In a heartbeat, the argument was forgotten, and we fell into the familiar defence strategy. Now, with children, especially rogue children, you can never tell when they're being brutally murdered or when its just Tuesday. Still, it wasn't a risk we wanted to take. Without another word spoken, myself and Nate took of sprinting through the forest towards the source of the scream, while Gwenna held back to strip out of her clothes and shift into her wolf form, just in case. As we ran, I felt Nate on the fringes of my mind, building up my defences to make sure I wouldn't be vulnerable to a mental attack. In the meantime, I yanked on my link with da until I knew I had his attention, just in case we needed reinforcements.
Gwenna caught up to us with ease, as when you pit four legs against two the wolf will always win. She was a big, timberland wolf with a patchy brown coat and golden eyes, slightly bigger than I was in my fur. The three of us burst into the clearing, Gwenna showing her deadly fangs, and me and Nate both holding our switchblades tightly.
There was nothing wrong. Well, actually, there was a lot wrong with the current situation, but they weren't being attacked or anything. Instead, the dozen children were currently trying to gorge scramble. Which would be fine, encouraged even, as it builds team work and physical endurance, but they were going to get themselves killed.
We called this place the Reaper's fall, because even in the height of summer the water roared down the rocky hill, the current so fast you couldn't even bathe in the calmer areas. Some of the kids currently trying to best the current and climb up the hill weren't even ten yet, having to cling to the older ones to keep their feet under them. Should any of them leave go, they would be swept away by the water and dashed against the rocks, and even for a wolf pup that would probably kill them.
And you know what the worst part is? This was one of their tamer adventures. Back when the three of us had been young enough to run with them, we'd pulled enough death defying stunts to convince me that we were out of luck. Honestly, how any rogue manages to have a pup and get them into adulthood shocked me.
I swear, this is why rogues have a life expectancy of thirty. It's not cos of the packs, its cos the puppies are stupid and keep skewing the averages. Gwenna sighed through the link, and I am proud to say I understand most of what she said. She laid down and put her head on her paws, a clear sign she was going to leave this to us. Well, great. In my peripheral, I saw Nathan backing away, no doubt wanting to run away and leave this to me. I sent a snarl from my wolf rolling down the link, bringing him back to heel and warning him not to abandon me.
"Alright, kiddoes, time to come down." I yelled, drawing their attention to me for apparently the first time. Jesus, we needed to play more situational awareness games. Maybe I'd organise a game for tonight, if I could get them all down before one of them broke their neck.
"Great idea. Give them a warning so they can run, why don't you?" Nathan muttered, Gwenna huffing in agreement at my feet.
"Even if we had ambushed them, we couldn't pin down four kids at once, never mind drag them back to camp. If either of you chucklefucks want to give me a better idea, I'm listening." I snapped. Unsurprisingly, the kids hadn't listened, if anything redoubling their efforts to reach the top. With a flick of the link, I sent Gwenna to go shift, find clothes, and wait at the top of the falls just in case any of them actually made it.
"Want me to go after them?" Nate offered, but I shook my head.
"Nah. Let's just wait at the bottom for them to fall." I was known for being ruthless, but even that seemed to shock my brother.
"Pretty sure that's not what da meant when he told you to take care of them, Natalia!"
"Jesus, I don't want to let them die. I mean that we wait and catch em when they fall. If we scramble up after them it won't do any good." I answered, kicking off my boots and preparing to wade into the shallows. Nathan clearly wasn't happy with my plan, but we were all hungover and none of us had any better ideas.
Five minutes later, the first one fell. It was one of the younger boys, who had been a packling before we, um, rescued him? Yeah. We rescued him from a life of hypocrisy and sexism. We definitely didn't just kidnap a kid who was wandering near the pack border when we retreated from a raid. Though, in the rogue who snatched him defence, what sort of parent lets their puppy wander off when the territory is full of nasty, violent rogues?
The dark haired boy plummeted with a muffled cry (hadn't yet learned that rogues revel in near death experiences, probably), straight into Nathan's arms. My brother fell to his knees under the sudden weight, grunting as the child began to squirm and try to escape his grasp. I stepped in, grabbing the boy under his armpits and hauling him away from Nate. I chucked him over my shoulder and waded out of the shallows, sitting him on the bank with a growl from my wolf to scare his into obedience. That wouldn't work for all of them; a fair few had dominant wolves of their own, and the puppies that had been born into the rogue life were gobby little shites.
