On the morning of the caravan’s departure, I was helping my fellow porters load the last of the wagons with the freshly purchased provisions when Matthew came to see us off. I had just heaved the last bag of grain onto the stack in the back of the wagon when I heard him call out to Lisa.
“Trying to slip away without saying goodbye, eh Little Fox?”
I poked my head around the side of the wagon in time to see him help her down from her perch atop her wagon and wrap her in a mighty embrace.
“My my,” he said, setting her down with a wink, “you’re getting fitter every time I see you. Come back soon.”
“You keep them flowery words flowin’ and I’ll be sure to.”
Next, he stopped and shook hands with the svelte blonde captain of the caravan guard.
“Safe travels Solomon.”
“We’ll keep her from harm brother,” Solomon saluted.
“I know you will,” Matthew said.
Walking over to James he gave the man a large smile and a hug with much back-slapping.
“Keep these lazy bums working hard,” Matthew laughed.
“They’ll sleep well at night,” James answered with a grin, “you can be sure of that.”
“Keep a special eye on this one,” Matthew said, putting an arm around my shoulders, “he’s indebted to me,” he chuckled.
“I’ll do my best to make sure he lives to pay it,” assured James with a smile.
“May Peragros, God of Travelers, watch over you all!” Matthew called as we took our positions on the wagons and the guards mounted their horses.
With a snap of the reins Lisa got her team of oxen moving and the rest of the caravan lurched into motion after her brightly painted wagon.
* * *
During our travels it was the job of the porters to clear the road of any obstacles, make repairs to the wagons, care for the oxen teams and to set up the camp each night. The guards took care of their own mounts of course, a good relationship with your mount can be the difference between life and death. After the first week of travel we had settled into a rhythm, we could have the oxen teams unhitched and watered and the tents erected around a cooking fire in twenty minutes flat.
The scenery didn’t change much over the first week, it was mostly flat grasslands between Dawn’s Vale and the Great Forest. The vast swathes of grasses rippled peacefully in the chill autumn winds. Our only company on the road was a few wagons traveling in the opposite direction, back towards the Vale. Most had skirted around the forest and had rejoined the trail afterward; one set of two wagons with four heavily armed guards had come through the forest, we spoke briefly and they reported smooth if eerie travel through the expansive woodland. They heard occasional noises in the night but nothing gave them any trouble.
One afternoon we saw a flock of harpies harrying a single wyvern through the sky, driving it away from their nests atop a distant mesa to the east. Lisa passed around a spyglass so everyone could get a look at the beasts. When the looking device was passed to me I got my first look at one of the flying lizard creatures. This particular specimen was green with red stripes marching down its back and red splotches on its outstretched wing membranes. Red also dripped from several long scratches on its flank where the sharp talons of a harpy had ripped into him. As I watched, one of the smaller harpies darted in too close and the wyvern’s scorpion-like tail lashed out and impaled the creature. The wounded harpy flapped its wings weakly for a moment and then plummeted from the sky, overcome by the poison in the wyvern’s sting. The rest of the flock wheeled back to their nests and the wyvern sailed on across the sky and out of sight.
We also saw several herds of mundane grazing animals, horses, buffalo, and antelope galloping across the open plain. We caught a fleeting glance of a group of hippogriff with young calves near the end of the week, the youths’ antlers were still tiny nubs on their heads, upon seeing us they took to the sky.
At the beginning of the second week the Great Forest came into view. The wide trail we followed was like the tiniest thread compared to the wall of trees stretching across our field of view. The first few hours of travel within the wood were fine, plenty of light filtered in through the trees and the path was wide enough to make a break in the canopy overhead. Soon enough however, the trees closed in and the amount of light getting through the boughs dropped off dramatically. As soon as evening rolled around lanterns on the sides of the wagons were lit and the guards clustered closer to the caravan.
