The werewolf yapped excited circles around Vemulus at the wafting scent of smoldering fats and bubbling soups. Although the prince also hungered for a proper meal, his stomach was more soured by the putrid ingredients of the camp aroma than tantalized by the savory. The army was now so near that the prince's less acute, but more privileged, nose was rankled by body odor, refuse, horse manure, the dew and mildew clinging to tents, and the laundered uniforms dangling from the lines that reeked more of sweat than soap. Still, Vemulus liked to be liked, and despite the lycanthrope's many, many shortcomings, Vemulus never had a pet, and was more or less charmed by his rescuer.
"Smells good, does it, Cheruk?" He forced a smile to his stiff face. His uncle, once the Alsantian Regent until Suvani came of age, had never permitted hobbies, or an interest outside of politics, even instructing the boy prince to entertain the graces of rank only to the point of privilege. While Vemulus hated learning etiquette, courtly manner, ethics, it was more pleasant to deny those things when you knew their virtue.
And while he absorbed a variety of book learning—those tomes allowed by the Regent—he now resented that area of his mind, for having to be periodically swept clean of cobwebs and buggy nonsense. Whenever a learned author whispered to him through the dusty centuries or the dustier layers of his memories, he whisked his mental brush until his intelligence was clean--unless it suited him to plagiarize these wise ones in a speech or in conversation with his toadies, for he cultivated a reputation for cunning and wit.
They emerged into the fringemost camp, a contingent of hirsute, half-naked warriors stooped over their breakfast. Vemulus eyed the battle standards—golden fangs gnashed between red lips, stretched so wide over the gigantic teeth that if such a mouth existed, it could never close over its piercing contents. The ludicrous heraldry was emblazoned not only on flags furling in the breeze, but on their tabards, all of which were heaped on the ground.
Tomorrow, Vemulus would upbraid these slobs for being out of uniform, despite any privilege they assumed for being on the front rank and the first to die. Still mortified at being kidnapped by a raccoon and a gang of children, his first item of business was to retreat to his tent, then order an extra two hours of sleep, not out of any concern for his troops, but to allow himself a full night's rest. Nonetheless, he tucked the sight in his memory—if they liked to bare their backs while chowing down on his army's rations, he would find them backbreaking duties to perform.
"Get up!" screeched Cheruk. "Receive the prince!"
"You're no prince, Cheruk," grumbled one, without looking.
Another turned from his hank of some bloody joint. "Will being a prince change his taste?" These were no human troops. As even the brutes Vemulus recruited didn't eat their meat raw, this must be Cheruk's werewolf contingent.
"Not a prince, the prince! Don't you know your general?"
"That pup is our general?" Cheruk's claws gouged deep across this rude one's forehead, nose and cheeks, so that he sputtered blood, dropped into wolf shape on all fours and howled.
"Cheruk," said Vemulus, "are you the ranking officer of this riffraff?"
"He is." Having shifted to his transitional form, Cheruk loomed over his wounded officer.
"Stand down," said Vemulus. "Both of you. I will expect better discipline from you, Cheruk."
"My prince?"
"You now captain these dogs."
When the werewolves growled at this slur, Vemulus's bold smile deepened its cut, and he turned on the circle of lycanthropes. "As you were." This was a joke, as not only had none risen in respect, but their faces were moreover frozen in dumbstruck snarls. "Cheruk, escort me to my tent."
"Yes, highness. You heard him, you dogs!" Cheruk's grin was so wide it seemed to split his head in two. "Put your shirts on!"
"Cheruk..."
"You heard the prince! Hear me now! One! Two! Three!" Such was Cheruk's ferocity that by the time his bellowing count reached eight, though neither threat nor promise was made about reaching any number, they had formed a squirming, shaggy line not unlike the twitching tail of a dog.
As they marched through the camp, wry grins heckled Vemulus's ramshackle escort, then turned from the prince's wrathful glare, which he whirled to bestow upon his motley troupe of ragged werewolves, who, unmindful of his shamed fury, scratched at fleas under their uniforms.
With weary satisfaction, Vemulus noted that werewolves aside, his troops were in good order, if rippling with a current of hostility that did not seem to stem from him, which he found quite unusual, as like a large boulder splashed into a creek washes away smaller eddies, he was accustomed to others' anger giving way to his privileged rage.
The only troops lacking twisted and dark expressions were a knightly regiment, whose armor was gouged and torn—and for a few unlucky ones, whose flesh was scraped, welted, or bandaged as well—and who, proud and battered, trotted steadily ahead as if they could trample werewolves with only the involuntary flinch of one who trod on manure.
"Have a care!" cried Vemulus. "Do you not recognize your general?"
"Prince Vemulus!" roared a massive knight, whose bulging brawn protruded through porcine flab, and whose titanic, shaggy horse seemed a continuation of these blubbery muscles, so that their combined effect was slabs of flab and sinew oozing from helmet to hooves.
"I am not displeased to see you, Cortero. Where have you been?"
"On your trail, or so I thought."
"What do you mean?"
"We followed your tracks all the way to Teriana. How did you get back here so fast?"
"What do you mean?"
"Were they dwarves and a raccoon that captured you?"
"Um...yes," said Vemulus. "I escaped."
"If I had known that, we might have been spared our wounds. We followed them to the hills outside Teriana, where the Free City's rebel lord himself gave us battle. They outnumbered us greatly, and we fled."
