War of the Werelords

by Curtis Jobling

  Trent. Gretchen cast her mind back, slowly recalling bickering on the riverbank after ambushing the Lionguard in the Dalelands. Gretchen had been taking a moment, her toes dangling into the chill waters of the Redwine, her mind running away with itself. Looking up, she had glanced at something in the water. She had thought it a rock until it blinked, and then it was gone, disappearing beneath the surface.

  “That was you, Kholka? In the river? Watching me?”

  “Kholka’s river,” he replied defensively. “Kholka fishing.”

  He wasn’t lying—the Redwine was his as much as any man’s. In the past weeks, she had seen him at work, stalking through the swamps with his hunting javelin, spearing the smaller fish in the shallows where marsh became lagoon. She had followed him as far as she could before he left her behind, diving into the water and disappearing from view. Gretchen would then head back to his hut, to Shilmin and Khilik. Kholka would return much later, dripping with water, bigger, meatier fish skewered on his spear, captured in the most dangerous depths of the Redwine. She had not wondered how he had been able to swim and hunt so successfully. Until now.

  “How do you get to be such an expert hunter, Kholka? How do you catch the big fish, swimming underwater with a spear? Could you teach me?”

  He shook his head, the possibility out of the question. “Phibians live by river. On river. In river.”

  It wasn’t much of an explanation, but it was all Gretchen was going to get from him. She walked on a while longer without saying anything, the sun beating down overhead, turning mud to dried-out clay. Birds chirped, taking flight when Shoma led the hunters through their territory, nesting waders making haste on their long, spindly legs. The substantial splash of water-bound mammals sounded on occasion, as they escaped toward deeper water. The phibians might have been fishermen, but they wouldn’t turn down the opportunity to snare an otter or beaver. The meat was tasty enough, but the pelts were even more valuable. Summer wouldn’t last forever.

  “Where are we heading?” asked Gretchen eventually. It felt like they were moving to higher ground, away from the water.

  “Shoma’s father,” replied Kholka. “Lives marsh’s edge, alone.”

  “Kind of like an outpost?” She couldn’t imagine a lonelier life, eking out a solitary existence in a swamp. “He’s expecting us?”

  “No.”

  “You know, whenever you’re ready you can let me go on my way. You can see I’m better now.”

  She walked with a limp now thanks to the wound she had taken in the leg, but she felt as fit as she’d ever been. Caused by the claws of one of Lucas’s Wyld Wolves, the injury was as stubborn as one delivered by silver. However, a few weeks outdoors with the Marshmen, grafting, hunting, helping where she could, had been good for her. And all Drew’s speeches about aiding the weak, the hopeless, the helpless, the have-nots: they made perfect sense to her now.

  “Not safe,” said Kholka. “Leave when safe.”

  She grabbed him by the forearm, his leathery flesh cold to the touch. “You don’t understand, Kholka. It will never be safe. There’s a war out there. I’m needed, I can help.”

  She stopped speaking as she watched his smooth brow rise high and he looked down at her hand on his arm. She released her grip and those big, bulging eyes leveled on her.

  “You could help,” she said. “All of you. Everyone has a part to play.”

  “Not phibian. Not our world, your world.”

  “This is our Lyssia, Kholka. Not just the Werelords and the townspeople—the drylanders, as you’d call them. Phibians, therians, and drylanders—we all share this world. We should fight for it, together.”

  It was the sort of speech she’d heard Drew make countless times, the kind of talk that got her heart racing, the blood pumping, the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end. But coming from Gretchen, or delivered to this audience, it didn’t have quite the same impact. Kholka turned away and continued walking.

  Gretchen snapped the reeds around her as she reluctantly trudged after the Marshmen. Were they simply scared of what was out there? Did they fear further persecution? She was about to ask when a terrible wailing ahead pulled her from her thoughts. Kholka was already running, pushing past the phibians in front of her as he burst through the bulrushes into the clearing ahead.

  Shoma’s wailing continued unabated as the rest of the hunting party staggered into his father’s plot of land, his sobbing joined by the cawing of a crow. The hut was built on drier land than Kholka’s home. Gretchen figured they were still a good many leagues from the Dymling Road where it skirted the Dalelands. Still far from civilization—but close enough, apparently.

