Trojan Wolf: Savages

olf: Savages

  Tobias Gavran

  Copyright © 2015 Tobias Gavran

  All rights reserved.

  Trojan Wolf

  Savages

  Diego winced as his commanding officer laid the elk’s lungs on the grass. He’d never been one to hunt, and surely not one to be near the skinning after the facts.

  Sergeant Major Thompson leaned in and plunged her hand inside the carcass. “They were right,” she said as she pulled out a dark red mass from within.

  “Curse me,” his teammate, Daya, exclaimed. “Two bloody hearts.”

  “It’s not unheard of.” Thompson dissected the organ with a swift stroke of her curved blade which, oddly enough, shared a common origin with Daya’s ancestors in Southeast Asia. Thompson, on the other hand, clearly had European origins with her fair hair and green eyes. They had more things in common than any other two members of the team, though.

  His remaining partner, Jack, observed Thompson’s inspection of the body as an eager student would have. He seemed even taller than usual next to her, his great sword only making the matter worse. Diego wondered if the cold bothered Jack less than them, surely his beard and his hair must have kept him warm enough.

  Such aesthetic and thermic details soon became irrelevant when he saw Daya and Thompson exchange a familiar look. They both had spotted something or someone.

  “Two ventricles.” Thompson acted like nothing else was going on, that meant that they were observed. “That’s a gen-mod.”

  “How can you tell?” Daya asked as she seemingly circumvented Jack to look closer, but Diego knew she only wanted to face the threat. He also knew that he was terrible at this. If he tried to spot the spies, using his eyes or his magic, he would alert them.

  As sad as it was for a nobleman such as himself to admit, the best he could do was to wait for orders. Thompson would eventually tell them what to do, and that would probably be the right thing. Until she did, he had to remain as calm and as sociable as ever.

  “Maybe you could use that one,” he told Jack. “The gods know how you need to open up.”

  The young man didn’t say a word, nor did he give him a glance. Thompson did it for him, and Diego shrugged with disdain. Act naturally, he did.

  “The rare occurrences when wildlife has developed two hearts was to implement a tertiary cycle which doesn’t involve an oxygen intake. This is different.” Thompson pointed the tip of her blade to one of the arteries. “That’s not a full aorta, my guess is that it’s a secondary heart.”

  “I don’t know who would do gen-mods on Wildlanders’ territory, but that’s a dumb move from a smart guy,” Diego said, in case their observers were Wildlanders.

  “We’ve seen gen-mods in Washington before,” Jack reminded them. Now, that’s something the spies didn’t need to know. Jack apparently had no idea what was going on, a dumb move from another smart guy.

  Diego was looking for a way to make that statement seem irrelevant when Daya suddenly kicked… But what? He looked down and found a broken arrow in the grass. This woman was amazing.

  “Thank you, cookie,” he said with his most charming smile.

  His magic whirled in his stomach, hot as molten steel and yet untainted by pain. He uncaged it and the energy flew out in search of the world, holding tight onto everything that lived, a thousand arms reaching for the trees. Magic was an odd thing, as diverse and as changing as the physical world. It wasn’t an element, but an intricate system that scientists still unraveled every day, despite the knowledge brought over by the Reminiscence in the 21st century. Diego knew his own magic, but to this day, he still hadn’t unfolded its every secrets.

  Amongst the pines, he counted five hostiles, their magic as wild as that of dogs. It had a slight hint of civilization, but that belonged to the past. Once his magic latched onto one of them with enough strength, he shaped it into a charm, binding the archer.

  Daya grabbed Diego by his armor collar and forced him down. He complied without complaint, the heady feeling brought by his unchained power keeping his mind away from annoyance or worry. He took another archer down seconds before Jack got his enchantment up. It tore the projectiles apart as they flew, protecting them from the assault.

  The spell Jack had crafted had clean edges and a soft texture that Diego’s magic enjoyed. It rubbed against it, sharing power with it almost sensually, like two people keeping close to feel warm. Diego was glad the technician had a very different relation with his very different magic, knowing how awkward it would have been otherwise.

