We were about to be attacked by a pack of fifteen werewolves, including an Alpha. My first instinct was to run away. Grab everything we could pack and get as far away from the village. Not an option, there wasn’t enough time. And even if we did manage to get everything packed and organised, they would be much faster than us. The only thing running would mean was that when they caught up to us and killed us, we would be tired.
We needed a plan.
“Our biggest advantage right now is that they don’t know that we know about the attack. We are also more familiar with the terrain. And we know when they will attack. ” Mathew said, listing out our advantages.
There weren’t many.
“How accurate is your future sight, how far can you see and how much detail” I asked. We needed any and all details we could, if we were going to formulate any kind of plan which could surmount these odds.
“In battle? About half a breath. This makes me a very good person to have, in a battle. My distant sight is localised to anyplace I call home. In this case I saw what was coming 3 nights ago. As for the details; they aren’t that clear, but I saw werewolves.” He said.
“Actual werewolves? In fur?” Isiah asked, he had guessed where I was going. Were we dealing with actual werewolves or the monsters The Witch had created?
“It was hazy and it was at night. Why does it matter? I heard them howling in my vision” Mathew said, wondering what was going on.
“They probably know that a Werecat used to live in the village, your scent must be all over the forest.” I said to Isiah
“Yes. And the scout probably smelt me coming back into the village yesterday.” Isiah said.
“No, he wasn’t observing last evening. Ian and I patrolled the village to scare him off.” Mathew said.
“Then they don’t know that we have 3 maybe four people capable of fighting against them.” I said.
“They know about your squad, being here. One of their main reasons for attacking is to kill you all.” Mathew said deflatingly.
We were the targets.
Again.
First, it was the wagon train; where the Blood Wolves had travelled south from the forests of Sherwood to hunt us.
Now this.
There was definitely a spy. And the spy was someone we knew. Very few people knew about our squad joining the wagon train; fewer still, the people who knew about our trip to border creek.
We would have to deal with the spy soon.
“The best way to attack them is probably to attack them from a distance. Ambush them in the forest with bows. Isiah and I could probably shoot down five or six of them from the trees before they are even aware of us. Which will help a lot, and then it comes down to close combat.” I said.
“They would still out number us 10 to 4.” Mathew said
“Werecats are inherently much better at fighting than werewolves. So Isiah and Josiah working together will probably be able to hold their own against the wolves. Despite being a mage, I am much more suited to close combat than anything else. My sword work has improved a lot since our last meeting, Mathew.” I said. There was a slight challenge to my voice. Despite the wholly inappropriate time, I wanted to test my skills against him. He had been my first teacher of the sword, but he had also been my first opponent (not counting stick fighting as a three year old). He was also the only one I had ever lost to in a sword fight. I wanted to test my skills and see how much my skills had improved.
“I can hold my own in a fight. Even against werewolves” Mathew said calmly, not rising to my bait.
“Um, I am not sure I can fight a werewolf. I don’t even know how to transform yet.” Josiah said.
“We will work on that today.” Isiah said to Josiah. “I agree that ambushing them with archery is the best option, but won’t they just heal? We will need to make silver tipped arrows. And they will have to be bodkins if we want them to penetrate. Even with my bow, we need more power.”
“I can make adjustments to your bow to increase the draw weight and make the bow more powerful, but then there is a risk of shattering the arrows as they are loosed.” I said to Isiah. I turned to Mathew and said “we need a smithy, do you think we can convince Tom to let us use his forge for a few hours?”
Almost every village needed a blacksmith; iron was the backbone on which the farming economy was built. There was no mass production, everything was handmade. Even the littlest of things like nails needed a blacksmith to make it. Tools for farming, tools for cooking, anything made out of metal needed a smith to make it. In actual fact most of the larger smithies used multiple smiths to make things. There were no power hammers or hydraulic presses, forging things required massive amounts of manpower.
“Ian can, he and tom are close. But why do we need a forge, we don’t have time to make anything?” he asked
“Silvered swords. Silver can stop weres from healing, making them easier to kill” Josiah replied on my behalf.
“Hmmm, an interesting idea. I’ll talk to Ian in a minute.”
“We also need a place for me to teach Josiah. I would normally have taken him into the woods, but we can’t do that without tipping off the werewolf scout” said Isiah. Every time he used the word werewolf, it came out as a spit; like he was cursing every time he said the word.
“The forge is probably the only place you could get away with making that much noise, it will be cramped but you will have to manage.” Mathew said. The smithy was a large open building, but the forge room was indoors and could be closed off.
Isiah didn’t look happy but he nodded.
We made our way to the back, where Mark and Ian were struggling with moving heavy barrels around. Each barrel contained a third of a culeus (175litres-ish). They had to be careful as each barrel weighed as much as 2 Josiahs and contained what had to be some of the most expensive beer in the land.
Isiah and I quickly took over helping from Ian, so that Ian could go convince Tom.
“We came up with a plan to deal with the wolf” I said, careful to avoid saying wolves. “There is only one, so it should be fairly easy.” Yeah right. “Mathew knows the hiding place so he is going to take us there. We are going to go upwind from the wolf and then Isiah is going to shoot it with silvered arrows. I am then going to go make sure it is dead.”
