The Waster of Men: The Sword of Saint Georgas Book 4

By Robert Davis

War attracts vampires like flies to a fresh carcass, and vampire-hunter Anders Draculescu is never far behind them.

A civil war has erupted in Corvinia and rebel forces have laid siege to the fortified city of Gradopol. For Draculescu, the reasons for the conflict are none of his business, but for his young apprentice, Stefan, the war is much more personal. An old friend has enlisted in the rebel army and wants Stefan to join the cause.

But Gradopol hides a terrible secret: wrapped in chains and imprisoned deep within the city’s vaults is a master-vampire too powerful to kill.

The vampires have been drawn to Corvinia by more than just the scent of fresh blood; they have come to release their ancient master from his prison, but if Draculescu is to stop them, he must first survive the horrors of the siege and the bloody crucible of the Forlorn Hope

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Davis
• Release date: Oct 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005096427

Robert Davis

Robert lives in Hermiston Oregon with his wife and two dogs. While driving truck for a local farming company many thoughts would stream through his mind until he decided to write them down. Using his cell phone he texted hundreds of poems with sunrise and local scenery pictures to his wife and friends. The practice continued until it was suggested he put them into a book. The cell phone camera proved unreliable to reproduction but the poems became a lifeline to many as he was impressed to write the simply events of daily living in a small farming community.

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The Waster of Men

The Sword of St Georgas: Book 4

by Robert Davis

This Smashwords edition: Copyright © Robert Davis 2022.

All rights reserved.

Originally published as The Prison of the Undying Warlord in Vampires of Carpathia by Swordworks. Copyright © Robert Davis 2012.

The right of Robert Davis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, countries, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual entities, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Chapter 1 – The Siege of Gradopol

The town of Karlovec was burning and the flames illuminated the sky in shades as red as blood. Thick, acrid smoke blotted out the moon and stars, and glowing embers drifted like snowflakes on the breeze. Cannons thundered and the streets echoed with the crackle of gunfire and the clashing of sabers. Men shouted and screamed, and the gutters ran with blood.

On the western side of town, a long line of refugees fled from their homes, their possessions crammed into handcarts or borne upon their shoulders. Children clung to their parents with tears streaming down their soot-covered cheeks, and everywhere there was the sound of crying and wailing.

Alongside this procession of human misery strode two men who were not like the rest. One was a giant who stood nearly a head taller than every other man he passed. His shoulders were as broad as an ox, and he bore an image of the cruciform Sword of Saint Georgas tattooed upon his thick-skulled brow. A small arsenal of knives, daggers and wooden stakes hung on bandoleers across his chest, and there was a crossbow on his back and a sawn-off shotgun at his hip.

His companion was younger than him by maybe ten years and was smaller in build, though stocky and muscular nonetheless. He was handsome and his clothes bore a finery that suggested he was a man of money. Like the taller man, he was heavily armed and carried an axe in a sheath on his back, as well as a long spear that he carried in his hands with a lantern hooked upon its blade so as to light his way.

Their warlike appearance ensured that nobody challenged them, but neither man belonged to the armies that were fighting in the town. Some of the folk they passed made the sign of the cross or whispered hopeful prayers, but most simply lowered their gaze and pretended not to see them. It had been over three-hundred years since The Thousand Nights War, and vampire-hunters were rarely seen in Corvinia nowadays.

‘Are the Reformists winning, do you think?’ the younger of the two asked his companion, glancing over his shoulder at the burning town.

‘I don’t care.’ Anders Draculescu answered. ‘It’s not our war.’

It was none of his concern that the land of Corvinia had fallen into civil war. It was not his country, and it was far enough from his homeland that the consequences of the uprising were unlikely to affect him. He had come only to hunt vampires, for conflicts such as this tended to bring them crawling from out of the dark corners in which they had hidden themselves for hundreds of years, to come and prey upon the weak, the wounded and the lost.

By the light of the burning town, he scoured among the refugees. He had spent long enough hunting vampires that his eyes had adapted to the night, and he saw as clearly as if it were day. Up ahead, by the side of the road, unnoticed or simply ignored by the hundreds of people who walked past, a humanoid figure crouched over a body and gnawed at its chest with his teeth. The victim’s belongings lay scattered all around him, where they had been dropped when the vampire had snatched him from out of the crowd.

Draculescu raised his crossbow and took aim. His was a custom-made weapon and it was able to fire two bolts from its twin prods, either separately or both at the same time. He gently squeezed the trigger to the first of its two settings and a single bolt shot through the night and hit the vampire in the shoulder, making it howl with rage. Draculescu had missed its heart, however, and the wound had done it no serious harm.

Angered that somebody had the temerity to interrupt it, the vampire sought out Draculescu with its blazing eyes. Many vampires could mesmerize their prey by making eye-contact, and it was precisely to defend against such a thing that Draculescu had tattooed the Sword of Saint Georgas upon his brow. In trying to meet his eyes, the vampire could not fail to look upon the cruciform image and was compelled to avert its gaze.

Draculescu squeezed his crossbow’s trigger further back, depressing it to its second setting, and the next bolt shot from the prods. This time his aim was true, and the bolt pierced the vampire’s heart and knocked it to the ground with a shriek.

‘Did you get it?’ his younger companion asked. Stefan Balaneanu had been Draculescu’s apprentice for a little under a year and his night-vision was not as developed as his mentor’s. By the light of his lantern, he had only seen a vague glimpse of what had happened.

‘If I’d missed, you’d know about it by now.’ Draculescu