by Samit Basu
‘Danh-Gem at his worst, or even the ravians during the Age of Terror, would never have sent human children into battle to be slaughtered,’ said the Civilian.
‘They really do see humans as cattle. As do the rakshases, of course. What will the rakshases of Shantavan do with the villagers?’
‘I wish I knew, Amloki.’
‘Only the gods can save them now,’ said Amloki.
‘Do not speak words of ill omen,’ said Temat.
Chapter Five
From the war journals of Unut the asur
So, I got a story. A werewolf I knew for a few hours, the greatest hero I’ll ever meet in my life, told me that when werewolves sat around a fire and told tales, there was one simple rule for telling whether a story was good or not; if good, it would have an introduction, several bodies, and an ending.
This is a good story, then.
I’m writing this in my tent. Used to share it with Saroo, but Saroo’s dead; he was in the 15th, and they’re all gone. My hand’s trembling, left eye’s still out, bladder’s melting again, but my chances of getting fixed are about as good as my chances of getting Munni and Migna to come with me, covered in oil, to the Swamp of Sticky Romance, so I better write this down while I got any hands left, before my flea-ridden tick-headed blister-sucker corporal stops pickling his pea-sized head with wormwood wine for long enough to remember to send me out on another suicide mission.
Weekend before last. I’m enjoying some well-deserved R and R, playing headball with the lads in the 15th, against the lads from the 10th, who got called back to the Tower after the 15th got wiped out by a Ventelot raid. I’d just kicked the 15th’s ex-captain’s skull over the defensive line into the goal, and I was looking for someone to hurt as part of my celebration when I got a call from the big ugly’s tent. Unut, you horrible bastard, he says, I got a job for you. Piss off, I says, I got three weeks of leave after the last mission, by the Dark Lord’s newest scheme. Insublubnation me again and I’ll make you eat your ma’s arm, he says. You can’t, I says, my wee sister ate that already, and it’s in-sub-or-din-a-tion, as you’d know if you did your reading like the Dark Lord wanted. So then he hit me, and I hit him, and he hit me again, with a club, and promoted me to under-corporal, and I volunteered for the job. If I’d known what it was going to be like, I’d have held out until they made me general.
So, five days after that, I found myself lurking, innocent like, in the woods around Castle Blagyar, waiting for my crack team of experts to show up, because I sure as hells wasn’t going to storm the castle by myself.
A little history, in case you don’t know what Castle Blagyar is, and many don’t, unlike me, who does. Know. Many many cycles ago, there was this madman, human, Baron or Count or Some Fancy Toffness Blagyar, one of the old-fashioned centipede-eyebrows vulture-nose brigade, and he lived in this big spooky castle on top of a hill, all tall and crooked, with those upside-down cone things and those wall things that look like teeth on top and no windows and scary outlines, right in the middle of werewolf country up north. And this was proper werewolf country – big moons, empty trees, gypsies dressed up to look scared and bloody to rob people, thunder round the clock, serfs hiding in bushes howling and screaming at night for atmosphere, bats, crows, the works. Loveliest real estate you could imagine. Old Man Blagyar had one of those V names, Vlad or Viktor or Vassili and that was where the trouble began. He used to be this dashing sort, you know, adventure sports – white water rafting, dashing off to Skuanmark and ravishing shield-maidens, impaling people on huge big spikes – and everyone liked him, until he started putting white paint on his face, talking with a sock in his mouth and pretending to be a vampire. That scared people. Not funny things, vampires - they’d already been hunted out of existence, but people didn’t know that back then, and here was this chap biting people and running down street corners saying Hark, The Cheeldren of the Naaiight, How They Seeng, and other such nonsense. So the humans got a nice mob together, pitchforks and torches and beer, ran around yelling, and burned down the castle, with him in it.