Mark nodded, agreeing with the plan. It would be a great plan if we were actually fighting only one wolf.
“You and Ian are going to remain here in the village, to make sure that village is protected. In case the wolf escapes and tries to attack the village.” I said. He didn’t seem thrilled with the idea, but it was probably the best plan. Mark would be useless in fighting against a whole pack of werewolves and it would mean revealing Isiah and Josiah’s secrets to him, so the best thing in this case was to leave him on the side lines.
“What about Josiah?” Mark asked curiously
“He will be home recovering, he is still hurt.” Isiah lied. Josiah made the appropriately disgruntled face; although it was impossible to tell whether it was because of the insinuation that he couldn’t help, or because it was a lie involving him. Since the head injury, he had been uncharacteristically honest.
We carried on moving the barrels around for another half an hour, before Ian and Mathew came back.
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“You can use the forge for today, but if anything is destroyed Tom will kill us all.” He said to us. “Mark stay, we need you to help train us back into fighting shape. I haven’t swung a sword in anger in two years.” Ian said to mark.
“You will have to use the spare swords, I am going to try and silver the swords as well” I said to them.
The brothers and I made our way to the forge after collecting all the steel swords, the brothers came along in the guise of helping me carry all of the swords to the forge. The forge was nothing like the modern forges I had used previously. The forges I had learnt on were propane forges which didn’t need manual fuelling or air to be pumped. This was different; this was a charcoal forge, with huge bellows used to pump air into the forge. Then I noticed that the bellows were being powered by the small waterwheel outside. The forge was already lit slightly, but the valve connecting the bellows to the forge was closed. I opened the valve slightly to let some of the air blow through. The flowing air re-energised the smouldering embers; I shovelled more charcoal into the fire and waited for the coals to light.
Whilst I did that Isiah was teaching Josiah about how to transform into a werecat. They were sitting on one side of the room quietly talking.
I got myself organised, I found a crucible and a pair of crucible tongs. I wrapped my palms and forearms in a thick cloth to protect them from the heat, and got a bucket of water.
Once the fire got going consistently I placed the crucible into the fire, and piled up the coals on the side, I also added a long iron rod into the forge. I opened up the valve completely so that the airflow was no longer restricted. The red coals started turning orange and yellow as the fire increased in temperature. I constantly monitored the fire, adding charcoal as needed and moving any ash away. I added a bag of about 30 silver coins into the crucible. I knew that the forge would be able to melt the silver as I knew silver’s melting point was in the 900-1000 degrees Celsius range.
It would take a few minutes for the crucible to come up to the correct temperature to melt the silver. So in the mean time, I turned my attention to the iron rod I had put into the fire. I had only put about 2 inches of the rod into the fire whilst the rest was on the outside. I felt the opposite side of the rod to see if it was safe to touch, and then picked up the rod. It was fairly thin maybe only a third of an inch in diameter, it was probably what Tom used to make nails. I placed the red glowing steel on the anvil and hit it with the hammer. The material was turned into paste and went flying, and there was a slight dent in the anvil. Oops I forgot my own strength; I was now a walking power hammer, I would have to be careful with my swings.
I modulated my strength on the subsequent blows and forged out a flat long palate knife looking thing, the type of long thin knifes used to even out cake icing. I put the knife back into the fire but in a slightly cooler area of the fire.
I checked on the silver in the crucible and it had melted. So I moved that into a slightly cooler section of the coal forge. I brought out 20 bodkin arrows from my void space and removed the arrowhead from the arrows. I found the thinnest pair of tongs I could and placed one of the arrowhead in the fire, I heated it till it barely started glowing at all, and then dipped it into the crucible. I brought out the dipped arrowhead. I made sure to remove the excess silver by scraping the arrowhead around the inside edge of the crucible. I waved the arrowhead around in the air for a second and then dropped them into the water to cool. I wasn’t worried about cracking as this was mild steel at best and silver is not water hardening.
I repeated the process for each arrow. Each arrowhead had to be done individually as they were too small for me to just place them in the fire without losing them in the charcoal. Once I was done with the arrow heads I turned my attention to the swords. I placed the crucible back into the hottest part of the forge and heated it as hard as I could. I placed one of the swords on the anvil, and then carried the incandescent white hot crucible to the anvil. I then dipped my cloth covered hand into the water and grabbed the palate knife that was in the fire. The rod was long enough that the other end was only very warm when touched with the wet cloth, and not burning hot. I dipped the hot palate knife into the molten silver and painted the silver on to the sword on one edge leaving the other side untouched. The steel near the painted section started to change colour turning a deep purple which radiated into a golden hay/straw colour as it creeped towards the unpainted edge. I quickly splashed some water onto the sword to stop it heating further and repeated the process until all 6 of the swords were silvered on one side (my single edged Viking sabre remained unsilvered).
