“Do the Protectorates mean to invade us?” Verreck asked, trying to gently steer the seer’s consciousness back onto the more pressing issue.
“It is hard to see. So many conflicting ambitions entwine their approach. So much fear. Blood and ash. And –” his yellow eyes snapped open. “And the stench of the Miremere. The Miremancers are at the root of this rot.”
“If the Protectorates attack us again the packs will fight to defend the Tanglewild,” Verreck said. He was young, but still old enough to remember the slaughter of the last war. The beast within him growled at the memories, stoked to bloodshed.
“Only the boy can stop it,” Hrothgar said quietly, shaking his head. The seeing-beads rattled.
“Saarl’s pup?” Verreck prompted, but there was no reply. The vision had burned the seer out, and he slumped back with an exhausted grunt. Verreck eased the old prophet into a more comfortable position and sat, pondering what had been said. Hrothgar was the last of the werekynd seers, and his visions had never been wrong before. His words echoed around Verreck’s skull, hardening his heart and stoking the beast.
War was coming to the Tanglewild. It was as Hrothgar had said. The beginning of the end.
* * *
From the cavern of the seers Ulthric rook the high path north, cutting along the western valley side. The human family followed him. He neither ordered them away nor told them to stay close. He was afraid that even speaking to them would unleash the beast within. He was angry, and worst than that he was sore, cold, tired and supremely hungry. The urge to feed on the nearest thing he could get his claws on was almost overwhelming. The beast was ravenous.
He tried to focus as he walked, using the methods of silent concentration and regular breathing that the older werekynd had taught him. What would become of him now he was alone, without their guidance? Would the beast break free once more, turn him back to the feral less-than-animal he’d been when they’d first found him? He ignored such doubts, dedicating his thoughts to getting out of crow valley alive.
That would be easier said than done. He could see crowman hunting parties shadowing them – one further up the valley’s rocky slope, another below. The slaughter in the cavern had stung the tribesmen, and ensured they wouldn’t dare mount an assault on the main pack again anytime soon. But stragglers…
Ulthric was confident he could take both the groups of hunters provided they didn’t attack at once. There were no more than a dozen in each party, and they looked young, as young as him. They’d probably missed out on the main battle in the cavern and were now searching for something to vent their frustration on. Ulthric could empathise.
The Protectorate family made things much harder. If he unleashed the beast then Ulthric was confident of butchering the crowmen. But if he did so the family would almost certainly end up dead as well. He’d already suffered enough for them, it would be a supreme waste to come all this way and then wake up from the post-shift haze to find their blood on his fangs.
The humans themselves was utterly exhausted, all of them limping and straggle-haired, clothes ragged and covered in dirt. Ulthric could sense they were desperate to stop and rest, but that was not an option. The moment they gave the crowmen an opening would be the moment they’d strike. They had to keep moving.
The humans at least seemed to have enough sense not to voice complaints. The parents were probably battling with the shame of knowing their lives had been saved, on multiple occasions, by a man-beast. And who knew what was going through the children’s heads. The boy hadn’t stopped staring at Ulthric since he’d fallen asleep on his shoulder earlier that day. The werekynd had come to the conclusion that the child was mentally ill. No human he’d met since joining the pack had been so honest and open with his fascination.
Wordlessly, Ulthric led them off the track and further up the slope. The climb was punishing, and even with his stronger metabolism the werekynd found himself as panting and breathless as the humans. He was trying to get up and over the side of the valley, and then down to the flatlands just west of the Tanglewild. There the humans could turn westwards once more to their own homelands, and he could return to the soothing darkness of the Tanglewild to try and figure out what he was supposed to do next. Thoughts of the future, uncertain as it was, were too painful to contemplate now.
