Wet fur is a pain in the ass, especially when the only towel you have is a thin piece of shit. It was soaked through before Brendan was finished drying his chest. Sam pulled herself up onto his side of the river not long after Brendan began wringing it out for a second time.

  “Why don’t you just fucking shake?” She asked softly, sounding somewhat contrite.

  “Hmm?” Brendan asked and looked over to her. She was sopping wet too, and unfortunately for her, her ruck was on her back when she landed in the water. She dropped it with a loud squelch.

  “Like a bloody dog? Shake your back.”

  Brendan thought about it for a second. It felt very undignified, but… He let instinct take over and shook his shoulders. The shake carried all the way down him and Sam swore.

  “You’re right,” Brendan said smiling, “Much better.”

  “Fuck, warn a girl next time, asshole!”

  “It was your idea!”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t tell you to do it right fucking now,” then she muttered, “At least I can’t get any bloody wetter.”

  Sam shucked off her robe, revealing a white button up top, with a grey sleeveless vest and a pleated black skirt that came to her knees. No crests or school logos, Brendan noticed thankfully. He still didn’t fully believe her age.

  He quickly opened his pack and pulled out a pair of pants, no underwear to be found other than the briefs he arrived in. The pants were more capris than proper pants, but it suited his lack of boots. His legs were still a bit wet, so he dried them as best he could with the damp towel and pulled on the pants. Finally, he felt a bit better and not like he was going to get charged with public indecency.

  “Hey, all my clothes are wet. You mind if I borrow some of yours while they dry?”

  “Sure,” Brendan said and pulled out a thick white turtleneck. He seemed to recall actual old uniforms had buttons. He had no clue how they expected him to get one of these over his horns.

  Brendan turned to hand her the shirt and then whipped back around. He was thankful for the fur covering his face because he could feel his cheeks heating. Sam was wearing nothing except for the wand holster on the underside of her left forearm. She was pale, sickly pale as if she had never set foot in front of the sun and far too skinny to boot. He could have counted her ribs if he looked long enough. As it was he couldn’t help but notice her nipples were just as colourless as the rest of her flesh.

  “You could have warned me,” Brendan growled, still holding the shirt out behind him.

  “Why?” She asked laughingly, “You’ve been walking around buck ass naked all this time. Tit for tat.”

  “Funny, I didn’t see any tattoos. You definitely don’t have any tits,” Brendan froze as the words slipped out of his mouth before he could stop them. A second later, there was a shriek of inarticulate rage and something smashed into Brendan’s shoulder. He grunted in pain.

  “Ow,” he said, “I deserved that.”

  “Yes, you fucking did. Prick!” there was a moment's pause while Brendan pulled out a third ration. He was suddenly hungry.

  “Ok, I’m dressed.”

  Brendan turned around and sat on a rock as he opened his ration. Sam was wearing the shirt as a dress, with a damp white belt around her waist. The shirt still came down past her knees and was thick enough that even though it was white and wet, nothing was visible through it. She was barefoot and had her clothes strewn about her exploded pack, in an obvious attempt to dry them. Her rifle lay next to it and Brendan winced at the thought of that having gone into the water.

  “Not that I’m complaining, but if you thought I was a threat, why did you cast that spell at me instead of shoot me?”

  Sam looked to her rifle and shrugged, “it’s not loaded, and I’ve never fired one before in my life. I was tempted to leave it back at the start of the valley, useless lump of metal, but for some reason I can’t.”

  She turned to Brendan and sighed when she saw his food, “Bloody hell, can I have one of your rations? Mine have gotten fucking soggy for some bloody reason.”

  Brendan gestured to his pack and started eating. Sam took one of his rations, which Brendan had moved towards the top of his pack and sat on a rock opposite him. Brendan looked to the side as her “dress” hiked up. They ate in silence, Brendan feeling better for the food, the pain in his shoulder receding.

  “So, how do you want to proceed?” Brendan asked after scarfing down his fourth ration of the day, “You’ve obviously been shanghaied into this army too.”

  Sam winced, “I figure we just head down the valley. I don’t see another option unless you were given climbing gear.”

  Brendan shook his head, “I’ve never climbed in hooves either, so I don’t want to risk free climbing up that mess,” he said, nodding towards the general direction of the valley’s wall. The fog hid actual sight of it, but the impression of it still pressed in on them.

  “The fuck?” Sam swore again, “You weren’t born a Minotaur?”

  “No, I was born a human. I am from Canada.”

  Sam shuddered, “Fucking Body Shop?” was all she asked with a dark tone.

  “Fortunately, no. I’m not sure how, but I was a minotaur when I showed up in the recruiting office. My Patron decided to change me somehow.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said slowly, “Our patrons can be dicks.”

