End's Beginning

Orders arrived by courier-wing late that afternoon.

“From Bilbalo,” Captain Mickel said, handing Augusta Novo the little roll of parchment. The general tore the twine and scanned the message. A grim smile creased his scarred features.

“Confirmation,” he said simply, crushing the paper slip in one mailed fist. “Burn this, and mobilise the battalions. I want the first cutting parties in place on the western edge of the Tanglewild by nightfall.”

“And what if the werekynd resist?” Mickle asked. Novo’s smile never wavered.

“No prisoners.”

* * *

“Another one?” Verreck asked. Hrothgar only nodded. He’d started awake after a deep trance-sleep, snarling, shuddering. The beast within had been growling softly – more resistance than it had offered the old werekynd in years. He’d been shaken by that, even more so than he had been by the vision.

The seer closed his eyes, willing the strands of memory to weave themselves back together into coherent thought. Verreck watched in silence, breath baited. Two visions in the same day was unheard of.

“There are humans coming to the Tanglewild,” Hrothgar said, voice a low growl as he re-entered his trance-state. “I can see them.”

“Protectorate envoys?” Verreck asked quietly, afraid to break his master’s concentration. Hrothgar shook his head.

“No, soldiers. And a family.”

“A family?”

“Of humans. And a werekynd. A pup, one of Saarl’s.”

“What of the rest of his pack?”

“I cannot see,” Hrothgar said, his voice pained. “It is clouded, like their weaves have been torn apart. But this pup is fleeing them. He will not be a pup for much longer, and nor will the family be a family beyond tonight.”

“Do the Protectorates mean to invade us?” Verreck asked, trying to gently steer the seer’s consciousness back onto the more pressing issue.

“It is hard to see. So many conflicting ambitions entwine their approach. So much fear. Blood and ash. And –” his yellow eyes snapped open. “And the stench of the Miremere. The Miremancers are at the root of this rot.”

“If the Protectorates attack us again the packs will fight to defend the Tanglewild,” Verreck said. He was young, but still old enough to remember the slaughter of the last war. The beast within him growled at the memories, stoked to bloodshed.

“Only the boy can stop it,” Hrothgar said quietly, shaking his head. The seeing-beads rattled.

“Saarl’s pup?” Verreck prompted, but there was no reply. The vision had burned the seer out, and he slumped back with an exhausted grunt. Verreck eased the old prophet into a more comfortable position and sat, pondering what had been said. Hrothgar was the last of the werekynd seers, and his visions had never been wrong before. His words echoed around Verreck’s skull, hardening his heart and stoking the beast.

War was coming to the Tanglewild. It was as Hrothgar had said. The beginning of the end.

* * *

From the cavern of the seers Ulthric rook the high path north, cutting along the western valley side. The human family followed him. He neither ordered them away nor told them to stay close. He was afraid that even speaking to them would unleash the beast within. He was angry, and worst than that he was sore, cold, tired and supremely hungry. The urge to feed on the nearest thing he could get his claws on was almost overwhelming. The beast was ravenous.

He tried to focus as he walked, using the methods of silent concentration and regular breathing that the older werekynd had taught him. What would become of him now he was alone, without their guidance? Would the beast break free once more, turn him back to the feral less-than-animal he’d been when they’d first found him? He ignored such doubts, dedicating his thoughts to getting out of crow valley alive.

That would be easier said than done. He could see crowman hunting parties shadowing them – one further up the valley’s rocky slope, another below. The slaughter in the cavern had stung the tribesmen, and ensured they wouldn’t dare mount an assault on the main pack again anytime soon. But stragglers…

Ulthric was confident he could take both the groups of hunters provided they didn’t attack at once. There were no more than a dozen in each party, and they looked young, as young as him. They’d probably missed out on the main battle in the cavern and were now searching for something to vent their frustration on. Ulthric could empathise.

The Protectorate family made things much harder. If he unleashed the beast then Ulthric was confident of butchering the crowmen. But if he did so the family would almost certainly end up dead as well. He’d already suffered enough for them, it would be a supreme waste to come all this way and then wake up from the post-shift haze to find their blood on his fangs.

