Loegrion called and we answered

We tossed a coin high in the air

We will fight the Valoise

With gun, tooth and claw

At the cliffs of Port Neaf

Or the mountains of Sheaf

Heads or Tails!

Duke Stuard, he called and we answered

We’ll take the curse straight to our foe

Till the battle is done

And the day has been won

From the cliffs of Port Neaf

To the mountains of Sheaf

Heads or Tails!

Lord Relentless, we ask for one mercy

Our coin, it is coming down fast

If we’re out of our mind

Our end, make it kind

At the cliffs of Port Neaf

Or the mountains of Sheaf

Heads or Tails!

The werewolves had their own song.

One of the volunteers had come up with it, shortly before David had had to cut his throat. Talbot had been his name, Archi Talbot. He had written down his little song, and one of the settled ones who had taken his body away had found it in his pockets. David thought that the gruesome story had helped it to spread.

It was stuck in his head as he inspected the formation of werewolves—a pointless ordeal, given that they had lined up as if they had all twenty years of experience of it. But he was their commander, and he had to follow protocol. Finally, he took his own position at the head of the formation, still humming the song to himself.

And then they had to wait, which David had been assured was another fine military tradition. Despite the early hour, he was sweating in his uniform.

Alvin’s horse pawed the ground nervously. David heard the saddle creak as the boy shifted impatiently. He had to suppress the urge to turn around and give him an encouraging smile. As his orderly—and their youngest officer—Alvin had taken position right behind him.

Where everyone could see.

David felt a faint tingle of magic from where Ragna waited next to him, and the creaking stopped. A few seconds later, the mare stopped prancing, too, just as the two dukes appeared, proclaimed by the cheering crowds. Today, the masses of Deva were celebrating—celebrating a battalion of werewolves led by two werewolf captains.

And one human major.

“Lord Relentless,” the crowd yelled in between cheering for the dukes who paid for their drinks.

David hated that name. Or rather, he hated that the humans used it, the people who had no idea what it even meant. Who didn’t know the song, or even if they knew the song, would never have to beg for a swift death from him.

They had no right to call him that, yet David had no doubt the nickname would stick. Not least because Bram was still “Lord Feleke”—and hopefully, would be for a long time to come.

At least the dukes used his real name when they addressed him both in their speeches. It was high time George Louis crowned himself, David thought, as his own gelding shifted restlessly underneath him. If only so they could cut down the number of speeches needed at these grand occasions.

Not that this occasion was all that grand.

Eight hundred ninety eight werewolves waited behind and besides him. Eight hundred ninety eight souls he was about to lead into the meat grinder. Not even the full thousand General Clermont had wanted, but a good strength for an infantry battalion none the less.

How many would return?

Heads or tails?

The song was still stuck in his head as he saluted the dukes and the werewolves presented their arms, and then when he rode ahead of the battalion that marched across the city to the southern train station. Two trains were waiting here: the fully loaded freight train carrying their supplies, and the troop transport that would carry them most of the way to Port Neaf.

More precisely, the train would take them to Dead End, the aptly named settlement that had sprung up around the railhead.

The troop transporters were special wagons, with a walkway down the middle and rows of double seating on either side. They were designed to carry as many soldiers as possible—the soldiers’ comfort was of little concern. Everything was narrow. Taller men sat with their knees almost folded up to their chest.

It gave David an extra appreciation for Alvin who was following right behind him as he checked on his troops. In the narrow aisle, he stood no chance of defending himself if someone came at him from the side or behind. He wouldn’t even hear them over the rattling of the train.

There shouldn’t be any spreaders left amongst the soldiers—not until the next full moon. He had just killed nineteen of them in the days following the last new moon.

And yet, there was always the risk of an outlier, of someone who didn’t follow the usual patterns. If one of them was sliding, he needed to know right away.

It made him feel like a renegade warlock, sometimes, conducting the kind of heretical experiments the Church would have rightfully burned him at the stake for—talking to experimental specimens rather than subordinates.

“Sir?” Alvin asked, when David chuckled darkly at the thought.

“Nothing,” David said. “Let’s find a seat.”

Noone stood out to him, and the sergeants had no complaints, either. So David moved on to the last wagon, furthest away from the engine and the acrid smoke. This was the officers’ carriage—Marques de Burg and Count de Vale had taken the very last compartment and locked the door. They even had their own orderlies sitting with them, rather than risk losing them to the monsters.

