The first night of full moon was even less fun than usual. They were nearly out of food, so Greg helped Thoko to climb one of the big conifers and then went to go hunting. The air was getting more humid by the hour, and he almost hoped for a good thunderstorm, Rot be damned. Everything felt sticky, and there was static in the air.

There would be a thunderstorm. Or a forest fire. Or, worst option, both.

Greg kept glancing up into the trees, trying to see the sky, to make sure there were no clouds forming yet. He couldn’t leave Thoko alone if there was even a chance of rain.

He had no idea what they should do if there really was a fire.

The tension in the air made Greg even more twitchy than he usually was this time of the month, and he didn’t manage to make game until the early morning hours. By then, there was a huge wall of black clouds moving in, and he had to jog back to Thoko and her tree with the dead roe deer over his shoulders. The full moon hunger made him wish for something bigger, meatier, like a red or fallow deer, but at least he could carry this doe fairly easily.

He found Thoko still safe, high up in a crutch of two large branches, mostly looking bored.

“I was starting to worry you got lost,” Thoko called down and started climbing at once. “Or, you know, lost yourself,” she added when she was nearly back on the ground.

Greg wanted to growl at her for letting the fire go out before he remembered how stupid that was.

“Sorry,” he muttered, and dropped the dead deer, started gutting it.

“Do you think it’s safe to get the fire going again?” Thoko asked.

Greg looked around and ran a hand through the dry as bone pine needles on the ground. There were ways to minimize the risk even in weather like this, but he had never had to worry about that himself.

“I wish David were here,” he muttered to himself. “But we can’t eat the meat raw, so we need to...” He looked up. “We need to move. Find a place where there won’t be any branches above our fire. Ideally, a small clearing. The biggest open space we can find. Just let me finish this, we’ll leave the entrails right here. Can you start on a hole? There’s a hatchet in my pack.”

Thoko nodded, got the hatchet, and began to dig to hide the entrails.

“We gotta hurry,” she said. “I don’t like the look of those clouds.”

Greg nodded. “Yeah, me neither. Might not reach us, though. Doesn’t seem to have moved any closer for a while now.”

“As long as there’s no fire,” Thoko muttered.

Greg didn’t say anything to that. Any other day, he would have turned wolf – at least that way he would have smelled any smoke earlier. He also thought he might be able to outrun a forest fire in his other body, provided the wind wasn’t driving it directly at them.

But tonight was full moon. The second night. The worst part of it.

They were lucky to find a small clearing fast, and started digging a hole for the fire immediately.

“It needs to be deep,” Greg explained. “Three feet, if we can make it.”

“How’s it going to draw air?”

“Second hole, connected by a small tunnel,” Greg explained.

“Sun, I hope I remember this right,” he muttered to himself.

There was a trick to building up the fire that would minimize both smoke and flying embers, but Greg wasn’t sure he remembered all of it, and he had never done it himself. Nathan was the wilderness survival expert, for all that he claimed to hate this “fiddly work”. David, too, of course.

Greg kept glancing up at the towering thunder clouds, which seemed to just have stopped in the sky.

“I think it’s raining over there,” Thoko said.

Greg just nodded. He was trying to focus on the digging, to drown out the wolf’s full moon fury and mad hunger.

“Greg?” Thoko asked.

Greg jumped and snapped, “What?” at her before he could catch himself.

“I was – asking what we do if there is a fire,” Thoko said. “I don’t think you even heard me?”

Greg hacked at the ground again. “I’ve got – like a ringing in my ears.”

“And you’re hungry.”

“You have no idea,” Greg muttered.

He glanced over his shoulders at the huge, towering cloud again, which threw a shadow at the small mountain’s flank across the valley. They heard thunder rumbling, but it didn’t rain on their side of the valley. Maybe he’d get lucky, and actually get some breakfast before they had to run from the weather.

“Do you want me to talk about something or shut up?” Thoko asked.

Greg hadn’t expected the question, and he jumped again. He was even more surprised when he realized that he did want her to keep talking.

“Tell me something funny,” Greg muttered.

“Something funny?” Thoko repeated. “That’s a tall order. Let me see... Can you dance?”

Greg gave her a blank look.

“Sorry, it’s just – so the one joke my father would keep repeating over and over was ‘Why are dogs bad dancers?’”

“I have no idea,” Greg sighed.

“Well, because they have two left feet.” Thoko ducked her head. “Sorry, it’s not all that funny, I know.”

“Dog jokes, really?” Greg asked. He was smiling, despite himself.

“Well, it is full moon, what other day would I tell them?”

