The Vampire Prince

I stopped and turned in a full circle, hoping to spot something familiar. If I was close to one of the resting places known as way-stations, used by vampires on their way to and from Council, there might be hope. I could hole-up, catch a day or two of sleep, and recover my strength. A good plan, with just one major flaw — I hadn’t a clue where I was or if there were any way-stations nearby.

I weighed up my options. Standing still would get me nowhere. And scouting for a way-station was out of the question — I hadn’t the strength or time. The first order of the day was to find somewhere sheltered to recuperate. Food, warmth and working my way back to Vampire Mountain could come later — if I survived.

There was a forest about a kilometre to my left. That was the best place to head. I could curl up at the base of a tree and cover myself with leaves. Maybe find some insects or small animals to feed upon. It wasn’t ideal, but it made more sense than standing here in the open, or climbing slippery rocks in search of caves.

I fell many times on my way to the forest. That wasn’t surprising — I was amazed I’d made it this far. Each time I lay in the snow a few minutes, gathering my diminished resources, then hauled myself to my feet and staggered on again.

The forest had assumed magical properties. I was convinced, if I could make it to the trees, everything would be fine. Deep inside, I knew that was nonsense, but the belief kept me going. Without it, I’d have been unable to continue.

I finally ran out of steam a hundred metres or less from the first trees of the forest. I knew in my heart, as I lay panting in the snow, that I’d reached the end of my tether. All the same, I rested a few minutes, as I had before, then made a valiant effort to rise — no good. I made it as far as my knees, then dropped. Another long rest. Again I tried to rise. Again I fell, this time face first into the snow, where I lay, shivering, unable to roll over.

The cold was unbearable. A human would have died from it long ago. Only the vampire blood inside my veins had kept me going. But even the powerful blood of the vampires had its limits. I’d pushed to the very end of mine. I’d no strength left, not even the tiniest morsel.

I was finished.

I wept pitifully as I lay there, tears turning to ice on my cheeks. Snowflakes drifted on to my eyelashes. I tried lifting a hand to brush them away, but couldn’t. Even that small gesture was beyond me. “What an awful way to die,” I moaned. Another hundred metres and I would have been safe. To collapse and die this close to the end was a shame. Maybe if I’d rested more in the cave in the mountain, I’d have had the energy to continue. Or if I’d–

A sharp, yapping sound jolted me out of my reverie. I’d closed my eyes and had been drifting off to sleep/death. At the sound, I cracked them open. I couldn’t move my head, and the flakes of snow clouded my vision, but I was staring in the general direction of the forest and could see a vague shape making its way towards me, tumbling through the snow. Oh, great, I thought sarcastically. As if things weren’t bad enough — now something’s going to come along and eat me before I’m dead! Could things get any worse? Judging by what had happened to me recently — yes!

I shut my eyes as the creature came nearer and hoped I’d be too numb to feel its teeth and claws as it devoured me. Fighting back was out of the question — a squirrel could have knocked the stuffing out of me, the condition I was in.

Hot breath clouded my face. A long tongue licked around my nose. I shivered. It licked again, this time my cheeks and ears. Then it licked the snowflakes from my eyelashes.

I opened my eyes and blinked. What was going on? Was it cleaning me up before it killed me? That seemed unlikely. Yet what other explanation could there be? As I adjusted my vision, the animal nudged back a bit and came into focus. My jaw dropped. My lips quivered. And in a pained, shaky voice, I mumbled incredulously: “Rudi?”

CHAPTER FIVE

RUDI WAS the wolf cub who’d accompanied Mr Crepsley, Harkat, Gavner and me on some of the way to Vampire Mountain. He’d been part of a small pack, which included two she-wolves and a large male whom I’d christened Streak. They’d left us to unite with other wolf packs close to Vampire Mountain.

Rudi leapt around me, barking with excitement. He’d grown a bit since I’d last seen him: his fangs were longer and his fur was thicker than ever. I managed to lift my head and smile weakly. “I’m in big trouble, Rudi,” I muttered as the cub licked my fingers. He cocked his ears and gazed at me seriously, as though he understood. “Big trouble,” I repeated softly, then collapsed again.

Rudi rubbed his nose against my right cheek. It was wet and warm. He licked around my eyes and ears, then pressed his body against mine, trying to warm me up. When he saw how helpless I was, he took a few paces back and howled. Moments later, a second wolf emerged from the forest, larger, sleeker, every bit as familiar as Rudi.

