“I have no comfortable answers for you, werekynd,” Novo said. “Only the evidence that if we do not end our rivalry now, both our peoples will be doomed. We have been used these past nine years, and I don’t know whether the ancient fury of the man-beasts has been exaggerated, but I for one want vengeance on the skulking sorcerers who have caused the needless death of thousands of my kin.”
“And if we aid you in this fight?” Ulthric said. “Then what?” He’d kept silent until now, impressed by Vega’s restrained rhetoric. He’d forced General Novo to answer difficult, pertinent questions, and Ulthric now had a better understanding of why Vega, so often just a sight of brute muscle, had risen to command the entire Great Pack. Like the Pup, Vega too had grown into his role down the years. Ulthric had underestimated him.
“I cannot say what the future holds beyond the purging of this rot,” Novo said. “I do not rule this Protectorate though, Saints know, I have no idea whether Duke Lorenzo yet lives. But regardless of what happens, I don’t imagine that anyone would wish a return to this destructive war. And I swear to you, upon my honour, that neither myself nor my men will lift a blade against you one way or another once Bilbalo is reclaimed.”
“The threads all lead to this point,” Venneck said suddenly. Everyone turned to the werekynd seer. His eyes were glazed, pupils dilated. Ulthric recognised the symptoms of a half-trance.
“We approach a knot,” the seer intoned. “The weaves are tangled. Many ropes split off from this point, but we must choose only one. Cut the rope of the Miremere, and your fates may yet be free.”
Ulthric looked at Vega as the seer lapsed back into silence, blinking away his sudden daze. The leader of the Great Pack remained expressionless, but he nodded his head, once. Like a human. Ulthric turned to General Novo.
“We go south with you.”
If it's Not Human or Man-Beast, Kill it
Bilbalo was in ruins.
The Protectorate capital had stood down the centuries, through riot and rebellion, invasion and starvation, but it had done so on foundations that grew older and weaker with each passing minute. Now it had fallen, in less than half a day, all hope of its salvation annihilated by total desolation.
The storm had still not blown over. The clouds were black as night, rotten with sin, weeping for a city that had realised its ultimate fate much too late. The rain was merciless, beating down upon Bilbalo’s broken corpse as though each drop personally intended to grind the remnants to powder. The streets were streets no more, but morasses churned by the rain, cloying, filthy rivers that had flooded broken homes and burst up through grates and sluices. Some streets had collapsed into the sewers, and in the southern district scarcely one stone remained upon another.
In the midst of the desolation, only the Keep still stood tall. Like a bent, broken finger pointing in accusation towards the low clouds, it remained standing after all about it had fallen. Its southern face was gone, and the lower halls were half flooded, but still it remained, one final symbol of defiance in the face of decay and entropy.
Novo gave silent thanks to the Saints when he finally spotted it through the sheeting rain. The sight of their city in abject ruin had shocked the soldiers of the Protectorate into grim silence, but the fact that the Keep yet stood afforded Novo the slenderest ray of hope. All was not yet cast down. And within the Keep’s highest halls there may yet be survivors. If they could reach them, perhaps the tide could be turned.
For their part, the werekynd were as shocked as the humans by the scale of the destruction. Few had gazed upon Bilbalo, and then only from afar, but the sight of the Wall in shattered ruins was enough to indicate how extensive the damage was. There was little sign of movement beyond the Wall’s remains, merely cloying spectres drifting in the darkness cast by the rain and the cloud cover.
“Survivors report attacks,” Novo said to Ulthric and Vega, via Thomas. “From the south. With the Wall breached we must assume the city has already been overrun.”
“Attacks by what?” Vega asked.
“Mirebeasts. Specifically, we’re not sure. If it’s not human, I’d say kill it.”
The werekynd glared at him, and the general flinched.
“If it’s not human or man-beast, kill it.”
The twin forces, Great Pack and Protectorate army, had marched through the night together. The latter had kept to the roads – or the rain-churned muck that had once been roads – whilst the werekynd had lopped along a little to the east, always keep a wary distance. The sudden alliance sat uneasily with both sides, and neither man nor man-beast were willing to get within blade reach of the other. Ulthric understood everyone’s recalcitrance. Bitter enemies were not so swiftly made into battle brothers, but the needs of fate and the course of the threads had woven them all together. There was no turning back now.
Nor did any of the humans wish to. The sight of their beloved city a smashed ruin had stoked a deep, slow-burning anger within their ranks. The werekynd, attuned to such bloodthirsty emotions, respected that. The humans would have their vengeance upon whoever had done this to their home, just as the werekynd would fight to the last claw to defend the Tanglewild’s sacred borders.
There would be no prisoners in the fight that was coming.
“We should send in scouts,” one of Novo’s subordinates suggested. The gathering of officers and pack leaders was as uneasy as any of the two force’s interactions, but thus far a cautious respect seemed to be developing. If nothing else positive had been dredged from the past nine year’s butchery, as least both sides knew that the other could fight.
“I’m afraid after Kalven’s loss there are no scouts left,” Novo said, not meeting Vega’s gaze. The werekynd remained silent, neither acknowledging nor defending his massacre of the humans just the day before.