David glared at the door but there was no point in calling them out on it. They hadn’t even been at the muster. Probably didn’t want to be associated with the werewolf battalion.

Cowards.

At least his own officers seemed in good spirits.

“You’re not taking that thing in here, are you, Sir?” Ragna complained, grinning, before he could even enter.

Right. New sword. Silver sheath. Good thing most of the troops were so young they barely even reacted.

Small mercy.

David smiled wryly and loosened the tackle from his belt, carefully stashing the sabre right outside the door. The ring at the wall there was probably for umbrellas? Surely, most people wouldn’t leave a weapon out of sight?

Not that he had to worry about anyone on this train stealing the blade.

“Thank you, Major,” Rust said.

“Care to join the game, Sir?” Neville asked.

Lenny filled the last seat, with two spots empty for David and Alvin.

“Deal me in,” David said.

“Alvin?”

“I—sure.” The kid was a little awkward around the elders, still. Distracted, too. He folded quickly.

“So you think the defectors know we're coming?” he asked, without looking at anyone directly.

“I hope not,” David said. That would mean another traitor at the palace.

“They’ll know something is coming,” Rust grunted. “If the rest of the army is doing their job, they’ve been shelling the city day and night to soften them up for us. Asides, they know their own fleet will be there soon, so they know we have to make a push to take the city.”

Alvin considered that. “So, if the city is being shelled day and night, does that mean we’ll just have to sweep in and pick up the stragglers?”

Rust laughed.

“No, son,” he said with a grim smile. “If Port Neaf was a village, all wood and thatched roofs, that might work. But a city built of bricks and stones, that’s a different beast altogether. Word is, we can’t even fire at the garrison proper, there’s so much of the damn city in the way. Even if you destroy a wall—or a whole house—keep in mind that the heap of rubble remains for us to climb and the enemy to hide behind.”

Alvin blanched at those words.

“Way to cheer up the troops,” Neville commented. “Don’t worry, kid. They’ll shoot you once and you bite their head off before they can reload.”

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

What if a werewolf got shot in the head, though?

Or struck by a cannon ball?

Alvin didn’t ask, and David didn’t, either. But the question lingered as Neville dealt the next round of cards. For the first time, David wished he’d paid more attention to Little Roy and his experiments with pistols.

One fact that he knew was this: Of the just over one hundred werewolves in the battalion who were Greg’s age and older, not a single one had ever been shot in the head and survived, or even knew someone who had.

It didn’t make him hopeful.

“How’re your grandsons, Lenny?” he asked, just to banish the miserable thought from his own head.

Lenny’s narrow chest swelled with pride and he promptly launched into a story of how he had taken the boys out to sea and the plans he had for after the war.

“I want to retire with them,” he said. “Saving my paper vouchers for it, so I can sit on the porch, smoke a pipe, and not be a burden to Dorothy and the boys. Take them out to sea every day and teach them all the tricks of fishing.”

He looked at David, hope shining on his face. “We’ll get to retire, right, Sir? Once the war is over?”

“That’s the plan,” David said. “That’s my plan, at least,” he amended. “Lane’s, too.”

“What’re the dukes saying?” Neville asked. “Just—between us six, Major?”

David stared out of the window, at the trees speeding past outside. “Duke Desmarais—he once told me it’s making him feel young again. To look at the country and ask, what if we just did things differently. George Louis—he’s coming around. Slower than I’d personally like, but it’s happening. And his son found out his mother is a werewolf and begged to meet her anyway.

“We have a chance to make a difference here,” he went on. “If we beat back the Valoise, who knows what the future might bring?”

“...think we can do it?” Neville asked.

“Why do you think I’m here?”

“Cause you’re mad as a hatter, Sir,” Neville said, without even hesitating. “You’re like Ragna—even given just half a chance at revenge, she’d have run at it.”

She bared her teeth at him, smiling proudly.

“I don’t know what’s driving you, major,” Neville went on. “But I’m not asking if there’s some kind of theoretical possibility. I want to know if you think us, as in this battalion, will take Port Neaf tomorrow.”

What was he supposed to say to that?

“I’m not a seer, and this is my first battle, too,” David pointed out. “Ask Rust if you want an expert’s opinion.”

