Werekynd - Beasts of the Tanglewild

by MacNiven, Robbie

  “I had him!” he spat in Ulthric’s face. “You worthless, stupid little pup!”

  “We haven’t got time for this!”

  Vega spun away from Ulthric and raked his claws down the face a crowman who’d been coming at them. The man shrieked with agony, but Vega simply kicked him to the ground and snapped his neck with a boot. He was looking for Saarl, Ulthric forgotten, but of the longfang there was no sign.

  “The pack is escaping, we need to follow!” Ulthric urged. Vega seemed not to hear him. He set off towards the cavern entrance, snatching up his broadsword as he went. Hissing with exasperation, Ulthric followed.

  * * *

  The death-stench of the Miremere followed Ferdano all the way back into Bilbalo, clinging to him as assuredly as the filth of the marshes. He kept his head down as he traversed the winding streets, alleys and forums of the great city, desperate not to be recognised in such a vile state. His position at court would not be helped one jot by the fact it looked as though he’d spent all morning crawling through the city’s sewers.

  Eventually he caught sight of the towering sandstone spire of the Keep, gleaming golden in the afternoon sunlight. It lanced above the brightly coloured tents of the Grand Bazaar like a spear thrust towards heaven, its upper crenulations wreathed in spiralling flocks of the red-winged bloodfowl that Duke Lorenzo’s daughter bred.

  The sight of his destination lent fresh strength to the valet’s tired limbs. He forged through the Bazaar’s chattering crowds. At the Keep’s east postern gate the Duke’s guards admitted him on sight, even the grim-faced warriors unable to quite hide their revulsion at the smell he was giving off.

  He climbed the tiers of the Keep in a frantic haste, panting with exertion at each new flight of spiralling stairs. He lost count of the time his fellow courtiers hailed him on the way up, eager for news of his venture. He stopped for none of them, desperate not to be late reporting to the Duke and equally unwilling to let them catch a proper sight of how filthy he was.

  Eventually he arrived outside the Council Chamber, the guard detail hauling the great ironwood doors open to admit him. The long, stone-flagged chamber was deserted apart from three figures at its far end. As he entered their conversation ceased.

  “Ferdano!” called Duke Lorenzo. The young noble was seated upon the High Throne of his father, flanked by his councillor, Eduard, and Lieutenant Gabrielle Mail of the guard.

  “Come, come,” the Duke said, motioning to him as he began the ritual bowing approach. “No time for that now!”

  Abandoning ceremony, Ferdano covered the long walk along the Council Chamber’s nave, the sunlight streaming down through the high windows to pick out the stern features of statues lining his approach. The past Dukes all appeared to have been grim men, and in that regard the latest seemed born to hold the title, young as he was. His expression was as stony as those of his forbearers as Ferdano came to stand before him.

  “Dear Saints above,” Lieutenant Gabrielle rumbled from his side. “You stink!”

  “He’s been to the Miremere, what do you expect,” Eduard responded before Ferdano could apologise. The hulking guard officer shot the wizened old adviser a caustic look, but Lorezno stilled further dispute with a cut chop of his hand.

  “Speak my valet, speak!” he urged, leaning forward in his old throne. It creaked painfully.

  “The message was delivered as per your instructions, sire,” Ferdano said.

  “And?”

  “The Miremancers seem sated for now. They will expect confirmation that the whole pack was wiped out, but as a beginning it will be enough.”

  The Duke leant back, releasing a slow, pent-up breath.

  “I trust you spoke of your venture to no one outside of the Keep?” Eduard said.

  “Of course not.”

  “Though some may guess from the stench,” Gabrielle chuckled.

  “Now is no time for idle jest,” Lorenzo snapped, fixing Ferdano with a stare that possessed a stoic gravity well beyond his years. “You know the importance of these negotiations. The fate of Bilbalo, of my glorious dukedom, of the Protectorates themselves, rests in our pact with the Miremancers. If they are not sated…”

  “We all appreciate the direness of the situation,” Eduard finished quietly. Ferdano nodded.

  “We can proceed then?” Gabrielle said. “With the next phase?” Lorenzo’s stare was still on Ferdano. The exhausted valet simply nodded.

  “Yes,” the Duke said, turning to his Lieutenant. “Take word to General Novo on the Eastern Marches. He is to begin operations cutting back the Tanglewild. If any of the werekynd beasts try to resist… kill them.”

  “It’ll be taken as a declaration of war,” Ferdano said.

  “It must be done,” Eduard replied before Lorenzo could speak, his voice forceful. “For the safety of the dukedom.”

  “I don’t take the decision lightly,” Lorenzo added. “But Eduard is right. I have never doubted his council before. The Miremancers will only stop their expansion of that cursed bog if we deal a blow against their ancient enemies. Saints know, I have no love for their filthy breed anyway. The Tanglewild must burn. And the werekynd with it.”

  * * *

  Outside the Council Chamber Gabrielle put Ferdano up against the wall.

  “How’s your wife coming along?” the brutish guard officer asked, sneering down at the valet. “And your child?"

