Ronan: Night Wolves by Lisa Daniels (86)

Chapter Two

Faith got to know Erlandur a little better over the next few days, though much of him still remained a mystery to her.  He answered freely on some questions, and went as silent as the grave on others, making him difficult territory to discuss with.

He kept his secrets.  There was more to the Fractured City than he wanted to admit, and Faith didn’t understand why he left the information out.  Every sliver of knowledge counted.  How would they know their foes if the one person most equipped to understand them revealed nothing of his true inner thoughts?  No wonder some people suspected him, watched him as he patrolled with his heavy, Shadow tainted armor, his undead wolves, once companions with him on the trip to the Fractured City over three years ago.  Everything about him reeked of conspiracy.  Of danger.

But, somehow, he had motivated all these clans to come with him into the Fractured City.  All the Spine wolves believed in him.  Lunehill had sent the best of the best, barring Garcia, who needed to train new witches.  Raine was supposed to be plucked for the role, but her skill in enchanting meant Erlandur wanted her with them. 

Faith watched as several battle armored werewolves patrolled the outside of the fort.  She sat in a pine tree, uncomfortable with the needles poking into her, but enjoying the heady, earthen scent the tree offered, the way snow tumbled off the higher branches, and the view it offered. 

Her clan, Ghost Lake, sent only a small fraction of the warriors it boasted – the bravest and most reckless of them, along with four of their ten witches. 

Ghost Lake, Dreadwood, Lunehill and Spine.  So few, yet Erlandur and his close council believed these numbers would be enough.

Enough to deal serious damage to a foe that vastly outnumbered them.

Even with the Shadow armor, the weapon crafting, the ballista, and Yarrow’s corrupted power – something else must be boosting Erlandur’s confidence in the mission.  Something he refused to drop on anyone else.

Faith intended to extract that information.  By any means necessary.  She noted Erlandur’s passing interest in her, and sought to exploit it.  Feelings didn’t matter.  Not when it came to destroying the Shadows.  If she was due to scout with this man and a choice few companions, she didn’t want to feel that at any moment, the secrets he held onto might destroy them.  That he might turn upon them in the last moment, and prove everything to be a lie.

Though her family remained at home, living as quiet a life as they could under the circumstances, her best friend traveled with her.  Geraline, cool headed despite the flames she toted from her fingers.

Part of her suspected Erlandur was more interested in her prowess as a combat witch, the first one in many years after her grandmother had passed.

I’m nothing more to anyone than a fighting machine.  No one sees me as a woman, not really – not when they know they don’t have the slightest chance of beating me.

A sliver of emptiness penetrated her heart, before she shook it out.

Eight people were chosen for the scouting party.  With Erlandur came Nox, who was Targun’s son, and five other werewolves, all from the Fractured Spine clan – Arlen, Mordyn, Loras, Bal and Nethen.

All seemed like burly, strapping young men, and all of them eyed her with apprehension.

“They don’t like knowing you can beat them in physical combat,” Erlandur said, after having argued extensively with Nox to have Faith with the party.  All of them wanted to be able to stay in werewolf form, and having Faith automatically meant a slower pace – but Erlandur did not want to waste the opportunity in her. 

“People rarely do,” Faith replied dryly.  She was tired of it, really.  Tired of their Shadow cursed stares, their dislike.  People didn’t respect her for who she was.  They just saw someone dangerous, threatening the natural order of things.  It was perfectly fine to have witches shooting bolts and spewing fire.  But to be untouched in combat?  To dance around skilled and trained warriors as if they were infants, floundering around with wooden swords?

No one liked it.

It wasn’t as if she could just turn off the magic, either.  It boiled in her blood, entwined in her neural pathways.  It didn’t give her headaches, but it did weigh down her body when running in combat for too long.

You have a wonderful gift, Faith.  The words of her father, though she saw the pain in his eyes, too.  Wonderful, but misunderstood.  Expect the whole world to be against you.  But never falter.  Always use them to fight the good fight.  Be the hero your grandmother was.

She nodded.

She didn’t plan to let her family down.

The next day, in the first glimmers of daylight in the otherwise long night, Faith strode alongside the six werewolves and Erlandur.  She wore thick wolf robes, the Tear of the Warrior around her neck, and wolf tooth bracelets that Raine had enchanted for her.  Erlandur rode one undead wolf, Faith mounted up on the other, ignoring her initial shudders of revulsion.

The undead did not tire like the living.  Still, to have the matted, shaggy gray fur underneath her, the eerie blue eyes staring ahead, and the lack of breath in their bodies, the non-existent heartbeat – it made it difficult to not just throw herself off the wolf, to wash her hands in the snows.

