Return of the Ancients

Chapter 9 Fenrir Watches Us All

The four Wolfen, three adults and one youth, moved silently through the deeper parts of the forest, pausing from time to time to lift their heads in the air, or get down close to the ground to examine some minor disturbance to the soil or grass.

Isingarr, their senior warrior, held up one hand and remained stock-still. His ears were erect and pointing forward. The tip of one of them was missing, and a long scar ran down the side of his face, the result of a previous battle. The others held their ground and waited.

His eyes were unblinking as they scanned the forest ahead, and a low, almost imperceptible rumble came from deep in his chest. Immediately, his two adult companions joined him, drawing long silver blades that glinted in the shaded gloom.

Isingarr spoke over his shoulder. ‘I fear we may be late in rejoining the Valkeryn pack this eve.’ He drew his own blade as the stillness of the dense forest was broken. Their ears twitched at the soft hissing and whining that echoed both low to the ground and high in the trees — all around them.

Isingarr turned to one of the warriors. ‘Ussen, you will escort our ward back to Valkeryn. Turok and I will give you some time — use it well.’

Ussen stared hard at Isingarr for a second, looking like he wanted to disobey the command to leave his leader, before nodding once. Behind him, the young Wolfen began to protest, and Ussen sheathed his sword, just as an arrow took him in the neck. He coughed hard and went to his knees, then fell forward to the ground and lay still.

Isingarr noted the accuracy of the fatal bolt, bared his teeth and roared his anger. Then he pulled the small warrior back behind himself and raised his sword. ‘Slinkers. Visors down.’

With a clank, the warriors lowered their visors and raised their swords. More arrows flew out of the dark, bouncing off their armour. There was movement at the forest’s edge, and more hissing and whining, then a roar that shook the trees all around them.

‘Something else comes.’ Isingarr gripped his sword so hard his hand began to shake.

The smaller Wolfen whimpered. Isingarr grabbed his forearm. ‘Steady yourself, young one; it will be over soon. Remember who you are.’

He looked down and held the young Wolfen’s gaze with his own. Then he banged one of his gauntleted fists against the raised wolf crest on the smaller warrior’s chest. ‘Fenrir watches us all.’ After a moment, the smaller warrior nodded.

Isingarr grunted in approval and then turned back to the dark forest, yelling to the giant shadows bearing down on them, ‘For Grimvaldr, and for Valkeryn!’

He heard the answering clang of fist on steel beside him, and the ferocious growls of the two remaining Wolfen preparing for battle. His own growls turned into a roar, and his fist tightened on his sword as he raised the mighty weapon.

Isingarr knew they would die this day, but their enemies would just as surely know that they had met Wolfen warriors in battle, and paid a heavy price for that misfortune.

Giant figures rose around them, and the three Wolfen leapt to meet them.

Arn heard the commotion in the camp as the Panterran returned. Long yowls of triumph were accompanied by an eerie howling, like hundreds of cats singing at midnight.

Too soon, Arn thought. He still hadn’t come close to freeing himself. He lay back and waited.

Something heavy was thrown onto the rack beside him, and it grunted as if in pain. Though his face was still covered with his shredded clothes, Arn smelled new odours — blood, fur, and something strangely like cinnamon. He also sensed something else, which, in an odd way, comforted him, reminded him of home.

He heard the voice of the old Panterran again — the new captive must have been undergoing the same sort of interrogation he’d had. The old creature asked its questions again and again, and though there were moments of silence when Arn felt the vile old thing was pulling its answers directly from the mind of the new captive, the other never spoke a word.

At last, there was a furious shaking of the rack as the body next to him must have begun jerking and straining against its bonds. There was a thumping blow, then silence and stillness — it seemed the Panterran had run out of patience.

Arn heard the vile old thing speak to its companions in its distinctive whining chuckle. ‘The fools don’t suspect we are so near, or aware of our pact with the Lygon. Time is still on our side.’

Arn could feel the moist, stinking breath on his bare shoulder once again. ‘But we’ll know our future for certain when this ape wakes.’ Its voice grew fainter as it turned. ‘Let me see the bodies; there is something we will need to collect for our emissary… before we give them to the Lygon. Our giant friends are developing a taste for Wolfen flesh.’

Wolfen? wondered Arn. Is that what the new captives were?

He waited for what seemed an eternity until he could detect no sound or impression of anything close by. Then he shook his head violently to shake the rags off his face, and immediately turned to the new captive, hoping to see another like himself.

He stayed staring for several seconds with his mouth hanging open, feeling his heart sink and his nerves jump at the same time. A large wolf-like creature was strung to the frame next to him. The creature was similar to those he had seen from the hilltop, but smaller, and he could see through the crusted blood much younger, finer features.