“Mind if I ask – if I ask what you did with your father’s body?” Greg asked.

“Dad’s – oh. That wasn’t really an issue,” Thoko said. “Eoforwic has catacombs. Mother sometimes – goes to visit,” she added quietly. “But we really – he needs to be buried properly, not – stored in a shelf. It’s just not right. Underground isn’t the same as – as being part of the earth, to go back and join his ancestors.”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Greg nodded quietly.

“Do you think the duke will keep his word?”

“No idea,” Greg sighed, and carefully blew through the side-hole he had dug, into the tiny flame. It caught even quicker than he had expected. “You can always bury him at Courtenay, though. If George Louis does go back on his word.”

“Thank you,” Thoko said, sounding needlessly surprised. “Thank you so much! Are you sure your parents won’t mind?”

“Yes.”

Greg watched critically how the fire grew, and listened with only half an ear while Thoko told him about her childhood back in Maravi, about relocating to Loegrion when she was just a child

“It was so weird, coming to a country where there was so much rain – so much water. And so few people looking like me,” she said quietly. “Standing out everywhere we went, as soon as we got past the harbour at Deggan. But then we got to Breachpoint, and there was a community there of people from home, and it was okay. It was good, until d’Evier came here, and...”

Greg nodded, but quickly looked away when she wiped the tears away.

“I’m sorry,” she added. “I didn’t want to bother you with this, not today.”

“No!” Greg hurried to say. He sat up. Opened his arms hesitatingly. “It’s not a bother, really,” he added. “Come here?”

She did, and he hugged her. He wasn’t sure how much good it did. “I’m sorry about your father,” he said after a moment and wished he had something better to say.

Thoko nodded, sniffing quietly, and pulled away.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “I know this is hard for you, today.”

Greg smiled wearily. “It’s fine, really. I don’t – I mean, these are human emotions. Makes it easier to ignore the other ones.”

He turned back to his fire and decided it was big enough to throw some meat on it.

“Have you ever left Loegrion?” Thoko changed the topic.

Greg shook his head. “No, you’re much more well-travelled than I am. I would have liked to, one day. You know, take the Grand Tour.”

“What’s that?” Thoko asked.

“Oh it’s – it’s young nobles, mostly landed gentry, or rich merchant’s sons travelling the Empire to learn about it, see the sights, find some culture along the way.”

“Right, cause you are such an uncultured heathen,” Thoko teased.

“A heathen for sure,” Greg sighed, and poked at the meat with a stick.

“If you’re going to eat it that raw, you could have saved yourself the effort of making a fire,” Thoko pointed out when he started at one of the pieces.

“Principal of the thing,” Greg gave back, mouth full. “Humans cook their meat. So do I.”

He sighed again and stared at the dead deer. “Should have found more game,” he muttered. “This isn’t going to last the night.”

“We can put it up in a tree, too,” Thoko suggested.

“Maybe.”

“But you want to find out how much of it you can eat in one day first, huh?”

Greg started at a second steak and didn’t answer.

To his relief, Thoko continued talking after a few minutes, telling him about her mother, the community at Breachpoint, just little things. Her voice was calmer now, even, and it gave him something to listen to, something other than the mad howling that existed only inside his own head.

They stayed at their little fire until late in the afternoon, watching the thundercloud empty itself over the other mountain flank, but then a second one appeared right above them. It didn’t start a fire, but it drenched them to the bones, and they had to find a new place where Thoko could spend the night safe from the Rot. Because werewolves might not be able to climb trees, but the Rot surely could.

“We haven’t even made it out of Crucible Ridge, and we might already be in trouble,” Greg grumbled, as they walked up the slope.

“I’ll be fine,” Thoko said.

Where she took that reassurance from, Greg couldn’t fathom.

“Didn’t you tell me yourself that Bernadette said there’s less Rot higher in the mountains?” Thoko said, as if she had read his mind.

“They hinted at something like that, yes,” Greg admitted.

“Well, then, let’s see how much higher we can make it up this slope.” Thoko pointed up the mountain.

“It’ll be colder up there, during the night.”

“Is that supposed to be a negative? I am melting.”

They dropped their weary limbs onto the ground as the sun vanished behind the mountain, but they didn’t have much time to rest. Greg hoisted Thoko up into a tree, which lowest branches were about ten feet of the ground. He could only pray that it would be enough to keep her safe.

He left her there and walked off briskly, down the slope he had just climbed with her. The further away he could get before the sun vanished completely and he had to transform, the better.

