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He comes running over, keeping his head respectfully low.
“Sire,” he acknowledges me.
“What is going on?”
He glances up at me quickly, uncertainly.
“There seems to be a problem,” I press on, impatiently.
“It’s the changed route… Sire, the drivers weren’t informed until this morning. And we can’t take that route, there are reports that it isn’t safe.”
“When was the route changed?” I demand to know.
Marlon’s face remains impassive. “I was only informed this morning, Sire.”
“By whom?”
“Prince Layrr.”
“He is here?”
Layrr doesn’t usually involve himself in the day-to-day running of the business and I seek him out, finding him in what we call the warehouse, one of the outhouses. I see him staring at maps and consulting with some of the drivers about alternative roads.
“What is going on here?” I demand to know.
I see him do a double-take when he sees me in the door. He is not happy to see me here and barely hides it.
“Father! I was not expecting you,” he says, bowing his head. Then he tells me about another attack on one of our convoys. He had only heard of it last night and had been trying to find out how the bandits had found the secret new route, which had been known to only a few individuals. “We have a leak, but I don’t know where it is,” he says, darkly.
“This is our fourth loss in a month?” I had known about one of the ambushes, but not that there had been three others since then. “What has this cost us?”
Layrr will not meet my eyes. “Close to a million.”
The shock of it almost takes my breath away.
“Why was I not informed?” my voice is cold and low.
“You were so busy trying to find out what happened to Tanata,” Layrr’s voice rises. “I couldn’t get hold of you so I’ve been taking decisions!”
“Where is Ragnar?” I ask about my other son.
“He is off on one of his missions,” he says, dismissing him. “We’ve been unable to catch any of these bandits, it’s almost impossible to know what is going on.”
“Not impossible at all,” comes a voice from the other end of the warehouse. It is Ragnar, striding towards us, his voice cool. “Some of our men have survived the attacks, they told us they saw vampires.”
“They could have been mistaken or fooled,” says Layrr, barely hiding his contempt for his brother. “Anything could cause those injuries,” he says dismissively.
“What do you think?” I ask Ragnar, who smiles at his brother.
“I think we need to take the trucks out ourselves, try and catch these fuckers red-handed.”
Layrr interrupts him, “We have doubled the convoy size! We can’t afford to move the operation to night time only! We will not meet the supply!”
Layrr’s temper bothers me. He needs to have a cool head when dealing with a crisis.
I call Marlon over. “What is your take on this?” I ask him in a low voice, as we walk away from the brothers.
“Someone is trying to cash in on our operation,” he says.