The crowmen gave up their shadowing as the sun began to drop towards the horizon. Hazoth, the Greater Moon, was already in the ascendency, and Ulthric and his charges had crested the valley’s slope. The crowmen had no desire to leave their natural territory in pursuit of the one man-beast. Ulthric found himself wondering whether the rest of the pack had made it clear as well. With Vega in charge now it wouldn’t surprise him if they’d found the nearest crowman settlement and gone on a killing spree. He wondered whether he’d ever see any of them again. Vrak’s parting words had been continuously running through his mind. If he really was soon to be the last member of the pack, did that make him pack leader? Was he supposed to bring younger werekynds into the fold, as they had with him? How could he possibly teach them control when he himself was still learning?
The doubts left him when he caught sight of what lay west of the Tanglewild. The vast, ancient forest stretched out below in the twilight, like some huge slumbering beast. It struck fear into the human’s hearts as readily as the sight of it gave him some small measure of hope and comfort to Ulthric. Yet lying between him and the safety of those thick, dark boughs was a body of men, their armour glinting in the last golden rays of the sun. Ulthric counted at least two hundred, and more groups of them further north, covering the plain to the west of the Tanglewood. Whatever activity they were engaged in was impossible to tell from so far away, but the work they were undertaking seemed frantic, and on a grand scale.
“There are your people,” Ulthric said to the family. “Return to them. I go to Tanglewild.”
“How can you tell from this distance?” the father asked. Ulthric bared his fangs in an expression of exasperation.
“They are humans are they not?”
“We are serfs of Duke Lorenzo,” the father explained. “If those soldiers are men of another Protectorate, they may bind us into slavery.”
“The ways of your peoples are strange, human. You are little better than the crowmen savages.”
“Can we skirt round them with you?” the father said. “We’ll follow you no further afterwards, I swear.”
Ulthric didn’t reply, just set off down towards the Tanglewild. The humans followed. As they reached the open plains, the wind snatching at Ulthric’s torn clothing and tussling his fur, the work that the large groups of humans were undertaking became apparent. Whilst cohorts of a hundred or more armoured warriors stood drawn up in battle array a larger swarm of labourers, many bare-chested, were setting to the brush and undergrowth of the Tanglewild’s outer limits with axes and shovels. A few had even reached the first old trees, laying in with mighty strokes of their tools. The sounds of frenetic industry echoed across the plains.
“What are they doing?” Ulthric demanded, his anger rising. He’d never heard of even the poorest human serfs daring to take wood from the Tanglewild, let alone a concerted operation involving thousands of them.
“We don’t know,” the father of the family said, his voice defensive. “We’re just humble farmers. This looks like the direct orders of Duke Lorenzo himself .”
“You recognise the banners?” Ulthric said. “Are these your people?”
“I think so…” the father trailed off as he realised Ulthric wasn’t listening anymore. The young werekynd’s attention had fallen on the group of human horsemen who were spurring from the closest phalanx of Protectorate infantry. They’d noticed the small, ragged band edging past them towards the Tanglewild, and were coming to investingate.
Ulthric felt his grip around the haft of his axe tighten. If ever there was a bad time for the beast to claim him, it was now.
The Tanglewild
At some point Verreck had fallen asleep. Hr
othgar woke him with a savage shake.
“I’m going,” the seer said. Verreck was instantly alert, a hand on the old werekynd’s shoulder.
“Where? You can’t leave the warptree!”
“Another vision,” Hrothgar said darkly.
“Impossible!”
“Improbably, pup,” Hrothgar snarled. “Yet it is true. The weaves are beginning to come together, finally. I must take a hand in binding them.”
“You haven’t done that in years! Allow me to act in your stead.”
Hrothgar paused, surprised by the young werekynd's suggestion.
“You think you’re ready?”
“Yes,” Venneck said. “Let me go. I beg you, master. I have the strength and the foresight. You have taught me well.”
“This thing you must do, it is of greatest importance," Hrothgar said. "To all werekynd. You must not, you cannot, fail.”
“What must I do?” Venneck asked.
“Save the pup,” Hrothgar said. “And the boy.”
