Chapter 38. The Wolves Finally Ask for Help (That’s How You Know It’s Bad)

Chapter 38: 38. The Wolves Finally Ask for Help (That’s How You Know It’s Bad)

But before she could answer, someone began banging on the front door.

BAG! BAG! BAG!

A messenger burst into the house a moment later, a young, panting fox woman in the green tabard of the city’s runners.

She was out of breath and half bent over, with her hand pressed against her side, and her eyes darted across the faces in the room before settling on Elsbeth.

"Evershade? Elsbeth Evershade?!"

"I am here."

"Urgent dispatch." She fumbled a pair of sealed scrolls out of her satchel and held them out. "One for the Council, and one for you!"

"It came through the rune-lamp towers overnight...! It was sent by your clan before they could have received your letter, so the two messages must have crossed on the road."

Elsbeth took the scroll with a hand that was perfectly steady. She broke the seal and began to read.

I watched her face. She didn’t move or react, and she didn’t change expression.

But I saw her fingers start to tremble, a small, quiet shaking that she tried to hide by tightening her grip. The paper crackled.

"What does it say?" Magnara asked, very gently for her.

Elsbeth lowered the scroll. Her voice came out flat, like she was reading a weather report.

"The Northern Wolf Clan has been attacked," she said. "By a guild of slavers, the Gilded Chain..."

"They are well-organized, trained, and armed with chain-mages and bound beastwomen forced to fight by collars..." Elsbeth gritted her teeth. "The outer villages have fallen..."

"The clan is holding the inner stronghold and requests aid under the old treaty with Elarune."

Nobody spoke.

"They are asking for help," Elsbeth said, "which means that things are very bad... it’s unusual for my clan asking for help."

"It’s probably that serious."

I wanted to say something. I’d already begun to formulate the usual joke, the one I used every time things got too dark for me to handle.

It was right there on my tongue, waiting.

I closed my mouth and swallowed it.

"We’re going now," I said instead. "All of us."

Elsbeth looked at me.

For a moment, she didn’t say anything, and I thought she might refuse out of pride. Then something in her shoulders eased, just a little.

"Yes," she said.

Millie reached out and took her hand.

Elsbeth stiffened. She wasn’t a person who got touched much, and I could see the tension run up her arm like a startled cat.

But she didn’t pull away. She looked down at Millie’s small fingers wrapped around her own, and her ears flicked back.

"I want to help your clan too," Millie said softly. "If you’ll let me..."

Elsbeth cleared her throat. It took her a second to answer.

"Very well."

"If I may," Bonette said quietly, "there is something the Northern Wolf Clan guards that matters very much."

"In the highlands beyond their territory lie the ruins of the Moon Shrine... the last surviving fragment of the Lunhare palace."

"The wolves have kept it hidden for generations... That is why they have always refused outsiders."

"So the Gilded Chain is after the shrine, huh?" I said. "Isn’t that quite predictable?"

"Or after the princess," Bonette said. "If the seal has leaked... they may have followed it, but I cannot say which."

"Or both," Elsbeth murmured.

It was a lot to process, and nobody tried.

Instead, Elsbeth read the second page of the dispatch again, and her mouth tightened.

"One more detail," she said, mostly to herself. "The scouts mention a Frostfang Behemoth..."

"A very large one, in the northern passes, long before the attack began." She looked up, and her eyes met mine. "The one that nearly killed me was no ordinary beast."

"It was hunted by blood and drove me into a clearing... Someone may have set it on me."

"On purpose?" I said. "To weaken your clan?"

"I cannot prove it yet."

"That’s really, really not good."

"No," she agreed. "It is not."

After the messenger left, the room stayed quiet for a long time.

Bonette went to the kitchen to make tea, because apparently that’s what you do when the world is ending, and Millie went with her.

I could hear them whispering in the next room, Bonette’s voice thick with tears, and Millie’s soft and hesitant.

I sat down next to Elsbeth. I wasn’t sure what to say, so for once I kept my mouth shut.

Eventually, because curiosity is my worst quality... I asked the one thing that had been bothering me since I’d arrived in Elarune.

"Can I ask a question...? And please don’t hit me."

"I will make no promises."

"Why are almost all of you women...?"

Magnara and Elsbeth exchanged a look. It was brief, but I caught it, and the air in the room changed.

"What do you mean...?" Magnara asked.

"I mean... I’ve been in this world for about five days, and I haven’t met a single guy with animal ears... Not one."

"In the market, in Frosthaven, and even in Elarune or the square yesterday!" I tried to smile to cover my happiness because I’m lucky to be surrounded by all beastwomen.

"It’s all women, and... It’s kind of weird, honestly."

Elsbeth set down the scroll.

"There are no beastmen," she said. "There have not been for three hundred years..."

I stared at her. "What...?"

"The Culling War," Magnara said quietly.

She’d turned her head to look out the window, and her huge shoulders had tensed. "The human kingdoms decided that beastmen were the greatest threat to their armies because of their size, their strength, and their ability to take battle forms."

"So they hunted them first... They slaughtered them, village by village, until none were left."

"By the time the war ended, there were no males of any beastkin line anywhere in the world."

The words dropped into the room like a stone into deep water.

"Not even one?" I said. "But... what about the kids...? I still see kids... how did you all even produce at this point?"

"Not even one... There have been rumors, and a few false claims."

"No one has ever proven it." Magnara’s voice was low, flat, and full of old pain. "That is why most clans are led by women..."

"We had to become the warriors, the leaders, and the protectors... There was no one else."

"We produced it through magic, and it’s complicated to explain it to a human like you... but save that for later if you meet someone who’s perfect at explaining that."

I remembered the bull-horned woman in the square, the one with the twisted hand and the shaking rage. ’I won’t let a human walk free after this...’

I’d assumed it was only about her arm.

"The woman with the bull horns," I said slowly. "In the crowd yesterday... The one whose hand was..."

"Her grandmother watched the last men of their village burned in a barn," Magnara said. "She told that story every year on the anniversary..."

"Her granddaughter was a child when she heard it... Grief like that does not stay in one generation."

"It gets handed down."

I didn’t say anything for a long time.

A hundred jokes tried to climb up my throat, and all of them died instantly.

I thought about the old world, about all the things my species had done to each other, and how easy it was to pretend that kind of thing was ancient history.

"I’m ashamed of my kind," I said finally.

It came out rough. "I know that doesn’t help... but I want to say it anyway... I’m ashamed of what we did... as humans."

Elsbeth studied me with those cool, red eyes.

"Shame is useless," she said, "unless it moves you to act."

"Good thing I’m really good at being moved."

"We shall see."

"But still, though! How do you even..." I started, then stopped, because I realized I was walking into an extremely awkward question. "I mean... how do the clans continue if there aren’t..."

"That," Elsbeth said, in a voice that could have frozen soup, "is clan business, and it is not something I will discuss with you."

"Totally fair... Withdrawn! I’m taking it back!"

"Wise."

Bonette had come back in with the tea tray and caught the end of the conversation.

She set a cup in front of me and added, quietly, "The Lunhare line is one of the very few that can only be passed through the female blood..."

"If it ends, the moon magic ends with it..."

"So you see, Her Highness carries more than her own life."