Suicide.

  That was how the reports of disappearances that happened at night were signed.

  Biased terrain benefited their children; its heavy snow made up for a hampering trap impossible to circumvent, and the canopy and mist shrouded predators from the unadapted eyes of humans, which were incapable of piercing through the veil of darkness, unlike most of their wild inhabitants.

  The trail — if you could call a bumpy and slippery path between snow-covered hills and pines a ‘trail’ — was nothing but an invention of the human mind that beasts cared in the least, hence, it offered no protection.

  Venturing past the city walls after sunset was nothing short of suicidal.

  The old veteran Evert Hort was familiar with such incidents; he himself had signed those reports countless times over the years.

  The ex-guardsman lamented and cursed the decision of his ‘comrades’ not to go back to the capital; the ‘preposterousness’ of his words and haste for the promise of glory and revenge discouraged most of them from going back by his side to alert Gr?t?h.

  At least Imants had been neighborly enough to lend him a magic mount.

  An incandescent horse with indigo shades galloped across the woods like a wraith, every step a hiss of ethereal fire. At the back of the magical beast sat an almost bald man with a mustacheless beard, holding a spear and a shield in both hands and wearing a breastplate, the latter two items depicting the characteristic coat of arms of the capital of the north, worn away and almost colorless due to its age.

  Some hours ago, several wolves had attacked the group the ex-guard was a member of. As expected, being led by one of the most famous adventurers of the north, M?rk H?ssen, meant there had been no physical damage or losses within the ranks. But what escorted the animals was a concerning matter — it was a three-eyed supernatural creature: a warg.

  It was uncommon enough to observe such monsters in this region of the Frostscape — their territory was located East, ranging from the edge of the mountain range to the Sea of Shattered Plates. But the weirdest thing had not been the presence of the lupine creature that might as well be a stray: it was how it commanded the wolves.

  As much as both kinds resembled each other, wolves and wargs were different species — comparing them to humans and greys would fall short. It was when the man heard that coarse booming howl last night, that whopping shout he had not picked up with his ears in decades.

  During his hasty ride to the capital, the howls could be heard from every corner of the woods, behind every bush and tree. A choir of cries that bit Evert on his heels, reminding him that he now stood as the prey and a guard of none.

  Decades of hearing the call of the wild from the safety of the towering bulwark had attuned the old sentry to the beast’s ‘language.’ They were transmitting orders; commands aimed to seize not a prey but a foe. Going by the cadence of the cries and the number of packs mobilized, whatever they sought was a major threat to their kind.

  It was comforting knowing he was not the main target, but that had not spared him from danger — wolves would not miss the chance to catch a snack during their harsh search task.

  Unexpectedly, a set of swooshing sounds manifested from his left. Of course the magical horse would not pass unnoticed by canine eyes.

  The rider urged the mount to move faster, wild dogs quickly closing in. Evert had been ambushed right in the middle of a rocky ditch; fortunately, magical manifestation was not without its benefits, and the unreal stallion suffered no handicap by the abrupt terrain and, unlike a real horse, gave in to no fear. The sum-up of these details allowed the rider to evade the first attacker.

  The fluorescent horse jumped right in time, and the wolf crashed past the magical figure, its momentum sending it rolling through the frozen stones. But the wolf was not alone, and one of its partners came from the opposite direction, lashing out without hesitation.

  “Stay back, you stupid dog!” the man yelled, pointing his spear at the snarling creature. His warnings were disregarded, and the animal leaped at the ghostly ungulate. Unbeknownst to the dog, the horse was a mere manifestation of magic, not a tangible prey with juicy meat; as the wolf tried to sink its fangs into the ethereal flesh, the projection dissipated in thin air.

  The wolf continued its trajectory and ended up tackling its partners on the other side of the narrow path. Gravity took effect, and the veteran fell as soon as the stallion faded, but by calling upon his reflexes, honed swift despite his age, he softened the fall and kept the spear and shield in his grip, not doing much besides issuing a groan.

  Using his pole weapon as support, the aged man picked himself up as fast as possible, and by the time he adopted a defensive stance, he caught sight of the two wolves having a dispute, neither of the two amused by the other crashing into the other. The veteran regarded the wolves for an instant, considering killing them both on the spot, but as the vegetation shook and the snow crackled nearby, he chose to keep moving.

  “You are just a bunch of dimwitted mutts,” the old man murmured as he moved forward, not taking his eyes or shield from the duo until the distance between them surpassed twenty yards, at which point he swirled around and sprinted.

