Werekynd - Beasts of the Tanglewild

by MacNiven, Robbie

  The beast took over once more. All thoughts vanished as a burst of unrivalled, animal savagery drove him muscles to bursting point. He heaved upwards, and the dead man’s marked shifted. Just a fraction. Painfully slowly. The mud fought it every inch, sucking at it, dragging it and its trapped man-beast down. But Ulthric would not be denied. He would not die like this. He would not sink into oblivion and be forgotten, as some wished.

  The stone rose, like a capsized ship resurfacing. Ulthric rose with it, exploding like some prehistoric god from the morass. His howl of triumph physically repelled the mirebeast that had tried to drown him. Weighed down as he was by dirt, his fur matted and befouled, the man-beast still moved with a speed to fast to follow. One swipe, two, a half dozen, and the giant mirebeast was down, dissolving into the surrounding dirt.

  It would not be enough to save the pack. Three more – Kvarl, Rulk and Skarvin – were gone, simply disappeared into the cloying depths. The rest were flagging. Even shifted as they were, their energy was rapidly draining from them. There were no more howls, barely even any snarls, only the wet thump of claws in dirt, and the gasping of man-beasts as they were dragged flailing under.

  They would all have died there, had not the men of the Protectorate arrived to save them. It was Novo’s skirmishers, the very soldiers whose kin Vega had so gleefully slaughtered mere days before, who sent their crossbow bolts down from the Wall’s rubble in support of Ulthric’s pack. The solid strike of the wooden shafts certainly wasn’t enough to stop the mirebeasts, but it gave them pause. And pause was what Ulthric and the werekynd so desperately needed.

  Up and over the rubble came Garren’s column, sweeping up its skirmishers and rolling like a steel tide down the inner slope of the Wall’s remains. The humans gave a war cry that would have made a werekynd proud – seeing their city in ruins and infested by the filth of the marshlands, all exhaustion was forgotten. Like a bladed breakwater they plunged into the mud golems surrounding Ulthric’s pack, hacking them back with sword and axe, speak and halberd. They didn’t stop until the street was clear, and mirebeasts now no more than mud underfoot.

  “On!” the shifted Ulthric barked. “On! On! On!”

  This attack would not falter. Into the corpse city, man and man-beast alongside plunged. Ahead, their final destination loomed. Bilbalo's Keep.

  Red Rides East

  The storm above Bilbalo had spent itself, but in the hinterlands the rain still seethed. Red could no longer feel it. Her body was number, and her thoughts paralysed by the venom of bitterness. She sat atop a rock, her cloak cast about her, heavy and dripping. Her warband waited at her feet, silent in the rain, their eyes downcast. No one spoke.

  It had been her brother, Thomas the Lost, Thomas Werekin. Her brother who was now as savage as a beast. He even looked like one of them now, painted, grimy, sinewy, his hair thick and matted. She’d only recognised his eyes, her father’s eyes. They’d been as surprised as hers. She wondered what they were gazing upon now. Had the werekynd and Novo’s men really marched on Bilbalo side by side? Could the old general really stomach those beasts being counted alongside his army? And had the Wall truly fallen?

  Red, not trusting herself to do something that would see her lose her head, had fled. Now she didn’t know what to do. For the first time in her short, brutal life, Red could not see the way forward. She was lost and alone, her hatred and her need for vengeance suddenly revealed for the madness it was. The foundations she had built for her life, stone by stone, mortared with her own rage, had been blasted away. Her brother was not dead and requiring her vengeance. He was one of them. And as though that wasn’t enough her home, Bilbalo, City of the Protectorate, was supposedly in ruins. What was she to do? To whom could she turn?

  They had ridden south-east after abandoning Novo’s army, Red’s men following her without a word. Nobody had explained the reason for their sudden departure, but Red knew they’d guessed. Their silence said everything. Like her, they were having their doubts. They followed her because she knew how to killed werekynd, how to kill them and how make them hurt. Now the werekynd were headed ever further away from them. Did they still trust her to lead them? For the first time in many years, Red felt like a small and helpless child again.

