When the Pack Comes Howling
Knights did not always resort to fair means. They were human, after all, and human beings were perfectly capable of pettiness.
Compared to the endless web of cunning deceptions that waged war, slipping into an enemy camp like this was hardly remarkable trickery at all.
Of course, had he been caught, his life would not have been guaranteed.
"Let's flay the bastard's skin off him!"
"Sir Knight! Grant me the honor, I beg you!"
The warriors were itching to peel the knight's face off with their well-honed daggers. Johan raised a hand to stop them — and remarkably, the savage warriors fell silent at once.
The knight, now awake, stared at Johan with wide eyes. A man from outside, commanding these ferocious tribes so effortlessly.
How in the world?
"You have two choices. Talk after your skin comes off, or talk before it does. Which will it be?"
"...I've nothing to hide. I'll talk."
The knight — Botan — laid out his purpose plainly enough.
Boriska's orders had been to sneak into the tribal settlement, glean whatever intelligence he could about the quarry, and, if possible, interfere with the hunt.
Aclada's face twisted savagely as he glared at Botan.
"My apologies, Sir Knight. It never occurred to me that other rabble might covet the werewolves as well."
"Quarry that fine is bound to draw rumors across every corner of the steppe. Don't fret over it. Judging by this clumsy stunt, they clearly haven't tracked it properly."
Granted, if the centaurs had been eyeing this prey since long ago, it was no surprise that others might try to shove their way in.
'Still, that's rather curious.'
Johan thought of Boriska and the other knights. Deception was fair game for any of them — but the manner of the deception varied from man to man.
Disguising himself in barbarian garb and sneaking into a settlement to eavesdrop was a trick rather far outside what knights tended to conceive of.
Come to think of it—
"This scheme of his — which of the men helping you came up with it?"
"...!"
Botan jolted. He could only assume that Johan already knew about the Arrowhead mercenaries.
And in truth, Botan had been seething with resentment long before he ever set out here.
To think he had to crawl across the ground in such dishonor on account of a scheme hatched by mere mercenaries.
Worse still, the mercenaries themselves hadn't even set foot on the operation they'd proposed. No amount of coin, apparently, could persuade them to crawl half-naked into barbarian territory.
Which was precisely why Botan's mouth opened so readily. He even confessed that mercenaries had been hired. The warriors were aghast — mercenaries, of all things?
"It was one of the mercenaries. A man called Galambos."
"What does this Galambos do?"
"I'm told he's a hunter from the Eastern Rangers. Beyond that, I don't know."
Aclada, listening in beside them, started and leaned toward Johan with a quiet question.
"Sir Knight — how did you know there were others aiding Boriska?"
"Just a hunch."
"......"
A hunch, he said — yet Aclada still gazed at Johan with admiring eyes. Johan might have been modest about it, but wasn't sniffing out such things on instinct the very essence of a warrior's sense?
"Do you wish to be treated as a prisoner of war?"
"...I expect nothing of the sort from savages like you. If you mean to kill me, then kill me."
"Fine, then this elder shall take your skin—"
"Enough."
Johan reined in the warriors as they moved to lunge again, then drew them aside.
"The man's life belongs to me, yes?"
"That it does."
"I'm thinking of letting him go. Thoughts?"
The warriors did not flare up in outrage at Johan's abrupt proposal... not at all. They nodded along, quite agreeable.
"That's Sir Knight for you — ever the imperial nobleman."
"I know what that thing is on him. A yoke, isn't it? Did I use the word properly?"
"Close enough, I'd say. He's your catch, so do as you please. A shame we couldn't flay him, but there's nothing for it."
"...No, it's not about honor."
Aclada asked, puzzled.
"Could it be you mean to release him and trail him from behind? That won't do. We are masters of the pursuit, but the man has eyes — he'd notice."
The steppe was an awkward place for shadowing anyone, least of all a quarry who was already alert and watching his back.