Her twin swords trailed in their sheaths on either side.

With Targun and the other leaders watching them, including Balthus of Ghost Lake, powerful beta to their clan leader.  The other werewolves in their natural forms gave Erlandur a wide berth as usual. 

He seems so lonely, she thought, observing how he always quietly accepted his position, never sought company, never forced anyone to endure the unnatural taint of his magic any more than necessary.

The scenery rolled out before them as they exited through the fortress portcullis, bounding out to the nearby mountain slop, steep and treacherous, where no one could live without the beasts of the wild or the Shadows of the nearby City devouring them.  It took them a few hours, and day had already started shifting into night, when they experienced their first screaming wind slipstream, howling down the sheer face of the mountain and blasting them in a torrent of cold. 

“Only the steepest, highest mountains generate these winds,” Erlandur shouted above the wind, as she clung onto the matted furs of her undead steed, trying not to get blasted off into space.  “But we need to navigate them so we can reach the Fractured City.  There is no easy path.”

She considered the black tower that they saw from their vantage point.  How high must that thing be, to be visible from such a distance away?  How thick?  How strong the supports, to last so long without anything sentient or worthwhile minding the City?  When she pictured the Fractured City in her mind, she imagined a derelict ruin of buildings, of cobblestones unpeeling, of skeletons in the streets, and Shadows endlessly roaming, seeking to slaughter anything living within reach.  A mad journey for mad people, for the brave and the foolish to try their luck with tackling the threat directly within its rotten heart.

“And you’ve done this journey before?”  Faith screeched over the winds.  “Are you insane?”  Her hands, red and raw from the howling blast, had frozen onto the undead wolf’s fur.  She gingerly lowered her mouth to each set of knuckles, puffing hot air into them, trying to warm up the lethargic blood inside.

“Always,” Erlandur answered.  “There is one rule, though, when we go.  It’s ‘don’t get lost.’”  Faith smiled despite herself.  Cursed moon, this man was brave.  Likely foolish, too, but what did that leave her?  She’d agreed to come along as well.  She had prepared herself to sacrifice everything for the greater good.

Everyone here was as mad as the black knight who led the way, his undead wolves silently padding the murk.

Faith could barely see in the night, but the werewolves had no such issues.  They navigated the cold and the dark, unafraid of the horrors that lurked, pushing through the embrace of the remorseless mountains that hemmed them in.

When the werewolves tired, they huddled together in a sheltered enclave, where the remnants of an old campfire lay – evidence of Erlandur’s former journey across to the Fractured City and back.  Even with the cold, Erlandur never took his armor off.  He lay there, with Faith, as the six werewolves huddled together to conserve their warmth, helping the humans to not freeze to death.  Faith lay squashed between Nox and Mordyn, both with the distinctive white shade colorings of the Fractured Spine clan.  She missed the warm springs of her home, and the clear crystalline lakes which were perfect mirrors of the sky. 

It was lonely, being so high in the mountains, seeing nothing but swirling blizzard around, shivering in the gloom as they waited for the first hint of light to come.

According to Erlandur, the Shadows would not attack so high up – could not, even, but it didn’t stop Faith from lying awake for a long time, wondering what awaited.  It didn’t stop her dreading the ominous appearance of those nightmares. 

She remembered the first time she’d ever seen one.  Seven years old, out with her mother and father in one of the lakes, fishing for their supper, when one of them had formed nearby the bank.  She’d already been told so many stories about them, and watched as it pathetically lurched towards them.

They never directly form underneath us.  They always have to form nearby, outside the spiritual field we all carry around us.  Look how it stumbles.  Look how the snows hinder.  This is the power of the Lunar Wastes.  It makes them like children.

Her father then morphed into his golden werewolf form, and with easy bounds, ripped the thing apart.

More Shadows came over time.  Faith soon realized their advantages lay in their numbers, in their tireless pursuit and the element of surprise if they attacked at night, making it harder for them to be seen. 

Movement disturbed her.  She strained her eyes under the faint light of the moon, inhaling the wet fur smell of the six werewolves as she saw Erlandur twitching, his eyelids fluttering.  She watched him curiously for a while, though the twitching never stopped.  Something haunted him.  Tormented his dreams. 

“I won’t give in,” he muttered, tossing over to his side.  “Won’t give in.”

He continued mumbling, and a chill went through Faith.

She knew one other person who had that kind of dream. 

Yarrow of the Dreadwood.

Gradually, Erlandur’s twitching died out, and he breathed slower, calmer.

