a hundred and fifty years they had infiltrated, corrupted and vampirized the populace of their own western mountain areas to such an extent that entire townships were now in thrall to them, including all of the hamlets on the approaches to their aeries!
Moreover, the Drakuls had recruited and turned loose many thralls to become their 'emissaries' or servants (or more properly their spies) abroad in the world. These had become wanderers, Gypsies, and 'Travellers' here no less than in Starside, in another world. And the Drakuls had engineered all of this a hundred years ago, when the Empire held sway over these Dacian parts. Why, men of the Drakuls had even crossed the borders to become true citizens of Rome -'sleepers,' as it were, in the so-called 'civilized' regions of a barbaric world. Romans, aye ... or Romani?
Romany! The source of yet another legend.
And so the Drakuls had become almost invulnerable, impervious to attack except perhaps in the drone of hot summer days when they slept in the deeps of their castles, in 'native soil' brought with them out of Starside.
But Radu knew none of that, not then.
He knew where they were situated, but not their situation, how powerful they'd become. He might have guessed something of it when, well past the fifty years of his earlier reckoning, he sent spies to map out the land in the heart of Drakul territory ... and they never returned. But Radu had grown powerful in his own right, until he believed that he was invulnerable. And perhaps this had made him lax ...
Meanwhile, in the outside world beyond the mountains - beyond Dacia, beyond the Danube - history was passing him by. The Western Empire had crumbled away entirely; an Ostrogothic kingdom had been established in Italy; only the Eastern, 'Byzantine' Empire, with its capital at Constantinople, survived intact. He knew of these things, for he was not without external inteligence; perhaps he even pined a little, for al the blood spiled on the reeking batlefields of the world.
And al gone to waste, without that he'd been part of it.
And Gaeseric the Vandal king: dead and gone these forty-odd years; and Radu's Wamphyri vow of vengeance gone with him, for he'd not been a part of that either! Oh, it was maddening! Which was when he realized how bored he'd become. Well, enough of all that! And he promised himself that when finally he was established throughout the mountains, and not just in the east, then he'd find time to venture forth and play the warrior again.
But now, in order to bring that time forward - also as an exercise in preparation for it - now it was surely time for a grand expansion west, against the Drakuls!
Except... the Drakuls moved first, against him.
There had been warnings. In retrospect, looking back on the far past -still dreaming his unquiet dreams in the semi-solid matrix of his resin 'tomb,' - Radu knew it well enough: that there had been unsettling occurrences in his many outposts strung out north and south along the legs of the horseshoe range ...
In the northern Carpathians, the Voevod Radu (occasionally 'the Wolf) held sway in villages as far removed as Rakhov, and in the south as far as Turnu Rosu, where the hurtling waters of the Oltul had long since carved a pass through the mountains on their way to the Danube more than a hundred miles farther south. But many miles inside these far boundaries - deep in the Wolfs heartland - even there his outposts had had their problems. And not hard to guess what sort of problems.
He prepared expeditions to lacobani in the north and Ruckar in the south, to see what could be done. Radu himself would lead the southern expedition; it would consist of some forty of his men, and one hundred more to be gathered along the way. Two of his bravest lieutenants -true werewolves or 'pups' - would head north for lacobani, and likewise collect a small army en-route. These detachments of Radu's main mercenary force, whose nucleus was still centred in Wolfscrag and the hamlets around, should suffice to sort out the problem. Which was this:
Villagers and their wives and children in Ruckar, lacobani and neighbouring towns were being picked off by the viesky, the Drakul who fell upon his prey out of the night sky. People - mainly women, but occasionally children - had vanished without trace; other victims had been found drained of their life's blood. Mumbled prayers