The Wolves Of War Read online

  Then his nerves finally snapped when he heard the howling of the wolves which had become almost continuous by then, being joined by another, deeper sound. A spine chilling howl that was deeper and far more powerful than that of the wolves. It was the sound of a dire wolf. The bards were right after all. The wolf mother's pack included dire wolves.

  How could that be? How could any of this be happening? And when were the guards finally going to kill the last of them? Briagh shivered, unable to help himself. It was beginning to look as though they had an actual war on the Docks and the soldiers were going to be busy. But as the long day continued into the night a new and even more terrifying question began to dominate his thinking.

  Were they going to win?

  Chapter Seven

  It was past midnight before the battle was won – though “won” was probably the wrong word to describe it. Briagh didn't know what the right word was. But at least the weapons and cannon fire had become more sporadic by then as had the howling of the wolves. He dared to hope that it was coming to an end.

  But if it was a victory then it was a pyrrhic one. Even by night he could see the damage as the sky glowed orange in the distance. The air was thick with smoke. It seemed that half the city had caught fire. Worst of all there was a terrible smell of cooked meat in the air. He just prayed to the gods that it was only wolves that had burnt and not the people. But he doubted it. Still, as the town crier walked the streets and announced to the city that it was ended, Briagh knew a little cheer. He desperately wanted to believe it was so.

  All day and all night the sound of gunfire, cannon fire and howling had been a constant; growing louder at times as the fighting came closer, and then softening again as the fighting moved away. At times he had heard bullets whistling past his windows and feared from the growls that the wolves were at his door. But through all of that the screaming had been the worst. The sound of men being torn apart by wild animals. Sometimes it had been accompanied by the sound of bones crunching. And it had happened repeatedly. Even through the smoke and fire, the howls and sound of gunfire, that sound had stayed with him. He feared it was going to remain with him for the rest of his life.

  Suddenly a dire wolf abruptly appeared from out of the darkness, and fear burned anew in Briagh's heart. He tried to yell out a warning, but he was simply too slow. And then his fear rapidly turned to horror as the crier screamed and Briagh watched helplessly as the man was torn apart in front of him. Briagh closed his eyes and turned away, knowing from the start that it was already too late to try and do something. He had only a sailors’ knife and an axe for chopping wood. But even if he'd had a rifle he couldn't have saved the man. By the time the beast had struck it was already too late.

  After that more gunshots rang out and more soldiers ran past his window. It seemed that the battle wasn't quite over yet after all.

  Dawn was the next chance Briagh had to assess things. Until then he'd stayed locked up tight in his home like everyone else, axe close at hand, face to the window. He still had only a vague idea of what was happening in the rest of the city. Most of what he did know he had had to guess from what he could hear. But dawn was a chance for him to see a little more of the terrible carnage.

  From his front window overlooking the street he could see three bodies. One belonged to a guard, one was the remains of the crier in his yellow summer dress which was now red with blood, and the last was a wolf. Maybe the last wasn't too terrible. But then this was only one street and it had been some distance from the worst of the fighting as far as he could tell.

  It was his back window however, that revealed far more.

  The window overlooked the harbour and had a clear view of a small section of muddy beach in front of it. Through it he could see many more bodies. Some were still floating, bobbing up and down in the waves. Others had washed up on the muddy shore. All of them showing signs of mutilation. In just that small area he could see at least a hundred bodies. Worse, most of those bodies were human.

  If that was what he could see from his window he wondered, how many more bodies were there? For an age Briagh stood there staring at the carnage, growing ever more horrified as the sun rose higher in the sky and the blood red showed brighter, and wondered how this could happen. This was his favourite view. Normally he would sit out in the back yard on a warm day and simply watch the ketches and sloops sailing by, their white sails filled with wind that would take them anywhere. It was a beautiful sight. Even the steamer ships were pretty in the distance. This was a horror.

  This was Abysynth. A peaceful advanced city where the technological wizards were the envy of so many others as they made their discoveries and brought modernity to the world. Where the law held sway and people were safe in their houses. It wasn't some barbarian realm like Grole where bodies were often found in the streets. As far as he knew the city had only two blights; a mad king and the wolf mother. But those were both minor disasters. They shouldn't have led to this.

  At least it was quiet. Things had been growing more peaceful for some hours by then. The air was still thick with smoke, adding a choking, acrid taste to it and making it difficult to see. But his and his neighbours’ houses were still intact. Elsewhere he knew that wouldn't be the case. As the sky slowly turned blue and the sun rose, he couldn't see any fires still burning, but that didn't mean there weren't still some buildings ablaze. Maybe now it was really over. But how could he be sure? Should he go out and check?