“Streak,” I whispered as the wolf advanced cautiously. His ears perked up when he heard my voice, then he bounded forward. Rudi carried on yapping until Streak snapped at him. The adult wolf sniffed me from head to toe, then barked at Rudi. They lay out flat beside me, Streak behind, Rudi in front, covering most of my body with theirs, transmitting their heat.

After a few minutes, warmth seeped through me. I flexed and unflexed my fingers and toes, working the worst of the chill out of them. I curled up into a ball, so the wolves could cover more of me, and buried my face between Rudi’s hairy shoulders. We lay like that for ages, the wolves shifting position every so often to keep warm. Finally, Streak got to his feet and barked.

I tried getting up. Failed. Shook my head and groaned. “It’s no use. I can’t go on.” The wolf studied me silently, then bent and bit my bum! I yelped and rolled away instinctively. Streak followed and I leapt to my feet. “Stay back, you no-good–” I shouted, then stopped when I saw the look on his face.

I stared down at my body, then at Streak, and grinned sheepishly. “I’m standing,” I whispered redundantly. Streak howled softly, then nipped my right leg lightly and faced the trees. Nodding wearily, I set off for the forest and the wolves padded along beside me.

The going wasn’t easy. I was cold and exhausted, and stumbled more times than I could keep track of. Streak and Rudi kept me going. Whenever I stalled, they pressed against me, or breathed warmly over me, or snapped to make me get up. At one stage, Streak let me grab the thick, long hair around his neck, and half-dragged me through the snow.

I’m not sure why they bothered with me — normally wild animals leave wounded companions behind if they can’t keep up. Maybe they wanted to keep on the good side of the vampires, who put lots of scraps their way during Council. Or perhaps they sensed hidden resources within me and knew my cause wasn’t hopeless.

After a long, hard walk, we entered a glade, where a large pack of wolves had gathered. There must have been twenty or thirty of the predators, lying about, eating, playing and grooming themselves, all different colours, builds and breeds. The wolves regarded me with suspicion. One, a dark, bulky male, padded over and sniffed me, then growled threateningly, raising its hackles. Streak met its challenge and growled back. The two stood snarling at each other for a few seconds, before the unwelcoming wolf turned its back on us and loped away.

Rudi ran after the dark wolf, yapping, but Streak barked angrily at the cub and he returned, tail between his legs. As I blinked owlishly at the wolves, Streak nudged me forward to where a she-wolf was suckling three cubs. She laid a protective paw over her cubs and growled at us as we approached, but Streak whined and dropped to his belly to show he meant no harm.

When the she-wolf had relaxed, Streak stood and locked gazes with the female. The she-wolf snarled. Streak bared his fangs and snarled back, pawed at the snow in front of her, then locked gazes again. This time, she lowered her head and didn’t respond. Streak struck the backs of my legs with his snout and I dropped to the ground. As he nudged me on, I understood what he wanted me to do. “No!” I resisted, insides churning. “I can’t!”

Streak growled and pushed me forward. I was too weak to argue. Besides, it made sense — I was cold and hungry, but too weak to eat. I needed to get something warm and nourishing down me, something that didn’t need to be chewed.

I lay down and wriggled forward, gently shoving the three cubs to one side, making space. The cubs yapped suspiciously at me, then crowded round, sniffed me all over, and accepted me as one of their own. When my face was up close to the suckling she-wolf’s belly, I took a deep breath, paused momentarily, then found a milk-engorged teat, closed my lips around it, and drank.

CHAPTER SIX

THE SHE-WOLF treated me the same as the three cubs, making sure I got enough milk, covering me with her paws to keep me warm, licking behind my ears and around my face to clean me (I crept away when I had to go to the toilet!). I remained with her for a couple of days, slowly regaining my strength, cuddling up to her and the cubs for warmth, surviving on her warm milk. It didn’t taste good, but I was in no position to complain.

Pain racked my body as I recovered. Bruises covered every last scrap of me. My cuts weren’t too serious – the cold restricted the flow of blood – but they stung like mad. I wished I had some of Seba’s healing spider webs to apply to them.

The more I thought about my slide down the mountain stream, the more incredible it seemed. Had I really done it, or was this some crazy dream? If not for the pain, I might have believed it was the latter, but dreams are painless, so it had to be real.

