Underworld: Blood Enemy (19 page)

That’s it,
Lucian encouraged him.
Don’t let me get away.

The wind whipped through Lucian’s sable fur as he ran full tilt toward the looming cliffside. He felt Sandor’s hot breath on his back and heard the silver werewolf’s massive paws crashing through the grass and brush behind him. Sandor was faster than he looked as well; Lucian knew he had only seconds to spare before the bloodthirsty beast brought him down.

The stark gray cliff seemed to come rushing toward him, blocking his escape. At the last minute, however, Lucian’s paws pushed off from the ground, and he ran up the face of the cliff before flipping over in the air and landing squarely on Sandor’s back.

Four sets of claws dug into the silver wolf’s leathery hide, holding fast despite Sandor’s increasingly frantic efforts to dislodge him. Sandor flailed wildly with his forelimbs but found it difficult to grab onto the snarling creature on his back. He spun about on his hind legs in a useless attempt to get at the smaller werewolf.

Time to end this,
Lucian thought. Safely clear of Sandor’s snapping jaws, he sank his own fangs into the silver werewolf’s neck. Hot blood gushed past his teeth as he tore out his opponents throat.

A crimson fountain spurted from the beasts severed jugular. Sandor’s roar fell silent, and he toppled face-first toward the ground. Lucian jumped free of his falling foe and watched in silence as the werewolf’s body twitched spasmodically on the grass. Taking no chances, he took hold of Sandor’s huge head with his forepaws and then twisted the werewolf’s neck until he heard bone crack.

Lucian stood panting above a furry silver carcass, while the other werewolves looked on in cowed silence. His victory brought with it a twinge of regret.
If fate is kind,
he thought,
Sandor will
be the first and only lycan to die at my hands.

Still, he was alive, and the pack was his. Surrendering to the moment, Lucian threw back his head and howled triumphantly at the moon. Hesitantly at first, then with greater enthusiasm, his fellow werewolves joined in. Their fierce, primeval music rang out across the forest, surely sending a chill through any mortal close enough to hear the inhuman symphony.

A smile curled back Lucian’s wolfen lips. These baying beasts would be the nucleus of his new army… an army that would liberate their oppressed species—and wipe the hated vampires from the face of the earth.

Chapter Eighteen

CARPATHIAN MOUNTAINS

The afternoon sun was streaming through the branches overhead as Lucian led the pack toward their target. The lycans moved stealthily through the pine woods, making as little noise as possible, the better to catch the enemy unaware.

Lucian paused at the top of a rocky slope. He signaled his troops to stay back while he surveyed the scene. He was thankful there was no moon for the lycans to howl at; his strategy depended on the element of surprise.

This raid,
he thought,
shall be our baptism of fire.

The silver mine occupied a wide gorge at the foot of the hill. Sturdy timbers framed the entrance to the mine, which was dug into the side of a craggy mountain at the northern end of the gorge. Stone barracks had been erected to house the miners, along with a company of mercenaries hired to guard the site. A muscle-powered windlass served to pull the heavy chain that drew cartloads of raw ore up from the mine’s subterranean depths. Wagons drawn by enormous draft horses waited to haul the ore to the smelter in a small village farther on down the mountain. Sweaty miners emerged as well, bearing buckets of silty water that needed to be cleared out of the mines in order for them to continue the back-breaking work of extracting the precious element from the earth. Armed guards watched over miners and metal alike.

So this is where the goddamn silver comes from,
Lucian thought bitterly. His back remembered the scalding bite of Soren’s silver whips, reminding him of the importance of today’s raid.

Silver was the vampires’ greatest weapon against those of his kind, so Lucian had resolved to begin his campaign by seizing control of the very silver mine that provided Viktor with much of his wealth and arms. For better or for worse, Hungary and the Carpathians contained many of the richest silver deposits in Europe, making the hated metal all too readily available to the coven and its merciless Death Dealers.

But not for much longer.

For obvious reasons, the vampires could not employ their lycan slaves to extract the silver, so the coven had hired skilled human laborers, mostly imported from Germany, to work the mines under the protection of the equally mortal mercenaries. The guards wore padded leather armor supplemented by steel gauntlets and kettle helmets. Lucian watched as a trio of bored soldiers leaned on their pikes, exchanging bawdy jokes as the straining miners toiled beneath the blazing sun.

“They don’t look too tough to me,” a raspy voice whispered in his ear. Lucian did not need to turn around to know that the voice belonged to Josef, his chief lieutenant. “How many of them did you say there are?”

Discovering the balding, one-eyed lycan among the pack had been an unexpected boon. A veteran soldier, short but stocky, Josef had fought valiantly in the Crusades before surviving the bite of a Turkish werewolf. By his own account, the newly converted lycan had then made his way back to Europe from the Holy Land because he preferred the taste of “decent Christian flesh.” For himself, Lucian was simply grateful to find a wild lycan who had a solid grasp of military tactics and discipline.
Would that
I
had a hundred score more of him!

