Thoughts, slow and ponderous crawled through grey matter like beetles within a tub of refuse. Random neurons fired, bringing him ever closer to his seizure threshold until finally, his black market neural wetware kicked on.
Awareness returned to him all at once, jarring him from his unnatural slumber. He snapped open his eyes and found that the world was coal dark and featureless, realizing that his head was in a bag a second later when coarse fabric rubbed across his face. His government-issued optical implant cycled through its various overlays but none of them provided any additional data. He tried to move but found that he was trussed up and draped across something. His wrists and ankles were shackled with cold metal and a cord was wrapped around his neck. Another length of rope tied all of his restraints together so tightly that he couldn’t move his arms or legs without choking himself. Fighting the urge to panic, he centered himself with a simple mental exercise and willed his breathing into a slow, steady pattern. His heart, which had been pounding away, followed suit shortly after. Whoever had kidnapped him had done a good job making sure that he couldn't escape. He actually found it mildly impressive that they had been able to subdue him at all.
He’d fucked up somehow. Of that, there was no doubt. But how? He couldn’t recall what had led to his capture but set that aside as something to be concerned about later. He needed to understand what was happening now if he was going to survive long enough to liberate himself. Who had taken him was far more important than how they’d done it. Could it be those separatists from the Colony of Minnesota, he wondered. Or perhaps a squad of Spanish Commandos from the South. The Crown had no shortage of enemies dangerous, or desperate enough to risk execution by kidnapping a Royal Marine officer. Hell, it might have been the Crown itself that had snatched him up. The Special Intelligence Branch would surely have questions for him if they ever discovered that his ex-wife was now running a resistance cell.
Unable to see or move, he focused on gathering information with his other senses. Whatever he had been tied to stunk in a way that he was unfamiliar with. He briefly wondered if it was an animal, but then recalled that there was no living species capable of carrying a 220 lb man on its back. Still, the way that it moved and the warmth it radiated led him to believe that whatever he was strapped to was alive. It was difficult to smell much of anything else through bag on his head, but the faint scent of pine and notes of what could only be perfume still reached him. The twittering of birds and the sound of the wind through leaves told him that he was in a woodland. A wind too cold for the month of July blew across his body making him realize that he’d been stripped down into a t-shirt and PT shorts.
“‘ave you awakened?” asked a woman, her question tinged with surprise. She spoke quietly with a lilting accent from Old Europe that he knew had once been called French. A voice like that could convince a man to do stupid things, and, despite his predicament, he began to form a picture in his mind of the beautiful woman that such a voice must belong to. He contemplated not answering her but decided that there was nothing to gain by doing so.
“Yes, I’m awake. Would you mind telling me what’s going on?” he said, his voice steady and betraying no nervousness. Remembering his SERE training, he waited for her to answer. It wouldn’t do to be rude and rush her. Winning her over was a priority in his nascent plan of escape.
“Will you tell me your name first?” responded the woman in the same sweet whisper.
There was no point in not answering the question since such basic information was almost worthless as intel. “Of course. My name is Matt. Or Physician Lieutenant Matthew J Falkirk if we’re being formal. First Battalion, Second Royal Marines. Service Number 13-17-816,” he said, providing the minimum information required by war convention. “And who might you be, love?”
Seconds passed in silence. “I am called Lilla,” she answered. “Which Royal do you serve?”
The question was simple, but entirely peculiar since there was only one royal house that anyone could serve. He found the question so strange that he began to wonder if his current situation was meant to be some kind of test of his loyalty to the Crown. “I serve Her Majesty Queen Mary Victoria, of course,” he answered. “Lilla, would you mind removing this bag from my head so that we can have a more civilized conversation?”
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“I cannot,” replied Lilla, her tone unmistakably apologetic.
Matt was disappointed but not surprised that his first crack at gaining more freedom had failed.
His attempt to ask a follow-up question was derailed when something struck him hard in the face. Pain exploded across his consciousness and the world went white for a second as the cartilage in his nose crunched and blood began to pour down his face. He could hear it drip onto the fabric covering his head. There was no way that it wasn’t broken. “Fuck,” he blurted out through a mouthful of blood.
