War of the Werelords

by Curtis Jobling

  “Baron Bosa has moved on already, I hear?” she continued.

  “Indeed,” replied the duke. “He said there were bigger fish to fry along the Cold Coast. There’s talk of even more Bastians making for our shores. I’m grateful to the Werewhale and his fleet for their timely incursion in Calico Bay. Had they not come to our assistance when they did, Brenn knows what fate would have awaited my people.”

  “You mention Bosa’s fleet, Your Grace, but those were actually the Wolf’s ships. The baron is one of Drew’s men, having sworn fealty to the rightful king of Westland.”

  “And why does this Wolf king not show his face to us? Do I not merit an appearance from the fabled son of Wergar, the lycanthrope at the heart of this sorry war?”

  “Lord Drew is otherwise engaged,” said Whitley, her own annoyance just about in check. She had not wanted to leave Drew’s side, but circumstances had dictated that their paths had to diverge. “He has sailed on to the desert realm of Omir, while I headed straight for Calico and the newly liberated Lords of the Longridings. My path takes me north, Your Grace, to Sturmland where our enemies await.”

  “Your enemies are your own business, my lady,” said the Bull. “I’ve had as much of this war as I can stomach. You may go north with my blessing.”

  Whitley stood agape. “I didn’t come here to seek your blessing, Your Grace,” she snapped. “I came here seeking soldiers.”

  “You’ve brought soldiers of your own, I see. No need for you to take any of mine.”

  “There is every need for the men and women of the Longridings to join us on the march north. As you yourself observed, my soldiers are Bastian warriors who now fight as brothers-in-arms against our common enemy.”

  “More Bastians coming to fight in Lyssia?” scoffed Brand. “Well, isn’t that just what we need? I hardly see how the Tigerlord’s warriors are an answer to our worries. The Lion king Lucas’s Redcloak army and the Goldhelms of Lord Onyx still swamp the Seven Realms.”

  “The Furies are but a small fraction of the solution to our problems,” said Whitley, fists curled earnestly as she took another step forward to lean against the table.

  Brand waved a mighty hand dismissively. “March north, my lady, with your southern friends by your side. The Longridings never asked to be part of the Wolf’s war but somehow managed to get dragged into it.”

  “This war was inevitable, with or without Drew’s emergence in Westland. King Leopold was only the beginning of the Bastian invasion.”

  “And that invasion is in ruins now! You said it yourself, the Catlords are divided, their army in pieces! Let the Lion keep Westland—”

  “Do you really think Lucas will be content with just a small portion of our continent? He wants the lot, Brand, as does Onyx. Our enemy may be divided, but they remain intent upon taking Lyssia for their own. They want everything.”

  “Mind your manners, child,” rumbled the duke. “I doubt your father raised you to speak to your betters in such a charmless fashion.”

  “Presently, Your Grace,” she said, scouring the assembled court in the Bull Pen, “I’ve yet to spy any betters.”

  Brand punched the table, enraged.

  “Insolent little wretch,” he snorted. “Come to my hall and disrespect me, will you?” His brow split, horns sliding out of his temples like two monstrous spears. The audience of assembled nobles gasped, stepping backward, and even Ransome quickly staggered clear, as the Werebull shifted shape before them. Only Whitley remained motionless, feet locked firmly in place, her eyes fixed fiercely upon the duke while her heart quaked. Perhaps I should fear the Bull after all?

  Brand grabbed the table and pulled it to one side, his temper exploding in the face of the contemptuous girl from Brackenholme. His powerful legs had transformed, great cloven hooves striking the flagged floor like steel against stone.

  “You seem to forget, Your Grace,” she shouted, “that you have Lord Drew to thank for your freedom! It was the Wolf’s fleet that sailed to your aid, scuttling Scorpio’s fleet. Tell me, how close to starvation were the people of Calico before Bosa sailed into the bay and liberated you from Scorpio’s siege? Before the Wolf was victorious on your behalf?”

  Whitley moved now as the Werebull snatched at her, ducking under his grasp and moving around him. Light on her feet, she kept him turning, making a mockery of his frustration before his cowed and trembling courtiers. Some of the noblemen and ladies cried out, panicked. Whitley was vaguely aware of shouting and a fresh commotion at the entrance to the Bull Pen, but her attention was focused solely on the duke and his terrible horns.