“About twenty soldiers,” Lucian estimated, based on days and nights of furtive observation. Only six guards or so were on duty at the moment, but Lucian knew that more mercenaries were on call in the barracks. “Plus maybe sixty or seventy miners.”

His own army numbered fifty-five. More than enough, he judged, to deal with a gang of unsuspecting mortals.

Even without the aid of the moon.

“Fucking sunshine,” Josef grumbled, raising a hand to shield his remaining eye from the glare. A brown goatskin eye patch covered the ugly cavity where his other eye had once lodged, the victim of a Saracen arrow back when the crusader was still mortal.

Lucian knew that the doughty ex-soldier was not the only member of his pack who found it disconcerting to be abroad by daylight. Although the sun was not lethal to them, as it was to their undead foes, lycans—like wolves—were instinctively nocturnal. It had required considerable effort on Lucian’s part to persuade his newly acquired army to attack the mines well before sunset.

“That sunshine is our best defense,” he reminded Josef. “How else are we to avoid engaging the vampires directly?” Lucian was not ready to take on the Death Dealers just yet.

When that dreaded battle comes, it will be at a time and place of my own choosing.

He watched as another load of raw ore was dragged out of the mine. To his slight surprise, the all-too-familiar gleam of silver was nowhere to be seen; instead, the jagged chunks piled high in the cart were bluish gray in color, being an impure amalgam of the silver with lead and minerals.

Apparently, the silver took on its characteristic hue and luster only after it had been smelted and refined.

The thought occurred to Lucian that perhaps, after he had seized control of the mine, he should use the precious metal to finance his war against the vampires, which would involve finding humans to work the mine for him. For the moment, however, it would suffice simply to cut the coven off from its supply of the deadly element.

“Ready the spears and arrows,” he instructed Josef. “We attack on my command.”

His lieutenant slunk back into the woods to gather the troops. Within minutes, the advance guard of Lucians army joined him at the top of the slope, just within the concealing foliage. Crude wooden spears and tightly drawn bows were directed at the unwary guards below. Josef himself drew back the string of a powerful longbow.

I do this in your name, Sonja, my love… and in vengeance for our unborn child.
“Now!”

Lucian commanded. “Let your weapons fly!”

Spears and arrows whistled through the air, raining down on the startled soldiers and whatever luckless miners happened to be aboveground at the moment. Sharpened spear tips and arrowheads pierced mortal flesh, eliciting screams of pain and anger from the ambushed men. Bleeding bodies crashed to the ground, while others clutched at wounded limbs and torsos.

But the battle had only just begun. “Onward!” Lucian hollered to his blood-crazed warriors.

“Fight like wolves!”

The lycan horde streamed down the hillside, howling like ravenous beasts. Handmade shields and bucklers defended their immortal flesh, while they flaunted an eclectic assortment of weaponry looted from various ill-starred mortal wayfarers: swords, pikes, maces, sickles, scythes, and pitchforks. Cobalt eyes gleamed in the sunlight. Yellow fangs showed between open jaws as they whooped and shouted their atavistic war cries. Lingering behind at the top of the hill, Josef continued to pick off human targets with his longbow, making Lucian wish that there had been time enough to tutor more of the primitive lycans in the finer points of archery.

Perhaps next time,
he considered, observing the battle from atop the slope. The prospect of bringing down a company of Death Dealers beneath a hail of arrows appealed to him.
If the mortals
could kill so many vampires at the keep, could not a legion of lycans fare even better?

Aroused by the agitated cries of their comrades and the feral howling of the invaders, more soldiers came running out of the barracks, only to find themselves confronted by an oncoming avalanche of wild-eyed barbarians. Swearing profanely, they raised their weapons to meet the yowling berserkers.

Crossbow bolts flew at the lycan charge, only to be blocked by thick oaken shields. A few stray quarrels found fleshier targets, but the steel-tipped bolts had little effect on the immortal attackers. A single bolt struck Josef in the ribs, but the squat lycan simply yanked the offending missile from his body and fired back at the mortals with his longbow, his very next shot spearing a human mercenary between the eyes. “Hah!” he laughed robustly. “Not bad for a one-eyed archer!”

Lucian glanced at the useless quarrel lying at his lieutenants feet. Unlike Death Dealers, these mortal soldiers were not equipped with silver weapons, only ordinary steel and iron. After all, the Elders had doubtlessly reasoned, what would renegade lycans want with silver?

A critical mistake on their part,
Lucian gloated,
or so I intend to prove.