* * *
“You are trespassing here,” the man who’d introduced himself as Captain Mickel shouted. “Animals like you are not permitted on Protectorate soil!”
Ulthric could hardly bring himself to speak. The urge to tear the man down from his horse and rip his throat out was almost overwhelming.
“Did you hear me?” the armoured human demanded. The dozen horsemen at his back remained impassive.
“The Tanglewild is beyond the borders of your realms,” Ulthric managed through gritted fangs. “This is our territory.”
“Not anymore,” Mickel said, hand on the hilt of his sword. “As of this afternoon the plains and the western approaches of the Tanglewild were annexed to the Eastern Marcher Lords, by the decree of Duke Lorenzo.”
“Decrees, annexation,” Ulthric said. “Meaningless. Get out of my way, human.”
“You have no right to be here,” Mickel reiterated, as though speaking to a very small, stupid child. “Give up these good people you’ve taken prisoner and surrender your weapons.”
“I protected these people!” Ulthric bellowed, gesturing at the family cowering at his back. “They own me their lives, and more besides!”
“Enough!” Mickel said. “Seize this beast!”
The first rider to come at Ulthric died with the werekynd’s axe in his skull. The beast struck with such fury that the haft splintered and the helmet fell away, cut in two. The second man was likewise dragged from his horse and savaged, Ulthric reduced to claws and teeth in a frenzied act of self defence.
“Stop!” The human family’s boy, Thomas, lunged forward. The rest of the soldiers had surrounded Ulthric, but the child darted away from his father’s grasp and through their legs. As Ulthric turned, eyes wild and splattered with the blood of his first two victims, Thomas jumped at the werekynd and latched onto his back.
“Don’t hurt him!” he yelled, desperately trying to ward away the other humans. The Protectorate soldiers were so shocked by his sudden appearance that they stopped, weapons raised.
It was the only opportunity Ulthric was going to get, and it was the only one he needed.
With a savage howl the werekynd ploughed out of the circle, crushing a third soldier as he went. Ahead of him lay the cool darkness of the Tanglewild, beckoning him on. Behind were the angry shouts of Mickel’s men, the clattering of armour, and the horrified wailing of the human family as they saw their only son still clinging into the furred back of a half-shifted werekynd.
Ulthric remembered little of the next few moments. Only the slightest sliver of control was separating him from a total shift. If it happened then not only would the boy still clinging to him die, but he would as well – even the beast within would be no match for an entire cohort of armed and armoured Protectorate troops.
But the Tanglewild was close. Ulthric bounded and leapt through the undergrowth, his loose-limbed gait easily outdistancing his pursuers. He felt little legs on either side of him, and realised that the young boy was riding him like one of the human’s steeds. What was more, he was laughing, giggling with pure exultation at their wild escape. There was definitely something very wrong with him.
Ulthric plunged into the safety of the Tanglewild’s darkness, twigs and thorns snapping and snagging at him in a stinging, welcome embrace. The scents of the ancient forest flooded his senses, and he let out a grunt of satisfaction and relief. He could feel the beast retreating, control returning with the fatigued shaking of his limbs.
“Get off me,” he managed to spit out between his retracting fangs. He pitched the giggling boy to the pine-scattered earth. “Go back to your parents.”
Before he could say anything more he heard the thumping of hooves and the cracking of twigs. With only a split-second to react he picked the boy up and threw him to one side. In the same moment he twisted, knowing before he even saw it that a sword’s edge was slicing down for his skull. His sudden motion saved his life, the steel carving into his jaw rather than the top of his head. The blow still sent him spinning, and he tasted the bitter tang of his own blood before darkness took him.
