The Lupine Curse: A Tale of Netherway
Chapter 28: Drunkards and Bandits

Fenris turned his head away when the corner of his eyes saw the body, the blood—the sparks for his Curse.

As Death danced around the city gleefully, brother killed brother, and fear became rampant, Fenris could not help but feel his Curse coaxing at his flesh, tempting with words of a growing temper to try and get him to strip himself of his human skin.

“Damned backstabber nearly got the better of us,” Vidarr remarked as he dragged the body to the back of an alleyway. One of the cultists had been overhearing their conversation; he’d decided it was a fortunate timing to collect not one but four bounties. Unlucky for him, Vidarr was the first one he came after.

Fenris grabbed Vidarr’s arm tightly and leaned close. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep it in. The more I see … I. It’s too much.” Stealing glances of Ashara’s worried expression, he wondered how long he had until warning her was inevitable.

“We must be swift. As Markus said, you need to—”

“I know what is planned,” Fenris said cautiously, as if the wrong word might ignite him into a transformation, “I simply don’t know if I will be able to see it through, before …”

“Do not question yourself. Not for a moment. If I had questioned myself in that scuffle only a moment ago, I would have died. Do you understand? There are some moments when action is required before thought. Instinct rules over certainty. Intuition unlocks potential.”

Fenris nodded. But all he could think about was how it felt to shut his jaws down on something. All his intuition told him to do was scream until his bones began reconfiguring.

“Go then. We’ve talked for too long. The tower on the rightmost side, remember?” Vidarr slipped off his bow to make sure the string was taut.

Even as he said so, the sounds of steel meeting steel were ringing out through the city. More fighting ensued, shredding the peace of Gods’ Rest to unrecognizable scraps. Fenris nodded once more, and started off down the alleyway. Deidre and Ashara were at his heels, while Vidarr and Markus left for their own tasks.

When they were at a far enough distance, Deidre grabbed Fenris’ arm, hoping to replace some foothold in their friendship. “They already know you’re here, Fenris. They’re certain of it, everyone must be, now. If you go through those crowds, you will die, won’t you?” She searched his eyes for that familiarity, the trust they always shared when everything seemed to be against them, such as it did right now.

But his eyes did not betray what he felt, and when he let her see through to him, she realized he, too, knew he was not the boy he was months before. What had become of that boy had been sloughed off in the shrine, left to rot in the revolutions of the sun. It had been his detachment, after all, that had kept them safe—at least from him. His trust belonged to nobody besides himself.

Fenris thought he should search to feel the familiarity. Though he knew for certain it was not now.

“Don’t you know this will be your death?” she asked him again.

They were not yet submerged in the throngs of people—the small battles that were ensuing. It was strangely quite, here on a street with closed shops and a few shady figures preparing to pillage the stores. The sunset was coming down swiftly, glinting off the windows.

Ashara dug into Deidre with a hateful stare.

“Do you see there being another way, Deidre? What would you have me do, sit here and wait for them all to die? These cultists tried to behead me, and they wish the same for you. If I cannot do it for myself, I can at least do it for these people, for you.” He looked at the city walls. To him they seemed like grey, lifeless mountains. What was once a statement of man’s power to construct turned into a ruinous example of his ability to entrap himself.

Ashara was silent. There was an almost foolish love in her chest that throbbed alongside the nervousness, and grew with every word that left Fenris’ lips.

“Vidarr and Markus should not do this alone,” he finished before he chose an empty path which snaked between several stores, and ended in an alleyway closest against the city wells.

But by the time they mazed through the path, the three of them cramped between the buildings, they could hear laughter and voices echoing ahead. They started to turn back, but the street behind them had grown crowded with a group of revelers, ignoring the bloodshed around them, or participating in it merrily.

“Where do ya think you’re going, little elf?” a woman almost twice the size of him grabbed Fenris, squishing his face against her obnoxiously large bosom. “Tiny little elf.” She let out a rather manly belch, which normally would have made Fenris laugh, but considering she was surrounded by a small band of men and other women, none looking too friendly, the burp only served to intimidate him. She dragged him closer to the thugs.

An older man, who had just as much dirt on his clothes as his face, seemed unamused by this. There was a curved shortsword across his lap. “Hey look here, this one ain’t like ’em others.”

“What’da mean, Rex?”

“I’m sayin’ this one ain’t an elf. Look at ’is eyes.”

