The Wolf Tribe, like all other new breeds in the Reclamation Army, was allowed to operate within their own laws, when matters involved only members of their own Tribe. This compromise was made by the Dynast to hold the multispecies nation of the Reclamation Army together. Culling sickly cubs, pits for cubs, culling the elderly, such things were unthinkable among other new breeds and normies. Many other new breeds had even more vile traditions, yet over the years they abandoned them, slowly becoming more like normies. Was it truly right for the Wolf Tribe to persist in their traditions? The Blessed Mother claimed that Wolf Tribe people were meant to be the shield and the sword for the people of the Reclamation Army. Peace was not for the Wolf Tribe, those who were given more at their birth, must give more back to the world, such was the main idea behind the philosophy of the Ravager. True, the Wolf Tribe allowed those who wanted to become outcasts to leave at will, and shamans even helped such families with tokens and job placement in new places, kin were kin no matter the distance, after all.
The Blessed Mother and the Spirits taught that sacrifice had to be voluntary because there was no inherent value in forced self-sacrifice. Very few wolfkins would use such method, last one who left the Tribe was warlord Kalaisa, and everyone knew what the Ice Fang order did to a noble warrior. The white-furred scums even dared to come to the tribe, seeking to make amends and were asking about Aranea's whereabouts. Shamans and warlords had to physically restrain wolfkins from harming their opponents because sword saints who came to the Wolf Tribe refused to defend themselves even against lower-ranking wolfkins. Peace… peace was just not for wolfkins, the Spirits made it clear when they took reason away from noble Kalaisa for the crime of leaving the Tribe.
But at the same time… Annie remembered the fear of Lucendra, horror of the warrior because of the thought of losing her rank and being sent back… As someone who was in charge of her, does she really have any right to see a possible mistake and do nothing? If not peace, then at least less harm.
What if the Wolf Tribe could be strong without harsh laws? Sword saints of the Ice Fang order were roughly equal to warlords, and swords saints never had to face the cruelty of domination in their lives. Devourer and Outsider were equals to Ravager, and while the past of the Outsider was unknown, Devourer’s past was something that he documented well enough. He had a normal life and a happy family who supported him. Even after his limbs joined with his body and his body became bigger than entire buildings, even then, his family stuck by him. Unless he was lying, he never had to push through pain and suffering toward power. Kayleen stopped beating her soldiers, but her pack was still equal to other packs.
I gotta try to do something really stupid today. Decided the scout, entering the training chamber. She felt blood throbbing behind her ears, the heartbeat increased against her will, spearing her body with a fresh surge of adrenaline. Thinking was not her forte. Yet, sitting around and doing nothing will just produce nothing. She has to try for the sake of her duty. But right now, Annie needs to work out her frustrations, she needs a cool head for the task ahead.
Carty was already here. The blue-furred wolfkin stood relaxed, her long hair untied and reaching the middle of her back. She was standing with her back to Annie, her arms spread wide. To her displeasure, doctors refused to allow her to keep the scars that she received in battle with the mercenary leader. Once again, her body looked perfect, not a single trace of damage was visible on her body. The training arena itself was a wide area, meant for two dozen wolfkins to train and fight at the same time. The floor was made of stone, unlike rivals from the Ice Fang, the Wolf Tribe did not care about cushioning the fall with mats. Countless holes covered the walls.
Annie heard a scratching sound, and Carty’s form became fluid for a moment. Gracefully, she moved her right paw behind her back, catching a ball made of steel. Her left paw moved in a line of blur from left to right before her chest, when the paw came to the right side, three metal balls were in her paw. She threw projectiles on the floor and turned around, almost dancing on the floor, as a hail of steel balls was unleashed from the walls at rapidly increasing speed. The eyes of Carty were closed, only her ears twitched, breaking the impression of calmness, while she was catching up steel balls with her paws.
