Moving around the side of the barracks a delicious aroma tickled my nose.

“Is that bacon?” I asked, checking the corner of my mouth for drool.

“Fully stocked kitchen,” Kearse said as he pushed the door open.

The unabated aroma got my mouth to watering. I glided into the kitchen and reached for a steaming hunk of pork. My hand was tantalizingly close to the prize when a wooden spoon crashed down on it. I clutched the stung hand to my chest and stared at the large woman in a white apron brandishing the spoon in my direction.

“Ye kin wait yer turn!” she crowed, a mad look in her eye.

“Drake, meet Chef Constance,” smiled Kearse.

“Less than charmed,” I mumbled.

“Care to repeat that laddie?” her head cocked to the side, after a moments silence, “I thought nae.”

She raised her spoon again and we fled her domain.

To the left as we exited the kitchen was the large refectory and on the right was the only slightly smaller larder.

“Ahoy there captain!” came a voice from within the larder.

“That you Ezra?” Kearse called back.

Striding out from the larder was a large dark skinned man with a red and white striped shirt stretched tight over a muscled torso, dark pants and a patch over his right eye.

“’Tis a pleasure to see ye matey! Oo’s this lubber?”

“This here is the newest member of our crew, Drake Grant.”

“Oh aye? Glad to meet yer lad.”

“How does our larder look Ezra?”

“Fully stocked Cap’n, plenty of fruits and veggies and the cold room is full of meat. We could spend months out to sea with this bounty.”

“Keep up the good work Ez.” Kearse said.

Ezra snapped off a salute and jogged back into the larder. As we walked away I asked the commander “What was that all about Cap... er Commander?”

“Ezra went a bit mad when he lost his eye, his broken mind came up with the pirate persona as a way to cope.”

Climbing the stairs to the second floor, Kearse continued, “He’s a good lad, still has a head for numbers so I put him to work in the larder. He’s still quite the fighter as well.”

“How did he lose the eye?”

Kearse stopped on the stairs and looked down at me, “How do you think?” he asked, gazing out at the Wolf targets on the shooting range and stroking his own scars.

“Ah,” I said, lowering my gaze to the steps as we continued upwards.

As much as the first floor was about work, the second floor was about relaxation. On this floor were the baths and sauna, a lounge with a fireplace and fully stocked bar and the library. The library was the largest room on the floor, it contained a vast amount of knowledge; shelves and shelves of books on lycanthropes and other creatures next to treatises on the history of the realm and many, many other tomes.

“Come in lad, let me introduce you to our librarian. Nicolas Crosser.”

Nicolas was an aging man with receding, short cropped hair and a hawk’s beak nose. Wide set blue eyes twinkled with knowledge. His red robed body had a moderate stoop but he remained spry enough to lead us on a tour of the library without the assistance of a cane.

“Nicolas is the smartest man I’ve ever met, sometimes I think he has more knowledge in his brain than is in all these books,” Kearse said.

“Please, dear commander, I am just a scholar.”

“And a far too modest one. Pick a book Drake.”

“Why?”

“Just grab me a random book lad.”

I walked to the nearest shelf and selected a moderately large tome entitled Beasts of the Wild.

Commander Kearse opened the book to a random page and stabbed his finger down.

“The diet of the basilisk if you please Nicolas.”

“Is this really the best use of our time?”

“Humor me.”

“Very well,” he sighed, “The basilisk’s diet consists of whatever it sets it’s paralytic gaze on, anything from small goats to a full grown bull moose and anything in between. Including the occasional human. Now, if we’re going to do this let’s make the next one difficult.”

“Right,” Kearse said, thumbing through a few chapters, “Here we are. Coloration of the adolescent female Desert Harpy.”

“Brown wings with a deep red center that will gradually move out into the feathers as she ages. I did say difficult, yes?”

“How does it feel to stare down a full grown, rabid wolf?” I queried.

He turned a calculating gaze on me.

“Now that, I do not know. A fact of which I am quite glad. Now, can we end this childish game so that I may get back to my research?”

“Yes yes, Nicolas, we’ll stop bothering you,” Kearse patted the air in an appeasing gesture.

“On the next floor are the bunk rooms for the general soldiers,” Kearse informed me, heading up another flight of stairs. “On the right are the women’s rooms and to the left the men’s.”

Pushing open the door to the men’s dormitory revealed a sleeping form in one of the lower bunks. A well muscled man lay snoring under the thin blankets, his arm hanging down to the floor.

“That’s Isaac, he’s been here a week already, training hard every day.”

“He have any wolf kills under his belt?”

“Not yet, big lad like him shouldn’t have too tough of a time of it.”

“Should I choose my own bunk?” I asked.

“Not just yet. There’s one more floor to see.”

Softly closing the door he motioned me up the stairway to the fourth and final floor. The stairs let out into a hallway with several wooden doors on either side.

“These are the officers quarters,” he said, “From front to back they are assigned by rank. Yours is the first on our left Lieutenant.”

I was stunned. I was just a woodcutter.

“I’m just a woodcutter,” I brilliantly espoused.

“I have had my eye on you ever since my agents informed me about you and your father when you started bringing in pelts three years ago. Anyone who survives hunting wolves that long clearly knows his stuff, and has a certain amount of luck as well.”

“Can I think about it?”

“Certainly, but at least look at your room first,” he said, a glint in his eye.

The room was relatively small but lavishly decorated compared to my threadbare closet of a room back home. There was a sturdy oak dresser and wardrobe on one wall opposite a bed frame with the most comfortable feather mattress I had ever felt. On the back wall were the closet and private washroom on either side of a small window. I had never had a private washroom, just the privy out back and the wash basin I shared with my parents. Thinking of home made me miss my parents; mostly my mother but I thought fondly of my childhood when they would both tuck me in after a long day ’helping’ my father move lumber. My mother would give me a single kiss on each cheek and tell me how much they both loved me.

I was now my own man however, and I leveraged my way, ruefully, out of the bed and took Kearse’s hand. That sealed the deal, I was Lieutenant Grant in the First Royal Hunt.

“You said you noticed something odd about the Wolves you encountered on the way here?” Kearse asked, as he walked me down to the end of the hall and into his rooms. His door opened into an office with a large oak desk and two chairs, Kearse took the one behind the desk and I sat in the one nearer the door. “Please,” he continued, “tell me about it.”

I detailed the entire attack and informed him of the unusual attack patterns of the rabid wolves and the enormous Wolf I’d seen watching the battle.

Next Chapter: Chapter8