LIGHTNOVELONLINE We Are Who We Are I
Hunt Leader Jairus thundered across the icy mountain valley astride his wiry gelding. At his back rode the cultists of Lycundar - their cloaks whipping, their breath misting and the lycanthropes’ eyes shining in the failing dusk-light with a bestial gleam even in human form.
These were hard men. While the cult pulled savagery from all walks of life - from gutters to palaces - these slayers had been honed by rough living long before the embrace of He Who Consumes Himself.
Cutthroats. Pirates. Mercenaries.
The wolf’s teachings only enhanced what lay within. They were what they were.
A score of acolytes - all versed in the arts of bloodshed - along with half that number in Lycundar’s blessed werewolves cut through the light of dusk. Where before Jairus had led a mere tracking party of varied skill into Laexondael, now he had drawn forth some of the cult’s most vicious members.
His confidence had swelled as his mind sifted through a hundred stratagems over their journey, until at last he had found one that would bring low their formidable prey.
Vengeance would come coldly and quietly: the stalking wolf’s way, as opposed to the roar of the charging beast.
And it would not be long now.
The troupe pounded the snow through a small forest that lay near Laexondael. Perhaps only a few more hours until they broke through the mountains and viewed the Duke’s castle perched above the city’s towers upon its dark escarpment.
From there, he would meet their contacts – indoctrinated guardsmen from The Duke’s Battalion - and arrange to frame the two outlanders, bringing the full wrath of-
Sniff.
His thoughts stopped.
“Ugh!” one of the lycanthropes pinched his nose. “What is that smell?”
From somewhere along the snow-sheathed road - hidden around a bend of creaking, dark needled pines - drifted an odd scent that set his nostrils burning.
It was one described to him, relayed in grim account by Berard.
A scent of burning vitriol. That woman was near.
“Hold!” He held up his fist. “Sharpen your senses!”
Their steaming mounts came to an abrupt stop.
Acolytes and pack-brothers eyed the trees with hands slipping toward wicked bronze blades; the tension of experienced killers played about their forms. Dusk-light lengthened shadows and turned the spaces between the trees to pitch.
Yet their noses did not lie.
Something lay ahead. Close by.
“Blades out,” Jairus ordered cautiously. “Forward at a walk.”
“Should we transform, Hunt Leader?” one of the werewolves asked, his voice almost comical through his pinched nostrils.
The hunt-leader paused, eyeing the path ahead. “You five dismount here and secure your horses. Transform quietly and circle through the trees on either side of the road.”
“As you command, hunt-leader.”
The five pack-brothers broke off from the troupe, dismounted and picked their way into the trees with silent footfalls. Jairus could not help the little rise of pride in his chest - their silent movements showed the fruits of his instruction in woodcraft.
When their forms had melted into the dark - he set his jaw, tightened his hands on his horse’s reins and tapped his heels to its sides. The pack moved forward as one. Into the trees they rode, the air growing ever colder as they slipped further into the forest shade. Pine boughs cracked about them and emaciated trunks swayed with the wind - as though drunken and filled with foul temper.
Flp! Flp! Flp!
Something burst from a branch overhead.
“By Lycundar!” one of the men exclaimed, drawing his blade.
“Hold together!” Jairus snarled, his teeth and eyes flashing. “It is but an owl! Nothing more!”
The big man winced like a scolded child. “Apologies, Hunt-leader.”
“Do better. Lambs fear the night. Werewolves are the night. Now forward.”
He turned away, glancing over the pointed tree tops to the mountain summits beyond. He noted the wan watchfires burning on the peaks about the valley entrance; neither flickered in warning, yet an interloper had somehow passed them.
A growing sense of ominousness began to creep from his belly. Bestial instincts tensed with the purpose of attack or flight.
Rounding a bend, the troupe came upon their hidden foe.
She stood alone in their path - broad shouldered and armoured like a fortress.
Her plate, bearing a deep sapphire hue and the shine of inlaid gold, sheathed her strapping form. Six wings spread from the sides of her helm - the topmost pair rising to point skyward - and they resembled demonic horns in the gloom.
Before her was a pile stacked like a miniature wall of heavy, rounded stones larger than a man’s head. Jairus could not see her face through her lowered visor, but her eyes burned like balefire through the slit.
“Surrender or die,” her voice boomed, deep for a woman’s.
Jairus’ knuckles turned white on his reins. One of the objects of his vengeance stood alone before him, but it was not rage or hatred that tightened his grip.
It was dread.
