“Crain’s caught something,” Grimbol said, peering through the darkness beneath the young boughs. He was right. Approaching was Crain the sentinel, hood up, leading a horse in one hand and a wide-eyed messenger boy in the other.
“Says he wants to speak to you,” the cloaked sentry said. “He was looking high and mighty on his nag, so I thought I’d cut him down to size.” He tossed the boy down onto the leaf mould at Red’s feet.
The messenger looked up, fear gleaming in his eyes. Before him he saw a long-legged youth, a scarlet cape clasped about her neck, her long red hair worn across one shoulder. Her eyes, dark like her lost brother’s, glittered in the moonlight filtering between the Edgewood’s saplings.
“What does the old man want now?” she asked, nodding to Novo’s yellow griffon crest stitched upon the messenger’s breast.
“He requests your attendance at the camp,” the boy said, lowering his eyes to the ground. “As soon as possible.”
Red let out a short, hard laugh, echoed by her assembled men.
“He castigates me and my followers for taking harsh steps towards culling these abominable animals, but now that his back is against the wall he wants us fighting under him once more? Nine years under his command and still the Tanglewild does not burn.”
“He hopes you’ll assist captain Kalven in discovering the Great Pack’s course and speed. They’re on their way here. The general says he believes this will be the final battle.”
“Old Kalven and his scouts are a pack of fools and cowards,” Red said, turning away from the boy and fixing Grimbol with her intense stare. The lanky crowman mercenary shrugged.
“If it means more werekynd to kill?” he said. Red nodded, and crouched down in the undergrowth beside the messenger.
“Take these words back to Novo,” she whispered, her voice as cold as the smile teasing at her lips. “Tell him to just point us in the right direction.”
She’d kill every last one of the beasts who had taken her older brother and then, perhaps, finally, Thomas could rest in peace.
She could not have been more wrong.
A Fugitive Running
Captain Gabrielle found Duke Lorenzo’s envoy in his chambers. Here, high up on the western side of the Keep, the wind was gusting hard – battering at the shutters and moaning under the doors. Gabrielle paused at the chamber’s threshold, the flickering candlelight picking out his ugly smile.
“Ferdano,” he said. “Here we are at last. Do you remember when you claimed I’d never make the rank of Captain?”
The envoy said nothing. He was sat behind his desk, facing the doorway, but with his head bowed over a book. Anger flushed across Gabrielle’s face.
“Eduardo has had enough of your meddling,” he growled, taking a step into the room. “You’ve always been too close to the Duke, and nobody likes to be closer to him than his chief councillor.”
“Eduardo is in league with the Miremancers, isn’t he?” Ferdano said, still not looking up. Gabrielled laughed, one hand now on the hilt of his sword.
“That would explain a lot, I’ll grant you. But Saints know what the old devil is up to. It doesn’t concern me.”
“Despite the fact that Bilbalo is your home?” Ferdano said.
“The marsh-scum could never take this city in a thousand years –”
“They have had a thousand years, and more. Have you not seen the southern bastion? It is in ruin. The decay of the marshlands is spreading throughout the city.”
“You know more about the Miremancers than an honest Protectorate citizen should,” Gabrielle said.
“But not as much as Eduardo?”
“He wants you taken. And I’m more than happy to do it.” The Captain of the Duke’s guard lunged across the desk at Ferdano, plate armour grating. The envoy’s words brought him up short.
“No,” Ferdano said. Gabrielle sneered, but the expression dripped from his face as Ferdano let the book he’d ostensibly been reading drop to the desk. In his hand, concealed until now, was a massive antique matchlock pistol.
“Saints –” Gabrielle began, but Ferdano wasn’t much inclined to let him finish. The pistol boomed, deafeningly loud in the enclosed space, and the brutal Captain’s head vanished in an explosion of blood, brain and shattered skull.
Ferdano was already moving before the heavily armoured corpse clattered to the floor. He scrambled over his desk and dashed out of the chamber, heading for the western spiral stairs. Already the heads of passing Keep officials were turning, shocked by the sound of a gunshot within their towering walls.
Ferdano ignored them. Eduardo had wanted him taken quickly and quietly, and none of the Keep’s guards had been ordered to intercept him. Yet.
That all changed as he heard the sound of screaming echoing down from behind him. Someone had discovered Gabrielle’s remains.
Heart pounding, breath rasping, the envoy made his way down to the lower levels and finally out onto the street. The night was deceptively calm and quiet. The pavements were mostly deserted and unlit – since the bastion’s fall the people of Bilbalo had kept to their homes, locking their doors and shuttering their windows tight. It hurt to see his city living in such fear, yet the knowledged that their fear was well founded now spurred him on. He raced through the silent stalls of the Grand Bazaar and turned east, along Saint’s Causeway, towards home.
He’d already sent word via courier-wing. As he’d prayed, his wife and daughter were ready in the saddle waiting for him as he arrived.
