As he had promised, David returned to George Louis’s office after writing a couple more letters the next day. There were petitioners lined up in the hallway when he walked up, hoping to speak to the duke. David stood at his side while George Louis received them: Farmers, and commoners, and some landed gentry, too, all with some request or grievance. David was surprised that George Louis bothered to hear them out, sometimes even promised aid.

“Someone once told me that a king should make time for his subjects and be merciful,” George Louis said, when David wondered about that aloud, while they took a break to eat.

“And why do you want me here?”

“Oh, just for appearance’s sake,” George Louis shrugged. “Can’t sit there all on my own, can I? A king needs advisors. And you are quite famous, you have to realize that? Popular, too. The closest thing Loegrion has to a hero, right now.”

“If you say so,” David said.

When George Louis asked him out for dinner at night, he once again declined.

The next day, George Louis was taking care of company matters, but he still wanted David around. And the day after that, it was back to war preparations. Another day later, the duke left the company early, to once again take his son to the fencing school. David went along. He still declined dinner every night.

The next morning, his visit to the prison was interrupted by a messenger boy. A nearby crew of railway navvies had been attacked during the night. The workmen had been incredibly lucky – still, two of them had gotten bitten – and the young werewolf protecting them had been severely injured by a couple of mad ones. George Louis had already signed the warrant.

David considered refusing. He considered sending for Lane, considered the danger of going out after two mad werewolves alone. But the long and the short of it was that there were two mad werewolves less than ten miles south of Eoforwic, in a fairly densely populated area, and every hour they were left to roam free was a danger not only to everyone in the surrounding villages but also to every sane werewolf.

So he got onto the next train to Brines where he saddled his gelding, packed what he needed, and got moving. It was easy to find out where he needed to go – he simply followed the rails. Soon, there were no rails, only the trackbed, and as the shadows grew long, with the waxing half moon already high in the sky, he reached the point where that ended, too. The camp where the navvies had been attacked wasn’t hard to find after that. David didn’t even need to get out of the saddle to pick up the trail of the two attackers.

He still hesitated to follow it. He felt vulnerable, out here all on his own.

David cursed himself softly.

It wasn’t night yet and he hadn’t even started, and already, the memory threatened to overwhelm him, the memory of those first desperate hunts, when he had been hardly more than a child. The terror of those first nights, alone in the dark forest, alone with the monsters, the fear of failing. The fear that he wasn’t good enough to save his mother and brothers, that he might lose them.

How had Lane done this over and over again?

“Coward,” he whispered to himself. If his brothers could see him right now, they’d be appalled.

Oh, how he wished he shared Nathan’s complete lack of respect for the dangers that lurked in the shadows underneath the trees. Or even better, to have Nathan here by his side. But his brother was at First Camp, looking after the werewolves there.

“Coward, coward, coward,” David whispered again. “Come on. You owe this much to Greg.”

And he prompted his gelding forward, after the werewolves. After just a few yards, he took his crossbow off his back, to be ready for anything. It was unlikely that his quarry had hung around, but he still jumped at every unseen, rustling leaf.

As if he were the prey, not the hunter.

Strangely enough, as night fell and he needed to light a torch, he finally fell back into the familiar rhythm of the hunt. He could feel himself breathing easier while he followed the trail on foot. The trees had thinned out, too, so that it felt as if he were walking through a large hall with many pillars.

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At sunrise, he decided to take a break and rest a little. Since he was alone, with no one to watch his back, he climbed up into a tree, out of reach of any werewolf, to doze for a couple of hours. Something woke him even earlier, a strange feeling in the back of his head. David sat upright with a jolt and grabbed his crossbow.

There was a single werewolf just standing there, easily within shooting range, but there was one problem. The navvies had given fairly clear descriptions of the two which had attacked them, and this one matched neither: The fur was a nearly uniform grey, with none of the markings David had been given.

For a long moment, they just stared at each other. David had no idea what to do – he couldn’t shoot the werewolf without a warrant, after all. The werewolf seemed equally frozen to the spot.