Leaving him, as far as Corterro knew, in the hands of the enemy.
Vemulus might have pursued this humiliating line of inquiry
if he was not weary, hungry for a proper meal, and dying to tear off his armor. "Thank you for your service, Cheruk. Cortero will escort me from here."
"This ragtag litter?" The werewolf's laugh rasped as it squeaked, not unlike a serrated sneeze. Cheruk's high-pitched titter set Vemulus's spine, teeth, and hackles on edge, so that he felt like dropping to all fours himself and scratching until the discomfiting shudder left his flesh. "These riffraff runts? Your best and mightiest should be the right hand of the prince."
Before Vemulus could respond, Cortero drew his sword, and a shadow crossed it--Cheruk, lunging atop the mounted knight, whose sword clattered to the ground as his hands flew to the cruel jaws in his neck and shoulder.
Vemulus stood dumbstruck as the werewolves pounced, some unhorsing knights, and others slashing at the throats and underbellies of their steeds.
"Stop!" No one stopped. "I order you to stop!" His command seemed to have the opposite effect, intensifying the mortal struggles of the combatants. Vemulus was frustrated--while he was eager for first blood to be spilled in this, his first campaign, he didn't want it spilled inside his ranks! Within seconds, the time he might have humorously dismissed this as a mere skirmish had passed, and he was in the midst of a full-fledged battle, reeling over the bloodied carcasses of humans, horses, and werewolves. Not only had he lost control, but he was losing some of his best troops, for these contingents were among his most valuable assets—or at least so had his battlefield advisers stressed more often than he had liked. In that moment, however, he wished them all dead, every one of them, for how dare they murder each other while their prince watched, and moreover, while their prince forbade! In the next moment, he considered executing his advisers, for he dreaded the embarrassment of rationalizing this gory encounter.
Suvani never had this problem, he brooded--despite her diminutive form, her proud screech summoned a black vortex of noise, and everyone, not only everyone in the throne room, but everyone in the castle, and everyone in the adjoining blocks of the court district, would be swept into her malignant funk, stop what they were doing, and stand perfectly still, not that they could hear a pin drop over their deafening heartbeats. It was quite a scream, one Vemulus had no desire ever to hear again, but in that pent-up moment he summoned it, bending nearly double in his outraged bellow of rage. "Stop!"
As they stopped mid-murder, they turned red faces, flecked with anger, prejudice, and blood, to stare in wonder at their general, who rose back to a standing position, glowering contempt having etched his eyes into such a frenzied, bat-like arc that they might have flown, howling, over the combatants.
"Cortero! Cheruk! Report!" Like petulant children, the two captains approached, but not without exchanging glares and a swipe, which Vemulus checked by the daring expedient of standing between them to receive both paw and gauntlet. While kidnapped in his light armor--riding leathers surmounted only by scale breastplate, greaves, and demi-gauntlets--this affored him some protection now, as the gauntlet's dull crack resounded in aching, but unbroken, ribs, and the paw grazed so low along his scaled thigh that Vemulus knew the werewolf had intended a tenderer target.
While Vemulus had training adequate to his station, was what the Regent called "passing competent" with sword, lance, and bow, and was a superb horseman, where he excelled on the battlefield was in flexing his natural attributes, for like the evil beasts swarming his army, Vemulus was principally a physical threat, a terror towering two hands taller than either captain, both of whom he now grasped roughly by their necks to dangle at arm's length. "Are tensions so high that you are happier at your own throats than in contemplating the destruction of our enemies?"
Though neither answered in intelligible speech. Cortero spat as he struggled, and Cheruk snarled and twisted with tremendous strength.
"Is a pound of flesh all that satisfies you?" Vemulus had his answer as he asked the question. Not only did the werewolves sizzle with frustrated ire, but the knights rattled their armor with pent-up fury.
"Will you make friends if we take a butcher's scale to Teriana?" While Vemulus was exhausted, his leer was genuine. It was less a stroke of genius than the stroke that fells a tree, for having been struck by the fall of the idea, Vemulus was now floating on his exhaustion. Before he crashed into unconsciousness, his subordinates must understand. If the Free City harbored the accursed children, then Teriana would either yield those criminals and join them against Ephremia, or be ground out like meal under boots, hooves, and wheels.
"Your highness," began Cortero. "Our orders..."
"...come from me. Teriana provokes us, and moreover, they have not delivered the tribute of warriors we demanded for this endeavor. We will pay them a visit, and if they do not fall in line, they will fall in rows."
"My prince," said Cortero, "I repent of my ill-advised brawl."
"Yours?" barked Cheruk, incensed even in the competition of making peace, "the fault was mine, my friend!"
"Friends, friends! Are we not all friends?" said Vemulus. "You will escort me together." While he was a master of sarcastic sighs, the one that escaped him now was involuntary, and whirled into a staggering wheeze. When he slumped, his captains shouldered the massive burden of their prince.
"Please, my prince," begged Cortero with a todaying squeal, "ride Phebulus."
Not two minutes later--as if Vemulus was relieved of duty by a higher power, having bade the dark deed fate intended--the Prince of Alsantia collapsed on Cortero's giant horse. While he sweated very near death in a hot, week-long fever, Cortero and Cheruk became fast friends. One might say hasty friends, for they marched the Queen's army double time until they overshadowed the Terianan frontier.