Blagyar didn’t die. Instead, he spent some money, rebuilt the castle with even more turrets and slits in walls and things, and lived in it, hiring a few asurs as servants and not going out much. Because of what had happened to him, he became all crazy about death. Trying to conquer it, and so on – alchemists had been doing that for centuries, but old Blagyar didn’t travel much. He decided he’d find a way to bring a dead man back to life. It’s funny, thinking how little people knew back then – just a few weeks’ journey south and he could have found as many undead as he wanted in Elaken. Instead, he stayed at home, building fancy machines to trap lightning and stick it into corpses and so forth. At some point the asurs got sick of his raving and hired an undead to come and pretend to be a corpse and wake up when he prodded it – this worked, and the old man died of shock, ending the Blagyar line.
But before he took off for hells unknown, he’d done some important things. Like, he’d built this extremely sinister castle, see, with big dungeons full of beasts he’d trapped and saved up for experiments – and remember it was werewolf country. This meant he’d also invented hundreds of different kinds of shackles and chains and things to keep things locked up for years and years, and the asurs made fortunes selling his simpler designs. The more tricksy designs they couldn’t come close to understanding. He’d also written the Blagyar Journals, a bunch of notes on life and death and magic and monsters and stuff, which were rumoured to be very important, but no one had ever seen them – they’d stayed hidden away somewhere in his big old spooky castle.
The werewolves took back the land after Blagyar popped it, but ravians captured the castle during the Age of Danh-gem’s Glory. What they did there I don’t know, but the Age ended, and they left, and werewolves ruled the land again—stubborn buggers, those werewolves. The secrets of castle Blagyar were still all locked away, and no one went after them because there were all sorts of nasty rumours flying around the place. Werewolves were too scared to go inside, saying there were twisted werewolves in there, creatures who’d been torn from the way of the wolf by Blagyar’s machines, werewolves who’d lived inside the castle for generations and had no idea what the world outside was like. And when werewolves are too scared to do something, that’s usually it; chances of the thing getting done are as good as my chances of getting Migna and Munni, covered in mud, to come up with me to the Mountain Cave of Interestingly Shaped Little Rocks. No one was going to risk being cursed by the ghost of Blagyar or something just to read some of his journals.
Then, about a hundred years after the Age of Danh-Gem, when the asurs were remaking our glorious empire, there were all these other stories, about a mysterious White Lady who’d come to the castle, who could be seen wandering around the battlements, singing, and doing other spooky things. How she got along with the castle’s mad werewolves I don’t know, and no one around Castle Blagyar was very curious either. But there was no longer any howling in the night (inside the castle, that is; they still went at it full force outside, it was werewolf country, remember) and as long as no one was bothering them, the werewolves didn’t mind, and neither did the Skuans, who officially owned Blagyar’s land. The werewolves kept travellers out of Blagyar land, and the White Lady kept the werewolves out of the castle. Good times. This was the story all of us grew up with – though I doubt rakshases or any of the Big Bads would have even heard it—there was an evil White Lady with an army of enchanted beasts in Blagyar, who liked luring little asurs into the castle and eating them raw. Blagyar was off the big trade roads and most asurs weren’t sure whether it was a real place, or just some made-up old country from vampire stories. I knew, though, because I read my geography like the Dark Lord said.
End of history lesson. About two weeks ago the Dark Lord started getting reports of trouble in Blagyar. The werewolves who lived in the woods around the castle sent Alpha Laakon word that someone or something in the castle was making werewolves disa
ppear, and there were howls and screams in the night, vague flashes of light and dark clouds permanently camped over Castle Blagyar. Which was all good fun, really, but Laakon didn’t like the disappearing werewolves bit, and went whining to the Dark Lord.
The Dark Lord told someone to take care of it, and that someone told someone else, and so on, until there I was, waiting for my team to turn up, like I said. And turn up they did, an hour late, and said they’d all insisted the asur be asked to come an hour early. Udder-suckers, but can’t blame them. Most asurs would have been late. I wouldn’t have, because I’ve read books on punctuality, but you know how it is.
Now I’ve been on a lot of campaigns and important secret missions in my life. That’s why I was the first choice for something like this. But in all my two and twenty years, I’d not met anything like my team that night, and if I go on a hundred other missions and live to see thirty, I doubt I’ll ever do anything to compare with our raid on Castle Blagyar.
