by Mark Tufo
CHAPTER 9 - Xavier
The Lycan had, for as long as any of them could remember, taken up residency in the wilds of the Yukon. Sometimes venturing as far south as upper Washington when winters were particularly difficult and food stores had suffered. When the zombies had come, the Lycan had approached them as they would any enemy, savagely and without mercy. And then more had come in numbers so vast that the only strategy afforded to the apex predator was to run. The command had come late and the Lycan had suffered grievous wounds to their clans. Fully sixty percent of their kind had fallen in those first few years before they learned that they could not fight the far superior hoards head on.
They used man as more than a meal, turning swaths of them into an uneasy ally. Werewolves had done as much to turn the tide of zombies as any man-driven army had. When the dust had settled and the zombie scourge had been purged from the lands. The Lycan found themselves with nearly unsustainable numbers and a deep hunger that their remote corner of the world could not quench. With great reservation they ventured further south than they had since mankind had crossed the ice bridge in great quantity. Mankind had been pushed further to the brink and the Lycan had to travel far and wide to feed. It wasn’t food that completely drove them; they also had to reign in their wayward children. Werewolves were untrained savages that killed for the enjoyment of it and, if left unregulated, would quickly destroy any vestiges of man.
Some of the Lycan had fought savagely against their own kind to let that happen. Man had been its own plague against the Lycan, and some saw a better world without them. Others argued that man was the reason Lycan were so powerful and without them they would be reduced to shepherds guarding flocks of sheep and cows from wolves. A fracture that the animal could not survive began to form until one came forward and ruthlessly cut off the heads of the opposition – the rest had fallen in line.
“Xavier, our scouts are back.” Ashe, the second-in-command, said to his leader who was sitting in an old office chair looking out over the land.
Ashe did not like the fact that they were so high up in what the humans once called a skyscraper. Lycan were not meant to be up this high. The wind howled around them, the glass had been blown out ages ago. The smell of bird scat dominated the area. Xavier was inches from the precipice, his back to Ashe.
“This will all be ours,” he said, standing and turning. Ashe was tall for a Lycan, but still Xavier dwarfed him not only in height but also in breadth; it had been no wonder that he was now the Storm King. “How did the training go?” Xavier asked.
“Mostly well.”
Xavier’s eyebrow arched.
“We lost a couple of werewolves to a village to the east. One was lost, fell down an old well and was impaled. Lost a group to a small band of humans, perhaps.”
Xavier was waving the losses off they were inconsequential to him.
“Normally I would agree, but scout leader Smoke said one of the humans was different.”
“How so?” Xavier asked.
“Faster than he should have been.”
“Interesting, is Smoke up here?”
Ashe turned and walked a few paces, opening up a door that seemed to be holding on merely by force of habit.
Smoke, the Ranger, came in, even more visibly upset with the height than Ashe was.
“What excuse for failure do you have?” Xavier asked.
Smoke growled.
“Careful or I’m going to see if your arms move fast enough for flight,” Xavier said.
A look of consternation passed over Smoke’s features. His desire to live won out over any sort of vengeance for the slight. “The werewolves were performing as necessary. We had killed and destroyed three of the men and their mounts we then tracked another six deeper into the woods. The werewolves attacked, killing one of the men. But one that was with them killed two almost in an instant, and then assisted in killing the third.”
“Did you fight?” Xavier asked.
“No.”
“So you watched as your pack was destroyed and did nothing?”
Smoke shifted uneasily from foot to foot. “My orders were to train the werewolves, not fight by their diseased sides.”
“Did you feed from their kills?” Xavier asked. Smoke’s head bowed. “I thought as much. They were good enough to eat with but not fight with?”
“Sir, one of the men was an Old Worlder,” Smoke replied, licking his maw.
Xavier moved quickly. He grabbed the smaller scout around the neck and lifted him off the ground with one powerful arm. He turned and moved towards the open window.