“Ete hulte ist thare k’th!” someone said. A male this time, speaking gibberish in a harsh rumbling voice. “Olet het k’thel moepa k’thor telis.” Matt had no idea what language they were speaking, but it sure as hell wasn’t the Queen's English.
“Ris eta! Ris eta coli!” Lilla exclaimed. The sound of someone’s palm meeting her face and a yelp of surprise and pain followed. “Captain Tothe tells you to be silent. Please obey. We will speak more at our destination. I ‘ope.” she said quietly. He wondered if Lilla had spoken up in his defense and been struck because of it.
Matt knew firsthand that women could be just as dangerous as men. He’d been forced to kill female soldiers when putting down insurgencies for the Crown, but they’d been enemy combatants first and women second. His actions there had been justified. Violence against women in general, however, was something that he’d never been able to tolerate. In his view, any man that needed to assert his dominance in such a way was unworthy of being called a man at all.
His nosebleed stopped sooner than he expected it to. The pain kept on for a while after and was then forgotten as he focused his mind on all of the oddities involved with his current situation. What was he strapped to? A horse? No, they’d been extinct for decades. What language had they spoken earlier? Certainly, one that he’d never heard in all of his travels. None of it made any sense. He flexed his hands and noticed that the skin felt odd, kind of tacky, but couldn’t think of a reason for it.
They traveled for over six hours according to the HUD projected across his field of view by his eye implant. The beast beneath him plodded along with seemingly endless energy, making Matt wonder if his captors would need to stop at all before they reached whatever their destination was. He was painfully aware of the fullness of his bladder by the time that the animal halted and he was roughly removed from its back. The rope connecting his bindings together was untied leaving only the shackles on his wrists and ankles. Someone grabbed the chain connecting his wrists and pulled him a short distance before another two people pushed him down onto his knees and yanked the bag off of his head.
Matt, thinking that they might be getting ready to execute him, prepared himself to fight for his life. What he saw as his eyes adjusted to the light made him rethink his plan. Shocked into inaction and at a loss for words, Matt just stared. Standing there in front of him was what appeared to be a six-foot-tall bipedal, humanoid wolf. Brown fur, flecked with gray, covered it from head to clawed feet. No, paws. It had paws on the end of its reverse jointed lower extremities. The thing’s coat rippled in the breeze like the sinewy pines that grew on the edges of the clearing that Matt found himself in. Its hands were more human, with four long, clawed digits and a thumb. Those hands were balled into fists as it paced in front of him, its sharp amber eyes never leaving Matt’s face. It appeared to Matt like what a werewolf was supposed to look like in the old legends. Except it was wearing a kilt and had several bandoliers of pouches strapped across its chest. Multiple necklaces, each bearing a different charm hung around its neck. Three long knives were sheathed on its left side, and an ancient-looking pistol was tucked into a leather belt.
Why does it carry knives when it already has claws?
In the half-light of the failing sun, the thing growled and smiled at him, displaying a set of teeth that Matt didn’t doubt could snap bone. “ Fut ild Lilla, et k’this,” it snarled. “Hrik ot k’thesta ilo k’thli?” Its upright ears twitched in the direction of a particularly loud bird and then faced forward.
“Ze Captain asks where is your strength now,” said Lilla from somewhere behind him.
Matt glanced up at the people holding him down and saw the hard eyes and triangular faces of two more wolf-men. His brain tried to sabotage his chances of survival by telling him that what he was seeing couldn’t possibly be real, but he overpowered the notion. He knew that failing to accept reality was the quickest way to end up dead when encountering the unknown. “Please tell the Captain that I’m not sure what he’s talking about.”
Lilla said something in the language that the wolf-man had spoken. Matt could only assume that she had translated what he said. The Captain growled again, apparently not liking what he’d heard, but this time there was no smile to accompany it. He strode forward and pressed his clawed fingers against Matt’s neck. There was nothing that Matt could do to stop it if the wolf-man was truly intent on opening his throat.