It never stopped surprising Little Ant how loud humans could be. She and every goblin in her camp worshipped the Quiet. By the time a child knew how to walk, they would be taught how to move without a sound through The Wyrding. How not to leave a scent or a footprint for a predator to follow. Humans would never have survived as goblins. They announced their arrival with every step.
Maybe you don’t need to be silent if you’re strong, Little Ant thought.
From the little she had seen of Garuccia, men were the masters of that land. Even the hungriest beasts avoided them. Which made her wonder… why hadn’t goblins been born strong like them? If they had strong arms instead of light feet, would Sparrow still be alive?
“Something wrong?” The viscount asked.
“… no.” Little Ant lied: “You just… make too much noise.”
The viscount considered that for a moment.
“Then can you show us how to make less noise?”
She could and teaching the viscount how to walk like a goblin made her cheeks flare up and her heart race faster. She showed him how to move without making a sound or leaving a footprint. Hiding their scent was trickier but she did what she could. The viscount learned fast and… the fool wasn’t too bad either.
Having something to share made her feel closer to the great warrior. Like an equal. She would prove that she could be more useful than just a guide.
“I will remember this when I am out hunting next time.” The viscount said.
Little Ant glanced at the rifle on the viscount’s back.
“Do you hunt with that?”
“Yes.” The viscount said.
“Really takes the sport out of it if you ask me. I believe in a fighting chance.” The fool said.
Little Ant just rolled her eyes and wondered again why the viscount tolerated this fool.
“Could you teach me how to shoot, milord?” Little Ant asked.
“And why would you want to learn how to shoot?” The viscount asked.
The fool nudged his master with an elbow.
“I’m sure he would love to. Seems only be fair after all the help you’ve given us.” The fool said and shot his master a look: “Right?”
Help? She had been… helpful to the viscount? For a moment it felt like Sparrow had complimented her for a job well done… but Sparrow was no longer here. Her reminiscing was cut short when she smelled gunpowder and unwashed clothes… and the musk of a skin-changer.
“We’re getting close.” Little Ant said.
They slowed down to kill even the smallest sound. Little Ant moved ahead and left a trail that the viscount and the fool could follow without setting off nature. After ten minutes of skulking, they saw a caravan of five men moving down a forest path with a carriage.
They were grizzled, sunburned men with cold eyes and rough beards. All of them carried rifles that had seen better days but still looked deadly. They had a suspicious air to them like they suspected the entire forest was plotting against them.
The carriage they were guarding was pulled by a bear with cunning look to it.
Its fur was dark brown, almost black and under the fur was an armor of fat and muscle. A monster like that could have gobbled her whole without even chewing but the worst part was the intelligence in the skin-changer’s eyes. It was no dumb animal acting purely on instinct.
And it was suspicious.
Suddenly the skin-changer stood on its hind legs like a man and sniffed the air. One of the men guarding the cargo shouted a curse and slashed the skin-changer with a whip. The skin-changer howled in pain when the whip cut its back and Little Ant could see this wasn’t the first whipping it had gotten. Its back was a patchwork of half-healed scars and bleeding scabs.
Seeing this made the fool growl but the viscount’s hand on his shoulder forced him to calm down.
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“Sal, advice me.” The viscount whispered.
The fool was quiet for a moment and Little Ant was surprised how hard his face and eyes were when he wasn’t grinning like an idiot.
“They look like veterans from the Twelve-Year-War. They must have gone full bandit afterwards.” The fool said.
“And the skin-changer?”
“A minor prince from the Bear Clan by the looks of it. I don’t know how but… somehow he has been enslaved.” The fool said and turned his sight at Little Ant: “Are these the men who murdered Sparrow?”
For a moment Little Ant was lost at words. The fool’s eyes were… almost glowing. Had his teeth always been this pointy? Everything about him was sharper. Deadlier.
“Little Ant.” The fool said.
“… yes.” Little Ant said.
The fool nodded and looked at his master.
“Cassio, these men are murderers and slavers. Both are hanging crimes. As your advisor I suggest we kill them all.”
The viscount looked at the men and the skin-changer and then let his red coat fall to the ground.
“By the authority bestowed upon me as a lord of Garuccia, I sentence them to die. The punishment will be implemented immediately by me.” The viscount said and took the rifle off his back: “I need a better spot to take the shot. You two wait here for my signal.”
“As you wish, milord.” Little Ant said.
“Sure thing, darling, but… leave the skin-changer to me.”
The viscount nodded.
“As you wish.”
The viscount sneaked away, leaving Little Ant alone with the fool… who was looking less like a fool by the second. Something was growing under his skin. Something big and savage that was fighting to get out. The spear she had brought with her no longer felt adequate for protection.
“Leave… the skin-changer to you?” Little Ant echoed.
“Yes. That is what I said.”
“And how… do you intend to deal with a skin-changer?”
“Probably confuse him with my overwhelming sexual charisma. If that doesn’t work… eh… I’ll think of something else. I usually do.”
“There’s something… wrong about you.” Little Ant whispered.
“Hopefully it didn’t take you this long to figure that out.” The fool said.
“You’re not a man.”
“Did you just call me an ugly girl? Or are you into Garuccian law too? According to that… the Roma are less people and more of an infestation.”
