack across the barrier mountains into the velvet of Sunside's night.
'The skies were clear and the moon tumbling on high; all the familiar constellations were twinkling in the smoke of our signal fires, while low over the barrier mountains the star of ill-omen — the Northstar, which lights the aeries of the Wamphyri — bathed the peaks with its silvery-blue ice-chip gleaming. A fine night, aye, for some…
'… As it might have been for me had it not been for my now barely-remembered love of Nadia Zetra. Still, I cannot blame her, for I am sure that Nadia knew nothing of her mother's plan. If she had… it's more than likely we would have fled from our fate, becoming loners; or we might have journeyed west and joined up with some band of true Travellers in their constant evasion of the Wamphyri; or perhaps we would have been happy simply to be free a while, together she and I, and let the future take care of itself. Oh, a great many possibilities, if Nadia had known.
'As for my father: if he had so much as suspected… then Melana's life were forfeit long before the first of Malinari's flyers touched down on Vadastra soil. But of course none of us knew, except Melana herself.
'And so to the preparations.
'All was in order. As the dusk settled in, Dinu had called for the tributes (in fact the ransom, for the life of the clan Vadastra) to be displayed on trestle tables to one side of the clearing, where he had tallied them as was his wont. Six barrels of oil, six of white wine and six of red; six of good plum brandy (and all of it ^oo^ plum brandy, mind, because Malinari was coming) and six more of wild honey. A pair of young bull shads, freshly butchered, fifteen brace of pigeon, and five of wild boar; and a very special prize indeed: a live, caged wolf of the wild, a bitch at that, and pregnant to boot! The Wamphyri are especially fond of wolf cubs basted in their mother's milk, and of heart-of-wolf and wolf meat generally, which they swear by as an aphrodisiac and positive aid to their longevity. As if they needed such!
'And meanwhile Dinu's specially chosen squad of bully boys was out and about, to ensure that certain other tributes — of the human variety — were not fled. For while the tithe-markers were already drawn, the unfortunate parties had not been named for fear that they would make off into the night. Thus, as the time drew nigh, the wailing of mothers and daughters, the curses of 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
