Squad nine, that’s what our squad was named. Nine.

We were supposed to be an example to the other recruits, the best recruits at each position combining to form an all-star squad. We should have a had more impressive name like the alpha squad, or elite squad, but no. we were called squad nine, because we came 9th in the foot race as a combined squad.

We could have come first, both Isiah and I were faster than everyone else. We could have literally carried the rest of the squad on our backs and come first, but that would have meant exposing our supernatural abilities; probably not the best idea. So Isiah and I ambled our way to 3rd and 4th talking about the new squads and about David’s former recruits, who had sort of been the unintentional trigger of these changes.

Isiah brought up the point that David had been a traitor and these were his recruits, there was a possibility that they too were traitors. “It’s probably the reason they shuffled the squads, they separated them so that they could observe them individually and see if any of them are working together. That kind of collusion would have been impossible to notice if they were on the same team” I said to Isiah.

We were talking out in the open, but we were being careful. We both had supernatural hearing so we could talk quietly and still be able to hear each other.

“They probably already know who it is.” He said back

“Um, should we be helping your brother finish the race?” I asked changing the conversation. Joey was probably one of the slowest runners in the entire platoon. He was also one of the largest, being almost twice as wide as the average recruit (and twice as strong, the idiot was a muscle head).

“No, let him finish on his own.” Isiah said with very little feeling

“Your brother seems to only understand brute force and you are much stronger than him, why didn’t you bring him to heel?” I asked with genuine curiosity.

“I am 5 years older than him by 5 years, but he was stronger than me by the time he was 8, he was a bully back then too… I became his favourite target; so I started spending more and more time in the woods just to avoid him. I guess it worked out, I became a good woodsman. By the time I was turned into a were the dynamic had already been well established. Plus those first few years I thought I was a monster, that I would turn feral and kill everyone I knew. It made me very cautious around people. There were times I nearly killed him…”

We finished the race in silence. Merlin won the race, exhausted and red faced having sprinted for the last half mile. Isiah finished 3rd, I came in 4th, walking across the line not even the least bit tired. Frank finished a respectable 8th. Josiah finished 40th and collapsed on the ground huffing and puffing like a great beast of burden. Our points were tallied, and we had come in 9th place in total points so we were squad 9.

A fucking foot race, we were going to go face an army led by a magical witch with possible undead soldiers, and things were being decided by a foot race.

We carried out training in Leicester for another 3 months, till the start of July, the days got longer and so did the training. We ran for longer, practiced for longer; we even started sparring with each other using blunted weapons.

I was the best in the squad with the sword, followed by Merlin, then Isiah who was almost as good as Merlin, then Frank and Josiah.

Isiah was the best in the squad with the bow. He was a dead shot from a hundred and fifty yards, which was beyond impressive considering the quality of bows at the time. I was the second best, improving at a rapid rate due to my supernatural eyesight and John’s imprinted memories. I was followed by Frank; he was surprisingly accurate up to about 80 yards but had trouble at greater distances. Josiah was terrible at archery, even after almost 5 months of training he could only manage to hit the outer rings of the target at anything further than 70 yards. Surprisingly Merlin was the worst of the group, only hitting the outer edges at anything further than 50 yards and not even managing to hit the target at anything further than 75 yards. Well except for that one time he managed to hit the centre from 150.

Frank proved he was indeed better than me with the spear, if only narrowly. He could beat me 3 out of 5 times, of course I was deliberately restricting myself to about the strength and speed I had before I started practising the Idiotic Taoist Immortal Cultivation Manual (John’s name not mine, it was his technique). Merlin, Isiah and Josiah were close to equals. Josiah favoured power, trying to overwhelm his opponent with every strike. Merlin and Isiah favoured the speed approach.

Josiah was the best with the shield. He was given a big rectangular shield, compared to our smaller round shields. He used his massive power to shield rush people, using his body like a battering ram. Demanding attention as someone behind him used the distraction to sneak in and attack.