A shot was fired and the bandit who had lashed a whip across the skin-changer’s back fell over without a word. To their credit, the other bandits weren’t frozen in place by fear and instead took cover wherever they could find it. Something the viscount had been betting on. From his vantage point there were few places the bandits were safe from him and those who were… now had their backs to the fool.
“Wait here. This will get bloody.” The fool said.
When the fool started heading towards the bandits, something odd happened. He became a reflection in a cracked mirror with every shard showing something different. In some he was the smirking, brown-skinned man with a short beard but in others… Little Ant could see a black fox the size of a horse with burning blue eyes. He didn’t transform exactly. The mirror simply mended itself until only the reflection of the giant fox remained.
The bandits who had escaped the viscount’s bullets found that they had ran straight into the jaws of a skin-changer fox. His fangs were sharp and his bite powerful. There wasn’t time for screams or struggling when the grass became wet with gore.
The skin-changer bear who had been content to stand by the carriage and watch his tormentors die now rose to its hind legs when it saw another skin-changer. The fox and the bear eyed each other with their fangs bared. When the fox prince spoke, he still sounded like the viscount’s advisor, but his voice was now more commanding without a drop of humor.
“You’re free. Return to your Clan.” The fox said.
The bear roared in response.
“Protect the cargo! Master’s orders!”
The bear tore itself free from the strappings that tied it to the carriage and lunged at the fox. The two skin-changers crashed against each other and began trying to rip each other’s throats open. The bear was bigger and moved with the terrifying speed of a rockslide, but it fought without skill. It just expected its weight and strength to be able to overcome anything and as a result there was a lot of empty movement. A lot of wasted energy.
Something the fox prince was taking full advantage of.
The fox prince circled the bear and only bit and clawed when he saw an opening leaving behind painful gashes. The pain only infuriated the bear further and made it attack wildly. Little Ant could see the fox prince’s strategy. Poke the bear. Make it angry and let it tire itself out. The blood loss would bring down even the fiercest beast.
The fox prince also had help.
Now that the bandits were dead, the viscount was taking shots at the bear, but its skull was too thick for bullets to pierce just like its hide covering a padding of muscle and fat. But they did make the bear angry.
It was a good plan but there was one flaw. The bear could afford a hundred mistakes before being brought down. The fox prince only needed to slip once. Which he did when the bear knocked him off his feet with a single swing from his paw. At that moment, Little Ant lost herself. Before she knew what she was doing, she was climbing on the bear’s back. The bear roared and tried to shake her off like she was a stubborn tick, but Little Ant held on fast.
And then she drove the blade of her spear into the bear’s eye.
The pained roar almost burst her eardrums.
Blinded by pain, the bear swung around wildly to get rid of her, but Little Ant held on and twisted the spear in the burst eye socket. Just long enough for the fox prince to get back on his feet and jump at the distracted bear. The fox’s fangs found the bear’s throat and tore into it. The roaring was silenced when hot blood spilled to the ground. The bear stood on its hindlegs for a moment before falling over dead.
Little Ant jumped off the bears back and despite just hanging to the skin-changer, she could already tell she would be sore for days. But it wasn’t the pain to come that worried her. All she could see was the black fox.
“Are you alright?” The fox prince asked.
Little Ant tried crawling away from the fox prince when she heard the viscount rushing towards them.
“Sal?! Little Ant?!”
Hearing the advisor’s name made the fox prince flash an annoyed look at the viscount and the human lord corrected himself.
“Your Savage Highness.”
The name made Little Ant’s eyes bulge.
“You… you’re the one… who was supposed to guard us.”
“And I returned when you asked for my help.” His Savage Highness said and looked at the dead skin-changer: “Your mentor has been avenged.”
Little Ant looked at His Savage Highness and then at the viscount. They had both known… and said nothing. It felt like she had been the punchline to a cruel prank.
“You… you both knew who he was and… why didn’t you tell me?”
The viscount looked guilty while His Savage Highness just seemed annoyed.
“I suppose my other half found it funny. He can be difficult at times.” His Savage Highness said and then looked at the carriage: “Cassio, can you see what these men were guarding?”
The viscount nodded and when he looked under the tarp that hid the cargo, he let out a wordless curse.
“What is it?” His Savage Highness said.
When Little Ant looked at the back of the carriage, the bottom fell off her stomach.
“Is that… a Wyrd Stone?” Little Ant whispered.
There was no mistaking about it. Someone had been moving a Wyrd Stone. A crime punishable by death. Who could be mad enough to try and break the Pact of Kings?
“Charming.” The viscount said dryly.
His Savage Highness looked at the corpses they had left behind.
“Now I wish we had let one live. We have a serpent’s egg on our hands.”
Holding a serpent’s egg… Little Ant had heard the saying once. A minor problem that could hatch into a large problem. The viscount tapped the Wyrd Stone for a moment.
“What should we do?”
“Leave. The Bear Clan will soon sense that one of their own is dead. They will come here to devour his meat and soul so he can be reborn. Let the bears inform The Wyrd King that someone has violated the pact.” His Savage Highness said.
Little Ant was more hurt than she had realized and when His Savage Highness saw the way her ankle was swelling, he bowed his head so Little Ant could climb on his back.
“You did well today. You can be proud of yourself.” His Savage Highness said.
The viscount patted her back.
“I guess you weren’t just playing a warrior.”