As the losers made another lap around the field followed up by joining a quick session of stretching, or as Kei put it, “Loosening bones”.

“Alright you all look loose enough,” She mused, gesturing for the lot to line up and line up they did as she briefly glanced over all of them. “The core of this training regimen is to break you all down from singulars, from the running, sparring, group jogging, sprinting, and now this.” Kei gestured at the swampy forest to her right, the complete opposite direction the town was.

“To unify you, to force you to walk in strides at the same pace. Whilst it is true that strong leaders can win a battle right off, they need strong and well-trained soldiers to accomplish this. Whether as pawns, or simply a distracting meat-shield.” She clenched her fist around a pebble, the sound of her muscles popping as something within was crushed. “My job, is to make a good meat shield out of you lot. And a good meat shield you’ll make, or else, we don’t need you. It’s as simple as that.” Kei explained before exclaiming suddenly, “Understood!?”

“Yes Ma’am!” The lot responded in unison.

With her usual resting bitch face, Kei sighed, “Not quite at the same pace, but I’ll get you there. A good meat shield is useless if the slab of beef to their left trips and falls over, or the poultry to their right turns tail and runs away. A good meat shield stands their ground till the very last drop of blood leaves their body! The best meat shields, stand solid beyond that!”

“So…like jerky?” Mused Clarence with some confusion.

“Yes, yes I’ll turn you all into a decent batch of fucking jerky, Clarence…” Kei growled, and he paled to white. “And to test your damn value in nutrition, I’ve come up with this next activity. Directly behind me, an unknown distance away, I set up a flag. Defending that flag, are a trio you know well. Whilst the trainees defend, it will be your task to take the flag and successfully transport it back to me. You will be given no equipment beyond your clothes, bodies and wits. You are not allowed to use any equipment or resources within camp grounds, or town boundaries.”

“Ma’am?” Liz then said, asking for permission to speak.

Kei nodded.

“Then, it’s all of us, against just the three of them?” Lizbeth asked.

“Yes, twelve slabs of raw meat versus three ingots of iron.” Kei responded matter-of-factly, “You have till noon, three hours starting from right…Now, I will give no further assistance other than answering questions on the rules. And to save you some breath, yes, Lycanthropy is allowed.”

Liz bit her lip in annoyance, “We have too little information,” before glancing about, “And we don’t know each other enough.”

“Well, whatever I guess.” Clarence mused, turning about and moving towards the forest.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Liz snapped at him.

“To do my thing, don’t you mind me now.” Clarence responded back.

“Hey…shouldn’t we work together?” Asked the largest of the guys, reaching out to him.

“Ignore him Dust,” Lune added, pulling at his shirt, “He’s an idiot.”

Not fully agreeing, Dust still let it be.

Erika quietly watched and listened, mostly gone ignored by the rest as she had been all week.

One less soldier, that can’t be good.

She thought, looking after where Clarence had left, pondering what the recruit was thinking.

He’s an unusual, but a smart one. He’s up to something.

“Eleven of us counting the lizard,” Lune mused, and Erika clenched her fists, “So how do we go about this hm? Shaman?” She turned to Lizbeth, “Your family is moon born, step up then eh?”

“Makes sense, same blood as the Alpha, alright I’ll bite.” Another male said.

Shaman? Moon born? What does it all mean…

Erika wondered, as Lizbeth glanced about, “Then if there are no qualms with me taking the bone, we’ll need to quickly plan this out. Tejil, Gerick and Drun, your clan is the fastest and stealthiest.” She called out to the white haired three of them, “You go scout out ahead and bring us back the situation, once we know what terrain and situation we’re dealing with we will discuss strategy.”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“Fine by me,” Gerick added, “We Snowtails will go check them out.” Him and the other two white furred, bunny or feline eared Lycans nodded.

“In the meantime, we’ll prepare ourselves, Silverhides are the handiest but that bastard walked off so we’ll have to use what we find in the woods and swamps.” Liz then said, “Lune, Gale, know of any creatures in the vicinity you Windwalkers can charm to our need?” she then asked the two dark-grey haired Lycans.

“Hmmm, Spinetails, Ruckbacks, we could use as mounts.” Gale offered.

“There’s some Silver gliders I spied north of the camp, we bunch up some honey and get it on the trainees, that’ll give them a bit of trouble.” Lune also added.

“You two go figure those out then,” Liz confirmed, “Celest, Gula, Dust, Daelin and…Erika, we’ll get our hands dirty and gather up what we can for make-shift weapons.”

Erika was surprised by her name being called, looking over to Lizbeth with a raised brow she instead ignored her surprise.

What changed?

“I can at best put together some spears?” Daelin, a brown-haired Lycan said.

“They’re something, though I’d say all Dust needs is a big ole’ log.” Gula chuckled.

“I’d rather have a shield.” Dust mused.