In any other squad Merlin would have been the unquestioned best swordsman. He was better than most of the much more experienced Privates and almost as good as the average Corporal. Unfortunately for him I was untouchable; my progress with the sword even with me restricting my strength and speed was unbelievable. I was now able to consistently eek out victories against the whole squad, even in mixed combat. Actually that’s not true. In 4 vs 1 mixed combat I would win against the rest if, and only if, Isiah was not using his bow. His range advantage was too big.

Over the four months we got to know each other, we would become a squad so we had to be able to work as a team and function together for our own survival. We learnt about each other, for instance we learnt that Frank could sing and play the lute. He was pretty good, better than most of the travelling minstrels that played in the local taverns.

Frank was a good guy, tall, standing at 5’8”, powerfully built. He was loyal to a fault. He was a man who believed in honour above all else. He took to military life like a fish to water. Loyalty and honour are good traits in a military man. Frank was older than us at 28, he already had a family. He had a wife, two 8 year old kids (twin daughters) and a little sister-in-law who lived with them. Frank was a local man, so he was able to visit the family a lot. This was a good thing for the rest of us as his wife was an excellent cook. She made sure to pack some things for us, every time Frank visited.

Actually on the point of food, 6th century food sucked. There were so many things modern me took for granted that simply weren’t available. Like pepper, seriously they didn’t have simple seasoning. There were no tomatoes, no chillies, no citrus fruits, they didn’t even have potatoes. Meat was rare, and usually pork. The bread was made of barley and rye, it was dense and bitter, I am sure hipsters would love it. The only fruits available weren’t really eaten. The people had an unreasonable distrust in uncooked fruits. Even when they had the ingredients available like ginger and coriander, they were outrageously expensive and used almost exclusively in medicines. The most expensive of these spices was cinnamon; the medieval people were swindled into believing it was harvested by stealing from a giant eagles nest. These nests were located on cliff faces found in a remote part of Arabia. I am not joking. Cinnamon by weight was over 20 times more expensive than silver.

Frank’s wife was an excellent cook, sending along bowls of hearty pottage, fruit pies, cheeses, cooked black pudding along for us to eat. All this food wasn’t completely free. We were roped into helping out with the household, repairing the roof, re-tiling the kitchen with slate and various other little jobs. There was also a tacit agreement that we were to keep her husband safe during the war.

It was because one of these odd repair jobs that Isiah and I had our first fight which resulted in us destroying a sizeable portion of the nearby woods. Frank had a younger sister-in-law living with his family, she was 22 and beautiful. She was widowed, her husband was a trader and he had been killed by bandits on his way back from trading goods in the neighbouring countryside. She had moved in with her sister and Frank after the death of her husband.

We met her during one Sunday when we were repairing their roof, which had been damaged by a recent thunderstorm. She was beautiful, intelligent and funny. Isiah fell for her, HARD. He started to visit her multiple times a week, first as friends and then more. It was obvious he had fallen in love, equally obvious so had she. He knew he couldn’t fall in love with a human, I reminded him as much several times but since when does a cat listen to anything it’s told? A cat follows its instincts above all and this cat was in love.

I heard Isiah psyching himself up, he was about to go ask Frank, for permission to marry his sister-in-law. I had to put a stop to it, for his sake. I grabbed him by the back of then neck, using my supernatural strength to pinch down on a nerve cluster. This was a weak point of were-cats; he went limp unable to control his limbs. I drag/carried him for 30 minutes until we were well into the forest, far away from any humans who could hear us.

“What are you doing?!” he asked me furiously when I let go of him

“I should be asking you the same question. You were about to ask Frank for permission to marry Amelia.” I said back just as furiously.

“I love her!” he snapped back

“You are a were-kin, you can’t marry her! She would find out your secret and that would put us both in danger.” I said.

“She loves me, she would never tell anyone” he said but he didn’t sound certain.