But Rust glared at the younger werewolf and David saw Neville’s jaw clench.

“Don’t jinx us, Neville,” Lenny said instead. “You start talking of victory before the battle even starts, that’s gotta be bad luck.”

“You don’t even want to know the odds?” Neville asked.

This time, Rust sighed. “You’re all such greenhorns. There’s no way of knowing the odds, Neville. You can’t ever know what it is you don’t know, and what you don’t know will kick you in the arse.”

The elder sighed again and added: “General Clermont is a cautious bastard. Some of the officers I served under went so far as to call him a glorified coward. And he’s the one who is ordering this attack. Make of that what you will.”

Neville ducked his head, looking down at the cards in his hands. He didn’t ask any more questions about the battle, focusing on the game. Alvin didn’t play the round, staring out of the window instead.

“I’ve never been so far south,” he noted. “Think we’ll make it all the way to the southern coast, Sir? I hear they grow strange things down there.”

“I can ask Marques de Burg if he’ll take you to Southshire,” David offered. “Once the war is over, I mean. They grow tobacco there, and cotton.”

Alvin’s eyes lit up. “Think he would let me see it? I want to see the whole country! All the way to the west coast! Think we’ll ever get the railway to Clyde’s Pass, Sir?”

“In a decade, sure,” David said. “Once they got the tunnels through the mountains figured out.”

Could he talk de Burg into taking Alvin?

Not today, that was for sure.

When they arrived at Dead End, de Burg and de Vale unlocked their compartment and hurried out the wagon, only to hover around David like moths around a lamp while their helpers unloaded their horses. They had to ride—march in the case of the soldiers—a distance of about six miles to the war camp. They’d be bogged down with carts, too. It wasn’t yet noon, but it was unlikely that the mules would make it all the way to the camp before dusk set in. To make the carters more nervous, clouds had moved in from the sea, unloading a light drizzle on the carts.

Rust and Ragna supervised the unloading of the supplies, especially the precious black powder. No dampness could get into the wooden crates, or it wouldn’t fire. David just watched. It still felt strange to him to do nothing while others handled the supplies that would decide over his life and death in a few hours. He would never have allowed a servant to pack his gear for a hunt.

The other two nobles just looked bored. De Burg checked his pocket watch every two minutes, impatiently stepping from one foot onto the other. Which was unfair. The werewolves were working as fast as they could, and by noon, they were off. David had a dozen of the older werewolves in wolf shape to secure the wagon train, several unsettled veteran soldiers on horseback as scouts, and the rest of them walked after the carts as humans. Hopefully, from a distance a scout wouldn’t be able to tell how many werewolves exactly were on the march here.

“I wish I shared your faith in them,” de Burg grunted, as he directed his horse next to David’s gelding. He looked David up and down, adding, “You aren’t wearing the red band?”

He nodded over at de Vale, who wore a bright band around his thigh, quite striking against the white pants of the uniform.

“What is that about?” David asked.

De Vale looked down his nose at him. “You don’t know? You of all people?”

“It’s a message to the healers,” de Burg explained. “In case of a debilitating injury. A way to signal that one would prefer a clean amputation and a bite over a prolonged magical attempt at salvaging the limb.”

“I’ve seen what the healers call a ‘saved’ limb,” de Vale sneered. “A lifetime of pain and hardly any movement, that’s what they gifted my father with. I’ll take the coin toss and keep fighting for Loegrion.”

De Burg shook himself, but both of them turned to look at David. “Do you want a band?”

David stared down at his hands, holding the reins. “Thank you, but no. Greg is the lucky one in the family.”

He was a killer already. Better not to add a monster into the mix. He couldn’t imagine that he would turn out any better than the woman Nathan had killed north of Deeshire.

And he didn’t deserve to join their numbers anyway. He had killed too many of them for that.

“You would risk a crippling injury over the bite?”

“My brother lost his leg at Oldstone Castle and he’s still hunting,” David countered.

And moreover, there was a price on his head specifically. He didn’t think his chances of surviving any injury were great.

“It’s a different situation for me, Count de Vale,” he went on, since the other man was still glaring. “If I were to lose the coin toss, I would force my own father or brothers—or my fiancée—to kill me. Our family went through those terrible five months once, and got lucky. I’d rather not put them through that again.”