  “Same crap since the last six years... That H?ssen and his bunch of glory-chaser dorks…” his scowl reduced to a sigh. “You damn better found that monster, H?ssen. I have a duty to my people.”

  Right after battling the wolves and wargs, the ex-soldier had warned the party about the dangers of an alpha warg within the region. ‘It was a stray wolf-thing.’ ‘One warg is no threat to the capital.’ ‘No such thing as an alpha warg exists.’ These and many others had been their thoughts, every syllable oozing with disinterested skepticism. Evert had opted to return on his own, not pushing his growing concerns lest he split the newly created party.

  The remembrance of last night’s events was interrupted by more snarls and barks from behind. Two minutes of running unperturbed, that had been his only breather.

  Another beast broke from the bushes and pounced at the man, but its attack was greeted by a firm-gripped shield, which redirected the assailant against the soil with a smack.

  Predictably, that wolf was accompanied, and more gray-furred animals joined their down comrade, each one growling deeply at the man. The noise increased nearly twofold when another two wolves appeared from behind the man.

  Evert groaned and clutched his spear harder as his situation worsened. In his youth, he could have stood against a handful of wolves without taking a scratch. But old as he was, he had his reservations about defeating four savage wolves without sustaining a crippling injury, and all his limbs needed to be functional if he wanted to make his way to Gr?t?h.

  The gray-haired man watched as one of the animals prepared to assault him, crouching down and its lips peeling up in anticipation. The man braced himself, but the attack never came. Instead, a roar rumbled from the vicinity, shaking the pine’s branches and provoking tiny avalanches to flow down and into the ditch. Evert flinched at the yowl, and so did the wolves circling him.

  There was no doubt for the human — that shout came from the monster, the very same monster he was supposed to alert the capital about. He heard stomps on the snow closing in, and wolves, previously eager to leap at him with animalistic violence, now crouched in what the former guardsman believed to be dread, a feeling he seized to slip out of the ambush.

  No wolf sideglanced or twirled their ears in his direction as Evert abandoned the scene.

  A pack of wargs shall not be here... Evert glimpsed over his shoulder and spotted a towering shadow, one whose shade was outlined even through the darkness cast by the trees and hills. And no damn warg shall be that massive. Cursed beast… You won’t roam free around my home.

  “Not under my damn watch!”

  The old warrior kept running in the direction of the capital, losing himself in the rustic trail, not wasting a single second to check whether the giant warg had spotted him.

  As the human got further and further away, a bulky quadruped marched toward the pack of wolves, six in number since the other two had scrambled from their dispute and joined their teammates. The wolf-thing, a dozen times as big as the common wolf, analyzed its primitive cousins, its gaze heavy with scowl, as if he were observing brainless pups in action.

  Not under my control, the wolf-thing mused. These have not fully recovered from the dragon’s appearance. I shall change that.

  Defiance came in the form of a growl, one that carried a considerable level of fear. One of the wolves rejected the warg’s presence. Yes, the warg’s ember-like eyes landed on the rebel beast. You are the head of the pack.

  Dominance over his inferior brethren was one of the humongous warg’s gifts, more valuable than its unnatural size. But not even he could subjugate the lesser kind when they had chosen a leader. Such remarkable loyalty for the mere beast.

  Such loyalty and stupidity.

  The giant wolf approached the rebellious canids with overwhelming triviality, mist smoking through its nostrils and the gap of its teeth. The pack leader cowered, ears lowering a tad and tail hiding low between its legs, but its snarl never faltered.

  Pitiful beast.

  The threatening air of the humongous warg became unbearable, pushing the pack leader to carry out a more hostile approach. However, before the wolf could pounce ahead, a clawed foreleg blitzed upon it, sending the wolf reeling to the left.

  The other wolves limited themselves to breathing low growls and yelps, unable to partake in the battle that was not their place. They merely stood in awe and fear of how the fight unfolded.

  None of them doubted who was going to win.

  The pack leader had not recovered from the last swipe when the monster’s crushing paw weighed upon its neck, extracting a series of agonizing whimpers from its maw. The air flux was blocked, and the remnants of sonorous resistance transformed into wheezes.

  The giant canid pressed its paw at the windpipe, its strength increasing by every second, painfully so. Why use the jaws and swallow the blood of the nameless beast when one leg was more than enough?

  Crack.

  The gruesome rupture of bone silenced the surroundings, every present wolf flinching at the sound.

  The monster retrieved his leg from the corpse and addressed the rest of the pack with a menacing three-eyed leer. The gaze conveyed a crude message — they all belonged to him. A mere flash of his fangs and the wolves shrank in submission, legs and ears bowing to the greater authority.

