The bulk of what remained of Loegrion’s regular army marched out the next day as soon as the sun was all the way up, to make the most of the long days and what protection from the Rot they offered. Calder and the eleven settled ones David had picked out for deBurg, too, set out with the marquis towards Southshire, to hopefully take back control of the south of Loegrion—or at least stop Southshire from being taken over, too.

David in the meantime, split his forces, sending them out in groups of ten to twenty, each led by a settled werewolf two years or older. Then he joined the final group moving out himself, Boris once again by his side.

And so they spread out, like a plague across the countryside. Coordination was easy, thanks to the werewolves’ ability to know where the others were. Not that it would hurt if they visited the same place twice. At worst, they’d find nothing. Which would actually be a good thing to find, because it meant the people had already fled.

The first village they came to was, in fact, deserted. It had been plundered, too. David couldn’t tell if it had been deVale’s foragers or maybe a Valoisian raiding party. There were no bodies around, so it had probably happened after the people had fled. The werewolves still searched the place. All they found were a couple of geese and a sheep that had probably been overlooked when the people had fled.

The werewolves killed them all, and spread the blood over the fields. Killed the cat, too, that wandered back into the place, oblivious. Then they ate the sheep.

The geese they carried with them as provisions.

The dead cat they left behind.

All that was left then was making sure that the Valoise couldn’t find anything useful in the empty houses. This final task was carried out by the youngest of the group, a group of four veterans who handled both fire and blackpowder with a reassuring ease. The dry, thatched roofs of the farm buildings didn’t need much in the way of a firestarter.

The farmers had fled south, which would hopefully take them out of the way of the Valoise—provided the pisscoats made straight for Deva. David busied himself with his matches, setting fire to a dry brush leaning against the central house, before taking the werewolves west. When he looked back over his shoulders after a few minutes, there was smoke rising against the clear blue sky, and a grim smile stole onto his face.

“Let’s see the Valoise fight this,” he muttered to himself.

They passed through two more villages like this, both of them empty except for some escaped livestock. They killed the animals in the fields, took whatever food they found and could carry, and set fire to the rest. It was grim and gruesome work, made worse by the heat of summer. And quite frankly, it was boring.

At least until they reached the first village that hadn’t been deserted.

David took a deep breath when the small settlement came into view. The band of werewolves had been spotted, too. He could hear the people scream even from a distance—eighteen werewolves tended to have that effect on people. There wasn’t even a token wall around the grouping of buildings, this being the heartlands. The farmers here didn’t get bothered by the Rot or werewolves.

Usually.

Today would be an unpleasant surprise.

David rode down the road into the village a couple of yards ahead of the rest of the pack, but they all followed him right into the heart of the place. Men and women and children gathered to stare at them.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” David yelled, “Loegrion is at war! You’ve been warned! The Valoisian army is on the move, so pack whatever you can carry and leave! Today, we will raise the Rot on your fields! I am not joking!”

He didn’t wait for them to protest or to ask him why. He didn’t have time for this. It had been three days since the Valoise had landed, and they were barely a half day away from Port Neaf. There was no way these people didn’t know what was going on, was there?

“Show them, Boris,” David sighed. “Harris. Show them.”

He stayed at the well in the middle of the village and watched the two burly wolves break down the doors, which caused more screaming.

Not that the werewolves were interested in the people. It was the livestock they dragged out of the barns and cages, and out into the fields. They butchered the cows and pigs and goats, anything that moved and wasn’t human, right in the middle of the winter wheat and the summer barley. The sheep they killed where they stood on the pastures, and only chased off the panicked sheep dogs.

Not that the Rot would spare those.

An escaped chicken fluttered right into David. He grabbed it out of the air and broke its neck, trying to ignore the crunching sound. It went limp in his hands, and he cut off the head, then tossed it straight into the well.

An old woman gasped as he did, staring at him from a window.

“This is your last chance!” David hollered at her. “The Rot won’t move as long as the werewolves are in the area! Grab what you can carry and go south, past the Berrin River! Southshire is protected!”

He could smell it already, over the sickly sticky smell of the blood. The only thing keeping the Rot in the ground right now were the sixteen werewolves all around.

“But where will we go after?” a man asked from the side, worrying his hands. “After the war?”

