In the last hour of twilights, the defenders watched from the walls of Oldstone Castle as the white sails of the Valoisian fleet draw near. It wasn’t a large fleet – the four ships couldn’t carry more than a few hundred soldiers. Not that they needed to.
Lane watched the keep’s Captain step onto the walls with the duke and David by his side. The Captain had a spyglass and stared at the fleet for a good long moment before he passed it on to Duke George Louis.
“The High Inquisitor himself is gracing us with his presence,” he said and spat onto the ground.
“True,” George Louis confirmed calmly and handed the glass back. “But hardly surprising. “We’ll feed his bones to the fish. No funeral pyre for him.”
He hadn’t spoken very loudly, but still, Lane could hear the words “the High Inquisitor” and “feed his bones to the fish!” repeated over and over again. There was a cheer from the crews of soldiers manning the cannons.
A part of her couldn’t help but shudder at that threat. What an insult! To toss a body into the sea like it was so much garbage, to trap a soul amongst the waves, unable to ever fly up to Mithras with the smoke...
“He’ll make one ugly sea monster,” David said dryly, causing those soldiers who could hear him to laugh. Nervous as they all were, the men would probably laugh at just about anything, Lane thought.
“Nah,” George Louis said. “We’ll grind up his bones first. I’ve got no intention of fighting the bastard twice.”
That earned another cheer, and Lane thought she could feel the tense mood on the walls lift a little. Seeing the duke, and seeing him joke with David, seemed to give the men courage in the face of what was to come.
“All cannons ready,” reported an officer.
“Very good,” George Louis said.
Every man on the walls, and every werewolf, too, was staring at the ships as they sailed in a large arc towards the beach, staying out of reach of the wall’s cannons. Lane had no spyglass of her own, but in the deadly quiet all around, she could hear the clinking of the anchor chains as the flagship of the small fleet, a ship-of-the-line with probably a hundred guns, reached the coast. The three frigates following it did the same. Lane could just make out the movement as the Valoise let the longboats into the water.
“Light the fires, and keep them burning,” Duke George Louis ordered, as soon as the first Valoise stepped onto the beach, still out of reach from the cannons.
The order was relayed quickly, and soon the parapet burned with a solid ring of fire. The glow made it impossible to see what else was happening down in the shadows of the beach.
Lane didn’t need to see, though. The first longboat would likely hold nothing but soldiers, but on the second and third and all the following, there would be priests. Mage priests and their sacrifices. They couldn’t raise the Rot from the salt-soaked shores of the ocean, so they would be heading inland, away from the beaches.
Nothing seemed to happen for a small eternity. All Lane could hear was the crackling fires, the soft fizzle of the flying embers. In the breathless silence, the shriek in the distance of the first human sacrifice was impossible to overhear, and a few seconds later, Lane could feel something, as if the wall underneath her feet wobbled.
The wall was fine, of course. It was the Rot that had her and the soldiers stagger.
Not the werewolves, though. There was one of them standing between the regular troops every few yards, nervously eying the flames that were supposed to protect them. Most of the werewolves were barely five full moons old, and some even younger. Duke George Louis and the Captain of the keep stood between Calder and Bernadette, though. Lane was close enough that she could see the lines of worry on both of the elders’ faces.
Lane wasn’t sure if they were worried about the Rot, or the fires, or the silver helmets all the men around were wearing.
David hadn’t put on his cap yet. He was circling around the whole castle, talking to the soldiers and werewolves alike. It was still an uneasy alliance, but it visibly helped that David knew so many of the werewolves by name.
Another scream echoed in the distance and abruptly cut off. Again, Lane felt herself stagger.
“Hold fast,” George Louis said calmly. “They have already wasted their first hour of darkness.”
One down, eleven to go, Lane thought. And there was no telling if the daylight would even help them. It certainly hadn’t deterred the Rot when d’Evier raised it at Deva.
“Movement!” came the call from the side of the castle where the Valoise had made land, followed quickly by the order of “Cannons! Fire!”