  The new head of the pack regarded his underlings for an instant, then he bent his neck back to his ebony-colored mane and retrieved something with his jaws that he later put in the frozen soil. It was a handful of white feathers soaked in red.

  The great warg turned to the pack once again and issued a throaty groan. The pack took the order without a second thought and approached the feathers, sniffing them and memorizing the scent the quills bore. The animals took turns snuffling at the bloody sample for another minute, after which the pack leader took a step back, raised his head at the dawning sky, and shouted a roar.

  The wolves howled in response, and just as they started to cry, they hastened up and out of the ditch that now served as the tomb of their former leader.

  With the wolves finally sent to fulfill their duty, the great canid stared at where he had noticed the human. He considered going after the man who wore the city’s insignia, knowing that the sentinel would alert about his whereabouts as soon as he got into the human settlement.

  But as he pondered that possibility, another howl was heard from beyond the valley, his ears jerking in the call’s way. As the leader, he could not leave his ranks and go for a wandering human; only he could stand against the true prey.

  Only he was allowed to slay it.

  The warg decided he would leave the primitive canids to go after the human as soon as he came across the next pack, maybe even sending a warg along with the hunting pack.

  Swiveling at the last howl’s source, the leader leaped at the mountain’s climb and sprinted, powerful legs as wide as human arms were long propelling him forward, provoking a boom of hoarfrost with every pawstep.

  I will get you soon, Howling Talon, and with your demise, I will claim these lands for my kind. The frozen lands were not made for aberrations. The frozen lands were made for the wargkin.

  ————————————————————————————————————————————————

  Nearly a fifth of a day had passed since Marek Blakesley abandoned Gr?t?h, departing as soon as the first sunrays pierced the clouds.

  Now, he found himself marching through the path between mountains, the valley standing as a river for the streaming breeze that licked the man’s face and made his cloak softly waver. The snow-clogged hills and foliage obstructed the view of the city left behind, and the staggering bulwark that separated wilderness from civilization was no longer visible from the current standpoint.

  Howls hummed across from time to time, their intensity growing the more the man walked further into the arctic wildlands. The first round of howl had put him on guard, and he responded by pressing his hand against the extravagant ax, but as time passed, the source of unnervedness among many had transformed into scratching grass for his ears.

  “It is like a church’s chant or a lunatic sect, I swear... The darn dragon is gone, why bother?” he complained.

  After several minutes of traveling, Marek stepped into rough terrain. This must be the ‘trail’ the locals told him about, a natural trap for wooden wheels and mounts, a snare that wild animals were very aware of.

  More lupine cries echoed from uphill, their cadence more insistent and volume more ear-scratching.

  “Could you just shut your snouts off already?” Marek grumbled. “It has been over a day. Can’t just go to your cave and wait for the night as norma—” his grouchy talk was interrupted by a faint crackle coming from beyond a pile of snow.

  His hand quickly landed over the silvery handle, his annoyed behavior discarded like the parchment of some sweet. After a couple of seconds that drew out a bit too long, a voice manifested from beyond the pile. “No use of being silent now, boy... I could hear your complaints the moment you entered the valley,” said the voice between ragged chortles, “I may be old, but my hearing is vivid enough to catch the tantrum of the kids.”

  The speaker revealed himself as he walked past the snow hump. It was a man with a very noticeable receding hairline and a beard, each mostly colored in gray with just some fragments of brown in some regions. He was equipped with a breastmail, showing the weathered image of the heraldry of Gr?t?h, walking while using the spear as a cane. No wonder, as the man was covered in scratches and punctures, his face dripping wet with melted snow and blood.

  “What... no respect for the elderly? No greeting of any form? I assure you, I will not yell at you; gotta save my breath for the road to come.” The cloaked man frowned as he regarded the hurt man walking in his direction.

  This man has lived for over half a century. What is he doing here of all places? And alone at that? Marek wondered.

  In normal conditions, Marek would have held no suspicion about a mere man old enough to be his father, let alone if injured. But this was no normal circumstance given both of them were in the middle of the arctic tundra and, going with his experience, even an injured man could be skilled enough to draw a knife and stab it into his chest; even worse, he could be a wizard, whose powers were not dependent on the physical condition of its wearer, be young or old, healthy or wounded.

  “... I see you are one of those youths wary of everyone capable of holding a weapon…” the old man muttered and stopped walking, noticing the black-haired man’s suspicion. “You know what, it does not matter... Just listen to me,” the soldier said as he groaned in discomfort. “Wolves are lurking in the mountain region; they have not been this active for over thirty years.”

