Nathan swung his crossbow around when something barked not far away. He tried to pierce the dense fir trees, but couldn’t see any movement.

“Damn it,” he muttered.

A small, shaking hand tugged his shirt’s sleeve. Nathan was so surprised he actually lowered the weapon.

Oli flinched away from him at once.

“Do you think it’s someone from the camp?” Nathan asked, though the kid hadn’t spoken a single word since Nathan had taken out the bolt he had shot him with. The child was grey in the face and shaking with both cold and pain. Nathan had given him his coat so he wouldn’t be completely naked, but it didn’t help much.

Unfortunately, there had been no way for Oli to walk in his wolf-shape, not with the injury to his shoulder. Not that they had walked far, anyway. Oli had begged until Nathan had taken the risk of pulling out the silver dowel. He had done his best, but he wasn’t a surgeon, and he was afraid he had only made things worse.

When he looked at him, Oli nodded slowly.

Nathan sighed, but drove the silver tip of his spear into the ground, then took the bolts out of the action of the crossbow. Finally, he lifted the weapon high.

It seemed to work. He heard a rustle, and then two werewolves stepped into view. Morgulon and Ragna. Nathan could have cried at the sight.

The cavalry was here.

It only hurt for a second that he used to be the guy people called for help with monsters, not the one who needed rescue.

“Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” he sighed when the two she-wolves stopped a few yards away. “Care to give the kid a ride?”

He could really use one, too. His bad leg was not liking this hike. Or this weather. It felt frozen, painfully so, down from the knee to where the healer had had to cut off his foot, and he was sore all over.

Morgulon took a small step forward, sniffing the air and staring at Oli vigilantly, while Ragna angled her body a little. Nathan recognized the movement at once. He had guarded David’s back a thousand times like that. But why was Morgulon looking at Oli like that?

Both she-wolves were bleeding.

Nathan blinked when the realization set in. It wasn’t just a little blood, either, but enough to soak through their thick winter coats, turn them matted. Something really had done a number on them. It had to have been the Rot, right? Since they hadn’t tried to heal the wounds by transforming? Or were the wounds already closed and only the blood remained? It was impossible to tell with all that fur.

“Uh, are you ladies okay?” Nathan asked.

Morgulon moved forwards slowly, her tail raised high like a regular wolf asserting dominance. Ragna moved with her smoothly, still guarding her back.

Nathan had no idea what was going on, but his crossbow was currently useless and he didn’t want to risk a fight at spear range. Not against the two elders who didn’t seem too bothered by whatever injuries they might have. So he backed off before Morgulon could get close enough to jump him.

Neither Morgulon nor Ragna paid him any attention. They were fully focused on Oli, and not in the “oh, the poor kid” manner Nathan had been expecting. They seemed to be really wary of the boy.

Morgulon stopped within arm’s length of Oli and barked once, a sound that echoed between the trees and sent a bunch of birds flying in fright. Oli just looked confused. Hurt. Scared.

Ragna left her place at Morgulon’s back and circled around Oli. Finally, Morgulon closed the distance and with a rough tongue washed over Oli’s face. Not in a gentle way.

When the boy barely reacted, Ragna finally lowered her guard and stepped forward to join Morgulon who seemed determined to wash every inch of Oli’s head and face, down to his neck. They even pushed Nathan’s jacket aside to clean the kid’s upper back and chest, also his arms and feet – even under his dirty feet. Sometimes they spit something out.

Only when there wasn’t a speck of mud left on the boy did they stop, sniffing the air again and relaxing a little. Morgulon “wuffed,” softly at Nathan, while Ragna lowered herself to the ground.

“Right,” Nathan said. “Right.”

Oli shied away from him again, but let himself be helped onto Ragna’s back when Morgulon poked him with her wet nose. Once Oli sat securely, Morgulon let Nathan climb onto her own back, and they were off.

It only took about half an hour for the two she-wolves to carry them to the clear-felled area around the camp. Nathan shuddered at the view. The outer walls were pretty much gone, torn down, and he could see smoke rising from at least one of the barracks. The telegraph mast had been snapped like a twig. There were, however, a lot of people milling about outside, busy with clean-up.

“Guess you got there just in time, huh?” Nathan asked Morgulon.

The navvies came running, shouting and cheering excitedly when they saw Oli, sitting on Ragna’s back under his own power. They parted for Morgulon and Ragna, with more men quickly closing the gap. Hands reached for Oli to lift him gently down from Ragna’s back, but Morgulon kept walking as more people pushed in to see how the boy was doing.

Nathan craned his neck until he spotted Andrew. And there – with that huge pack of unfamiliar werewolves – was that Greg? How?