“What about Red’s war party?” Ulthric asked. He saw Thomas waver as he translated. The sudden reappearance of his sister, alongside the army of the Protectorate, had clearly shaken the boy. He’d given little thought to his brief, mundane life before the Tanglewild, and the re-emergence of his little sibling had cut to the core of his beliefs. He’d asked Ulthric to go after her, but the werekynd pointed out that he had no idea where she’d gone. And neither, apparently, did her commanders.
“We’ve not seen her since yesterday,” Novo said heavily. "She rode off east, in the direction of Crow Valley. I don’t think we’ll be seeing her again, at least no before we attack the city.”
Thomas was silent.
“My pack will do it,” Ulthric said, looking from the boy to the general.
“What?”
“Act as the vanguard. Someone needs to be first my. We’re more than used to stealth work.”
“Not in Bilbalo you’re not,” Novo said, then grimaced. He was still coming to terms with the nature of their alliance. He shrugged, managed a grim smile.
“My apologies weremaster.”
“Do you want my pack to lead you in, or not?”
“It would be a great help.”
Ulthric turned to Vega. If the leader of the Great Pack felt upstaged, he didn’t show it.
“We aim for the Keep,” Novo said. “If there are any survivors, that’s where we’ll find them.”
“And if there are none?” Vega said.
“Then we carry on fighting, alone, until we’ve cut the heart out of this rot.” All eyes turned to Ulthric.
“I’ll prepare my pack,” he said.
To enter the unknown.
Corpse-City
The fields to the east of the city were waterlogged. The approach of Ulthric’s pack was an awkward one, a far cry from the stealth they were used to. They were forced to slosh through brackish, knee-high water, slugging and encumbered by weapons, armour, and sopping fur. The broken mound of rubble ahead that had once been Bilbalo’s great, defying Wall gave no hint as to what awaited beyond.
Ulthric led from the front of the loose formation, jaw clenched as he struggled through the muck. He co
uld feel the pack’s recalcitrance, and to a degree he shared it. He was cold, he was soaked to the bone, he was tired to the point of exhaustion. He had no idea what he was expected to face beyond the rubble of the Wall, and a part of him questioned what he was even doing here, fighting for a city he would have rejoiced at seeing crushed any other day. Only Hrothgar’s prophecies, the urgings of some higher plan, the knowledge of the intertwining weaves, gave him an real incentive to press on, and right now even those abstract thoughts were insufficient to deal with the shivering of his skin or the ache in his bones.
The pack felt the same. They’d left the Tanglewild expecting a fight with Vega, expecting their leader’s ambitions to reach fruition – or death – at long last. Now however they were not only fighting alongside, and in part at the behest of, Vega, yet they were also allied with the humans. Ulthric had felt the threat of a challenge in the air for the past day, and only the fact that they’d been constantly on the move had stopped those within the pack who were deeply unhappy about their new circumstances from collating their strength.
Ulthric had known that to pause and rest outside the Wall would give them the potential chance to air their grievances with him, perhaps in the most forceful way possible, not to mention organise themselves into a viable faction within the pact. Such difficulties had never existed before under Ulthric’s leadership. He recalled well Saarl’s stoic, often brutal rulership of the old pack, Vega’s ever-rising contention, and the lessons his years as a pup had taught him. Here, however, the situation was unprecedented. Which was why Ulthric had volunteered to be the first into the fallen city.
He had to keep the pack moving.
There was no sign of anyone observing their approach. The rain had lessened slightly, finally, and the weak light of morning was actually trying to battle its way through the oppressive cloud over. The remnants of the Wall glistened as Ulthric approach, and laid the first claw upon them
How strange, he thought. Never in their wildest visions would any of the werekynd have imagined that this would be how they came to Bilbalo. Especially with a human army at their back.
Then they began to climb.
The Wall was now half its size, no more than a ramp of broken, crumbled stony, yet it still presented a formidable obstacle. The werekynd did their best to scale it, moving with the loose-limbed, lithe grace of their species, but the unstable rocks and the rain-slick surfaces made it tough going. Three times Ulthric was forced to snatch out and stop himself falling. Broken stone and crushed mortar grated beneath his every step, and the great slope of rising rubble above him seemed to get ever higher.
He found himself wishing he hadn’t left Sawtooth behind. For all the beast’s grace, it was still a big creature, and he doubted it’d be well suited to the flooded, ruinous streets of the city. It had also given him the opportunity to leave Roddick, Thomas and Venneck with the Great Pack. They were either an encumberance or too important for this kind of work. Venneck had begun to argue, before Ulthric had pointed out that he was Hrothgar’s only seer apprentice, and likely the last of his line. Until they knew exactly what was that had overrun the city, he’d stay with the Great Pack.
At last, the slope’s ridge beckoned. Ulthric went claw over claw the last few dozen yards, letting the beast within guide him. The stink of sewage and filth was thick in his sensitive nostrils – it seemed the whole city was rank with decay. The Keep was visible, looming above him, and abruptly it was joined by more broken buildings as, panting, Ulthric made it up over the Wall’s crest.
Below, a fallen city sprawled.