  “I’m aware that the presence of the wyrm agitated the wildlife. It was informed to me this was a temporary issu—”

  “Spare me the feedback until after I’m done, brat,” the man snapped, causing the young man’s frown to swell further. Too much for not yelling at me. “This is not about the freaking lizard: this is about the wolves... Amid the chaos caused by the hellish monster, something took the initiative to control the mutts…”

  Marek refrained from saying anything, limiting himself to staring at the old man. He no longer had his hand on his weapon’s handle; Marek could tell this man was no menace to him. Nonetheless, Marek would not give the man the benefit of knowing his name.

  The veteran went on. “It was a warg... and not a common one. A mutation of sorts... There had been no record of one appearing in this part of the Frostscape in decades.”

  Indeed, based on his own research and what the locals told him about the region, wargs inhabited the East of the Frostscape. “Did a warg do that to you, old man?”

  The ex-soldier shook his head. “Nah... all these grazes? Bug bites compared with what a warg can do... Neh, these wounds were caused by their mundane cousins... Not all the blood on my clothes belongs to me.”

  “I’m sure one or two wargs are no threat to the city or me,” the cloaked man retorted, still skeptical of the soldier’s words. “And why would the wolves kneel to another creature? As bright as a warg can be, they can’t simply seize control over animals.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The man chortled. “You aren’t that different from the rest... What I get in talking reason to kids... and an outsider on top of that,” the senior soldier sighed, tired in more than one sense. “Whatever… I need you to accompany me back to Gr?t?h.” Marek raised a brow. “I can convince Georg to give you gold, but it’s important tha—”

  “Not a chance,” his voice was quiet but firm. “I’m in a hurry. Going back to Gr?t?h would mean losing one day.”

  “What?” The old man wrinkled his face in what Marek identified as growing indignation. “That’s why you’re walking alone in the middle of this damn hunting ground? And what the hell is a lost day so important?!”

  Marek merely shrugged.

  The guardsman huffed and hawked. “You know what? I will not scold you for your haughtiness, kid… I’m too tired for that; instead, I’ll be blunt and direct. A damn warg massive as shit, not witnessed since two generations ago, is roaming around, puppeting wolves so they carry out its beastly whim. What’s its whim? Conquer, obviously. What else can be? If the monster gets to settle in this region, traders, hunters, and other travelers would be exposed to further attacks. The remaining settlements of the Frostscape, wasted as they are after the rampage, will be isolated from the capital in the best scenarios and eventually hunted to their annihilation at worst.”

  More howls resonated through the valley, making the veteran flinch and avert his eyes from the young in front. “Shit… They must have figured out I killed another pack of them…”

  The young warrior chewed his inner cheek. What the man said was a concerning matter if true, however... “Sounds serious,” Marek replied, “but forgive me if I consider your take a bit of a stretch.” The elderly sentry barely contained his face from warping with ire. “Go back by yourself, the path is clear. Whatever is chasing you will not go through me.”

  “Disrespectful brat…” He hissed. “Get this through your thick skull: the wolves have been biting at my heels for hours. You and I wouldn’t make it if we were to go alone. The giant warg will get us!”

  “You mean that guesswork you spoke about?”

  “It is no guesswork!” the man bawled, “and what with you young ones and their haste? Is it about the damned lizard? You are looking for it as well. The lizard must be sleeping by now. You all have plenty of time—” the echoes of swooshing cut off the soldier’s indignant yells. “Should not have yelled…”

  That is something we both agree with, old fart, Marek mused.

  The sound of many pads belonging to a group of wolves emerged from both sides of the path. The pawsteps halted, replaced by the array of growls of seven canids baring their teeth at the humans beneath.

  “Fantastic… Too much longing for a calm walk.” Marek commented, ax and dirk shining in his hands as if they just teleported there.

  “Were you expecting any calm? In this frozen hell?” A snort boomed. “I see now. You’re straight up mad.”

  Marek gave off no reaction to the man’s insult. Neither did he glance at the old guardsman shifting his stance and giving him the back. “You have survived this far. I understand you can stand against a couple of wolves without suffering a heart attack. Just so you know, I won’t be helping you.”

  A half groan, half snort. “I fear a warg, not some mutts. These, I can take care of. Let’s see if your swordsmanship matches your haughtiness, boy.”

  Fair enough, the axman thought as one of the wolves released a bark, and as if it were a trumpet of war, all seven animals charged as cavalry down into the valley. A stampede of gnashers that could not afford to play around; sheer numbers were all that was needed.

  Yeah, run at me... save me the hassle. Marek thought.