  “Is that how you win a war, Duke Brand?” she called out. “Hiding behind your giant walls while other men—better men—give their lives?” She turned to the cowering crowd. “What of the other Lords of the Longridings? The Bull of Calico grants you shelter, and you leave your backbones at the door? Will none of you help us?”

  “Shut up, you wretched child,” roared the Werebull, stamping the floor as he lowered his head, blinded by rage. “Silence or so help me . . .”

  “What?” she growled back, rust-brown fur emerging from her skin. “You’ll attack me? I suppose you can take me, Brand, since I’m just a girl. Perhaps you feel I’m not worthy opposition for the once powerful Lord of the Longridings? Well, I promise you this,” she said, claws and teeth growing as she prepared for his charge, “I’ll leave you with something to remember me by.”

  As the Werebull lunged at her, Whitley leapt high, seizing Brand’s monstrous head. The two wrestled across the chamber, the half-transformed Bearlady gripping the duke with all her might, while the onlookers watched on in wonder. She had Brand in a headlock, twisting and turning the duke as he tried to wrestle free. The duke’s cloven feet struck the ground, their clatter rattling off the Bull Pen’s walls as the two struggled for dominion. Finally tearing himself loose, the Bull collapsed through a darkened alcove, crashing into the wall, plasterwork crumbling with the impact. He struggled to his feet, bellowing at his guards.

  “Pass me an ax!” he snorted. “Now!”

  Before any soldier could comply, a blond-maned Horselord pushed through the throng, making his way toward the two combatants. He was partially transformed and more than prepared for a fight, his eyes fixed upon the Bull.

  “Have you taken leave of your senses, Duke Brand?” asked Whitley’s champion, his nostrils flaring as his long face flushed with anger. “I return to court to find you trying to kill our guest?”

  “She’s no guest of mine,” snorted Brand, glaring at the Werestallion, who positioned himself between the duke and the girl. “Stand aside, Conrad.”

  “Why?” said the Horselord. “So you may harm her?”

  “So I may turn her out of my city!” shouted the Bull.

  “Then you turn my brethren and me out, too,” replied Conrad, gradually shifting back to human form as his temper subsided. “Whitley is a friend to the people of the Longridings. She is an ally of ours.”

  “Of yours, young Horselord.”

  “Of ours,” repeated Conrad, pointing at the girl as her fur receded. “The Bears of Brackenholme have suffered more than anyone in this war, yet still they fight on. I witnessed her brother slain at the hands of King Lucas and saw many of her people butchered on the street in Cape Gala. We owe them our freedom, Your Grace. Don’t treat her this way. The Wolf is our ally.”

  “Yours, perhaps,” said the Bull, shifting slowly back to human form, as more plaster crumbled free from the bricks at his back. “But not mine. You remember my son, girl?”

  Whitley shook her head, unable to recall if she had ever met him. “I cannot say I do.”

  “He was a ward to Baron Ewan, the Ramlord of Haggard. Just a lad, my dear, sweet Dorn. And then he met your friend the Wolf. Death followed swiftly, Bearlady. He took up arms alongside Drew Ferran and died for his troubles. I can never forgive
the Wolf for what happened to my son.”

  Whitley cast her mind back, the memories now returning, but cloudy and distorted. The grim events of Lord Dorn’s death had been lost among the hundreds of others she had witnessed in the intervening time. But Brand spoke the truth. The young Bull had aided Drew in freeing the prisoners of the Goatlord Kesslar in Haggard. Dorn was murdered for his troubles, little more than a boy, the same age as Drew.

  “Go with her if you must, Horselord,” muttered Brand miserably, remaining in the alcove’s shadows. “Take your brother Stallions with you. But count me out. I owe the Wolf nothing.”

  2

  KILLER CHARM

  DREW FERRAN STARED at the tarnished mirror fixed to the wall, the swinging lanterns and jangling ephemera providing a grating chorus around him as the ship gently rocked. Oddities from every corner of the Seven Realms had been collected down the years by the Maelstrom’s skipper, finding their way onto the ceiling of the captain’s cabin. Discolored and clouded though the mirror’s surface was, there was no mistaking the young man who glowered back. His thick mop of black hair had grown down to his shoulders, in desperate need of a good cut, while his jaw was peppered with the dark stubble of a beard. His skin was tanned dark, thanks to months on the road and at sea, crossing oceans and continents, exposed to the elements.