“It’s true,” he panted, hands on his knees. “Eduardo is conspiring against the Duke and the city. You have to leave before the Miremancers attack. Go to your sister’s house in Tolerno and wait for me there.”
“What about you?” his wife asked, gripping their daughter tightly.
“I need to go find help,” Ferdano said. “Beyond the Wall. I don’t know how many members of the Duke’s court are under Ferdano’s sway. If I can reach general Novo and convince him to listen to me he may bring his army here in time to defend the city and root out the traitors.”
“Novo’s army is in the north, battling the werekynd.”
“Then they must be convinced to stop. The man-beasts too. The war these past nine years has all been a diversion. The Miremancers have set us up.”
“You’ll send us word when you reach Novo’s encampment?”
“Yes. Now, for the love of the Saints, go!”
As his family fled, Ferdano took Bartimaeus to the northern gate. By the time he reached it, his tunic still splattered with Gabrielle’s blood, the guards had been alerted to his apparent treason.
The commander of the watch had already heard tell of Ferdano’s family escaping through the western gate. The majority of the town watch had been rushed there, anticipating that the envoy would seek to make good his flight and join up with his wife and daughter. That was why the officer in charge of the north gate could only stare, mouth agape, as Ferdano rammed his old pistol against the face of one of his men.
“Keep walking,” the envoy said to his hostage, trotting his horse slowly out beneath the raised portcullis. The man was clearly battling the urge to either lash out or run, but the presence of Ferdano’s pistol was proving too large a distraction.
“Captain Gabrielle’s brains are decorating the inside of the Keep thanks to this thing,” the envoy said, loud enough for the man’s hesitant comrades to hear. He gave the smouldering matchlock a little shake. “So you keep going unless you want to rejoin his august company.”
Out beyond the gate the night was vast and cold, encroaching upon the Wall as assuredly as the Miremere was on its south side. Ferdano dared not relax even a fraction as he passed out of the gatehouse’s shadow.
“Stay here!” he barked at the Protectorate soldiers, who’d begun to edge after him and their captive friend. “Or by the Saints you won’t have much of him left to bury!”
The torturously slow escape continued. Ferdano knew that even now messengers wo
uld be scrambling to every barracks in the city. Horses would be receiving their saddles and cavalry would be hurtling from the other gates to cut him off. But he had Bartimaeus. His mount was temperamental at the best of times, but he was also a fleet young thing, and tonight more than ever Ferdano was thankful of that.
By now he was almost three hundred yards up the northern highway and away from the gate, the looming edifice and the glimmer of its torches becoming ever more distant. He paused for a moment, judging the range, wondering if the ballistae in the towers were loaded and the crossbow strings taut.
Then, knowing that to hesitate any longer would be fatal, he kicked his captive off the roadway and dug in his spurs.
With almost a full regiment of cavalry on his heels, Ferdano raced north towards General Novo.
Who was preparing to make his last stand.
Massacre
Vega’s broadsword was lodged in a Protectorate sergeant, so he let go of its hilt and raked the next man to come at him with his claws. The armoured warrior went down, screaming and trying to cram his eyeballs back into his skull. Humans usually only dropped their visors as they closed in for the kill, to protect their faces from missiles. Once locked into the chaos of close combat most preferred to lift their visors. Fighting from behind a metal plate was stifling and blinding, and those who kept them down were forced to twitch their heads constantly from his to side as they sought their way through the melee.
Or you could leave it up, and have your face ripped off by a rampaging werekynd.
Vega didn’t pause to retrieve his weapon. His blood was up, his heart hammering at a rate beyond that of any mere human, his eyes wide and wild with the savagery of slaughter. He caught a down-swinging arm in one bloody paw and, howling, bent the human’s elbow joint the wrong way. Armour grated and there was a grisly snap. Vega tossed the screaming human aside like an infant, the force of the throw actually pitching the warrior up over his armoured kin.
The rest were trying to scramble back, scattering before the rampant man-beast, but Vega didn’t give them a moment’s rest. The key to an ambush, the favoured werekynd battle tactic, was simple. Speed and savagery. Strike fast, tear into them before they realised what was happening, terrify them with howls and brute strength. Beat them before the fight had even begun. It was a method Vega and his war pack had perfected these past nine years, perfected to such a degree that other packs of werekin had gathered to him, seeing in the brutal champion a leader who might finally stand against the Protectorates with some hope of success.
Vega had rewarded the loyalty of his Great Pack with blood. He’d led them to victory against the northern section of the Protectorate cordon around the Tanglewood. When General Avani had pursued with his cohorts, they’d been led into an ambush and butchered. Last summer, Vega had repeated the tactic against General Alberto. It was common practice to leave a sole survivor to carry news of the massacre back to his comrades, but Vega had no time for such theatrics. He wanted this war won, and so the humans had all died.
And now only old General Novo and his bedraggled army stood between him and the accursed city of Bilbalo.
