Chapter 21: A Long Night with Too Many Tears

“Because you are human; and we are not.” Isiah said with a calm determination.

The phrase hung in the air for a while. It brought the entire conversation to a stop.

The silence was palpable; thick, like a heavy soup.

Mark stood there with his jaw agape, unable to say anything. He closed his mouth, opened it and closed it again. He was like a fish. He swallowed a couple of times. Then he exploded.

“What do you mean you aren’t human!? We grew up together. I have known you since birth. We used to play soldiers together!” he turned and pointed at Josiah. “I was there when he was born! I saw him grow up! We were all there when that vicious little bastard started picking on you. We were all here when we saw you cower and retreat from your own brother; choosing to hide in the woods rather than stand up to him”

“ ... I’m sorry...” Josiah said from the side

“What does me being human have to do with defending MY village? Why does my being human make me inferior to you?! How dare you prevent me from defending my own village!!” Mark was panting by the end of his speech.

“It isn’t about you being inferior to us...” I said trying to calm him down.

“Then why didn’t you take me with you?! Why did you leave me behind? I am supposed to be the leader of this squad, yet I was kept in the dark and lied to. This was insubordination! It was tantamount to mutiny!” he was getting hysterical. This conversation wasn’t going anywhere. Mark wasn’t listening. He was spiralling within his own neurosis; we needed to snap him out of it.

“Because you would have died ... and worse than that you would have gotten in the way” Isiah must have been thinking along the same lines as me.

Mark was taken aback.

“What do you mean gotten in the way? I could have helped. Maybe, if I was there Mathew wouldn’t have lost his arm!” Mark exclaimed. Mark was about to say more but-

“You would have been a distraction and gotten us all killed!” Isiah shouted over mark

“You seem to think we are disparaging your bravery or calling you weak. We aren’t. This isn’t about whether you are brave enough to fight; or whether you have the right to fight for your own home. This is about capability. This is about ability.

Earlier you called us monsters ... that’s precisely what we were fighting out there tonight; Monsters. Monsters out to kill us all and all the people we care about. Terrifying monsters that were targeting us.” Isiah waived his hand around pointing at all of us in squad nine.

“This wasn’t about some misguided glory seeking. Or a way to undermine your authority; this was about survival. They were hunting us; we decided to hunt them back. We decided to ambush them at night before they could attack us. We didn’t tell you because you are a human. You aren’t capable of fighting against the monsters. This was a night raid, you can’t see in the dark. You needed a torch to move around in the forest, where as we can see in the dark. You move slower than them, you are weaker than them in every single physical aspect. And a silvered sword as only as useful as where you can stick them.”

“We didn’t know whether we would win ... quite honestly we didn’t expect to come out of this so unscathed.” I said quietly. Mathew’s wife started to say something, but I cut her off. “Mathew shouldn’t have been out there with us either. He is a human. His future sight might make him a better fighter when compared to other humans; but he was out matched against even the weakest of werewolves. It was the 4 of us against 15 werewolves. We had no right to survive. It is a miracle that we survived. We had no right to survive.” I repeated

“We didn’t expect to survive...” Isiah said.

“We left you back here so that you would be able to protect the village against any werewolves that got past us.” I said, again, for what must have been the 20^th time. But this time the message seemed to get through.

Mark looked at us; then turned his head to the floor, ashamed. “Sorry...

But I still don’t understand the not human part. Emris, yes, he I know is something different; but you two? I grew up with you two. I trained you two, I saw Josiah almost die a week ago from a shield strike to the head. How are you more equipped to deal with a pack of werewolves than me?”

Isiah extended his arm outwards and then selectively transformed each of his fingers and then slowly transformed the rest of his arm. It was actually a bit weird to see him transform each of his fingers individually as the finger expanded outwards; he looked like he had one really fat big furry finger, whilst the rest remained normal. I had seen his transformed arm before, but the out of scale-ness of one finger was weird.

Mark jumped back, scared, his arm reaching towards his belt for his sword; which wasn’t there. Everyone had taken their swords off and placed them behind the bar at Bess’ insistence.

“You’re one of them?!” he accused back, his anger flaring back again. Only to be smacked on the back of the head by Bess.

“Stupid child. If he was one of them why would he help you fight them.” she said calmly

“Look at his arm! He is one of them. He is a werewolf!” Mark exclaimed again.

Isiah bared his teeth and hissed, at being called a werewolf

“No he is not a wolf ... he is a cat.” I said “A werecat.”

“How ... what... ?” Mark said flummoxed.

“Werewolves aren’t the only were creatures in existence, just the most populous. There are weres of most higher-order predatory mammals.” I explained

Everyone looked at me funny

“Higher-order, predatory mammals?” Mark asked confusedly. Oh-shit, those words meant nothing. And they wouldn’t for another 1200 years.

“Large predators with Fur: Like lions, wolves, bears, etc.” I explained hastily

“How did you turn into a werecat?” Bess asked Isiah calmly, everyone was still giving me the side eye, but thankfully this question took the attention away from me.

Isiah looked around the room everyone was looking at him, curiosity in their eyes ... and fear. Everyone wanted to know the story, even me. I knew the short version, but was curious about the full story. He took a deep, lung clearing breath; breathing out explosively. He slumped in resignation.

He pulled a chair and sat down, his left side leaning against the side of the table.

“It was the fall of the year I turned 19, the Sunday after the harvest festival. I was wearing the new clothes I had bought at the harvest feast. Josiah was 13; he was drunk on stolen harvest mead. He had confessed his love to daisy again. She refused him, again. He was in a foul state of mind and drunk. He was already larger than me and in need for an outlet for his frustrations.

He found me.” Isiah took another deep breath and shook his head.

Josiah had his head down in the corner; trying to make himself as small as possible. I saw a teardrop fall from his eyes.

“I’d like to say that I gave as good as I got, but that would be a lie. Josiah went too far, in his drunken rage he managed to break my arm and I was bleeding from a cut to my head. I couldn’t tell anyone, I was embarrassed; I had been beaten up by my own kid brother ... and despite everything he was my brother. and I had promised mother that I would always look after him.” Isiah looked down hiding the tears that threatened his eyes at the mention of his mother.

Isiah’s mother had died shortly after giving birth to Josiah. She had succumbed to what was called childbirth fever, known as puerperal fever in modern times; a bacterial infection of the reproductive tract, contracted after the birth. Maternal mortality rate in the sixth century was close to almost 5%; mainly due to the poor sanitation (also the solution to a haemorrhage was not a venesection, why did they love venesection so much?). So that meant that if a woman had 4 pregnancies (which, considering the lack of contraception wouldn’t be uncommon) she would have a 20% chance of death.