The Devil's Eyrie: The Sword of Saint Georgas Book 1

By Robert Davis

Anders Draculescu – the last Sword of Saint Georgas – arrives at a remote village in search of his nemesis: a master-vampire who commands a deadly flock of man-eating bats.

Before he can confront the vampire, Draculescu must first scale the towering mountain atop which it has made his lair, and brave the guardians who watch over it while it sleeps.

If he should fail, it is not just his own life that he risks – but that of every man, woman and child in the village.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Davis
• Release date: Oct 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005419677

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 Devil’s Eyrie

The Sword of St Georgas: Book 1

by Robert Davis

This Smashwords edition: Copyright © Robert Davis 2022.

All rights reserved.

Originally published by Swordworks as Curse of the Winged Terror. Copyright © Robert Davis 2011.

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 Cost of Defiance

A gibbous moon hung above the town of Buceava, casting its silvery light across the shingled rooftops. The clock tower had long struck curfew and all was quiet save for the gentle rustling of the wind as it blew through the narrow, winding streets and alleyways, bringing with it the distant chill of the snow-capped Carpathian Mountains.

On top a hill in the middle of the town stood a fearsome black-walled citadel, where three men stood watch upon a lonely tower. Two of them were members of the local constabulary and they were bored and sleepy. The other was a brooding giant of a man who towered over his companions by a clear head and was broader in the chest than both of them put together. His arms were thicker than a woman’s waist and his broad, trunk-like neck supported a head that was like a boxer’s callused knuckle. Upon his brow the cruciform image of a Saint Georgas Sword had been tattooed in plain black ink, extending from the top of his nose to the tip of his forehead. His eyes peered sharply into the night as if the moonlight were as bright as day.

‘Perhaps it won’t come tonight,’ one of the constables muttered.

‘Be quiet!’ the larger man hissed.

He pointed into the sky and the constable who had spoken gasped in alarm. Across the town, a flock of bats had begun to gather. They came from the hills and the forests and circled overhead like a living cyclone.

‘There must be thousands of them!’ the constable exclaimed.

‘I said, be quiet!’ the larger man snapped again. He looked anxiously to the house on the far side of the piata, whose occupants he had sworn to protect. Behind the shuttered windows, a young girl lay sleeping. At his insistence, she had taken away the wild roses that hung above her bedside and removed the cloves of garlic that she wore around her neck. She had knowingly put aside her defenses and agreed to act as bait so that Anders Draculescu could destroy the fiend that had been attacking her.

Mindful of the responsibility that rested upon his shoulders, the big man solemnly reached for the weapon that lay wrapped in a tarpaulin by his feet. Draculescu had found it in the citadel’s armory, where it had been stored since the days of the Turkish invasions some 300 years ago. It was a big siege crossbow about the size of a fully grown man, and it was so powerful that its string could only be drawn with the aid of a winch.

Draculescu loaded it with a harpoon that had been cast by the town’s blacksmith earlier that morning. Its head was viciously barbed and it trailed a long cable that was joined to a windlass beside the two constables.

The three men waited tensely, looking up at the swirling cloud of bats that filled the sky. Presently, Draculescu spied a larger figure break away from the central mass. It was man-sized and descended towards the rooftops like a bundle of rags borne on a strong breeze. Amorphous in appearance, it landed