The camp was a sight that calmed the constant lingering fury pooling within me. The urge to change into a beast of glistening fangs and flesh tending claws prowls at the surface of my mind. My soldiers sense it, the scouts even more so. All keeping their heads bowed. Wisely avoiding my eyes as boots, paws, and hooves bring us to the edge of the Wild Hunt encampment.
Slung between two of our small group, is a canvas sack holding the bones of my murdered brother. One who I had just the summer before, waved off as he perused his own quest for exploration and the hope of finding his mate. My family, and the court, had not expected him back for two years at most. Knowing he would be traveling to all the different wolf kingdoms throughout the land. Now, he has to return to the halls of our home in nothing more than tent canvas. Nothing more than a pile of battered bones.
Despite Nyx's perusal of Mordue's body, her surety that his killer and the murder weopon are long gone, I am not satisfied. Once we are again within the walls of the Silver City, the best of my trackers will be sent out to make certain that their queen's claims ring true. If not, then there will be reprisals most assuredly.
Our arrival at camp was noticed immediately. All glanced up from their work around campfires and erected tents. Pausing only a moment from tending to armor and animals, wagons and fires, to watch me and my companions thread our way to the center of the encampment. Here food was being prepared for the sixty soldiers. Not including myself, Karim, Ursa, the wagon drivers, the five captains, and the additional humans. Two of which, being the silent red haired twins currently elbow deep within the stomachs of two great stags hanging down from the nearby trees next to the main campfire.
The respectful of the two sisters stand next to her mate, the young foot solider Corus. Both quietly cutting and removing organs and fat into separate wooden bowls by the fire. Corus's brother, by name of Drathen, sits on a log closest to the surliest twin. Sharpening his sword while she in turn stabs and guts the stag before her. Ignoring him despite the intensity of his glare upon her robed back. Every movement of her body making the cougar pelt draped across her shoulders sway and shift. A twin to the one across her sister's shoulders.
"Return to your groups," I order my soldiers, waving off the scouts towards their fellow men. "And deliver my brother's bones to Sister Ursa, she will know what to do with them."
As one, they disperse. Peeling away as strips of bark from a tree. Some going to warm fires with laughing men, others to tents to catch some sleep. And the two carrying my brother's body, to the circular gray tent with a crescent moon upon the entrance flaps. There the priestess will have the bones cleaned and dried. Incense lighted and crystals placed within the water to cleanse and ready the bones for the royal pyre.
My people in centuries past learned long ago the agony to find the bodies of loved ones savagely destroyed and disrespected if fallen into the hands of enemies. Our dead are safely burned under the rays of the moon. Their ashes carried off into the sky by the wind. To join our ancestors in the cradle of our silver wreathed goddess.
I steer the stallion through the camp towards the northern part of the camp center. Winding my way past men fixing armor and blades. Oiling saddles and drying clothing soaked through from deep rivers we have crossed on our march home. Laughter eddies from small fires and tents. The knowledge of us leaving this strange forest of death and sorrow flows through the men link the finest wine.
Ale from flasks helps it stay. The clinking of dice and the shuffling of well loved cards assists the swigs of warm drink in the cool evening air. A surprising source of this early celebration is from a couple of my captains joined in a boisterous round of cards with the Scythe, her mate Orlan, and the twin to the Hammer's blond Ersa. A large flask of ale passes hands as sure as the small pile of silver increases on the tree stump that have you utilized for their entertainment.
YOU ARE READING
Forest of Lies
Hombres LoboA thousand years past, the world was run by humankind. But it changed, when countries became embroiled in a war that gave the werewolves the opportunity, to recreate the earth in their own image. Now humans are the lowest on the food chain, little m...