Through the shattered armour, he could see that the body was covered in fur, but did not possess the V-shaped chest of a dog. Instead, it was broad and flat like a human’s chest, as were the shoulders, arms and waist. The bound paws were more like hands — long fingers ending in short and sharp claws. But further down, the anatomy of a canine returned in the legs with their knee joints turned backwards — but oddly, ending in human-like feet.

Arn craned his neck forward and frowned. He could see inside a tear in the chest plates the swell of human-like breasts — female, then. Arn looked back up at the head that lay turned towards him. He winced. Her face was cut, but it was hard to tell if the wounds were serious as there was so much blood matting the short silvery fur. Where the body looked like some weird type of hybrid dog-human, the face was still all wolf.

‘Wolfen — amazing,’ he breathed softly.

Her eyes opened. They were so luminous and light, they resembled slivers of pure silver blue ice. There was intelligence there — not the crafty, hate-filled slyness he had seen in the Panterran’s eyes, but something very different. On seeing him, they widened momentarily, before they half closed and she turned her face away from him.

‘Am I in the promised place?’ The Wolfen tried to move, and groaned. ‘No, there is too much pain.’ She turned back to Arn. ‘Are you Man-kind?’

Arn nodded.

‘My father said you would come back one day.’ She smiled weakly. ‘We always believed… that you would return to us in our hour of need.’ She grimaced, closed her eyes again. ‘Death will come soon — the Slinkers will see to that. I just pray it is quick, and I can hold my tongue when the old sorcerer returns.’

Arn swallowed. He could not believe that only yesterday he was worried about a few taunts from the class idiot, and now he was in some nightmarish place, bound to a rack, and talking to a dying wolf-warrior woman.

He leaned forward. ‘Hey, what’s your name?’

Her eyes didn’t open. ‘I’m called Eilif.’ She smiled. ‘My father would have been proud of me this day.’

She turned her head again, the ice blue eyes drilling into him. ‘Why don’t you slay them all? You are one of the Old Ones — whose magic was so powerful it allowed them to fly away. You were the original rulers of this world.’

Arn shook his head. ‘No, not me; I’m not from this place… or time. I’m just someone who is lost.’

She sighed, and looked disappointed. ‘Why are you here?’

‘I wish I knew — an accident, I think.’ He craned his neck to look around. ‘We need to get out of here. They said they were going to read my entrails; I certainly don’t fancy being killed and then cut open.’

Next to him Eilif gave a soft, tired chuckle that ended in a cough that left blood on her lips. ‘Then rest easy, Man-kind; they’ll be cutting you open first, then killing you — the sorcerers like their entrails warm.’

‘Great.’ Arn gulped. ‘Then we’re definitely leaving.’

If the old sorcerer had forgotten the pocketknife in his hand, Arn certainly hadn’t. But try as he might, he couldn’t get it to open. Some things that seemed so simple with two hands — like doing up buttons or opening a pocket knife — were near impossible with just one. He dared not rush; if he dropped the knife, he didn’t want to think about what would happen when the creatures returned — both to him and the young Wolfen.

Arn froze — he could hear thundering roars coming from further off in the dark forest, and knew that the throat that made these sounds was much larger than those belonging to the small vile creatures that had imprisoned him.

He turned to Eilif. ‘What the hell are those things?’

She looked at him with fatigue in her eyes. ‘What are they? We met them in battle and I still don’t know. But they now stand with the Slinkers. They were able to bring down Isingarr, one of the king’s mightiest warriors. I fear for the kingdom if there are many more of these creatures. They are something straight from Hellheim.’

Arn watched her face for a moment, and then shut his eyes to concentrate. He held the pocketknife between the tips of two of his fingers and opened the others wide for a few seconds to allow his sweat to dry, and afford him a better grip.

With his eyes shut, he pictured the knife in his mind, and worked through his plan for opening it. He turned it in his hand, and held it between his two outer fingers, wedging his thumbnail into the notch in the back of the blade. He had it nearly a quarter of the way out, but try as he might, he just couldn’t work his fingers into a good position to get the leverage he needed. There was only one thing to do — he slid one of his fingers along the sharpened edge of the blade, to stop it retracting. He then pushed — it cut deep, but the knife opened at a right angle. It was enough — it would do — it would have to.

He immediately set about sawing at the rope binding his wrist, concentrating on his task, while also listening to the forest around him. He had to be careful, as already the blood from the cut in his hand made the pocketknife slippery.

There came the sound of something approaching — a Panterran, or Slinker as Eilif called them, pushed through the trees.

Arn stayed silent and still, and closed his eyes. He could sense it approach him, and lean over his face — perhaps interested in seeing his features up close now that the torn clothing had fallen away. Arn smelled its foul breath; sweat trickled down his cheek, and something like a wet rasp — a tongue — slid up his flesh, almost making him scream. It was tasting him.

