The merchants took the afternoon train back to Eoforwic, and just a little later, as dusk was falling, the workmen returned from the construction of the bridge. Lane, Andrew and Nathan talked to the other werewolves on guard, but most of them were too young to even have noticed what Neville had warned them about.
Despite the looming danger, Lane and the two Felekes were soon surrounded by a merry group. The scientists who were here to study the werewolves wanted to pick Lane’s brain about everything Morgulon’s cubs had done, every little change. Mr. Smith in the meantime was asking Nathan about Greg and Thoko and their journey into the mountains. His colleagues sat around, drinking like sailors.
When Lane mentioned it, Prof. Audenne shook his head. “Scared half out of their minds ever since the elder warned us about that new presence.”
“You aren’t worried?”
Audenne looked her straight in the eye. “I’m a scientist. I have waited my whole life for an opportunity like this, for the chance to learn, to study werewolves and all the other magical creatures of Loegrion. To be free of the Church and all their superstitions. I would have stood on the walls of Oldstone Castle with you if the dukes had allowed it.”
“You’d have fought? Or just watched?”
“Of course I’d have fought. This is my home, too. But apparently, I’m too old to defend this country. I suppose that means the only way I can help is by gathering knowledge. If you don’t mind, I would like to go with you to the Savre Camp. To tell you the truth, I would like to see a fight between werewolves and the Rot with my own two eyes.”
“It’s dangerous,” Lane reminded him. “We have no idea what’s out there.”
“That just makes it all the more important, doesn’t it? We might see something no human has seen in hundreds of years!”
“Right.” Lane didn’t point out that they might not survive to tell anyone about it. However, she couldn’t stop herself from adding: “Like a dragon?”
Audenne sighed. “That would be truly something,” he said wistfully. “Unlikely, though. True dragons are most likely extinct.”
“What about the creature King Lackland killed?”
“The Knucker? A formidable foe, for sure. But taxonomically, it should probably be classified as a sea-serpent rather than a true dragon.”
He shook his head. “A technicality, of course.
If it should turn out to be a dragon, unlikely as that is, do you wager the werewolves could defeat it?”
“I suppose so,” Lane said slowly. “I mean, I have no idea what an actual dragon would be like, but all the legends claim that knights could slay them. And if a human can, then I am very certain that Morgulon can, too. Unless its scales are made of actual silver, which seems even more unlikely.”
Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw several of the engineers lean back in their chairs in obvious relief, so she didn’t bring up the possibility that they might be facing a Rot-queen.
Whatever that might be.
Audenne was already up and dressed for travel when Lane, Andrew, and Nathan made their way into the taproom for breakfast the next morning.
“I had my horse prepared,” he informed them and an hour later, he climbed into the saddle of a sturdy pony. His assistant pointed out the danger again, but Audenne was unswayed.
“One of us should be there,” he pointed out. “And it shouldn’t be the man with three small children.”
It was hard to argue with that, Lane had to admit.
They took the new bridge across the Lour. It was nearly ready for trains, too. Another week, two at the most, Smith had said last night. “If we don’t all die before that,” one of his colleagues had added.
“Good hunting,” Smith yelled after them, while a lot of workers shook their heads or even made warding gestures against ill luck in the direction they were going.
Andrew waved back at the engineer in passing.
There was no sign of anything supernatural on the other side of the Lour, just a wide, almost straight trail of destroyed forest with the embankment for the future rails down the middle. It wasn’t a pretty sight. If the Rot had been about, it would have found plenty of dead or dying plants to gobble up.
But that was an unavoidable side effect of building the railway.
The four riders hurried to get to the next fortified camp before the end of the short winter day. Calder was the elder there. He was somewhere right outside, the lieutenant in charge explained. There was an air of fear all around. Only three younger werewolves supported Calder, and the walls of this camp were weaker and lower than the ones of First Camp. The small stalls, where merchants had sold their wares before, had been deserted. The news that Morgulon had been informed only helped to alleviate the workers’ and soldiers’ fears a little.