“Even if that were true, and she didn’t run away the first time you transform into an 8foot tall Man-cat with huge claws. You could never be with her. Your curse is passed through bodily fluids, you could never even kiss her.” I said “Even if she agreed to that, you will outlive her. You will live for another 2000 years, could you bear to watch her grow old and die?” I said pleadingly. He looked away guiltily. Guiltily. Not in pain, but in guilt.

“You idiot! You were going to try and turn her! You selfish cunt! How could you even think to attempt that? You say you love her! How could you even think about turning her?! Her chances of survival would only be 10%. You would rather risk a NINETY PERCENT chance of KILLING her, than giving up the chance to be with her.” I was FURIOUS; I could feel my rage building.

Isiah looked down at the ground sad and ashamed. “You think I don’t know that? I love her and I want to be with her, I can’t bear the thought of her dying. I was going to wait till she was at least 50 before I turned her.”

“She has a 90% chance of dying when she is healthy and young, how would she survive the curse when she is older and frail? Even if she agreed to all of that how would she explain her husband never aging? How would you live together?” I asked, I paused took a deep breath and said “It can never happen.” I patted him on the shoulder consolingly.

He broke down crying; heartbroken, knowing that I was right. Knowing he would have to also break Amelia’s heart, despite loving her deeply. He despaired, and then he got angry. His anger turned toward me, blaming me for waking him from his dreams of marital bliss. He needed to vent, his inner cat needed to vent.

His pupil turned into vertical slits, glowing with an unnatural yellow colour. He slowly took off his tunic, and his trousers not wanting to destroy them during the change. He started changing, it was disgusting. I heard his bones break and reform into stronger much more dense and bigger bones, his pelvis broke as the spine grew longer, the annealed bones in his coccyx separated out and formed into his tail. His face grew wider the nose shrinking into his face as it became rounder, his skull distorted as the ears relocated to the top of the head. His human ears, not his cat ears. He was bleeding from all the places where the skin was stretched too far and tore. His feet grew into paws, with three inch long claws protruding out of them. His hands grew longer; his nails fell out, as the bones literally tore through the skin. I could see that the finger tips were hollow.

His bones were broken, his skin was shredded, and his muscles were torn. Then they started to heal as quickly as they were torn. His skin grew back pale and baggy, for an instant he looked like one of those hairless Egyptian cats. The next instant, all of his hair sprouted. Blacker than the darkest of nights, except for a V-neck like ring of blonde hair. His hollow bones hissed as sharp karambit like claws shot out of his hollow fingers.

He roared into the night sky sounding like a tiger’s roar. It was deep raspy, full of a heart shaking bass and remarkably similar to race car exhausts. I don’t know why that thought popped into my head at that time, with a terrifying 8ft tall monster roaring out its challenge to me, but there I was, thinking of whether it was monster truck or crazy a Wankel engine.

I was remarkably calm as I reached into the void to take out a sword; in the end I decided one sword just wasn’t enough sword. I took out a Chinese broadsword, and Chinese war sword. The war sword, was a heavy impractical piece of shit, the single edged blade was 4 inches wide and barely two feet long, the handle was impractical and ridiculously long at nearly the same length as the blade, with a large ring on the end. It was designed as a chopping weapon to be used two handed. I was using it one handed, compensating for the lack of two hands with my supernatural strength. The blade was designed for power, and that was exactly what I needed.

I had the war sword in a reverse grip, with the blade edge facing up. I gripped the handle at the base, close as I could to the blade itself. I gripped the broadsword in a regular grip in my right hand. I turned 45 degrees away from Isiah, my left side facing forward elbow tucked in an almost boxing stance, using the war sword as a blocking weapon rather than a chopping weapon.

