War for Auros: Origins

Prologue

Harn shot upright, startled, staring into the midnight woodland around him. Eyes watched him, he knew, although he could not see them. The gloom and fog grasped him like a cold hand, and bushes and branches waved in the lonely wind. This might have unnerved him but for the comfort of eerie whisper-like breezes which made his every turn and stifled cough so much less noisy than they had been in daylight.  A damp green foist in the air slowly curdled over the night to the stench of rot. That hideous black wolf left more and more corpses, chewed and malformed, waiting to be picked and pecked by the crows and rodents of this cruel forest.

A grey creature shot out of a nearby shrub and perched itself on a sawn log. Harn patted his companion on the head and stroked him lovingly behind the ears. "Eh, you like that, don't you? Silly cunt." He laughed and tore a piece of meat off the iron spit looming over the campfire. The force ripped right through the softened tendons. As he moved, so moved his shadow across the surrounding trees. He threw the meat to his dog, who caught it and swallowed it in a greedy instant.

"Didn't even touch the sides. Good lad," he whispered. Looking at the scarce supply of food, he sighed, and reclined onto his thin burlap roll. "Yeah, well, there's not much left where that came from. Greedy fuckers..." He chuntered on, now becoming aggravated at his train of thought. "That smug barrel-head back at the city couldn't part with much of his stock. Lordship couldn't go without a pig's head and a basket of apples to feed the man who'd sheltered his back from a thousand daggers and even more arrows. I served that man for nine damned years - I was prepared to die protecting him - and for what? A few cold scraps." He huffed, now with a grin, "Well, his fate was an early or belated death - depends who you fuckin' ask... And now the same end's fated for us." He held up his hand and pendulated between two options. "Starved or eaten alive." He laughed, "It's all hunger in the end."

In earnest, he stroked his hand across the dog's shining head and down his satiny neck, and the creature's little eyes looked up to meet his own. "You've got it in you, lad. You've got some years left on you." He lost focus for a moment and spoke to the bushes. "Forty-six this summer. What a fucking joke." He appeared glassy but the shine in his eyes renewed as he looked at his little friend.  "And don't even think about outliving me, you little fucker - or trying any of that martyr crap. When I'm dead, you be sure and run as far North as you can - no old cripple slowing you down." He smiled and rubbed a tear off his eye. He ruffled Alf's head fast and his ears flopped from side to side. "Ach," he spat, and murmured, half to the dog, "Got to eke out whatever sleep we can -- got to sleep to carry on -- prefer the light in the morning -- can't see fuck all in this pitch fucking black -- 'whatever'? Tsh, I know 'whatever', cunt! That wolf." Under his breath, he laughed ecstatically but as silently as possible. "Lords'll get what's coming to 'em. Sick fucks. Have a taste o' your own medicine. "Oh, no, it wouldn't do to be eaten," he laughed under his shirt, and imitated somebody, "wouldn't do to have my guts spilled, limbs ripped off, ribs crushed one by one. No, no. Leave that to them." To me."

"Got what you deserved, fucker. Not laughing now, are you. Barely laughed when you were alive, come to think of it." He chuckled and spat hatred into the fire. Then, forced to yawn, he rolled onto his side and nuzzled his face into the soft furs of the bedroll, whispering inanely.

Events in that cold forest had taken their toll. Even before this chaos had broken out, there was already reason to dismay. But Harn, a man who had seen war, who had seen children bleed and die in their mothers' arms, now laid muttering, his sanity crushed to splinters. What he had seen was unnatural, unbelievable. A giant shadow-like wolf tore its way through the city by claw and fang. His wife and children were ripped apart as easily as wet clay. Blood sprayed from every corpse-littered corner and formed a red river along the pathways of the city, and his own lord, the man he was sworn to serve and shield, was shredded to a mince by the Wolf's barbed teeth. From then on, it seemed to him that this terrible feral black demon would sweep across all of Ghosphum, and that Man and Animal alike were surely fated horrific deaths.

As Harn hiked further and further away from Soelhad, more dead bodies lay on his path. Scenes of mutilated men, women and children were strewn through the forest, slaughtered families like his own who had once been farmers. Some were simply nests of dead, rotting carcasses that the Wolf had amassed for its own feeding pleasure. The gore would have driven Harn to kill himself were it not for Alf. In a way, that mutt was the only thing keeping him alive - the only family he had left.

Harn rose to an arched sitting position and breathed deeply, annoyed at his restlessness. He looked at Alf, who watched him happily, his light tongue flapping about his hairy chin. "I wish I had your energy. We'd soon be moving quicker across this gods-forsaken land faster, that's for sure," he murmured in his low, grumbling tone. He rose to his sore feet and then knelt masterfully before the fire. The leather of his soles rubbed under his feet and the friction burned. With an iron rod, he stoked the flames and the fire intensified.

Letting out a sudden roar, Harn dashed the firewood with his foot, dispersing it across the dewy, twilit grass. Alf's tail dropped and he jumped down from the log trotting off to find shelter from his master's wrath. With his fists clenched stiff in his dry palms, Harn shouted anger deep into the air, "Damn you! Damn Soelhad! Damn it all! Why them and not me?! Kill me! Now! Come on!" He hit his fists on his chest and gave out a hoarse, anguished wail. In his recklessness, he felt the spit escape his mouth.

Suddenly, a large movement in the dark bushes shocked Harn out of his anger and he fell backwards onto the smoldering firewood. He quickly scrambled onto his feet and grabbed the sword nestled beside his burlap roll. The hilt of the blade was cold and begrimed with damp. Harn searched around for Alf, but there was no sign. "Alf! Here, Alf!" he whispered. The woods echoed and chorused his words, like a great chorale. Alas, it was not the dog, but vicious growling that came from the dark.

Gnashing and roaring followed, and then the whine of a dog, and then silence. The woods and the wind ceased to a gelid whispering breeze, and Harn stood alone, subdued and helpless. The fire had been doused by a sudden wind, and only the moon illuminated the forest. He saw nothing but a few moving leaves and branches ahead, but above him a grey mass appeared to soar through the air, getting closer and closer. It crashed hard on the ground before him.

"No," Harn cried, "No!" Realisation burrowed deep in his throat and almost choked him as he fell to the floor and gathered the dead dog up into his arms. "Damned dog, you never should have gone off!" He cried into Alf's soft neck and stroked his blood-matted fur. Warmth clung feebly to the dog's body, and soon it was as cold as the rest of the forest's ravaged corpses.

Harn laid Alf to rest on the burlap bedroll he knew he would never need again, for now he would run even until his legs collapsed under him to escape the Wolf which pursued him.