  The hut was a burned-out shell, the grass roof long gone and its blackened walls crumbled. Two wooden stakes had been driven into the ground at right angles to one another, crossing to make a large X. The body that hung from the frame might have once been human, but looking at the desiccated, misshapen form, it was hard to imagine it. She looked away in disgust, her eyes finding a discarded shield on the floor. Even covered in mud and blood, the roaring lion head was clearly visible.

  As a child growing up in Hedgemoor, she had once seen a toad pinned out in the grass, shriveled in the sun, by the cook’s sadistic young son. She bent, picking up the shield, and brought her eyes back to the corpse on the frame. Drained of fluid, its limbs were freakishly long, and its hands and feet had been lashed to the timbers. The large, sloping head slumped forward, a constantly shifting swarm of flies buzzing around it. A lone black crow sat upon the back of the head, pecking away at the threadbare flesh.

  Shoma stumbled forward, wailing, shaking his spear at the bird until it took flight, squawking. The other horrified Marshmen stood staring at the body of their leader’s father, disbelieving. Kholka turned to Gretchen as his distraught friend dropped to the baked earth, curling into a fetal position. He took the battered Lionguard shield from her hand.

  Gretchen saw Kholka’s throat suddenly balloon, heard his chest cracking and popping as it shifted shape. That low-sunk head dropped a little lower, stubby neck vanishing altogether as body and skull seemed to merge into one. His eyes grew bigger, his mouth wider, his flesh rippling, toughening, turning from pasty gray to a murky mottled green. Before she had had time to think he was two feet taller, the thighs atop his powerful legs the thickness of her torso. He tossed the helmet to the ground and stamped on it with a huge, webbed foot, buckling it in an instant.

  “Now,” said the Werefrog, his voice a low croak and dripping with anger. “Phibians fight.”

  2

  QUILLS AND ILLS

  “HOW CAN YOU be sure he’s telling the truth?” asked Drew, staring down the sea marshal of the Bastian navy where he stood chained to the brig wall. There was little room for maneuvering within the cell, just enough space for a jailer to step in to feed and tend to the prisoner. A cage of dark metal bars surrounded him, the door shut but unlocked, the Werefish posing no threat in his current predicament. A chain of iron links looped about his wobbling throat, pulled taut around his jutting jaw.

  “I could keelhaul him, but I think he might enjoy that,” said Count Vega, smiling as Scorpio snarled at him.

  “Why would I lie to you, Wolflord?” spat the Werefish. “My war’s over, my life, too, for that matter. When the Catlords get wind of the Bastian Empress’s fate, my neck’ll be for the block.”

  “You shouldn’t be so negative,” said Vega. “Perhaps we can find an opening for you in the Lyssian navy. I know of a poop deck that needs mopping. Come to think of it, the privy could do with a good scrub, too.”

  Scorpio laughed.

  “I’d heard so much about you, Vega, but now I see most of it was just rumor of your own creation. Has there ever been a Werelord more in love with his own voice?”

  The Sharklord only grinned wider. “But it’s such a wonderful voice, don’t you
think, Scorpio? This voice has inspired a thousand sailors and broken as many hearts. It would be a crime to hide it away for fear it might make lesser therians such as yourself feel somehow unworthy.”

  Scorpio leveled his hateful gaze on Drew, ignoring the count’s mocking words. “You should have killed me when you had the chance, Wolflord.”

  “I’m no murderer.”

  “This is war, boy. No such thing as murder. We’re all just doing our job. Happens to be that job’s killing, something I’m very good at. Don’t shed a tear for my well-being. I wouldn’t waste one on yours. If the roles were reversed you’d be scooping up your guts from your lap and shoveling them back into your belly right now.”

  “So long as you’re our prisoner, I’ll allow you to live, Scorpio. I won’t see you killed.”

  “You won’t, eh? I’ll remember that. You can’t possibly win against the Catlords, Wolf. Tell me, what is it about these Lyssian Werelords that makes you take a stand against Bast?”