Any man with a working brain would double-check his surroundings again and again.
"Better to torture him and wring out the rendezvous point, wouldn't you say? It can't be far."
"No. I considered that too."
'He considered it?'
Aclada had to fight down a laugh. Everything Johan said pleased him far too much.
"The men who sent that knight will have prepared for exactly that. Surely they didn't send him out without a contingency for capture."
"......"
Aclada conceded the point. It was true. Whoever dispatched him would have planned for that much.
"Even if we found such a place and sprang an ambush, we'd gain little by it. They'll be camped on ground that suits a fight, won't they?"
"No question of it. But Sir Knight — even if they've prepared, we are confident of winning."
"I don't doubt that either."
The captured knight had nothing more to spit out, true enough — but there was no compelling reason to spare a man who had crawled all this way to sneak in uninvited.
Johan's reasons lay elsewhere.
"Consider it this way. You order a subordinate to infiltrate in secret, and he comes back safe and sound — face battered black and blue, every weapon on him gone. What would go through your mind?"
"...!"
"The man already looks like a bundle of grievances walking. Would he not come under suspicion? Far better than walking straight into a trap they've laid out for us, wouldn't you say?"
"Truly, Sir Knight, you are as wise as Tangr himself!"
"Someone called me that before, as well. Who was Tangr again?"
"A warrior from our tribe's myths — one who fought magnificently and killed magnificently."
"Oh. I like the sound of him."
At Johan's easy response, Aclada smiled in satisfaction. No other knight would have come back with how dare you wave some heathen god of theirs in my face! — the reaction that would otherwise have been all but guaranteed.
"Tangr, the destroyer of worlds, the pure wrath of heaven made flesh, burned every city from the western edge to the eastern sea and bound the weak into slavery."
"......"
Wasn't that just a raving lunatic?
The words surged up Johan's throat, but he swallowed them — out of respect for the man's faith.
Though the infiltrating knight had unearthed nothing, the party resolved to move fast.
Now that they were known to be chasing the same werewolves, haste was prudent. The others might yet gather intelligence elsewhere and steal a march on them.
By good fortune, the hunters arrived in the village just as dawn broke.
"Lord Aclada. We've found where the werewolves are lairing."
"Well done! Thanks to you, the name of the Alchio tribe will not be put to shame!"
Aclada was beside himself with joy. He had a certain reputation to uphold in front of Johan and the other warriors, after all.
If he had gone to the trouble of summoning Johan only to find the quarry late and lose it to someone else, he could never again show his face as an Alchio man anywhere.
The party packed light and raced across the open steppe for more than two days, making for the site the hunters had found.
Along the way, Aclada dispatched the warriors one by one to other destinations.
"What are you sending them off for?"
"I've asked them to summon warriors from tribes we know, to bring them close by."
"Didn't you tell me the knights couldn't find this place?"
When the news had come, Aclada had galloped back crowing that by the time those slow-footed knights arrived, the hunt would already be over.
And now he was calling in tribal warriors from the region.
"...Isn't there an imperial proverb, Sir Knight? Even a bridge of stone should be tested before you cross it?"
Johan chuckled and nodded. Better to prepare than to overtrust — that was the wiser habit.
The steppe was dotted with nameless forests, and such woods made fine dens for monsters.
Even the centaur hunters did not enter them lightly — in winter, most of all.
But the men gathered here today had long since made their peace with that. On the steppe, an exceptional warrior was as good as an exceptional hunter.
They pitched camp some distance from the forest's edge and waited for dawn.
"Werewolves roam by night, and when morning comes they retreat into their dens to sleep. So at first light, we go into the forest and strike at their den itself."
Most of them had hunted werewolves before, so the briefing went quickly. The warriors checked their weapons and tested their bowstrings.
"And if they come out at us first?"
"Werewolves are cunning, cautious beasts — they don't hunt near their own dens. They won't charge us just because we're sitting in front of the forest."
