by Billy Wong
"I guess being tough as nails runs in the family, huh?" he said while they ate bowls of creamy fish soup. Red savored it, her appreciation no doubt enhanced by having to endure poor food during her prison stay.
"I sometimes wonder if she doesn't let herself get beat up like that because she blames herself for letting our family fall apart."
"What could she have done? She can't be more than a year or two older than you."
"Probably nothing. But that doesn't stop people from feeling guilty." She shrugged. "Then again, maybe she just enjoys it. And she does make a fair bit of money."
He grinned. "You borrow from her a lot?"
"No... just sometimes."
"Do you return what you borrow?" When she resumed eating without an answer, he teased, "Just remember I don't have any money, then."
Two days later, they met Evie in the empty arena. Only eleven men waited with her among the stands, who must have been the help she'd recruited. "That's it?" Red asked. "We might be taking on an army."
"That's the reason they're so few," her sister replied. She now wore scale mail and rested a battleaxe against her shoulder, while her cohorts sported all different types of armor and nasty weapons. Some had hooked or serrated swords, one a chain whip and short spear, and one a silver-capped hammer. "Only the rarest men who seek the thrill of battle with no fear of death would take on such a job—but that's what makes you heroes, right boys?!"
"Heroes!" they shouted in unison, but Herbert didn't find their mean, grimy and scarred faces very-heroic looking. Even the youngest, most fresh-featured of them returned any glance with a piercing stare, as if he'd slit someone's throat just for looking too long. Most of them looked like unrepentant murderers, if a little more courageous than some given they might not mind being murdered themselves.
He supposed maybe he should not judge so quickly and give them a chance. Red didn't seem to be made as uncomfortable by their presence as him, or at least didn't show it. Then he recognized one of the men as Evie's opponent in the fight when he'd first seen her—and that she let him embrace her from behind with no reservations.
"This is Boris," she said when she noticed him staring. "We're together."
"But that fight was so brutal..."
She grinned. "Work hard, play hard. Besides, good way to settle an argument, right Boris?" The bald man clad in a breastplate with two hilts jutting over his back growled his approval, then they kissed with sloppy passion. Herbert could hardly believe it, as the memories of the man seemingly close to beating her to death flashed through his head.
Red pushed him. "Pick up your jaw! You're going to make the men think you're a sissy!" She touched his hand. "I know you're not. Just try to fit in, okay?" Though he didn't know if he could, he nodded.
He decided to try and make small talk with Boris. "I'm surprised those blades of yours are so thin. Wouldn't have expected a man like you to use such delicate looking weaponry."
The goateed warrior grunted, and in a slow, deep voice said, "Power is nothing without precision."
"Like when you hit my chin so precisely, right?" Evie commented.
"Still not keep you down." Boris hugged her and stroked her jaw. "Beautiful strength."
"Annnyway," Red asked, "everybody have their weapons silvered?"
"Aye!"
"Yes."
"You bet your sweet buttocks!"
"And we all have enough silver to eat in case we get bit?" There were some grumbles, but the men confirmed they did. "Anything else we should discuss before we go?"
"One other thing," Evie said. "Curtis, the device?" A sinewy man with greasy black hair handed her a metal sphere the size of a child's head, which she tossed up and down in a hand.
"What is that?" Herbert asked.
She smiled gleefully. "It's a 'bomb,' made with very rare explosive materials. When it goes boom, it'll send shards of metal tearing through anything within fifty feet. Usually they use steel, but since we're fighting werewolves we had it filled with silver instead."
"Um, sounds like it could be useful..."
"Just don't get caught near it."
#
They got back shortly before nightfall on the first day of the full moon, and waited behind some brush on a slope just off the road near the entrance to the valley. "So twelve men and two women against an army of werewolves," Herbert mused. "This could end up being the stuff of legends."
"If we prevail," Evie replied. "Otherwise, we might be forgotten corpses in the dirt."
"Or in werewolf bellies," Boris said. "Best to keep your thoughts on survival before glory."
