No one said a word, so Harold went on. “As we went, on our army got bigger and bigger, and more and more cows died. Every skull of every cow we brought back here to make us stronger. It was a heady time.”
Harold looked like an old man, thinking back to his party days.
“When did Count Bovine show up?”
“Oh, about four months into our little war. He and five of his most powerful vampires walked in here one night and killed every one of my men without so much as a fight.”
“Bet you thought you had it shielded, didn’t you?” Aahz said.
“I did,” Harold said. “I was so confident of the shielding that I didn’t even have guards posted.”
“Wouldn’t have done any good,” Aahz said. Tanda nodded. I didn’t have a clue why he said that, but Harold seemed to agree as well.
“Needless to say, Count Bovine was angry. He imprisoned me up here, and put a spell on me so that every month, when he and his people are dining on my people, I’m a cow eating grass.”
“How long ago was that?” I asked.
“I don’t know exactly,” Harold said. “No real reason to keep track. At least thirty years, maybe more.”
“And Bovine and his people have been killing your people ever since?” Aahz asked, looking puzzled.
“Actually, no,” Harold said. “That just started a few years back, when Count Bovine was killed and his second-in-command, Ubald, took over.”
“Ubald’s not one for keeping things in balance, is he?” Tanda asked.
“Not worried about it at all,” Harold said. “He told me that there were enough of my kind around for his people to party for centuries.”