Men and Gods

The Human Enemy’s Land, Eleven Hundred Years Before

The city was, as it had appeared from the distance, destroyed.

Once it would have been a place of wealth and power. The wide streets were paved with a slant intended to collect waste and water run off in a design that Thaelen admired for its initiative and fore-thought, and the buildings had been built by skilled craftsmen with an eye for the aesthetic of the city streets. They passed public gathering places, gardens and monuments destroyed, broken pieces of their sculpture spilling across fire-scarred paving and grass torn beneath hob-nail boots.

The people were dressed in the rags of finery, bright elaborate embroidery smothered by filth as they withdrew into their houses, holding back hollow-cheeked children and pushing them behind them defensively as Thaelen’s intimidating convoy moved through the streets.

“They’re starving,” Isolte whispered.

Thaelen did not say, but he knew every vampire in the convoy had smelled the stench of