Getting up early was not something David and Nathan had to do often – their work usually happened at night, after all. They both needed a double ration of coffee before they were awake enough to brave traffic in Eoforwic, which wasn’t quite as bad as in Deva, but still plenty annoying. They had to follow the busy main road all the way out through the Old City gates, across a channel, and into the New City. It was so new it didn’t even have a proper wall yet.
At least they didn’t get lost again: The Lackland Company was impossible to miss, not with that huge mural all over the front. They reined in their horses on the other side of the street, to stare up at the huge King Lackland up there, killing the dragon.
“George Louis sure has balls,” Nathan said after a moment. “That what you liked about him?”
“Shut up,” David sighed.
“Think he’ll be in there?”
“No idea,” David said. He hadn’t even considered that possibility. “Let’s go,” he added, before he could chicken out now.
It was lucky that they had gotten all those warrants last night because it had given Nathan an idea under which pretence they would ask around the company.
“We’re werewolf hunters,” they explained when they were stopped at the doors. “We’d like to talk about some of the warrants the company has put out recently.”
This got them inside at least. The main hall they were ushered into was almost as splendidly decorated as the Imperial magistrate, with similar long counters around the huge room. At one of them, they had to state their business again, and their names, too. The clerk behind it frowned at them.
“You want more money, I take it?” the clerk asked, sounding resigned. Before David could even answer, he had rung a bell, and a young boy in the colours of George Louis came sprinting over. The clerk gave him a message, and then the kid raced off again.
“You’re lucky that no one else has wanted those contracts,” the clerk told them. “If you’re really lucky, the director will see you about the issue.”
It didn’t take long for the boy to return, slightly out of breath. He whispered the answer into the clerk’s ear, who nodded. “Jimmy here will take you upstairs to director Meyer’s office,” he told David and Nathan.
They followed Jimmy to a small waiting room where already a couple of older white men were waiting, both heavyset, in important-looking suits. One of them rustled his newspaper demonstratively and hid behind the pages, the other one kept glancing at his pocket watch. Both looked surprised and insulted when David and Nathan were called up before them by a young ash-blonde lady.
David was very surprised when they were received by Duke George Louis himself, and not the director of the company. The lord of Mannin was waiting for them behind an impressive, heavy oak desk, maybe a little overwrought with woodcarvings and a green felt covering. The duke wore a black suit, subtly emphasizing the width of his shoulders. He was a native Loegrian, with pale skin and dark brown hair and eyes. His face was as handsome as David remembered it, though he wasn’t sure he approved of the beard George Louis was sporting now.
“The Honourable David Feleke, what a surprise,” George Louis greeted them. “And your brother, I take it?”
“This is Nathan, Your Highness,” David agreed.
“Eoforwic seems a little far out for you?” George Louis went on.
“It’s springtime,” David gave back. “Best time to travel.”
George Louis eyed him quizzically. David could feel his heart pick up the pace, but he managed to keep an even, almost bored expression.
“Right,” the duke said after a moment, glancing at Nathan. ”I was told you want to talk about money?”
“Only if you want us to go after these two werewolves,” David gave back, placing two warrants on the desk.
There was a little, roughly hewn wooden figure sitting there, strangely out of place amidst all the other polished wood surfaces and lush felt. David recognized it at once. He’d carved the little owl himself, more than a decade ago. For a second they both stared at it. David almost asked why the duke had kept the ugly little figurine, but stopped himself.
“You want these two dead, you better pay gold,” Nathan spoke up.
“One gold coin, for both,” the duke said promptly, without batting an eye at Nathan’s usual directness.
David rolled his eyes. “We’re not going after a couple of mad ones for that, and I don’t know anyone else who will.”
“I’m sure I can convince Lady deLande,” George Louis said.
“Convince her, no doubt,” David said. “But even she can’t be in two places at once. The clerks at the magistrate sounded like you’re in a bit of a hurry with these. Or have you roped in Greg as well?”
“Your brother Greg?” George Louis asked, a little confused.
“He was talking about joining the railway,” David said, shrugging like it was no big deal. “He’s seventeen now, wants to make his own mistakes. You know that age. Anyway,” he added like the topic was closed for him, but George Louis interrupted him:
“Looking out for your little brother even when he doesn’t want you to. How very sweet. But no, he hasn’t hired up with the company. At least not officially. All the stretches are subcontracted. So he might have tried some honest digging rather than the blood works.”
David shrugged and tipped at the warrants with one finger. “Do you want these out of the way, or not?”