My team.
The first one to turn up was a big pashan. Granite, tough, quiet. Asked me to call him Bitnun. I’d heard of him; brain like a peahen, but good man to walk through walls with.
Then there was a sizzle in the air next to me, and I almost wet myself when I saw a pair of white eyes shining in the dark next to me, and leaves and dust hurrying along to fill out a woman’s shape. An air-jinn. She said her name was Artimagnas. That was good enough for me.
But the last member of our team was the most famous of us all – the legendary Blue Wolf himself, tribeless Borjigin, who I’d thought had howled his last at least a hundred years ago. Grizzled, old, but with the most massive body I’d ever seen on a werewolf, and I’d seen a lot of werewolves. His fur was patchy, one paw dragged on the ground, but I could see why his name was still passed around. Had that thing. Commanding aura. Usually meant you were a complete gas-hole, but old Borji had a twinkle in his milky eyes as well. Call me a sap, call me a tulip-face, call me what you want, from far away if you’re smart, but I liked him.
So there we were, the boys, well, the boys and jinn, chatting about this and that, exchanging notes, sizing one another up, with the great big hulking castle in front of us, some very pleasant howl-work for music, and what they call a sickle moon for light. Lovely as a jar of eyeballs.
Borji told us what we were facing. I was shocked, but the rest seemed to know. Well, Arti smiled and Bitnun grunted, which could have meant anything.
Ravians.
A bunch of ravians had sneaked into the castle, and were running Blagyar’s machines on whatever was inside. We had to break in and destroy everything, which was hust the kind of highly specific mission statement I like. The tickhead back at camp had given me a separate mission – I had to find the Journals of Blagyar. Borji was in it for revenge, and Arti and Bits had just been told what to do. Fair enough.
Borji had arranged for a pack of local werewolves to run up the front path and cause a general ruckus, and while they were doing that, Arti sneaked us all over the walls at the back. Inside the castle grounds, we lurked around for a bit and split up; Arti and Borji, who’d be most likely to survive ravian attacks, headed into the castle, and Bits and I took the dungeons. There was a whole lot of clanging and clashing going on at the front gate, and I heard ravian voices for the first time, high and shrill and cold, like human voices with knife-edges attached to them. Scary stuff.
We were lucky, Bits and I. We only met one ravian, a fat old idiot jailer, sleeping in a guardroom. He woke up as Bits charged, but Bits squished him easily enough. We stomped his body for a bit, took the keys, giggling like crazy – well, I was, anyway – and we started setting prisoners free.
The Blagyar dungeons were in fairly bad shape. Cobwebs, large reptiles, hordes of rats – nice enough if you like your dungeons ornamental, but far too cluttered for my taste. First few cells just had skeletons of people and werewolves who’d died in strange poses. But as we got lower and deeper into the dungeons, we found old live werewolves in cells, whimpering in fear as we opened the doors, some mad, really thin werewolves Bits had to kill, because they just attacked him without question, and bit his stone body again and again, in a frenzied sort of way, until he took their heads in his hands and popped them. Some of the scared old ones settled down after a few minutes, though, and told us what had happened.
They’d been living for years in the castle, quite peacefully, helping the White Lady with magic. Turned out she was some kind of sorceress trying to build windows between worlds; she’d talked the werewolves, Blagyar’s prisoners, into working for her instead of going out and hunting in a world they didn’t know, where they wouldn’t be welcome. Must have taken a lot of persuasion. Anyway, the ravians had come out of nowhere, and they’d locked up the Lady and her wolves in the dungeons, and every day they’d take out a werewolf or two and take them upstairs, and then there would be one werewolf less in the dungeon.
I sent Bits off to open all the other cells, and asked the wolves to take me to the White Lady. A couple of ravians came running into the dungeons at one point, but I’d put five old and very angry werewolves at the entrance, so you can guess what happened to them.
The other old boys took me down to the very lowest level of the dungeons. I had the keys, so I opened the doors, one by one. Six cells, in a row. Single torch, which I blew out to see clearly. The first two cells were empty. The second cell had a ravian in it – he started yelling like anything when he saw us, but the old boys tore him to bits. Strange.