All that stood before him was wrong. How did she find the valley? What brought her to the mountains? Why was she alone?
And where was her fire-wielding companion?
They needed to strike now.
“Transform!” he leapt from his steed, his feet sinking into the snow. He paid no heed to the sting of cold. “Weapons out! Take her quickly!”
“Yes! Hunt-leader!”
Acolytes charged forth. Pack-brothers dropped from the saddle.
Crack.
Bone and flesh shifted.
In but a few breaths, his lycanthropes would undergo the change.
He looked to the trees and gave a sharp whistle: a secret signal of attack. They would take her from the flanks while the rest rushed…in…
His blood turned cold.
No attack came.
Sniff.
His nostrils flared and his heartbeat quickened.
Blood. There was blood on the wind. The hairs on the back of his neck stood as though something crawled across his flesh. His beast-form instincts screamed.
His eyes searched the trees and caught a flash downwind - high in the needled canopy.
A pair of crimson eyes that glowered in the dark.
He drew a breath to shout.
Vrooooosh!
Dusk flared into day. Fierce, white light tore into his eyes - stinging them shut. “Aaaaargh!” he stumbled back.
Something crackled through the icy air - hungrier than any man, beast, or lycanthrope - and struck the throng of werewolves. Caught in their change, there was no avoiding its deadly assault.
Terrible heat blasted through the troupe.
Boom!
An explosion of steam erupted from flash-melted snow - scalding flesh and searing lungs. Hardened men cried out in alarm, their war-trained horses shrieking in pain and panic. Hoofs churned the road while bodies crashed into the earth.
Thmp!
A fleeing horse galloped headlong into Jairus, knocking the little man from his feet.
Schnk! Schnk!
Metal sheared flesh. Cultists shrieked out death-cries. Scrambling to stand, Jairus tried to blink away the searing light.
He barely made out silhouettes struggling in the steam of melting snow. A tall figure - dark robed and lean as death - glided through the ranks of his men. A shining blade swept about him on the end of a long pole, felling warriors with every stroke.
Men died to the sound of slaughter and the spray of hot blood.
“R-retreat!” Jairus rushed forward. “We are undone! Retreat!”
He would need to buy time. Sinking into himself, he called to the beast.
Whoosh.
He had forgotten his other opponent.
Crack!
Two boulders shot through the wind - larger than human heads - and drilled their weight into his side.
Crnch!
Ribs caved in. Organs ruptured. His spine snapped. The hunt-leader ploughed into the snow as a limp, senseless heap. Blood poured from his mouth and nostrils - though he could not feel its warmth; his body had plunged into numbness when his back shattered.
The healing came quickly - but it would be sometime before even Lycundar’s blessing could undo the ruin he had become. Trapped in the deadness of his form, the hunt-leader could only watch as stones hailed upon his remaining acolytes. They struck with a fearsome accuracy and all the power of a titan’s mighty cast, breaking bodies with every strike.
Between the punishing stones and the death-dealer’s fearsome blade, his mighty troupe was withered away to the very last man. As the last horses fled into the wilderness, only the crimson-eyed spectre, the armoured warrior, and the broken hunt-leader remained.
The former stood tall, wiping gore from his blade amid crimson snow, rising steam, and cooling bodies. With a long, languid stretch, he approached the fallen commander.
Crnch.
Crnch.
His feet pressed through the red-stained snow and his over-robe - blue-black and decorated with tiny dots like stars - flowed about him. Jairus snarled, as a corned beast would, and choked on blood. “Wh…where are my five pack-brothers who went into the forest?”
“Dead,” a deep, rich voice answered - sharp and hard as obsidian. He drew a shining object from his belt, one that made Jairus stiffen.
A knife that gleamed with the cold fire of silver.
“It is true,” the lean man continued. “Silver is the bane of you and your kindred.” He gave a predatory grin, his teeth gleaming white below crimson eyes. “All the better to slay you with, wolfman.”
Clink. Crnch. Crnch.
Jairus could not move his neck, but he could hear the approach of cold metal and silent wrath. A set of boots stepped into his view, sheathed in greaves and sabatons of sapphire metal, inlaid by burnished gold.
“Behold, villain.”
Thmp.
The hunt-leader gasped through his blood.
A clutch of severed heads - strung together - had dropped before his eyes. Men’s faces twisted in final shock above ragged stumps. “Your sentries from the peaks.” The woman stared down on him. “They did not surrender either.”
The robed death-dealer’s lips parted into a broad grin that left his eyes as hard as rubies.“We sought them out first.”