The duke reached for the warrants and scanned the text. After a moment he asked: “Why these two?”
“I’m sorry?” David asked.
“The company put up a lot of warrants recently. Why only ask for more money on these two?”
“These are more dangerous,” Nathan said. “And more urgent.”
“How do you know?”
David rolled his eyes. “I’ve been doing this job for over fourteen years now. You’ll have to trust me when I say that these will be more trouble than the others. Ask deLande, if you want to,” he added, mostly to find out if she really was around.
The duke considered that and finally shook his head. “That would take too long,” he sighed. “You’re right. I am in a hurry to have these issues solved.” He rubbed his hands together. “I’ll pay you one gold coin each,” he finally said.
“Three,” David said, mostly for appearance’s sake. They agreed on two gold coins and a handful of silver for each of the werewolves, and David couldn’t shake the feeling that George Louis had given in too easily as they left the building.
“Think deLande is really around?” Nathan asked, as soon as they were out on the street.
“Let’s hope not,” David grumbled. “That’s the last thing we need.”
He had a lot of respect for deLande, she was a damn good huntress. But she was also the daughter of crazy Leon deLande, and he was pretty sure that she didn’t even entertain the possibility of a sane werewolf. She was certainly one of the most zealous ones about making sure that hunters who got bitten were killed straight away. If she found out about Greg, she could make trouble for all of them. She was Valoise, after all.
“I wish father and Andrew were here,” David sighed. “Then we could split up. Let’s go and ask over there,” he added.
There was an inn right next to the company’s headquarters, certainly a place where navvies flocked?
The inn was empty though.
“The navvies all left a couple of days ago,” explained the woman behind the bar. “Won’t be back for a while.”
“Was there a black man with them?” David asked.
“No,” she said, looking him up and down.
“Please,” David tried again. “We’re looking for our brother.”
But the woman shook her head. “You’re in the wrong place then. All the navvies working on the line to Sheaf stayed here, and I didn’t see anyone as dark as you guys.”
“You’re sure he couldn’t have slipped by you?” David asked.
“Only if he didn’t eat or drink anything at all,” she said firmly. “I’ve got a good memory for people. Have to, with so many of them tryin’ to slip away without paying.”
“There’s no other place where a navvy might eat?” Nathan asked.
“I mean, if he only ate breakfast, I might not have seen him, I don’t do mornings. But who does that? Or, I suppose, he might have walked all the way into the Old City, but that’d be quite a walk.” She shrugged. “If you want to make really sure, we also send the crews their provisions. Next caravan leaves a week from now, you’re welcome to go with them. They won’t say no to a couple of hunters.”
“Thank you very much, Miss,” David said. “Where does the caravan leave from?”
“Right here,” she said. “It leaves about an hour after it gets safe.”
“Perfect,” David said. “Seven days from now, yes?”
She nodded, and they thanked her again and walked out.
“You still think Greg went with the navvies?” Nathan asked. “I mean, he must’ve eaten something, right?”
“You think that place offered anything Greg would care to eat?” David gave back. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he made the trip into the city every morning, probably didn’t go back all day.”
Nathan looked back at the inn, nodding. “Yeah, I can see that, too. So, we’re off to Lancing next?”
David nodded.
“The monster of Lancing,” was all the talk in the pub David and Nathan stopped at on their way to the village. When they rode into Lancing itself, people came running from everywhere, offering them money they clearly couldn’t afford to give away if they killed the werewolf.
When they tried to get more information on the creature in question all they got was conflicting rumours.
“He’s huge,” that was the only thing all the villagers agreed on. “Not like a normal werewolf, much bigger.”
David didn’t put much stock in that. Werewolves commonly grew as large as ponies, rather than dogs. What did worry him much more was that no two villagers could agree on what the creature looked like beyond “big.” Descriptions ranged from “almost pure white” or “nearly all brown” to “grey, patchy grey” and “jet black, like ink.”
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Nobody knew what it looked like as a human.
“Can’t be him, though, can it?” Nathan said as they climbed back into the saddle. “Timing’s all off, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” David said.
“The monster of Lancing” had been terrorizing the village since full moon, at which point Greg, David and Nathan were almost certain, had been running around that little island in a sidearm of the Savre.
“Eight people dead, though,” Nathan said. “And it might be more than one werewolf. Unless these people are all colour-blind.”
David nodded.
“So?” Nathan asked. “Are we on the contract, or not? We likely even won’t get the money. You know how it is with the descriptions so imprecise. Lackland’s, they would be idiots not to try and wriggle out of it.”