I was in full concentration mode. Fully distracted by what was once my favourite hobby. I was enjoying the work very much and had tuned out the rest of the world. So I was surprised when I turned around to find what I can only describe as the black yeti, standing in the corner with a pathetic whiny sad expression on his face. Holy shit Josiah was huge. He looked to be almost 12ft long, with the same panther like colouring as Isiah, but his face was like the opposite of a panda, with white splotches for his eyes and nose.
He currently had a pathetic expression on his face and was being fiercely scolded by Isiah. “You need to learn to have more control! Your arms are much longer and faster than before, be mindful of how you swing them about.” I heard Isiah scold.
“Holy shit he’s big.” I said. They both turned to look at me. “Arrowheads” I said pointing at the bucket. “And swords” I said pointing to the floor besides the anvil.
“I don’t think we can change the bow in time, so I am just going to change the string to something better and lighter which should help with the speed of the arrows.” I said to Isiah as I measured and strung Isiah’s bow with some modern ultra-high molecular weight polymer string that I found in the weapons vault, in my void space. Along with various bows including some really modern compound bows. I looked for guns but, it seemed John wasn’t a fan of guns.
Actually that’s not true. I did find guns, but they were locked inside of a vault that I didn’t have the codes to, I found a note on the vault saying that the code was trapped in a memory fragment that would be revealed later. Thanks John.
Whilst I measured out the appropriate length of string and restrung Isiah’s longbow, Isiah was in the bucket looking at the arrowheads. He transformed his hand into a claw and scraped the insides of the arrowheads (the collar) clean and reattached the arrowheads to the shafts. Josiah meanwhile was trying to juggle; to increase his dexterity. Under normal circumstances it would have been the cutest thing to see a cat with a panda face juggle. Especially since, this cat had his tongue sticking out of his mouth in concentration. But this man-cat was 12 ft. tall.
Once Isiah was finished he told Josiah to change back. Josiah changed back into his human form; got dressed and put on his metal arm-cast/bracer. Whilst he got dressed, Isiah and I cleaned up the smithy.
We made our way to Ian’s and dropped off the three silvered swords belonging to Mathew, Mark and Ian. Isiah and I made our way out of the village and into the open fields to test our bows. I ended up not choosing a compound bow, and went with a modern recurve bow made out of carbon fibre. It had been painted jungle camo and felt very lightweight. We made sure we stayed down wind of the wolf and Isiah made sure that we weren’t being observed. We shot a few arrows at the trees, adjusting to our new bows, we added cotton balls and wool strips to various bits of the bows to make them as quiet as possible without losing too much speed. Isiah seemed very happy with the new string.
We went back into the village and met up with the others. We had a light supper.
Mathew, Isiah and I then made our way out of the village, whilst Josiah “went back home to rest”.
We made our way out of the village and entered the forest. Josiah managed to catch up to us about half an hour later; he had followed us using our scents. Mathew guided us to where the wolves were going to meet up, when we got there the scout werewolf was already there waiting. We made sure to stay down wind and hidden away from the wolf and waited for their arrival.
We were about a hundred and fifty yards away from the clearing, Isiah and I quietly climbed up a tree and waited; any noises we made whilst climbing, were covered up by the winds blowing and the general sounds of the forest. We both made sure we had a clear line of sight to the clearing.
Mathew and Josiah stayed on the ground hiding behind a fallen tree.
We were up in the trees waiting for a long time. It was tense and it was boring. We daren’t make a sound. Josiah napped. I wasn’t even mad; he was a quiet sleeper and kept very still.
It was around midnight when we heard movement.
The wolf pack had arrived.
They didn’t even try to be quiet. They were the most dangerous things in the forest, and they knew it. They were utterly confident in their security and in the knowledge that no one could harm them.
The man at the centre of the pack was the Alpha. He was at the front of the pack; all the other wolves were at least one step behind. He was also the most richly dressed, his cloak was more luxurious looking, and his hands were covered in ornate gold rings, with various gemstones inset. The biggest giveaway however was that he was wearing an ornate steel sword; none of the other wolves had a sword that was as expensive. They weren’t drawn so I couldn’t be sure, but I would have bet the rest mostly had cheaper iron swords.
A man stepped up from behind the Alpha. He was big, dumb and muscular; the Beta. He was the enforcer of the group. “Report! What is the news?” he asked the scout.
The scout addressed his answer to the Alpha and not the Beta, the Beta was the Alpha’s mouthpiece, it was the Alpha who was asking. “Those soldiers, they have arrived just like he said they would. They got here late last night and they were doing chores and catching up with friends this morning.”
“Good, we will change and then attack the village. We will raze the village to the ground, just as the witch commanded it.” The Beta said.
“Don’t get too cocky, that squad survived against the blood wolves when outnumbered 3 to 1” the Alpha warned calmly. “Don’t be overconfident, their archer is capable of killing from 300 yards and one of their swordsmen can best four people in battle at once. They may not be able to kill you, but they will provide a fight”
All of the werewolves began to take their clothes off in preparation for the change. They were at their weakest. They had taken off their chain mail and they weren’t aware that Isiah and I were in the trees ready to shoot our bows. Isiah and I looked at each other and nodded.
We took aim and fired, with our superhuman speed we both managed to shoot 3 arrows in less than 2 seconds.
And then all hell broke loose.