The Storm King

Chapter 301: An Easy Hunt

“So, what’s the situation?” Grim asked as the group of knights entered the guardhouse with Odulf, the third-tier guard captain.

“About two weeks ago, a pig went missing from one of our farmer’s pens,” Odulf explained. “We didn’t think too much of it at the time, it was only a single pig, right? There was a hole in his fence, so everyone just assumed that the pig ran off. But then more pigs went missing, and then chickens, and then four days ago, we found one of our prized stallions dead in the field after grazing time. It was torn apart quite gruesomely.”

“But why would you send word about a werewolf?” Grim asked as he did his best to conceal his doubt. “Did someone catch a glimpse of the monster?”

“No, but our community has been here for centuries, now. We know how to defend our animals from natural predators!” the guard captain said with pride and some slight offense at Grim’s lack of confidence in his village’s report. “We can accept a few mistakes made here and there that lead to the loss of an animal or two, such as the lack of maintenance causing a section of fence to collapse and letting in a predator, or simple miscounts when taking stock of animals. Whatever has been killing our livestock is both intelligent enough to get past our fences, and to evade us when we went out to search for it. Only one thing would be so interested in our animals and be possessed of such intelligence: a werewolf.”

“Werewolves aren’t the only things with those traits, though I suppose they are the most likely,” Grim conceded. “Regardless of what it is, we’re still here to deal with it. Where are the villagers themselves? I happened to notice that the village seemed rather empty when we were riding through.”

“Most of the men are out looking for the beast killing our animals,” the guard captain explained. “I stayed here just in case the beast attacked while everyone was out, and to wait for all of you—I can’t tell you how grateful I am that the capital sent so many powerful mages, by the way… Other than our hunting parties, our women and children are staying inside, as are most of the rest of our horses and livestock.”

Grim nodded as he analyzed what the guard captain had just told them. This was a small village, and even the rich landowner whose villa they were at was probably second or third-tier at best, let alone the rest of the village, especially as the guard captain was only third-tier. A third-tier werewolf, which is what Grim thought they were most likely dealing with, would be far beyond almost everyone within the village.

“I don’t suppose you kept the dead horse?” Lothar asked.

“I’m afraid not,” the guard captain answered. “We didn’t want lycanthropy to spread, so we burned the carcass. Besides, even if we did keep it, it would’ve begun to rot by now.”

“We could’ve examined the corpse for a more detailed idea of what we’re dealing with, but not having it isn’t that great an issue,” Grim said as he sat back in his chair and stared at nothing in particular as he thought about how to proceed.

“Which of the ranches were attacked?” Leon asked.

“Uuuh, there was Everard’s place, and Sigismund, and of course, Sir Clodio’s horse…” the guard captain listed, though it didn’t tell Leon the information he wanted to know.

“Can you show us on a map or point them out to us outside?” Grim asked, picking up on what Leon was going for.

“Sure,” the captain said as he went rummaging through some nearby papers. Eventually, he retrieved a rough map of the surroundings, though none but the villa owner’s property was marked on it. The captain quickly drew some crude borders around the village, and then around each of the farms and ranches so that the knights could understand the scale of the village.

“That’s a lot of space…” Lothar whispered as he stared at the map. The entire footprint of the village, despite how few people lived within it, was close to a hundred square miles of grazing land.

“This one, this one, and here,” the guard captain indicated, pointing to the three ranches that were the farthest to the east, including the villa’s accompanying grazing field.

“The village seems too big to me for the beast we’re hunting to have gone completely around it, so it must have come from the east,” Leon said.

“Makes sense to me,” Grim agreed, as a rabid third-tier werewolf running dozens of miles out of its way for food didn’t seem likely to him. “We’ll start our search to the east, but we should keep in mind the possibility that we’re wrong.”

The rest of the knights nodded their understanding, and Grim turned his attention back to the map. There was no place close to the village for the werewolf to hide, as it was mostly flat plains that had been cleared of all large vegetation so that animals could graze there. However, just beyond the borders of the ranches was a forest that extended off the map.

“I’d bet money that our quarry is somewhere in that forest,” Leon said.

“That makes sense to me, Sir Clodio took most of our best fighting men that way,” the guard captain said.

“Then we’d best get to work,” Grim said as he rose to his feet. “We’ll meet up with Sir Clodio and the others, then work together to find this thing and put it down.”

“The forest is quite extensive…” the guard captain said with some concern.

“It won’t be too difficult to find who we’re looking for with eight fifth-tier mages,” Grim confidently replied.

“Right…” the guard captain sheepishly responded. He was so used to being one of the strongest in his small community that he completely forgot for a moment how much stronger these knights were than him.

Grim and Leon’s party ventured back outside, and after grabbing Anzu, they then started making their way to the east, toward the thin forest at the eastern edge of the village. They passed huge chicken coops filled with massive numbers of the animals and barns that reeked from hundreds of feet away with the stench of great quantities of pigs. Since the animals hadn’t been let out in a while, the places they’d been corralled in were clearly beyond filthy.