Just as Morgulon stopped and Nathan wanted to jump to the ground and greet his brothers, a murmur went around the navvies. “Silver – shot with silver – but he’s alive!” and one of the new werewolves growled in alarm. Another one screamed, which was made worse by the fact that they were still in their wolf shape.

Right. New werewolves just as they brought in a young boy shot with silver.

The strange pack had been mostly resting on the ground, but now they shot to their feet, hackles raised, growling, barking, and looking around wild-eyed. Several of them surrounded Morgulon, clearly looking for some kind of reassurance from her.

Nathan grabbed his spear tighter, wishing that he had taken his chance earlier to get to the ground. There was no way he would get down now if she didn’t make him. He craned his head. Andrew and Lane had both backed up together with most of the navvies, which was probably wise, and Greg was talking very quickly to a smaller, black werewolf.

Morgulon calmly stood in the middle of the panicked pack. She seemed to be talking to them but made no attempt to get Nathan off her back.

The gong rang out that called the navvies together for their meals. It startled the werewolves so much that they froze in place so that Nathan could hear Greg’s hurried explanation of the signal. Eyal must have heard it, too, because he raised his voice to announce: “You are all welcome to join us for dinner!”

Maybe it was that gesture that did it: The wolves calmed down a bit, enough so that they could watch warily as Eyal’s men dragged tables and seats out into the open, despite the cold weather. Nathan took this chance to slide down from Morgulon’s back. His tired legs almost gave out underneath him and he had to grip his spear with both hands. Blinding pain shot up his leg.

Andrew and Greg were at his side by the time his vision cleared. Nathan ripped the bloody silver helmet off his head and pressed it into Andrew’s outstretched arms before he accepted Greg’s help over to one of the benches. It had a table, too. Andrew sat down across from him, but Greg remained standing, nervously stepping from one foot onto the other. Nathan wondered if that was because of all the silver amulets he still had on him.

“What the hell happened here?” Nathan asked, once he was settled down and had caught his breath enough to look around. The outer wall wasn’t the only wall full of holes.

“Hell no,” Greg snapped. “Absolutely not. You go first! What happened to Oli?”

Nathan stared at Greg. That – didn’t sound like his little brother at all?

“No, seriously. Everyone is demanding to get that answer. I’ve got a dozen elders putting pressure on me to find out! Including Pierre and the Morgulon!”

“Pierre. As in, that really old dude from Ragna’s pack you met on your first visit in the mountains?”

He had barely finished the sentence when he noticed the expression on Greg’s face.

“Let me guess. He’s standing right behind me.”

“Can you please just say what happened,” Greg said, his voice strangely toneless and terse at the same time.

Nathan nodded slowly. “Ragna told us in the middle of the night that a Rot-queen was on the move towards Calder’s camp. So she went that way to help. A little while later, we realized that Oli had left the camp as well and not come back. We reasoned that a second Rot-queen would be huge trouble –“

“Third Rot-queen,” Greg corrected.

“Yes, well, we didn’t know there were two of them. If Ragna knew, she never mentioned it. So Eyal and Digger gave me all the magic protection their crews had been able to afford and sent me to bring him back.”

“Alive?” Greg asked, still in that same weird tone.

Probably a question of Pierre’s, then.

Nathan glanced over his shoulder at the old werewolf, who was staring intently at him. “If at all possible, yes.”

“Yet you shot him.”

“Yes. By the time I got there, the Rot-queen had grabbed him. Literally. Two trees had caged him in, kept him completely pinned, and the queen tried to dunk his face in this weird, bubbling water it was standing in. Oli was struggling, but it was just a matter of time until he would have had to drink whatever the queen was trying to feed him. So I took a risk and shot him in the shoulder. I did not mean to kill him. I could have. Easily. He couldn’t move and I don’t miss a target from twenty feet away, you know that, Greg. But I hope he’ll be all right.”

“And then the queen let you go?” Andrew asked. “Just like that?”

Nathan shook his head. “The queen – it can – read minds? Memories, I guess? It didn’t kill me right away, instead it – looked at me. But not just at my face, but at every single memory I have of shooting a werewolf. All the way back to when I was a kid and learned to shoot. I think it assumed I had indeed killed Oli, or that I was going to finish the job, and apparently, it didn’t mind? So it left me to it. Just walked away.”

“Probably thought it was being clever,” Greg said, his eyes locked on Pierre’s face. “That’s Rot-queens for you. They don’t care if they kill or corrupt us.”

“It told me where I could find Ragna, too,” Nathan said. “Pretty sure it wanted me to go after her. It even let me know that there was a second Rot-queen while it did.”

Pierre nodded, while Greg repeated: “That fits what I have learned of Rot-queens. Though I’ve never heard of them using humans to do their dirty work.”

With that, the elder padded off stiffly. Greg hurried after him, and half a dozen wolves followed them towards the Inn.