More incredible still was that I hadn’t broken any major bones. Three fingers on my left hand were broken, my right thumb was sticking out at an alarming angle, and my left ankle had blown up like a purple balloon, but otherwise I seemed to be OK. I could move my arms and legs; my skull hadn’t been cracked open; my backbone hadn’t been snapped in two. All things considered, I was in astoundingly good shape.

As the days passed, I stretched and tested myself. I still slept beside the she-wolf and drank from her, but I started getting up to take short walks, hobbling around the glade, exercising lightly. My left ankle pained me terribly, but the swelling subsided gradually and eventually returned to normal.

As my strength returned, Streak brought me meat and berries. I couldn’t eat a lot in the beginning, but I sucked plenty of blood from the small animals he brought, and my appetite increased swiftly.

Rudi spent a lot of time with me. He was fascinated by my bald head – I’d had to shave my hair off after it caught fire during one of my Trials of Initiation – and never tired of licking it and rubbing his chin and nose over it.

After four days (possibly five or six — I hadn’t kept a clear track of time) the wolves moved on to a new patch. It was a long march – seven or eight kilometres – and I lagged behind most of the way, helped along by Streak, Rudi and the she-wolf who’d been suckling me (she now regarded me as one of her cubs, and mothered me the same as the others).

As punishing as the trek was, it was beneficial, and when I awoke that night after a long, dreamless sleep, I felt almost as good as I had before my descent down the stream. The worst of the bruising had subsided, the cuts had healed, my ankle barely troubled me, and I was able to eat normally.

That night, I went hunting with the pack. I couldn’t move fast, but I kept up, and helped bring down an old reindeer that several of the wolves were tracking. It felt good to be contributing to the pack after they’d done so much for me, and I gave most of my share of the meat to the she-wolf and cubs.

There was a nasty scene the next day. The dark wolf who’d objected to my presence when Streak brought me into the pack had never accepted me. He growled and barked whenever I came close, and often snatched food from my hands while I was feeding. I avoided him as much as I could, but that day, when he saw me playing with the cubs and handing meat out to them, he snapped.

He charged at me, barking wildly, meaning to drive me off. I backed away from him slowly, not showing any fear, but I didn’t leave the pack — if I let him chase me out once, he’d never stop hounding me. I circled around the wolves, hoping he’d lose interest in me, but he followed, determined, snarling menacingly.

As I prepared to fight, Streak darted between us and faced the darker wolf. He raised his hackles to make himself look big, and growled deeply. It looked as though the dark wolf would back off, but then he lowered his head, bared his fangs and lunged at Streak, claws extended.

Streak met the challenge and the pair rolled away, biting and scratching at one another. The wolves around them hastily cleared out of their way. Some younger cubs yapped with excitement, but most of the older wolves ignored the fighting or looked on with only mild interest. They were accustomed to quarrels like this.

It seemed to me as though the wolves were going to tear each other to bits, and I ran around them worriedly, hoping to prise them apart. But as the fight progressed, I realized that, for all their barking, snapping and clawing, they weren’t doing a lot of actual damage. Streak’s snout had been scratched, and the dark wolf was bleeding from a couple of bites, but they weren’t out to really hurt each other. It was more like a wrestling match than anything else.

As the fight wore on, it became obvious that Streak had the beating of the other wolf. He wasn’t as heavily built, but he was faster and sharper, and for every swipe to the head he took, he delivered two or three of his own.

All of a sudden, the dark wolf stopped, lay down and rolled over, baring his throat and belly. Streak opened his mouth and clamped his teeth around the dark wolf’s throat, then let go without breaking the skin and stood back. The dark wolf got to his feet and slunk away, tail between his legs.

I thought the wolf might have to leave the pack, but he didn’t. Although he slept by himself that night, none of the wolves tried to chase him away, and he took his regular place in the hunting pack the next time they set out.

I thought about that a lot over the next day or two, comparing the way wolves handled their losers with how vampires handled theirs. In the world of vampires, defeat was a disgrace, and more often than not ended with the death of the defeated. Wolves were more understanding. Honour mattered to them, but they wouldn’t kill or shun a member of their pack just because it had lost face. Young wolf cubs had to endure tests of maturity, just as I’d endured the Trials of Initiation, but they weren’t killed if they failed.

I wasn’t an expert on the subject, but it seemed to me that vampires could learn a thing or two from wolves if they took the time to study their ways. It was possible to be both honourable and practical. Kurda Smahlt, for all his treacherous faults, got that much right at least.

CHAPTER SEVEN