  The first of seven wolves sprang with open jaws, its target: the hooded man. The beast drew near enough to see the faint glow of the man’s brown eyes; then, a flash of silver. The beast saw no more after that; it was dead way before it had realized the man swung his ax in its direction.

  Seeing their comrade plunging into two clean pieces made the remaining wolves hesitate, halting in their advance three yards from where Marek stood. However, that had been the half of the pack; the other half continued their beset, aiming at the human exuding the smell of their murdered brethren.

  But if they thought an injured soldier would be easy prey, they were wrong. Despite his condition, the old man still had tricks under his sleeve.

  With a skilled and quick movement with both wrists, the pole weapon whirled as a windmill in the middle of a storm, the maneuver making two dogs stop in their tracks out of precaution and punishing the remaining, hasty one with a strike with the sharpened end of the lance. Its edge was not as honed as the young one’s eccentric ax, but the spear scored a fleshy rift across the wolf’s snout, extracting a pained yelp from the beast.

  Behind the veteran, the wolves scrutinized the man responsible for their comrade’s death, who seemed more busy sideglancing at the guardsman’s battle. Marek peered back upon hearing snarls and observed the remaining trio trying to surround him, crouching and crawling slowly.

  The black-haired man groaned in annoyance: they were about to initiate a taunting game with feigned attacks and hesitating jaw snaps. “I really don’t want to play along... let me help you with your dwindling initiative.” Marek dashed toward the wolf in the middle of the other two, his speed matching that of an agile deer, and kicked its snout, flipping the animal a couple of feet away.

  If the other two wolves were shocked by the human’s blunt attack, they did not show it; they simply reacted to the now near prey with a charge of their own. But the axwielder was where he wished, standing equidistant between the two foes.

  The wild dogs, not surpassing two feet and eight inches tall, were out of the standard reach of an armed man. The solution for the dualwielder was simple: he stooped low and, veering on the ball of his feet, unleashed a whirling attack, scoring a gale of cuts with both Iousterard and his dirk on the animals, covering them in lethal lacerations and spilling blood everywhere.

  No man would have deemed that maneuver simple, not even Evert himself, who managed to glance over his shoulder. Seolvor smites me rust. Guess the boy has his insolence backed up.

  But Evert could not focus more than a fraction of a second on the marvels of the new generation. He had to admit it: if the boy were absent, this skirmish might have been his last one. But with only three wolves, he had this in the bag.

  One could not win a battle by playing defensively, so he stopped his spear from wheeling. The beasts did not miss the gap in man’s defense and attacked. The first snapping wolf was deflected by the dull end of the crafted wood; the second one tasted the spearhead’s steel, releasing a soft bark after the weapon pierced its collarbone.

  You still got it, Evert. The man snickered as he retrieved the length and adopted another defensive stance as he noticed the first wolf he struck edging closer.

  “—Ghr!” But suddenly, a surge of pain. The wounds, both of past and present, and fatigue finally caught up to him. A sharp sensation as lasting as an eyeblink caused his movement to lapse for an instant, failing to prevent the rushing lupin from approaching his close quarters.

  The good thing about spears was that they gave the spearman an edge in range. The bad thing? If a single opponent managed to bypass the defense, the spearman would have more trouble attacking and defending. A matter of distance that influenced the outcome of vying and perishing, just as it transpired.

  The wolf snapped at the man, who had no choice but to intercept its trajectory with the pole weapon. The wood creaked with the pressure of the fangs, its surface denting and acquiring more battle marks.

  The bearded man’s fumble was not missed by the second wolf, which equally thrust its fangs at the struggling spearman. The elderly human reacted just in time to stop the biting canid, once again blocking the fangs with the spear, but the aged ex-soldier could not stand against the pushing force of nearly two hundred pounds worth of wild dogs. Inevitably, the man fell backward.

  “Damned dogs!” The spear-wielding fighter yelled and groaned as he toppled, two gray-colored canids standing over him with snouts inches from his face, their warm and rabid breathing ghostling over his strained face, only the spear preventing the animals from tearing his face and neck.

  One wolf, ever the clever one, took one step back and found a more vulnerable angle from where it could savage the man. Notwithstanding, its plans to cause harm to the man crumbled as one boot connected with its muzzle, and the canid was sent jerking back with a cry. As for its gnawing partner, it realized too late the attack and only caught a glance of the glow of a steely length. The impact pushed the animal some feet away, its snout releasing whimpers while spitting blood and fangs.

  Without skipping a beat, the old man stood to his feet, stirred by his near-death experience. He calmed himself after heartbeats, shaken vision clearing up just in time to see his savior.