The werewolves all jumped when the cannons on the western side barked. Lane couldn’t stop herself, she walked over. In the distance, she could see the bright flames of alchemical fire.
Next to her, the cannons roared again, and at the impact of the second round, Lane saw movement down there: Two Rot-creatures had been hit. They continued moving towards the fortifications, but the incendiary stuff from the cannons was sticking to them, and they both faltered before they reached the walls.
The cannon crews reloaded quickly.
“Aim at the biggest monsters only,” their officer ordered, when a host of the smaller creepers raced around the fallen creatures, easily enough to overwhelm the defenders if it hadn’t been for the werewolves.
Lane wasn’t the only one who glanced nervously to the closest one. Yellow eyes reflected the flames. David had called the youth Alvin. He had his fingers wrapped in a death-grip around the iron-tipped spear he had been given. Some werewolves had even accepted silver-coated arms, to better fight the Rot.
“Here they come,” a soldier muttered.
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Despite the silver, something had scaled the wall. Lane watched Alvin gulp, but then David called: “Werewolves, ready!” and the boy stepped forwards, despite the flames burning all around the wall, to help repel the attacking Rot-creatures.
Lane was very glad about her ugly winter cap when the first of the creepers came across the balustrade. They mostly ignored her, though, fully focused on the werewolves. Quite a few of them had never fought the Rot before, and Lane saw Alvin freeze, just for a second, yet long enough for the ugly thing in front of him to rake his arms with its claws. Alvin screamed and gored it with his spear, then swung the stick around to roast the Rot creature on the nearest flame like a sausage on a stick.
The screams of the Rot all around were deafening.
Soldiers nearby cheered at the sight of Alvin killing his first monster but were quickly called to order by their sergeants.
When the cannons fired again, alighting another one of the bigger creatures still down on the slope leading to the keep, Lane thought for a second that maybe all this wouldn’t be too bad. So, of course, at that moment the first human sacrifice came into view: A tree – an old tree, its trunk too wide for three men to reach around, and high enough that it wouldn’t need to bother with scaling the walls. If it reached them, it would be able to pick soldiers from the parapets like ripe cherries.
The stink hit Lane even a second before the sickness, a sickly, sweet smell like tree-sap, with an undercurrent of rotten meat. And then she couldn’t breathe at all anymore, couldn’t bring her muscles to move her ribcage. Lane was certain she could even feel her heart slow down and falter.
But she could still, somehow, hear Morgulon howl in the depth of the castle’s cellars, the sound carrying a power even stronger than the Rot.
Alvin screamed in answer, and so did both werewolves and soldiers all around the keep.
“Cannons!”
George Louis’s orders were loud enough to overpower all the other noises.
“Take that thing down! Don’t let it reach the walls!”
Lane wondered how much of the burning ammunition they had when the cannons all along this side of the wall started firing again. Two, three, four, five balls of fire hit the moving tree, and at least as many shots missed.
“Hold!” yelled an officer.
Next to Lane, the soldier responsible for lighting the fuse kept his slow match wick less than a hand’s width away from the line, eyes fixed on his officer, who was glaring at the towering shadow of the burning Rot monster, despite the way it made his eyes water. Lane could barely look at the thing, and she wondered if it was possible to go permanently blind from staring at the Rot too long.
Nothing moved on the walls, while down on the ground, the Rot tree burned and roared and trampled over smaller creatures with its huge roots, until the officer yelled: “That did it, boys!”
Of course, this had only been the first of the human sacrifices. At least one more was on the way, and while Lane was still staring at the burning tree, she could feel one, then two, then a third one follow. How many people would the priests murder tonight?
The thought was wiped from Lane’s mind when she felt the world heave once more, but in an entirely different way than when the victims of the priests had died: This time she felt it mostly in the pit of her stomach as if someone had punched her. It hurt, and it felt great at the same time, and there was a new energy in her that made her fingers shake as if she had drunk way too much coffee. All the werewolves were affected, too, some more, some less. Alvin looked around wild-eyed and exited, but over where Duke George Louis was standing, Bernadette and Calder were on the ground, writhing as if in agony. Lane didn’t understand what was going on until she heard a soldier’s terrified scream of: “Werewolf! Werewolf!”