Fenris gave the woman a hard elbow into her side, causing her to shriek and stumble back in pain. He tried to dart away, but at the last moment her hand caught the side of his face, more specifically the mask that covered it. It slipped off.

“Well, well, well,” the man called Rex said. “Certainly not an elf, now are ya?” Fenris drew his dagger, stared him down.

The woman was too afraid to do anything. “H—He’s got the Lupine Curse. Tha’s the one from the …”

“Yeah, yeah,” Rex said, flipping his sword in his hand, each time it landed he seemed twice as agitated as before. His voice was growing in volume, alerting more than just the people in the alleyway. “Everyone drop your trousers and run,” he mocked. “This boy ain’t nothing but a frightened mouse, aren’t ya? What’re ya doin’ in the city, anyhow?”

“Back away,” Fenris warned, but when he turned around, Deidre and Ashara were about to be ambushed by three others who had come from the street.

Rex made Fenris shrink in his shoes, the way his muscles bulged and his face turned red, how his lip quivered when he said, “Little scum. You brought this plague upon our city. Those damned elves from the Scarlet Hand. I don’t give a bucket of satyr’s piss if I get a reward or not. You’ll die right here and be grateful we didn’t string ya up outside.” The thugs started toward him. If the alleyway were any wider, they would have encircled him completely by now.

He lunged and grasped Fenris by the neck, shoving him against the stone wall, turning the world black for an instant while Deidre and Ashara dealt with the three behind them.

The man growled an insult that Fenris could not hear because of the blood pounding through his ears. His feet searched for the ground, but Rex only held him up higher. He could feel the edge of his blade playing with the idea of going through his flesh, sliding against the tender skin of his neck.

Whenever he tried to breathe, his chest only grew tighter, his consciousness already drifting away. He could not bring himself to stare into the man’s eyes as he killed him, how enraged and bloodshot they seemed. A terrible thing to look at as a last spectacle.

Something splintered, or cracked, if the sound was any indication, and then a warm substance splashed across Fenris’ face—numb from the thug’s grip. A breath of air brought him back to his senses. Only when his knees hit the ground did he realize Rex had let go of his neck, and he was wheezing beside his dead body.

“Facing down a bandit almost twice your size may not be the best decision, my love,” Ashara said as she yanked him to his feet.

A rush of blood caused the world to go dark. “Ashara, I can hardly breathe.”

“Just run, run or we’ll die here.”

Fenris stumbled forward. Rushing to his feet left him dizzy and his vision darkened. “Ashara, I can’t see!” He clutched her hand.

“You don’t need to see. Just follow my hand.”

After rushing blindly through skin and clothes, Fenris’ vision cleared. There was something like a bright flash behind him, as if a storm cloud had appeared right in the middle of the street. Deidre was standing there when he turned, looking murderously angry and tired of running from people, so much so that she’d shot a bolt of energy at one of the thugs, powerful enough to knock him back and leave him with burn marks. The crowd stopped chasing them, too frightened to face the same fate, and Deidre had time enough to catch up.

“What was that?” Fenris asked, incredulous.

“How else do you think I survived this whole time. A chapel of virgin women cannot exactly defend someone with a bounty. I had to learn to survive, somehow.”

“Your mother’d be proud.”

With the people behind them too intimidated to follow, they had some room to breathe.

“You look pale,” Ashara noted.

She could hardly feel her legs as they continued with their brisk pace, yet she just shook her head. “No cause for worry. Just been stuck in that chapel for too long,” she lied.

Fenris eyed her worriedly. “Take a deep breath. It appears we’re almost there.” They arrived at the entrance of the courtyard that led to the city gates. One of the houses bordering the square was on fire. It seemed as if every citizen was either attempting to flee, murder, or pillage. Doubtless, some were doing all three simultaneously.

Someone’s hand grabbed Fenris’ shoulder. He jumped, felt for his weapon. “The tower is just ahead, lad,” said Markus, grave and deep.

Fenris sighed. “Gods, man. You nearly killed me.”

There were still cultists all around them. Their bows were in their hands, with arrows already on the strings.

“Better move quickly. My men are ready.”

Something of a whimper came from Ashara. “They’re going to slaughter the whole city. Why aren’t your people returning to their homes? Can’t they see they’re simply walking to their deaths?”

“You’ve not seen the other quarters of the city,” was all Markus responded.

At the entrance, a mass slaughter was ensuing as the cultists got increasingly malicious, starting pushing the people away with daggers instead of shoves. A whole crowd of innocent townspeople were attempting to swallow up the tunnel, sheerly with numbers, but were being cut down.

