Chapter 18: The Black Panda-faced Yetay

We were about to be attacked by a pack of fifteen werewolves, including an Alpha. My first instinct was to run away. Grab everything we could pack and get as far away from the village. Not an option, there wasn’t enough time. And even if we did manage to get everything packed and organised, they would be much faster than us. The only thing running would mean was that when they caught up to us and killed us, we would be tired.

We needed a plan.

“Our biggest advantage right now is that they don’t know that we know about the attack. We are also more familiar with the terrain. And we know when they will attack. “ Mathew said, listing out our advantages.

There weren’t many.

“How accurate is your future sight, how far can you see and how much detail” I asked. We needed any and all details we could, if we were going to formulate any kind of plan which could surmount these odds.

“In battle? About half a breath. This makes me a very good person to have, in a battle. My distant sight is localised to anyplace I call home. In this case I saw what was coming 3 nights ago. As for the details; they aren’t that clear, but I saw werewolves.” He said.

“Actual werewolves? In fur?” Isiah asked, he had guessed where I was going. Were we dealing with actual werewolves or the monsters The Witch had created?

“It was hazy and it was at night. Why does it matter? I heard them howling in my vision” Mathew said, wondering what was going on.

“They probably know that a Werecat used to live in the village, your scent must be all over the forest.” I said to Isiah

“Yes. And the scout probably smelt me coming back into the village yesterday.” Isiah said.

“No, he wasn’t observing last evening. Ian and I patrolled the village to scare him off.” Mathew said.

“Then they don’t know that we have 3 maybe four people capable of fighting against them.” I said.

“They know about your squad, being here. One of their main reasons for attacking is to kill you all.” Mathew said deflatingly.

We were the targets.

Again.

First, it was the wagon train; where the Blood Wolves had travelled south from the forests of Sherwood to hunt us.

Now this.

There was definitely a spy. And the spy was someone we knew. Very few people knew about our squad joining the wagon train; fewer still, the people who knew about our trip to border creek.

We would have to deal with the spy soon.

“The best way to attack them is probably to attack them from a distance. Ambush them in the forest with bows. Isiah and I could probably shoot down five or six of them from the trees before they are even aware of us. Which will help a lot, and then it comes down to close combat.” I said.

“They would still out number us 10 to 4.” Mathew said

“Werecats are inherently much better at fighting than werewolves. So Isiah and Josiah working together will probably be able to hold their own against the wolves. Despite being a mage, I am much more suited to close combat than anything else. My sword work has improved a lot since our last meeting, Mathew.” I said. There was a slight challenge to my voice. Despite the wholly inappropriate time, I wanted to test my skills against him. He had been my first teacher of the sword, but he had also been my first opponent (not counting stick fighting as a three year old). He was also the only one I had ever lost to in a sword fight. I wanted to test my skills and see how much my skills had improved.

“I can hold my own in a fight. Even against werewolves” Mathew said calmly, not rising to my bait.

“Um, I am not sure I can fight a werewolf. I don’t even know how to transform yet.” Josiah said.

“We will work on that today.” Isiah said to Josiah. “I agree that ambushing them with archery is the best option, but won’t they just heal? We will need to make silver tipped arrows. And they will have to be bodkins if we want them to penetrate. Even with my bow, we need more power.”

“I can make adjustments to your bow to increase the draw weight and make the bow more powerful, but then there is a risk of shattering the arrows as they are loosed.” I said to Isiah. I turned to Mathew and said “we need a smithy, do you think we can convince Tom to let us use his forge for a few hours?”

Almost every village needed a blacksmith; iron was the backbone on which the farming economy was built. There was no mass production, everything was handmade. Even the littlest of things like nails needed a blacksmith to make it. Tools for farming, tools for cooking, anything made out of metal needed a smith to make it. In actual fact most of the larger smithies used multiple smiths to make things. There were no power hammers or hydraulic presses, forging things required massive amounts of manpower.