David raced past Lane, and she followed him a little slower, still dazed and overwhelmed.
“It’s okay,” she heard David call to the soldiers, pushing one of them, who had pulled out his sidearm, away from where Dale was laying on the ground, half transformed. “This is good, it’s all good! The Morgulon is giving birth. It’s giving the older werewolves the power to transform!”
Lane looked around, and true enough, Fenn was already getting to his four feet. Calder followed a minute later, and then Bernadette got up, too. Dale was the last to finish the transformation. He was breathing hard when he staggered onto his paws. After a few pounding breaths, he threw his head back and howled, and the other three elders joined in.
Lane and David grinned at each other. “That should give them something to think about,” David said.
George Louis had already sent Bernadette to guard a different part of the castle walls so that each of the four sides had one elder werewolf amongst the defenders.
Lane, however, raced down the stairs that led down into the main courtyard, through the gates of the keep, and deeper down, until she reached the cell at the very end of the hall, where Morgulon had made her new den in the straw. Lane stopped and stared.
Dr. Barnett, the veterinarian, was kneeling right next to the she-wolf, just placing the first baby right next to her belly.
“Looks like a healthy little boy to me,” he informed Morgulon, who wined softly.
Lane hesitated suddenly. It looked like Morgulon was already in good hands, but the doctor waved her forwards.
“Sit down with her, you can rub her back. Tell us how it’s going up there. I take it the walls still stand?”
Lane nodded and sat down obediently, scratching the back of Morgulon’s head. Down here, she couldn’t even hear the cannons roar, only Morgulon’s soft moans, and the first-born, who was suckling eagerly. Lane needed a few minutes to adjust to the warmth down here, the quiet and the calm.
“The walls are still standing,” she said finally. “The four elder werewolves up there just transformed, probably right as the first – child – was born.”
She stumbled over the word. She had expected cubs, but that was stupid, wasn’t it? It was new moon after all.
“Do you think – do you think the unborn children transformed inside of her?” Lane asked.
The doctor shook his head. “I’m fairly positive that they didn’t,” he said. “My supposition is that as long as they remain in the womb, they only transform when she does. As soon as they take their first breath, though, they turn human. I think – ah yes. You’re about to see with your own eyes.”
Lane had seen a lot of horses being born, and a few hunting dogs, too, and of course cows and sheep and pigs were bred everywhere in the heartlands. A noblewoman needed to know about that, even if it wasn’t generally talked about in polite company. She had witnessed a human woman give birth once, too. But this was easily the strangest nativity Lane had ever watched.
Morgulon herself wasn’t acting much different than any other bitch Lane had ever owned, but watching the second cub get caught up in the umbilical cord and turn into a baby before she was fully out of the womb was just plain bizarre. It made Lane very glad that the doctor was there.
“At least they are born without teeth,” he said, as he gently, little by little, untangled the foot and eased the tiny baby girl out of the birth channel. “I was worried that I would have to wear my thick leather gloves or risk getting bitten.”
When the child was finally out and the umbilical cord cut and the girl took her first breath and started to wail, Lane once again felt the power that, this close, seemed to shake the whole world.
She tried to remember what it had felt like when Risha, the scullery maid, had gone into labour a month early, way too early for her to have gone to one of the safe cities already. The child had been born in the kitchen of Wardshire house, all the windows boarded up and all the fireplaces burning as hot as wood would burn. Had she felt the same power then?
But back then, Lane had been far too terrified for the whole household to feel much else.
The doctor offered the little girl to Morgulon, who washed her with her tongue, and then sat down on a tiny wooden stool, resting with his back against the plain stone wall of the cell.
“That’s the first two,” he noted. “If I’m not much mistaken, there should be five.”
Nothing happened, though, for what felt like forever, and Lane was too restless to just sit around and wait.
“I’ll be back,” she promised, when Barnett glared at her for pacing up and down the corridor in front of the cell. She ran a hand over Morgulon’s head again before she climbed the stairs out of the cellars.