***

In the distance, held down by the rain, David spotted a pale plume of smoke, and he thought he could already smell black powder. Maybe it was just his imagination. The mules pulling the supply carts barely flicked their ears, and neither did the eight werewolves guarding them.

Right and left of the road, the land was already devastated by the fighting. The fields had been trampled, forests cut down for wood and the stumps burned. The remains of pyres stood black against the grey sky, witness of the carnage along the way. Cavalry attacks against the slow wagon trains from the southern breakaway provinces were not unusual.

And had allowed the Rot to take a hold, even here in the heartlands.

There was nothing moving anywhere today, but the drivers manning the carts still looked scared. All the more so when dusk fell.

De Vale thought similarly. “What if the Valoise raise the Rot tonight?”

David almost laughed at the thought. It was Ragna who turned in the saddle to look over the barren land to the south.

“I’d like to see them try,” she said.

However, it wasn’t the Rot that came after them. Just before night truly fell, a frantic horn was sounded by their most southern outriders.

“Cavalry,” de Burg cursed. “Have your soldiers make ready—”

David rolled his eyes and turned to Rust. He didn’t even need to say anything. The elder was already climbing out of the saddle, tossing the reins to Alvin. He shrugged out of his uniform at surprising speed. As their own riders raced back to the supply train, the giant russet wolf jogged in the other direction, up a small hill—the first riders of the enemy charge were nearly in musket range, when Rust finally raised his head and howled.

At the sound, the enemy’s horses panicked. The charge that had just picked up speed broke like a wave on a cliff, as if there was an unseen wall right and left of Rust. Horses reared. Cavalrymen were carried away or outright thrown from the saddle, some even trampled.

It was a directional effect: David’s own gelding and the lords’ war-horses barely threw their heads, and the mules behind them didn’t react at all.

“Ragna, take the eight guards and see if you can pick up some of the stragglers,” David ordered. “Don’t kill them, just bite them. Gently, if you can.”

Ragna nodded and grinned.

“We’re going to have wild werewolves all over the south,” de Burg groaned.

David grunted. “If they’re smart, it won’t do anything.”

But he hoped they would be no smarter than he had been, refusing to even look at Greg’s injuries…

Nervously, he glanced over his shoulder as the line of supplies slowly continued, until finally, Ragna and her eight returned, their faces smeared with blood.

“We got most of their horses,” Ragna reported after she had cleaned herself as much as possible and gotten dressed on a cart. “Had to kill a bunch of soldiers, too, or it would have been too obvious what we were doing. We let about a dozen of them run back, lightly bitten.”

“Well done,” David said. “Any injuries on our side?”

“No lasting ones, Sir.”

Well, that was something.

“Well done,” David repeated.

Ragna accepted it with a faint smile. They both knew the actual battle would be nothing like this. This fight had looked easy because the lightly armed riders hadn’t known they were going to face werewolves or about Rust’s little trick. They had counted on the element of surprise, not on being surprised themselves. If that howl worked a second time, it would be sheer luck. Furthermore, this had been an ideal battlefield from the werewolves’ perspective. No fire, no cannons, no grenades—all the things the coming battle would bring en masse had been missing here.

Still, good for morale.

***

Before the camp came into view, the bellow of cannons in the distance was audible. The incessant roar never stopped as the supply train drew nearer. The werewolves craned their necks, looking towards the hills that hid Port Neaf and the camp from view. The last shimmer of sunlight had vanished by the time they arrived at the camp. The cannons were still roaring, and at the horizon, Port Neaf was burning. At least the outer districts.

A good distance away from the city, shielded from the defenders’ artillery by a small ridge, the campfires of the Loegrian army burned. It was a vast camp, at least to David’s untrained eye. Some eight thousand men, not that he could count them all in the dark. Earthworks and palisades protected the camp from cavalry charges like the one Rust had just defeated. Behind them, hundreds of empty cages were lined up. Tents had already been prepared for them, and the quartermaster and his helpers were directing the werewolves on where to go.

A nervous ensign, as young as Alvin, presented himself formally and led David to the command tent in the centre of the camp, where he reported to Clermont. By the time the general had finished congratulating him for the werewolves’ first victory, Alvin had taken care of the horses and stood ready to lead the way to their tent. When he saw his field bed, David had to admit his new rank had its perks, too. Not having to sleep on the ground was certainly nice.

Provided he found any sleep at all.