  Briagh stood there thinking about it for a long while, and failed to come up with an answer. Occasionally he moved from window to window, staring out at the different scenes of carnage. But that didn't help. He was naturally cautious. But he also knew that he couldn't stay locked up in his house forever. At some point he had to risk going out. And eventually that was what he did. Grabbing his wood chopping axe firmly in his hands, he walked out into the front yard and looked around, listening carefully for any sounds of the wolves as he did so.

  There were no wolves. He slowly satisfied himself that there really were none around as he walked further and further out of his front door. Further away from the safety of his home. In time he even crossed his front yard and looked about from the front fence. Still there were no signs of wolves. Though on the street he saw more bodies than the three he had been able to see from his window. He spotted at least half a dozen as he looked down the street toward the docks, and a few more in the other direction. Half of them were wolves. None of them were moving. Not all of them were intact. And the snow was painted red in places.

  Eventually he walked out all the way into the street and took stock of the situation. Some of the houses had caught fire. They might have stone walls but the thatched roofs caught alight easily, even under their blanket of snow. And where they had he could see scorched grass and rings of black soot extending out from the houses.

  Further on towards the port he could see where many more fires had burnt out of control. A lot of the larger buildings that had once been warehouses and workshops were blackened skeletons of timber. Some were simply piles of rubble. And though he had no desire to look, he suspected there would be more dead bodies inside them. As for the city guards and the wolves, he could see neither. Either they had fought each other to the death, or they were hiding somewhere. He suspected the latter.

  As he looked further in toward the heart of the city he could see more smoke rising, and guessed that the battles had not been confined to just the docks. The Imperial district had also been hit. He also suspected that that was where the guards had gone. They had had to protect the Court and the nobles – not to mention the mad King. It was also where most of the city's cannon could be found since the Imperial Legion controlled them.

  Smoke was rising from other parts of the city as well. The Escarpment was covered with a pall of thick black smoke. He feared that the death toll there would be far higher than across the rest of the city. For the buildings in the slum were far flimsier than elsewhere, and most would not keep a wol
f out. Many scarcely kept the rain out. It was also coincidentally where he had always assumed the wolf mother would be found. Guards were fewer in that part of the city, and there were a lot more derelict buildings she could have used.

  He couldn’t see the Warehouse district from where he stood so had no idea how it had fared. He could however, see the taller buildings of the Merchant's Quarter. Rather, he could normally see those buildings. Not this morning though. The smoke perhaps obscured a few of the buildings, but he suspected that others were simply missing. Knocked down or burnt down. The merchants loved building their four and five story tall towers, and they had stood like a thicket of trees against the flatness of the rest of Abysynth. No more.

  What had happened? As he stood there, axe in hand, Briagh found himself asking that single question over and over again. This was no simple attack by a wolf pack. Not even one with dire wolves. This was what you expected after war had been declared. But wolves didn't declare war on cities. And packs weren't armies. Unfortunately, he had no answers.

  Others joined him on the street in time, most of them like him armed with whatever they could find, standing and staring silently. A few asked questions. No one answered them. Because no one could. And really he thought, they were asking the wrong question. What had happened wasn't as important as whether or not it was over. And there was no one who could answer that question.

  The city was unusually quiet. Normally there would be people heading off to work. Steam wagons would be rolling; teams of horses and wagons too. The stores would be opening and women would be heading off to the markets. And the bells would be chiming every hour. Today though the city was as quiet as quiet as the grave.

  Eventually Briagh headed back into his home. Not because he felt afraid anymore of what was happening outside his home. He doubted there was much left to be frightened of. Instead he went back inside because he didn't know what else to do. Though the battle appeared ended, he still wasn't brave enough to start wandering further away from his home. There was nothing that he particularly had to do save chop a bit more firewood. And he felt like a senile old dotard simply standing there doing nothing.

  Others sooner or later did much the same. And once inside they stayed there, locked up tight, all of them no doubt waiting for someone to come along and tell them what had happened and what to do.

  But no one came. Not during the morning anyway. No criers wandered the street shouting out the news. Maybe they had heard what had happened to the last one? Maybe they too had been killed. No soldiers marched up and down the street either. Which left all of them with the same question. What were they supposed to do?

  Briagh settled for chopping more wood. He didn't plan on heading outside at night to chop more if it turned out to be another night like the one they'd just been through. Eventually he even did his laundry. What else was there to do? But he didn't wander further from his home than his front yard. And every few minutes he found himself stopping, looking up and checking to make sure that there were no wolves around. He also packed a back pack full of clothes. Just in case.

  After that, he simply sat in his home and waited.

