Together with Smith, Thoko, Nathan, and the rest of the pack, Greg left the campsite right after the Juilet full moon, to meet with the new crew. When they reached the Lour, a sidearm of the Savre, Greg was a little shocked. When Greg had last seen it, the Lour had been just a trickle of water often vanishing in the mire surrounding it. The build-up of peat and Rot had been so dense that the workers had been able to walk across the river.

Now that the Rot was gone, the Lour was retaking its old bed, and they had to use a narrow, slightly ramshackle construction made of ropes and wood to get across. Men were busy cutting the peat where it hadn’t been carried away by the river. Properly dried, it could serve as fuel for the railway engines, but in the absence of the Rot’s dark magic, it was decaying fast, forming a marshy area. At the outlying borders, it was falling dry already.

Green, fresh pasture was spreading in those areas, growing more than knee-high already, dotted with summer flowers. Some especially brave farmer had three cows grazing between the butterflies, where three months ago, nothing had lived.

“We did that,” Boris said softly at the sight. “Can you imagine that we made that possible?”

Greg shook his head slowly.

“Just imagine what the rest of Loegrion might look like in a few years,” Boris added.

“Let’s hope so,” Bernadette said.

Greg still stared, a little dazed. Suddenly, all this fuss about the railway seemed wrong. He understood why it was done, but wouldn’t it be much more efficient to send the Morgulon up to the spring area of the Savre? The Rot was still holding firm onto the big river, sending its ugly spawns down its waves.

And then he had another idea.

“Bernadette?” he asked, still unable to look away from the meadow. “You said the Morgulon knows all the elder werewolves, right? How many do you reckon there are, out in the wilderness?”

“Not that many that I know of,” Bernadette said. “I think most of them live up in the mountains, but I never went there myself, and the Morgulon won’t say.”

“Too bad,” Greg sighed. “If we could just send a couple of them up to the spring of the Savre...”

“I doubt that would do much good,” Smith said.

“Why not?”

“Well, for one, nobody knows exactly where the ultimate source of the Savre is located,” the engineer explained. “And even if a werewolf could find the headwaters, I doubt that it would be enough. The Savre has too many tributaries, and some are bigger at the confluence than the Savre itself. For example, the river Man is nearly twice as wide where it meets the Savre at Mannin, and it carries a lot of Rot in from the north-eastern forests. You’d have to cleanse the Man, the Savre itself, the Wey, the Hafren, possibly the Stour – mind you, those are just the big tributaries I can think of right now.”

“It’ll be great, though, once they’re all cleared,” Boris said.

“There’s a war to win first,” Nathan pointed out. “Let’s go, see where they want us.”

When they approached the camp, there was another surprise. What had been a scarcely fortified short-term solution a couple of months ago, was turning quickly into a small town. Right outside the mound that formed the base for the walls, a proper railway station was being built. The rail track was already there, and workers were laying the bricks for a platform. A train that had stopped right in front of the construction site was just getting unloaded, and Greg craned his neck until he spotted the turntable that would be needed to turn the engine around.

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The walls, too, had been strengthened and extended, a proper gate had been fitted – currently wide open. Men in the colours of George Louis were waving them past, more were patrolling real parapets up on the walls. Others were busy erecting barracks. The sounds of hammers, and axes, and bricks clinking together were echoing between the walls, which were already becoming too narrow for the many people hoping to profit from the whole enterprise. Merchants were selling their wares in tents and putting up even more buildings. One of the biggest ones already finished was – of course – a pub.

When they walked past the seating set up outside –roughly cut tree stumps – a man called out to them: “Finally! What took so long?”

“Hello, Calder,” Bernadette sighed and walked over. “What are you doing here?”

Calder rolled his yellow eyes at her. “Guard!” he barked, pointing at his chest. “But I go now. Hate towns.”

“And where will you go?” Nathan asked.

