FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter VIII - Pride

The muscular tiger lowered his shoulder and unleashed a mighty shield slam, unwinding his body's coiled posture to smash his opponent's thick steel helm with a thunderous clang that sent the other duelist reeling into the stone wall of his father's grand court hall.

To either side of the fight, strained-looking courtiers in their panoply of bright, colorful raiments sucked in breaths of suspense, fear, admiration, jealousy, a cornucopia of conflicting emotions towards the result they awaited.

The battered knight stumbled away from the tapestried wall, managing to raise his own shield in time to receive a pair of powerful sword blows that sailed around from behind Royval Casso's muscular shoulders to smash the stunned warrior back left, then right, giving him little chance to regain his balance or counterstrike.

Royval let rip a wild, roaring laugh, as he stepped inside his opponent's range and raised a booted foot to plant his armored boot into the reeling knight's chest, smashing him from his feet and to the hard stone floor with a crash of heavy chain and plate. A moment later, he stomped his footpaw down on the other knight's sword wrist, bending the embossed bracer inward and receiving a high-pitched yell of pain that sang like music in his ears.

"Do you yield yet, Sir Ranos? Or do I get to keep having my fun?"

He spat the knight's appellation with such gleeful viciousness that he heard his younger brother squeal out a peal of childish laughter, causing even some of the most loyal courtiers to shift with discomfort. Others were covering their eyes, heads bowed, unwilling to watch the young champion's fate.

The younger knight heaved for breath, his breastplate dented early in the duel, clenching the paw on whose wrist Royval was standing in the hopes his bunched muscles might prevent his wrist snapping like a twig. The pain was truly dizzying, and he was sure the metal had bitten through his padding and fur and into the skin.

Royval's gleaming blade tipped up the bottom of his helm then, and touched the thinner chain links that guarded his throat, forcing a reflexive gulp from the defeated warrior, as he struggled to get words out despite his lack of wind, the cold touch of steel sending a shiver of adrenaline, fear, and hot shame writhign through his body.

"I...Hff..."

He raised his gauntleted left paw, and held up three fingers, and the crowded courtiers seemed to gust out a breath of windy relief at the request for mercy. The young knight felt tears running down his face, at the sudden and ashamed realization he'd been manipulated into this by these cowards, too afraid to even watch the bloodshed they'd caused.

Percussive clapping, slow and calculated, stole the murmuring from the room like fire taking air, all eyes sucked towards the Duke as he stood. Sir Ranos' eyes finally fixed on that point, shivering in fury to see the mighty, statuesque tiger standing so proudly there in his bright crimson velvet garments, clapping with an amused expression on his usually severe angular face.

"You have fought well, my son."

Over him, Royval smiled savagely as he raised the visor of his helm.

"As is our country's ancient law, Royval has won the duel and thus the claim against him is rendered void. Sir Ranos' claim that Royval cannot be my heir by virtue of his rumored impotency is false. Any who would dispute the gods' own finding is a fool and will be ignored."

Royval's smile broke into a laugh, low and chortling, quiet enough not to interrupt his father as he leaned down towards the downed warrior. His voice was a hissed whisper, husky with exertion and sick prurience.

"We saw through your little ruse, Ranos. Spreading rumors of uprisings and riot in the free cities, spreading rumors to superstitious peasants about walking dead men, then calling me impotent to challenge my father's authority. Clever! You just didn't account for your own lack of sword skill."

Ranos glared back at him, as the tiger used his sword tip to lift his defeated foe's visor. In the background, his father went on to pontificate and inform his courtiers of a number of things neither warrior paid attention to.

"You're our hostage now, against further moves by your silly little family."

The tiger grinned, and below him, the smooth-furred handsome ocelot paled under his fur at the thought of what his new captor had in mind. Some sense of it formed as Toryen Casso, smaller than his brother but no less feared for that, pranced over and pressed himself to his elder brother's side.

"May I have him, Royval? Please? I promise not to break him completely..."

At first, the chirurgeon priest had simply bound his bite wound and put the horrific episode from his mind. The older chirurgeons had counseled him that it was merely battlefield madness, seeing things that could not happen.

As was expected with bites, the wound festered despite their treatment, and he took a fever that had him sweating and groaning in bed for days before it seemed to finally break.