Wolf hags were meant to catch forty such balls without getting hit. Scouts were meant to catch twenty. Warriors and males were set at five. Annie checked the terminal near the entrance and saw that Carty set the program to unleash one hundred and fifty metal balls, the program was set to unleash them four at a time, giving the wolfkin barely any time to react. Annie felt the touch of these projectiles in training before, her skin bore bruises for days after missing one.
And Carty was undeniably dancing in the face of impending pain. Unafraid of danger, her paws moved like ropes, catching metal objects before they could even touch her fur or her green swimsuit. Using just her ears to sense the trembling of the tubes in the walls, to hear the friction that metal balls were producing as they were moving across the special pathways in the walls, before being unleashed at their target, the scout was able to deduce the direction from which an attack would come. The rest was simple, knowing how many projectiles there would be in a wave, it was more or less easy to react in time. In theory. Carty put the theory into practice flawlessly, calculating every move and exerting only the bare minimum of effort to protect herself.
Annie dropped her jacket and t-shirt on a table near the entrance. She put on protective goggles and took a deep breath before stepping forward, closing her own eyes. She heard scratching in the ceiling, announcing that a ball of steel had moved from the device above. Now rudimentary virtual intelligence was busy looking at her through cameras in the room, making predictions of her blind spots based on her posture. After one of the wolfkins lost her eye during training fifty years ago, Dragena allowed only a chosen few to train in this chamber with closed eyes. The warlord also adjusted the system herself, removing the possibility of steel balls hitting the eye and requiring wolfkins to wear protective goggles. Annie, technically, was not allowed to train here at all.
Left…. Around the room… Now! Her right paw moved, swatting the steel piece from the air before it could hit her belly. A smile of gratification appeared on her snout, before a burning sensation across her ear made her duck. The scout was too preoccupied with the first ball to notice the second. She released another breath, sensing her surroundings. Round and round inside the walls, the ball is go, where will it come out? Behind me. Annie used her right paw as a support to kick a ball of steel into the ceiling with her left heel, propelling herself in the air with a thrust of her right paw and kicking another incoming ball right into one of the holes in the wall. Her ears twitched, trying to hear the movements in the air or inside the wall, but the room gave in to the loud buzzing sound of a failure. Gracefully landing on the floor, Annie took off her goggles, understanding that she kicked the last ball away with her ankle, instead of the lower part of her foot or paws. This counted as a loss.
"Nice moves, brave girl," The world of calmness was gone when intense clicking came from the walls. The scout opened her eyes to see closing holes in the walls and Carty standing near the terminal, "I see you have made some progress in your training," she said.
"Progress… if you can call it that. I bet if she… Never mind," Annie allowed bitterness to disappear from her voice, smiling to Carty and taking the compliment, "Listen, I need to ask you about a favor. Spar with me for a moment, I need to cool off my jets a little and no one else will be willing to hold back on me. Sorry, I am not taking no as an answer."
"Reckless girl, so reckless," Carty shook her head, coming to the center of the room to look at Annie. The scout clenched and unclenched her right paw, feeling the movements of the muscles underneath her skin. The skin on her ankle bore no bruise from the hit of the steel ball, she may as well have been hit with a feather. Annie quickly squatted a couple of times, eager to see if her head would spin from rapid movements, and everything was fine. Neither the jump, nor the exercises caused her to feel any prolonged pain, "Look at yourself. One paw is disabled and locked in a medical paster. Skin is covered in bandages, your body is a mess…" Carty rolled her paws across the back of her head, tying up her hair into a tight knot with black rope. She blinked once.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
At this moment, Annie charged, aiming for the left foot of her opponent. She ducked low and made grappling movements with her right paw, only for Carty’s leg to move up. A smile appeared on Annie’s lips, when she felt the foot of Carty on her right shoulder blade. So far, everything has gone according to plan.
The scout never intended to pull a fast one on her fellow. Against Carty, it was impossible. The reach of Annie's right paw was only aimed at the ground rather than the leg. Using the palm of the paw to gain a foothold on the ground, Annie sent her entire body spinning around in a barrel roll toward Carty, making the leg of the scout slip from her back and landing a crushing high kick into the arm of the scout, making her retreat two steps back. Despite the clean hit, Annie felt slight pain in her foot, no matter how soft she looked, Carty’s body felt more like a solid wall of iron than flesh and bone. Pushing herself up with a single right paw, Annie launched herself into the air, aiming her foot into her opponent’s feet.