Nerves were a bit frayed that night as we set up camp by flickering torchlight amidst pitch darkness. Several scared porters shouted at their fellows over minor mistakes. A few incidents came close to fisticuffs but James was always there to keep the peace with a level headed calm and made sure those involved parted as friends. Men whispered about what creatures lurked in the surrounding trees and no one slept well that night but we grabbed what rest we could and were on our way early the next morning, none of us wanted to stay in these woods longer than we had to.
On our second night in the Great Forest, I was sitting at the fire with some of the other porters, shoveling down a bowl of trail stew when one of the guards grunted and was hauled screaming out into the night. His screams and the growls of his assailant tipped me off to the presence of at least one werewolf.
“Stay near the fire!” I shouted, running to my kit. A few of the younger porters questioned this but the old hands followed my advice and dragged the younger men closer to the fire. Most of the guards stuck with the wagons, making sure the caravan wasn’t about to be ransacked. Grabbing the box of silver ammunition out of my pack I scooped out a fistful of rounds and levered open the rifle with shaking hands. The first round slipped from my fingers to the mossy ground but I managed to get the second and third into the breach. Hoping that would be enough I drew a deep breath, steeled myself and ran towards the sounds of a man being devoured.
One of the guards who followed me out, with a look back I realized it was Mycah, regretted his decision to do so when we found his dismembered colleague sprawled on the ground being fed on by a Wolf. He retched noisily into the bushes as I chambered a round and brought the rifle to my shoulder. The first round tore into the beast’s lower abdomen, it howled in pain and rage and its blood red eyes locked onto me. I always take good care of my weapons but this was an older model, not as reliable as the new line of rifles from the capitol gunsmiths and the bullets didn’t always fly true. I ejected the spent casing and adjusted my aim slightly, staring through the cold iron sights always calmed me down, gave me a place to focus my energy.
My second shot was on target, it pierced the beast’s heart as it charged me. The carcass plowed a furrow in the loose dirt of the forest floor as the beast crashed to the ground, smoke curling up from the charred wound in its chest.
Crouching down, I reached out and turned its head far enough to see the foam dripping from its enormous muzzle.
“Rabid,” I grunted. Something was wrong. Rabid Wolves attacked savagely and without thought. This one had crept in silently and dragged a man away.
Mycah had straightened from his retching and was cautiously approaching the scene.
“Quite the shot,” he complimented, wiping bile from his lips with a kerchief, a grudging respect in his eyes.
“Help me haul it back to camp and I’ll split whatever I get for the skin with you.”
“Deal.”
It was at this point that the screams sounded from the camp. Mycah and I dropped our burden and I looked at his weapon and indicated the empty breach in mine. He nodded and led the way at a sprint, his halberd pointed forward. We stumbled around a wagon into a scene of bloody chaos. There was a body collapsed in the fire with a burning Wolf corpse atop it, everywhere I looked guards were engaged in battle with Wolves. Solomon stood over the corpses of two Wolves keeping another pair at bay with whirling sweeps of his two silvered long-swords. The porters all had their backs to the fire and, James in the forefront, were waving flaming brands at three circling Wolves. Lisa stood atop the driver’s seat of her wagon reloading a blunderbuss, the body of a beast lay on the ground nearby, a smoking crater in its chest.
Luckily we had rounded the wagon with my pack in it and I grabbed more silver rounds and reloaded my rifle as Mycah charged into the fray to aid Solomon.
As I finished loading my rifle I took a moment to hook my ax onto my belt as well. Putting my eye the gun’s sights I took aim at one of the Wolves circling my weaponless friends and put two bullets into its back. Arching its spine and howling the creature collapsed into a motionless heap, its blood seeping into the dirt.
Shifting my aim I saw another Wolf leaping towards me. Throwing myself out of its path I caught sight of James charging forward to light the third beast aflame with his burning brand. My eyes darted back to the Wolf who had sailed through the air where my head had recently been, it had collided with the side of the wagon, the wooden siding was splintered and the beast was shaking its head as it rose from the ground. I rolled to my knees and shot it in the head, blood and brain matter splattering the cracked wood behind it.
