in time they might also support him. Now he waited for his scouts to return and report to him ...
When the first snows came, Radu went down into Krawlau personally, to invite the last half-dozen of his former workers into the great cave for the winter. They thanked him, however cautiously, and told him they would take advantage of his offer ... perhaps tomorrow? Radu sat by their fire a while - long enough that they noted the red cores of his eyes, and his talon hands which he made no effort to hide - and when all grew silent he left.
But within the hour, panting as they dragged their scant belongings behind them on makeshift sledges, the ragged survivors of Krawlau were off down the mountain trails. Except they were survivors no longer. They got to the first pass ... where they found Radu and the pack waiting for them.
Which saw to the provisioning ... for the next week or so, at least.
One by one as winter laid its white cloak on the land, Radu's scouts returned. Utterly in thrall to their dog-Lord, they had given him away neither by word nor deed. But they brought home to him various items of information and al manner of rumours.
Information:
There were trappers, at least four teams of them, working along the river where it wound to lasi in the east. These were good clean, hardy folk; they'd make for good recruiting ... or eating, whichever. They'd made their winter camps, and because the Moldavian steppe was still volatile they had brought their families - and more especially their women -with them!
There was a man with his two sons - aye, and a fine fat daughter, too. Another couple had two grown girls, who helped out with the skinning, curing and what all. Oh, and there were others, eating good red meat and taking pelts for the trading. Radu's informant had seen these people from the tree-line over the river. He had noted their locations, discovered their rude lodges in the rocks, but done nothing to alert them to his presence. They were only a few miles away, seven at a guess. Why, he could lead a party back there this very night...
Radu himself led the raiding party, and at last there was woman-flesh in the dog-Lord's cavern manse. Naturally, he took 'first fruits' of the women; he had all of them that were worth having, kept the one he considered best for himself -the only one who'd tried to have his eyes out... at first, anyway - and gave the rest to his men. They'd fight over them, he knew that, but it was only to be expected. Indeed, Radu watched the rough-and-tumbling with great interest, in order to discover the most worthy fighters. These were his lieutenants, after all...
Another scout came in, bringing more information:
He had gone into the mountain hamlets in the guise of a beggar (but in fact as a spy) and seen how they were ripe for conquest and destruction. Why, the people were so soft he had no doubt they could even be herded, like so many cattle! Isolationists, pacifists, they had cut themselves off completely from the outside world, from all the surrounding war-torn regions of Dacia and the great battlefields under the mountains.
Radu couldn't really say he blamed them, and in any case it wasn't conquest that was on his mind; or perhaps ... a very subtle conquest? No, these people didn't need a conqueror but a saviour! He would not kill them, not yet, but instead offer them his services as a mercenary warrior, their Voevod against who or whatever might brave these mountains and attack them. A grand scheme, and a safe one at that; for indeed it seemed that the dog-Lord had been right and the mountains were impregnable. What? But only thirty years earlier Attila himself had had his headquarters at the foot of these very mountains - but even he had skirted them to continue his assault on the west!
And since Radu first commenced building Wolf scrag here? Six years sped by, and not a single invader had ventured into these heights. Or perhaps ... could it be that the threat from the east was finally over? Uneasy precognitive dreams told him 'no, not yet!' But Radu's dreams weren't always right. Or they were, but rarely worked out the way he thought they would. The future seemed a very devious thing. And just how long was the future, anyway