  Had it really been almost two years since his journey had begun? Drew closed his eyes, thinking back to the farmhouse where he had grown up, the night of the storm and the beast that had followed. He shook his head and grimaced, the memory of his murdered foster mother flashing through his mind, her throat torn by the Ratlord Vanmorten. Drew had changed so much, and he was not alone. What had become of his old friend Hector, the Boarlord of Redmire? He had left his bookish friend behind in Highcliff, thinking he would be safe. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Hector’s path had been a dark one as he dabbled in necromancy, ultimately taking him north to Icegarden. Was he still there? Could he truly have become the monster people said he was?

  When Drew opened his eyes he was no longer alone. The grinning visage of Count Vega had appeared in the mirror at his back.

  “By Sosha, we could be related!” the Sharklord declared, laughing and tousling his friend’s hair. He wasn’t wrong, Drew had to agree: they shared the same dark looks.

  “My father?” Drew teased.

  “I was thinking of a more charming, handsome, slightly older brother.” He clapped the youth’s back. “Come. They’re waiting for you on deck.”

  The heat was instant and punishing as they went up top, the Maelstrom’s decks bleached of moisture and color. There were few places to shelter from the sun’s fierce rays, and Drew instantly wrapped his kash around his face. Few aboard the pirate ship had gone without the Omiri headgear since they had sailed into the Sabre Sea, the kashes providing protection against the terrible heat, especially during the midday sun. But there was another reason why the young Wolflord wore the kash: the Maelstrom was anchored in the deeper waters of Denghi harbor, in view of the neighboring ships within the Bloody Bay. To be spotted by anyone sympathetic to the Lion could mean the end of the impending battle before it had begun.

  Drew was not the only one disguised. The Maelstrom had received a makeover: her pristine sails were replaced by tattered, patchwork affairs, her decks and hull cluttered with nets and lobster pots. The gun decks had been hidden away, her many shuttered windows dressed with planks and tarpaulins. For all intents and purposes she no longer looked like the dread vessel of the Pirate Prince of the Cluster Isles; she was a battered, oceangoing fishing ship, unremarkable in every way. Three more ships remained anchored around the headland, each wearing a similar nautical mask. Fully two hundred warriors from the Bastian port of Felos had been distributed among the vessels, the cuirass-wearing Furies hidden belowdecks, waiting patiently for their moment. Waiting for the bloodshed.

  A rowboat was being winched aboard, the seawater painting the deck wet as the boards thirstily soaked it up. Opal, the Pantherlady of Bast, stood with her back to the quarter mast, her dark form shrouded in robes and harsh shadow. Her bright eyes shone from within the slit of her kash, fixed upon Denghi, narrow and appraising, as she studied the Omiri port. She and Figgis, the Maelstrom’s first mate, were returning from a brief visit to the harbor’s bars and drinking dens. As Figgis spoke animatedly to Opal and jabbed a bony finger in the city’s direction, Florimo stood nearby, watching. The old navigator looked quite at home in the colorful Omiri attire, his now customary enormous pink feather drooping from his bandanna, befitting a Ternlord. The ship’s youngest crewmember, Casper, crouched at his bare feet, studying coastal maps under Florimo’s watchful eye. The cabin boy had only recently discovered he was a Werehawk, the son of Vega and a Hawklady, though the boy did not know the full story of his conception or who his mother was. The elderly Ternlord provided invaluable guidance for the boy as he slowly came to terms with his fearful avian abilities—guidance Casper’s father, the Sharklord, was ill-equipped to offer.

  “What did you discover in Denghi?” asked Drew as he joined Opal in the shade. “Is it as bad as it looks?”

  “Worse,” she said, her voice rich as honey. “Denghi is no longer neutral. Hayfa, the Hyena of Ro-Shan, claims the city as her own.”

  “The road to Azra is hers, my lord,” added Figgis. “Doglords are welcome enough, but I doubt you’ll encounter a Jackal in Denghi.”