One of the Protectorate soldiers wasn’t trying to run. He was old, a longtooth by human standards, and as his eyes locked with Vega’s he dropped his visor. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake as his fallen comrade. Vega recognised the red sash of an officer tied around his waist, and realised this must be the patrol’s leader.
The man carried a mace which he now swung at Vega. Still without a weapon, the big werekynd went to intercept the blow as he had done earlier, but this human was more experienced. He twisted the strike at the last instant, and the heavy, spiked metal head of the mace thumped into Vega’s shoulder whilst his claws snatched at air.
The werekynd grunted with unexpected pain, blood seeping down his back and chest.
“Now!” he heard the human officer screaming from behind his helmet. “For the love of the Saints, now!” Vega had no idea what he was talking about. All that mattered was that he’d managed to land a blow on the werekynd – the first human to do so in a long time – and Vega wanted revenge.
Before the officer could pull back for another blow the man-beast launched himself forward. Getting within the human’s guard and embracing him in tight hold. Vega hoisted the man off his feet, grimaced, and tensed. The aging warrior was utterly helpless, a child in Vega’ arms as he squeezed tighter and tighter. A growl rose up from the werekynd’s chest, and the human began to scream. Armour started to grate and scrape, and then there came the first little snap. It was followed by another, and another, louder, wetter, and now the human really was screaming, squirming and struggling with all his strength.
It would do him no good. Vega was angry, and he hung on. The death-grip grew ever tighter until, with a last grisly crack, the human went limp. Vega released his grip with a hiss of exhertion, the limp rag-doll corpse clattering to the bloody earth.
The rest of the humans had already fled.
* * *
Werekynd were not the only warriors to have perfected the art of the ambush. Red watched the slaughter of Captain Kalven and his patrol playing out in the gorge below, unmoving, her face expressionless. Her red cowl was up, and she’d taken the bow from her holster and strung it. However, as her fellow-men were hacked apart below her she made no move to intervene. The rest of her war band, strung out amongst the boulders looking down upon the bloodshed, likewise remained motionless.
A light rain was falling, misting the little gorge, slicking the rocks and making Red’s cape look like the colour of fresh gore. The screaming of the Protectorate soldiers and the animal howls of their killers drifted up from below. Red knew she should have struck minutes before, but the thought did not trouble her. Kalven had been a fool for suggesting this plan, a brave fool true, but a fool nonetheless. Red had thought he was old enough to realise that using himself as bait against the werekynd meant almost certain death, but he’d persisted all the same. And now he was being murdered.
“Now!” she heard him screaming as the big werekynd leader grabbed him. She could feel the eyes of her war band on her, but still made no more. Kalven had been an old fool, but now he was just a dead one. There was nothing she could have done to save him once the werekynd struck, and besides, the objective of their joint venture would still be achieved. General Novo merely wanted a prisoner to interrogate regarding the Great Pack’s intentions, and he’d still get one.
“Another pack coming up from the south-east,” whispered Grimbol in her ear. She frowned beneath her dripping cowl, the first hint of emotion the young girl had shown all day.
“From the Tanglewild?”
“Yes. They seem to be headed to join the Great Pack, and they’ll cross our path first if we stay where we are. Henk also reports that they have a tanglecat in their midst.”
Red cursed softly. She’d hoped the Tanglewild had emptied itself of werekynd, that they’d all already rallied to their Great Pack for the final push. If they were still receiving reinforcements then Saints only knew how many more yet lurked in the accursed forest.
And if they had a tanglecat with them they’d be even more likely to pick up the trail of Red’s band. They had to act now.
“On my signal,” Red said, slipping like a bloody spectre down the steep, rocky sides of the gorge. The slaughter below was over, and the werekynd leader had already departed, clearly bored with such meager pickings. His pack had been savaging the Protectorate dead, but as the echoes of the fight faded they too began to drift back north, towards where the main body of the Great Pack was encamped. Red crouched and watched from just a few dozen yards away as the werekynd picked themselves up off their bloody haunches and padded away into the light rain.
Eventually only one was left, a young pup barely grown into its claws. It was gnawing on the arm of a corpse, clearly ravenous, a runt left behind to scavenge what it could. Red slipped an arrow from her quiver.
An older wereky
nd would have been far more alert to the danger. The man-beasts knew of Red, knew of her ruthless war band which preyed upon the unwary and the unprepared in the same way that they preyed on Novo’s Protectorate scouts. But this pup clearly hadn't listened to its longfang's tales.
This pup had never met Red. It was about to.
The girl loosed, the arrow – fletched with the crimson feathers of a bloodfowl – whispering through the rain to thump home into the animal’s thigh. It yelped, startled by the sudden sting, and Red was already rising and running, waving Grimbol forward beside her. The pup saw them coming and scrambled for a weapon, but the girl was faster. As Grimbol the crowman slammed it into the ground Red clamped an iron collar around its neck, the jagged spikes pointing inwards nicking at its skin.
Werekynd - Beasts of the Tanglewild Page 8