He watched intently as his forces engaged the enemy at the bottom of the gorge. A terrified-looking sentry charged at a frothing lycan with his pike, but the inhuman warrior grabbed the mortal’s spear with both hands and easily wrenched it from the grasp of the stunned guard. Tossing the pike carelessly to one side, the same lycan seized the disarmed human and lifted him high above his head before hurling the guard into a crowd of onrushing soldiers, knocking them all from their feet. More lycans fell upon the downed mortals like wolves upon a fallen stag. Geysers of blood erupted from beneath the huddle, drenching the frenzied lycans in scarlet.

Similar dramas played out up and down the length of the gorge. Faster, stronger, and most definitely more ferocious than the overmatched mortals, the lycan army slaughtered its terrified foes at will, although not without suffering the occasional loss; Lucian watched with dismay as a lucky sword blow removed the head of an inattentive lycan named Fritz. The victorious human did not have long to savor his kill, however; within moments, a pack of vengeful lycans tore him apart, limb by limb.

The conflict was brief, bloody, and one-sided. Shaken by the grisly massacre ensuing all around them, the last few mortals threw down their weapons and pleaded frantically for their lives. “Spare us!” they cried, falling onto their knees and clasping their hands before them. “For the love of God, have mercy!”

Lucian chose to grant their pleas, at least for the time being. “Enough!” he shouted, cupping his hands over his mouth in order to be heard over the uproar. “Stand down, my valiant war wolves.

The day is ours!”

In truth, halting the bloodshed was easier said than done. Ultimately, he and Josef were forced to descend to the floor of the gorge themselves and physically tear a few of their more maddened brethren away from the defenseless mortals. Finally, Lucian managed to make his wishes clear…

even if Josef had to crack a few heads together first.

They’re savage fighters,
Lucian thought of his newfound army,
but they’re still short of
discipline. I shall have to remedy that situation if we are ever to have a chance at defeating
the vampires themselves.

The surviving guards were rounded up on Lucians orders. Stripped of their weapons and armor, the trembling soldiers knelt on the rocky floor of the gorge, surrounded by a throng of jubilant lycans, many of whom licked their lips in anticipation of succulent mortal meat. A handful of hapless miners, who had taken cover behind the wagons and barracks during the battle, were made to join the vanquished mercenaries.

“Remember,” Lucian ordered loudly, before anyone’s appetites got the better of him, “one bite only for each man. I want them infected, not eaten!” Reinforcements were needed for his army—an opportunity to recruit another experienced soldier or two was too good to waste. Even if only a single mercenary survived being bitten, that would still add to the forces at his disposal.

I am offering them a better bargain than their kind have ever offered ours,
he observed to himself.
The fortunate among them will become immortal. The rest will simply end their brief
mortal existence a few years earlier than expected.

And as for the miners? Well, they would be working the mines on Lucian’s behalf from now on.

Disappointed moans erupted from the throats of the hungry lycans at Lucian’s decree. “My orders are final,” he asserted, heading off any possible insurrection in advance. “But help yourself to whatever else you find in the mortals’ barracks. Take everything: food, clothing, coins, and drink. If I know mortals, there are certain to be stores of wine and ale just waiting to be quaffed!”

As he expected, eager lycans rushed off to loot the humans’ quarters. Others rummaged among the captured armor and weapons, claiming the best pieces for themselves. Greed triumphed over bloodlust, except for a handful of particularly savage lycans whose hungry eyes remained fixed on the mortal captives. “Just one bite,” Lucian stressed again, before nodding at them to proceed.

Voracious lycans lunged forward, sinking their fangs into the defenseless flesh of the mercenaries, who shrieked in pain and horror as bloody chunks were ripped from their bodies. Lucian heard a few of the other lycans wagering on which mortals would die and which, if any, would become lycans. Within seconds, the betting became quite heated.

“The ones who die?” a cunning young lycan called out. “Can we eat them after they’re dead?”

Lucian shrugged his shoulders. “Why not?”

In the long run, he intended to break his followers of their reckless taste for human flesh, if only to avoid provoking mortal reprisals.
One war at a time,
he thought; he had no desire to battle the mortals and vampires both. Although he had turned his back on the Covenant, he still agreed with the Elders that feeding on humans was too dangerous a pastime to risk. Still, he was not ready to impose such a stringent prohibition on his feral subordinates just yet.
I need a victory or two under my belt
before I can command that degree of authority.

Blood spurting from their wounds, the bitten humans collapsed onto the ground, many already going into convulsions as the lycan venom coursed through their veins. Brother Ambrose’s ugly death passed through Lucians mind as he kept a close eye on the proceedings, ready to discourage any of his followers from making a feast of a potential new pack member.

“What about the mortals still down in the mines?” Josef asked him. He tilted his head toward the gaping black entrance of the mine. “I don’t think they’ll be coming out of their own free will, not after all this clamor up above.”