“You said it yourself,” David sighed. “Eight people have been killed already. And we’ll attract the wrong kind of attention if we walk away now. I mean, they all but promised us their first-borns there.”
“Right,” Nathan said. David was pretty sure he looked relieved. “Let’s just hope we can still make that supply caravan.”
“Let’s hope we can see this – this thing as human,” David gave back. “We have to be sure it’s not him.”
At least in that, they ended up getting lucky: They couldn’t find a trail at the last point of attack – too many feet had gone over the area – but when they entered the forest close by, they did find a tinkerer’s cart, sitting with one broken wheel in the ditch on the side of the road, still hung with all the tools and a bunch of pots and pans. Inside, a man and a woman were asleep, both naked, he with almost white, she with patchy brown and black hair. David only managed a short look, before she sat up and snarled at him like an angry dog.
He backed away quickly before she could come at him through the narrow window. There was no humanity or reason left within her golden-brown eyes, only a wild animal, forced into a corner. David had seen this mindless fury hundreds of times. Today was the first time he thought he saw fear, too, as he reached for his crossbow.
The woman crawled out the back of the cart on all fours, still human-looking, while the male werewolf burst from the front of the cart, taking out a piece of the roof with his hulking form. David had to give the villagers this much: he was bigger, and much heavier-set than most werewolves he had come across. Even though he and Nathan had moved away from the cart at the first sign of movement inside, it took the werewolf only one jump down from the coach box to close up on Nathan, who was being cocky again. David barely managed to swing his crossbow around in time to shoot the thing.
“Hey!” Nathan complained promptly. “I had this!”
David would have loved to cuff him around the ears for that, but instead turned back to the woman. She had started transforming, still crawling in a wide curve around them. David hesitated. It took her forever, and it didn’t seem right to shoot her in this strange, contorted form, not wolf, not human, not anything he had ever seen or wanted to ever see again. One of her arms sprouted fur, the hand elongated into a paw and then shortened again into a hand. The fur on her body grew in patches and vanished again, the tail, too. At one point, she looked more like a giant rat than a werewolf.
“What the hell?” Nathan muttered.
When she started screaming in a way too human voice, David shot her.
“What the hell?” Nathan repeated and went over to have a closer look.
David looked away, trying really hard not to throw up.
“Probably best if we only take the head, right?” Nathan said. “No one’s going to pay for the skin of this freak, anyway.”
“Probably best,” David agreed, and somehow managed to keep his stomach down, though he wasn’t sure how he did it. He felt like his knees would buckle under him any second.
“Are we taking the big one?” Nathan went on, unperturbed.
“Yes,” David said softly.
“You okay?” Nathan asked.
“I’m fine.”
“Only, normally you’d be bitching me out by now, for chancing it back there,” Nathan went on.
“What’s the point?” David sighed. “Guess there’ll be two werewolves in the family, soon.”
“Nah,” Nathan said. “Long as you got my back, I’m not worried.”
David almost did take a swing at him then. He took a deep breath to start yelling at Nathan but then realized that he had no idea what he even wanted to say.
“Don’t do that to Mum,” he finally sighed. “Or Dad, for that matter.”
Nathan stared at him, but he didn’t say anything more. Instead, he turned back towards the grotesque form of the female werewolf, a long knife in hands. David looked away and started searching the underbrush for a long, sturdy branch they could tie the other werewolf to. By the time he found one, he mostly had himself under control again, but he still avoided looking at the grotesque figure of the half-turned female. The fact that Nathan had cut its head off didn’t make it any less disgusting.
They tied the paws of the male werewolf to the long branch David had found, and then they had to fight to convince the horses they had borrowed in Eoforwic to carry them and the werewolf back to Lancing.
“We need to write home for our own horses,” Nathan grumbled. “Good thing that we didn’t actually have to hunt these two down.”
David nodded. Hunting werewolves without reliable horses was a bad idea all around. “These’ll be good enough to go with that supply caravan,” he said. “And by the time we’re back from that, hopefully, Andrew can bring us our own.”
The people of Lancing greeted them like heroes, with women literally throwing flowers at them, and children running after them. They were offered so many celebratory drinks before they even reached the village square, that David decided to leave the talking to Nathan. Which of course resulted in them promising to stay the whole night. But at least Nathan also remembered to ask for a witness who would testify to the Lackland Company that they had killed the right werewolf.
David wasn’t entirely certain of anything else that happened that night.