  “You good, geezer?” the man asked, not taking his eyes from the two wolves in front.

  “A softy for the elderly, eh?” Evert said between pants, eyeing another wolf lurking to his right. “I thought you didn’t want to protect this old man.”

  “I ran out of mongrels to kill,” Marek said without taking his eyes off the three wild dogs. A blatant lie considering the wolf the veteran was gazing at. It was limping, so it did not escape the axman’s punishment.

  “Why not just behead the two dogs? I did see what you did to the first pup,” the spearman asked.

  “It was not necessary: their will to fight has deflated.” Marek used his chin to point toward the remaining wolves. The ex-sentry cast a look at the duo: the two were growling but keeping their distance with their tails practically between their legs. The third wolf, now in front of him, did likewise.

  The other three pack members lay dead, with the other one severely injured, and only because that one took the dirk first rather than the enchanted ax.

  Yet, something felt amiss. Both warriors knew it.

  “Why are they still here? They do not want to fight, yet they do not take leave,” the outsider wondered.

  “Yeah, it’s like they are not out of options. Perhaps they are waiting for more wolves.” As the two fighters reasoned, one of the wolves, the one with the spear-inflicted injury on its cheek, howled. It was not a cry to retire, not an attack order. It carried some undulations on the shout, increasing and decreasing the pitching.

  “This is the first time one of them used that cry... and I fought over a dozen of them just today,” the soldier mentioned. Marek gave off nothing but a frown.

  The odd wailing concluded, and after almost ten seconds of tense anticipation, a deep roar resounded from beyond the woods and the slant.

  “So it was a call for help... and not asking for more wolves,” the spearman stated.

  The snow thudded with heavy stomps, distant at first but increasing in intensity. In short, the beast that answered the call on the wolf manifested forty yards uphill. It was a wolf nearly as big as cattle, with a fur showcasing variable hues of greyish blue, bearing a majestic mane halfway between a gray wolf and a lion. But the features that gave away its monstrousness, what set it apart from its mundane cousins, were the additional eyes in the middle of its skull.

  Suddenly, what the old man had said made a lick of sense — there was a warg where it should not be.

  “Is this the huge warg you told me about?” Marek muttered, gawking at the monstrosity, somehow trapped by the supernatural air it expelled. This was the first time he had witnessed such a terrifying creature.

  “No... that has a regular size... That one must be part of the mutant’s original pack. We, the party of the capital, met with one before but retired along with the other wolves as soon as it realized it could not stand against all of us,” Evert mumbled. The low temperatures of the Arctic could not prevent a cold sweat from running down the ex-sentry’s hairy nape.

  The warg remained still, staring at the humans with three pale yellow eyes. Its breath was heavy, practically generating a cloud around its snout, visible from below, where both humans stood. A faint whistling was starting to rise in tone, its sound reminiscent of a boiler’s pipe when steam rose in pressure.

  And it came to Evert, understanding the unusualness of the breath. That was no condensed air.

  “Watch out!” Right after shouting those words, a miniature blizzard manifested from the depths of the monster’s maw. The torrent, shaped like a waterfall, trailed through the ground downhill until it reached the location where the two fighters stood. Evert foresaw the attack and pushed Marek out of the way with his spear, sending him staggering some steps ahead.

  “Old man!” Marek yelled in response to being shoved, but just as he stared back, he witnessed the blast of cold energy crossing the spot where he used to be. At the end of the trailing attack, the last wolf stood bruised, and given its state of defeat, evading the attack turned impossible. When the coldwave ended, the wolf was imprisoned in ice, frozen lifeless on the spot.

  A gelid five-feet-tall rampart now separated both humans.

  “Hold there, boy! I’m coming—” The words of the spearman wheezed out of his mouth as he was tackled by a blurred brute. The warg emerged from his left, and it crossed its mind that getting rid of the weakest man first was the best course of action.

  Shakily, Evert picked himself up. “D-damned mongrel! Thinking I’m easy prey cos I’m covered in bashes and blood, eh? You will lament that brainless choice!”

  The veteran speared forward; no use in playing to the defensive this time — in his current condition, he could not evade without tripping head-first to the ground, let alone parry a paw as sizable as his head. The warg, however, suffered no such handicap.

  With a swift movement, the wolf-thing evaded the lance, and just as quickly, it latched its fangs onto the crafted wood. Taking the fangs of dozens of canids had enfeebled the pole weapon’s solidness; thus, the second the crushing jaws pressed against the crafted wood, the spear snapped like a broomstick.