Isiah roared. I twirled the broadsword in my right hand. He charged at me supernaturally quick, slashing horizontally with his claws trying to decapitate me, I dodged out of the way by bending my body down and to the right. Then I got my first lesson in supernatural combat: Don’t forget to account for the sonic boom. His arms were moving fast enough to generate a sonic boom. The shockwave hit me, throwing off my counter attack. Then I felt a blunt pain in my abdomen, as I saw the ground shift underneath me. Then I felt a larger blunt pain in my back as I hit a tree, then another similar but lighter thump on my back. I looked up and saw that I hadn’t just hit the tree, I had gone through the tree, and hit another tree behind the first.

Isiah had kneed me through a tree.

I got up, as the tree my body had gone through toppled over. “You get three.” I said to Isiah “Then I start fighting back.”

He roared back defiantly, and charged at me. He used the same swing again, this time I let the swing go past me and before the shockwave hit, I punched his elbow with my left hand. I was trying to dance away when I learnt my second lesson of supernatural combat: Don’t forget to account for the tail. I felt something wrap around my leg tripping me, then I felt another blunt impact, this time on my thorax. I felt 3 of my ribs break from the impact and I went through another tree.

I coughed out a mouthful of blood. Some of the blood vessels in my lungs had ruptured, resulting in a little blood filling my lungs. “That’s two, only one left” I said, getting up, I revolved my core faster, using the void energy to heal my ribs.

I don’t know why I was being so confident. I was losing.

His third attack was different, he hunched down on all fours. His tail was raised up in the air. He jumped. Using those powerful back legs to propel himself forwards. The ground underneath him exploded and there was a sonic boom which caused the trees nearby to fall. He jumped high above me into the trees, using his claws to climb up even further. He cut a fairly straight branch into a 5 foot long javelin. He reared his right arm back and threw the spear. It was like a rocket, easily reaching past the sound barrier many times over. I swung my broadsword at it, just like he expected.

The spear throw was a distraction; the spear couldn’t take the stresses involved and burst apart into a million splinters. Isiah was right behind the spear, having launched himself forward in the microsecond after throwing the spear. He fell for my trap.

I turned my slashing swing into a thrust, spearing him through the right shoulder. He roared and slashed at the broadsword, his claws slicing through steel. I swung the war sword at his knees, using the blunt back edge to break his knee. Truth be told the front edge was also blunt, a war sword cleaves it doesn’t slice.

He screamed in pain as he collapsed forward. I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, causing him to go limp below the neck. Kittens have that nerve point so the mother can carry them without hurting them. In terms of were-cat age Isiah was only five years old and could live up to 2000, he was barely more than a new-born. So he still had that flexor reflex.

“Do you yield?” I said looking him in the eyes.

He looked at me angrily for a few moments then nodded.

I let go of him and he started to transform back into a human, this process was much less disgusting. Well he was naked. So I will revise that to, slightly less disgusting. He went over to where he had stowed away his clothes and started putting them on, while I surveyed the damage we had caused. There were fallen trees everywhere. Two from me crashing through, the trees felled due to the sonic boom caused by Isiah jumping, there was even one that had a perfect diagonal cut through it. This one was caused by the wind pressure from my fake slash.

Isiah came back fully dressed. “you said I had three chances” he said

“I lied” I said shrugging

“I need a drink.” he said sitting down on a recently felled tree.

I reached into the void and filled up the water skin with an entire bottle of Talisker 10, I felt the salty smokiness was the appropriate flavour for what had happened. I also put the war sword back.

“Where did you get those swords?” He asked

“You aren’t the only one with a master who has passed on and left you their inheritance.” I said referring to John. Ailsa his were-cat mother (not his actual mother, obviously), had left him a mysterious key, that he wore on his neck at all times. She’d told him it unlocked the greatest treasure in all of were-kin existence. She’d said he would find it when he was strong enough and that the key would guide him. John actually left me with stuff, so John won the “who is the better dead master competition”.

We sat there all evening drinking in silence. By the time the water skin was empty we were friends again. Well at least until Isiah punched me in the face. “That’s three.” he said