She may as well try to hit the water. Like a moving silk leaf, Carty moved to the right, allowing the legs of Annie to slide past on the fur, unable to reach the skin beneath.
Don’t ever become frustrated in combat if your foe dances around your hits. What good will it do? You will merely lose focus and become wide open. Flow your attacks into one another instead. You can turn kicks into knee strikes and punches into… Words of Kayleen came to Annie’s mind as she landed on her feet, punching with her right paw. Once more, Carty evaded the hit to the right, making the knuckle of Annie touch the softest fur of the scout. Circling around scout, Carty’s right paw moved up in an uppercut, aiming for the jaw of Annie. Instead of retreating or backing down, Annie hit with her right elbow, timing the moment for the blow to connect with the opponent’s neck, when Carty was busy circling around Annie. Had Kayleen seen this strike, she would have been proud.
And then shocked, when the wolf hag would have seen how Carty’s right paw was wrapped around the right wrist of Annie. Instead of continuing with her uppercut, Carty threw Annie over herself with a flick of the wrist. For a moment, Annie wanted to squeal from fear. She discovered, oh how she discovered, how painful such throws were: when your body first collided with stone ground, fluids in your body went wild, blood rushed to your temples, and pain began to rocket in your very bones.And Carty always finished each of these throws with a precise kick into the solar plexus, robbing her opponents of all ability to breathe and continue to fight.
Yet, through pain comes experience and knowledge. What does not kill you, only pushes you to become stronger to avoid pain. And Annie trained hard and long, asking Kayleen to throw her over and over until the scout mastered the control of her mass in full. This time her body reacted on its own, landing the scout on her feet instead of her back, while the mind of the scout was still in shock from the sheer ease of such a throw. The ease with which Carty flung Annie into the air reminded the scout of how her mother and father used to pick her up when she was a cub. Shock turned to panic, and panic turned to despair, as the lean form of Carty began to turn toward Annie.
I refuse. Stubbornly thought Annie, stepping on the left feet of her opponent, pinning Carty’s to a spot, just when Carty was about to make her iconic kick. Annie broke Carty’s hold on her right wrist, punching directly into the serene face of her sparring partner. The scout jerked her head to the left, leaving traces of perfume in the air and avoiding an incoming hit by the hair. Turning her missing hit into an elbow strike across Carty’s collarbone, Annie tried to grab her foe by the neck, wanting to channel her missed attack further. She may as well try to hit the wall. The blue-furred wolfkin barely twitched when the elbow smashed across her skin. Pain made the field of view dim for a moment, and the body of Annie became like a feather in the face of the hurricane, a hurricane that sent her backwards. Two blows, a kick with the right knee of Carty, and a hook into the right side of Annie’s body, right under the ribs. Two blows, timed to arrive at the exact same moment, with enough force behind them to throw the scout a good two steps away from Carty. Two hits were all it took for Annie to bend in pain and collapse on her left knee, gasping for air.
Carty charged forward, raising her right paw for one final punch. Annie could only see this precise hit, one that would smash across her jaw, spinning her brain and causing her to lose consciousness and end up in the dark. Raising her own right paw for blocking, Annie understood that she was simply too late. Carty read her like a book, and punishment was incoming. Adrenaline took a step back, allowing fear to resurge in anticipation of pain.
The sparring partner stopped her advance, leaning toward Annie and putting her right paw on the shoulder of the scout:
"Sorry, but this is it for today, wounded girl. A draw or your victory, you choose it." Carty nodded at the chest of the fellow scout. With surprise, Annie noticed a wet sensation under her left breast. Not once did Carty land a hit there, yet tiny red dot slowly appeared on the pristine white bandage below her breast.