  “Geezer!” Marek cried from the other side. He was about to jump over the ice wall when the snarls and growls resumed their cacophony at his back. The appearance of the wolf monster must have boosted the remaining beasts’ confidence. Marek hissed, already exasperated by the wolves’ stubbornness.

  The young warrior decided to launch his dagger at one of the wolves. The wolf sidestepped, but in the time it took the dirk to impale itself on the soil, the human had accelerated toward the animal, unholstering another weapon hidden beneath his cloak until now. The canid merely noticed a glow of red and velvet black when the upper half of its skull was sliced clean, not even releasing a yelp of pain.

  Its remaining partners would have taken advantage of the man’s reckless lunge. Yet, they did nothing. The wolves stayed growling, not at the murderer of their partner, but at the instrument of its execution.

  “Yes, I have a damned item,” the swordsman hissed, the wolves cowering more and more. “Leaving that clear... disappear!” He made a feint with the sword, startling the scarred wolf and its teammate and eliciting a yelp from each one; the wolves turned around without a second thought and left the scene.

  Not missing a single beat, Marek swiveled around, trying to reach the old man. But it was late. Through the gaps of the icy spikes, the black-haired swordsman witnessed how the wolf-like monster held the old veteran by his shoulder, a spring of red liquid cascading from the wound.

  “Grrh,” clenching his teeth, Marek unfastened the device from his back, hid his ax inside his garments, raised his right hand and foot at the wall, and in one single thrust, he leapt over the gelid barricade, masterfully avoiding his garments from getting stuck in the icy points. That movement had not passed unnoticed by the warg.

  “Why don’t you test your fangs against a noteworthy steel, monster,” the swordsman practically growled at the wolf-thing. The monster gazed at the human and then shifted its eyes to the ebony-red blade. Just like its underlings, it could notice the weird aura the item emitted.

  The monster snarled and let the man between its jaws drop to the ground as if he were a bag of potatoes, the latter hardly resisting the pull of gravity.

  Then, fog built up around the creature’s muzzle, and a whistle filled the atmosphere. A second breathing attack was coming, Marek deduced, but he had no plan to dodge the attack. No more dance; his mood had been shaken sour, and he wanted nothing more than to skew this oversized wolf as fast as possible. And so, the man narrowed his eyes in defiance, fearless against the incoming wave of cold.

  The wolf-thing likewise squinted its three eyes, ticked off by the lack of distress its enemy was displaying, but nevertheless kept building up cold energy inside its snout. The seconds passed, and the winter burst in the shape of a localized tornado.

  Marek leaned to his left, enough to have an opening to raise his right arm along his leather cloak, forming a cape-shield in front of him. Obstinate geezer, Marek had thought when the man shoved him; the breath weapon was nothing he could not deal with. Precautions had been taken, and he was equipped with the perfect shield.

  The freezing wave collided with the man, but it failed to freeze him up; in fact, its only achievement was pushing the man a few inches backward. The cloak, made from the fur of a manticore, was not only durable against most conventional weapons but also resistant to extreme temperatures, high and low alike.

  The wolf-creature widened its eyes in shock as its most deadly weapon was as effective as a fall breeze against a green tree, but that had been the first of many problems. With the left hand, the swordsman lunged with his black blade toward the creature; he struggled against the stream of coldness, waves of tiny shards blocking his sight, the soil frozen beneath almost succeeding in making him slip.

  Notwithstanding, the human managed to close the gap and swing his cursed blade. The upswing was wonky for the man’s standards, but the hit was true, slicing the head of the monster, taking its right and middle eyes in one go. The blizzard of cold stopped for the warg to give birth to a booming roar of agony.

  With no gust to halt his steps, the black swordsman reversed his grip and executed a backswing. The beast composed enough to avoid a lethal wound, reducing a crippling laceration to a severed ear. The wolf-thing yelped before lashing out at the human, desperate to taste the iron of his veins. The only blood it tasted was its own when its teeth clunked and broke against the accursed steel.

  To the great canid’s wonder, the cursed metal has no unnatural taste. Irrelevant: the blade lay trapped in its maw, and the human had been stripped of his only weapon. Raise the legs, rake at the man, spill his guts out. Human strength could do little against the warg might — the human was doomed.

  Or so the monster ignorantly thought.

  “You monsters are so human. Always underestimating the small ones,” the warg heard before picking up a swishing sound. Blood sprayed in the air and landed on the wolf-thing’s functional eye, and it was then that it noticed a piece of flesh flying through the air.

  It was a left forepaw.