Before any lycanthropes could show up, Leviatha appeared to their side with her brother. Also there was Prince Aidan—whose side he would take, Red wasn't sure—and at least twenty men behind. "I knew you'd come back," the giantess snarled. "Get off my land."
Red scoffed. "Yours? Since when? I thought you just claimed the valley, not anything outside it."
"Nobody else claims this land."
"I think she might have a point," Aidan said. "These are public roads. Anyone should have a right to travel, or slay werewolves on them."
"Public? Ha! The kingdom is dead, who says any of its old rules still apply?"
"You know," Evie pointed out, "you can still kill werewolves without letting them into your towns. Just help us ambush them here."
Leviatha frowned thoughtfully. "But more of them could escape..."
"Perhaps. On the other hand, we might be able to kill more of them quickly while they're in one big mass, as opposed to your men having to chase them down one by one."
Red saw that there might be more use to Evie than her fighting skills and the allies she brought along. Maybe her big sister possessed an overlooked talent for getting anyone to listen, or it might just be that bringing a new voice into a conversation often helped. "Look," she added, "we're already here and we aren't leaving without a fight. So either you waste time and energy battling us—and even if you win, you might be in poor condition to exact revenge on werewolves—or we call a truce and kill as many wolves before they reach the valley as we can."
"It does seem counterproductive to fight those who share your true enemy," Aidan said. "Besides, your subjects will look more favorably upon you if you protect them from a huge attack. You've lost enough of their trust, don't you think? Time to do something to regain it."
"You're not going to throw away the plan just because they have sweet tongues, are you sister?" Lane asked.
"Shut up. I'm trying to think." She paused. "I... suppose you've got me trapped. We could go back and leave you all to be killed, but then the wolves will likely think I've betrayed them and not go through with the feast. There's really no rational choice now but to help you meet the beasts."
"B-but sis! She impaled you!"
"It couldn't be helped. I paid her back in full already." She turned to Red and her allies. "You have anything you can use to send a signal?"
"I have this horn," a big man, the one with the silver-capped hammer, said. He produced from his pack the instrument, which looked made from the ridged horn of some great beast.
"Good. Lane, go back and wait with the rest of the men just inside the valley until you hear the horn. We'll wait until they've committed to engaging us, then you come and we can hit them from two sides."
Lane took off. "Fine strategy," Aidan said. "I was about to suggest the same myself."
"You were too busy looking at the new girl to be thinking about any strategy," Leviatha replied, and Aidan glanced bashfully at Evie. She seemed unaffected, though.
Red extended a hand to the noblewoman, who shook it. "I'm glad we could put our differences aside. But if I hear about you putting your subjects at risk for selfish purposes again, I will come back for you."
"You can try. But honestly, I don't expect to anytime soon. After this, it should be enough for me." She looked into Red's eyes. "I have respect for you, you know. You may have lost, but there aren't many who'
ve singlehandedly hurt me like you did."
"I can say the same about you. I've met few people who could beat me, let alone twice. Respect."
Leviatha offered her hand to shake again. "Respect!" she said when Red accepted it, and then pulled her forward so that they bumped chests—or rather, Red bumped Leviatha's armored midriff rather uncomfortably with her chest.
"Slight height difference, remember?" She rubbed her bruised breast.
Aidan whistled. "So you ladies going to kiss and make up?"
"In your dreams, Prince Pervert," Leviatha said.
Red shook her head in exasperation. "Anyway, your men all have silvered weapons?"
"Of course. I've been preparing for this."
She nodded meaningfully towards the hilt of Leviatha's sword. "And your own?"
The big woman grunted. "It's silvered. I may be able to kill werewolves without it, but it still makes it easier."
"She even tried to have mine silvered," Aidan put in. "I protested, so she just gave me another silvered sword."
"You're joining us too?" Herbert asked.
"The rusty sword needs some sharpening."
Boris looked confused. "Rust covered by silver?"