He had no idea what he would do with himself if he hurt her.

There was no point in fighting against the transformation, not on this night, but Greg couldn’t help himself. He didn’t want that other – thing – inside his mind to come out, didn’t want to surrender control. It was still scaring him. Not just the fear of hurting someone, but also the thought that, maybe, this time he wouldn’t come back. He knew that it was extremely unlikely, that there were no records about something like that to happen to someone this late after. But that couldn’t quench the sheer terror of losing himself, of feeling his very soul getting torn just as his body was ripped apart and reassembled.

So he fought, even though there was no winning this struggle. Even though it hurt.

It hurt again when he came back to himself, into his own body, and then he had to go through the pain once more to become the wolf again, so he wouldn’t waste time trying to find his clothes and Thoko again.

He had to sit down, weak with relief, when he found her in her tree, perfectly safe.

They had more of the meat from deer he had killed the day before and then walked a little further in the direction Morgulon had told him to go.

“How far do we have to go, anyway?” Thoko asked.

“Morgulon didn’t think we’d get there before new moon,” Greg said.

“I see. Did she tell you anything about this elder we’re looking for?”

“Well, she did think he was least likely to kill us on sight.”

“Which he would be able to?”

“Oh, absolutely. I don’t think I’d even be able to put up a fight. Like, did I tell you she forced me into a transformation, when I talked to her? Couldn’t stop it.”

“She forced you to – to turn wolf?”

Greg nodded. “Like she just – directly ordered the wolf to come out, completely circumventing, you know, me.”

“Damn,” Thoko muttered. “No, you hadn’t said. Think this other werewolf will be able to do that, too?”

“Maybe,” Greg said. “He’s not the oldest one out there,” he added. “But older than Bernadette. So, maybe.”

“Think we’ll meet someone older than the Morgulon?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we did.”

Greg went out hunting again at night, but the best he got was a couple of large rabbits. He was shocked, when at his return Thoko wasn’t in the tree where he had left her, but rather going through the underbrush, foraging.

“Are you crazy?” he hissed at her.

Thoko just offered him a hand full of juicy blackberries. In her other hand, she held some large roots she had dug up. Greg was too hungry to resist.

“’S still too risky,” he grumbled.

Thoko shrugged. “The ground is dry as dust here,” she pointed out. “If there is any Rot about, it’s not coming out until a lot more rainfall. And we need food that’ll keep longer than the meat.”

“We can dry some meat,” Greg tried to argue. But he knew she was right. The more food they had, the better. There was a long way ahead of them.

He just didn’t like the risk.

They walked a few more miles until the temperatures rose again and they lay down close to a small, fast-running little creek. Its stony bed hopefully wouldn’t allow the Rot to fester. When night fell, Greg transformed into the giant wolf, and Thoko climbed onto his back, and he ran until the next morning.

That was their new routine: Rest during the heat of the day, travel during the night, which had the advantage that Greg didn’t have to guard them against the Rot came nightfall. Just like Greg had feared, the distance they travelled declined as the moon waned and they journeyed deeper into the Crucible Ridge. They still made it out of the mountains by half moon. After that, they spent a fun day crossing the river Abhain that separated the Crucible Ridge from the much higher Argentum Formation and was nearly as Rot-infested as the Savre, so they could only do it in bright daylight. Greg swam across, with Thoko clinging to his back.

They were supposed to find the first elder in the Argentum Formation. If they had no luck with them, they might have to go further, into the High Plains.

“It’s new moon soon,” Thoko pointed out one evening. “How far are we from the coach road?”

“I have no idea,” Greg admitted. “Why?”

“I was just wondering if you wanted to go find an inn.”

Greg hesitated half a second, but then he shook his head. “Even if I had any idea where that is, I don’t think there’s time. I don’t know why, but I keep feeling like we’re going too slow.”

“You think because of the Morgulon?”

“Her, the war, the Rot – I don’t know,” Greg sighed. “The summer is almost over. We’ve been really lucky with the weather thus far, but what if it starts raining more again? Will three elders be enough to keep everyone working on the railway safe then, when they’re working so close to the Savre? Just – if we could be back before the equinox...”

Thoko nodded as he trailed off. “Let’s keep walking?” she asked.

Greg nodded, even though he was weary down to his bones. Another night till new moon, and all he wanted was to throw himself down onto the ground and go to sleep.

But they kept walking anyway, all the way through new moon.

Morgulon had said that they wouldn’t make the journey before then, Greg tried to calm himself, when that feeling came back, that strange urgency. They were still on schedule, there was no point to panic just yet.