He flinched on instinct as claws flew towards his chest, but knowing better than to waste his blow parrying, the pack leader let them pass—
Clang!
Sparks scattered before his eyes as metal scraped against metal, revealing a confused werewolf as they cleared.
Fenrir gritted his fangs and drove his weapon into the attacker’s exposed chest.
All around him, this pattern repeated as his warpack deflected blows with their own bodies, sending a cacophony of hisses into the ravine:
An armored warpack!
But armor didn’t make them invincible. One of his werewolves whimpered and dropped lifelessly beside him as the enemy’s cold claws bit her between the chest and shoulder plates.
There were gaps.
He lunged for the assailant; his men followed, each holding back three, sometimes four, werewolves on their own as waves of enemies poured onto them.
The coalition's numerical advantage ground his forces down slowly, as armor only delayed the inevitable. But as Rurik explained back in the longhouse, delay was the point.
The banks around them rumbled, making his enemies hesitate. Rurik’s voice soared above the battlefield—
“GRAYFANG!!!”
Armored werewolves barreled down the hills.
The coalition army froze, for this wasn’t a simple pincer movement, but a full-on encirclement. They were now also threatened from the inside, as they had surrounded Fenrir’s warpack first.
“Push!” the pack leader cried.
His chieftain carved his way through the coalition’s men, an unstoppable giant—the biggest of their tribe—as Fenrir’s warpack shoved, bit, and clawed. He suspected that not even he could take the chieftain in a duel.
Bodies smashed against bodies, growls and hissing steel, turning everyone deaf or dead by nightfall.
The battlefield fell quiet.
Today, victory belonged to his tribe.
They counted their losses and plundered their fallen foes when a full moon rose in the sky, crimson like the snow under their paws.
To anyone else, that’d be an eclipse, but Rurik’s eyes glimmered as if he saw an omen pointing down at him. They tried speaking to him, but the chieftain didn’t respond until, trance-like, he shot his fist skyward— Read the latest chapters at NovelPing.
“Grakhur khet ulgra vroskan!”
Likely believing it was just another war cry, the Grayfang warriors howled in response.
But Fenrir hesitated, for those words hadn’t been heard since Ulv the Founder first proclaimed them. They meant:
The wolves who eat the world.
The Red-Ear city sat on high ground between two violent streams, making it nearly impossible to surround. Its northern face on flatter ground was the only practical approach, but it lay riddled with trenches, sharpened stakes, and multiple palisade layers.
Of all fortifications in Werewolf Country, this was the Grayfang Pass’ true counterpart, and they would never yield as the Ironjaws did.
Redirecting toward the less fortified Stormhides further southeast was also suicidal, since it would isolate their forces deep in unfamiliar enemy territory and between the two tribes. Which meant they’d have to tackle this labyrinth of death head-on.
Smaller Grayfang squads skirmished with the entrenched enemy day and night, eating chunks of their trenches one at a time, only to lose them before they could turn their stakes against their owners.
This deadlock could not last, for the Stormhides were undoubtedly amassing another army from their vast population—perks of living in warmer lands.
Without armor, to confuse the enemy, Fenrir gathered his best fighters and set out himself under the cover of darkness.
As the pack leader’s squad approached from a different direction than the Grayfangs’ camp, the Red-Ears in the muddy trench let them approach unopposed, likely thinking it was another skirmishing party returning.
His paws splashed in the mud.
The Red-Ears’ eyes widened as he unsheathed his weapons.
Not wanting to let a werewolf die thinking an ally killed him, he broke the silence before the blow—
“Grayfang!!!”
He and his men carved a red road across the trench, then turned the stakes around.
Red-Ear reinforcements came rushing to contest it, but so did the armored Grayfangs behind them. Chaos ensued as their enemies impaled themselves on their own defenses.
Having secured the first trench for the main force, Fenrir pulled back to camp with his fighters.
Vargan and Rurik fastened their armor to join the next assault. Another would come tonight, and many more after.
“Well done, Fenrir,” the chieftain said as the pack leader joined them in gearing up silently.
Vargan scoffed.
Stormhides?
He turned, expecting trouble, when a lone werewolf ran past the warriors and reached them at the front.
A messenger from the Grayfang Pass.
“Great Rurik!” he said, bowing. “Your vassal from beyond the pass is under attack. They require immediate military assistance.”
The Witch…?
Rurik kept silent and didn’t even turn. Fenrir understood this; the main force had to maintain the siege, but they didn’t need everyone here either. A delay in their victory was a low price to pay when Katarina needed him.
He snapped his armor into place and turned to leave. “I’m going—”
“Don’t you dare flee, you coward,” Vargan said. “One trench is nothing—this battle is not over yet.”
His jaw clenched. “Our allies need us.”
“They are not our ‘allies’.” Vargan spat on the snow. “They’re vassals. When will this thick skull of yours understand?”
“It doesn’t matter. That’s our duty. I’ll just take my warpack if it needs be.”
“No,” Rurik said, still looking at the city. “Sorry, Fenrir.”
Fenrir’s eyes widened. “But Great Rurik—”
“An external call to arms requires unanimous decision from all pack leaders, or so our ancestral laws say. You can’t just go on your own,” Rurik said. “My vote is yes to aid our vassal… What say you, Vargan?”
It can’t be… You know what this means, Rurik.
The law was the law, but invoking it now, of all times, was repulsive.
Vargan laughed. “Hell no.”
“Then it’s settled,” Rurik said. “If you go, you’d better not return, Fenrir.”
The messenger shifted uncomfortably. “What do I tell them?”
Fenrir stared at him. “Tell her…”
The cacophony of battle swallowed the pack leader’s voice. Reading his lips, the messenger nodded, then bolted out of the camp.