At least the exodus of the merchants meant that there were plenty of empty cots for them to sleep in.
At dusk the next day they reached the Savre Camp, just as the navvies returned from the construction site at the river. The sun had already sunk almost entirely below the treetops and a whiff of putridity was blowing on the wind, coming from the marshes that hadn’t retreated entirely. Yet the workers moved unhurriedly in an orderly fashion.
“If we didn’t know already,” Nathan said as they entered the camp last, the gates closing behind them, “one look around would tell us that this is the camp where the old hands are stationed.”
“What old hands?” Audenne asked.
“Greg’s first crew,” Nathan explained. “The first ones to go into the forest, before they had any idea how to defeat the Rot. These guys are either crazy brave or just crazy, I really don’t know.”
“Says the man who went to dance with the Rot!” a voice called back. “What’re ye doing here?”
“Came to see what in the five frozen hells you guys woke up here,” Nathan replied, jumping out of the saddle. Lane thought he nearly didn’t stick the landing, but it was hard to tell since he was at once bear-hugged by a tall and very lanky young man in workman’s clothes.
Isaac, Lane remembered after a second.
“You didn’t happen to bring the Morgulon along, did you?” another man asked. Mr. Eyal Levi, head of the butty gang Greg had originally signed up with. He was even taller than Isaac, and nearly twice as wide in the shoulders. There still was a certain similarity between the two in the shape of the eyes and the long, narrow nose.
“Unfortunately not,” Andrew said. “We did send a telegram to Brines as soon as we heard, to make sure she’s ready in case this goes to hell.”
“When this goes to hell, you should say,” Mr. Levi replied. “How long will it take her to get here?”
Andrew raised his empty hands. “About an hour to Eoforwic, from there it shouldn’t take her more than an hour to get to First Camp. Provided the company keeps their promise and have a train ready.”
“So unless we get an early warning, we’ll have to hold out at least a day on our own.”
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“Pretty much, yes,” Andrew confirmed. “How’s Ragna?”
“Frustrated,” the elder werewolf replied. Lane jumped; she hadn’t heard the woman walk up. “A little worried, too, I’m not going to lie.”
“Neville told us you tried to track down whatever is out there. Did you try again?” Andrew asked.
“No,” Ragna said. Lane thought she could maybe feel the echo of some of the elder’s frustration as she shook her long blond hair. “If Neville and Calder both could come with me, I might try again. But in all honesty, I no longer think I can survive what’s out there on my own.”
Only the soldiers guarding the gate they were still standing close to looked worried at those words, Lane noted. Andrew apparently noticed, too, because he said: “You seem pretty unfazed by that, Eyal?”
He shrugged: “Don’t worry, we have a plan. We learn from our mistakes and we still have some tricks up our sleeves.”
“He won’t say anything more,” Ragna said when Andrew opened his mouth. “Don’t even bother.”
Nathan and Andrew exchanged a glance at that, but Isaac already threw his arm around Andrew’s shoulder. “C’mon guys, ye owe us a story! And where the hell are Greg and Thoko?”
“Let’s take care of the horses first,” Andrew said. “And we need to get rooms, too.”
Once that was all done, Lane, Andrew, and Nathan met with Eyal and the rest of Greg’s original crew in the largest of the camp’s buildings. It was even bigger than the old coaching inn belonging to the footbridge, and had clearly been built to last. Or possibly to withstand a siege. While most of the sleeping barracks were little more than huts, this house even had glass-paned windows, high up above the ground.
“Nice,” Nathan noted.
Lane nodded quietly. The ceiling of the main room was at least as high as the camp’s outer walls, and the windows sat right underneath. A walkway made them easily accessible, and while she watched, workers were closing the massive shutters and lighting lamps.
Lane guessed the space inside was big enough for all the workers and guards to gather in. It was a little hard to be sure, because the eastern part of the hall had been thoroughly closed-off with heavy drapes. Probably old tents. For some reason, Lane thought she could smell something like the wet scent of fresh clay.