And so the tasks were set and the group scattered, Erika didn’t mind following Lizbeth’s ideas, she lost nothing from doing so. She still had much to learn about them and this world.

“Gather me any wide strong rocks, and sturdy long branches.” Daelin called out as they scrounged through the forest, he himself setting up by a large boulder as his table, whilst they gathered up what they could. Bringing it all to him, over an hour passed by as he finished about two spears for each of them, and a just as crude looking stone axe for Lizbeth.

Midway through this, Clarence had walked by suddenly, walking over to Daelin’s table he crouched down by the many branches and began looking through without saying a word.

“Ah, the ass returns.” Daelin mused, turning to see this, he stared with a raised brow expecting a response.

No response came, only Clarence picking out a branch from amongst the many, bending it a few times before turning to leave smirking to himself.

“The fuck is his problem?” Gula murmured to Daelin as she dropped off some rocks.

“You asking me? That branch is too sturdy to be made into a throwable spear, hasn’t dried up enough. It’ll take too long for it to settle to be usable.” Daelin said.

“Silverhide huh?” Gale muttered as he and Lune returned, riding a group of ragged looking creatures. On all fours with scraggly fur, short lupine snouts and a long thin tail riddled in deadly looking white spikes. The two rode one each whilst two more followed behind them.

“No Silver Gliders?” Lizbeth asked seeing them return.

As she did so Lune tapped a ball of twine, plant fibre and vines tied up to her waste, and the entire thing began rattling, shaking and glowing silver. “Got them little cuties right here, gathered up some honey into a large leaf too, it’s in my right pocket.”

“We’ll quickly douse the spears with honey then,” Daelin added, standing up from where he worked as he noticed the Snowtails also had returned.

“We found them.” Tejil said as they landed, having apparently been using the tree branches to travel.

Lizbeth turned to them, “Where’s Drun?” she asked the two who glanced at one another.

“They got him, we sprung a trap approaching them, they saw a scouting party coming it seems.” Tejil replied.

“Jumped us just as we saw the flag, Drun gave us an opening to make our escape by leaping after it.” Gerick added, “We barely made it out.”

“Shit, down to ten of us then…” Dust grumbled.

“Eleven,” Clarence mused, abruptly coming out of the woods nearby, a make-shift quiver of arrows slung over his back and a make-shift longbow in his right hand.

“So, that’s what you were up to.” Daelin mused, “How’d you quicken the process?” he asked gesturing at the bow.

Clarence smirked, “A wizard doesn’t simply reveal his trade secrets.”

Daelin huffed in disbelief, “This guy!”

Lizbeth simply sighed, “No matter, we’ve still got the number advantage. How was their equipment?”

“Fully armed…” Tejil groaned, “Armour, Weaponry, even bloody rations.”

“Seriously?” Lune mused.

“Yeah, they’ve spent their time barricading instead. Let me show you.” Gerrick added, kneeling down amongst them as they all encircled him, watching him drawing into the dirt with his pinky finger.

Drawing an oval with the top wider than the bottom, almost like an egg, he marked out trees expertly with his thumb, before using his palm to circle out what he mentioned to be a large boulder. Then using some leaves and pebbles, he marked out where the flag was, and the barricades they put up.

“Log walls all over their south, with the additional bleakwood spines, don’t get hit by those…” He mentioned glancing briefly at Erika, “I also spied a pulleytrap just to the east of the boulder, I swear they had more time than us to set up.”

“We don’t have much time remaining, two hours and a half at best.” Clarence reminded.

Each turned to look expectantly at Lizbeth as she surveyed the quick map, after a brief moment she began to give out her plan. “Clarence, you will take on the high ground that is the boulder with Dust and Gula as your backup, Gerrick go with them to ensure they don’t trip any traps. Tejil, Lune and Gale will take the spinetails and climb the south trees, jump over the wall like that as the rest of us go in from this funnel they created, we’ll surround them like fish in a puddle.”

They’ll expect us to take the boulder and to use stronger mounts to get over their wall…

Erika thought to herself, something just seemed off, they must of known of this groups capability to charm these beasts? Right?

“We set off immediately,” Lizbeth ordered, and everyone shuffled to gear up.

As they did so, Erika approached one of the Snowtails, Tejil. “Hey, uhm.” Who turned with a raised brow, as if surprised that Erika actually spoke. “How were the walls set up?”

“What do you mean?” Tejil bluntly asked back.

“Were the logs straight, outward or inward?”

“Uhhh, starting straight and what seemed like an inward bend, they probably expect us to use ranged weapons off the tree branches.” Tejil mused.

Is that it?

Erika thought, something bugged her, like she should’ve known better but was unsure about what.

“Let’s go people, time is not on our side.” Lune called out.

Putting her thoughts aside for the moment, Erika picked up her two make-shift spears and turned to follow them, giving the map one last glance as they left.

Why…