by Logan Jacobs
The first two, who leapt at pretty much the same time, both crashed through the false floor with startled yelps followed by howls of agony. Their fall, however, broke or knocked aside all the weakened planks and left only the solid one in place, which showed the next two werewolves the safe path to run across. I couldn’t see what was going on inside the vaults, but I could hear the shouts of the pikemen and knew that the werewolves must have reached them.
Of the remaining two werewolves still outside the bank when the floor collapsed, one turned and ran toward the assay office presumably to attack the archers posted there. I wasn’t sure, because the other werewolf turned and charged at me with an accusatory snarl as if it knew that I was the chief author of all its pack’s misfortunes.
It was so close to me, since I’d been preparing to run into the bank after the werewolves and assist the pikemen, that I didn’t have time to get my fork up in time to stab it. Instead I dove out of the way of its teeth and claws, rolled back over, and managed to stab it in the hindquarters.
It howled and twisted around to try to reach me, but I was on my ass and didn’t have time to change positions, so I pulled myself in close to the fork that was still embedded in the monster’s side, tucked my knees up by my chest, and let the werewolf drag me around as it continued trying to bite me. It was like some horribly deranged version of a dog chasing its tail.
Then after a particularly violent twist on the werewolf’s part, the fork wrenched free out of its side. It screamed in agony and then immediately dove at me.
I had landed on my back and could see the underside of its jaws and chest as it bore down on me, a ragged pestilent mass that blocked out the stars. I lifted the fork in both hands with the handle toward my feet and the tines pointing past my head and stabbed it down the werewolf’s throat. Then I let go of the fork and scrambled out of the way as the werewolf collapsed.
It wheezed raggedly, and its fading yellow eyes were filled with hate, but with its airway pierced by the silver fork, it could barely even make a sound as it died.
I pulled out the butter knife next and enlarged it to the size of a sword, but its shape was even worse than the fork’s had been for fighting with, because the “hilt” was flattened out and nearly impossible to grip well enough to land strong blows with. If you swung it, especially if it came up against any resistance, the flat hilt inevitably twisted in your hands. But the fork was implanted so deeply in the dying werewolf’s gullet that I didn’t want to take the time to wrench it out. Instead, I just took the giant butter knife and ran into the bank.
As it turned out when I got there, the pikemen had already dispatched both of the werewolves that reached the vaults. One corpse lay among a pile of gold, the other surrounded by shelves full of potencium inside vials. The shelves had holes cut in them to hold the vials securely. Nonetheless, a few of them had been smashed during the fight, and the precious pale gold liquid spilled. But that seemed to be the only casualty of the battle on our side.
As we crossed back through the main room of the bank over the solid beam, we checked on the two werewolves that had fallen down into the pit. One had been impaled by a stake and was clearly dead. The other just seemed to have broken bones and was lying there snarling at us, and one of the pikemen dispatched him with a stake through the skull.
When we stepped back outside, the archers gathered around us. They too had all survived unharmed after killing the werewolf that had gone after them. The townspeople started whooping and cheering and embracing each other. I saw that a few of them were crying with joy.
Silas, who had been among the pikemen, came up to grab me in a hug and slap me on the back.
“Thank you,” he said, and the other townspeople gathered around me too.
“You don’t know what you have done for us,” one of the archers said. “You saved Richcreek.”
“Raiding potencium like that is not normal werewolf behavior, I think there must be something more going on here,” I warned him. “Those werewolves are gone now, but your problems may not be over. You have something that a lot of people want. Don’t let your guard down.”
“If there’s another attack, then we will know how to meet it,” the archer replied. “You showed us how.”
“Some of the tactics I showed you were only applicable under rather particular circum--” I started to say.
“You showed us how to make a plan and execute it,” another man interrupted. “How to use our wits to better our odds first, as much as one can, and then from there it’s a matter of brute force and sheer will.”
I had to smile at that. “That’s not a bad way of saying it.”
“You know, I’d ask how we could ever repay you,” Silas said in a tone of amusement, “except that I know exactly what kind of payment you want, and that you already got it.”
“It’s better that way, don’t you think?” I asked. “No one is in anyone else’s debt. You don’t have to build statues in my honor or offer me your daughters in marriage or, even if I walked away with nothing, wonder if I’d ever come back to claim your firstborn children. It’s a clean farewell. If we ever meet again, you won’t have to greet me as anything other than an equal.”
Silas was silent for a moment. Then he asked, “You know what?”
“What?” I asked.
“I’ve decided,” he said. “I’d like to be a sellsword.”
Chapter 7
I had intended to slip out of town without any fuss the next morning, but things didn’t work out that way. Despite what I had said to Silas about nobody owing anyone else shit, and despite the fact that at first they had deeply begrudged me my fee, the good people of Richcreek decided to declare the next day a town holiday and wrangled me into staying on as their guest of honor.
But I didn’t want any of that and intended to make my escape before any of that bullshit. I was in the stable right before dawn saddling Theo when Lucinda found me.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” was the first thing she said.
I looked over at her in surprise. She was wearing a pale pink gown this morning. I hadn’t thought that anyone besides royalty owned three gowns.