  But her brother, Thomas, was alive. That realisation returned to strike her again and again. Thomas lived.

  And it was that realisation that made Red rise. She slipped to her feet from the rock, and pulled her cowl up over her soaking hair. Grimbol met her with a knowing look.

  “We’re going back?” the bluff warrior asked. Red shook her head.

  “Not yet. Follow me.” Red pulled herself up into the saddle, her eyes sweeping her assembled band. They were sodden and downcast, but the fire in her gaze still made them grip their weapons a little tighter. They would not abandon her, yet.

  “Follow me,” Red repeated. And she set her stirrups to her horse’s flanks, and rode east.

  * * *

  Novo had long ago become accustomed to staring into the face of disaster, and saying precisely nothing. Yet now even he mouthed a curse, his jaw set as he mounted the crest of the Wall’s rubble. Below and beyond his home stretched, in utter ruination. Houses, towers, walls and steeples, all cast down. And amidst the filth of the nearest streets and alleys, beasts and his men fought to the death.

  The general paused at the top of the rubble. It was a sensible thing to do, to cast an eye out over the chaos below from a commanding viewpoint. Fortunate too, for the moment gave Novo a chance to regain his breath. He was no longer a young man, and the climb – at times hand over hand – up the Wall’s remnants in full plate mail had been more than punishing. A younger Novo would have managed it without pause, but he was long gone now. Regardless, he tried not to let his subordinates see the exhaustion etched on his weathered features.

  “Garren’s column is making good headway,” Captain Pellick commented from Novo’s side. He was right. Garren’s men, headed by a detachment of dismounted Protectorate heavy cavalry, were ploughing through the wallowing mud-beasts opposing them like a sharpened spear tip through rotting guts. They’d already reached the end of what had once been Saint Bartholomew Street, and were plunging on into Candlemaker Row. The blue pennants of Garren’s cohort were flying high.

  “Not as well as the animals,” Demi-Major Cantil said, his voice lost halfway between disgust and respect. Novo followed his gaze, and likewise felt triumph warring with a bitter anger as he witness the werekynd at war.

  They didn’t fight like Novo’s men, a wedge of armoured steel moving as one into the heart of the enemy’s ranks. Of course they didn’t, for where the soldiery of the Protectorate were a hammer shattering all opposition with endless blows, so the beasts of the Tanglewild fought as the claws that savagely tore flesh from bone. They hunted in their packs, dexterous, experienced bands of kin-warriors numbering between twenty and sixty. Each member of the pack knew his place within it, knew what would be expected of him, and was willing to die if necessary – and more importantly, to kill – for the greater good of the pack. Their commitment in the heat of battle was matched only by their white-hot savagery. Novo watched in silence as Vega’s man-beasts tore up half a dozen streets at a time, angling towards the leaning wreckage that had once been the Keep. They were already overtaking Novo’s leading column, Garren’s, forcing its way with unstoppable but ponderous force up the row running parallel.

  Allies they may be, but Novo was damned if he was going to permit any werekynd to set their claws within Bilbalo’s Keep before any of his men.

  “Come on,” he ordered, beginning his descent into his ruined city.

  * * *

  “In to them!” Vega roared. His broadsword slammed through a wooden protrusion that could have been intended for use as a shield for the torso of the nearest mirebeast. It was no protection against a werekynd’s fury. The notched steel of Vega’s blade eviscerated it in a shower of dirt.

  “Push, push, push!” Vega de
manded, shouldering his way forward into the next mirebeast. They were without number, but his own savagery was without end. He beat this one down with the heavy pommel of his prized sword. He was into the next, fangs bared, even as his own pack kin struggled to keep up. Their leader was rampant – overhead the Keep loomed

  Venneck, Thomas and Roddick followed in the wake of Vega’s advanced. They were located safe at the heart of the onrushing Great Pack, or as safe as anyone could be in the city of death.

