Long Read: Our Better Wolves
Table of Contents and Preview
Foreword
Working Blurb
Linked Table of Contents
Preview: "Our Better Wolves.”
Foreword
Come in all, and especially our New Subscribers, to the Maw. Many of you are relatively new arrivals that have been awaiting formal transport. We are so glad to finally meet you and we are so so sorry for the delay. Have all our New Subscribers received their robes?
A quick tour, then refreshments. This is the Tongue where we meet; these are the Teeth where we eat. I’ve laid out the buffet on the ground-level molars. You shall have to sleep where you may. Regurgitation is weekly, but it has been sporadic of late. It is a barely tamed beast.
But something we like to say down here while we wait—and you New Subscribers, you’re going to get real familiar with this: Come in all to the Maw. All are welcome, mostly. And this shall remain free while we collect the Unholy-Holy Bounty. Come in all to the Maw.
This week, since so many of you are still very fresh, I’ve laid out a previous tasting menu—it, like the Immortal Husks-Glorified that It, Cavalcade Maw, has bestowed upon our grateful and loyal Subscribers, stays fresh for forever!
I call it:
Working Blurb
Death stirs beneath Perta, the capital of the Vericanti Republic; and the Republic continues its expansion--now west into Turael, a bold move against a vassal of the Arkassian Empire. But the mad emperor and his cult of sorcerers are not the only things the Vericanti need to worry about. Greed festers in the Free Cities of the Republic, treachery roams the conquered lands, and horror lurks beneath them all, waiting.
Into the fray, enter the Scarlet Sarks, the elite of the Republic’s greatest mercenary company, the Cagne of Perta. With Mago Tenente Magaritte Aseni at his side, Capitano Josep Garibald and his band must navigate the violent waters of imperialism and despair. Or be sunk forever.
Table of Contents
Book 1: Into the West
In which the Scarlet Sarks return home to Perta and then pack right off to the Western Front in Turael. There’s a river that needs crossing, a siege that needs to be broken. And on the journey, they’ll be joined by ambassadors from Curael and, their bitterest subjects, Estruey.
Sketch: Garibald and the Architect
Book 2: Our Better Wolves
The Western Front is ready to break, both the siege and tensions within the Army of the Vericant and its conscripted Estruani clansmen. The front is a muddy morass. When Rizzi steps in it, he steps in deep to a plot of black worms eating at the Republic. It will eat the Sarks. Or will another betrayal devour them first?
Book 3: The Puzzlewood
On the run, the Sarks stumble into a new plot on the shores of Lake Curael, and an age-old mystery about to consume a princess in a tower in the middle of the Puzzlewood.
Book 4: Untitled
A dark road through a bitter land. Poison seeps into the earth; and what feeds on that poison.
Book 5: Untitled
The Scarlet Sarks return home to Perta, the last battle.
Preview from “Our Better Wolves”
Here’s the scene that started it all, from the short story “Our Better Wolves” before it became a novel. Maybe you’ll understand why it’s been turned into turn it into a novel.
Summer, 7773 AS: the Kingdom of Turael, a vassal state of the Arkassian Empire.
The River Aldono ran black and slow, currents turning under the summer light. A dinghy lay abandoned on the banks of a grove, not far from the encampment of the Scarlet Sarks.
Their comrades in the Greyline Company, five of them, had already beaten the Temuran boy and lashed him to the mast pole; and now they brought forth the tar-black worm hive, dangling from a stick.
They had stripped him. Piss dribbled down his leg as he watched the writhing sack approach. They would drop it at his feet; it would burst. They would push the little boat into the river. Perhaps and hopefully, his countrymen would hear his agony before it was too late.
“Tisk tisk tisk, what is this?” Maresciallo Rizzi Innominato, the Little Jackal, strolled into the grove and propped his bare foot on a log and rested his sheathed rapier on his knee.
Soldato Meno Calu stepped into the grove beside him. Both were young and lean—hungry in the long war—black-haired, swarthy gutter rats from Perta. They wore the crimson leathers of the Scarlet Sarks but had already stripped to their shirtsleeves, jackets in hand.