“You thought you’d sneak off without so much as a goodbye?” she continued. “How could you?”
Before I could even reply, she stepped into Theo’s stall, pressed her body up against mine, and kissed me.
Theo, in the far corner of the stall, snorted. He might have been capable of speech but he still had no more concern for human sexual relations than any other horse.
I found that Lucinda didn’t just look like a rose, she also smelled like one. Her skin was soft and smooth as silk, and she was so slender that she looked breakable, especially when cinched into a corset, but her hands were digging into my back, and her mouth was devouring mine with a ferocity that was not in the least bit sweet or ladylike, and I think it was that more than anything that made my body respond.
I’d thought Lucinda was beautiful from the instant I saw her, but my body hadn’t really needed her until this instant. I thought of laying her down in the hay but that would have been a bad idea. The pieces would have clung everywhere, to her skirts and her hair, and been impossible to pick off entirely, and that would be hard for an engaged woman to explain. Silas did say she’d had two broken engagements already, though. She probably collected proposals just like she did jewelry. She clearly wasn’t in love with Sheriff Alford, and if I ended up causing Lucinda Fairfax’s third broken engagement, I guessed my conscience could bear it.
I lifted her up and propped her back against the wall of the stall. Then I bundled her skirts up above her waist and peeled the bloomers that she was wearing under them off past her feet and flung them in a corner. She kicked her shoes off, too. That left her completely naked from the waist down. Somehow, her ladylike pink gown with its ruffled sleeves just made the expanse of bare white flesh below, the long slim legs and the triangle of coppery hair between her thighs, even more erotic by contrast. Besides, my n
eed was suddenly far too urgent to bother with trying to unlace her.
Instead I just fumbled with the laces of my own pants while Lucinda threw her arms around my neck, nibbled on my ear, and ground her cleft against me. My hands were in the way of my cock since I was still untying my pants, and I could feel her wetness smear across the backs of them. Then I pushed my pants down to my knees, and my cock sprang free of them.
“Ohhh,” Lucinda sighed as the tip prodded her slick entrance.
I reached down and forced it in the first inch or so. Then by wriggling her hips Lucinda worked herself the rest of the way down onto my shaft as she moaned through gritted teeth. I gripped her by the buttocks to support her weight as I drove into her against the stable wall, so that she was sandwiched between the rough wood of the wall and my body bucking against hers.
She whimpered with ecstasy as my cock squelched in and out of her. Her whimpers started to speed up, and I realized that she was close to the brink. I slowed down, and we both looked down to watch my glistening length slide almost all the way out, then press back in, and out, and back in for another ten or so minutes.
“I’m going to…” she groaned with her pretty mouth open. “You feel so good. Please…”
Her tunnel was starting to spasm, so I hammered her against the wall again until we both came convulsively, and I could feel her walls clench like a vice around my cock when my seed poured into her.
When I had filled her up, I set her back down on her feet, and she leaned against the stable wall panting. After a few seconds, she collected her bloomers and shoes, got dressed again and dropped her skirts back into place.
“Don’t leave Richcreek,” she demanded.
“You know that I have to,” I replied.
“Well, I suppose I knew that you were going to,” she sighed. “But stay just for today? It’s going to be a holiday. Just for you.”
“I’ve never had a holiday in my honor before,” I laughed.
“Mayor Montague declared one,” she said as she reached out and ran her hand along my jawline. “You have to stay. Please?”
“Will there be whiskey?” I asked.
“As much as you can drink,” she promised.
“Will there be apples?” Theo asked. His head swung around, and his ears pricked up as he took an interest in the conversation for the first time.
Lucinda and I both laughed.
“Why the hell not,” I said. “I’ll stay for one day.”
Lucinda kissed me softly on the mouth. As she pulled away, she opened her gray eyes, and they were wistful, as if she knew it might be the last kiss we would ever share.
“Breakfast will be ready soon, unsaddle that poor beast before you come in,” she said, and then she turned to go back to the house.
“Every female you see you have to put your dick in,” Theo muttered.
“It was her idea, not mine,” I retorted. “You saw that for yourself.”
“Get my damned saddle off and bring me some apples.”
If Edmond Fairfax suspected anything at breakfast, he didn’t say anything about it. He was all geniality to both of us and seemed, if anything, even prouder than usual of Lucinda, now that I had proven her choice of champion for the town to be a good one.
“I’m glad it worked out,” he said. “I’m glad it all worked out. But, Lucinda, you will be married soon, and you won’t be able to run off like a wild creature like that anymore.”
“If you’re worried that I wouldn’t come back, you don’t need to be, you know,” she replied. “I wouldn’t leave you, Father.”
“Well, I am glad of that, my dear, but I also worry that your husband might tire of your little adventures and refuse to take you back,” he said.
“Paul would never refuse me anything,” she scoffed.
“And if you had little children who needed you?”
“You know, Father, the Savajun women often spend weeks away from their tribes tracking game,” Lucinda said. “And they leave their babes in the care of elders. And the babes learn to walk and feed themselves sooner than ours do.”
“Well, you’re not marrying a Savajun marauder, my dear, you are marrying the sheriff of a respectable town.”