Such devastation took even the werekynd’s breath away. He had see the slaughterhouse of horrific battlefields, and leagues of broken stumps and felled logs where the humans had hacked back the beloved Tanglewild, yet never had so wilful and so utter a scene of desolation presented itself to him. It was as though a petulant child had grown angry with his little building blocks and stamped them into ruin. Structures of all shapes and sized, homes, shops, churches, government buildings, markets, barracks, all had been universally wrecked. Some were utterly unrecognisable, just little mounds of broken bricks. Others retained a shell of their structure, the outline of teetering walls and gaping windows. Roofs had caved in, stories had collapsed, steeples had fallen, thoroughfares and squares and palazas and back lots had been crushed. A whirlwind of total annihilation had visited the old human capital, and nothing had remained untouched.
If any had sought sanctuary beneath the crumbling streets, they had found none. The city was flood, knee and even waist high in places, every street now a churning river, and open space seething in the rain. In some places the sewers had burst and overflowed, but for the most part it seemed to be the filth of the Miremere. It had entered through the broken southern bastion, clogging the city with slow-moving sludge, and now the remains of the Wall to the south had visibly slumped, sinking slowly into the ever expanding marshland.
In the watery, grey half-light, the Miremere was claiming Bilbalo as its own.
Ulthric led his pack down the reverse slope of the Wall, picking his way cautiously. As he took his first step down into the nearest street, he felt the filth underfoot ooze and shift. The muck rose to the thighs, clammy, cold, making his wet fur bristle. The whole place was rotting around him. The humans would be fortunate to salvage a single stone of their precious city if they did not strike soon.
The pack joined him, snarling and grimacing with disgust as they spread out along the ruined, waterlogged street. Weapons were drawn and fangs bared, but no enemy presented itself. Bilbalo seemed completely deserted, a corpse left on a battlefield to rot.
That was, until the pack leader felt the icy sensation of a hand clench around his ankle.
The Corpse-City Rises
Hrothgar’s eyes snapped open.
The old longtooth shuddered involuntarily, his breath wheezing. The shakes did not depart gracefully, leaving behind an unsteadiness in his limbs that he was finding harder and harder to ignore. The end of his thread was drawing near, he could feel it in his bones. The threads of many others too were about to join him in darkness, plucked from the rope. He could feel the beast within, old and docile now for many years, hungering to be free of this frail flesh.
The ancient seer sat back on his haunches, panting. The vision had been the clearest he had ever seen, so clear it had stole his breath away. Ulthric and his kin fighting for their lives. The humans alongside them. A vast, malign evil, like a spreading blotch of mould, seeking to eclipse them. His vision-self had shied away from the darkness at the heart of that decay, even Hrothgar’s powers unable and unwilling to pierce the rancid fog which hung about the masters of the Miremere.
Battle was being joined, the seer realised, one final battle that would decide the fates of all, man and man-beast alike.
He closed his eyes, calmed his breathing, and slid back into the seer’s trance. One way or another, today would be his end.
* * *
There were things beneath them, things not of flesh and bone, but birthed from sludge and ooze, wood and rock. Conglomerates of marshland disease, given undulating, sticky form by black magic as old as the marshland itself.
The first one attacked Ulthric from below, grasping his leg with a cloying embrace. The next thing the werekynd knew and it was lunging up out of the mire, at one with the filth which had flooded Bilbalo. A maw of mud and sharpened stones yawned in the faceless mass, and Ulthric howled and swept down with his claws. The morass parted and split before his below, but he struck with his other fist, a snarl rasping at the back of his throat. One wet thump followed another, as with a bestial fury the pack leader drove the mirebeast down into the dirt it had spawned from. Eventually he was stamping down with his foot, and after a finally shuddering surge the mass of dirt spit apart.
It was only as the haze of adrenaline-fuelled bloodlust lifted from the surprised werekynd that he realised the rest of his pack was likewise under attack.
The
mirebeasts had struck as one, lurking in the murk, awaiting the first intruders. Almost half of Ulthric’s pack had been yanked down by the sudden strength of what they had presumed was simply more swilling dirt, yet all had fought back savagely. They’d succeeded in regaining their feet, splattered in the muck that had once been the creatures which had attacked them. More were rising all around though, making sickening slushing, popping noises as they surfaced. Arms of fluid filth, jagged stone and wet, splintered wood lashed and lunged towards the werekynd.
Ulthric swiped away the first blow with a swing of an axe, the weapons yanked from his belt. A second and a third arm stabbed towards him, forming seemingly at random from the ever morphing dirt of the mirebeast attacking him. Ulthric barked in anger and went on the attack, letting the thing strike him and barrelling inside its guard. He grunted as he felt splinters digging into his fur, but followed through with a haymaker blow against what he took to be the creature’s head. The strike sent gobbets of dirt in all direction, and the creature recoiled.
Ulthric pressed his advantage, hewing both the writhing limbs from the main torso. The rest of the thing finally collapsed, and once more left Ulthric standing in nothing more than thigh-high mud, panting. Yet once again, another one was coming at him.
Werekynd - Beasts of the Tanglewild Page 13