The Vampire Armand - Anne Rice [106]
His cheeks though thinner were still rosy, but there were hollows beneath the bones, and there were streaks of gray, most prominent in his mustache and long beard. It seemed to me that some of the hair of his temples was gone, and that his fine smooth brow was steeper, but this may have been an illusion. The flesh all around his eyes was tender-looking and dark. His hands, clutched together beneath the cloak, were not visible to me, but I could see that he was still strong, of powerful build, and his love of drink had not destroyed him yet.
I had a disturbing sense of his vitality suddenly; I could smell the blood of him and the life of him, as though of a possible victim stumbling across my path. I put all this away from my mind and stared at him, loving him and thinking only that I was so glad that he was alive! He had come out of the wild grasses. He had escaped that party of raiders, who had seemed then the very heralds of death itself.
I pulled up a stool so that I might sit quietly beside my Father, studying his face.
I had not put on my left glove.
I laid my cold hand now on his forehead, lightly, not wanting to take liberties, and slowly he opened his eyes. They were murky yet still beautifully bright, despite the broken blood vessels and the wetness, and he looked at me softly and wordlessly for a while, as if he had no cause to move, as if I were a vision near to his dreams.
I felt the hood fall back from my head and I did nothing to stop it. I couldn’t see what he saw, but I knew what it was—his son, with a cleanshaven face, such as his son had had when this man knew him, and long loose auburn hair in snow-dusted waves.
Beyond, their bodies mere bulky outlines against the huge blaze of the fire, the others sang or talked. And the wine flowed.
Nothing came between me and this moment, between me and this man who had tried hard to bring down the Tatars, who had sent one arrow after another sailing at his enemies, even as their arrows rained down upon him in vain.
“They never wounded you,” I whispered. “I love you and only now do I know how strong you were.” Was my voice even audible?
He blinked as he looked at me, and then I saw his tongue roll out along his lips. His lips were bright, like coral, shining through the heavy red fringe of mustache and beard.
“They wounded me,” he said in a low voice, small but not weak. “They got me, twice they got me, in the shoulder and in the arm. But they didn’t kill me, and they didn’t let go of Andrei. I fell off my horse. I got up. They never got me in the legs. I ran after them. I ran and ran and I kept shooting. I had a cursed arrow sticking right out of my right shoulder here.”
His hand appeared from beneath the fur and he placed it up on the dark curve of his right shoulder.
“I kept shooting. I didn’t even feel it. I saw them ride away. They took him. I don’t even know if he was alive. I don’t know. Would they have bothered to take him if they had shot him? There were arrows everywhere. The sky rained arrows! There must have been fifty of them. They killed every other man! I told the others, You have to keep shooting, don’t stop even for an instant, don’t cower, shoot and shoot and shoot, and when you have no more arrows, bring up your sword and go for them, ride straight into them, get down, get down close to your horse’s head and ride into them. Well, maybe they did. I don’t know.”
He lowered his lids. He glanced around. He wanted to get up, and then he looked at me.
“Give me something to drink. Buy me something decent. The man has Spanish sack. Get me some of that, a bottle of sack. Hell, in the old days, I laid in wait for the traders out there in the river, and I never had to buy anything from any man. Get me a bottle of sack. I can see you’re rich.”
“Do you know who I am?” I asked.
He looked at me in plain confusion. This hadn’t even occurred to him, this question.
“You come from the castle. You speak with the