  There seemed to be a story there, but Brendan felt uncomfortable asking about it. He felt an urge to say something, but stomped on it. At this point, he had to watch everything he said around Sam. He wasn’t comfortable with this change, even more than the change his body had undergone. He didn’t normally antagonise people, he couldn’t figure out why Sam elicited that reaction from him.

  “So, you are comfortable travelling with me?” He asked carefully.

  Sam cocked her head at him, and then nodded, her mouth full.

  Brendan looked up at the sun, “We have lost a bit of time, I started when the sun was at the edge of the valley. How long have you been here?”

  Without a timepiece, this seemed the easiest way for them to track time.

  “Fuckin’ same,” Sam said, covering her mouth with the back of her hand.

  Brendan looked back the way they had come from.

  “I don’t recall the valley branching…”

  Sam just stared at me for a second.

  “You’re a minotaur, I can cast spells with a wand, we have these strange stats that allow us to do stuff, and you’re worried about the geography that we have almost certainly been teleported to?”

  “...Fair.”

  That killed the conversation for a bit and Brendan looked out over the boulder strewn field, what he could see of it. The mist had closed in again, probably from the river, the water felt just slightly warmer than the air. Low bushes were starting to grow up between the boulders, and the path was starting to form an actual trail on their side of the river. It was flanked on one side by the bulrushes and on the other by a line of boulders.

  A thought struck him, and Brendan turned to Sam, “Sam, mind if I ask a question?” he asked.

  “Sure,” she said between bites.

  “Where did you get the wand?”

  “Oh, I got it at the fucking Kit Shop, that and my badass Robe of Wizardry,” She beamed proudly at the answer, obviously very pleased with herself.

  “Robe of Wizardry?” Brendan asked sceptically and Sam winced.

  “Well, the fucker actually called it a fucking ‘Robe of Energy Attunement’,” she said with a derisive tone, “but Wizardry sounds more badass.”

  Brendan grunted, “He just gave me big clothes and extra rations and junk and charged me an arm and a leg for it,” Brendan’s thoughts flashed to the Body Shop, “Not literally.”

  Sam nodded, “Yeah, it cost me a fucking pretty penny, but I figured it would improve my pisspoor chances at surviving this shit, plus you know, fucking Magic!”

  It was Brendan’s turn to nod.

  “So?” He asked her when she was done.

  “So?” She asked back in confusion.

  “We should be heading out.”

  Sam looked at her still wet clothing, “I was hoping to let my clothes dry a bit first.”

  Brendan looked up at the sky and the dim sunlight, “Day’s half done, we don’t know how far it is to the fort, and it is going to be a cold night if we are forced to stay out. I haven’t seen any trees and you would be surprised how cold it is going to get in this valley once the sun goes down.”

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  Sam bit her lip in thought and Brendan reminded himself that the first thing she did was shoot at him. After a moment she reached her decision.

  “Fuck it, I’ll pack my shit up. Hopefully we find some place we can bloody well dry it out before nightfall. Worst comes to fucking worst, I can always just share your fucking blankets tonight. It is your ass’ fault I got wet after all.”

  Brendan wanted to argue, but he thought better of it. Such arguments never went his way in the past. Besides, with any luck they will be at the fort by then, and if not, he could probably sleep out comfortably just with his fur.

  “Right, let’s get packed up then.”

  Packing only took them a couple minutes, and they were off. The air was thicker down here by the river and soon they lost all sight of the cliff edges. Sounds still echoed off of them whenever one of the two would inevitably slip on the muddy ground. They were not moving silently by any stretch of the imagination, although discussion was limited, so Brendan had no clue how they managed to sneak up on the thing.

  Brendan and Sam rounded a bend and came face to face with a rodent standing on its hind legs. It wore dirty scraps of red and white cloth and held a crossbow in its paws. Its eyes were wide and it seemed to have frozen mid-stride.

  Brendan suddenly was very aware of the weight of the rifle in his hands. It felt heavy and unnatural.

  “Why’d you st-, oh what the fuck?” Sam asked, coming around the corner further. This broke the moment of indecision and the rat thing raised its crossbow. Brendan brought his rifle to his shoulder in reaction, but the rat was faster and fired off the bolt at him.

  A sharp stabbing pain shot up from the side of Brendan’s chest as he pulled his trigger. The hammer slammed home with a click, but nothing happened. Brendan cursed as he realised he had never actually loaded the rifle and then an overwhelming hunger erupted through the minotaur.

  Sam was quick on the uptick and drew her wand. She stabbed it at the rat and it tried to dodge but the missile took it in the leg and it stumbled to the side. It reached for a short dagger that hung from its belt, but before it could do anything the minotaur was upon it, the rifle it had carried lay forgotten in the mud. Clawed hands the size of its torso came down on each arm and squeezed it still, before the minotaur’s massive maw closed on the rat’s head with a snap. With a negligent toss of its head the minotaur wrenched the rat’s head sideways and it parted from the body.