When they returned to Eoforwic, the Imperial magistrate paid them the general reward for the female with very little argument, which meant they had plenty of cash and a couple of days to prepare for their trip into the forest with the supply caravan. It was still surprisingly difficult to buy even basic protection against the Rot.
“It all goes to the guards at the New City,” one craftsman told them.
“Technically, we aren’t even allowed to sell these,” he added, pointing at a row of hats with simple silver decorations on them, “but the city guards don’t want them, of course. Anything the silversmiths turn out goes either to the City or the Lackland Company.”
“Well, it’s better than nothing,” David sighed, and they each bought a flat cap with a fairly wide brim in the front, adorned with some silver, nothing like the fully coated silver helmets of the guards. They weren’t exactly fashionable either, but would at least keep off sun and rain. How much they would help against the Rot, David wasn’t sure, but the hatter assured him that the navvies didn’t have more than that either.
The supply caravan was made up of a single covered wagon, pulled by two oxen. On the coach box sat a young man with short, black hair, almost as curly as David’s own, and light brown skin, who chewed on a pipe and introduced himself as Aaron. He, too, wore a little round hat with some silver ornaments.
“Glad to have ye along,” he said, grinning. “Can’t never be too careful.”
With that, they set out, alongside the construction site where navvies were building a line in the safety of the New City.
“This is the line going east, towards the coast at Breachpoint,” Aaron explained before David could even ask. “We’re gonna pass the building site for the new Main Station in a moment, and the turnouts in front of it. Eoforwic is gonna be the centre-point of all the lines, unless the Imperials at Deva get a move on, fast. If they can actually make it through the forest to Sheaf, I mean.”
“Do you think they’ll make it?” David asked.
“Guess so,” Aaron said. “So far, no one came running out of the forest, screaming. So yeah, I hope they’re making it. Got a few relatives on the crew, I hope they’re still alive.”
He fell silent for a few seconds, before adding: “I’m sure they’re fine. Eyal’s got a plan on how to beat the Rot. I’m more worried about us. We can’t build a fortified camp every night like they can.”
“Cheery thought,” Nathan said. “The money must be really good, for people to risk this.”
“If they make it, it’s worth a fortune,” Aaron agreed, but he claimed not to know how high exactly the reward might be when Nathan pressed.
David didn’t quite believe him.
“What’s the company paying you to guard this caravan?” Aaron changed the topic.
“Oh, we’re not here on company’s orders,” Nathan replied. “Looking for our youngest brother. He might have joined the navvies.”
“It’s good, honest work,” Aaron said, a little defensively.
“Yeah, but he’s seventeen, and mother wants him back home. Asides,” Nathan added, “we’re not even sure he’s here.”
Aaron nodded and clicked his tongue to spur the oxen on a little. Not that it made much of a difference. The wagon trudged onwards painfully slowly. Come noon, though they had made it out of the city, the gates were still in sight when David looked back.
Nathan looked like he might have fallen asleep in the saddle, but David got more nervous with every passing hour.
“How many miles do you think we’ll have to go?” he asked Aaron when the city finally vanished behind a copse of trees.
“Can’t really say,” the driver said. “It’s at least another six till we even reach the edge of the forest. Dunno how far they already got towards Sheaf.”
“Any idea what the road ahead will be like?”
“Slow,” Aaron just said. “If we make those six miles in one day, we’ll be doing good time.”
“So we’ll be stuck in the forest over full moon for sure.”
“Like I said, glad to have you along,” Aaron shrugged. “Can’t be helped.”
David nodded. He had no idea what to do once full moon came about. There was no way he could shoot Greg without even trying to speak with him first. If it came to it, they’d have to climb a tree or something.
They did make it to the edge of the trees by nightfall the next day. By that time, even David had difficulties staying alert. The headache that had gripped his whole skull about the moment they could see the forest didn’t make it any easier. Still, he stayed up late into the night to guard the fire, and then woke Nathan to take the second watch. Aaron took the third.
The fire was their only, meagre protection should the Rot show up. They saw no trace of it, luckily. The days were too hot for Avril, and not a drop of rain fell, maybe that helped.
David stared up at the sky while the oxen trudge onwards. Was Greg really just a few miles away, staring at the same sky? And if he was, which precautions was he taking? The first night of full moon would be the night after next. Some very few werewolves could stay human for that night, could Greg? And if they spared Greg, and climbed into the trees like cowards, what would Aaron say? Who would he tell?