  The fabled city of Azra was home to King Faisal, the Werejackal of Omir. The true prize of the Desert Realm, this was the jewel Lady Hayfa had long desired. Not content with the coastal city of Ro-Shan, the Werehyena would stop at nothing until she had seized Azra. With Hayfa’s ally Lord Canan and his terrible Doglords controlling the lands as far north as the Bana Gap, Faisal’s hold on his homeland was looking increasingly fragile. If the road to Azra was controlled by the Hyena, her stranglehold on the city was almost complete.

  “Seems Hayfa and Lord Canan are carving Omir up between them,” continued Figgis, “looking to oust the Jackals from Azra and all their lands.”

  “The only blessing is there’s no sign of my Bastian brethren,” said Opal. “Field Marshal Tiaz must be keeping his men occupied farther north, routing the Jackals at the Bana Gap.”

  At the northernmost edge of Omir, where the Barebones rose from the sand, a narrow avenue wound its way through the mountains. Many years ago, the land here had been claimed by Faisal’s forefathers, the last refuge for travelers on their way into the Desert Realm. As time went by, the city of Bana had grown from this settlement, carved into the rock face and overlooking the gap below. As the Doglords had joined forces with the Catlords of Bast, the first city to suffer had been Bana. The Tigerlord, Field Marshal Tiaz, had been dispatched to claim the Gap for Lord Onyx, while Lord Canan wanted every Jackal within the city put to the sword. It had been besieged since the beginning of the war.

  “Nothing’s ever easy,” Drew sighed, scratching his bristly jaw. “What news did you gather regarding the city of Azra itself? When I left it on the eve of winter, the Hawklords had flown to the Jackals’ aid. I thought they could handle whatever the Catlords threw at them.”

  “It appears not,” said Opal, a hint of pride evident in the Panther’s voice. “Azra is besieged by Hayfa’s forces, while Tiaz and Canan have drawn your Hawklords away from Faisal’s side. It appears the Jackal believed the walls of Azra to be impenetrable. Confident of his own safety, he wasted no time charging your avianthrope allies with rescuing his brethren in the north. The Hawklords flew to the Bana Gap, carrying many of the Omiri king’s greatest warriors in their talons. Maybe they suspected they would free the trapped Jackals easily. Perhaps they thought they were flying to victory, to quell a few rowdy Doglords who pawed at Bana’s gates. What they encountered was Field Marshal Tiaz and the full might of his Bastian army.”

  “I have to believe that my friends who flew north yet liv
e,” said Drew. “I made a promise to them all that I would return.”

  “I saw the weapons Tiaz had at his disposal when he departed Sturmland along the Great West Road. Your allies were winging their way to their deaths.”

  “What weapons?” snapped Vega, tired as always of the Panther’s penchant for drama.

  “The Gypsian Vultures for one,” replied Opal haughtily.

  Drew watched the two of them speak, no love lost between them. The Sharklord had blackmailed Opal while she was prisoner aboard his ship. True to his word, he had gone straight to her homeland of Braga while the Pantherlady escorted Drew to Leos, the Catlord seat of power. Drew’s task was to sow division among the Forum of Elders, while Vega abducted the infant children of Opal, guaranteeing her cooperation. Both missions were successful: the Bastians were now at war with one another and Opal’s children were under the watchful eye of the Tigers in Felos. Safe though her children were, thanks to the Sharklord’s actions, there was no disguising the hate she felt for her unlikely ally.

  “Gypsian Vultures?” said Drew, trying to take the sting out of their dialog.

  “From the Gypsian Plateau at the heart of Bast,” said Opal. “It towers over the jungle, fully a thousand leagues across. Barren, inhospitable, and miserable. The Vulturelords call it home.”

  “And these Vultures are a match for the Hawklords?”

  “More than a match, when one considers their superior numbers. If you thought having the Hawks of the Barebones fighting your quarter in the sky would win you this war, I’m afraid you’re in for a rude awakening, Wolflord.”

  “It’s Drew, Opal,” he replied with a stiff smile. “Wolflord sounds so impersonal.”

  “I’ll stick with ‘Wolflord’ until our work is concluded.”