  Sam stumbled back and gagged at the sight. The bulk of the minotaur’s form thankfully saved her from seeing exactly what he did, but the sounds of snapping bone, tearing flesh, and the shrill scream that was cut short left little to her imagination on what was happening. She shuddered remembering those same hands on her rib cage and backed up further. She looked behind her and considered running, but the minotaur was undoubtedly faster.

  Sam couldn’t watch any further and turned to look at the bushes, just in time to see two more rats, crossbows raised and staring at the minotaur in horror. It was clear what they intended, and Sam didn’t waste a second, but stabbed her wand at them again and dropped one of them. The other turned on her and fired but she brought her wand up in the second spell she knew and a shield of white light formed in front of her. The bolt slammed into the shield and deflected off of it, tearing a slight rent in the fabric of her oversized turtleneck.

  Sam fired off a third missile, but the rat dodged back into the bushes. Sam was sure she got a piece of him, but he disappeared into the underbrush. She wasn’t going into the underbrush to find it, but the sound of its passage as it ran was obvious.

  Sam heard a growling sound and turned to see the minotaur shuffling through the wreckage beneath him and swore as a sick thought came to her. She hurried over to the rat she had downed. Even though it was tiny, it was still heavy to her, and she dragged it from the bushes and set it in the middle of the path.

  She backed off again and shouted, “Oih, Brendan,” but the minotaur didn’t turn. It was focused on breaking a femur and sucking the marrow from inside.

  “Fucking fuck,” she muttered and dragged the rat closer. She tried to maintain her distance from the minotaur and doubly tired not to look at the wreckage where he had found the femur, and tossed the rat as hard as she could. It landed with a thud and a squeal, and only then did Sam realise it wasn’t quite completely dead. That lasted for all of 2 seconds and the minotaur was eating again.

----------------------------------------

  Brendan came to with the sweet taste of honey in his mouth, with hands and mouth sticky as if he had been eating his mother’s family famous ribs. He cracked another one open to suck the marrow from it and reality crashed down on him. He had never broken a rib open with his bare hands before. He looked down at what remained of the rat and turned to the side and vomited.

  “You’re back, then?” Sam asked without swearing and Brendan turned to face her. She was back the way they had come and was facing away from him, wand in hand. A part of Brendan wondered if the wand was for him or further rats.

  “Yeah,” he said hoarsely and pushed himself up to standing, the grime on his hands not dirtying his trousers any more than they already were.

  She pointed at the river with her chin, “Go clean up.”

  Brendan looked to the warm water and nothing in the world sounded like a better idea. He started towards the water, but she stopped him, “Horns, drop your pack.”

  Brendan paused when he heard his new nickname, but he nodded and followed her order. No need getting both their kit wet.

  Horns. It had been so long since someone called him that, but it made sense. Brendan was a human name and a human couldn’t do what he had just done. He shivered at the thought despite the warmth of the water and began to strip his blood stained clothes.

  “One of the fuckers got away,” Sam called from where she was sitting, not looking at him, and Horns felt slightly better. If she was getting back to swearing, she couldn’t be too shaken, he hoped.

  “We’ll deal with it when it comes up,” Horns said more calmly then he felt and pushed his trousers down over his hooves. He began to beat the clothes in the water and wring the blood out of them. He watched the water become stained with it and thought of that little strand of his blood flowing down to the atlantic. He wasn’t a stranger to blood, but this…

  His mind replayed the incident, how he had forgotten to load his rifle. He should have left a round in when he was practising, but he hadn’t thought he would need to. He thought he would have had more warning of attack.

  He remembered the sharp pain in his side and touched the patch that was bare of fur on his side. He had healed.

  “Healing Feast,” he said softly to himself and shuddered again. That was a horrifying thing. He needed to make sure he didn’t get injured again in the future. He needed armour.

  These thoughts carried him through getting the worst of the gore from his clothes and he wrung them out and through them to the bank. He scooped up some of the sand from the river bottom and wiped as much gore from his fur as he could. Only after the river around him stopped flowing red did he return to land.

  “I’m sorry,” Horns said with long practice, “I don’t know what came over me,” He continued the lie.

  Sam just stared at him and raised a thin eyebrow. Her eyes didn’t even dip low this time and Brend - no Horns, felt like some small shrunken thing under her gaze. It was as if she channelled Catherine’s disappointment in him. At least back then he didn’t eat the people he lost control on. Horns shuddered but changed it into a shake to dry his fur. Fortunately he was out of range of Sam this time.

  “It’s fine,” Sam said and turned away from him, “Get dressed.”