"He didn't mean it literally!" Evie said. "Genius."
Red gazed towards the treeline from which the werewolves would likely emerge and touched her hilts. A shiver of equal parts anticipation and fear ran through her. So it was time to face what would be the greatest opposition thus far in her career as a werewolf hunter. She hoped she would live to share the tale and inspire others to stand against evil.
#
They waited on the slope, refining plans that might all go to hell if something went wrong. Time stretched out until Red stopped looking forward to the battle, and just wanted to get it over with. All who could shoot passably readied a bow or crossbow, including Red herself. It was well past midnight when they spotted the first werewolf trot out from amongst the trees below. Another stepped into view, and another. Their dark shapes packed the road, turning it into a churning carpet of fur that now slithered towards the valley mouth.
"Shouldn't we attack?" Leviatha asked.
Aidan raised a hand. "Patience. Let some more get into the open first."
"How many are there?" Herbert whispered to Red.
"A lot. There must over a hundred we see already, and more keep coming."
"Some of them are almost in the valley," Leviatha said, voice growing tense.
Boris nodded. "All right, it's time. Attack!" Evie lit the bomb and hurled it deep into the lycanthrope ranks. It exploded, shredding dozens of werewolves and filling the night with lupine cries of pain and confusion. A great ball of smoke left in the middle of the devastation quickly dispersed, a hint of the smell already reaching Red's nose. Everyone with a projectile weapon loosed. Even the less accurate shots tended to hit something in that dense hairy mass. Wolves realized the source of the attack and rushed the slope. The humans nocked another arrow or, in the case of the crossbow users, raised their second loaded bow. More werewolves dropped beneath their second volley, but many continued up the slope. "Blow the horn!" Boris yelled. The big man with the hammer did so. "Charge!"
"How did he get to be the leader?" Herbert asked as he dashed with Red to meet the enemy. The better archers shot once more over their heads into the back ranks of the werewolves, then they too drew melee weapons and followed.
"Loud voice, I guess." She still felt weaker than usual and hadn't gained back all the muscle she'd lost, but she would make do with sheer will. She closed with a werewolf, slashed its face, and when it turned its head away plunged her other knife into the side of its neck. It fell and Herbert's bastard sword hammered into the chest of one behind it, tumbling it back down the hill.
Red caught a wolf under the jaw with the heel of her boot, then rammed a blade down through its skull as it stumbled. She glimpsed Leviatha cleaving a werewolf vertically in two, a deathblow with or without silver, and strike the head off another. Aidan got in front of her and rapidly sliced multiple times across a beast's abdomen, spilling its ropy guts.
"You call that rusty?!" Leviatha shouted over the cacophony of howls, battlecries, and pained screams.
"In my prime I would've drawn an 'A' over its front before it fell," Aidan said, stabbing into a wolf's throat and shoving it into one of its fellows. "Now I've become sloppy and basic."
Leviatha smiled before bisecting a monster at the waist, and Red imagined with a shudder how the scene would look after the werewolves reverted. It couldn't be helped. She ripped a throat with a backhanded slash, glimpsed Evie and Boris fighting back to back. It looked a little odd, the smaller woman wielding the heavy chopping weapon while the larger man cut and poked with his rapier and poniard. But they were probably close in strength, and seemed to work well together. Already five werewolf corpses littered the ground around them.
Herbert's sword flashed down past her, parting a wolf head down the middle. She ran up its falling body, used it to jump over two more. Spinning around in midair, she drove her knives through their spines. She turned to face a lunging werewolf, caught its teeth on a blade. She stabbed her other knife up through the bottom of its jaw and into the brain. The man with the hammer brained a wolf to her left, and beyond him the stocky one with the chain whip used it to drag an opponent by the neck onto his spear. So he didn't use such an impractical seeming weapon as his main killing tool; good for him.
