The Court of the Midnight King: A Dream of Richard III (61 page)
Read The Court of the Midnight King: A Dream of Richard III Online
Authors: Freda Warrington
Kristian was gone, but his threat hung like gun-smoke in the air. Karl began to feel cold. The noise of battle seemed muffled, but the voices of the dying were as clear as bugles calling him.
He had to stay. A painful decision, dangerous – but the only one he could make. To heed the threat was to let Kristian win.
There is no God here. No revelations to explain any of this, he thought. Science, then? What might that tell a vampire, who by the laws of nature should not exist?
One voice in particular drew him; a German crying pitifully, “Mutti... Mutti, hilf mir...”
He went towards the sound. A strange mist was drifting across the battlefield, like a vampire of another kind, sucking the last warmth from the dead. It crept down into the shell-hole where the young English soldier lay drained of life. Not the first of the wounded to whom the vampire had brought swift oblivion, nor the last.
This night would be endless.
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The Court of the Midnight King
Prelude: Bosworth, 1485. “The truth that none dares utter.”
Chapter Three. 1468–1469: Richard
Chapter Eight. 1477: Ankarette
Chapter Ten. 1477-1478: George
Chapter Eleven. 1478-1483: Edward
Chapter Fifteen. 1483-1484: Harry
Chapter Nineteen. 1485: Plantagenet
Chapter Twenty-one. 1485: Muse
Sample Chapter of A Taste of Blood Wine