Greg turned human again, and soon they were on the hunt.

“’Sheepkillers’ sounds promising, right?” Nathan asked.

“Let’s hope they haven’t already moved on,” Bram said.

Several hours later, they had split up to cover more ground. Greg hadn’t even questioned it when his father had told him to go with David into the forest, while Nathan and Andrew and Bram each went on alone into the villages. It wasn’t until David actually found a track, that Greg began to wonder about this arrangement.

“What if the others find them first?” he asked David. “Won’t that be dangerous for everyone? Shouldn’t we have stuck together?”

“They’ll be fine,” David said absentmindedly. “They can handle themselves, and besides, they’re supposed to go door to door, remember? Not track.”

“Okay,” Greg said. “But why do I need a babysitter?”

“Because you are the babysitter, idiot,” David replied. “This way.”

“Oh,” Greg said and nudged Dolly gently forward.

Andrew had reluctantly agreed to lend him his horse once again.

Together, they followed David, who moved on as certainly as if the track was lined with torches. Greg could have followed the wolf’s nose, but they had agreed that it would be better if he could talk to the two sheepkillers first.

But after several hours, they reached a river, and David cursed. “They went in there,” he said. “Let’s go a little up and down the shore, but I’m afraid they crossed over.”

Greg looked doubtfully at the waters. He couldn’t see much of them, for the moon had already set, and the starlight was clouded, but he could hear an ominous sound that suggested quite a torrent.

“They must be really good swimmers,” he pointed out.

“It’s water,” David replied. “Not fire or silver. Is it even possible for a werewolf to drown?”

“I have no idea,” Greg admitted. “I’d rather not try, though.”

“Nah,” David sighed. “The horses will never make it. As I said, let’s make sure they didn’t just double-back, and then meet with the others.”

Greg was tired and a little cranky about the failure when they rode back towards Castle Blanc. David on the other hand wasn’t perturbed.

“Lots of hunts go like this,” he pointed out. “On the bright side: I’m fairly sure they are sane. Quite smart, too. They knew exactly how long they could stay in the area before someone was on their trail, and then they left in a way that makes it really hard to follow.”

“And what do we tell the duke?”

David shrugged. “What I just told you.”

“But it could take ages to catch up with them.”

“That’s the nature of the beast,” David said. “Don’t worry. I’ll send a message to deLande, we’ll go after them together, take Nathan. You stay here, guard the castle, and Dad and Andrew take care of politics.”

“You and deLande? They’ll never go with you. Take Andrew, at least he’s good at calming people down.”

“Hush,” David said, reigning in his gelding.

Greg wanted to argue his point, when he heard it, too: A howl.

“Think that’s them?” Greg asked.

“No,” David said, reaching for his crossbow. “Unless they suddenly lost their minds. It’s only three days past new moon, and we’ve nearly reached the next village. So far, our pair of sheepkillers have tried hard to stay inconspicuous.”

They moved towards the howl anyway. Greg was half hoping it might be a perfectly normal wolf, but those were about as rare in these lands as sane werewolves.

“Sun’s bloody ashes,” David swore when they exited the forest.

They were too late again. Even from a distance, it was clear to see in the first light of morning, that there had been an attack. One of the doors on the meagre huts closest to the forest had been smashed in, and they could hear somebody screaming.

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Begging, by the time they jumped out of the saddle. Villagers with pitchforks and knives had already gathered around the broken door, and a woman was wailing, begging for mercy for her children.

“Make way,” David ordered harshly.

The people did, all except for the youth who had held the door against the villagers.

“Come to kill us, yes?” he shrieked. “Kill the monster, not my little brothers!”

David sighed and simply muscled him aside, pushing his way into the sparse bedroom, where the crying woman cowered between the children.

Two dying children.

“Your belt,” David ordered Greg, already ripping the sheet off the one empty bed. “We need to staunch the bleeding. Move!” he barked at the mother. He only paused for a second to pull his gloves up, before bending down over the kids.

“Let me do it,” Greg said, taking off his belt, then his own gloves. “Make sure the mad one doesn’t come back or strike elsewhere.”

“All right,” David said. And off he was.

Greg took a deep breath, swallowed bile. The monster inside him was reacting to the smell of fresh blood in a completely different way, but he fought it back down.

Stem the bleeding, first.

“You,” he said, turning to the youth. “We need more sheets. Go.”

One of the kids had been bitten into the thigh, with enough force to break the bone. Greg could see the white through the torn flesh. He nearly gagged but started to wrap the sheet as tightly around the wound as possible, then his belt, too.

