Excerpt of The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice

IN THE WINTER OF MY TWENTY-FIRST YEAR, I WENT out alone on
horseback to kill a pack of wolves.

This was on my father's land in the Auvergne in France,
and these were the last decades before the French
Revolution.

It was the worst winter that I could remember, and the
wolves were stealing the sheep from our peasants and even
running at night through the streets of the village.

These were bitter years for me. My father was the Marquis,
and I was the seventh son and the youngest of the three
who had lived to manhood. I had no claim to the tile or
the land, and no prospects. Even in a rich family, it
might have been that way for a younger boy, but our wealth
had been used up long ago. My eldest brother, Augustin,
who was the rightful heir to all we possessed, had spent
his wife's small dowry as soon as he married her.

My father's castle, his estate, and the village nearby
were my entire universe. And I'd been born restless—the
dreamer, the angry one, the complainer. I wouldn't sit by
the fire and talk of old wars and the days of the Sun
King. History had no meaning for me.

But in this dim and old fashioned world, I had become the
hunter. I brought in the pheasant, the venison, and the
trout from the mountain streams—whatever was needed and
could be got—to feed the family. It had become my life by
this time—and one I shared with no one else—and it was a
very good thing that I'd taken it up, because there were
years when we might have actually starved to death.

Of course this was a noble occupation, hunting one's
ancestral lands, and we alone had the right to do it. The
richest of the bourgeois couldn't lift his gun in
myforests. But then again he didn't have to lift his gun.
He had money.

Two times in my life I'd tried to escape this life, only
to be brought back with my wings broken. But I'll tell
more on that later.

Right now I'm thinking about the now all over those
mountains and the wolves that were frightening the
villagers and stealing my sheep. And I'm thinking of the
old saying in France in those days, that if you lived in
the province of Auvergne you could get no farther from
Paris.

Understand that since I was the lord and the only lord
anymore who could sit a horse and fire a gun, it was
natural that the villagers would come to me, complaining
about the wolves and expecting me to hunt them. It was my
duty.

I wasn't the least afraid of the wolves either. Never in
my life had I seen or heard of a wolf attacking a man. And
I would have poisoned them, if I could, but meat was
simply too scarce to lace with poison.

So early on a very cold morning in January, I armed myself
to kill the wolves one by one. I had three flintlock guns
and an excellent flintlock rifle, and these I took with me
as well as my muskets and my father's sword. But just
before leaving the castle, I added to this little arsenal
one or two ancient weapons that I'd never bothered with
before.

Our castle was full of old armor. My ancestors had fought
in countless noble wars since the times of the Crusades
with St. Louis. And hung on the walls above all this
clattering junk were a good many lances, battleaxes,
flails, and maces.

It was a very large mace—that is, a spiked club—that I
took with me that morning, and also a good-sized flail: an
iron ball attached to a chain that could be swung with
immense force at an attacker.

Now remember this was the eighteenth century, the time
when white-wigged Parisians tiptoed around in high-heeled
satin slippers, pinched snuff, and dabbed at their noses
with embroidered handkerchiefs.

And here I was going out to hunt in rawhide boots and
buckskin coat, with these ancient weapons tied to the
saddle, and my two biggest mastiffs beside me in their
spiked collars.

That was my life. And it might as well have been lived in
the Middle Ages. And I knew enough of the fancy-dressed
travelers on the post road to feel it rather keenly. The
nobles in the capital called us country
lords "harecatchers." Of course we could sneer at them and
call them lackeys to the king and queen. Our castle had
stood for a thousand years, and not even the great
Cardinal Richelieu in his war on our kind had managed to
pull down our ancient towers. But as I said before, I
didn't pay much attention to history.

I was unhappy and ferocious as I rode up the mountain.

I wanted a good battle with the wolves. There were five in
the pack according to the villagers, and I had my guns and
two dogs with jaws so strong they could snap a wolf's
spine in an instant.

Well, I rode for an hour up the slopes. Then I came into a
small valley I knew well enough that no snowfall could
disguise it. And as I started across the broad empty field
towards the barren wood, I heard the first howling.

Within seconds there had come another howling and then
another, and now the chorus was in such harmony that I
couldn't tell the number of the pack, only that they had
seen me and were signaling to each other to come together,
which was just what I had hoped they would do.

I don't think I felt the slightest fear then. But I felt
something, and it caused the hair to rise on the backs of
my arms. The countryside for all its vastness seemed
empty. I readied my guns. I ordered my dogs to stop their
growling and follow me, and some vague thought came to me
that I had better get out of the open field and into the
woods and hurry.

My dogs gave their deep baying alarm. I glanced over my
shoulder and saw the wolves hundreds of yards behind me
and streaking straight towards me over the snow. Three
giant gray wolves they were, coming on in a line.

I broke into a run for the forest.

It seemed I would make it easily before the three reached
me, but wolves are extremely clever animals, and as I rode
hard for the trees I saw the rest of the pack, some five
full-grown animals, coming out ahead of me to my left. It
was an ambush, and I could never make the forest in time.
And the pack was eight wolves, not five as the villagers
had told me.

Even then I didn't have sense enough to be afraid. I
didn't ponder the obvious fact that these animals were
starving or they'd never come near the village. Their
natural reticence with men was completely gone.

I got ready for battle. I stuck the flail in my belt, and
with the rifle I took aim. I brought down a big male yards
away from me and had time to reload as my dogs and the
pack attacked each other.