Warden's Path

by Heath Pfaff

  I sighed and shook my head. It seemed a bad time to be making jokes. We sat down together and began to pour over the reports, reading every detail again and again, and looking for the truths hidden behind the fallibility of scared witnesses and what they’d each said. We compared the records to maps and figured out about where we would need to go to be certain we were in the right territory, and then we attempted to figure out exactly how many creatures we were dealing with.

  “No fewer than six.” Arthos said after several hours of consideration. The light beyond the window was growing dim. “No more than a dozen.” Those numbers weren’t perfect, but the information we were fighting with was also flawed. We might have gone and interviewed those survivors still alive one more time, but the information wouldn’t be fresh anymore. Stories always changed with time. These were our best accounts. The questioning had been thorough, even if the information was inaccurate. Most people just weren’t trained to observe all the details, to register them and put them away in their mind for later retrieval. This was especially true in times of fear and stress.

  “How big is a pack of willifen?” I asked, curious if we were seeing a whole pack of the creatures here, or just a group of stragglers that had come together.

  “A pack is no less than twenty members, but only the males hunt and raid. Females raise the young, guard the weak and keep the nest for the males. This isn't to say they’re not dangerous, because they are. In fact, if there aren’t enough males then the females will join the hunt as well. Females tend to be more aggressive. It’s a possibility that this pack has a female Alpha, which would explain why it has pressed down this far. A female leader would be more prone to taking risks, especially if she’s young.” Arthos nodded to himself as he thought this through.

  “You seem to know an awful lot about these creatures.” I pointed out.

  He answered my implied question with a shrug. “I studied them for a while. One of my first missions after becoming a Warden was to explore and catalog the species of the Revenant Swamp. The willifen don't live there, but they live close and make appearances frequently. That gave me a good deal of time to learn about the creatures. They generally don’t look for fights with men, but these ones are a dangerous exception.” He seemed to think on that for a moment and then added, “Well, let us hope that these ones are an exception. If the willifen have decided to spread their territory this way, it would be a disaster for this city. There are enough willifen in the mountains to wipe out all trade to this city, which would kill it entirely since it’s so far out on the fringes of settled lands.”

  “So how will we deal with this situation?” I asked, uncertain whether we would be acting as exterminators, or if we would be attempting to drive the creatures back through the swamps. Either path seemed equally difficult, but I wasn’t sure that the wholesale slaughter of the willifen was the right course of action. They were frightening and dangerous, but did that give them any less right to live then our people? They were also intelligent, maybe more so than regular animals, and they had communities of a sort where the women cared for those who couldn’t care for themselves. This made them seem less dangerous beasts, and more like a misunderstood group of people.

  “It depends on what we discover when we go out to investigate. If there aren’t too many of them, and it seems like they don’t wish to cooperate with us, then we’ll have to kill them. If the pack is large enough we might have to contact the city for support, but I doubt that will become a problem.” Arthos seemed to only be considering extermination as a method.

  “Isn’t it wrong to just kill them?” I asked, wanting him to at least consider an alternative.

  Arthos’ eyes were thoughtful as he looked at me before answering. “Killing is almost always wrong, Lillin, but sometimes it’s the only way. We have a commitment to protect the people of the city, and that commitment puts us at odds with whatever is killing their people. I’m not saying we won’t make an effort to scare them off, but the reality of the situation is that we will probably be forced to put them down. If they could just be dealt with using civil means, then this situation would likely have been settled by the people of the city long before we arrived. They’re killing men, women and children indiscriminately.”

  I wasn’t happy with his answer. The Wardens were quick to use violence as a solution. That was how we were trained. It felt like we were intentionally conditioned to fall back on violence as a solution. We were treated brutally for years, killed without justification and unfairly, so why would we bother to look at the world around us any differently? Arthos seemed to still at least think about what he was doing, to understand that he was making a choice to use force but he also didn’t seem that eager to question what his own methods. Given the strength we had, it would be easy enough to fall back on force constantly. If I was serious about changing the Wardens, it would need to start somewhere. I made up my mind that it would start here, it would start with Arthos and these willifen.

  The next morning we left the city as we’d entered it. Again the people in the streets took notice of our passing, traffic slowing around us, making way as we wade through the waves of folk going about their business. Not everyone stared, but those who noticed us did. I saw other people with tattoos on their flesh, though none with markings on their faces. The inkings were common enough that I realized people probably weren’t as alarmed by my tattoos as they were by my Warden outfit. I’d been marked as an outsider by that inking for so long that it felt strange to have people watchful of me for an entirely different reason. It was a different kind of separation, and one that I found equally distasteful.

  We reached our mounts as quickly as we could, and I could tell immediately that Zara was excited to see me. Her brilliant green eyes set in her white fur mask sparkled with pleasure as I approached. Arthos noticed as well and chuckled as he mounted his own creature.