All those worries, though, were driven from his mind at about noon, when huge, towering rain clouds pulled up over the forest. By mid-afternoon it was nearly as dark as night, and the oxen wouldn’t move a single step further, no matter how hard Aaron tried. The most frustrating thing was that they were close – they had just passed an abandoned campsite, clearly marked by the ditches filled with ash that surrounded it. Greg might be just around the bend in the trail.
There were things moving in the shadows beyond the fire they had started, misshapen creatures. David thought the scariest part about them was how they still sometimes looked like they might have been real, actual animals, swallowed up by the Rot, and spit out all wrong. They, too, might soon stalk the shadows much the same.
David was drenched in cold sweat before the rain even started. They sat with their backs to the cart, the horses tied up on either side of their tiny, insufficient campsite. The oxen still wouldn’t move, so they stayed where they stood in the drawbar even after Aaron freed them. David stared into the darkness, one hand on his crossbow. Could he shoot the Rot, if it came for them?
There was a deer out there, a perfectly normal deer. It came walking towards them slowly, hesitatingly, as if it was looking for shelter from the storm, too. David felt himself relax, his hands falling away from his crossbow. Only his head felt like a nut stuck in a nutcracker, as if his skull would burst at any moment...
The first raindrop fell onto his face, but he barely noticed. The tiny camp was stinking something awful. The next raindrop landed in their fire, and a fountain of sparks soared up into the darkness. David jumped. And suddenly the deer wasn’t a deer at all anymore.
David grabbed his crossbow again, but his shot went wide. Behind him, the mare he’d rented was doing her best to kick through the plank of the cart it was tied to.
David grabbed the next silver dowel but did not attempt to nook it. Instead, he pulled first Nathan, then Aaron to their feet by their collars. “We gotta go,” he hissed.
He kept the silver bolt grasped tightly even as Nathan just stared at him incomprehensively, and he had to throw him over the back of his horse. Aaron climbed into the saddle of Nathan’s mount. While David struggled to get into the saddle behind Nathan, Aaron slapped each ox onto the back, but they had no time to waste to see if they even moved at all. The horses went wild as soon as they realized they were free. David could only hang on and pray that they were going in the right direction. There was no steering the panicked animals.
Luckily, the horses were smarter than their riders and instinctively stayed as far away from the trees as possible, running right down the middle of the clear-felled path the navvies had created. They didn’t stop until they were well out of the forest.
It was still pouring cats and dogs, and flashes of lightning showed the towering forest in stark relief. David could see nothing move but the treetops. Still, his mare threw her head nervously, and while she did slow down, she wouldn’t be stopped until they reached civilisation again, marked by a field in which the winter barley stood about a foot high.
The farmer would not be happy with them.
“How did we even survive that?” Nathan asked, and let himself drop into the crops.
Aaron stared towards the forest. “Do you think – do you think there’s any way they’re still alive?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” David said. “But you saw the ditches full of ashes,” he added because he had to cling to that hope, too. “Much better than our tiny fire was, I’m sure.”
There was no way they would make it through tonight or even tomorrow. Not with the Rot suddenly this strong.
“Bloody rain,” Aaron swore. “We were so close. I’m going back, soon as the weather gets better!”
David had to commend his bravery, if maybe not his common sense. For now, they moved slowly onwards, until they reached the edge of the field.
They spent the rest of the night in the middle of the road running alongside it, constantly looking over their shoulders for anything moving. The nearly full moon broke through the clouds at around midnight, bathing the landscape in silver, but they never saw another sign of the Rot. At sunrise, they set off towards Eoforwic. Aaron said he needed to report back to the company of the failed delivery, and didn’t say anything more about going back into the forest.
“Now what?” Nathan asked when they were back at the Mills Hotel. It was a different room, but just as splendid as the one they had rented a few days ago.
“I don’t know,” David admitted. He felt defeated. He couldn’t shake the thought that Greg had joined the navvies, and he couldn’t imagine that anyone, no matter how well organized their group was, could have survived that thunderstorm.
And tonight was the first night of full moon. Even if Greg had entered the forest together with the crew, even if they had found some way to beat the Rot, he couldn’t stay with them tonight.
Or could he?
The only protection he could imagine that might keep the navvies safe in the forest was strong magic. And if they had that...
But he was being stupid. Strong magic could bind a werewolf even on a full moon night, but why should anyone bother?
They spend the next two days wandering around Eoforwic rather aimlessly. They did ask about Greg but got no useful answers. On the third day, just as they considered giving up entirely, they ran into Andrew and Bram.