He remembered little of what happened next. There was the howl of a shifted werekynd, sending instinctive shudders up his back, and the terrified shriek of a horse. The clash of steel and the thump of something striking the forest floor. The startled cry of a tanglecat. His eyes fluttered open. He found himself looking into the icy-blue gaze of another werekynd. For a split-second he thought it was himself, separated spirit-from-body in death. But the man-beast crouched over him was not his own reflection, just a fellow pup. He bore strange tribal markings, red dashes of paint streaked along his shifted snout and the shaggy fur of his upper arms. They were the marks of a seer, a prophet, and yet there were no more prophets among the werekynd that Ulthric knew of. The strangly-marked man-beast had shifted, yet for some reason didn’t strike as Ulthric lay prone and helpless, bleeding out into the forest floor. His control had to be immense.
Then Ulthric started awake. He was still lying in the dirt, yet of the mysterious young werekynd there was no sign. He glanced about wildly, certain that it had been no dream. It could not have been – Captain Mickel, who had furiously pursued him into the Tanglewild after his men had given up the pursuit, lay just a few feet away. He’d been disembowled with a savagery only exhibited by a shifted werekynd. Ulthric recalled hearing the howl again, and the strange, cold blue eyes of the one who had knelt over him. There had been a level of intelligence there, of understanding that he’d never before witnessed in a shifted man-beast, even in Saarl.
He found the pines beneath him sticky with his own blood, and tentitvely reached up to probe his jaw. It was aching, yet the flow of blood had stopped. His claws came away smeared with blue residue. He sniffered at it, powerful senses identifying the substance in an instant. Pulped bluebark, known for its healing properties, used by the werekynd on the gravest of wounds. But it was impossible to find it this close to the edge of the Tanglewild.
Of whoever, or whatever, had applied it to him there was no sign.
There was only the human child, Thomas, sitting back on his haunches nearby and still grinning.
Into the Tanglewild
Nine Years Later
In terms of chances, this one was as good as any they were going to get.
The warden was tired, Roddick understood that. They all were. It was getting late, the sun descending towards its cradle in the High Hills. The labourers, Roddick included, had long since slowed, their muscles aching and their bodies slicked with sweat. For his part, the warden’s mind had clearly wandered. There had been no werekynd attacks along this stretch of the Tanglewild for well over two months. Just a few minutes more and shift rotation would see the Protectorate soldier released from his charges and free to do whatever it was Protectorate soldiers did with their down-time.
Roddick had a different end to the warden’s shift duty in mind. Allowing labourers to escape was a flogging offence, and if any esca
pees weren’t retrieved and returned to their work gangs by the end of the week, said flogging would be extended to a full-blown summary execution. That was exactly the fate Roddick had in mind as he gave the Sark twins the nod.
The Sarks were big and stupid, and just about perfect for the scheme Roddick had cooked up. Big enough to overpower the warden, and stupid enough to take the fall. Of course leading a full-scale escape with his entire work detail had occurred to him, but where would that leave him? Lost in the Tanglewild with a dozen hungry mouths looking to him for leadership. And if enough of them ran there was a chance, however slender, that the Protectorate troops ringing the Tanglewild’s borders would bother coming after them. That was an eventuality Roddick had no wish to entertain.
It took a few more purpose-laden nods before the Sark twins took notice. Seeing their faces light up with childish understanding would have been funny in any other circumstance. In this particular one it was nothing more than infuriating.
“Go,” Roddick hissed at them, hefting his axe. The rest of the work detail were oblivious to the drama poised to unfold in their midst, mindlessly hacking and slashing at the brambles and stunted trunks. They had moments before the warden recalled them from the very edge of the forest, to make way for the fresh work detail coming to relieve them. Roddick knew from the pattern of the past few months’ hard labour that he wouldn’t be this close to the Tanglewild’s inviting darkness again for some time. He wasn’t going to spend one more night in the miserable, makeshift camp the workers inhabited when they weren’t set-to cleaving back the borders of the ancient woodland. Tonight he’d be free, whether amongst the Tanglewild’s branches or sent up to the Halls of the Saints by the edge of a Protectorate blade.
Werekynd - Beasts of the Tanglewild Page 5