Okay, I have to say that I wasn’t the one who started the snickering. Tanda was, with her snort. Then Aahz started shaking his head, clearly trying to contain himself, and I just couldn’t keep the laugh inside anymore. Thank heavens the guy was so lost in trying to tell us the story he didn’t notice.
“For as long as history recorded,” Harold said, gathering speed on his tale, “Bovine’s type and our people lived in an uneasy balance. They fed off of us; we killed them when we discovered them. Everything was in balance. The legends go that Count Bovine, a very long-lived and smart vampire, found this area and took it over. He enslaved the people of Donner and built this castle.”
Harold waved his arms in both directions to make sure, I guess, that we knew he meant the castle we were sitting in.
“Then Count Bovine led his people in a revolt against my people, using the power that came from this castle. Over a period of a hundred years he swept out over everything and was on the verge of wiping my kind from the face of this planet.”
The guy glanced at the window. The sun was on the tops of the mountains. Sunset was close.
Harold went on. “Of course, during that time Bovine’s people also wiped out almost all other living creatures here as well with their blood thirsty ways. Day in and day out, they just couldn’t get enough blood to satisfy themselves.”
It suddenly dawned on me, that except for horses, we hadn’t seen any other creatures since we had gotten here. No dogs or wild animals. Nothing but cows, horses, and people.