‘Now Raven!’ shouted Hirad and he charged out of the alley, The Unknown right next to him and Ilkar, sword drawn, a pace behind. Above them, Denser flew low across the face of the store. From out of the sky above the guards, drops of flame, just a few, lashed down, setting fur and clothing alight. Panicked, the guards ran blindly away, not realising that The Raven were also attacking on foot.
Beating at the flames that threatened to engulf him, the fastest Wesman ran headlong towards the waiting Unknown. The Big Man sidestepped smartly, left in a foot which the Wesman obligingly tumbled over and finally drove his blade straight through the prone man’s throat. Beside him, Hirad ran forwards to take on two more. One’s gaze was locked anxiously on the sky until his companion tugged at his smouldering sleeve and both squared up to the barbarian.
‘Who’s first?’ rasped Hirad, springing forward and opening a cut in the face of the left-hand man. ‘You’ll do.’ He ducked under a wild axe swing and buried his sword in the Wesman’s gut. He dragged his blade clear and rolled away from the attack of the other, who followed his movement and turned his back on The Unknown. It was the last mistake he ever made. Before his body had dropped to the floor, The Unknown Warrior had turned to face the three remaining Wesmen and Ilkar was sprinting for the grain-store doors.
Hirad ran in to support his old friend, though The Unknown scarcely needed it. Angling his sword hilt in front of his face and blade down left, he caught the first axe blow and thrust upwards, tearing the weapon from the guard’s grasp to go spinning away into the night. He lashed the double-handed blade back down across his enemy’s chest and Hirad could hear the ribs shear. The man fell backwards, clutching at his ruined body with the blood pouring through his hands.
Hirad closed down the penultimate threat, clashing blades with the Wesman and kicking out straight to connect with his stomach. The man grunted but still thrust Hirad back and, though winded, held his blade steady in front of him. The barbarian smiled. Moving a pace forward, he feinted to strike right, switched grip and chopped in left. Hopelessly slow, the Wesman had barely moved his sword in the right direction before Hirad’s entered his neck, cleaving all the way to the spine. He turned to see The Unknown wipe his blade on the body of the last man. He spread his arms wide.
‘Good, aren’t we?’ he said, smiling.
‘You know it,’ said The Unknown, the corners of his mouth turning up. They ran on to join Ilkar, who was preparing to cast. Denser and Erienne circled above them.
‘Clear at the moment,’ said the Xeteskian. ‘The Julatsans have run into a little trouble just south of the market but the Wesmen aren’t organised yet. Be quick because I can see a large force, probably two or three thousand, running in from the west. You don’t have too long before they get here.’
Hirad nodded and hammered on the padlocked, barred doors with his sword. The sound of voices, lots of them, could be plainly heard but he had to try anyway or someone would get hurt.
‘Get away from the doors!’ he bellowed. ‘No time to explain, just get away.’
Ilkar stood and backed away a pace, giving the slightest of nods to Hirad who could see his face wracked with concentration, his arms tight in front of him and cupped as if to catch a ball. Hirad moved aside.
‘Deploying,’ said Ilkar quietly. He jabbed his arms forward quickly and the tightly formed ForceCone shot from the centre of his cupped hands and thundered into the heavy wooden doors. Built to withstand weapons they may have been, but not the ForceCone of a master. As the mana shape ploughed in, they first buckled at the lock then shot inwards, the padlock and chain snapping and whipping away to clatter into the wall near Hirad’s head.
‘Steady, Ilkar,’ said Hirad.
Ilkar shrugged. ‘I had to be sure,’ he said. The three Raven men ran inside to confront a sea of faces and a thousand frightened voices.
‘Your job, I think.’ Hirad patted Ilkar on the back. ‘You are a native, after all.’ Ilkar gave him a sideways look and opened his mouth to call for quiet.
Chapter 25
For an instant, Thraun’s eyes misted over as the life slipped away from man-packbrother. He felt it in the core of his being and the passing to the grey dust left a pit of loneliness inside his wolven heart. An agonised whine escaped his throat as he watched man-packbrother’s head slip slightly to the side and his chest fall but not rise again. He looked up into the face of the human who tended him. She laid an implement aside, one which had been used to wipe man-packbrother’s face, then moved a white covering to hide his still form.
Thraun could see the sorrow in her and felt the helplessness which tinged that sorrow with anger. The instant passed and Thraun’s mind was deluged with animal fury. He opened his mouth and howled at the sky blocked from him by the human structure as the blood-lust soaked into him and cast about for prey.
The body of the tending woman now cascaded fear, it showed in her face and gushed from every pore. She backed away. He could smell it like he could smell the forest. It was fear of him and fear was good. It told him when a prey was beaten. But she had tried to save man-packbrother and he found himself unable to bring her down. A vestige of thought swam through his crazed mind and he bolted into the open, another howl blasting from his mouth, his body racked, muscles glowing with rage, the blood on his mind and the forest in his nose.
But outside he scrabbled to a halt on the cruel stone. Outside was fire and shouting in the dark. Outside was chaos and confusion. Humans ran everywhere and the overpowering scent of the hated ones whose flesh he remembered assailed him, mixed with the rotting stench of death. A mass of the humans, those untainted with the scent of the hated, ran towards an opening in the walls. Beyond it, the prey he desired.
Thraun ran hard towards the opening, his savage barks scattering the humans whose inbred terror of the wolf had them leap from his path. He could feel their alternate fear and relief as he ran past them, intent on the one prey, the strong-scented ones whose blood he had tasted and desired to taste again. He cleared the opening and, sniffing the air as his legs blurred beneath him, drove straight to where he knew his prey waited, a third and final howl marking his grief at the loss of man-packbrother.
Thraun ran towards the flickering light of a fire. Around it, the hated men were standing and he could feel their anxiety and incomprehension of the noise and flame the pack-humans had caused. His blond-flecked brown body slipped through the dark unnoticed, the noises covering his footfalls and the growls quiet in his throat.
Prey.
There was no desire to stalk. The pack were far away, the forest colours dim in his memory and his animal brain ablaze with the anger of something taken that could never be returned.
At a dead run from the shadows he pounced, leaping high, taking his first prey in the throat, his jaws ripping for blood, his paws braced on the shoulders. The man fell under the force of the leap but had no fight in him, his life already flowing from the tear under his chin. Thraun lapped hungrily at the blood, careless of its spurting and flashing over his muzzle and coat. Lost in desire, he didn’t hear the other men surround him but he felt the sharp slap as one of their metal sticks bounced from his impervious hide.
He turned and the four of them stumbled backwards, scared words tumbling from their mouths combined with frantic pointing with their arms at where one had struck him. Thraun crouched, yellow eyes smouldering contempt for their helplessness, jaws dripping the blood of their companion, his body tensed.