"Draw." Annie forced herself to announce the result with a wheezed voice, allowing Carty to help her stand up. Carty was a weird one. Her record was filled with defeats and draws. Self-inflicting defeats, as the blue-furred scout refused to go to the length needed to fully knock out her opponent. If her sparring partner refused to give up, Carty always throw out the match, announcing herself to be the loser, rather than harm opponent too badly. Yet everyone knew just how strong she was. In rare occasions when someone manages to truly anger her… Suffice to say, Carty knew how to break bones well enough. To be fair, she also always apologized afterwards.
"Mind telling me, what this all about?" Carty asked, helping the fellow scout to sit on the bench. Annie touched the area where Carty’s blow landed. A bruise had already appeared on the skin, and it was difficult to breathe for a moment. Other people in the pack joked that Carty’s blows felt like bullets. Annie found herself in disagreement with this. The blows of her opponent were like shards. What they hit, they crushed.
"I needed to calm down and fe…" Annie gasped, feeling how Carty slashed bandages across her back, quickly replacing the soaked with blood bandages with the fresh ones from the room's med kit. The blue-furred wolfkin briefly checked the wound below Annie’s breast and confirmed that the bleeding had already stopped. Unlike the bandages of medics, the one that Carty put on Annie was far from gentle and way tighter, "…Fear dulls adrenaline, allowing me to think straight. I am about to ask the warlord to forbid dominations all together and afraid that she will beat me to death for…" She noticed that the right sleeve of Carty’s suit was exploded, the material of her swimsuit torn in place where Annie landed her kick, revealing a small dent with blue fur that was pushed deeply into the arm, "Carty, I am so sorry! I thought that…"
"Ignore this," Carty said as she pushed the muscles on her right paw, forcing the flesh back into its original shape and removing a dent. Flashing a perfect white smile, the wolfkin clenched and unclenched her fist, showing that everything was fine, "I actually felt that that. Someone cute is growing up at quite a rate! Feeling it in person was well worth a ruined suit. I even went against you all out as well at the end, so we are even."
"If you say so." Annie grumbled. All out, as if. Carty never used her left paw during sparring, handicapping herself to match the disadvantage of her opponent. Who knows what else she held back?
"As for Dragena, don’t worry your nice, weary head," Carty put the jacket onto the back of her opponent, helping the scout to dress herself, "I once was frustrated about being last in the pack. Silly me went to Dragena and asked her to throw me out. I was always the strongest in the pits, yet once I got into the actual pack, I ended up being smacked again and again and again. You gotta understand, I was young and stupid…"
"Young. You are speaking as if you are that much older than me."
"Irrelevant," Carty said elegantly, waving her paw, "Any other warlord would have broken me for daring to waste their time and then thrown me out. Dragena instead led me by the paw to a training hall. For the next few months, we trained together. The result stands before you. The Warlord helped me regain confidence, thus I try to return the favor by helping others as well. Trust me, silly girl, Dragena and Zero are the two warlords with whom you can always speak your mind at ease. Neither of them will ever lay a claw on you. Buuut if you are still scared, I can walk with you. As Dragena taught me, good spread around often comes ba…"
"No, it will be fine!" Annie almost screamed, jumping up in frustration. It was bad enough that she looked like a fool already. It was insanity that she dared to even presume to know more than the warlord. But showing up with Carty, now this would be the ultimate humiliation to die from.
Accompanied by the soft laughter of Carty, Annie stormed out of the training hall, zipping her jacket as she moved toward the second floor of the barracks. She almost crashed into a worried-looking scout from the pack of the another wolf hag. The woman wanted to share some gossip with her, but Annie excused herself, moving up the stairs and the scout hurried toward the training hall. The hallway leading to the command room of the warlord was pretty rich by the standards of wolfkin. The floor was covered by a replica of a carpet that once belonged to a prince of a long-gone country. The warlord and her soldiers were the ones who discovered the bunker with diseased family members of the royal family. All items inside were donated to the museum of Reclamation. As a token of thanks, the curator of the museum made a full replica of the gorgeous looking carpet and gifted it to Dragena.