  “Just ask what it is you want to know, Gabrielle,” Ferdano sighed. “Your style of subtlety was never becoming.” Gabrielle frowned and released his grip.

  “Aria,” he said. “What news of him.”

  “As far as I know, Captain Aria is alive and well.” Gabrielle frown became an outright glare, and Ferdano shrugged. “He sent the courier-wing informing the Duke that he and the pack had entered crow valley, so as of this morning he was still alive. But Saints alone know if he’ll make it out of that hellhole alive. Betraying a group of werekynd he was relying on for protection, you’ll not find a more hazardous task undertaken by a Captain of the Duke’s guard in three generations.”

  “He would not have accepted it, had he not known the Duke is on the cusp of promoting me over him,” Gabrielle sneered. “Even so, I doubt he will return. I will be the next Captain of the Guard, mark my words Ferdano.”

  “Good for you,” the valet said idly, slipping away from Gabrielle’s threatening bulk. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really have to find a bath.”

  Banishment

  At the tunnel’s entrance the pack was regrouping. The crowmen were hurling themselves at the werekynd with renewed fury, Aria’s frantic shouts having finally rallied them. The man-beasts, however, had slipped the noose – now they could use the narrowing walls to channel the attacking savages onto their blades.

  “Keep backing up!” Vrak shouted, glancing down the tunnel towards the cave’s entrance. He could see sunlight now, tantalisingly close. “We’re going to make it!”

  “I give the orders now, Vrak!” a voice interrupted the werekynd. It was Vega. Fur matted with blood, he materialised from out of the press. His broadsword was running wet and red. Behind him came Ulthric, himself panting, bloody but alive.

  “Where’s Saarl?” Vrak shouted over the clashing of steel and flint.

  “Gone!” Vega said, spitting. “Thanks to the pup! I’m pack leader now!”

  “Well if you want to be pack leader for much longer I suggest we get out of this place."

  “Keep going,” Vega said, even as he swung his heavy blade down through a screaming crowman’s shoulder and into his torso.

  “More humans behind us!” Kex shouted from the rear of the pack. “I can smell them!”

  “Another trap?” Vega demanded.

  It wasn’t. The scent that had alerted the werekynd belonged to the human family. Like the pack, they were fleeing down the tunnel towards the light of the open slopes. Captain Aria was with them.

  “You!” Vega roared.

  Aria half turned
as he ran. He was red-faced with exertion, the weight of his plate armour leaving him a good dozen paces behind the family. He couldn’t outrun Vega. In a few bounds the werekynd had caught up with him.

  The man’s armour counted for little against the Vega’s notched broadsword. With one swipe the pack leader parted the head of the Duke’s Captain from his shoulders. Vega was not sated. As Aria’s corpse clattered to the tunnel floor he launched forward, snarling, his body morphing and shifting in mid stretch as he lunged for the human family. The little girl screamed, and Vega shrieked with glee, already able to taste their blood on his fangs.

  Ulthric stopped him. A fistful of Vega’s fur caused the pack leader to come up short. He howled with fury and turned, striking out at the younger werekynd. Lacking the transformed beast’s reflexes, Ulthric was unable to avoid the blow and grunted with pain as he was flung back against the tunnel wall. Vega loomed over him.

  “Enough,” Vrak shouted. The pack leader paused, poised to strike.

  “You dare challenge me, Vrak?” he said, glaring at the older werekynd.

  “No Vega. No one does. Not even Ulthric. You cannot strike him down unless he has challenged you first. It is the law.”

  “He dared lay hands on me,” Vega spat, shuddering as he fought against the beast giving him strength.

  “Was it meant as a challenge?” Both turned to Ulthric. The young werekynd looked from one to the other, and shook his head.

  “I’ll run him through,” Vega barked. “He stopped me killing Saarl. The longfang coward escaped because of him!”

  “Then his fate must be banishment. If you kill him you break the laws of the pack. You cannot return to the Tanglewild if you do.”

  Vega glared down at Ulthric.

  “Get up,” he snapped. Ulthric rose unsteadily.

  “You’d risk your life for these pathetic creatures,” Vega said, gesturing with one bloody claw at the family cowering at the mouth of the tunnel.

  “I wouldn’t see them slaughtered for your bloodlust alone, if that’s what you mean,” Ulthric said through gritted fangs. “They’d no hand in any of this.”

  “Then how about you go with them?” Vega sneered. “Ulthric Wereborn, I banish you from the pack. If I ever see you again, I will kill you.” If tradition dictated the moment be observed with solemnity, Vrak did not give it a chance.

  “We have to keep going,” he urged. For once Vega didn’t argue, allowing the momentum of the fleeing pack to carry them all out into the blessed, miserably pallid sunlight of the tunnel entrance.

  “That’s far enough!” he ordered as the pack, bloodied and panting, regrouped on the pathway beyond the icy darkness of the cave. “More than enough! Turn and face the fleshy whelps!”

  The crowmen were still hard behind them. But now they too were wounded, exhausted and, unlike the pack, demoralised by the violent deaths of both their venerated leader and the strange-speaking Protectorate human who had hired them. Their advantages had been reduced one by one, and they had seen what even a cornered war pack could do.