Red noticed more soldiers of House Leviathan running into the fray, and spotted Lane shooting bolts from a repeating crossbow into werewolf after werewolf while a saber rested unused for now in his other hand. A wolf jumped on a man nearby and tore out his throat, and Lane nonchalantly put a bolt in the canine's eye.
Despite the success of their better fighters, the human side was suffering casualties as well. More wolves pounced upon men and bore them down, biting and tearing with sharp claws. One of Evie's cohorts collapsed gurgling blood, his face and throat ripped at once by a massive paw. Red charged that freakishly big werewolf, only for it to block her stab by taking it through the forearm and rake her badly across the ribs. She reeled away; it pursued. She ducked another swipe, took the next to her arm and was sent sprawling. The werewolf pounced atop her, roaring and dripping hot saliva onto her cheek. It windmilled its claws at her in an attempt to rend her to pieces; she fought back with a similar flurry using her knives. The result was both their arms covered in wounds, strips hanging. She kicked the wolf back, stood up. It struck again, claws digging into her bosom, but she caught the arm to keep it from defending that side and drove a knife through its temple.
"Ouch," she muttered after it toppled, cradling her shredded forearms against her sides.
"Hurting?" Leviatha asked. A deep gash adorned her cheek, but she smiled. She chopped away a werewolf's skull above the jaw, beheaded another with the backswing.
Red gritted her teeth against the pain and resumed fighting. "Just scratches." Her eyes found the grimmest part of the action, where werewolves were getting the best of Leviatha's men, and sprinted towards it. The first beast that turned on her took her flying knee to the throat, knocking it over with her landing atop it. She stabbed it between the eyes, stood and laid into the wolves all around her. She sliced and diced, not bothering to finish all the ones she hurt, often settling to blind or cut their legs out from under them so others could dispatch them in her wake. Claws tore her shoulder, her forehead, her thigh, but she didn't care. She danced among her foes, a spinning whirlwind. Even the bottom of her cloak was a weapon as it whipped into eyes, hampering sight momentarily so she could deliver a telling blow.
"You are better at fighting werewolves," Leviatha said behind her. Red sidestepped a beast's snapping lunge, letting her cloak flap into its face as she did. When it stumbled free of the garment, its eyes bulged a moment before the giantess' sword descended through its shoulder and chest.
"It's my specialty." Red wiped away blood dripping into her eye, blinke
d and looked around for Herbert. There he was, face scratched, bashing in a wolf's head with the edge of his shield. A good idea from Boris, to silver even that. She didn't know how many werewolves had been killed, but the battle seemed to be dying down. At least three of Evie's men were down, but she and Boris stood strong though both bore wounds. Aidan seemed to be one of the only people with no visible hurts. Just as Red gutted a wolf and kicked it down, he stepped in and skewered the other one that'd been facing her from the side.
"I think that's the leader," he said, pointing his sword somewhere. "You want to finish it?"
A male figure stood some distance away, slashing down House Leviathan guards with a sword. A naked, human male. She wasn't sure why he had apparently changed back from his lupine form if he was a werewolf, but he definitely fought on their side. She ran for him, dodging past another two wolves and cutting them down along the way.
"You have great skills," the bearded man with long brown hair said. Though she knew the situation to be deadly serious, his exposed member distracted her and made her want to laugh. He pushed the tip of his blade through the neck of the soldier at his feet, dispelling her thoughts of mirth and leaving them alone for the moment.
"Are you the werewolf king?" Her arms were getting heavy with fatigue and blood loss, and she really began to feel the pain. He, on the other hand, looked unmarked.
"No. But I'll kill you in his name." They walked towards each other. He thrust at her face; she leaned aside and struck at his arm, but he retracted it too fast. She launched into a flurry of slashes which he parried and took a knee to the ribs. She staggered back, ducked a swing of his sword, shining in the moonlight.
A dagger buried itself in his eye, and he flopped backwards onto the dirt.
Red turned to regard Aidan, his arm still outstretched from throwing the blade. She fell to her knees, hugging her wounded body. "What the hell was that?" she demanded.
