Not so simple after all, for she ran off! Angered beyond reason, and despite the pleas of his son, her tribal leader put her on the tithe list. If she wouldn't go to his son, then let her go to the vampires.

She lived wild in the hills awhile and managed to avoid the first tithe. Like her father before her, she was opposed in every way to vampire supplication and believed they should be fought, destroyed, even followed Starside of the mountains and put down in their manses. Madness! For at sunup, warriors were let out to roam on the floor of the gulleys and ravines of Turgosheim, to keep the Wamphyri safe from attack through their most vulnerable hours. And anyway, how may you kill men who are already dead?

Well, there were ways, but on the few occasions they had been tried - when lieutenants and lesser Lords had come over the mountains at sundown to collect the tithe, been ambushed, dealt with - Wamphyri retribution had always been swift and merciless. The last of these 'risings', which had taken place some forty years ago, was still told of around the campfires; but the heroic insurgents in question, and their tribe to its last member, were no more. The story itself was still the ultimate deterrent.

In any case, Wratha was captured, kept prisoner, tormented and threatened (but never harmed physically, neither marked nor sullied, for that was not the sort of tribute one paid to the Wamphyri), and finally handed over at tithe-time to collector lieutenants on their tithe routes through the tribal territories. But somehow, during her captivity, she had managed to obtain and conceal a small amount of kneblasch oil and a packet of silver filings upon her person ...

At that time and to the present day it was the practice of the collectors to march most of the tithelings back to Turgosheim. Special cases (beautiful girls, strapping youths, clever musicians and men skilled in the working of metals) went on the backs of flyers. In this way they were spared any small ravages which might occur en route, so ensuring their pristine presentation. Wratha's hands were loosely bound; she was strapped into the long saddle behind the pilot-lieutenant of a flyer; at the last moment the leader's son came to sneer, and tossed up to her a small bag of belongings.

On their way back to Turgosheim, she got her hands loose and began to stroke her captor's back, and to whisper sensual suggestions in his ear. He was an aspirant but in no way Wamphyri; once a Sunsider himself, he found this beautiful Szgany girl's attempt at his seduction pleasing; he made no objection to Wratha's stroking and her fondly beguiling words .. and all the while she worked kneblasch oil into his broad back, and now and then fingered the handle of the ironwood knife which she'd discovered in the bag given to her by the man she'd spurned.

The pilot lieutenant's blood was infected with vampirism, of course; he was in thrall to the Wamphyri generally, and to his own patron Lord especially. And this was the source of his downfall: his own tainted blood, which made possible Wratha's poisoning of his system. She worked the kneblasch deep into his spine, his back and shoulders, until he grew at first fatigued, then ill where he began to rock in the saddle. The tree-line was below them and the dark peaks beckoned, but his hands trembled on the reins and his body was clammy with the sweat of fever.

'You are sick!' Wratha told him, feigning concern. Take us down before we crash, and let me care for you until you're well again.'

Gripped by this dread lethargy, he began to do as Wratha suggested, settling his flyer down towards the trees. But deep within he suspected that she was the source of his discomfort, and instead of landing squared his shoulders to fight off whatever it was that sickened him. Which was when Wratha used her knife, driving it into his back to the hilt. In fact the knife had been given to her as an instrument of mercy, so that she could take her own life. But that wasn't her way. Indeed, life had never been so dear to her.

She wrenched the ironwood blade this way and that in the lieutenant's back, until he cried out and his spine arched in agony. Then, as he slumped sideways in the saddle, Wratha toppled him into space. He crashed down in the pines, and a moment later his flyer followed suit. Unhurt, Wratha jumped free and went to look for him where she'd seen him fall. She found him under the canopy of the trees, groaning and badly broken, and hurled dust of silver in his face until he breathed it in. And as he coughed and choked, so she stabbed him again and again: in the eyes to blind him, then in the heart to make an end of it. And finally she set about dismembering him.

But in the twilight hours before sunup, the light of her fire was seen by a late patrol out of Turgosheim. Suspicious riders came winging to investigate - and discovered Wratha burning the lieutenant's pieces!

She was retaken - this time knocked unconscious -and so at last was brought in with the other tithelings. Except of course where they were innocent, she was guilty of this 'heinous' crime against the Starside Lords, and naturally her life was forfeit. No question of what should become of her, or to whom should go the task of execution. For her thrall victim had a brother, also a lieutenant...

The other tithelings were assigned, but Wratha was handed over to Radu Cragsthrall, to do with as he wished, so long as his final act was to kill her. Radu was the brother of Lathor, the lieutenant she had killed. But he was also thrall-in-chief to Karl the Crag, and dwelled in Cragspire. Karl was a rock of a man, Wamphyri through and through, but of all that a capricious Nature had given him in physical strength, she had taken back in wits. In short, he was a dullard.

And Radu paraded Wratha proud and naked before his Lord Karl, listing all the many things he would do to her, before she paid the ultimate price; which list was long and detailed. At first Karl applauded his chief lieutenant, but Wratha had caught his eye and was not cowed by Radu's threats. Hers was a stunning beauty, with hair blacker than night and eyes to match, legs long as sundown, pointy breasts, and a behind firm as an apple. And her mouth was a special delight: shaped like a crossbow's wings, pouting, and fitted with a soft dart of a tongue whose sting ... Karl might not find displeasing. A dark Gypsy jewel, she tilted her breasts at him, so that he lusted after her.

Radu saw the girl's ploy, ceased numbering his intended torments, knocked her to her knees. She cried out and fell against Karl where he sat, and hugged his legs to her breasts. And as she begged his protection, so Radu rushed upon her. But the Lord Karl of Cragspire held up a hand ... simply that, but more than enough. Which was when Radu, stalled, had made what could so easily have been a fatal error. 'She is mine!' he had snarled. 'She was given to me!'

'Aye,' Karl nodded his great head. 'Just as you are mine, given to me. But with the heat of your words -this which you would do to her, and that which you will do - you have set my juices working, and I would try her first. So tell me: do you make objection?' And all the while Wratha hugging his thighs, saying:

'Save me, Lord! Save me! I killed his brother because he would have taken me, to which end he landed his flyer in the hills. But am I to be given to mere thralls, while even the greatest of Wamphyri Lords goes wanting?'

Radu calmed down. Blood was in his Lord's eye and a dab of spittle at the corner of his mouth. True, Karl was a great fool and easy to handle when he was at peace with the world, but when his mood was sour ... then the vampire in him took over. No sensible idea to turn him sour now. And so he said: 'Do I make objection? No, of course not, Lord - except that she is unworthy! But if it will amuse you, have her first by all means, and instruct her in your ways. For after all, what better teacher could she have?'