  “Show them how real warriors fight!” Vega said. The pack needed no further encouragement. With a serious of wild snarls and grisly snaps the entire band turned, morphing in a few adrenaline-charged heartbeats into things of legend and nightmare. Only Ulthric, tired and bloodied, retained his semi-human form. He was done. For him there was no more bloodlust, no more fury, only a bitter anger and deep, aching fatigue.

  His contribution to the fearsome display was unnecessary. The crowmen fled. Very few were fast enough to make it back to their caverns alive.

  * * *

  “Go,” Vega said simply. Ulthric turned, and obeyed. Every every ounce of strength and emotion in his body screamed at him to turn back, to turn and fight and cut down the upstart leader. He would take his rightful place in the pack. His whole body itched with the need to shift and kill.

  But he wouldn’t. He knew if he did he would die. A part of him thought that such a fate would be preferable to what he had now become – an outcast – but he remembered that he’d been an outcast before, until the pack had found him. He could one again. He would control himself, just like that old traitor, Saarl, had taught him. He would control his base, bestial instincts, he would walk away from Vega and he would live, to fight another day. He walked.

  The human family walked with him. They were still in dangerous territory, still shadowed by the roving packs of crowmen, wary, beaten, but thirsting for revenge. The father, his son, his daughter and his wife would stay by Ulthric’s side for the time being, as much as they feared the bloodied, glaring young man-beast.

  As they trudged down the path away from the pack, the sound of running footsteps made Ulthric turn. A part of him expected to see Vega bounding after him, given over to the need to rend and tear, and that part rejoiced that the challenge had been forced upon him. But it was only Vrak, the elder werekynd regarding him warily as he came to a halt before him.

  “Vega will kill you if you tarry with me,” Ulthric said.

  “True,” Vrak shrugged. “But I fear I will die soon regardless, by his hand or the human’s. He intends to lead us against Duke Lorenzo, for his treachery.”

  “That’s madness. The pack will never last against the entirety of the Duke’s host.”

  “Vega doesn’t care. He wants revenge and you know what he’s like. Nobody is strong enough to stand up to him.”

  If you’ve come after me looking for someone who will, you’ll have to keep running."

  “That’s not why I’m here,” Vrak said. “All I wanted to do before you leave is remind you of one of your lessons. As long as one member of the pack remains, then the pack remains. If Vega has his way with the rest of us, you may soon be the only one left.”

  “What – ” Ulthric began, but Vrak cut him off.

  “Alone you will be weak, Ulthric Wereborn. But I think there is strength in you that is not so easily broken. It’s the same strength Saarl – curse his pelt – saw. You need not be a lone hunter for long. Seek out others of our kind, reform the pack. Many will pay for your skills. Do not let the lessons you have learned with us be in vain. For the good of our kind. Return to the Tanglewild, and grow strong.”

  Ulthric held the older man-beast’s gaze for a long time before he nodded, once. Then he turned and stalked off. The human family followed. Vrak watched them go, resisting the urge to scurry back to Vega. Much of the pack was dying, he knew. Much of it, but not all of it. A small, lonely part was free from the fate ordained for the rest. It was walking away, to better things. It had come to crow valley with the pack, but it was leaving with a future all of its own, and it didn’t yet recognise it. Vrak almost envied the young pup.

  He watched Ulthric’s slowly vanishing form for a minute more and then, with a grunt, turned and rejoined the rest of the werekynd. Vega held his gaze, but said nothing.

  End's Beginning

  Orders arrived by courier-wing late that afternoon.

  “From Bilbalo,” Captain Mickel said, handing Augusta Novo the little roll of parchment. The general tore the twine and scanned the message. A grim smile creased his scarred features.

  “Confirmation,” he said simply, crushing the paper slip in one mailed fist. “Burn this, and mobilise the battalions. I want the first cutting parties in place on the western edge of the Tanglewild by nightfall.”

  “And what if the werekynd resist?” Mickle asked. Novo’s smile never wavered.

  “No prisoners.”

  * * *

  “Another one?” Verreck asked. Hrothgar only nodded. He’d started awake after a deep trance-sleep, snarling, shuddering. The beast within had been growling softly – more resistance than it had offered the old werekynd in years. He’d been shaken by that, even more so than he had been by the vision.

  The seer closed his eyes, willing the strands of memory to weave themselves back together into coherent thought. Verreck watched in silence, breath baited. Two visions in the same day was u
nheard of.

  “There are humans coming to the Tanglewild,” Hrothgar said, voice a low growl as he re-entered his trance-state. “I can see them.”

  “Protectorate envoys?” Verreck asked quietly, afraid to break his master’s concentration. Hrothgar shook his head.

  “No, soldiers. And a family.”

  “A family?”

  “Of humans. And a werekynd. A pup, one of Saarl’s.”

  “What of the rest of his pack?”

  “I cannot see,” Hrothgar said, his voice pained. “It is clouded, like their weaves have been torn apart. But this pup is fleeing them. He will not be a pup for much longer, and nor will the family be a family beyond tonight.”