What did this mean?  Did Erlandur suffer from corruption as well?  Did he hear the voices?  Was that why he never took his armor off?  Part of her itched to unclasp the buckles, to see what lay beneath.  The wayward fantasies she contained of him being naked, with a clear, unblemished torso, those deep blue eyes piercing her soul, with her on top of him, whispering into his ear that she planned to decipher all his secrets – her imagination blossomed.  What if a spider web of black veins sheltered underneath his armor?  Was that why he never took it off?

A horrible notion came to her.

Erlandur claimed he didn’t have magic.  His armor did, which enabled him to control the undead wolves.

What if he was lying?

What if he had magic, unheard of in an ordinary human male?

Shadow magic.

Her brain weighed down with sleep.  Too many speculations, too many possibilities to consider. 

What in moon’s eye happened to him the first time he entered the Fractured City?

Sleep came, fitful, plagued with doubts and worries, with the fear that somewhere, something was going to go terribly wrong.  Maybe all her doubts were misplaced.

She hoped so, anyway.

Traveling the next day on an empty stomach made it hard for her to focus.  She ignored the pangs of hunger as best she could, knowing they needed to make it through the Fractured Spine as soon as possible.  They ate sparse snippets of food, traveling hard for three days, drinking from the snow when they had no other choice.  On the fourth day, the wolves spread out, their enormous forms lumbering over the snow, which now sunk waist deep for them in areas.  Progress went slow, and Faith felt the powder scrape against her boots as they advanced, and the air oddly compressed her lungs, and clamped her skull.  Headaches pinched her brain.

“Up there,” Erlandur wheezed, pointing at the highest peak of the mountain they climbed, “is the death zone.  We have to be fast when we reach it.”

“W-why?”  Faith’s teeth chattered.  She felt queasy, dislocated from reality.

“There’s not enough oxygen for us to breathe.  Our bodies will start shutting down once we pass eight thousand meters, so we need to make it fast to the other side.”

Two of the werewolves lagged behind, suffering the effects of the altitude as well.

“We’ll have a few minutes.  It’s a short distance.  And we only just dip into the zone – but I lost two members of my expedition last time we made it here.”

“That doesn’t sound promising,” Faith said, clutching tighter to the undead wolf.  She heard Nox growl softly beside them.  The Fractured Spine wolf whimpered, eyeing the two who struggled from altitude sickness.

“Remember,” Erlandur panted, his voice carrying across as they waded.  “Once we pass the arch, we have to be as fast as we can, but without exerting ourselves.  A trot will do.  We need to start our descent before we stay too long in the death zone.”

Whimpers and growls punctuated his speech.

The dizziness and nausea became stronger.  Their group advanced at a glacial pace towards the arch.

Once they passed under it, everyone burst into trotting speed, except one werewolf, who sprinted ahead.

“Fool,” Erlandur hissed.  “There’s not enough oxygen…”

Sure enough, within twenty or so seconds, the werewolf stumbled, and fell unconscious, unable to breathe efficiently.  He morphed back into human form.  Erlandur and Faith quickly dismounted to help sling him over Faith’s undead wolf, and they continued their gruelling trek in the death zone, racing against time and oxygen decay.

Faith’s heart thudded traitorously.  Her head pounded, the nausea intensified, until she wanted to vomit out her insides, but kept it in check, holding onto the undead steed and the unconscious werewolf – Mordyn.

Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted two corpses in the snow, perfectly preserved, their icy yellow eyes staring blankly, as if judging them.  She saw other bodies as well, some higher up, others collected at the base of an incline – expeditions that had failed in the past.

Their group began descent.  The nausea didn’t go away, and Faith began seeing spots in front of her eyes, finding her eyesight failing, and she panicked, though tried to not show it.  Was she going blind?  How?  Why?

They descended.  Visions began swimming at the corners of her sight.  Shadows rustling, a mass of wolves, all with undead, luminous blue eyes, watching them in eerie silence.  Laughter and manic gibbering in the background, a voice hissing, telling her she’d never make it, she would die and freeze, and the snow would pile over her body, and the cold would preserve it, so she could stare at all the other travelers who passed.

I’m hallucinating, she thought vaguely.  None of this is real.

What is real?  The voices mocked, the army of blue eyed watchers said.  The susurrations swam into her ears.

Erlandur hovered in front of her, like a spectre.  He seized her roughly, and planted dead blue lips upon hers, kissing and kissing.

She gasped as her breath sucked out into his mouth.  Her entire body iced over, as he inhaled every drop of warmth from her, leaving her an undead husk, with an un-beating heart.

Now you will kill for me, the Erlandur monster declared, and something tinged in her bones, like an involuntary movement for her to let go, to kill, to fight against the onslaught of cold.

