At the abyss (hollow leg)

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Am Abgrund is a historical and fantastic novel by Wolfgang Hohlbein , published in 1999 , and the first volume in the Chronicle of Immortals . The story of two vampires in search of the killers of their loved playing in Transylvania of the 15th century .

action

After the death of his wife and daughter, the swordsman Andrej Delãny returns to his home village of Borsã, from which he was expelled years ago, to see his son Marius, who lived there. But when he arrives, he finds out that the village has been attacked and almost all of the residents have been brutally killed.

Only the young Frederic survived and tells Andrej that a churchman came to Borsã with a retinue of knights , killed some of the residents and carried off the rest as slaves. The most brutal were three "golden knights". Andrej takes up the chase with Frederic, but is caught on the way by one of the knights and two other men, but barely manages to gain the upper hand - but the "golden one" disappears.

On the way to Constanza , where they suspect the captured villagers, Andrej and Frederic have to stop at an inn, where they are discovered a little later by other warriors who set fire to the inn. The two are rescued by the thieves Serge and Krusha and therefore have to team up with the criminals to save their families. After Andrej and Frederic have recovered from their wounds relatively quickly, the four of them come up with a plan.

In the port city of Constanza, Andrej meets the mysterious Maria, with whom he falls in love. But Maria is the sister of the inquisitor Domenicus, who attacked Andrej and Frederic's home village. Frederic injures the inquisitor life-threateningly in a confrontation, and since then they have been hunted not only by Domenicus' followers, but also by the knights of the Duke of Constanza.

During the night Andrei has to steal the Duke's private treasure for Serge and Krusha, a traitor helps him. But this then turns out to be Duke Jag Demagyar himself, who lured Andrej into a trap. He is caught and charged not only with the attempted murder of Domenicus, but also that of Demagyar and the arson in the inn. Later, Andrei is attacked and knocked unconscious.

He wakes up again in a warehouse at the port where Demagyar and one of the golden knights, Maltus, are selling the villagers to the Nubian slave trader Abu Dun. The duke tells him that he killed Frederic. After the Duke has left, Maltus tells Andrej that he is an immortal and that he, Andrej, is one too. After explaining to him how one of them can be killed, an unequal life-and-death struggle begins between the two, which Andrej can only barely win. In the end he only has to drink the special juice of life, the blood of his opponent, which makes him stronger.

The Duke is finally killed by Frederic, who, as Andrej already suspected, is also an immortal. Andrei decides to pursue the slave trader Abu Dun first before he turns to the other golden knights.

background

Am Abgrund was published in 1999 as the first volume of the Chronicle of the Immortals, which now comprises sixteen novels. Hohlbein, who had previously written several historical novels that took place in the Middle Ages , embedded the fantastic story about the vampire Andrej and his companions in a historical scenario - the threat to Christian Europe from the expansion of the Ottoman Empire - and lets the plot largely be real Play locations.

In 2004 a comic book adaptation was published, which comprises roughly the first third of the novel.

expenditure

novel

Comic

  • Thomas von Kummant, Benjamin von Eckartsberg: Wolfgang Hohlbein's Chronicle of the Immortals 1: Am Abgrund 1 , ehapa comic collection 2004, ISBN 978-3770428809
  • Thomas von Kummant, Benjamin von Eckartsberg: Wolfgang Hohlbein's Chronicle of the Immortals: The Making Of , ehapa comic collection 2006, ISBN 978-3770428892
  • Thomas von Kummant, Benjamin von Eckartsberg: Wolfgang Hohlbein's Chronicle of the Immortals 2: Am Abgrund 2 , ehapa comic collection 2011, ISBN 978-3770428816
  • Chaiko, Benjamin von Eckartsberg: Wolfgang Hohlbein's Chronicle of the Immortals 3: The Vampyr 1 , ehapa comic collection 2014, ISBN 978-3770438365
  • Chaiko, Benjamin von Eckartsberg: Wolfgang Hohlbein's Chronicle of the Immortals 4: The Vampyr 2 , ehapa comic collection 2015, ISBN 978-3770438587
  • Chaiko, Benjamin von Eckartsberg: Wolfgang Hohlbein's Chronicle of the Immortals 5: The Death Blow 1 , ehapa comic collection 2015, ISBN 978-3770438815
  • Chaiko, Benjamin von Eckartsberg: Wolfgang Hohlbein's Chronicle of the Immortals 6: The Death Blow 2 , ehapa comic collection 2016, ISBN 978-3770439188

Audio book

  • The Chronicle of the Immortals - Part 1: On the Abyss , spoken by Dietmar Wunder, Lübbe Audio 2008, ISBN 978-3-7857-3544-2 .

Web links