From the shadowed ridge beyond them came Skara, the warg matriarch.
She was immense her fur silver-black, streaked with old scars. One eye glowed bright azure, the other was blind and clouded white. She walked with the slow grace of something that feared nothing left in the world. The smaller wargs lowered their heads as she passed.
Her gaze fixed on Vris.
“Little green thing,” her voice rumbled not words, but a growl that shaped itself into meaning. “You walk into my den without fear. Why?”
Vris bowed his head slightly, never breaking eye contact. “Because fear wastes strength,” he said. “And I have none to spare.”
The blind eye flickered. “You killed men. I smell their blood. You wear their stink.”
“I killed what hunted me,” Vris answered. “As you do.”
The warg queen’s lips curled, showing teeth. “You come to boast?”
“No.”
He took a slow step forward, and though the pack stirred, Skara raised her tail hold.
“I come to offer a hunt.”
He knelt, drawing one of the maps from his cloak. The parchment was creased and bloody, but the markings still glowed faintly in the moonlight. He pressed a claw to the west, where the mark of Fairehaven sat like a bright wound on the paper.
“Humans,” he said. “They take everything. They build and burn. They will come for you one day as they came for us.”
Skara sniffed the air, eyes narrowing. The other wargs growled softly.
Vris pointed next to the south-east. “Ogres. Their sorceress hates all things small and clever. One day she will come for us both.” His tone hardened. “Unless we strike first.”
Skara’s growl deepened, something like amusement rumbling in her throat. “And what would you give, little lord, for my fangs?”
Vris looked up at her steady, fearless. “Meat. Blood. A place in my tribe for your kin. We hunt together. We eat together. When I rise, you rise.”
She circled him now, slow and deliberate, her tail brushing against his cloak. “And when you fall?” she asked.
“Then you eat me,” he said simply.
The warg’s one good eye flared bright in the dark.
Without warning, Skara lunged.
Her paw struck like a hammer, slamming Vris to the ground. The impact drove the air from his lungs. He rolled, blade flashing the twisted knife from the ruins glinting like liquid night. He slashed upward, scoring a line across her snout. Blood welled.
The wargs howled, ready to tear him apart.
But Skara barked once sharp, commanding and they froze.
Blood dripped from her muzzle. She licked it slowly, her tongue rasping over the wound. Then, with a low, approving rumble, she stepped back.
“You don’t beg,” she said. “You don’t break.”
She lowered her head until her cold nose brushed his forehead. Her breath was hot and heavy with the scent of the wild.
“Then hear this, Goblin of the Knife. I will run with you… for a time.”
Vris rose, blood on his lips and a faint smile curling there. “Then we hunt as one.”
Skara threw back her head and howled a deep, rolling sound that shuddered across the plains. The other wargs joined her, their voices weaving with the wind. It echoed across the world like thunder the first song of the Fang Pact.
When Vris returned to the Burrow, the night fires were still burning. He walked among his people, cloak tattered, blood drying on his skin, eyes gleaming faintly blue from the reflected moonlight.
Behind him, the shadows moved.
And then they saw them shapes slipping into the torchlight, huge and silent. Wargs.
Gasps filled the cavern. Goblins scrambled back, terrified and awestruck as the beasts settled near the fire pits, their yellow eyes gleaming like lanterns. Vris raised a hand for silence.
“The Southern Fang grows,” he said, voice low, carrying through the dark. “The plains run with new blood. From this night on… the howl is ours.”
The wargs growled in answer low, proud, almost regal.
And the goblins
They knelt.
For the first time since the first stone was laid in the Burrow, the monsters of the south had an army.