  “We need to find Ulthric!” Thomas urged, having to shout to be heard over the clash of arms. Venneck said nothing. The Seer had been slugging ever since awaking from his vision. Thomas hadn’t pressed him beyond his initial explination, but he could sense Venneck was worn to breaking point. Behind him, Roddick wasn’t much better. He was blank-eyed with exhaustion and number to the terrors he had been exposed to. His flight into the Tanglewild had not given him anything like the safety or freedom he had hoped for.

  “Venneck,” Thomas said again, but a series of barks from ahead stilled him. He scrambled up atop the fallen remains of what had once been a crockery garden wall, peering ahead into the melee. At the end of the street, the inevitable had finally happened. Vega’s pack had broken through at the same time as a column of Protectorate troops, and the two had collided as they were funnelled by the leaning ruins into the entrance of what had once been the Grand Bazaar.

  Now they’d see just had committed man and man-beast were to their uneasy alliance.

  The Beast of the Grand Bazaar

  The humans died first. For all their own fury in battle, the Protectorate veteran's lack of control was nothing compared to Vega’s werekynd. Most of the man-beasts leading the attack had gone completely berserk, unable to differentiate anything stood in front of them between friend and foe. And since they’d collided outside the Grand Bazaar, it was now Novo’s men who were stood in front of them.

  Plate was rent and flesh torn. Novo’s men didn’t fight back initially, too surprised and too terrified by the sudden assault. Their stunned inaction saved the alliance.

  “Stop!” Vega howled, barrelling forward and cuffing away the first werekin he could reach. As pack leader, he’d kept control even when all around him hadn’t. And now, though the human’s blood keened through his senses, he fought back the beast within and set to stopping the unreasoned bloodshed.

  “What is the meaning of this!” General Novo shouted. He’d arrived on the front line at full tilt, red-faced, his entourage struggling to keep up. Vega ignored him, still tearing his pack kin away from the recoiling humans.

  “Stand down!” Novo shouted at his own men, some of whom had finally recovered their senses enough to raise their weapons against the snarling man-beasts. “Stop, Saints damn you!”

  “Back,” Vega snapped at his own warriors, his claws and brute strength finally pushing through the blood-crazed consciousness of the leading werekynd.

  “I thought we had an agreement,” Novo said, striding through the muck towards Vega and his snarling pack.

  “We do,” said another voice. It was Ulthric. Plastered head-to-toe in the filth infesting Bilbalo, he and his pack had appeared on the scene just as the werekynd and the humans were being pulled apart. They’d shifted back, and now the bloodied, panting Pup limped to the front of the momentarily stalled wedge of man-beasts and Protectorate soldiers. He gestured with one dripping claw towards the Keep now looming over them.

  “If any of us want to leave this place alive, let alone cut out this cancer, we have to do it together.”

  Vega and Novo joined him at the end of the street, and now saw what he and his pack had stumbled across moments earlier. Between them and the ramp of rubble that led into the partially collapsed southern face of the Keep, the Grand Bazaar sprawled. Or what had once been the Grand Bazaar. It was now unrecognisable, the stalls which had filled the open fora gone, the walls of the surrounding exchange houses and haggling shops demolished. A sea of dirt covered the cracked flagstones, a waist-deep quagmire of churning ooze summoned from the pits of the Miremere by dark sorcery. Here all the scum which had flooded the human capital had collected, drawn together in the final defence of the Miremancer’s new lair. And as man and man-beast looked on, the great expanse began to bubble.

  “What’s that,” said one of Novo’s mud-splattered captains, pointing up at the Keep. A sickly light had begun to emanate from the ruined windows of the upper levels. The pallid green glow seemed to distort the weak sunlight around it, leeching into the very air and tainting it with entropy. In the distance, thunder rumbled once more.

  The ominous sound was joined by the bubble and pop of the muck in the Grand Bazaar. As the light shining from the Keep grew stronger, so the strange disturbance amidst the dirt became more frantic. The quagmire was shifting and congealing, accompanied by a disgustingly wet, sucking noise. Things were forming amidst the morass.

