Werekynd Rising

Roddick wished he’d just stayed unconscious. Someone had tied him to a stump in a small clearing lost deep in the Tanglewild’s depths, the surrounding woodland dark and gloomy. What was more concerning was the fact that, by the look of it, the someone in question had been a man-beast.

The clearing was full of werekynd. The monsters were ignoring him, for now. Some were scraping a ghastly assortment of axes, swords and falchion blades with whetstones, buffing leather and bits of old plate, or conversing to one another in their crude were-tongue. Others ate with the savagery of dogs, or returned from the encroaching Tanglewild with fresh game or cut timber for the lean-toos scattering the open space. The clearing was an encampment, and Roddick was tied up at the heart of it.

“The sleeper awakes,” said a voice behind him. He jumped and bit back a curse, all hopes that the werekynd would overlook his new wakefulness gone.

“We are sorry for tying you up like this,” the speaker continued, pacing round into Roddick’s line of sight. “My were-kin have been fighting men for too long now. Sometimes I think I am lucky they do not eat me in my sleep. For a complete stranger like you to appear in their midst, well, it is tempting for them, yes?”

Roddick stared at the thing addressing him – not a werekynd, as he had first thought, but another human. As human as he was. His age lost somewhere between the indeterminate changes of boy and manhood, he was tall and gangly, with dark, piercing eyes. And in a rush Roddick remembered his saviour, the slayer of the tanglecat. A human, the same one surely who now stood before him.

“You are wondering what I am, perhaps?” the youth said, smiling. His speech was clumsy, shot through with the animal inflections of the werekynd. His teeth, when he revealed them with a grin, were sharpened to points. His hair was a great tangled mess, knotted and platted down to his waste. His chest, like many of the werekynd’s, was bared, his skinny muscles covered in swirling red paintwork. He stank of the man-beasts, and yet he was not one of them.

“What are you going to do to me?” Roddick asked, his voice a dry croak. The youth laughed, and smiled his fanged smile again.

“Maybe castrate you, yes? Vanniken would like to do that –” he nodded towards a massive werekynd who was busy rubbing down a battleaxe whose broad blade was larger than Roddick’s head. “He did it to the last brace of Protectorate prisoners.”

“I joke. Maybe. We shall see what the Pup decides when he returns. But do not be afraid, I like you. I heard you screaming when the tanglecat caught your smell. It was funny to see you squirm, but I helped you, yes? My name is Longhair, but by men I was once known as Thomas.”

“You are Thomas the Lost?” Roddick said, wide eyes returning to the human boy. Thomas didn’t reply. Another sight, even more fearsome than the rest of the clearing’s inhabitants, had caught his attention.

From the edge of the clearing, padding with the slow, easy grace of the supreme predator, came a tanglecat. It was a full adult, bigger even than the one Thomas has rescued him from – a huge, sleek beast of fur and claw and eerily intelligent eyes. Eye, Roddick corrected himself. One glared about the clearing, cat-yellow, whilst the other was a milky white, bisected by a livid red scar that stood out amidst the fur of its face.

The tanglecat’s appearance alone would have been terrifying enough, but even worse was the fact that this was no wild predator. The werekynd’s calm reaction to the appearance of it in their midst was proof enough of that, but even so Roddick could have guessed the tangecat’s status as pet and mount to the savage man-beasts due to the fact that one of them was riding on the thing’s back.

It was a fearsome specimen of a a werekynd, bare-backed and broad-chested, with twin axes at its hips and eyes which gave the clearing the swift appraisal of one used to command. At its appearance the nearest of its kin flocked to the beast’s side, but the snarl of the tanglecat mount gave them pause. Roddick went deadly still, mouthing a silent prayer to the Saints that the werekynd didn’t notice him.

Apparently the Saints couldn’t hear their servants lost this deep in the Tanglewild. The werekynd dismounted and barked something in its guttural language, guesturing towards Roddick with an outstretched claw. The boy named Thomas responded with a series of grunts and snarls which Roddick identified, to his horror, as being a human approximation of the werekynd’s savage tongue. He’d never known anyone from the Protectorates able to understand the were-speak, let alone converse in it. He started to tug at his bonds as the werekynd approached.

“You best not look him in the eye,” the boy whispered, grinning. Roddick said nothing, fixing his gaze on his muddy boots.

“What is this?” snarled the man-beast as he came to a halt in front of Roddick. The prisoner flinched at the animalistic attempt at the human tongue. “Found a friend in the forest did you?”

“He would have been food for the tanglecats if I hadn’t found him,” said the boy, beaming like a prized pupil.

“Sawtooth is hungry,” the werekynd said then, in a burst of sudden anger, “look at me!” It grabbed Roddick by the chin, its claws digging into his flesh, and he whimpered as his head was forced up. He found himself staring into the dark eyes of a man-beast, their faces inches apart, the rotting-meat stench of its breath washing over him.

“Not all,” the werekynd replied, and let Roddick’s head drop. It turned to Thomas, and they exchanged another conversation in their feral language. Seemingly done, the werekynd stalked away. Roddick let out the breath he’d been holding.

“What… what are you going to do to me?” Thomas laughed again, the sound so at odds with the fear churning through Roddick's belly and setting his limbs to shaking.

“The Pup says you are to be freed, but you will stay. I will watch you. Help you. Maybe protect you from the others, and Sawtooth –“ he gestured at the Pup’s tanglecat mount, which was now prowling the edge of the clearing, seemingly at liberty to do as it pleased. “The Pup has gone to consult the Verreck and Hrothgar, the seers. Their skrying will decided our course for the next few days.”

“Why would you want to?” Thomas said, genuinely puzzled. “Everything for eight leagues in every direction wants to eat you.”