“There’s still time to change my mind about that, I suppose,” Lucinda said with a shrug and a mischievous glance in my direction.
“Lucinda Fairfax!” her father exclaimed.
“Only joking, Father,” she said. “But wouldn’t you like a house full of half-Savajun grandbabies? And if they had brown skin and my red hair, wouldn’t that be extraordinary?”
“Extraordinary is one way to put it,” Edmond Fairfax scoffed. “You will appall our guest with your talk.”
“I think it’d take more than that to upset Mr. Hale,” Lucinda replied.
Her father looked at me helplessly.
“She’s quite right,” I said with a smile.
“Well, if you are not too appalled by my daughter’s ways, know that you will always be welcome in this house as an honored guest,” he said. “Whenever your path may take you back this way, for as long as I live, and I intend for that to be at least another decade yet. So that I may meet all my grandchildren.”
“Thank you,” I said. Seldom did I retread any path I’d tread before. It was sort of my policy not to. Partially because the world was a plenty big place, partially because I didn’t want to encounter a woman who might have rightfully claimed she bore me a child, and mostly because I knew my family was always a few steps behind me.
I think Lucinda heard that unspoken part in my voice, because she gave a tiny sigh and rolled a berry between her fingers as she gazed off into the distance.
After breakfast, the Fairfaxes and I along with Theo went outside, and the streets were bustling with what seemed to be the entire population of Richcreek. There were probably nearly two hundred people out in their Sunday best. Most of them grinned and waved when they saw me, but the grins they gave each other were just as wide and genuine. I might have inspired this newly minted holiday, but it wasn’t really about me, nor should it have been. It was an excuse for merriment, and a reminder to the townspeople that by pulling together in a united effort with their neighbors, they had proven strong enough to defeat their greatest enemies.
The first order of business was disposing of the werewolves’ bodies. There were fourteen hairy corpses in various states of mangled ruin, and since the townspeople didn’t think they deserved godly burials and didn’t want them around anywhere in the vicinity even after death, they had decided to burn them. For that purpose, they were in the process of piling up kindling downwind at the edge of town, at a safe distance from the buildings, to fuel a massive pyre.
Next to the pile of wood and tumbleweed and so forth, there was a pile of dead and decomposing werewolves. The sun had barely begun to rise, so it hadn’t started heating them up yet, but they already stank to high heavens, and the relentless flies were buzzing greedily.
I walked over to get a closer look.
“Where are you going?” Lucinda asked in a disgusted tone that indicated she could see for herself exactly where I was going. She had been hovering at my elbow since we left the house, but she didn’t follow me this time. Neither did Theo.
In the light of day, and all deflated and crusted together with blood as they were, the werewolves no longer looked terrifying. Just sort of grotesque. There was very little physical variation between one to the next, except that some of their pelts were a bit darker or coarser or patchier than others. The easiest way for me to distinguish them was by their respective wounds, which reminded me of how each one had died. They looked more like twins of each other than individual creatures, and that impression was reinforced by their mindlessly violent behavior. What would werewolves want potencium for anyway? Why would they suddenly start spending the one night of the month on which they were most powerful slaughtering the people of a faraway town, just for the sake of obtaining a substance that didn’t taste good and
had no nutritional value to their kind?
That was the mystery that really bothered me about this whole affair.
I took out a knife and knelt down to cut off a scrap of hide from the nearest werewolf’s flank. I cut it close and scraped off as much of the flesh as I could from the backside of the hide so that it wouldn’t turn putrid. Then I wiped my knife off and carried the scrap of hide back over to my waiting horse to tuck it away in his saddlebags.
“Ugh, what’s that for, a trophy?” Lucinda asked.
“Something like that,” I said. I didn’t want to explain my fears to her. They probably didn’t concern Richcreek, anyway. And I didn’t want to cast a shadow on the town’s celebrations for the day.
“You could have taken a tooth,” she pointed out. “Then you could wear it around your neck. Perhaps I would like a werewolf tooth to wear around my neck.” She looked at me expectantly.
“I’m sure no one would mind if you took one,” I said. Lucinda grimaced at the idea of going up to the pile of corpses and cutting a tooth out of one of the werewolves’ mouths herself, as I had known she would. In my opinion a werewolf tooth was a very silly thing for a girl to wear who was scared to so much as touch a dead one.
“Lucinda!” a vaguely familiar-looking blond man wearing an oversized white hat pushed his way through the crowd to reach our little group. I saw the silver star flashing on his shoulder and realized that he was Sheriff Alford, who really did have a terribly forgettable face. “There you are, darling. Good morning, Mr. Fairfax. …And Mr. Hale.”
“What am I, chopped liver?” Theo inquired icily.
“Ahh, good morning, hor-- er, that is--”
“What the hell did you just call me?” demanded Theo, who knew exactly what word the sheriff had intended to say, but had no mercy.
“I don’t think I caught your, er, name,” mumbled Lucinda’s fiancé, who seemed, simultaneously mortified by his blunder and indignant that he was being told off by a horse.
“It’s Emperor Theodosius the First,” Theo informed him.