Fortunately, the smell faded away as the knights pressed further east. They didn’t want to waste time, so they set a fast jogging pace and reached the forest’s tree line less than three minutes after leaving the villa.

“All right, now where did they go…?” Grim wondered aloud as he searched for signs of where the villagers had gone. They had followed a small path between two of the farms, which had seemed to be the most used path for going east from the village, so Grim felt it reasonable to assume that Sir Clodio had taken this path as well.

The other knights began to spread out, but Leon took one look at his surroundings and said, “They went that way,” and pointed north-east.

Not seeing any reason to doubt Leon, Grim started heading in that direction, and as the group proceeded, they began to pick up on the same signs that Leon had seen; a footprint here and there, some snapped twigs and other disturbed flora. But whereas they needed to pay attention to find these signs, for Leon, who had spent his childhood hunting and tracking, these signs were so blatant that he couldn’t miss them.

Once on their trail, the group of knights quickly caught up to the villagers. A group is only as fast as its slowest members, and the villagers were largely composed of mortals, with Clodio and his guards being the only mages among them. Even with the relatively light and thin forest in their way slowing them down a bit, the fifth-tier knights caught sight of the villagers not even minutes into their pursuit.

“Hail there, friends!” Grim shouted while they were still a ways off. They were approaching from behind and he didn’t want to startle them when they were hunting a possible werewolf.

The party of thirty villagers turned and several of them brandished weapons at the knights for a moment—most of the villagers were armed with spears and bows, but Clodio and his five guards were armed with swords and dressed in gambeson, so they were easy to distinguish from their equipment alone.

Clodio himself was quite striking, being a third-tier mage surrounded by first-tier mages and magic-less mortals. He had a head full of gray hair, his body was thin but still strong, and his pale face was covered in wrinkles. “Who are all of you?” he asked in the gravelly voice of a man who had spent most of his life shouting.

“We’re knights from the capital!” Grim responded.

The guards and villagers looked to Clodio to figure out what to do, but as he couldn’t make heads or tails of the auras of the eight knights and he could tell that most of their equipment was expensive and well-made, he decided to take Grim’s explanation at face value. He nodded to his group, and they lowered their weapons.

Grim smiled and began leading the group of knights over to join the villagers.

“They seem a bit jumpy, so keep your hands off your weapons,” he whispered. With a suspected werewolf on the loose, he understood why they would be mistrustful of eight heavily armed and armored mages and a griffin showing up out of nowhere.

“I’m Sir Adalgrim, a knight in the service of Prince Trajan,” Grim said once he got within comfortable speaking range of Clodio.

“And I’m Sir Clodio,” the elder knight replied.

“Good to meet you. We were sent from the capital to deal with your monster problem,” Grim explained. “We were told you went this way by your guard captain, Odulf.”

At the mention of his guard captain, Clodio visibly relaxed. He doubted any enemies would know the man’s name, after all.

“It’s good to finally see you all,” Clodio slowly said. “We’ve been tracking this thing for hours, but we haven’t had much luck in running it down.”

“So you’ve seen the werewolf?” Grim asked.

“We did, about four hours ago not long after we entered the forest. However, it ran off and outpaced us, we haven’t been able to close that distance despite it leaving a clear trail behind.”

“Ursus,” Grim said, calling Leon forward. Grim knew that Leon was the best tracker out of the entire group of knights just from the way he had so quickly identified the direction the villagers had gone, so he trusted the young knight to get them on track. “We’ll go and deal with this, please don’t be too concerned if we leave you behind,” Grim said to Clodio.

“Please, don’t mind us,” the old knight replied. “If you can kill this thing that’s been harassing our village, then all the better, don’t let us get in your way.”

“This way,” Leon muttered, pointing directly north. The werewolf was clearly panicking, as it had been running so fast it hadn’t even bothered to try and cover up its tracks.

“All right, just remember not to get too close; use magic or ranged weapons, I don’t want to have to treat lycanthropy out in the field. I don’t even think the healing spells I have on me would get the job done…” Grim said as he took on a thoughtful expression, momentarily contemplating how little he had actually prepared for this mission.

The group of knights then sped off into the forest, leaving the villagers behind.

“What should we do?” one of the guards asked Clodio.

The old knight sighed and said, “We’d probably just slow them down and get in their way. It’s better that they do this themselves. Let’s head back home, our job now is to just wait for them to bring back word of victory.”

With that, the villagers began their trek back to the village. Some were skeptical and suspicious of the knights, as the latter hadn’t shown any real identification, but since Clodio had decided to trust them, the villagers could hardly complain.

The knights, however, pushed deeper into the forest. They were rapidly approaching their prey and were about to get close enough to see it with their magic senses.