Massacre

Vega’s broadsword was lodged in a Protectorate sergeant, so he let go of its hilt and raked the next man to come at him with his claws. The armoured warrior went down, screaming and trying to cram his eyeballs back into his skull. Humans usually only dropped their visors as they closed in for the kill, to protect their faces from missiles. Once locked into the chaos of close combat most preferred to lift their visors. Fighting from behind a metal plate was stifling and blinding, and those who kept them down were forced to twitch their heads constantly from his to side as they sought their way through the melee.

Vega didn’t pause to retrieve his weapon. His blood was up, his heart hammering at a rate beyond that of any mere human, his eyes wide and wild with the savagery of slaughter. He caught a down-swinging arm in one bloody paw and, howling, bent the human’s elbow joint the wrong way. Armour grated and there was a grisly snap. Vega tossed the screaming human aside like an infant, the force of the throw actually pitching the warrior up over his armoured kin.

The rest were trying to scramble back, scattering before the rampant man-beast, but Vega didn’t give them a moment’s rest. The key to an ambush, the favoured werekynd battle tactic, was simple. Speed and savagery. Strike fast, tear into them before they realised what was happening, terrify them with howls and brute strength. Beat them before the fight had even begun. It was a method Vega and his war pack had perfected these past nine years, perfected to such a degree that other packs of werekin had gathered to him, seeing in the brutal champion a leader who might finally stand against the Protectorates with some hope of success.

Vega had rewarded the loyalty of his Great Pack with blood. He’d led them to victory against the northern section of the Protectorate cordon around the Tanglewood. When General Avani had pursued with his cohorts, they’d been led into an ambush and butchered. Last summer, Vega had repeated the tactic against General Alberto. It was common practice to leave a sole survivor to carry news of the massacre back to his comrades, but Vega had no time for such theatrics. He wanted this war won, and so the humans had all died.

One of the Protectorate soldiers wasn’t trying to run. He was old, a longtooth by human standards, and as his eyes locked with Vega’s he dropped his visor. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake as his fallen comrade. Vega recognised the red sash of an officer tied around his waist, and realised this must be the patrol’s leader.

The man carried a mace which he now swung at Vega. Still without a weapon, the big werekynd went to intercept the blow as he had done earlier, but this human was more experienced. He twisted the strike at the last instant, and the heavy, spiked metal head of the mace thumped into Vega’s shoulder whilst his claws snatched at air.

“Now!” he heard the human officer screaming from behind his helmet. “For the love of the Saints, now!” Vega had no idea what he was talking about. All that mattered was that he’d managed to land a blow on the werekynd – the first human to do so in a long time – and Vega wanted revenge.

Before the officer could pull back for another blow the man-beast launched himself forward. Getting within the human’s guard and embracing him in tight hold. Vega hoisted the man off his feet, grimaced, and tensed. The aging warrior was utterly helpless, a child in Vega’ arms as he squeezed tighter and tighter. A growl rose up from the werekynd’s chest, and the human began to scream. Armour started to grate and scrape, and then there came the first little snap. It was followed by another, and another, louder, wetter, and now the human really was screaming, squirming and struggling with all his strength.

It would do him no good. Vega was angry, and he hung on. The death-grip grew ever tighter until, with a last grisly crack, the human went limp. Vega released his grip with a hiss of exhertion, the limp rag-doll corpse clattering to the bloody earth.

Werekynd were not the only warriors to have perfected the art of the ambush. Red watched the slaughter of Captain Kalven and his patrol playing out in the gorge below, unmoving, her face expressionless. Her red cowl was up, and she’d taken the bow from her holster and strung it. However, as her fellow-men were hacked apart below her she made no move to intervene. The rest of her war band, strung out amongst the boulders looking down upon the bloodshed, likewise remained motionless.

A light rain was falling, misting the little gorge, slicking the rocks and making Red’s cape look like the colour of fresh gore. The screaming of the Protectorate soldiers and the animal howls of their killers drifted up from below. Red knew she should have struck minutes before, but the thought did not trouble her. Kalven had been a fool for suggesting this plan, a brave fool true, but a fool nonetheless. Red had thought he was old enough to realise that using himself as bait against the werekynd meant almost certain death, but he’d persisted all the same. And now he was being murdered.

“Now!” she heard him screaming as the big werekynd leader grabbed him. She could feel the eyes of her war band on her, but still made no more. Kalven had been an old fool, but now he was just a dead one. There was nothing she could have done to save him once the werekynd struck, and besides, the objective of their joint venture would still be achieved. General Novo merely wanted a prisoner to interrogate regarding the Great Pack’s intentions, and he’d still get one.

“Another pack coming up from the south-east,” whispered Grimbol in her ear. She frowned beneath her dripping cowl, the first hint of emotion the young girl had shown all day.

“Yes. They seem to be headed to join the Great Pack, and they’ll cross our path first if we stay where we are. Henk also reports that they have a tanglecat in their midst.”

Red cursed softly. She’d hoped the Tanglewild had emptied itself of werekynd, that they’d all already rallied to their Great Pack for the final push. If they were still receiving reinforcements then Saints only knew how many more yet lurked in the accursed forest.

“On my signal,” Red said, slipping like a bloody spectre down the steep, rocky sides of the gorge. The slaughter below was over, and the werekynd leader had already departed, clearly bored with such meager pickings. His pack had been savaging the Protectorate dead, but as the echoes of the fight faded they too began to drift back north, towards where the main body of the Great Pack was encamped. Red crouched and watched from just a few dozen yards away as the werekynd picked themselves up off their bloody haunches and padded away into the light rain.

Eventually only one was left, a young pup barely grown into its claws. It was gnawing on the arm of a corpse, clearly ravenous, a runt left behind to scavenge what it could. Red slipped an arrow from her quiver.

An older werekynd would have been far more alert to the danger. The man-beasts knew of Red, knew of her ruthless war band which preyed upon the unwary and the unprepared in the same way that they preyed on Novo’s Protectorate scouts. But this pup clearly hadn't listened to its longfang's tales.

The girl loosed, the arrow – fletched with the crimson feathers of a bloodfowl – whispering through the rain to thump home into the animal’s thigh. It yelped, startled by the sudden sting, and Red was already rising and running, waving Grimbol forward beside her. The pup saw them coming and scrambled for a weapon, but the girl was faster. As Grimbol the crowman slammed it into the ground Red clamped an iron collar around its neck, the jagged spikes pointing inwards nicking at its skin.

“You try to shift, you’ll end up tearing your own throat apart,” she growled in the thing’s bestial language. Shocked, it went still, and Red couldn’t help but relish in its unaccustomed fear. The capture a werekynd was an act only Red and her band would be insane enough to attempt, yet this pup wasn’t even the first to have been taken. Nor, she prayed, would it be the last.

“Cut its hamstrings,” she ordered Grimbol. “And bring it. Have Ralden go get Kalven’s body too. We’re heading back to the camp.”

As her warband dispersed Red paused, looking up into the rain. Another pack joining the forces amassing north of the Tanglewild. And they had a tamed tanglecat, something she had never heard of before. No matter, she thought. She’d killed enough of them in the Tanglewild’s depths. The things that lived in that place’s festering heart were all the same, and she swore once more that she would be the death of all of them.