Chapter Fourteen #2
I scooted back a bit more. “Could you tell me about it? We, uh, some of the clans, are trying to fill in some gaps in our history.”
Carales didn’t look like he bought that, but he didn’t call me on it. Just took another puff on his cigar. “I’ll tell you what I know, but it may not be as much as you’d like. The whole thing started back in '86 or '87—”
“Of what?” I asked, pulling out a notepad.
“What?”
“The year,” I explained, because I didn’t think we were talking about something that started with a 19, or even an 18. “Seventeen eighty-six? Sixteen eighty-six?”
“No. Just ’86.”
“What?”
We looked at each other in joint confusion for a second before the vamp sighed. “The year. Was eighty. Six,” he said, slowly and distinctly, as if talking to a child. Which was exactly what I felt like when I finally realized what he meant.
“You were alive in the year eighty-six?”
“No. I told you, it started then. I came in after.” He leaned back in his chair.
“Let me see if I can sum this up for you. The Dacian Kingdom—that was the old term for modern-day Romania—was a pain in the butt for Rome. The empire,” he added helpfully, which was condescending as hell but under the circumstances…
“Okay.”
“Its king, named Decebalus, had decided his realm wasn’t big enough, and Rome was too far from its lands in Moesia—modern day Serbia and Bulgaria—to defend them.
So he invaded. Domitian—the Roman emperor at the time—got pissed and sent a force into Dacia to show Decebalus what was what.
Instead, they got their asses kicked, because what Rome didn’t know was that the reason Decebalus was being so uppity was that he had allied with some local Were tribes—they got land in Romania’s vast forests in return for a little help.
“So he and his new buddies led the Romans, who were under a pretty good general named Fuscus, deep into Dacia, then ambushed them at the mountain pass at Tapae.
The result was two whole legions lost—Domitian had it put out that it was one, which was damned well bad enough, but it was two.
The eagles, the symbol of the legions and Roman power and might, were also lost, a major black eye for the empire.
“The clans were responsible for most of the carnage, which was so bad that Domitian was forced into a humiliating treaty that required him to pay an annual subsidy to Decebalus and send Roman engineers to strengthen his kingdom’s defenses.
“The empire didn’t get over shit like that, and to erase the dishonor, Trajan, a later emperor, sent another force into the country.
They defeated Decebalus, and the area was eventually annexed by Rome, mainly because the king had lost the support of the Weres.
They’d fought for land, not for him, and they had it—and kept it under subsequent changes of power in the country.
“Where I come in was after Rome fell apart and the area was up for grabs, and my master decided he wanted a piece of the Were lands for himself.”
“He decided what?” I repeated, sure I’d heard wrong. “Taking on entrenched Were clans in the forest—”
The vamp nodded. “And mountains, don’t forget those. Honestly, the whole damned country is tailor-made for Weres. The bastards—sorry—can ambush you around every tree and rock. Or, hell, fall out of the damned canopy onto your head!”
“So your master had a death wish?”
Carales snorted. “Sure, like that coward was with us. No, he was just a stubborn cuss, and his architects were already drafting the plans for his castle, so he dismissed me and the other commanders who were trying to talk sense.”
“What did you do?” I asked because obviously, he’d survived. Although I had no idea how.
He shrugged. “Held back. The forces under my control were guarding the rear, and I made sure they stayed that way.
When things went like I knew things were gonna go, I pulled us back some more.
And then some more after that. Until the remnants—what little there were—of our advanced force came streaming out of the forest, leaving chunks of their bodies behind, and we fought off the smaller group of Weres still jonesing for some flesh that followed.
“And let me tell you, that was enough. Thirty of our people stumbled out of that forest when almost five hundred had gone in. And these were five hundred vampires, so multiply that by dozens if not hundreds of mages’ worth of troops, depending on whether you’re counting masters or not—”
“A vampire is not worth—” I began hotly, before remembering who I was talking to.
