Red

General Novo brushed a hand through his silver hair, and prayed to the Saints that his subordinates didn’t see the exhaustion in his posture or the uncertainty in his eyes. He hadn’t slept in almost three days, and his subsistence of hard tack, water and a half dozen ounces of bread and stringy meat had been no better than the common levy’s. It had been a long nine years, but the aging Protectorate general had a bad feeling it was going to be a bloody few days ahead.

He suddenly became aware of his subordinate’s stares, and silently damned himself. The fatigue was getting to him. He scowled, clenched his fists, and banged them on the camp table.

“Cantil, what of the supply lines?” he demanded of a gaunt-looking demi-major in breastplate and helmet. The man bit his bottom lip, eyes glancing around the tent for support. None was forthcoming.

Once upon a time Novo wouldn’t have shown any reaction to such ill news in front of his men, but tonight he let out a hiss of anger.

“Does the Duke realise we’re up here all alone, without food, without crossbow bolts, our ranks riddled with disease and exhaustion? Does he realise we’ve been at war on the edges of this damnable forest for almost ten years?”

The assembly shifted awkwardly, and said nothing. Novo sighed and turned his gaze upon a squat captain with the red and blue helmet plumage of a Master of Arms.

“That it is, sir. My harquebusiers are ready and willing, with shot and gunpowder to see off any number of the heathen animals.”

“Some good news at least,” Novo allowed, sitting back in his camp chair. “Saints know, we’ll need every one of your guns when the beasts arrive. Kalven, what news of their movements?”

“My scouts are struggling to pick up their deployment in the dark,” the grizzled old Huntmaster replied. “But they’re definitely moving south-west. How fast we don’t know.”

“Use the Red,” the general said, cutting off his chief scout. The order caused an even more painful silence to settle upon the tent’s occupants. Only Kalven dared break it.

“Yes, right away. Like it or not, we need her and her murderers. We’ll need every damn thing with a human heartbeat by our side when the Great Pack reaches us. Be under no illusions, gentlemen. This will be the final battle. Whoever wins here, wins this damnable war.”

He looked his officers in the eye. There was tiredness there, and hunger, and fear. But there was also a steely determination, the kind of spirit exhibited by only the hardest of warriors. The best had made it this far. These men would be enough, Novo promised himself. And not just the men either.

As the war instigated by the Miremancers between man and man-beast had intensified, so much of the Protectorate work along the Marches had been abandoned. The Tanglewood had grown back in patches, stunted, weak, young, but becoming stronger day by day. Named the Edgewood, a twilight of bushes and undergrowth, saplings and mulchy earth had slowly surrounded the reduced boundaries of the ancient forest, and it was in this young woodland that Ellen the Red and her warband made their home.

She hated the Tanglewild, hated it with every fibre of her young body. She knew she was still viewed as nothing more than a child by Duke Lorenzo and his Protectorate generals. She was seen as mercurial, selfish, prone to tantrums and flights of wild ambition. And so she was, because she hated the werekynd, hated the vile man-beasts who had abducted her brother, Thomas, and taken him beneath those black boughs all those years ago.

“Someone’s coming,” Grimbol, the young crowman, said. Red didn’t reply – she’d already heard the approach of a horse, breaking the night’s stillness. Around her, in the wooded patch where they’d made their camp, her warband stirred. They were hard men, cruel men, bitter men. Men driven to Red’s side by loss and sorrow. Men with their own reasons for hating the werekynd, and hating them enough to follow a young girl on her vengeance-fuelled raids into the Tanglewild’s depths. They’d all learned soon enough that the little girl was not to be trifled with.

“Crain’s caught something,” Grimbol said, peering through the darkness beneath the young boughs. He was right. Approaching was Crain the sentinel, hood up, leading a horse in one hand and a wide-eyed messenger boy in the other.

“Says he wants to speak to you,” the cloaked sentry said. “He was looking high and mighty on his nag, so I thought I’d cut him down to size.” He tossed the boy down onto the leaf mould at Red’s feet.

The messenger looked up, fear gleaming in his eyes. Before him he saw a long-legged youth, a scarlet cape clasped about her neck, her long red hair worn across one shoulder. Her eyes, dark like her lost brother’s, glittered in the moonlight filtering between the Edgewood’s saplings.

“What does the old man want now?” she asked, nodding to Novo’s yellow griffon crest stitched upon the messenger’s breast.

“He requests your attendance at the camp,” the boy said, lowering his eyes to the ground. “As soon as possible.”

“He castigates me and my followers for taking harsh steps towards culling these abominable animals, but now that his back is against the wall he wants us fighting under him once more? Nine years under his command and still the Tanglewild does not burn.”

“He hopes you’ll assist captain Kalven in discovering the Great Pack’s course and speed. They’re on their way here. The general says he believes this will be the final battle.”

“Old Kalven and his scouts are a pack of fools and cowards,” Red said, turning away from the boy and fixing Grimbol with her intense stare. The lanky crowman mercenary shrugged.

“If it means more werekynd to kill?” he said. Red nodded, and crouched down in the undergrowth beside the messenger.

“Take these words back to Novo,” she whispered, her voice as cold as the smile teasing at her lips. “Tell him to just point us in the right direction.”

She’d kill every last one of the beasts who had taken her older brother and then, perhaps, finally, Thomas could rest in peace.