“Ian can, he and tom are close. But why do we need a forge, we don’t have time to make anything?” he asked

“Silvered swords. Silver can stop weres from healing, making them easier to kill” Josiah replied on my behalf.

“Hmmm, an interesting idea. I’ll talk to Ian in a minute.”

“We also need a place for me to teach Josiah. I would normally have taken him into the woods, but we can’t do that without tipping off the werewolf scout” said Isiah. Every time he used the word werewolf, it came out as a spit; like he was cursing every time he said the word.

“The forge is probably the only place you could get away with making that much noise, it will be cramped but you will have to manage.” Mathew said. The smithy was a large open building, but the forge room was indoors and could be closed off.

Isiah didn’t look happy but he nodded.

We made our way to the back, where Mark and Ian were struggling with moving heavy barrels around. Each barrel contained a third of a culeus (175litres-ish). They had to be careful as each barrel weighed as much as 2 Josiahs and contained what had to be some of the most expensive beer in the land.

Isiah and I quickly took over helping from Ian, so that Ian could go convince Tom.

“We came up with a plan to deal with the wolf” I said, careful to avoid saying wolves. “There is only one, so it should be fairly easy.” Yeah right. “Mathew knows the hiding place so he is going to take us there. We are going to go upwind from the wolf and then Isiah is going to shoot it with silvered arrows. I am then going to go make sure it is dead.”

Mark nodded, agreeing with the plan. It would be a great plan if we were actually fighting only one wolf.

“You and Ian are going to remain here in the village, to make sure that village is protected. In case the wolf escapes and tries to attack the village.” I said. He didn’t seem thrilled with the idea, but it was probably the best plan. Mark would be useless in fighting against a whole pack of werewolves and it would mean revealing Isiah and Josiah’s secrets to him, so the best thing in this case was to leave him on the side lines.

“What about Josiah?” Mark asked curiously

“He will be home recovering, he is still hurt.” Isiah lied. Josiah made the appropriately disgruntled face; although it was impossible to tell whether it was because of the insinuation that he couldn’t help, or because it was a lie involving him. Since the head injury, he had been uncharacteristically honest.

We carried on moving the barrels around for another half an hour, before Ian and Mathew came back.

“You can use the forge for today, but if anything is destroyed Tom will kill us all.” He said to us. “Mark stay, we need you to help train us back into fighting shape. I haven’t swung a sword in anger in two years.” Ian said to mark.

“You will have to use the spare swords, I am going to try and silver the swords as well” I said to them.

The brothers and I made our way to the forge after collecting all the steel swords, the brothers came along in the guise of helping me carry all of the swords to the forge. The forge was nothing like the modern forges I had used previously. The forges I had learnt on were propane forges which didn’t need manual fuelling or air to be pumped. This was different; this was a charcoal forge, with huge bellows used to pump air into the forge. Then I noticed that the bellows were being powered by the small waterwheel outside. The forge was already lit slightly, but the valve connecting the bellows to the forge was closed. I opened the valve slightly to let some of the air blow through. The flowing air re-energised the smouldering embers; I shovelled more charcoal into the fire and waited for the coals to light.

Whilst I did that Isiah was teaching Josiah about how to transform into a werecat. They were sitting on one side of the room quietly talking.

I got myself organised, I found a crucible and a pair of crucible tongs. I wrapped my palms and forearms in a thick cloth to protect them from the heat, and got a bucket of water.

Once the fire got going consistently I placed the crucible into the fire, and piled up the coals on the side, I also added a long iron rod into the forge. I opened up the valve completely so that the airflow was no longer restricted. The red coals started turning orange and yellow as the fire increased in temperature. I constantly monitored the fire, adding charcoal as needed and moving any ash away. I added a bag of about 30 silver coins into the crucible. I knew that the forge would be able to melt the silver as I knew silver’s melting point was in the 900-1000 degrees Celsius range.