  “Like a puppy.” He intoned before his voice grew far more serious. “Alright, let’s get to work. Things will be dangerous from here on. Willifen have several notable, and dangerous characteristics. They can see in almost pure darkness. They hunt and fight as a group. They’re fast and decisive in their actions. Their claws and teeth can carry infection depending on what they’ve been into, so if you’re bitten or scratched you’ll probably need proper healing. Most Wardens can cope with this kind of thing, but I don’t think you have the focus to push out a bad infection. That makes this far more dangerous for you.”

  I offered a somewhat nervous smile up with my reply. “You’re not really making me feel confident.”

  He shrugged. “It’s better to understand what you’re getting into then to go in blindly.” We were beginning to move quickly now, the kea flowing across the ground smoothly, almost like a bird of prey flying just above the terrain to catch a field mouse. The silence with which they could run at such speeds was almost frightening. Their feet touching the ground made less sound than the wind whipping by us. “They have strong inherent Will. Don’t try to affect them directly. You don’t really have the finesse for that anyway. Even those with powerful Will would have trouble bending a willifen with Will. They have strong instinct. Use the terrain to your advantage, and make sure your hits count. Don’t aim to stun. Do damage with every blow. Keep near me. It’s better if we fight in tandem.”

  “That definitely doesn’t sound like you think we can scare them off.” I said, having to speak loudly to get my voice over the howl of the wind around us.

  “Be inside ‘fore the storm and you won’t be struck by lightning.” He answered with an old adage suggesting preparation for the worst.

  I had no immediate reply to that, so we rode in silence for a while in the wake of that advice. My mind turned over what might come when we found the willifen, but it was impossible to prepare for something that I knew so little about. Even what Arthos had told me was limited in scope. The willifen were still mostly unknown, and all I had was information on how to fight them.

  10.
2

  It took us four hours of fast riding to reach the appropriate place. As we drew our mounts to a stop, both of them breathing hard from the exertion, trepidation sprouted and grew within me like a creeping vine. We dismounted and gave the kea their leads so they might rest, eat and recover from the trip, and then we began the process of tracking, a task which felt quite natural to me. We’d had many lessons on doing so while I was still training to become a Warden, and it wasn’t long before I found something to follow.

  The tracking was made easy at first because our quarry had left a mess at the site of their attacks. The stench of death filled the air as we approached the wreckage of a caravan. Dead men and women littered the street, weapons still in hand for the most part, though some had dropped them as they died. The corpses had been pecked at by birds, though I saw no sign of wolves having picked over them, as I would have expected with how long they’d been sitting out. Rot and bloat had taken more than I would have expected. The horses were missing.

  I considered the scene carefully. “This is strange.” I said after a time.

  “You mean the fact that the horses are gone and there are no signs of children’s bodies?” Arthos asked. Children commonly traveled in caravans like this one. Family traders weren’t always comfortable leaving their little ones behind when they were to be gone for a long time. There were usually at least a couple youths around. “Maybe they were taken for eating later.”

  “Then why not take some of the dead here?” I asked. “I’ve seen a few wounds that might have been bites, but most of this looks like claws or . . . spears? Do the willifen use weapons?” I’d found a body with what clearly looked like a sharpened pole protruding from it.

  “I don’t think so. This might have been something that the traders had. We have no way of knowing exactly what happened in the course of the fight here.” Arthos pointed out. “The scene is too old to read the details clearly.” He gestured at a nearly empty cart. “It looks like they dragged off some of the supplies though, maybe food of some sort. I should have looked more closely at the trade manifest.”

  “Blankets, and warm clothing for the winter months.” I said, recalling the information. This was the larger of the recently missing trade caravans. I could tell that by how many carts were laying around. It had been full of winter supplies. “Dried meats as well, spices.”

  “Why would they take blankets?” Arthos said quietly, though it was more to himself than it was to me.

  I began to count the carts again, this time more carefully than the first. I frowned as I reached the end. “There is a cart missing.” I spoke aloud only after having counted twice. I wanted to be certain. “There is supposed to be one more covered wagon here. Do the willifen use carts, or do we have a survivor that made off with some of the goods?”

  “The willifen are smart, but they’re still animals. They wouldn't have any use for a cart.” Arthos answered firmly, seeming quite certain on that fact. “Someone must have survived the attack and taken a cart when they went to escape. It’s possible we’ll find them dead elsewhere since they never made it to the city, or perhaps they turned back the way they’d come, hoping to return and recover some of their losses.”

  That seemed as plausible as anything else, so I began to scan the scene again, looking for some other sign of passage. I eventually found indications of travel heading off into the wood, but that wasn’t all I found. “It looks like whoever survived decided to go after the willifen, and they took all the horses with them. Look at this.” I called Arthos over. The willifen themselves left almost no sign of passage. Their footprints were light, and they seemed to take care to watch where they stepped. The horses and the cart tracks, though, left an unmistakable sign of passage. They’d been taken off into the woods. “Why would anyone do that?” It didn’t particularly make sense. I knew the willifen had gone this way. There were signs of them, small ones, but they were there. The cart and horses had certainly come this way. They’d pushed their way right through the underbrush leaving an easy path to follow.