"And if they do charge? All the better!"
The warriors roared with laughter. An ambush might catch them off guard, but beasts charging from a distance were simply prey. However stout and powerful the werewolf, a few poison-tipped arrows would fold it in short order.
Sensing the seasoned hunter's craft in the assembled warriors, Johan felt his tension ease.
'Traveling with experienced men really is comfortable.'
Warriors ready for any eventuality made steadfast companions. Johan decided to rest well before the werewolf hunt.
And that very night, the werewolves came pouring out of the forest like creatures possessed.
"Werewolves! Werewolves!"
The sentry woke the entire party, and everyone in the camp was on their feet in an instant, snatching up weapons and armor.
"How many?"
"I— I don't know!"
"What do you mean, you don't know? One? Two?"
"T— tens of them...!"
"?"
The warriors woke and stared hard into the faint darkness. The ground thundered like rolling drums, and far off in the black, dozens of werewolves were sprinting back and forth.
"Everyone mount up! Weapons in hand!"
"What in the world is going on?"
Even the usually unflappable Aclada seemed flustered, and the answer came slow.
That many werewolves bursting out of the forest and raving like madmen — what could possibly have caused it?
"Even you've never seen anything like this?"
"My apologies."
"Someone got here before us."
"?"
"Otherwise this couldn't be happening, could it? The ones who came first clearly did something."
"...!"
Aclada caught Johan's meaning. This bizarre event had occurred while others were hunting the werewolves too. For a coincidence, it was far too strange.
"But how?"
"No idea. But Aclada — whatever's happened, has our task really changed all that much? Give the order!"
Johan's composure proved contagious. Aclada nodded and shouted.
"We move! Keep an eye on the beasts' movements and edge the horses forward carefully!"
"Shall we put out the fires?"
"Anyone who means to see them has seen them already. Throw torches down all around! More light, not less."
The horses, sensing werewolves nearby, whinnied shrilly and grew skittish. Johan stroked their necks to steady them, thinking to himself:
'What I wouldn't give for a horse that can hold its nerve during a monster hunt.'
It had been the same with the troll hunt — horses were, unexpectedly, cowardly creatures, often unsuited to hunting monsters at all.
Wooooooo—
The werewolves' howling began to swell until it shredded the air. The beasts that had burst from the forest were wailing like things gone mad.
"Something's certainly wrong with them. They're not hunting prey — it's as if their savagery has simply detonated."
"Aclada! Some of them are coming this way!"
Even if the beasts were too far gone to sniff out prey with any cunning, a creature raging blindly was bound to be seen. As a few drew near, they flung themselves at the riders without warning.
But against warriors already mounted and ready for battle, such a charge amounted to nothing.
"Fall back and loose!"
The warriors wheeled their horses rearward, twisted in the saddle, and rained arrows down on the werewolves. Despite the darkness, their shots struck with uncanny accuracy.
The werewolves' reactions were just as startling, though. They swatted arrows out of the air with their claws and rolled their bodies clear of others — acrobatics no one would believe possible in a frenzied state.
But the warriors were one cut above. They loosed in coordinated volleys, arrows streaming into every opening, punching through werewolf hide and into the muscle beneath.
-■■■!
A curse-laced shriek rang out. The werewolf sank to its knees, unable to pursue any further.
"Best we fall back and wait for daylight!"
"Withdraw, Aclada!"
"Understood. Falling back—"
"Wait! Someone's coming!"
The warriors nocked and aimed in a single motion. Out of the darkness, amid the thunder of galloping hooves, a rider emerged.
"Hold your fire! Hold your fire!"
"Well, if it isn't that knight. Did the bastard tail us?"
"He couldn't possibly have. It's a mess out there — just shoot him!"
Johan pressed the warriors down and called out.
"Give me one reason why I shouldn't kill you!"
"I'll tell you where Sir Boriska is!"