  One of his prisoners started to slip away from the charm, hacking away at its fabric. Diego chuckled and bullied the captive out of his strength, pouring his own ruthless energy into the fight.

  “Stop!”

  Why would he? It would be so easy to strip the archer of his will once his magic would have gone cold.

  “Diego, I told you to stop.”

  He suddenly recognized Thompson’s voice. Immediately, he pulled at his magic, leashed it, chained it, and caged it until it roared furiously, making his heart race and shortening his breath. Diego’s power was always eager to remind him how it could keep him in check too. Of course, the two charms he had cast were still in effect, living on their own borrowed time.

  A Wildlander had emerged from the trees, his head crowned with the skull of an elk, the brightness of his eyes intensified by the soot around them. Bloody savages, all draped in pelts, they lived off the land and they killed for it. Yet, these had aimed low, for the calves. Rarely did the natural hunters of the Everwhite state not go for the kill. Thompson raised her hand, so did the Wildlander, and his companions came out of the woods, even the ones Diego had bound. They’d escaped his charms in a matter of seconds.

  “You’re not an easy prey,” the one with the elk skull complimented.

  “I’m no prey at all,” Thompson retorted.

  The man smirked.

  “What’s funny?” Daya might have been small, but she wiped the smile off his face with a single glance. That only meant that the Wildlander knew how to recognize a good warrior, and not to defy one in open battle. At least they had that going for them, not like the bloody Barbarians who couldn’t avoid a fight to save their own skin.

  “We heard about you. Lance and his people talk about four Imperials with long teeth and an open mind.”

  Thompson nodded slowly. “We know Lance, his territory is south of here.”

  Always the usual dance. The Wildlanders didn’t use the internet, but they had their own network, in a way. They kept in touch with each other as they exchanged members, for they didn’t have any notion of family, nation, or domain. Every Wildlander had what every Wildlander took. They were renowned for not knowing thievery or murder amongst their people, but these savages killed and pillaged mercilessly from foreigners.

  Their only solace was that they could bear living in a land the Emperor wouldn’t waste the manpower conquering, although he refused to call them the Wildlands. There were no Wildlands in the Empire, only Imperial lands… Being civilized didn’t mean you couldn’t be ridiculous, but that’s a statement no one could make about their ruler, or at least not without consequences.

  Once Thompson had listed enough Wildlanders, dead or alive, the man wearing the elk skull deigned to introduce himself. “Frank” and his companions led the group into the forest. They left the carcass behind, deeming it inedible. Soon, the nine of them reached their camp. Leather tents and wooden toys, there was the height of their glory, Diego thought.

  While the hunters had a reputation for being discrete, the settlements were always noisy. Diego had once heard Daya ask about this. “They know they can’t hide their whole population from the wilderness. Instead they make sure that th
e animals know where they are, so that they may not wander into their midst only to panic when faced with humans,” Thompson had explained, with other words, surely. She’d lived with the Wildlanders before.

  They sat near a fire, now wasn’t that picturesque? Every bit of discussion had to take place near burning branches with these people. Men and women of all ages gathered around them, curious and interested. Frank didn’t take his elk skull off. His appearance slowly shifted from threatening to ridiculous.

  “You said that you’ve seen gen-mods in Washington before,” Frank pointed at Jack. “Where?”

  The technician looked at his superior. Thompson nodded. “Olympia,” Jack replied. “A city, north of here.”

  Chatter ensued, but Frank didn’t do a thing to shut up his peers. He only spoke louder, “Close enough for the quarry to migrate?”

  “No,” Thompson took back the lead. “Not unless they were led here, but we can’t make a connection. The changes were different. What we saw in the city was warfare, what we saw here was…” She hesitated, something she rarely did. “It’s almost veterinary.”

  “You don’t mutilate an animal to save it,” Frank spat. His people vigorously agreed. These savages could kill and maim humans and wolves for sport, but the thought of messing with the genetic makeup of a single creature enraged them.

  “What we call gen-mod involves a wider range of procedures than what you might have heard of,” Thompson