Calder eyed him warily. His jaws worked for a few seconds before he said: “Protect. Track crew. Bernadette?” he added. “Young ones. Watch!”

And with that, he pushed himself off his tree stump and just walked out of the camp.

Bernadette shook her head.

“What was he talking about?” Greg asked.

“I have no idea,” Bernadette said.

By now, they had garnered some attention and a young soldier led them over to the barracks and into a building.

“Finally,” they were greeted again. “I’m Captain Reed, commanding officer of First Camp. I’m in charge of this settlement. And this is Mr. Brown of the Lackland Company, he’s in charge of the bridge.”

Reed wore a uniform like all the other guards, only a little better made; he looked to be about David’s age, native Loegrian with red hair and lots of freckles. Brown was older, a heavy-set man, also native, in a suit that looked like he had slept in it. He waved with both hands and Reed continued:

“There has been very little Rot-activity in the past couple of weeks. Asides from you guys, we have six werewolves to guard the settlement, all of them less than a year old, two of them convicts, who have only been bitten three weeks ago. It’s their job to patrol the area during the day and raise the alarm if necessary. So your – elder – will only be needed at night for now. How many werewolves are you even? Four? That’s a little excessive, but okay. Who’s your leader?”

“I am,” Bernadette said. “My name’s Bernadette.”

“Right.” Reed frowned. “Will you be staying inside the camp?”

“We were hoping you’d have at least a tent for us, yes,” Bernadette said.

Reed’s frown deepened, but he nodded.

“Is there a problem?” Nathan asked.

“No...” Reed said. He shook himself. “No, I just wasn’t expecting a whole sentence. The other elder one we had, wouldn’t – well, not important. A tent, yes, no problem. My men are also erecting buildings as we speak. I hope we’ll get rid of the last tents soon.” He shook his head again. “I didn’t expect so many of you. We’ll have to rig something up for full moon.”

“Which one of you will go with the engineering team?” Brown interrupted.

“I will.”

“Good,” Brown said. “Let’s go right now, then. They need to get started. Smith, you’re with us, aren’t you?”

Smith nodded and Brown promptly waved them to follow him, back over to the pub.

“Your bodyguard is here, gentlemen, time to get cracking!” Brown called into the fairly large taproom. Inside like outside, it had no chairs, just the same tree stumps, and only a couple of tables. Half a dozen men were sitting around one of them, each one with a large beer mug in front of them. Four of them were about Nathan’s age, two rather elderly and frail-looking. All of them wore similar hob-nailed boots as the workers in Eyal’s butty gang, but suits instead of the trousers and grubby shirts of the workmen.

“Smith!” greeted Adrien excitedly. Then his gaze fell on Greg. “I thought we were getting a werewolf, not a hunter?”

“Both, in his case,” Smith said. “Think of it as a special service.”

Adrien stared at Greg.

“Also, Greg’s the most experienced werewolf currently working for the railway,” Smith continued. “He was the one who made the line to Sheaf possible.”

“Oh yeah?” asked one of the older men. “Why are we getting him?”

Smith shrugged. “He’s here with me.”

That seemed to suffice as an explanation, but still, nobody made a move to get up, until Brown put his hands on his hips and asked: “Well? What are you all waiting for?”

The engineers stared at him. “But it’s past noon already,” said Adrien.

“Which means you’ve been wasting more than half a day, and the company is most certainly not paying you for that,” Brown gave back. “I expect you to use the remaining light. The weather certainly won’t get better. It’s perfectly safe out there now.”

There was a long, long pause, but eventually, the older man who had already spoken sighed and took a long drink from his mug of beer, before putting it down and getting up. The others followed his lead, grumbling and slower than necessary, but they all followed.

“Everyone ready?” the old man asked. “Fine then. I suppose we should start by having a look at the building site.”

They trudged past Mr. Brown, Smith bringing up the rear. He was grinning and winking at Greg, who was a little confused. He had expected the engineers to be like Smith, not half-drunk students lazing around.