“I would worry about surviving the war first,” David replied. “And anyway, we’ll be cleansing the rivers after the war, from the Savre all the way down to the Berrin, from the coast all the way to the Abhain. Go south!” he repeated.

Finally, people started moving. The werewolves hadn’t butchered all the oxen yet, so a couple of carts were filled with people and their belongings, crates full of chickens, dogs. It all took too long and the carts moved too slow. David had slim hopes that they would make it all the way to the Berrin River before the Rot ran them down.

And there was nothing he could do about it.

They could have moved three days ago.

He thought he could hear Clermont’s voice in the back of his head: “You do realize that we’re at war with the bloody Empire, don’t you?” the old general growled at him.

What would the old man think if he could see him now? Was he still too nice?

But he couldn’t murder his own people, as annoyed as he was with them. Even though it might be the kinder alternative to leaving them to the Rot.

Sun, he felt dirty.

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The werewolves went into the houses as soon as soon as the people were gone, to check for more food. David waited until the carts were out of sight before he too, went inside so see if he couldn’t nick some clothes. The farmers had to have some decent leather, right? Maybe there was even someone who had hunting rights in the area?

He picked the biggest farmstead, on the basis that it probably belonged to the richest farmer and came with the best chance of finding something useful. And indeed, he found a sturdy knapsack and filled it with clean underclothes, some bed linnen for bandages, a spare knife, whetstones and fire starter, a couple of jars of preserve, a fishing line and hooks, a small axe. A thick, quilted blanket for the nights.

In a small side room, probably a farmhand’s sleeping place, he found some well-worn but clean leather trousers, a shirt and a jerkin to wear over the shirt. In the next building, he found a warm woolen hood, and in the third house, finally a leather jacket that fit him properly. He dropped the remains of his impractical major’s uniform on the spot, and changed into the new clothes.

When he slung his crossbow onto his back, he finally felt like himself again. Like a hunter.

Boris bared all his teeth at him when David emerged. Lord Relentless, he commented.

“Go eat something,” David told him.

The rest of the pack was already feasting. They would eat their fill, and take as much as they could carry with them of what remained. Most of the carcasses would still get left behind.

Well, one they dumped into the little creek running past the village.

“All right, that’s it, everyone,” David called them together. “Let’s set it on fire, and we’re off to the next village!”

The veterans tossed the burning logs from the farmers’ own wood ovens up. There would have been booze, too, but that had quickly vanished inside the various packs.

David waited at the exit of the village until the heat washed over him, to make sure the whole place went. Only when all the houses were ablaze did he spur his new horse to catch up to the older werewolves, who had hurried ahead. The skin on his back crawled as he turned his back on the village. A thick stink rose from the dead animals spread around the fields, overpowering even the smoke, and he knew the Rot would be moving as soon as the werewolves were out of sight.

Alvin’s ghost growled soundlessly at something David couldn’t see just yet, moving stiffly and the scruffy fur in his neck bristling.

Off to the next village.

They overtook the carts with the bulk of the fleeing villagers after less than half an hour of quick riding—or jogging in the case of the wolves. The people stared at them full of terror. David did his best to ignore the way they were eying him, specifically. He hoped the previous owners of the clothes he now wore weren’t among the fleeing farmers.

And then they were past the small trek. A little while later, they reached the fields surrounding the next village—barley, ready for harvest to the one side, sheep on the pastures on the other. So either the shepherd had left his herd behind, or the people were still there.

They did have the wind at their back.

“Hang on,” he called to the rest of the group. “Let’s burn this field. Maybe it’ll show the owners we’re really serious a little faster.”

And the Rot wouldn’t get the harvest, either. Maybe it would give the refugees behind them a chance to escape.

Probably not.

His veterans shrugged and reached for their lighters. From the way they promptly formed a line along the northern edge of the field, David reckoned this was a familiar order to any experienced soldier.

The flames caught fast in the dry crops, and the wind drove them south towards the village, as David had hoped. The people there had to notice the smoke, right? He expected someone to come running, given that they were destroying people’s livelihoods, but no one showed their face. When they entered the village, it became clear why: the hamlet was already in the process of evacuating. Children shrieked and cried when the werewolves strolled down the main road, but the adults seemed resigned to see them. Most likely, someone from the nearby villages had warned them.