“Meno, they say the Greyline are a bunch of cess-dwelling barbarians. But see, we came for a bath and the boys give us a show. Manners are a virtue, cucciolo.” The Greyline barely understood vericanti, they hadn’t bothered learning about their overlords. “Prendi il Capitano.”
Rizzi relished the doubt that crossed the Greylines’ faces. He owed them thanks for the Temura fiasco—he would not have risen to maresciallo if not for the Greyline’s nastiness with the locals; and the Greyline, as far as Rizzi was concerned, owed the Sarks blood for the men they lost there.
“Sì, maresci.” Meno, the latest recruit to the Sarks, tore back through the woods to the camp and Capitano Garibald. The Capitano, at least, would care about the undue murder of a prisoner—a prisoner of the Sarks no less.
Rizzi recognized the Temuran boy. There was law in the Compact of Perizi about mishandling another company’s hostages. And though the world was full of suitable tortures, a worming was flat-out illegal by all laws of war and decency. Rizzi was happy to add to the list of Greyline infractions for the Capitano.
A tall, pock-faced Greyline stopped the hive’s processional and smirked down at Rizzi. Pock-face was just a couple steps and a swords-length away. “You came for a bugger, and we’re just doing our jobs.”
“Murder isn’t a job.” Rizzi stepped up onto the log as he explained murder. “It’s a calling. Take him back to the Pens where he belongs.” As an acting officer, it crossed his mind to use his new rank. He did like the sound of the common yes, sir.
They didn’t know him, however. They would scoff, he would act offended, and this scene would play the same anyways. Rizzi preferred a direct route to the inevitable, and he disdained appeals to authority anyways. He cocked his head to the whimpering boy. “I remember this one—”
“You would,” said a fair Greyline boy with an unfortunate pug nose. The Fair One glanced to his four comrades for approval. They snickered for him.
Rizzi didn’t rise to cheap bait. It was true anyhow—the Temuran boy was too handsome for Rizzi to forget when he surrendered himself.
The Temurans had suffered much when the Greyline garrisoned the town, Turael’s first and largest trading post on the Aldono—though Rizzi barely considered it a town—Temura was the initial landing zone for the Vericanti army. An absolute surprise attack despite all odds. The landing party ran off the Turaelian garrison easy enough.
The citizenry surrendered. The Greyline left a hundred men as garrison—they could have left more and done less—while the rest of the army marched upriver. What men weren’t killed, the Greyline took prisoner.
Months later, months of brooding on their new subjugation, the Temurans that met the Sarks on the docks were mostly boys, Meno’s age or younger. Too stupid to heed the banner of the Cagne of Perta that flew over their barge. Rizzi didn’t blame them for rebelling under their new chains, though. The causes were clear—the very cobbles of the town square were dyed in blood.
The Capitano didn’t relish the action, ordered restraint, even if those boys were deadly, or trying to be. The Sarks followed orders.
The Temuran boy had stood tall on their last barricade, even put up a good fight with nothing more than a boat hook for a pike. He was frightened—just a fisherboy—but not weak. Rizzi saw a fighter to challenge his old bravi in Perta.
He thrashed and snarled as Rizzi turned his jabs and tackled him. He smelled like sweet onions. Rizzi had considered making him an offer for his freedom. “He’s one of ours. Not yours,” he told the Greyline.
“He’s the Sovrano’s, the Republic’s”—as if the Greyline cared for either— “…and the worms’. We don’t take orders from Pertan dogs.”
Rizzi spit on kings and worms. “You’ll take my blade, then.”
He was quick to toss his jacket and draw his rapier. They were quick to reply with knives. The worm hive was tossed into the boat with a squelch and the Temuran boy’s weeping turned to full-throated cries. The Greyline circled.
Rizzi stepped down from the log. He swept over the five of them, half-circled before him, with his blade point measuring each and marking their postures. The left-handed Pock-face would take the lead.
Rizzi set his stance, knees supple, blade and silver scabbard extended as the Fair One on his left crept in clever and slow. Not bothering to glance in his direction, Rizzi gave him a little poke with the scabbard as he got sword-close.
Rizzi opened his chest, inviting each to try him as his blade counted: The Fair One. An ugly one. Another ugly one. Pock-face lunged from the right.