  Arthos studied it critically for a time. “Well, if nothing else it gives us a very clear path to follow.” He noted, not looking pleased. “Be at the ready. An attack could come at any time. Let’s not be caught unaware. We still have the possibility that this might be some kind of elaborate ruse by human bandits.”

  We took to the trail then, following after it as quickly and quietly as we could manage. It wasn’t difficult to do. Horses weren’t particularly good at sneaking, especially not in a large group, and carts were even worse about it. We walked for nearly an hour before Arthos stopped suddenly in place, holding perfectly still.

  I did the same immediately, my senses sharpening in an attempt to find a reason for our sudden stop. I turned my head slowly, trying to take in every sound, but I couldn’t hear anything other than the rustle of the leaves as the trees turned in the wind, and the song of birds. There was a faint odor in the air, something of old decay, the rot of leaves and wood, stagnant water. We were getting closer to the swamp. Had it not been getting cold, there might have been more flying insects around, though I had noticed that there were more than there had been since we’d first left the corpses behind.

  I wanted to ask Arthos what had caused him to stop so suddenly, but at the same time I didn’t want to break our silence in case it was dangerous to do so. I looked at him, trying to understand what had caused him to pause. After a moment he took a quiet step in my direction, and then another.

  “We’re being hunted.” He whispered the words. So soft was his voice that I could barely make it out at all. “Keep moving, no weapons, but be on guard.” He added. I nodded, and then started moving forward again. I tried to move as I had before we’d paused, but knowing something was watching me made me uncomfortable. I was too aware of every footstep, and that made them all see louder to my ears. My paranoia was heightened by this perhaps imagined extra noise I was making, and all of it seemed even worse because I had no idea from which direction we were being tracked. Every angle seemed to hold an enemy, and I had to force myself not to swivel my head about so often that I became nauseated as I progressed.

  We walked for another twenty minutes, and then my ears caught the sound of motion in the trees around us. The ground was getting softer. We were close to the swamp, but the cart tracks were turning now.

  Arthos drew his weapon, locking the two halves of his staff together in one motion, and I followed his example, spinning my weapon to the ready and holding it across my back, ready to fight. That’s when they came. They slipped from the woods almost silently on two legs, hunched in the way they walked, almost like they could fall forward onto all fours at will, but chose not to. I was most surprised by their color. They were varying shades of gray, black, and white. They looked as though they could blend into a rocky mountainous landscape quite well, but in the woods their colors almost worked against them. This disadvantage was offset by their speed and the unnatural seeming way they moved without making a sound.

  I might have likened them to wolves, if wolves were two to three times as large and walked like men, but their eyes were deep and dark, shades of red and orange. It was unsettling as they watched us. There were at least five of them in this group, though I dared not move much to count them more precisely. My back was quickly facing Arthos’ so that we had all sides covered.

  “Six.” He said softly, meaning I’d missed one. Louder he said, “Get from this place, back into the mountains! You can’t kill men and not expect to be killed yourself.” He spoke in a harsh growl, though clearly in our language. Did these even have language? They didn’t wear clothing.

  One stepped forward. “No get!” It growled, voice difficult to understand as it was like it had to chew on the words to get them from its mouth. “Ours land. Ours!”

  There was a chorus of growls.

  “Well, that’s a surprise. I was just trying to sound aggressive so they’d run.” Arthos spoke softly again.

&n
bsp; I jumped at this chance. If they could communicate, I surmised, we could reason with them. I had a strong desire to prove to Arthos that we needn’t handle this situation with violence. “You killed our people. The road is important to us, and those lives are important. We do not wish to fight, but if you kill out people, then we will kill yours.”

  “Kill.” One of the creature’s echoed the word. “Our land, enemy, we kill. You killed.”

  The first creature that had spoken barked something, harsh words in a guttural language nothing like ours, and suddenly they were coming. I had the barest moment to realize that they had a language all their own, or that the particular growl their leader had used sounded like it belonged to a tongue and wasn’t just a random noise. Arthos had seriously underestimated the willifen, but the time for such considerations was over. I’d failed to stop this. They’d barely given me a chance. The time for thought passed instantly, and I had to swing my weapon to the ready.

  I felt a surge of Will from behind me, and then one of the creatures howled in pain and anger, though I barely had time to notice that because they were upon us quickly. I spun to attack, twirling my weapon, using its length to keep the four creatures that were upon me at bay. I didn't want to fight to kill, but I could see the intent to kill in their body language, and in the hunger glowing from their eyes. They wanted me dead, and I would have to give everything to survive.