Page 22 of The Nightbound Soldier

El’jah winces, blood welling up on the spot.

“Impatient, are we?” Et’enne asks the commander.

“My king, if you don’t tell me all about this Nottuza vampire right away so that I can reassess the level of threat he poses, I’ll stab myself in the eye with this cardboard horn. Only because jabbing it into your eye is too tempting.”

Et’enne smirks. “I had to get the facts straight from June. This is a long and interesting piece of history, and more than what the tutors taught me. The history books don’t cover the time during which Nottuza was alive.”

“Which time are we talking about?” the commander asks.

“He existed nine millennia ago.”

El’jah whistles. “Can someone bring me up to date on the current events?”

“We are trying to ascertain,” Et’enne says, “if Fleur met a vampire named Nottuza and if he extracted some males he calls warlords from our dungeons, all while the commander was none the wiser and Fleur was left to inform me.”

Short and to the point.

Realizing the seriousness of the situation, El’jah stops fidgeting with his pink wig. “And?” He runs a hand through his long blond hair, the wig falling off behind him.

“Long ago, before the fae courts, when fae existed in tribes and were nomads much like the creatures we know now as savages, they would roam the lands resting in some areas, setting up camps in others, or, as was the case with the Olan tribe, looking to settle at the confluence of the Yesha, Kaya, and Mesy rivers.”

“That’s in the Winter Court,” the commander says.

“Precisely.” The males exchange looks before Et’enne continues. “But two other tribes arrived there at the same time as the Olans, and battles for the land ensued. The other two tribes joined forces and defeated the Olans.”

“Oh no,” El’jah comments. “I was rooting for them.”

“Instead of allowing the fallen a proper burial, which at the time was a body raft over the riverbanks or a pyre, the other two tribes threw the bodies of the Olans into a ditch and covered them with soil. They left them there and went on setting up their camps.

“Among the Olans was a little boy, no older than eight turns, who hid in the trees and watched his big brother die on the field. At night, after the other tribes left, the boy dug up his brother’s body and performed a ritual to raise him from the dead.”

A shiver runs up my spine.

“The ritual in the story is, as my June tells me, a myth. It wouldn’t have worked for anyone else besides this boy, who previously did not present with any magic. You see, he carried the magic that raises the dead and unknowingly used his magic on his brother. Nevertheless, his brother awoke, and the boy, happy and desperate, made his brother promise he would never leave him alone again.”

“Aww,” I say. “That’s a lovely, sad story.”

“His brother swore an allegiance and also vengeance, but he needed more males to avenge the tribe’s demise, so the big brother asked the boy to share some of his magic. The boy agreed.” Et’enne pauses. “The little fool. We should never share magic with others.”

We all nod in unison.

“Go on,” El’jah says. “Tell me more about the honorable little brother who saved his big brother. Mmhm.”

Et’enne rolls his eyes. “The big brother performed the ritual, which was simply feeding his dead friends, Leroy and Ledger, his blood. And they rose at twilight. Newly undead.”

“I’ve never heard of this,” the commander says.

“Nobody has because nobody knows besides the people who were there and my June.”

Which is why Nottuza told me to ask the fate. “Is that it?”

“We’re just getting to the good part. June’s words, not mine. She’s very passionate about stories from our past. In any case, the newly risen big brother shares his blood with more males, and by now he has more than a dozen. Meanwhile, he himself is getting hungry, but is unable to keep anything down. He starts getting sick, thinks he’ll die again, and takes his friends and his brother to a retreat so he can recover and plot his revenge away from the two tribes, who outnumber them.”

“Patient. Calculating,” the commander says. “Not prone to impulse, nor driven by hunger or vengeance. He retreated to regroup.”

“A tactical retreat,” Et’enne says, seemingly excited by Nottuza’s decisions. “The undead are wandering the lands, and Nottuza is becoming weaker and weaker while noticing his preference for animal flesh, particularly blood. He has long canines we know now are fangs with holes in them, which drives him to suck, but he’s unsure on what.”

“Not on his mommy’s tit, that’s for certain,” El’jah supplies.

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