Gradually, her thoughts cleared.  The distorted images vanished.  The headache grew calmer, and she took in great gulps of air, feeling wonderful, crisp oxygen igniting her lungs.

The group continued their downward slant, no one saying anything.  Faith didn’t know who else suffered the hallucinations, who else went through the same nausea as her, or whether it had just been her and Mardyn affected by the death zone.

The descent on the other side appeared dangerously steep – they often sunk into snow and slithered down it, whilst trying to stick to a designated path which had been marked by travelers in the past with clothes tied around boulders, and rocks piled in uniform shape.

When Faith bravely looked into the distance, trying not to let her head spin at the dizzying height thousands of meters up, she saw, for the first time in her life, the full outline of the Fractured City.

The whole expanse stretched ahead, with thousands upon thousands of buildings, most collapsed, but some towering and still standing.  The tower that reached above the mountains was a monolith, thickening as it neared the foundations to support its awesome height.  Although this building was made of black cast iron, the other buildings in the distance looked as though they were made of marble, or glass.  Streets between the buildings looked wide enough to host marching armies, or many wagons side by side.  The buildings on the outer rims looked the most ruined.  Most had crumbled into dust long ago, but the fact that so many areas still looked functional, despite the centuries it had been since the Lunar Wastes first formed, left Faith flabbergasted.

The whole thing was gigantic.  At least half the size of the Lunar Wastes.  Maybe even more so.

“Strange, isn’t it?”  Erlandur’s voice drifted to her in the chilled air, so cold that Faith felt certain that if she moved her hands away from the wolf’s furs and from the wrappings she had them in, they would catch frostbite and drop off within hours.  Even with her face wrapped up warmer, the cold had a way of seeping into her bones, slithering past all her defenses to make her feel eternally frozen.

“It still looks like a city,” Faith said, gawping.  She shivered.  “I thought everything would be gone.”

“Not everything,” Erlandur said.  “Werewolves,” he called out then.  “If anything should happen to us – if we get separated for any reason, even if you are alone, attempt to complete your mission and then return to the Fractured Spine clan.  Scout the activity, determine where our best entry point will be.  And… if you meet any living creature down there, if they’re not wearing a crescent moon pendant, then don’t trust them.”

What?

“There’s people there?”

Before Erlandur had a chance to answer, a low, rumbling sound emanated.

The werewolves hesitated in confusion. 

“Keep going,” Erlandur urged, his eyes roving around nervously.  Faith clutched onto the unconscious Mardyn, wondering what that stomach wrenching sound belonged to.

Her eyes settled on a shadowy mass standing by a thick clump of boulders.

“Shadow!”  She barked.

“What?”  Erlandur sought where she looked.  “That’s… no.  That’s not right.  They can’t be up here.”

The Shadow raised up its arms, swaying as if in a trance.

Faith’s heart squeezed in fear.  “It’s a Supreme.”

“Oh, curses!” 

The Supreme shot black bolts out of its hands, striking the sheer mountain face.  In the encroaching night, Faith heard the face of the mountain growl, before a horrific sound, like tearing rock resounded through the area.

“RUN!”  Erlandur screamed.  “RUN!”

How in curses could they outrun the avalanche?  The snow and rock roared towards them like a vicious glacier tide, the noise and impact causing Faith’s bones to vibrate.  She clung onto the undead wolf, and Mordyn began slipping from her grasp.

No!  Her wolf stumbled, struggled with the additional weight upon it, and Mordyn now slid at an awkward angle, dangling.  No!

“Let him go,” Erlandur screeched.

“I can’t!  That’s not fair or right!”

“Then die.”  His words chilled her more than the environment around them.  There was no warmth there, no mercy.

She clung onto Mordyn for longer, seeing the mountain fall down on top of them, casting a blotting darkness over their position.  With a curse, she let Mordyn go, and the undead wolf silently sprang forwards, free from its bindings, eager to follow the bidding of its master.  No matter how fast they ran, though, they couldn’t escape the advancing white death.

The snow slammed into her back.  She clung, desperately onto the wolf, as they stumbled, tumbled, and went flying into empty space.  The world spun around, as they rolled off the edge of a jutting incline into nothingness, seeing the sheer drop below.

Faith’s heart practically burst out of her chest.  She yelled as she and the wolf tumbled through the air, and she saw two other forms in the same position as he, one howling, the other silent as he clung to his wolf.

We can’t die here!

Even with the resilience her combat magic gave her body, she couldn’t – if they hit the ground…

She screamed in pure, unadulterated terror as they plummeted towards the ground, thousands of meters below.