But he didn’t seem to take offense. “Yeah, you’re that war mage Were, right?” He grinned suddenly. “How’s that work for you?”
“It works.” Sort of, but that wasn’t his business.
Fortunately, he didn’t seem too interested.
“I wasn’t talking about elite war mages.
The rank-and-file type used as ground troops at the time were not on that level.
You forget, the Corps wasn’t in Romania in those days.
They were fighting it out with the Black Circle for control of Europe, and getting the shit beaten out of them half the time. ”
I glared at him, and he grinned back. “No, I don’t suppose that’s how they tell it in little war mage school, but it’s the truth. Anyway, why do you care about ancient history?”
I swallowed bile and got down to the point. “You said you fought Ulfhéenar. That doesn’t just mean wolf—”
“I know what it means.”
“Then you saw one? One of the captains?”
“I told you, I fought one.” The vamp stubbed out his cigar, and his grin faded.
“Big bastard and crazed with battle, to the point that you couldn’t talk, couldn’t reason, couldn’t do anything but fight and run.
Blood lust, battle fever, whatever you want to call it—this fucker was lost in it.
We were beaten and in retreat, but did that matter?
“Hell, no.
“Asshole wanted flesh, my flesh, and would have had it, too, if one of the senior masters hadn’t come to help me.
And even fighting alongside a master almost a thousand years old, I barely got out of there alive.
I lost most of the blood in my body and had to take a transfusion from him, sucking on his wrist in the middle of the goddamned woods, just so I didn’t wither too much to come back.
“It was brutal. We didn’t take down our enemy; we escaped. And not many of us. So, yeah, I don’t want to meet another of those fuckers again. Might go ballistic if I ever did, to be honest.”
Great.
I sat there a moment, absorbing that.
“Did he, uh, did he show any special skills?” I asked. “Anything other than savagery?”
That got me another eyebrow lift. “Who the hell had time to notice? The bastard targeted me from the start, picked me right out as a commander, and after that, it was all claws, teeth, and rip, tear, shred. Like a whirlwind of fur coming at me, so I wasn’t taking notes!
” He thought about it for a minute. “I will say this. It was hard to be sure because of all the trees, but in the few cleared spots, it almost looked…”
“Yes?”
“This is gonna sound crazy, but it almost looked like we were facing one creature instead of hundreds. Like the ranks of the other wolves were the claws, the front of their column was the head, and the úlfhe?dinn was directing the body like the brain, through some crazy kind of hive mind…”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m projecting, ‘cause that is something like how vamps fight if they’re from a single family, only this…
It wasn’t just like they were talking to each other mentally, but as if they were each other, one giant piece of savagery descending on us like a wolf the size of a goddamned mountain.
“Anyway, I didn’t hear any commands being given. You think it’s gonna be all howls and barks and shit when facing Weres, but not that time. Eerie silence is all there was, even to our ears, with those fuckers moving like ghosts through the forest until suddenly, out of nowhere—”
He cut off, shuddering. And the sight of that massive, powerful, giant vampire shuddering had gooseflesh breaking out on my arms. What the hell had I gotten myself into?
Nothing, because none of this had anything to do with me!
I didn’t fight like that, couldn’t fight like that—and didn’t want to.
And yes, some Weres had come running at my call in Tartarus, but I had given Sebastian the answer for that, and it was the right one.
They’d gotten a chance to fight back for the first time since being ejected from their clans, and they’d taken it.
That was all.
“Anything else you can tell me about him?” I asked. “Any other attributes, no matter how small, would be helpful.”
He thought for a moment, but then shook his head. “It was a long time ago, and I was too busy surviving to notice much. But if you’re talking details, you got that part wrong.”
“What part?”
I looked down at my pad, where he was pointing to one of my notes. “Why do you keep calling it ‘him’?” he asked, the dark eyes meeting mine. “The bastard that wiped out our column was a woman.”