Vampire Mountain. Darren Shan

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      CHAPTER THREE

      I WOKE shortly before nightfall, stretched the stiffness out of my bones – what I wouldn’t have given for a bed or hammock! – then left the confines of the cave to study the barren land we were journeying through. I didn’t get much chance to study the countryside while we travelled at night. It was only during quiet moments such as these that I could pause and take everything in.

      We hadn’t hit the snowlands yet, but already we’d left most of civilization behind. Humans were few and far between out here where the ground was rocky and forbidding. Even animals were scarce, though some were strong enough to eke out a living — mostly deer, wolves and bears.

      We’d been travelling for weeks, maybe a month — I lost track of time after the first handful of nights. Whenever I asked Mr Crepsley how many kilometres were left, he’d smile and say, “We are some way off yet.”

      My feet cut up badly when we reached the hard ground. Mr Crepsley applied the sap of herbal plants that he found along the way to my soles, carried me for a few nights while my skin grew back (I healed quicker than a human would), and I’d been OK since.

      I said one night that it was a pity the Little People were with us, or he could have carried me on his back and flitted. (Vampires are able to run at an extra-fast speed, a magic kind of running, where they slip through space like eels through a net. They call it ‘flitting’.) He said our slow pace had nothing to do with the Little People. “Flitting is not permitted on the way to Vampire Mountain,” he explained. “The journey is a way of weeding out the weak from the strong. Vampires are ruthless in certain aspects. We do not believe in supporting those who are incapable of supporting themselves.”

      “That’s not very nice,” I observed. “What about somebody who’s old or injured?”

      Mr Crepsley shrugged. “Either they do not attempt the journey, or they die trying.”

      “That’s stupid,” I said. “If I could flit, I would. No one would know.”

      The vampire sighed. “You still do not understand our ways,” he said. “There is no nobility in pulling the wool over the eyes of one’s comrades. We are proud beings, Darren, who live by exacting codes. From our point of view it is better to lose one’s life than lose one’s pride.”

      Mr Crepsley often spoke about pride and nobility and being true to oneself. Vampires were a stern lot, he said, who lived as close to nature as they could. Their lives were rarely easy, and that was the way they liked it — “Life is a challenge,” he once told me, “and only those who rise to the challenge truly know what it means to live.”

      I’d grown accustomed to the Little People, who trailed along behind us at night, silent, aloof, precise. They hunted for their own food during the day, while we slept. By the time we woke, they’d eaten and grabbed a few hours sleep and were ready to go. Their pace never changed. They marched behind us like robots, a few metres to the rear. I thought the one with the limp might struggle, but he’d yet to show signs that he was feeling any strain.

      Mr Crepsley and me fed mostly on deer. Their blood was hot, salty and good. We had bottles of human blood to keep us going – vampires need regular doses of human blood to remain healthy, and though they prefer to drink directly from the vein, they can bottle blood and store it – but we drank from them sparingly, saving them in case of an emergency.

      Mr Crepsley wouldn’t let me light a fire in the open – it might attract attention – but it was allowed in way-stations. Way-stations were caves or underground caverns where bottles of human blood and coffins were stored. They were resting places, where vampires could hole up for a day or two. There weren’t many of them – it took about a week to make it from one to another – and some had been taken over or destroyed by animals since Mr Crepsley had last come this way.

      “How come they allow way-stations but no shoes or ropes?” I asked one day as we warmed our feet by a fire and tucked into roast venison (we ate it raw most of the time).

      “The way-stations were introduced after our war with the vampaneze seven hundred years ago,” he said. “We lost many of our clan in the fight with the vampaneze, and humans killed even more of us. Our numbers were dangerously low. The way-stations were set up to make it easier to get to Vampire Mountain. Some vampires object to them and never use them, but most accept them.”

      “How many vampires are there?” I asked.

      “Between two and three thousand,” he answered. “Maybe a few hundred more or less.”

      I whistled. “That’s a lot!”

      “Three thousand is nothing,” he snorted. “Think about the billions of humans.”

      “It’s more than I expected,” I said.

      “Once, we numbered more than a hundred thousand,” Mr Crepsley said. “And this was long ago, when that was a huge amount.”

      “What happened to them?” I asked.

      “They were killed,” he sighed. “Humans with stakes; disease; fights — vampires love to fight. In the centuries before the vampaneze broke away and provided us with a real СКАЧАТЬ