“DO NOT SPEAK TO ME OF OLD WORLDERS!” he raged. Smoke’s feet were dangling over a two hundred foot drop. “Ashe, what do you know of Old Worlders?” Xavier asked as he clamped harder on Smoke’s throat.
“They were vampires, my lord,” Ashe stated.
“And?” Xavier asked.
“And in the time of Flining (flining was the process of vampires proving their prowess) they would perform their rite of passage by hunting and killing Lycan,” Ashe added.
“We came to this new land, Smoke, to be rid of the bloodless ones!” Xavier screamed as he shook Smoke around like a rag doll. “They hunted us into the deepest depths of the world that they could until we were a huddled petrified mass of fur hidden in caves. It was our ancestors that found a way to hide us in plain sight disguised as the humans. We were wolves hiding in sheep’s clothing, not because we wanted to but because we had to. The bloodless ones hunted us for sport and because we were a threat to them. Competition amidst the top of the food chain is not tolerated well. Instead of fighting, we slunk off, much like you, Smoke.” Smoke never cried out as he hurtled through space, his body cracking open as he violently collided with the earth.
Xavier turned back around as if nothing had happened. “Where was he patrolling?”
“East…by the human dwelling Denarth.” Ashe replied.
“Do you believe him?” Xavier asked, sitting back down.
“He was one of our top Rangers. I have no reason to doubt his words.”
“An Old Worlder joining in the fight with humans…this could get interesting,” Xavier said. “We will be able to exact some measure of revenge on two enemies.”
Ashe wasn’t as confident. Like all other Lycan he had been brought up with a dark fear of the bloodless ones. “Will they have marshaled an army?” Ashe asked, swallowing back his fear.
Xavier laughed. “Relax, Ashe, vampires despise their own kind almost as much as they do us. They would never unite.”
We could say the same about us and werewolves, but yet here we are, Ashe thought but he did not put it to voice.
“We may have to push our attack,” Xavier said to Ashe. “That idiot Smoke may have given our plans away. Ashe, send up a human, I’m starving.”
“Right away,” Ashe said, bowing and heading out.
A few moments later he returned pushing a small child onto the floor.
“I ask for a feast…you throw me a scarecrow.”
The girl was a huddled mass on the floor. Dirt covered her from head to toe. She was shivering from the cold.
“How have these hairless monkeys survived?” Xavier asked, stepping closer to the girl. “Rise, child.”
The girl looked wildly about and did as she was told. “Yes.” She held her chin high, but her quivering thighs and knees showed her true feelings.
“I’m sorry, my lord, we are running low on stock,” Ashe said.
“Then get some more!” Xavier replied.
“Where are you from, girl?” Xavier asked, placing his large paw under her chin. He turned her face from side to side. “You could have cleaned her up before you brought her to me.”
“Harbor’s Town, my lord,” the girl said trying her best not to cry.
“A lot of people there in Harbor’s Town?”
“Yes,” she replied meekly.
“How many?” he asked, squeezing her jaw until she squealed in pain.
“I...I don’t know, my lord. I don’t know my numbers.”
“Ashe?” Xavier asked.
“Five hundred.”
“Wonderful, that will be our test. Next moon we will descend upon Harbor’s Town and start our war against mankind in earnest. Now leave us, I do not like to eat in front of others.”
Ashe bowed and left. The cries of a girl where quickly replaced by the rending of meat as Ashe walked down the corridor. They weren’t ready, not now and possibly not ever. The werewolves would do their bidding up to a point, but they were wild beasts more likely to cause trouble than eradicate it. Ashe was not alone in his disgust about tainting a diminishing food supply, add to that they would have to go out on multiple hunts to kill any werewolves that got away and it just didn’t make any sense.
Letting the humans repopulate was the wiser course of action and then the entire clan could cull them at their leisure. They were not overlords, they weren’t rulers and conquerors; they were predators that dragged down their prey and ate the steaming pile where it lay. To destroy man was to destroy themselves. He had doubted that Xavier would someday see the error of his ways. He could only hope he would fall in battle before he did any lasting damage.
