Rumble. Crack!

A wooden groan and jarring motion jolted Wurhi of Zabyalla back to consciousness.

The thief moaned. Her skull throbbed as though trampled by camels, while her belly churned like a barrel of pickled plums roiling in a tempest at sea. An icy wind raked through great rents in her tunic, blasting snow over her trembling body. Something creaked around her. An odour of animal musk, the stink of horse and a familiar incense filled her nostrils.

Her face ached - swollen from a great blow - and her mind moved as though in quicksand.

Blearily, she forced her eyes open.

Whooosh.

The sight that greeted her only brought further confusion.

She found herself in the back of an open wagon on a snow-crusted path. Wind blew a white haze through croaking trees lining the sides of the road, their dark needles heavy with blankets of white.

Above those…

She gasped.

Mountains filled the horizon, and she gaped at their size. At such proximity they seemed to eat the sky itself, dwarfing all things she had ever encountered. Zabyalla’s high walls and grand palaces - and even the trees of the Forest of Giants - would have shrunk to insignificance beneath these titans of skyward stone.

Her mind whirled. Were one of those summits to crumble, they would crush half a city. A tiny, trivial little thief would not even leave a smear.

She shuddered, attempting to turn away and push such thoughts aside-

“Ngh!” she grunted.

-but found herself bound in place. Her heartbeat doubled in swiftness as she looked over her shoulder. Something had brought her wrists behind her back and twisted a bar of bronze about them, looping it through a metal ring hammered into the wagon frame.

The tight binding left her hands swollen and she could barely feel them. Terrible strength would be needed to bend bronze so thoroughly. What was happening? How did she get here?

Now did her mind begin to waken.

The previous night’s horrors returned: images of a great, black-coated beast dazing her and snatching her in its maw. Its powerful form loping over the walls of paradise. Flashes of city streets. A tunnel.

Horror transfixed her. She had been taken. Why in hells had they taken her?

“Hey, you. You’re finally awake,” came a voice like scratching glass.

Stiffening, she whirled toward the voice.

She nearly screamed.

A wiry, familiar man was curled up, shivering on the opposite side of the wagon. His grey eyes leered above a beak of a nose that would have suited a falcon. Even though she had not seen his face unmasked, Wurhi could never forget the murderous, raptor-like gaze of Merrick the Hawk.

Swelling and dark red bruising marred his sharp features while only a black tunic hugged his wiry frame against the cold. His hands were bound in the same way as hers. For that, she was grateful.

“What…what’s happening?” she whispered. “How’re you here? Where in all hells am I?”

Merrick gave a mocking chuckle. “That’s it, I reckon. We’re on our way to hell.”

“Exactly, you thieving scum,” came another voice, both familiar and foul.

Wurhi whirled toward the back of the wagon and recoiled.

A young man smirked astride a beautiful steed, his wretched satisfaction radiating from every movement. Haldrych Ameldan basked in his victory as he had the morning he’d come to Paradise to spread his silver. He touched his chest to draw her gaze to a familiar red jewel; the Eye of Radiin once again hung upon his neck. An irrational rage boiled in her at the very sight of the thing.

“And so, my precious heirloom returns to her master.” The young poet gloated. His rust-coloured hair whipped about his shoulders like poisoned flame tainting the white landscape. “While the vile interlopers who despoiled my house will gain their comeuppance.” His mirth boomed over cold, snow-crusted wind. “A fine day, is it not, Adelmar?”

A blond-bearded man rode at his side, smiling with Haldrych’s declaration, but there was a tightness to it. His eyes were empty of the mirth apparent on his lips; instead, they burned with the vicious resentment of a beaten hound. His ire seemed fixed entirely on Wurhi. “It’ll be a fine day when these two are dead. Especially the rat-thing. Many brothers paid for her capture.”

Haldrych’s cheer faded somewhat. “Yes…of course.” He glanced furtively to the front of the wagon.

Crack!

A vicious snap drew Wurhi’s eyes toward the fore.

Only a whip could make such an evil sound. She had heard its like from caravans of the Slave-City of Salik, and The Maw’s hidden chambers, where agony was artistry. Its victims were a pair of shaggy geldings labouring mightily through the snow to avoid its cruel ministrations.

Their driver was an evil-looking, weasel-thin slip of a man who worked the bullwhip as though he had been birthed with it. Its black leather shone with each undulation before it blurred down to snap across the geldings’ backs.

On his left rose the jewelled hilt of her sword. Instinctually, she leaned toward it, cursing the futility of the action.

On the driver’s right lounged a bear of a man, filling the seat with his bulk. Heavy furs obscured his powerful form, and though he was not quite as colossal as the barbaric Eppon of Garumna, he bore a bestial menace that made her hair stand on end.

Her nostrils flared.