He needed every bit of mental resolve to resist the urge to pull away, or gag, and the thing’s face was so close, it must have been nearly pressing its short flat nose up against his own. He couldn’t help it — he was going to have to open his eyes, going to have to see what it was doing…

‘Disgusting vermin of the night — cowards, backstabbers, unblinkers, disease carriers.’ It was Eilif, and Arn knew what she was doing.

The hot, greasy breath swung away from him. The Panterran leaned over Eilif, and drew from its robe a wicked-looking dagger. It whispered something into her ear; then, finding a place on Eilif’s shoulder where the armour had been torn open, it dragged the blade across her furred flesh.

Eilif grunted from the pain, but didn’t cry out. Instead, she spoke as evenly as she could manage. ‘Mighty warrior… but only when I am bound.’

Arn knew she was drawing the Panterran’s attention away from him, and continued to saw at his bonds until he felt the coarse threads part and fall away. He considered his options — he could reach across and saw through the ropes binding his other wrist, but the chance of his being detected was high with the Panterran so close. And with his feet still bound, it would only have to step back, and he’d end up a sitting duck — a trussed and sitting duck.

He looked down to his side; the old sorcerer’s heavy water jug and bowl were still there, on the bench — within reach.

Eilif saw that Arn had released one of his hands, and she spoke again to her tormentor, the scorn heavy in her young voice. ‘Be warned, vermin — Fenrir sees all cowardly acts.’

The Panterran hissed back at her, ‘Then Fenrir can watch while the Canites are wiped from the face of the Earth… beginning with you.’ It laughed cruelly, and then sniffed at her. ‘Your very stink makes me unwell.’ It lifted its blade again, this time to Eilif’s face.

‘Perhaps Fenrir sees, but soon you will not.’ He brought the dagger close to one of Eilif’s ice blue eyes, but she refused to blink or look away. Instead, she smiled.

Arn swung the heavy jug down onto the creature’s head. The Panterran fell heavily, and Arn was momentarily confused; he didn’t think he hit it that hard, or that these creatures were so fragile. But its crushed skull was evidence enough of the force he had used.

Eilif spoke quickly, ‘Hurry, Man-kind; time now is against us.’

Arn finished cutting himself free, then stepped down to quickly rummage through his torn clothing and pull on his mangled jeans. Only one leg remained intact; the other had been ripped off at the knee. His shoes were gone.

He looked at Eilif and hesitated.

‘Can I trust you?’

The Wolfen held Arn’s gaze for a second before responding, ‘Always.’

Arn cut through her bonds, and she immediately fell forward into his arms. He helped her to stand. She was lighter than he expected, even though she was still partially dressed in her armour.

‘Can you walk?’

‘Not far. I have lost much blood, and have no strength. I need to find some feninlang leaves — they’ll help to numb the pain, and give me enough energy to travel. Once we get back to one of our outposts, they can treat my injuries properly.’

Arn held the Wolfen upright, and placed one of her arms over his own shoulder. ‘Let’s go… Ahh, which way?’

Eilif pointed with her long nose. ‘East, and fast away from this Slinker encampment.’ She groaned as they started off.

Arn could smell cinnamon again as she slumped against him.

‘Man-kind, if they come, you must promise to leave me. You must get to Valkeryn to tell the king that the Slinkers are near our lands. This unholy alliance they have with the giants… We must be ready for them.’

Arn spoke quietly to the Wolfen without meeting her eye. ‘Not a chance — no one is going to be left behind today.’

He felt her relax slightly. ‘Yes — the Man-kind were said to be honourable. I still don’t know your name. What are you called?’

‘I’m called… I mean, I am Arnold Singer — Arn, to my friends.’

She nodded, as though expecting this. ‘Of course; the Arnoddr-Sigarr — your name means Bringer of victory.’

No wonder the Panterran became excited at hearing my name, he thought. He looked down at her. ‘Quiet now. Show me where this feninlang grows, and then let’s put as much distance between us and these creatures as we can.’

‘To the river, and then home, Arnoddr-Sigarr.’

‘Arn, please call me Arn.’

‘It would be my honour, Arn.’ She gritted her teeth.

Arn felt something warm running down his side, and knew it was the young Wolfen’s blood. The thought crossed his mind that he should check the wound, but seeing he had no real idea of first-aid for himself let alone for a hundred pound wolf-girl, he decided that they should keep moving.

Eilif’s head fell forward, and he spoke to keep her conscious. ‘What does this plant look like?’

‘It grows on the banks of rivers. Some call it the blood-star flower. Its fat leaves are what we seek.’

Arn nodded. ‘I know it.’

Eilif looked at him wearily. ‘Of course you do. This is your world, after all.’ She collapsed against him, and he lifted her in his arms and ran on, hoping he found the river soon.