Tracking the barrel of my weapon across the rest of the battle my iron sights found a Wolf chasing an unarmed guardsman. I shot the Wolf in the leg and as it collapsed I saw the guard’s non-silvered sword jutting from its back. I quickly ran over and finished the wounded beast off with a bullet to the head.
“Get to the fire,” I told the guard, tossing his blade back to him.
Staring wide-eyed he did as I asked.
The guards were dispatching the last of the creatures as I scanned the camp for more targets. In the trees beyond the fire I caught a glimpse of a red glow. Crouching in the underbrush was an enormous Wolf, the biggest I’d ever seen. It appeared to be watching the attack while trying to remain unseen. As if sensing my attention the beast looked in my direction, snarled and loped off, heading deeper into the woods. I took a shot at it but it was too far away and moving too quickly for me to aim properly and the bullet thudded into a tree.
We spent the rest of the night cleaning up after the battle. I used my ax to finish off any Wolves still twitching, silver wasn’t required to kill the beasts if you removed the head, while the others buried the two guards and three porters we had lost. Most of the Wolves showed some signs of rabies. The porters, and even a few of the guards, looked on as Mycah and I skinned what Wolves we could and burned and buried the remains away from the camp so that no animals ate the tainted meat and got sick.
We held a small ceremony over the graves of our fallen, Lisa spoke a few words and asked the Life Keeper to guide their souls home.
Afterward she approached me with thanks for my aid and Solomon shook my hand as well. We packed up camp and it was a somber group that continued towards the capital, the only sounds were the soft creaking of wagons and the rhythmic thumping of hooves.
The next night I dreamed I was back in the hills hunting Wolves with my father.
* * *
My father and I crept through the forest towards the cave the villagers had told us about, carefully placing our feet, being sure not to step on any twigs or dried leaves. Wolves had sharp hearing. My father had a tight grip on one of his pistols, the other strapped to his belt, and I carried a silver edged ax with my rifle on my back. I was still an awful shot, so I stuck with the melee weapon.
Suddenly, my father’s hand came up, his fingers curled into a fist. The sign for ’stop’. We crouched behind a shrub as a large Wolf dragged a limp body out of the woods and into the mouth of the cave. The young woman’s throat had been torn out and her entire torso was stained red. Snarls sounded as he disappeared inside the cave and we heard the sound of flesh being ripped from bones as the creatures within fed.
My father loosened the strap on his holster and drew his second pistol, waving me forward with it he padded around the bush. I went around the other side and we crouched down on either side of the cave entrance. The sun shining in through the mouth of the cave framed the woman’s face. Her dead eyes stared at us as though pleading for our aid, her head moved slightly as the beasts within worried at the meat. My father made the sign of the Life Keeper and stepped into the entrance both pistols out and blazing.
Silver bullets tore into the feeding beasts, dropping two of them immediately. One of the remaining three clutched at a hole in its leg, the last two charged towards my father. He stepped back from the entrance to reload and I readied my ax, waiting for the beasts to reach the cave mouth. As soon as I saw a slavering muzzle I swung the ax at neck level, parting a head from its body. Twirling my ax in my left hand I brought my right hand higher up and gripped the ax near its head. Bringing the silvered edge down hard into on the last Wolf, the heavy blade split the beast’s head in two.
Keeping our senses alert we waited for a tense minute until no other targets presented themselves. It was then that the smell wafting from the cave really hit us. It reeked of blood and offal, dreading what we would find we lit a torch and stepped into the cave. It was a charnel house of blood and bone scattered on the walls and floor, a full skeleton was impaled on a stalagmite.
Back then the flesh was stripped from all the bones. In this dream the bodies still had eyes and they all stared at me. Mouths opened in screams of agony.
I jerked awake, covered in sweat, my own faint screams ringing in my ears.