It meant the people had slightly more time to pack. The oxen were already before the carts, and the chicken were inside small crates. At least one cart was filled with sheep rather than people, and an old woman glared at David as she led a single cow away, setting out ahead of the crowd, a heavy pack on her own back. A young boy tried to drive a flock of geese after her, and there was a family driving three big sows, too.

David rolled his eyes.

“Kill the geese,” he told Boris. “Leave him a couple. Leave them one sow. Kill any livestock that isn’t moving already or on a cart.” He considered that and added: “Let the horses live, too.”

He wasn’t even sure if he was doing these people a favour, leaving them any animals at all. The Rot would be all over them if they didn’t move fast enough.

He watched Boris take down a couple of geese, and rode forwards to collect them. One went into the well, the other into a shallow pond at the edge of the village. He shot the ducks sitting fat in the water for good measure.

For once, they wanted the Rot nice and well-fed, and all the water undrinkable. To hopefully torment the Valoisian army rather than Loegrian farmers.

The looting was over faster this time—there was less stuff left behind, and the packs were full already, anyway.

The flames seemed to reach for the sun when David turned his back on another luckless place.

They raided a single farmstead on the way to the final settlement for tonight. It was the biggest and richest one, and the people there apparently felt especially lucky: they opened fire on the werewolves from behind the meagre protection of an overturned cart on the main road.

“What a waste,” David muttered. Louder, he called: “Hold your fire! Or I’ll send in the werewolves!”

“This is Loegrion! We’re not scared of monsters!” someone yelled back.

“Idiots,” David sighed. “Boris, feel any silver?”

“No, Sir. Want me to kill them, or just bite them, Sir? Doesn’t seem likely they’ll want to join up, does it?”

“Just bite them,” David said. “They can be another surprise for the pisscoats. If they run, let them go.”

Or the refugees. Or for Lord deBurg, if they made their way to Southshire. Hopefully, Calder would sniff them out if they did.

“As you say, boss,” Boris said, grinning as he shrugged out of the clothes he, too, had looted just this evening.

Stark naked he walked down the road, which apparently confused the defenders so much, they forgot to fire until he was almost upon them.

“Six muskets at the most,” one of the veterans commented when they opened fire.

Boris staggered, turning wolf at the spot and tearing into the people out of sight. A young man stumbled out from behind the overturned cart, throwing his musket away. At least one of the defenders had more brawns though, if not a whole lot of brains. David heard a pistol fire, followed by an unholy screech from Boris. And then a howl—coming from a human throat, if David was any judge. A musket came flying out from behind the cart, followed by a pistol and what David thought was a sword. More humans were fleeing, backing away from the werewolves and each other.

David nudged his new gelding forwards, towards the barrier. It really was just one overturned cart. What a waste of time. The people living here could have packed that cart and be well on their way towards Southshire.

Instead, they had tried to fortify a village that didn’t even have proper walls, had lost one of their carts in the process, and some of their men, too. Not to even think about the time.

“You know the drill, everyone,” David said as the werewolves fell in next to him.

They jogged past him into the settlement proper, while David checked on Boris and the people who had tried to fight him.

“If you’ve gotten bitten, feel free to join up,” he told them. “Otherwise, get the hells out of here. The Valoise or the Rot will be here soon, and they won’t kill just your animals.”

He didn’t wait for an answer—either they would stick around, or they wouldn’t. He was tired, and so were the werewolves, he reckoned. Or maybe they were just starting to develop a routine—they were setting the houses on fire before the people were fully out of the village.

At least it sped everything up.

***

It was getting dark when the werewolves gathered again, in an abandoned farmstead. Whoever had lived here had left quickly and without resistance. Ragna and her group had found the place deserted and returned after finishing off their allotted villages. When David rode into the yard, a huge bonfire was burning there, with pieces of meat skewered up to roast in the flames. There was a little creak, too, which they hadn’t spoiled with a carcass yet. Instead, someone had blocked it to form a little pond.

So in the mild summer night, David climbed into the water for a thorough wash. Then he had freshly grilled pork for dinner. And then he climbed into the attic of the farmhouse and kicked over the ladder, in case one of the unsettled werewolves went rabid overnight. While all around, the Rot rose, and no doubt, people were dying, he went to sleep surrounded by werewolves. To finally get some proper rest.