Just in front of the tarps, a single pedestal stood. The way the seating was arranged made Lane think of an altar, but it was too high, too narrow, for an animal sacrifice to be immolated there.
It was also made of wood, so it couldn’t easily hold the sacred flames of Mithras, either, except perhaps if they were lit by someone like Bishop Larsson.
“This is your keep?” Andrew asked.
“You can think of it like that,” Eyal said.
“It’s also our meeting room, and the best place to sit down and eat,” Isaac added.
They settled down around a table, Eyal, Isaac, and a few others. Digger, the camp’s other leader, was the most noticeable of them, because he was the only one who groaned softly when he heard that Morgulon was still in Brines. The rest of the crew were suspiciously calm in the face of the danger. Lane wondered what they planned to do if a monster or the Rot showed up.
A couple of them glanced over to the tarps, but more of them looked at the only man at the table who didn’t look like a navvy. For one, he was about ten years older than the workers. He was also dressed entirely in black, but his loose garb didn’t quite manage to hide a somewhat plump figure. He wore a small round hat and a long beard white with age. Lane could only guess that his hair had once been blond.
When people turned to him, he gave a tiny wave with his hand, a gentle smile on his face. There was no sign that he was worried at all.
He did not look anything like Lane imagined a sorcerer to look like, but clearly, Eyal’s crew trusted him to deal with whatever was coming.
“Mr. Kohen,” Eyal introduced the man. “A scholar.”
Digger harrumphed at that. Andrew and Nathan both glanced at Mr. Kohen, and then at Lane, and it was only when she noticed their worried expressions that the penny dropped. Finally, she recognized Mr. Kohen’s habit.
Lane looked around the room again. This was, indeed, a church. Or a temple. Or whatever the moon-worshippers called their gathering places. And Mr. Kohen was a “scholar,” good grief, they weren’t even subtle about this, were they?
But why would they be? Duke George Louis had declared several times since the battle at Oldstone Castle that he would allow freedom of religion to everybody. And if this rebellion failed, Eyal and his family were sure to bear the ire of the Empire anyway, as the first crew that had collaborated with werewolves.
She opened her mouth, looked around again, and closed it. She couldn’t even in her own mind quite sum up why she would have preferred another meeting place. It wasn’t like she was being asked to attend one of their ceremonies.
When she didn’t say anything, Andrew and Nathan seemed to relax. They let Isaac and the rest of the navvies question them about Greg, the battle at Oldstone Castle, Thoko, and the werewolf cubs. Eventually, a horn outside began calling, interrupting the conversation.
“Dinner is ready,” Isaac explained.
He led the short way to a field kitchen, not the inn, just a big cooking pot and an oven under a roof, where they each received a bowl full of food and freshly baked bread. They carried the food and, in case of the navvies, their daily ration of beer, back to the communal building, where Andrew and Nathan managed to get a word in edgewise to ask more about what was going on around the camp. As Ragna had already warned them, neither Eyal nor his crew wanted to talk about the preparations they had taken. Digger did tell them, at some length, about the varying Rot creatures they used to see walking around in broad daylight.
He had left both before and after dinner to buy more beer, and was waving his empty tankard while he grumbled: “It’s been mad! Every day at this sun-cursed river is madness! We used to see them strut around bold as brass. And now they’re gone, and I don’t know what’s worse: The thought that there’s something out there that scared even the bloody Rot, or the thought that the creepers are getting organized for something.”
He shook himself. “We should’ve called it quits once we reached Mannin! Shouldn’t’ve come back to work on this bloody bridge, no matter how good the money is.”
“It’ll be all right,” Eyal said calmly.
“Easy for you to say. Where’d the Rot go, huh? Where’d all the little creepers run off to, you can’t tell me that’s not weird!”
“It’s weird, all right,” Eyal admitted calmly.
“When did the Rot disappear?” Nathan asked.