The humans themselves was utterly exhausted, all of them limping and straggle-haired, clothes ragged and covered in dirt. Ulthric could sense they were desperate to stop and rest, but that was not an option. The moment they gave the crowmen an opening would be the moment they’d strike. They had to keep moving.

The humans at least seemed to have enough sense not to voice complaints. The parents were probably battling with the shame of knowing their lives had been saved, on multiple occasions, by a man-beast. And who knew what was going through the children’s heads. The boy hadn’t stopped staring at Ulthric since he’d fallen asleep on his shoulder earlier that day. The werekynd had come to the conclusion that the child was mentally ill. No human he’d met since joining the pack had been so honest and open with his fascination.

Wordlessly, Ulthric led them off the track and further up the slope. The climb was punishing, and even with his stronger metabolism the werekynd found himself as panting and breathless as the humans. He was trying to get up and over the side of the valley, and then down to the flatlands just west of the Tanglewild. There the humans could turn westwards once more to their own homelands, and he could return to the soothing darkness of the Tanglewild to try and figure out what he was supposed to do next. Thoughts of the future, uncertain as it was, were too painful to contemplate now.

The crowmen gave up their shadowing as the sun began to drop towards the horizon. Hazoth, the Greater Moon, was already in the ascendency, and Ulthric and his charges had crested the valley’s slope. The crowmen had no desire to leave their natural territory in pursuit of the one man-beast. Ulthric found himself wondering whether the rest of the pack had made it clear as well. With Vega in charge now it wouldn’t surprise him if they’d found the nearest crowman settlement and gone on a killing spree. He wondered whether he’d ever see any of them again. Vrak’s parting words had been continuously running through his mind. If he really was soon to be the last member of the pack, did that make him pack leader? Was he supposed to bring younger werekynds into the fold, as they had with him? How could he possibly teach them control when he himself was still learning?

The doubts left him when he caught sight of what lay west of the Tanglewild. The vast, ancient forest stretched out below in the twilight, like some huge slumbering beast. It struck fear into the human’s hearts as readily as the sight of it gave him some small measure of hope and comfort to Ulthric. Yet lying between him and the safety of those thick, dark boughs was a body of men, their armour glinting in the last golden rays of the sun. Ulthric counted at least two hundred, and more groups of them further north, covering the plain to the west of the Tanglewood. Whatever activity they were engaged in was impossible to tell from so far away, but the work they were undertaking seemed frantic, and on a grand scale.

“There are your people,” Ulthric said to the family. “Return to them. I go to Tanglewild.”

“How can you tell from this distance?” the father asked. Ulthric bared his fangs in an expression of exasperation.

“They are humans are they not?”

“We are serfs of Duke Lorenzo,” the father explained. “If those soldiers are men of another Protectorate, they may bind us into slavery.”

“The ways of your peoples are strange, human. You are little better than the crowmen savages.”

“Can we skirt round them with you?” the father said. “We’ll follow you no further afterwards, I swear.”

Ulthric didn’t reply, just set off down towards the Tanglewild. The humans followed. As they reached the open plains, the wind snatching at Ulthric’s torn clothing and tussling his fur, the work that the large groups of humans were undertaking became apparent. Whilst cohorts of a hundred or more armoured warriors stood drawn up in battle array a larger swarm of labourers, many bare-chested, were setting to the brush and undergrowth of the Tanglewild’s outer limits with axes and shovels. A few had even reached the first old trees, laying in with mighty strokes of their tools. The sounds of frenetic industry echoed across the plains.

“What are they doing?” Ulthric demanded, his anger rising. He’d never heard of even the poorest human serfs daring to take wood from the Tanglewild, let alone a concerted operation involving thousands of them.

“We don’t know,” the father of the family said, his voice defensive. “We’re just humble farmers. This looks like the direct orders of Duke Lorenzo himself .”

“You recognise the banners?” Ulthric said. “Are these your people?”

“I think so…” the father trailed off as he realised Ulthric wasn’t listening anymore. The young werekynd’s attention had fallen on the group of human horsemen who were spurring from the closest phalanx of Protectorate infantry. They’d noticed the small, ragged band edging past them towards the Tanglewild, and were coming to investingate.

Ulthric felt his grip around the haft of his axe tighten. If ever there was a bad time for the beast to claim him, it was now.