  “Aye, Ma’am,” he said jokingly, and there might have been a smirk that crossed Sam’s lips. Horns pulled out a fresh uniform from his pack and hurriedly pulled it on. He pulled out a ration pack, but quickly put it back. He was still slightly hungry, but his stomach rebelled at the idea of eating right now.

  “Did you get hurt?” Horns asked as he got things stowed in his pack again.

  “The bloody wankers winged me, but I’m fine as fuck,” Sam casually swore.

  Funny, Horns couldn’t smell any blood on her, and then he shook himself. He should not be smelling people for blood. He wasn’t a fucking vampire. Great now she had him swearing.

  “You good to head out?” Horns asked.

  “Fuck, sure, yeah,” Sam said with a sigh and hopped of the boulder she was sitting on, “You might want to get your fucking rifle though.”

  Horns wanted to smack himself in the head. He had forgotten all about it. He found it lying on the muddy path, with the muzzle in the grass fortunately. He brushed the mud from the stock and opened the breech. No mud. Inside he placed a round and snapped it shut again.

  “You mind carrying this fucker for me?” Sam asked and flashed him a smile while she handed him her rifle, “I’m getting to be a bloody good shot with my wand.”

  “Sure,” Horns said, as the weight was negligible to him. If he were carrying it they could probably make better time.

  “So, do we track the rat?” Sam asked, “or continue down the path?”

  “You know how to track?” Horns said with a surprised tone.

  “Fuck no, but I figured you might with all your bloody-ness,” she said and waved her hand at him. Horns frowned. He didn’t need to be reminded about the blood just yet.

  “Oh come on, that was a fucking good pun!”

  “No thanks,” Horns said lowly and started down the path.

   “Hey, it wasn’t that bad!”

  Horns shook his head, “We should keep an eye out for more rats. And a place to stop for the night.”

  Horns looked up. The sun’s pale glow had moved further west and towards where the valley’s other wall no doubt stood. Once it blocked out the sun. the valley would get colder, but they’d probably have quite a bit of dim light left before nightfall. Horns didn’t like the thought of travelling in that dim light. He wasn’t sure why.

  This time they moved a touch slower, and attempted to move silently. In Sam’s case, she mostly succeeded. Horns carried his rifle in two hands now, with the muzzle trailing and to the left. Sam walked a step behind him and to his right, probably planning on using him as a shield, Horns mused. He didn’t see a problem with that, he did seem to be the more durable of the two.

  Horns stopped the two of them when he smelled something good ahead, like his grandma’s cooking. Remembering what happened the last time he smelt something like that disturbed him.

  “What’s wrong?” Sam whispered at him.

  “Blood,” Horns said back at the equal volume and tapped his bovine nose with a claw.

  Sam nodded and drew her wand. She took a step back and to the side so that Horns was completely in front of her. Yup, shield, Horns thought with a chuckle and rounded the corner.

  What lay before them was eerily familiar. Three unmoving rats lay on the ground. As Horns got closer he smelled a hint of sulphur as well, more so than was coming from the river. Two of the crossbows were still cocked. Whatever happened happened quickly.

  Each of the rats had a hole in their tiny heads, smaller than what Horns thought their rifle rounds would do, but more than enough to empty their skulls of brain matter. Horns was forced to look away, his stomach queasy with the feeling of hunger but not wanting to eat.

  “What do you think?” Sam asked.

  “Another botched ambush,” Horns replied.

  “Well fuck, no shit sherlock,” Sam rounded on him.

  “Then why ask?”

  “I thought you might have some insight beyond the obvious.”

  She broke off a stick from one of the bushes and poked one of the rats rolling him over.

  “Looks like they are wearing scraps from our uniforms,” Sam said with a thoughtful tone and Horns looked back only to look away quickly again as Sam began to look for something on the bodies.

  Horns crossed the path to give him some space from the honeyed smell coming from the rats. He stopped short when he glanced down though.

  “Huh,” he said.

  “Oh?” Sam called back questioningly, “Did you find shit?”

  “Yeah, boot tracks. Looks like two sets. They walked into the ambush fine, but there are drag marks after.”

  “Huh,” Sam echoed and was beside him. She held out her closed hand out to him and Horns instinctively placed his hand under hers. He half feared it would be something gross, but light glinted off of coins as she opened her hand and dropped them into his.

  “They only had 6 of these fucking things on them,” Sam explained and showed the 3 in her other hand.

  Horns held up the tiny pieces of silver to the fading light and could make out the profile of a male wearing a crown on one side, and bore the words “One Shilling” on the other. It was a drop in the bucket of his debt, but it was a start.

  “Thank you.”

  “No worries, you fucking owe me two shillings later, though.”

  “How do you figure,” Horns asked.

  “You ate the ones our fuckers had!” Sam pointed out and Horns couldn’t argue.