It was embarrassing how long it took before it occurred to him that he might try speaking.

“Hey, you,” David called finally, lowering his weapon a little. “Can you understand me?”

After a few seconds the werewolf replied with a jerky, but unmistakable nod.

David balanced the crossbow on his knees and raised his empty hands. “You didn’t happen to come across a couple of mad ones?”

When the werewolf nodded again, David cursed himself for not asking a clearer question. “You did?”

The werewolf shook their head, but then walked a few steps forward, to about the point where David had abandoned the trail yesterday, and pawed the ground.

“Yes, that’s their trail,” David confirmed. “I’ll come down now, okay?”

The werewolf retreated several yards again but didn’t take off, so David slung the crossbow over his back, and climbed back down.

“Are you going to Eoforwic?” David asked once he was standing on the ground.

The werewolf shrugged, then nodded.

“Want to help me?” David asked, surprising himself a little.

The werewolf quickly shook their head and hurried away before David could say anything more.

“Right,” David muttered to himself. “Well, might as well get moving, since I’m awake.”

He checked his horse over quickly, to make sure the gelding was still in good shape, before he climbed back into the saddle. If he was lucky, the two mad ones he was after had split up since the attack, so he could take them down one after the other. If not, he might have to get creative.

After an hour, he found the place where the two werewolves had rested. They must have been hungry when they woke up, David found traces of them hunting, and at noon, the remains of a red deer. It hadn’t been dead long. He was getting close.

He paused again, to allow his gelding another rest. He didn’t want to run into two dangerous werewolves with a tired horse. Especially not without any of the other “Feleke Four” to watch his back, and the prey outnumbering him.

He found them in the evening, out in the open in a wide clearing. The two werewolves had killed another deer, and stretched out right next to it in the evening sun. It looked like they had barely even fed on their kill. They were awake, unfortunately, just basking in the sun.

When David stopped his gelding between the trees and reached for his crossbow, one of them raised its head, and then got up. Growling, and planting its feet in front of the dead deer, as if it wanted to defend the carcass.

The second one got up, too. It just stood there, throwing its head left and right.

David raised his crossbow. Neither of the two made any attempt to run away, so he shot the growling one, which was presenting him a clear target. Of course, just as he loosened the shot, it turned a little, and David had to waste his second bolt to make sure it was dead. The other one screamed, a sound that turned into a whine, and came at David at full speed. He rushed his gelding into a mad gallop.

Re-arming his crossbow while racing through the forest was always tricky business. David tried to avoid having to do that in the first place, but there was nothing for it now. As soon as he had managed it, he turned in the saddle. The werewolf was still right behind him, only a few yards away. If they had both been standing still, it would have been an easy shot. This way, David once again used both shots he had and then raced onwards until his gelding slowed down in exhaustion. David put two more bolts into his weapon before he threw the reins over a branch and left the horse behind. Carefully, he stalked back.

The werewolf was still alive, and still following him, even though a limp slowed it down considerably. David put it out of its misery with another bolt and then cut its throat, just to be doubly sure.

He could already hear Andrew and Nathan ribbing him for needing five quarrels to bring down two werewolves. He checked the dead body and didn’t even find one of them.

“Must have missed completely,” he grumbled to himself. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened to him.

He retraced the way the mad chase had taken and found the missing bolt stuck in the mud.

“Yeah, not gonna tell Nathan about that,” he muttered.

He went back to where his gelding was faithfully waiting for him. David led it back to where the first werewolf was fallen, where it took him a good while to gather both the head and pelt. And then he had to repeat the messy procedure in the clearing with the second werewolf.

It was almost fully dark by the time he was done with that, so David found another tree which he could climb. He tied his horse to the trunk loosely so that it could walk around it to graze, and then picked a strong branch to rest a little. Proper sleep turned out to be impossible, though.

“I’m getting too old for this crap,” he muttered to himself when he gave up trying a couple of hours before morning, and climbed down again. At least his horse had gotten better rest.