Scents struck them that brought shivers to her spine. The driver and his hulking companion stank of a predator’s musk and the latter’s bore a foul familiarity. Her memory of the black-coated beast…its scent belonged to this man.

Her eyes returned to her silver blade, tantalizingly close, yet impossible to reach. It had pierced one of the devil’s chests the night before, withering away the wolf until only a man remained. A dead man, at that. His passing had brought revelation: the wolf-demons were shape-changers, just as she was.

Now they walked in human skin. The very thought filled her with a revulsion akin to self-loathing, and the notion that these devils could be some kin of hers brought with it a wilting horror. She had never truly considered her own beast within.

It had come on shortly after her first bleeding.

Cramps had grown until they enveloped her body, heralding a crumbling of bone, shattering of skin and melting of flesh that changed her into a creature both rat and human. Transformation always bought her agony, but her first change came with a peak of anguish she had gratefully never experienced since. Or perhaps she had simply grown more accustomed to it.

Both bestial instincts and pain had drowned her young mind until she had awoken terrified in her mother’s arms, with a calloused hand petting her hair. Herself once more, she might have thought it a vivid nightmare had her mother not given insight by way of brusque explanation:

“You got it from your father.”

And that had been all.

Never again did she speak of the man who had sired young Wurhi, and the girl’s further questions had been met by harsh words and dismissal. The child had been intent on wearing her mother down…but a few months later, it mattered not at all.

Plague had ravaged Zabyalla, brought by horse-traders from the steppes of Kherlen. Food had grown scarce. The dead had filled boarded up houses and bloated the ditches beneath the blazing sun. Crocodiles in the River of Scales had fattened indeed.

To their horror, she and her mother had found swellings on their own skin.

Her fever broke after several days.

Her mother’s never did.

In the lonely years afterward, she had come to rely on the change as a tool of survival. A way to be quicker than the violent men lurking in the alleys. A way to slip into spaces far too narrow for any woman to pass. A way to fight off the stray hounds in the dark.

A tool of desperation and nothing more; she greatly feared its body-shattering agony and the rodent’s instincts that attacked her thoughts to overwhelm her mind. Unnaturally, they rose even now, balking from the giant man as prey would before a predator.

She grit her teeth even as her heartbeat raced. Now was not the time to lose oneself to panic. Her wits would need to be in order if she had any hope of survival. Still, her eyes flicked toward the snow, and she wished she had a hole to burrow into.

“What are you going to do with us?” she asked warily. “Where are we going?”

The large man said not a word.

Crack!

The driver snapped his whip hard and one of the geldings snorted.

“I would not test them further, little knave.” Haldrych sneered. “They are wroth as is.”

“Wha-“

“Best listen to him.” Merrick’s eyes watched the two men uneasily. “You had them as mad as badgers with splinters in their feet last night. The big one wanted to kill you straight away.”

Wurhi’s mouth closed and she eyed the large man. A multitude of cultists and beasts had attacked Paradise, but she had seen many of them dead before her capture. She could almost feel their hunger to avenge their companions.

And she was their only present avenue.

“Keep quiet. They had sacks over our heads for the longest time.” Merrick squinted up at the mountains. “They’ve taken ‘em off, so I reckon we’re almost wherever they’re bringing us.” His eyes narrowed on something. “Look there.”

Wurhi turned, craning her neck. Mountains rose to her back as well. Toward the peaks she spied several thin lines of smoke undulating into the grey sky. Had they not been pointed out, she would not have spied them. Beneath each lay a flickering light - the largest of which burned in the bowels of an ancient ruin.

At this distance, the Zabyallan could discern few details, but each of its stone blocks looked as large as the very wagon around her. In a dead age, it might have served as some temple to a forgotten god or grand tower for the Tigrisian Empire.

“They’re watching us,” the Hawk murmured, his large eyes drifting all through the mountain tops. His words came quietly and slowly - low enough to blend with the churn of horse’s hooves and rumble of wagon wheels. “Four…five fires there. Five on the other side. Bold as bucks in springtime.” He nodded, half to himself. “They’re not worried about the city’s watchtowers: whole valley must be their’s.”

She glanced back to the two young men trailing them. They were distracted now, chatting excitedly to each other. Both seemed thrilled. Her lips tightened sourly. If only she had her blade.

“You’re right. No one’s wearing those shit-looking wolf masks,” Wurhi muttered. “If they’re not bothering, it means they’re home.” Her brow creased. “Hey.” She took a deep breath. What she wished to say now nearly stuck in her gullet. “You tried to kill me, and I wanted you hung by your guts-”

“Thanks.” He scoffed.

“-but if we’re going to make it out alive, I say we drop all that for now. Thief’s Truce until we’re out.”

He snorted. “What’re you, slow? Why do you think I’ve been telling you all this?”

Wurhi’s eyes narrowed at his mocking. Once again, she wished she had her blade.