“Wester thinks I sound like you,” Larten said.

“He must be going deaf,” Seba huffed. Shading his eyes, he studied the soldiers. They had concluded their killing for the day and were limping back to camp, dragging the wounded, leaving the dead for the creatures of the night that they could sense circling them. “Such noble fools,” Seba sighed. “One war should be enough for any race. Why do they go on and on?”

Neither Larten nor Wester tried to answer. They hadn’t been vampires anywhere near as long as their master, but as young as they were, both found it hard to recall the time when they had walked as humans, or how their thoughts had functioned in those less blood-riddled days.

“We will move on tonight,” Seba said. “Just a few miles. I would be obliged if you carried my coffin.”

Larten and Wester fetched Seba’s coffin from the rough shelter they had made, then followed him down the hill and around a field of corpses. The younger vampires had not yet developed a taste for coffins. They’d slept in many while traveling with Seba, holed up in crypts or tombs, but when given a choice they preferred beds. Their master, however, only felt snug with pine walls encaging him and a lid overhead. He had tried several coffins since they’d landed in America. When he finally found one to his liking, he claimed it for his own and begged pardon of the skeleton he’d evicted. His assistants had been carting it around after him ever since.

As the trio followed the course of a small stream, someone called out abruptly from a tree on the other side. “Same old Seba Nile, always has to have the modern conveniences. Can’t settle for a stone floor and a roof of sky.”

Larten and Wester set the coffin down and squinted. Larten knew the voice, but couldn’t place it. As he tried to put a face to it, a shabby vampire dropped from the branches. He was dressed in animal hides and had a couple of belts strapped around his chest, throwing stars hanging loosely from them. He had long green hair. He spat into the stream as he crossed and Larten was fairly sure he heard the General break wind, though it might have been the creaking of the trees.