  “That’s where you and I are different. This isn’t just about theriankind. My fight is also for humanity across the Seven Realms.”

  “Humans?” scoffed Scorpio. “Why would you risk your life for those pathetic bottom-dwellers?”

  “You couldn’t begin to understand, Scorpio. Nobody—human or therian—should spend their life in slavery. Being born a Werelord doesn’t automatically make you better than your neighbor. I fight for a free Lyssia in every sense of the word.”

  “You fight for a lost cause,” said the Werefish. “Even if you somehow won this war, the Werelords of the Seven Realms would never stand for such change. Therians rule over humans. That is the way the world over. Your talk of freedom will bring a knife to your back.”

  Vega interrupted, drawing the Fishlord away from his rant. “You say the Red Coast’s impenetrable?”

  Scorpio shrugged, jangling his chains. “I didn’t say that. You can certainly land there. That said, chances are that you and Tigara’s henchmen will be cut to ribbons in no time.”

  The Werefish had seen the soldiers of the Tigerlord aboard the Maelstrom when a handful of the Furies had joined Vega while the Sharklord interrogated the Bastian sea marshal.

  “Because of this mighty force you tell us is stationed along the coastal road, correct?” said Vega, suspiciously.

  Scorpio’s eyes lit up. “I do hope you’ll land there, Sharklord, and find out for yourself if I’m telling the truth.”

  “Why such activity along the coast? How are such numbers gathered there?”

  The Werefish sighed. “For starters, the remains of my fleet are anchored intermittently throughout the shallows. If you navigate your way past them somehow, you’ll make land at the Pashan Road. This links the Doglord city of Ro-Pasha with the gateway to the west, the Bana Gap.”

  Drew and Vega glanced at one another, the look not missed by Scorpio.

  “You mean to aid your friends in the Gap?” he asked.

  “What do you know of our allies in Bana?” said Drew.

  “That they’re as good as dead if they aren’t already. Join them, by all means: land along the Red Coast and make haste to the afterlife.”

  “This Pashan Road,” said Vega. “You haven’t explained why it isn’t safe for us to travel.”

  “With the Bastian army concentrating on snuffing out what resistance remains in the Gap, the road provides a direct supply route for Field Marshal Tiaz’s army. Bastians and Doglords alike traverse it in huge numbers, and the route is dotted with settlements, barracks, and oases of civilization. It’s one giant war camp.”

  “There has to be another way in,” said Drew, “some way of avoiding direct entanglements with Tiaz until we really can’t.”

  “If you’re searching for a back door, there isn’t one, Wolf,” said Scorpio triumphantly. “Tiaz is a master tactician and the land of Omir is his until he concludes his campaign in Bana. The desert realm is inaccessible.”

  “You underestimate the fortitude of the Hawklords.” said Vega.

  “You underestimate the stranglehold Tiaz has over the Gap. Your friends have been imprisoned there for months, throughout winter and spring. Those who aren’t already dead will have been driven mad by hunger.” Scorpio grinned. “Bana is a tomb.”

  “So they haven’t surrendered?” said Drew, keen to seize any morsel of good news.

  Scorpio grimaced. “Apparently not. Seems your Hawklords and their Omiri friends would rather die free than live in shackles.” He rattled his manacles as if to emphasize the point.

  “Then there’s still hope,” said Drew, turning to Vega. “If the Red Coast is closed to us, where else can we get ashore?”

  “The River Robben,” replied the Sharklord. “We’d need to be wary, mind. The Great West Road is under Catlord control, and the river runs parallel to it.”

  Scorpio snorted. “Do you really think we would’ve left the Robben unguarded?”

  “That leaves only Roby,” said Vega quietly.

  “Roby?” said Drew as the Werefish grinned. “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Why would you have?” interrupted Scorpio. “It’s a ghost town, isn’t it? Razed to the ground by Leopold when the Lion first took hold of Sturmland, a message to all in the Whitepeaks.”

  “It was burned by the king?” asked Drew.