Rizzi spun into it, twisting the man’s arm into his own, tangling his knife-hand with his blade. With Rizzi back-to-back with Pock-face, a third ugly one rushed from Rizzi’s left to his comrade’s aid. Rizzi thrust his scabbard into the man’s mouth. He stumbled and fell at his comrades’ feet, choking, spitting shattered teeth.
Rizzi stepped back, flipping Pock-face and severing the tendons as his rapier raked over his knife-hand.
They’d hardly a chance to react. The toothless one hacked blood at their feet. Pock-face cradled his hand, weeping. Rizzi reset with them all in view, scabbard out, rapier back, more defensive—maybe they’d learned the lesson. They certainly doubted their next move.
A sloppy glance of agreement and the last three lunged at once. Rizzi sneered, grateful they had not learned. His blood pounded in his ears. He didn’t hear.
A meaty hand yanked him backwards to sprawl on the grass. A bastard sword twirled and clattered the knives from the Greylines’ grasps. Not a single finger lost. “Stop this!”
Capitano Garibald was breathless but composed. The quietest of the Sarks, even at a run, and the biggest, towering by a head over all of them and one of the few who could drop on Rizzi.
“Meno, the boy,” he commanded. “You lot, back to Capitano Beroza.”
The Greyline hesitated.
“Now.”
The three left standing ran without their comrades. The wounded slunk off.
Rizzi tried to pick himself up. The Capitano shoved him back with his booted foot, not bothering to look down on him.
Rizzi spent his first twenty-odd years pulling himself from the gutters of Perta by a thousand-and-one schemes then, finally, a duel gone wrong, a betrayal—loyalty among the bravi of Perta was fickle as fortune.
That meaty hand of Capitano Garibald dragged him out of a Pertani jail and a murderer’s drowning at sea. Conscription or death. Rizzi chose the Cagne. Maybe, there was still that merchant’s bag of gold tucked behind a brick in an alley in the Quarto di Fortuna. Rizzi’s beautiful city would swallow him whole eventually. He saw that now.
He rose to the Scarlet Sarks, the Cagne’s strike force, quickly. Perta had made him deadly and swift and hungry, and too impetuous he supposed. That meaty hand. But that booted foot had kicked him enough times in the past three years. Too much, or not enough? Rizzi wasn’t sure.
“Stay down, Rizzi.” The Capitano helped Meno haul the gibbering and ruined boy from the boat, gingerly stepping around the crawling black ichor on the boards. They laid him on the shaded grass. The Capitano shoved the boat and the worms out into the river.
A worm hive was a horror: cocooned in their shallow holes beneath the grass, waiting for some unwary creature to misstep, hundreds of black worms writhed in a sack. But a single burrowing worm was enough to poison the blood if not kill.
The boy’s veins already spidered at the ankles, infecting the tissue. Rizzi had seen it before.
“I’ll get the Curador,” Meno said.
“It’s too late for him. Rizzi.” Capitano Garibald cocked his head for Rizzi to do what must be done, holding out his own dagger. “The heart. Stop the blood that burns through him.”
Rizzi rose and took the proffered blade. He knelt.
They both clutched at the grass. Understanding dawned in the Temuran boy’s eyes. He stopped his whimpering, closed his eyes and let out a breath. His body went still as if already dead, relaxed, floating on water under the sun. Rizzi put his hand on the boy’s soft cheek, hoping it would feel like a brother’s or a sister’s, or a father’s or a mother’s, or a lover’s if he had ever had one. He had a home; things to fight for.
Rizzi slid in the dagger.
“Say some words over him when he’s done, then report to me.”
They left Rizzi by the river at the boy’s side, motionless and ticking out his last seconds peacefully, his eyes cast into hazy summer skies. Rizzi held his hand, his thumb swirling over the boy’s fingertips.
He looked out as the boat took the flow and drifted back downstream toward Temura. It caught in some branches on the near shore, stuck. Across the river, willows, and green-gold fields of summer crop, beyond which a Turaelian encampment sent up wisps of smoke from the soldiery fires. A breeze threaded violin music from across the river. Rizzi was far from the gutters of Perta and the sea.
Curse this foreign land.