  It wanted to shout with full lungs. It wanted to curse the human for its suffering, but the wolf-thing could not; it could not release its grip on the human smoothly. Knowing that the man wielded another dangerous weapon, the warg shook the human by his arm and sent him rolling a couple of yards through the snow. Marek just went with the flow and rolled on his back, landing with no issue.

  The warg snarled in frustration, the absence of its eyes and leg searing him with hot agony. It should have noticed something was off when the human did not bother to evade its breath; the human wanted to be at close quarters, having it stand at blade’s range.

  Victory was no longer within its possibilities. The warg would need to swallow its pride and alert its leader about another notable enemy.

  Lamentably for it, Marek had no intention of letting this creature slip past him. He could tell the wishes of the warg to escape the fight, every blink of it heavy with hesitation. “Don’t bother. You aren’t getting out of here alive,” Marek said.

  As a last resort, the warg shouted another thundering howl, short-lived but almost deafening. If its goal was to shake the man to facilitate an exit, it had failed; the man shrugged off the ring inside his ears and dashed against the monster, enchanted weapons in both hands. The warg could not escape, so it met the human with a charge of its own.

  Natural fierceness and human expertise collided. The winner was evident for both animal and human, there had been onlookers present near the battlefield.

  The canid monster did not feel the attack that cut the upper part of the skull, which sprang ten feet into the air along with a spout of blood. Red rained for a second, and the piece of severed head touched the soil, the rest of the body following in short, not spasming or noising, it just dropped dead.

  After slaying the beast, Marek let out a hiss, baring his teeth at the chilled air. He passed his tongue across his teeth and confirmed the change — his fangs were sharper than usual, one aftereffect attributed to the sword’s bane. Regardless, no other ‘symptoms’ were presented, and Marek knew the teeth would shrink back to normal. He then sheathed Dalavut, keeping Iousterard in his right hand. The young warrior shifted his gaze to the old man sitting on the ground against the ice wall. The ex-guardsman was still breathing, albeit with difficulty, and eyeing the young adventurer from his deathbed.

  Marek got close and knelt in front of the veteran. “Koff— G-guess you really did not need to be p-pushed out of the path of the breath attack, eh?” the old man mentioned between ragged breaths.

  “No, I did not need your help back there,” Marek stated, conveying no emotion.

  “And... and I also guess your ar-arrogance was backed up... you are a m-master with both sword and ax,” he muttered, every word becoming more difficult to utter by the seconds. “Can’t compete with the current g-generation... heh.”

  The young man said nothing; this time, he was not planning on interrupting the senior veteran. “L-look... it may be a pain in the arse... but y-you need to go back to the capital... that warg was not the pack leader... I’ve seen and heard the r-real one,” Marek could tell that: he could hear more howling echoing through the mountains. The man gasped and coughed for a few more seconds, then composed and began to speak again: “I n-never told you my name... it is... was... Evert... Evert Hort.”

  The cloaked man solemnly nodded. “Marek Blakesley. And Evert…” As he heard the skilled warrior mentioning his name, Evert marginally raised his chin in curiosity, “I will not turn back to the city. But I will do something about the wargs. I’m going to eliminate the warg you told me about,” Evert just stared at Marek, his panting more and more quiet every second.

  When it seemed that Evert was about to come up with a comment, a shriek was heard at the mountain, followed by more howls.

  “Me think they finally caught up with w-what they were looking for…” The young man turned again to the dying man. “Whatever that was, it m-must have been their target all along…” The next sound that boomed through the valley was a more familiar one, rattling and guttural. “Now... that is the true en-enemy…”

  Marek did not take his sight from the woods located high up. “L-listen... I still believe you are arrogant... but b-being ho-honest, I was in my youth too... the d-difference is that you have the skill to back up your insolence,” Evert wheezed.

  “Take c-care, kid... Pl-please... help me get rid of that menace... so it does not touch my people,” his eyes broke off and went into the sky. “I wonder... if they’ll report my death as sui... cideee…” And with one last sigh, the veteran closed his eyes and stopped breathing. His body tilted to his left, about to smack himself on the ground, but Marek caught it in time, placing the body in the frozen soil with calm.

  “No… No one would believe an obstinate man such as you had committed suicide.” Marek rose to his feet. “Farewell, Evert Hort. May we see each other again in the Silver Saloon.” Marek moved to retrieve his missing dagger and wrapped device; then, he walked toward the mountain and the woods that loomed up in the highlands, his goal set.

  Before slaying the dragon, he might as well practice with another kind of monster.

  Before slaying the wyrm, he might as well do a good deed before going into the wilderness alone.