A Flight of Ravens by John Conroe (thriller books to read TXT) 📗

“It did that when I first climbed up here.”  My teacher’s voice drifted down from above.  “It keeps circling this house, so I decided to just wait here.  Yawl is directly behind it, one building back.”

“She hasn’t killed it yet?”

“She tracks it, but she won’t close with it,” Jella said.

“Scared?” I asked, incredulous.  Yawl was a woldling killing machine.  I’d never seen her shy away from tackling one.

“No,” Jella said, a note of bewilderment in her voice. “It’s like she simply chooses to let this one alone.  It avoids her the same way.”

Weirder and weirder.  The growl had deepened while we were speaking. Now it rose in volume.

“It’s moving up to the alley entrance,” Jella reported.  For the twenty thousandth time, I wished I had Drodacian night vision.  But I was stuck with what I was born with, so I settled for taking her word.

Curious, I stepped forward, toward the threat.  The growl actually got softer.  I took a step back.  It got louder.  I took two forward and it dropped right down to just a dull rumble.

“You don’t like me near the house?” I asked it.  “Why?”

Most people would think me daft for talking at a Crafted monster with the brains of a wild animal.  The common person thinks woldlings are just unthinking, vicious beasts, incapable of reason.  Granted, they are exceedingly aggressive and prone to battle rage, but they do learn the commands of their Lashes and they have a pack structure with alphas in charge.  And this one had shown more thought and cunning than almost any other I had come across.

At the sound of my voice, the growls stopped altogether, replaced by a soft shuffling sound that told me it was drawing even nearer.  I took two more steps, axes held lightly by my sides.  The distance from me to the mouth of the alley was at least ten spans, too great for a woldling to leap, plenty of room for me to maneuver.

Fighting a woldling one-on-one is generally a bad idea for most soldiers.  The beasts are fast and strong, and armed with long, cruel claws and bone-crushing teeth.  Heavy infantry troops rely on the protection of their layered armor and shields, which work great when they fight as a unit.  But without a shield wall, they are too weighed down to fight a beast as agile as a woldling. The monster will just circle the soldier, looking for a chance to attack from behind.  Once it gets it, the infantryman will be lying face down with a beast on his back that weighs as much as two men.  Not good odds of survival.

A cavalry trooper has the speed and strength of his mount but if the horse isn’t well-trained or experienced, the results can be disastrous, again due to the agility and power of the woldling.  But RRS troopers are all trained to fight one-on-one, using a spear, sword, or like Urso, an axe.  It’s all about room to maneuver.  Close quarters, inside a building or in thick forest, favors the beast.  An open street like this one favors the well-trained, appropriately armed fighter.  And I’m proud to say that under my watch, that training had reached even higher levels.  All of my people could fight a woldling and win.  I had personally killed tens of them.

So, I was confident yet still wary.  Movement in the shadows focused my attention, a flash of fur in the streetlight.

“Well, come on then. Let’s have a look at you,” I said softly.

Amazingly, it listened, or seemed too, moving forward, becoming visible.  Urso had been kind.  It was a fucking mess.  One arm, the right, hung almost to its knee, the left coming to the middle of its thigh.  The eyes were uneven, like the bones of its skull had been malformed, and one orb looked larger than the other.  The lower jaw jutted forward, the top one pulled back, teeth protruding in all directions.  And it seemed wounded, one ear torn to shreds, not fully healed, and four raking claw marks on its left shoulder, like it had been in a fight.  The dark brown fur was patchy and uneven, its shoulders lumped with a hump over the right side.

I had never seen its like, not in any of the thousands of woldlings I have witnessed.  But I had seen sketches in old books.  This was a throwback, a woldling made not from any age of child, but from an adult human, something not seen in centuries.  Not only did children transform into better, more refined woldlings, but adults died more often than not during the change. The survival percentage for an adult male had been something like eleven percent.

A horse neighed, and I immediately recognized Tipton’s distinctive sound.  I didn’t look around, but the woldling did—and immediately it straightened, standing upright, its focus completely on my horse and his rider.  Actually, based on the angle of its gaze, just the rider. Those eyes… as deformed as they were, they held a clear intelligence that was as foreign to the woldlings I knew as its misshapenness was.

It stared at the boy on the horse and I swear I saw recognition in those red orbs whose glare softened visibly.  Above and behind me, I heard Jella take a soft breath, the only nonspeaking sound I’d heard from my deadly teacher the whole time she’d been there.  She saw it too.

Suddenly the clatter of multiple hooves came from back up the street, followed by Kiven’s deep voice giving orders.  The woldling crouched, snarling as men and horses thundered up behind my men, horse, and young charge.

“What are you doing?” Kiven demanded.  “Shoot the damned thing—it’s right there!”

“So is our captain, in case you missed that,” Cort said behind me.

“Give me a crossbow!” Kiven ordered and the woldling immediately backed away, arms coming up to protect its face.  The fur on its limbs was even patchier than on its body, with blotches of mottled skin showing through.