  “More mirebeasts,” Novo wondered aloud.

  “No,” said Venneck. The werekynd seer and his two humans had rejoined Ulthric’s pack. Hrothgar’s heir was staring intently at the shifting ooze, fangs slightly bared in concentration, snout wrinkled.

  “They’re summoning something?” Ulthric guessed. The seer nodded once, but said nothing.

  The silence was short lived. There was a cracking noise, and a pop of displaced air. The light at the top of the Keep suddenly blinked out of existence. But in the same moment the sucking sound of shifting ooze rose to an ear-splitting shriek. The muck around Ulthric’s knees surged inwards towards the Bazaar, and in a globule-filled explosion the heart of the sea of mud exploded upwards.

  If it was a mirebeast, it was their king. The dark filth of Grand Bazaar flowed together, gelatinous and shifting, a pillar of mud and sewage, moss-covered stones and rotting wood. It morphed before the eyes of its shocked enemies, sprouting amorphous limbs and dirt-formed tentacles. Its top was crowed by three great crumbling stones – the old cairns which had once marked the heart of the Miremere. From the space between them a single rancid yellow light glowed, regarding the werekynd and their bloodied human allies with a crude intelligence.

  From a hundred oozing mud-maws, the marsh golem shrieked.

  “Just when I thought I couldn’t get any dirtier,” Roddick said.

  “You ready Pup?” Vega asked Ulthric, not taking his eyes on the thrashing monstrosity before them. Ulthric didn’t reply. He just took a step down into the Bazaar.

  “This is it men,” Novo said, turning to the remaining Protectorate soldiers. Their armour and weapons were boefowled and their banners encrusted with dirt, but beneath the plastering their faces were fixed with determination. Novo allowed himself an icy smile.

  “Break past this thing to the Keep, and we’ll make these bastard sorcerers pay for all this –” he gestured at the surrounding ruins with one gauntlet. “Are you with me, sons of Bilbalo?”

  “Always, general,” came the shout.

  The werekynd had already set off after Ulthric and Vega, howling as they raced towards the marsh golem. Many had shifted, fangs and claws bared. Drawing his sword, Novo led his roaring men down into the dirt after them.

  It ended here. It ended now.

  Crowmen

  The marsh golem was a nightmare of sucking ooze and filth. Ulthric knew, even through the blood-fuelled frenzy of a shift, that there was no way they could destroy it. It was too vast, regenerating limbs and heads the instant they were struck off by the savage assault. Werekynd and human alike threw themselves into the morass surrounding it, hacking and slashing with swords, axes, maces and halberds. But one sweep of an oozing limb smashed aside a whole rank of Novo’s men, their armour buckled, their bones crushed.

  “We need to push past!” Ulthric roared to Vega. The pack leader had gone wild, lopping his broadsword over and over into any shifting dirt which presented itself. A sudden upsurge around him clamped onto the werekynd’s lower torso, trying to drag him down. A stone-lined maw yawned in the dirt, snappi
ng. Ulthric flung himself forward as Vega stumbled, raking the monstrous thing with his claws. It disintegrated between his fingers, freeing the pack leader long enough to rip himself from the sludge.

  "Ulthric!” shouted Venneck’s voice. The seer had waded in with the attack, his red markings completely lost now amidst the dirt which caked his pelt.

  “Ulthric, we have to go! This thing is bound by the Miremancers, we can’t kill it until we kill them!”

  “I know! Vega?”

  “Go on!” the werekynd barked back over his shoulder, still laying in with his broadsword. “We can’t all make it past this thing!”

  “We’re with you, werekynd!” shouted Novo a few yards away, leading his own phalanx of armoured warriors in a desperate push through the mud. “Go!”

  But it was useless. The marsh golem wasn’t merely the monstrosity towering before them – it was connected to every ounce of ooze in the Bazaar, a sentient tidal wave that wouldn’t let the alliance pass.