“Same day as Ragna and Neville felt that strange presence out there,” Eyal said. “It’s been a week now, and we have only seen a couple of brutes.”
“Feels like they’re spying on us,” Digger chimed in. “Slinking round the worksite, watching us with their not-eyes...”
The big man shuddered visibly. “And that you won’t say what it is you’re basing your confidence in, is not helping, Eyal.”
“We’ve been over this. It might not help the men to know what we’re planning.”
“It would help me,” Digger sighed. He stared into his empty tankard, but didn’t get up to get a refill. “Any movement?” he asked Ragna instead.
The elder shook her head.
“You’ve been a werewolf for more than twenty years, right?” Lane broke the silence that fell over the table. “Neville said that Pierre and his pack fought against a Rot queen twenty years ago. Were you part of that fight?”
“Seventeen years ago,” Ragna said promptly. “And yes. I was there. And also: yes, I think this might be one.”
“I’ll probably regret asking, but what in the five frozen hells is a Rot queen?” Digger asked. He looked at Lane, but she could only pull up her shoulders.
“I don’t know, either. Morgulon mentioned the word, once, and I could never get her to explain.”
“Yeah, that’s the Morgulon for you,” Ragna sighed. She drummed her fingers on the table. “You know that the Rot was born of corrupted magic, right? But it’s not actually alive, so all it has is, well, stolen magic.”
“I have a bad feeling about where this is going,” Digger muttered.
Ragna smiled wryly. “Yeah. A Rot queen is a corrupted but still sort of living source of magic. They can raise other Rot creatures right out of the dry ground, and strengthen creepers to the point where they turn into brutes. The worst thing is, they can corrupt other sources of magic, to create more Rot queens.”
“What do they look like?” Isaac asked.
“I think they vary, just like the Rot,” Ragna said. “But I’ve only ever seen one.”
“Okay, but what is a source of magic, exactly?” Digger asked.
“I’m a source of magic,” Ragna answered. “So is every other werewolf, though a younger werewolf would be far weaker. Pierre reckoned the one that attacked us in the mountains used to be a unicorn, but I’ve never seen a normal unicorn, so I can’t be sure.”
“A dragon,” Nathan said, the only one who seemed excited at the prospect.
“Let’s hope not,” Ragna said calmly. “A corrupted dragon – well, I don’t know if even the Morgulon could handle one.”
“So a young werewolf would make a fairly weak Rot queen?” Digger asked.
“A somewhat weak one. It would still be incredibly dangerous,” Ragna warned. “We werewolves call them queens because they seek to spread their corrupt magic. Like an ant queen laying eggs. We had to kill another werewolf of the pack because the queen got to him.” She drummed her fingers on the table again. “If the thing out there had gotten around me when I first followed it... It would have gone straight for Oli.”
“Not for you?” Lane asked.
Ragna grimaced. “I mean, if it really is a dragon – but I don’t think it is. The queen we fought back then wasn’t stupid. It didn’t go for Pierre, and it only tried to kill the Red, not corrupt him. I expect this one’ll try to get to one of the younger ones first, and then to me as a last resort. Or maybe it’ll try to get to Calder.”
“The Red was born a werewolf, like the Morgulon, right?” Nathan asked. “Any chance that this queen might not be able to corrupt her?”
“I wouldn’t like to bet my life on it. But sure. It’s possible that she’s protected.”
“So what’s it waiting for?” Lane asked.
Ragna shrugged. “An opening, perhaps? A way to get around me? Or maybe, if Pierre was right and the queen only attacked us back then because the Red was around, it’s waiting for Morgulon to move.” She paused. “Maybe it’s waiting for backup. Who knows.”
“Cheery thought,” Digger muttered. “I’ll get myself another beer. Anyone else want some?”
“No, but we’ll walk with you, I think it’s time we catch some rest,” Andrew said. Lane nodded. Nathan was clearly exhausted from the day in the saddle, enough so that he didn’t even complain when Andrew hovered by his side as they made their way through the dark to the coaching inn and their rooms.