To the right of the tunnel was one of the two guard towers bordering the entrance. That’s where Fenris was headed now, avoiding quarrels as they spilled out onto him like beggars reaching out for alms. Here and there, bloody blades were being flicked, brandished, and thrusted. Last cries were being screamed and vows of vengeance choked on trembling lips.

It was a struggle not to watch it all in utter fascination.

“Run, Fenris! Kick as if Siflos is chasin’ ya!” Markus barked, pointing at the guard tower across the courtyard.

He turned while he was just in shouting distance. “What about Vidarr? Is he there? Did he make it to his tower?”

“Just go!” Markus said.

The three of them shoved through the crowds, dodging misplaced attacks and threats. “Someone is following us,” Deidre said, tugging at Fenris’ arm.

“There’s no time,” he mumbled, shaking off her hand and shoving a drunkard aside to clear their path.

Past the city gates, reinforcements were coming to occupy the city. Two more high priests from separate encampments joined the ranks on horseback, wearing chain mail and armor.

This would be their first city, their new haven that would serve as an example that the Crimson Hand was no longer a mere cult. They marched towards the gates slowly, like a river of darkness from the forest.

Fenris burst through a tangle of people, panting, almost grinning as he realized he was still alive, and not a single wound to show for it. He savored the air unimpeded by someone else’s stench, and looked around. Ashara came through the masses, then Deidre.

Fenris’ eyes went wider than the moon. Someone had seen through Deider’s guise and was just a breath’s distance from her. A hand closed around her body like a snake, groping it hungrily, a demented satisfaction in the man’s drunken expression. He had a wild look like a rabid animal while he handled a knife for gutting fish.

But Ashara didn’t waste time, kicked him in his side and left a deep gash on his arm. While he was busy screaming, Deidre wrenched herself from his grasp, turned, and kicked him to the ground.

“To the tower, Deidre, now!” Fenris shouted as several Hands on the walls took notice of the scuffle. “Do you think they’ve figured it out?”

“Don’t look at them, maybe they won’t notice,” Ashara responded

Fenris straightened the mask on his face. A barrel of ale exploded from a fire, inspiring shrieks from nearby citizens.

“It’s not as if they are our problem, at the moment,” Ashara grumbled. She nodded her head at where the man had fallen. Two more of his friends emerged behind him, one of them smacking a club against his hand while another brandished two shortswords. They were a troublesome lot, but mostly annoying. The type with pitiful childhoods and a vice for blowing smoke in people’s faces.

“Look, she has claws!” the injured man remarked, still slurring insults despite having not quite figured out how to get back to his feet

His friends came after her, sending Ashara into a series of dodges and parries like a cat batting away a bird. Fenris did what he could to make himself useful, but it was all he could do not to get his hand cut open. With every wheeze and pant, they grew more frenzied—angered that a woman of her size danced around them.

Fenris tried to remember his bravery on the day Crowshead was attacked, tried to coax the familiar rush of innocent courage. But each time, he only saw the people he hurt, the souls he snatched up, how their dead eyes flashed up in his memories. It numbed him. Rooted him there as it had before.

Ashara was losing her grounding.

She parried the sword, but took the club to her side.

The opening was punished. He could another blow, catching her jaw with the end of his club. Her head snapped to the side. Stars swelled around her. She stumbled backwards with the world whirling like a ball on her forehead, nearer and nearer to falling over completely.

Guilt and terror overcame Fenris.

To his left, Deidre was slipping into the guard tower. Inside was a mechanism for closing half of the city gates.

The man with the swords, drunken and crazed, went after Ashara, ignoring Fenris for what he seemed to be: a scared statue.

Fenris shook the fear, sidestepped and intercepted him, whipping the back of his head with the butt of his dagger. He groaned, swooned, and then did something Fenris did not at all intend for: fall upon Ashara with all his ponderous, drunken weight. Her dagger’s point was, coincidentally, pointed toward him as he fell on her.

Fenris tried to grab her attention, but it was too late. She fell backwards, unconscious after her head struck the ground unforgivably. Almost humurously, the dead man’s weight pinned her.

Fenris regarded the remaining attacker with a nervous chuckle.

“You’re not going anywhere, li’ll one,” he said.

Across the courtyard was the other tower, where Vidarr had, with any luck, made it inside as well.

But the gates weren’t closing.

Why aren’t the gates closing? Fenris thought.