  It was the middle of the afternoon before they finally heard word of what had happened, and it didn't come from a crier or the city guards. There weren't many of either left as far as he could determine. At least not in the Docks. Instead it came from a merchant and his family heading for the western gate in their trader's wagon. Leaving what remained of their home for the last time. Though from what they said, there wasn't much to leave.

  The wolf mother as they knew, had attacked with surprising force. No one knew how she had got so many of her pack into the city, or where they'd been hiding until the previous day. But the attack had been devastating. Not only did she have wolves almost without number, but they could attack from anywhere. It seemed that the wolf mother had mastered the sewers and seemed to have a thousand ways in and out of it for her pack to use. So the wolves had come up from the sewers and attacked without any warning. Not just in the streets, but inside buildings. Walls were no protection when there was an enemy coming up from beneath.

  And there had been thousands of them.

  And then the king, already moon crazed, had made things worse by ordering his Imperial Guards to load the cannon with fire shot and destroy them. Had they just used swords, crossbows and rifles they could have dealt with the threat though many would have been killed. But the cannon had killed indiscriminately and destroyed everything in their path. And fire shot of all things? Phosphorous? The burning metal was a terror weapon for use on the battle field. Not in a city. That was what had started the fires that had burned out of control. And all the while the king, dressed only in a crown, an ermine robe and boots, had stood on a palace balcony, waving his sword wildly, as he directed the defence. Wherever he had pointed with his sword, the cannon had fired and people had died. And each time he had cheered as if it was a mighty victory. He hadn't realised he was killing his own people. Or maybe he just hadn't cared. Obviously his madness had worsened.

  Between the two of them Abysynth had been terribly damaged.

  The Merchants Quarter was gone. What the wolves and guards had left behind after their battles, the cannon had levelled and then the fires had turned to char. Bodies littered the streets, and more could be found in the remains of what had been the merchant houses. Many more. Those who had survived were apparently also packing as they intended to leave in the coming days. The warehouse district was in even worse shape, though at least there had been fewer deaths. Mainly because fewer people lived there to begin with. But the warehouses by and large were made of wood. People spent more coin on their homes than they did on their businesses. And stone masons cost good coin and wood was cheaper.

  Being made of stone for the most part, the Imperial Quarter had survived better as far as they could tell. The buildings had held firm against the assault and the guards stationed there had survived. The palace was intact as far as could be seen. But the gates to the Imperial Quarter were closed and those guards who had survived weren't letting anyone in or out of it. No one knew why.

  As he’d expected, the Escarpment had taken the worst damage, and now there was nothing left of it save burnt out timbers and dead bodies. Thousands were thought to be dead, but that was only a guess. It could be many more. Of course, it could also be less as it was possible many had escaped. But that was probably just wishful thinking.

  As for the wolves and the dire wolves, they were dead. They had fallen not in their scores but in their hundreds and thousands. No one knew where so many had come from. Or why they had attacked like an army. No one could guess how the wolf mother could have had dire wolves among her pack. But some time during the middle of the night they had finally been defeated. Unfortunately, most of the city guards had perished with them. The battle had been intense.

  Most troubling though, there had been no sign of the king since the battle had ended. Though his royal coach had been seen flying around the city, no one had got out. Granted he was mad, but the people would still have expected him to make an appearance even if it was the Court who made the announcements on his behalf. But no one had been seen. No criers had been sent out. No announcements had been made. Instead, it seemed the entire Imperial Quarter was locked down tight, and no one was getting in or out.

  As news went it wasn't much, and it certainly wasn't what Briagh had hoped to hear. It wasn't what any of the others had wanted to hear either judging by the looks in their eyes. But hearing him talk Briagh could see that his neighbours were carefully weighing his words and deciding what to do. Whether they should stay or leave. Neither option was all that palatable. No one wanted to leave the city and everything they knew. But if they stayed they would now be living in what had become a derelict city. Briagh suspected their decision, whatever it was, would rest with what happened tonight. Because it was too late in the day to leave now. There were only a few hours left before night fell, and no one wanted to
be caught out in the open by wolves. Briagh decided that if he left it would have to be in the morning, so that he could be as far away from the city as possible by the time night fell.

  As well as the threat of more wolves, his decision would be determined in part by how much of the Court still lived. If enough had survived they could bring some order back to the city over time. That might be a reason to stay. But did the wolf mother still live? If so, even though her pack might have been destroyed, there was still danger. She could surely form a new pack in time. And if she still lived that would be another reason to leave.

  Either way he realised as the merchant left and he returned to the safety of his home, he had a decision to make.

  But as night slowly fell once more he began to wonder about something else. What had the wolf mother stolen from the Arcanium? Because he suspected it was important. Perhaps it had been the reason she had attacked the city? Perhaps if he had stopped her this wouldn’t have happened? But he hadn't even tried.