It would be a miracle if either of these kids survived, he thought, but he did what he could, aided by the mother and oldest son. Neither of them said a word until all the wounds were bandaged, and neither of them knew what else to do.

“You’re a hunter,” the kid finally said. “You kill werewolves. They will be werewolves.”

“Times are changing,” Greg said.

“Have they found a cure?” the mother asked, looking up.

“No,” Greg said. “But the duke has need for a werewolf on his lands. To fight the Rot.”

“Fight the Rot?” somebody in the door asked, and Greg jumped. He had forgotten about the villagers. But of course, they were still watching.

“Fight the Rot?” people murmured.

“That’s impossible,” the first man said. “Isn’t it?”

“Not for a werewolf,” Greg said loudly. “A werewolf can fight the Rot. But you need the right kind of werewolf The one that attacked here was the wrong kind.”

He stepped closer to the door. The people backed off. “Who’s got the fastest horse in the village?”

There was a murmur and much staring at boots, but eventually, a name was volunteered:

“Aggy.”

“And is Aggy around?” Greg asked. “The duke needs to know what happened here.”

“I’m Aggy,” said a rather frail-looking elderly man, just as a young woman pushed forward.

“I’ll go inform the duke,” she announced.

Aggy seemed fine with lending her the fastest horse in the village, and Greg relaxed a little. Help would be on the way soon.

Nathan arrived first. He took one look at the bleeding kids and decided to go after David. Andrew and Bram showed up with the duke himself a couple of hours later, together with a band of soldiers and a very unhappy veterinary. The guards were equally unhappy, so it was Greg again and Andrew, who escorted the man into the hut, to watch how he treated the injured children.

“Should have run like the doctor,” the man grumbled.

“The doctor will be hunted down and hanged,” Andrew pointed out in a perfectly conversationally tone.

This gave the veterinary pause, and he started his examination over, though he was still clearly reluctant to touch his patients.

“The blood can’t harm you,” Andrew said. “Only the teeth are cursed. We all touch it every time we cut a werewolf’s throat. Don’t let their blood mix with yours, and you’ll be fine.”

With that reassurance, the veterinary went to set the bone as much as possible, stitched some tissues together, and put new bandages on the wounds, to staunch the bleeding.

“It’s not clotting,” he stated. “The big blood vessels are both intact, but the way it’s bleeding, I can’t make any promises.”

The younger boy was a little better off. He was awake, too, and could report that the werewolf had gone straight for his hand.

“Could have killed them both easily,” the veterinary wondered. “Why just bite them each once?”

“We don’t know,” Greg yawned. “But it’s actually not that unusual.”

“Some of them seem to have this urge to pass on the curse,” Andrew added. “They start about three days after new moon, attacking either early at night or right at sunrise, and they keep going until they’re permanently stopped. Why they do that, we have no idea. It’s a really fast way to get killed.”

Nathan and David did return not much later with the dead werewolf. Usually, this would have received a loud cheer, possibly even an impromptu holiday. But today, the villagers all just cared about “the right kind of werewolf” to fight the Rot.

It was mostly Andrew who answered their questions. Andrew was not just better at making friends than Greg, he had also caught a few hours of sleep. It would have been far less of an issue, Greg thought, if they weren’t on the wrong side of half-moon. Or maybe not.

He still would have been a lot less patient with the scared and confused villagers.

Finally, the duke decided to have the two injured children taken to Castle Blanc, and Greg volunteered to ride on the cart with them. He promptly fell asleep, but since the two boys hardly even stirred, nobody noticed. At the castle, David and he managed to take a bath and catch some more rest, before they met the duke at the dining table. Dinner was as excessive as all the meals at the castle had been so far. After the sleepless night and the trying day, Greg was for once hungry enough to appreciate all the food that was put in front of him. He only listened to his father and the duke discussing the future.

Nathan was to race to Eoforwic, to inform Duke George Louis of all that had happened, while viceroy Desmarais would send a missive to Lane deLande, to order her after the escaped sheepkillers. David would go with her. The rest of them would stay at Castle Blanc. How long, was a matter of debate. Desmarais tried to order Bram to stay “until the two boys could be made safe,” while Bram only wanted to wait the one month until the duke’s daughter had had her child.

Desmarais grew very quiet when Bram asked: “Are you ordering me as viceroy of the Roi Solei, or as a duke of Loegrion? Because a duke does not have that power over a baron.”

Eventually, Andrew offered to stay, if necessary until summer.