  Vega explained as the Werefish giggled manically against the wall. “The Sturmish provided stiff resistance to Leopold, especially in the east. That land was home to your mother’s people, of course, the White Wolves of Shadowhaven. Leopold made an example of Roby, near enough erasing the port off the map. That soon broke their resolve, and Duke Henrik bowed the knee. Reluctantly, of course, but bowed nonetheless.”

  “Roby it is! Haunted by the dead,” said Scorpio, laughing uncontrollably. “Land there! Die there!”

  Drew stepped up to the bars, his hand gripping the barred gate. “Haunted? What do you mean?”

  But Scorpio’s laughter cut off as abruptly as it had begun. “I’m done answering your questions,” he sneered, eyes narrowing. “You’ll allow me to live, little Wolf? You don’t get to choose who lives or dies!”

  He slipped where he stood against the wall, his legs going from under him as his body dropped toward the deck. The chains went tight suddenly, throttling him around his hideous, bloated throat. Scorpio’s feet writhed against the floor as he allowed his full weight to fall against the shackles, welcoming the agony that followed. His eyes strained from their sockets, a sickly grin spreading across his face. Drew moved forward toward the brig door, only for Vega to seize him by the bicep. The young Wolf glanced down at the Shark’s hand, the count’s face stern.

  “Let go of me, Vega. He’s choking in there.”

  “By his own volition,” said the Sharklord. “If he wants to kill himself, let him.”

  Drew yanked his arm free, lifting the handle of the grated door to step into the brig. With his one sweat-slicked hand he reached down, hooking it under Scorpio’s stinking armpit as he tried to haul him up. The Bastian’s feet lashed out, trying to keep the Wolf back as his neck crunched within his chain noose.

  “Stop fighting me,” Drew snarled, trying to find a hold on the suicidal sea captain.

  Scorpio’s flesh was changing color now, not the strangulated hue of a hanging man, but bright flashes of yellow and orange fluttering across his throat. His clothes, already tattered from the prolonged interrogation at Vega’s hand, tore loose as he welcomed the beast. Bright red spines with purple tips emerged from his head and shoulders as his body ballooned before them. Drew took a step back now, wary of the shifting Werelord.

  The Sea Marshal of Bast spied the Werewolf moving back to the brig door. His legs kicked out again, one foot swiping Drew’s legs from beneath him, the other kicking the barred door and sending it slamming shut. The metal hand clapped down, snapping into place
as the young Wolflord fell against it.

  Vega moved quickly, seizing the door and lifting the mechanism, looking to shove it open. To his horror he found Drew’s prone body blocking the brig’s threshold, stopping him from entering.

  “Move, Drew!” Vega shouted. “The quills!”

  Drew looked up in horror as the burbling, bloody Scorpionfish now materialized before them, the chain about its enormous, bloated throat almost decapitating it. Its hands and feet snatched at the air, sharp talons that swiped at an invisible foe as it approached death. Pulling himself to his knees, Drew snatched at the door, trying to open it and squeeze through while avoiding the monstrous Werefish.

  “Forrrrr . . . Basssssssst . . .” were the last words out of its still grinning lips as they peeled back, revealing tiny razorsharp teeth that studded the jaws. Its body was almost spherical now, pockmarked flesh still undulating with color, mottled yellow, purple, and black. The poisonous quills rattled as it spun about, turning its spine-covered back Drew’s way. A spine shot from the Scorpionfish’s shoulder blade, hitting the deck at the youth’s feet with a resounding thunk.

  “No!” screamed Vega, kicking open the door, the bars smashing into the Wolflord as the Shark rushed in. His rapier was out, lunging through the air and finding the back of Scorpio’s head. The blade went through, embedding in the brig wall on the other side, causing the Sea Marshal of Bast’s struggling to instantly cease. The air in its swollen body began to dissipate at that moment, as if escaping a punctured wineskin, the monster’s death rattle sounding with it. The quills that adorned its back went limp, falling flush against its hideous flesh as it hung suspended from the groaning timber wall, the chains still taut with the Scorpionfish’s weight.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, Vega turned to look at the young lycanthrope where he sat on the floor, arms crossed, sandwiched between the caged door and the barred walls of the brig. His face was pale, his eyes wide as he stared up at the dead sea marshal.