As Larten studied the warring American factions, he wondered again why Seba had brought them to this place. Their master had never shown an interest in the affairs of humans and hadn’t even glanced at the soldiers since they’d arrived. What could have lured him to this maelstrom of slaughter?
Wester stepped up beside the man he thought of as a brother and watched for a while with him. Both were thinking of Tanish Eul.
“How much longer do you think we’ll be here?” Wester asked, but Larten only grunted in response. “Did you smell the war pack last night?”
“Aye.”
Larten’s senses had improved greatly in recent years. He’d been aware of the other vampires for the past two nights but had avoided them, staying by Seba’s side, ready to obey his master’s orders.
“I miss being part of a pack,” Wester sighed. “Feeding on the battlefields was barbaric but exquisite.”
“I am sure reformed opium addicts miss their pipes,” Larten said drily. “It does not mean they should return to their old ways.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Wester said.
“No?” Larten shrugged. “I have often told myself that there was nothing wrong in what we did, since so many other vampires were reveling in the bloodshed. But that is no excuse. Humans might not deserve our respect, but they do not merit our contempt either.”
Wester smiled. “You sound just like Seba.”
Larten winced and scratched his nose, then his ears. He had tried to copy Seba’s way of speaking in the past, and Seba had simply corrected him when he made a mistake. But since he’d returned from his time with the Cubs, Seba had taken it more seriously.
He had asked Larten if he truly wished to master his vocabulary. When the unsuspecting assistant confirmed that he did, it was the beginning of a new phase, one he had come to despise. He had often begged Seba to stop, but the ancient vampire wouldn’t relent.
Under the new regime, when Larten said “don’t’ or “can’t,” Seba plucked hairs from his student’s nostrils, which was far more painful than Larten would have imagined. After a year of that, he’d tried to outfox his master by burning the hairs from his nose, but Seba set his sights on the hairs in Larten’s ears instead, and that was even worse! The orange-haired assistant had learned swiftly in the face of such punishing lessons. He suffered an occasional lapse, but only rarely. It had been weeks since Seba had felt obliged to pluck any hairs.
As Larten and Wester stood watch, Seba joined them and stretched, enjoying the weak evening sun. It had been nearly half a century since he’d met a scared boy in a gloomy crypt and taken him on as an assistant. Seba had aged a lot in that time. His long hair was mostly gray now. He’d shaved his beard and the skin around his throat was dry and wrinkled, covered with old scars and blotches. He looked battered and weary, and groaned if he moved too quickly.
Yet he could set a pace his assistants struggled to match, and he was as light of foot and fast of hand as ever. He often spoke of being near to his end, but Larten suspected his old master might see out this century and perhaps a couple more. Not that he ever said such a thing — he didn’t want to invite bad luck.
‘Wester thinks I sound like you,” Larten said.
“He must be going deaf,” Seba huffed. Shading his eyes, he studied the soldiers. They had concluded their killing for the day and were limping back to camp, dragging the wounded, leaving the dead for the creatures of the night that they could sense circling them. “Such noble fools,” Seba sighed. “One war should be enough for any race. Why do they go on and on?”
Neither Larten nor Wester tried to answer. They hadn’t been vampires anywhere near as long as their master, but as young as they were, both found it hard to recall the time when they had walked as humans, or how their thoughts had functioned in those less blood-riddled days.
“We will move on tonight,” Seba said. “Just a few miles. I would be obliged if you carried my coffin.”
Larten and Wester fetched Seba’s coffin from the rough shelter they had made, then followed him down the hill and around a field of corpses. The younger vampires had not yet developed a taste for coffins. They’d slept in many while traveling with Seba, holed up in crypts or tombs, but when given a choice they preferred beds. Their master, however, only felt snug with pine walls encaging him and a lid overhead. He had tried several coffins since they’d landed in America. When he finally found one to his liking, he claimed it for his own and begged pardon of the skeleton he’d evicted. His assistants had been carting it around after him ever since.
As the trio followed the course of a small stream, someone called out abruptly from a tree on the other side. “Same old Seba Nile, always has to have the modern conveniences. Can’t settle for a stone floor and a roof of sky.”
Larten and Wester set the coffin down and squinted. Larten knew the voice, but couldn’t place it. As he tried to put a face to it, a shabby vampire dropped from the branches. He was dressed in animal hides and had a couple of belts strapped around his chest, throwing stars hanging loosely from them. He had long green hair. He spat into the stream as he crossed and Larten was fairly sure he heard the General break wind, though it might have been the creaking of the trees.
“Vancha March,” Seba smiled. “I wondered where the foul stench was coming from.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Vancha scowled. “I bathed last spring, even though I didn’t need to.” He frowned. “Or was it the spring before?” With a laugh, he tossed a salute to Larten and Wester. “Still hanging around with this old vulture?”
“Someone has to look after him,” Larten said.
“He’s too weak to carry his own coffin,” Wester added.
Larten and Wester hadn’t seen the filthy General since their first meeting in Vampire Mountain, so there was much to catch up on. But before they could ask questions, Seba pointed to his coffin and coughed purposefully. Groaning, they picked it up and followed behind at a respectable distance as their master strolled with Vancha and the pair discussed business that was not for the ears of the young.
In time they turned a bend and Larten caught sight of a tent. He might have dismissed it as the camp of a human officer, but Seba and Vancha were heading for it, so he adjusted the coffin on his shoulder and stole a closer look.
The tent was like none he’d seen so far. It was circular, tall and wide, adorned with beautiful, stitched patterns of water flowers and frogs. It looked a bit like the tent in which the Cirque Du Freak performed, but nowhere near the same size. There were three smaller tents around it and a clothesline stood behind them, hung with a variety of dresses and women’s undergarments.
A confused Wester nudged Larten, who frowned at the feminine clothes and said, “What sort of a woman would pitch her tent at the edge of a battlefield?”
The answer came to both of them at the same time, but Wester was the one who exclaimed, “A woman of the wilds!”
Sharing a thrilled look, they bustled after their master and his foul-smelling ally, heading for the tent of the woman who — if they had guessed right — was as powerful and as crucial to the fate of the vampire clan as any goddess of legend.
Chapter Seven
Seba paused at the entrance to the tent and asked Larten and Wester to set aside his coffin. He tugged at his red shirt and cloak, straightened some creases, then examined the material for dirt.
“How do I look?” Vancha asked, spitting into his palm and using it to brush back his green hair.
“Like a cherub,” Seba murmured.
“Do you think — ”
The flap over the entrance swished back, cutting short his question, and a woman stepped forward. She was short and ugly — she reminded Larten of Zula Pone in some respects — and even filthier than Vancha. She wore no shoes or clothes. Instead there were ropes wrapped around her body. She had pointed ears, a tiny nose, one brown eye and one green. She was as muscular as a man and hairier than most, from a thin beard and mustache down to