That morning, he had been roused from bed by a strange new song the choir was singing, that seemed to penetrate the walls even to his cell, and had gone about his daily chores. Pleased to see him u and about, the older healers assigned him the task of seeing to the many wounded soldiers still convalescing after the disastrous battle on the ravine road, and in the swift fall of the city to Duke Casso's rebel army a day after.

He prayed in thanks to the Finder of the Lost for the fact that Casso had decided to spare the wounded, and those who would abandon their loyalties to the late Callian and swear to him as their king.

Given that most of the soldiers in the city were exhausted from having recently taken it away from Casso in the first place, there was hardly any resistance.

The strange choir song seemed to follow him even there, a sing-song melody that seemed somehow sickened, and he made mental note to ask the monks when their new song would be put aside for the older hymns he was used to. Strangely, he noted, none of the other priests seemed bothered by the new music, though a number of the more seriously wounded seemed to hear it, twitching their limbs to the beat of the childrens' tune.

Feed!

The young priest looked up from the man he'd been operating upon, his lapine paws wrapped carefully around the knife and bowl he'd been using to lance a painful infection. He stared around in the dimness of the common infirmary of the Cathedral, where hundreds of the wounded still rested, recovered, or festered and died. No source of the voice seemed evident.

Feed!

A clatter sounded as he dropped the blade and bowl, handpaws shooting to his head as a wave of nausea overtook him, sending him to his knees next to the operating table. He groaned out, unable to choke forth more of a scream or shout of warning, as he felt a blaze of heat emanating from the wound on his arm.

The song was louder, filling his ears in the moments that the voice didn't call to him. It was a mocking song, a beckoning song, and he felt a strange and horrible fury and hunger in his chest, like a fire gnawing at his innards. It seemed to spread from the same heat that burned from his bite wound.

Tearing at his clothes, he ripped the fabric free to stare in horror at the festering hole growing where that poor dying fur's teeth had gone into his flesh. The skin was sloughing away like overcooked pie crust, and he grabbed at it, moaning out in terror as he sank to his knees, seeing the flesh sliding over his fingertips, squishy like pudding.

Feed!

The singing was too intense now, searing his mind such that his hands flew to his face, tearing at the skin in an attempt to dig out the burning agony seated there. He tried to shriek, pushing so hard with all his muscle that his lungs ruptured, spilling blood through his throat and out his mouth over the unconscious soldier. He scrabbled, fingertips ripping flesh from his face, snarling incoherently and gurgling blood.

Insensate now, lost in the dancing notes of that awful song, he began shoveling bits of his fur-speckled flesh into his mouth, chewing them, gnawing through it and into his fingers, stripping the flesh there.

The pain weakened, slowed, turning from a fiery scorching agony beyond all reason into a dull, burning, acid thing in his gut and through his limbs. He turned a slow circle, seeing all the unconscious soldiers, registering distantly that an apothecary was fleeing in terror, and rushed near-mindlessly towards the nearest source of meat to slake his agony.

"Tell me about the undead, witch hunter. I need to know more than you have already said."

Tomasj smirked, though his posture, slouched up against the wall of the infirmary with his hat covering his face made it impossible for Cel to see. Timid had left the two alone together finally, after nearly a full day of keeping them apart, just in case the wolf tried something again. She had finally told the priest to go rest, when he'd fallen twice and not seemed to notice.

"They are relentless, without fear or a mind with which to feel pain. When they hear the groans of their fellows, they will travel over miles to find the source of the sound."

She managed a slight nod, the strained muscles in her neck feeling less painful after sleeping off and on much of the last day. Cel managed to shift her right arm as well, and was rolling her wrist, feeling the stiffness slowly leaving it.

"How do they spread?"

The wolf shifted, making space so he could draw his heavy, weathered antique blade from its sheathe, testing its edge on his thumb pad in a nonchalant sort of way.

"Depends on how bad the bite is, and how weak-spirited the bitten. Most become undead rapidly in great pain within minutes. Rarer are the ones who change slowly, over the course of weeks or even months. Slow ones are worst of all. You may not know someone is bitten, may invite them into your home as guests, and months later...They kill and eat you in your sleep. Heh."