Fourth cell, we found the White Lady.
She was really ugly, uglier than most humans, all skinny and smooth and a little shiny. They’d beaten her up, the poor thing, she was covered with bruises and scared and half mad. But the wolves went up to her and licked her and freed her, and soon she was up on her feet, holding on the wolves, and thanking me for being her brave saviour.
I told her to cut the flirting and tell me what was going on at Blagyar.
She told me, and that was the scariest thing I’d ever heard.
The ravians had come to Blagyar to create monsters using their own people. They’d come to make ravian werewolves.
Turns out they’d found Blagyar’s journals long ago, and learned enough blood magic to ensure that the ravian werewolves, after they turned, would be loyal to ravians and not the way of the wolf. They hadn’t done it back in Danh-Gem’s day – must have had some shred of good sense left in them – but they were doing it now.
They had taken the first ravian prisoner upstairs three days ago. They’d come back for the second one a few hours ago.
I asked the White Lady why she was in line, was she a ravian? She said there was no time to tell the whole story, because the ravians would be here soon – and if I had any goodness in me, all I should think of was burning the castle down and killing everyone in it.
We got the two other ravians out of the cells, and then we were all sort of standing around in the dark, wondering what to do next. I said we’d wait for Bits to get back with as many werewolves as he could, then he’d lead the werewolves and ravian prisoners in a charge while the White Lady and I sneaked upstairs and swiped some journals.
The White Lady asked me a question then, a question I’ve been asked many times. Why me? What was I doing here with a pashan, a jinn and a bunch of werewolves? I told her why – my superiors knew I had been blessed. An old asur wise-woman had seen me when I was a wee thing, and told me mother I would never be the strongest or bravest or cleverest, but I would succeed, and I would survive. The White Lady patted my head then in a condescending sort of way, and blessed my dear sweet brave heart, and I was going to punch her in the teeth, but I didn’t because she was so frail.
There was a thumping on the stairs leading up from the dungeon, stone on stone, coming closer. Bits had returned, I thought, and walked up closer to see.
Well, it was Bits, but not quite how I’d expected. It was just his head, rolling down the stairs.
I yelled a fair bit, and the
werewolves charged, and a couple of ravians came running down the stairs, and there was a bit of a brawl. I’m not sure what happened, because one second I was hanging on to a ravian’s ear with my teeth and the next the White Lady came up and grabbed me and the next thing I knew we were running out of the dungeons, I don’t know how she did it. Not that I care. I was busy running. The White Lady led me up lots of twisty stairs, saying we were heading for the main hall, where old man Blagyar had tried bringing men back to life, where the ravians were now making monsters with his notes.
So, I won’t get into big descriptions, because my right arm’s really beginning to hurt now, but you know the drill. Big hall, lots of machines, chains and cobwebs all over the place. And a bunch of ravians running about in panic, because Morji and Arti had been found, and were kind of the centre of the party, and the werewolves who’d attacked the gates had broken in, and they were bounding about all over the place causing very serious property damage. But no one was breaking more stuff than Arti – she was flying around the room like a demon wind, tearing chain links, sending flame-torches flying, and dust-blasting ravians, peeling off their skins. Most of the hall was in flames, and chains were clanking and gears were grinding like there was no tomorrow. In the centre of the hall, there was this stone platform, with a ravian on it, tied down with the kind of chains they use to keep ships still. He wasn’t enjoying himself, unless he normally squealed like a pig while having fun. He’d been Bitten, he was Turning. The weirdest thing was, he had these baby clothes on his face. You know, the little square things humans use to preserve baby waste? This was more perverted than anything I’d seen, and I’d seen a lot of perversion in my life, growing up where I did.
Anyway, the ravians were in a ring around him, hitting the werewolves with big flying broken metal things, but the werewolves kept coming, right up to the point where they got their heads smashed, and sometimes even then. Borji was right in the middle of it all; he was roaring like anything, and holding two big gears in his hand, swatting away everything the ravians were throwing at him. That was some sight.