Cel closed her eye again, and tried to force the other open, finding she could see only a slit of light from it. Still, she mused, it was an improvement over the previous day, when she could get nothing from it at all.

"No wonder you Svalich are so suspicious of strangers."

"Hah! That reason and many others. You soft lowlanders have forgotten about magic, witches, demons, the old black gods of sorrow...So many things you forget, and then leave to us to fight without your aid."

The wolf's words had a taste of bitterness to them, she noted, and also a strong overtone of pride. It was as if the foreign wolf took great pleasure from being derided as a psychotic, barbaric creature, as most Svalich were thought of in the lowlands. Strange and dangerous ancient people of the eastern mountains and valleys, they were known to be quick to kill their own and quicker to slay unwanted guests. Most of all, they were known for fighting the stranger and more dangerous people further east still.

"I am no lowlander, Svalich."

He glanced up towards her, and smirked, as his eyes trailed over her mutilated body. Timid had re-wrapped her bandages without concern for modesty in lieu of medical need, and then covered her with a cleanly washed blanket. Still, the blanket had settled in such a way that he could see her build was muscular, powerful, small-chested and well-made for leverage and speed.

"No, I suppose not. You are not Khalish, nor are you one of the old forest folk. Atarasi? I thought they did not allow women to be warriors. Just baby-makers and sorceresses."

Cel waited for her pride to rear its head, to force angry words from her, and was surprised a moment when she felt only vaguely tired, weary of the foolish assumptions of others, rather than the rage that had driven her away from her home those years ago.

"That is my peoples' way, in our homelands. There is not time for individuals to pursue their own way, in the struggle to survive. Males are male, females are...Mostly property."

The wolf shrugged his shoulders, scraping a whet stone slowly up his grey-hued blade.

"So you flee to the lowlands looking to be a man? I can give you cock, if you want, but you won't get to keep it."

He smirked saying it, and she ignored his mocking leer for a moment, until her pride finally showed itself, and she made a rude gesture with her left paw, indicating what he could do with that cock and his own ass, in the common sign used by tradesmen across the continent.

The wolf just laughed, throwing his head back to do it. The sound was off-kilter, toned somehow wrong, and Cel closed her eyes again to avoid feeling a need to scowl as it echoed around the chamber.

"Such gestures! From a noble lady! Hahaha!"

"A noble knight, and don't forget it, wolf."

Her stern tone broke on the last word, fading into a few chesty coughs that made her shift on the table when the motions sent pain wriggling through her body. Not so severe as the previous day, she didn't cry out, merely winced and sucked in breath loud enough for the wolf to hear.

"Pah. A noble cripple that will merely slow us. I do not know why the priest demanded you be saved. You'll be the death of us, woman."

Cel lay quiet, concentrating simply on breathing until she felt her lungs could handle speech again. When she spoke, her voice was soft, careful, but contained the undoubtable steel of her personality all the same.

"He is a cleric of the Finder. Do you not have temples in Svalich?"

The wolf shook his head in amusement and restarted his sharpening, the blade across his lap.

"We have temples to many gods in my homeland. Most are small, run by villages who can protect them from raiding. I never bothered learning much more than I needed to know. Witch-hunting was my father's and grandfather's trade. I know more of demon calling than I do of prayer. Not much use for gods who don't listen."

Cel listened quietly, curious at his sudden desire to explain. He'd just spoken more at a go than in most of the rest of the time she'd known him.

"The Finder's Fall. Ask Timid about it when he has time. Then you will understand why he spared me and suffers to travel with you."

Tomasj glanced up from his sword for but a moment, shrugged in an uncaring manner, and went back to work.

"He travels with me because I keep him alive. I travel with him because he is...Like hope in the eyes of a child, maybe. I don't know. Nastasia wants him alive."

Cel tilted her head towards him again, managing to open her swollen eye enough to make him out blurrily even with the good eye closed.

"Is that sympathy from the madwolf?"

Tomasj smirked, his sharp, yellow teeth gleaming in the candle light that reflected off them and little else beneath the shadow of his tall peaked hat.

"Sympathy is madness. It is pride and arrogance to believe yourself invulnerable enough to be charitable. Foolish."