Another one fell, courtesy of one of the older children slipping and deciding to save their own skin instead of hold on to the younger kid. The girl fell as well, being promptly caught by my brother and collared by me, as the rest of the pack of children managed to scramble to the top of the gorge. They looked back down and began to cheer, marking this as a victory against us as Nathan took the children from me as I started to climb up the rocks besides the falls. As they booed at me, Gwenna silently emerged from the trees behind them, still in her fur as she stalked them with her ears slicked back. When I started to get a little too close for comfort, some of them shifted on the spot, wheeling around only to be pounced on and pinned. Nathan was making his way around to help with the two kids he had, and when I reached the top as well, they realised that the gig was up.
That's the thing about rogues. We were savage fighters, and better at it than most packlings, but we were also cowards. As soon as the odds stopped being stacked in our favour, we were likely to run away and try to save our own pelts, and that bled into our puppies' outlooks too.
"Right, you horrible lot, about turn and back to camp." I ordered, letting my wolf lean on their minds to back up my words. They went grumbling, and they made the odd dash for it just so they could say that they did, but we still managed to corral them back to camp. I could see da up on the hill, in the entrance to the ruined room he was using as a HQ, and he nodded once before he disappeared into the darkness. Now that we'd gotten them back to camp, our part was done, so we turned the kids loose to wreak havoc on everyone else. Wasn't our problem anymore. Or at least it wouldn't be, until they inevitably decided that they needed to get revenge on us for spoiling their fun and did something stupid like fill our sleeping bags with maggots. Of course, I only thought they'd do that because that was exactly the kind of thing me, Nate and Gwenna had done when we were kids. I felt da tug at the mind link and subtly redirected us so we were heading towards him.
"So who's gonna be your second?" Nathan asked as soon as they were out of earshot, making me groan and throw my head back. Of course they were gonna bring that up again.
"Both of you! Ok? Both of you will be my second." I yelled back, too worried about who my da would expect me to lead than this petty power squabbles between my two best friends. Last time he had us helm a raiding team... it hadn't gone well. Truth be told, we had never even made it to a raid. The older raiders, with way more experience than us, had challenged us, beaten us, and chased us away with our tails tucked between our legs. It had been humiliating and it had set us back a lot in the grand hierarchy. The only saving grace is that da hadn't stepped in and bailed us out; that would have destroyed any credibility we had left. Now, looking at that same challenge, I was nervous. Not that I'd let it show- that was like suicide for a dominant wolf. Meanwhile, Nate and Gwenna were looking between themselves, clearly not happy with my answer.
"Nat, that's not how this works. You can't have two seconds." Gwenna pointed out, and Nathan seemed to agree. I snorted.
"Yeah, says who? The packs? Since when do we care what they say about their stupid rules?" I pointed out, slinging my arms around both their shoulders. Nathan sighed, and Gwenna reluctantly responded.
"Its a rule that even us rogues have observed for, like, forever." She said, and I had to admit that it was true. Even our da, who was infamous for breaking traditions, only had one second.
"Yeah, well, fuck the rules. Lets both be the second, and if anyone has a problem with it they can fight us." Nathan said, clearly on board, which had taken him long enough. Gwenna hummed non committedly, so I elbowed her in the ribs.
"Oh, fine. Only because I'll get to be your second though, I still think the reasoning is bullshit though." She argued, squirming away as we approached da's HQ.
"That's the spirit! I don't know what you were talking about, but I heard the bit about fucking the rules and I'm on board." Da yelled from where he was leant in the doorway, gesturing us in with a massive grin. He mussed up my hair as I walked past and I growled playfully at him only to be clipped round the ear.
"Watch it, puppy. Now then, good job on stopping the kids killing themselves, always a good way to start the day." He commented, sitting on his desk and grinning at us. Since this morning he'd clearly gotten into a brawl, his right eye bruised and swelling and dried blood around his nostrils. That wasn't unusual. What was unusual was that he wanted to speak with me for the second time in one day.
"I think I preferred it when we were on the other side of that arrangement." Nathan muttered wistfully, projecting through the link a small montage of the stupid shit we did when we were kids. Well, some of them were only from like, a year ago, but we won't talk about that.
"Of course you did. But if you want to do something suicidal, I have just the job for you."
"What about the raiding team?" Gwenna asked, while me and Nate were just excited at the prospect of doing something dumb. It had been at least twelve hours, and we were getting too close to breaking our record.
"I've decided to change that up, actually. You kids need to make it on your own, so I want you to take over the old raiding team you got your asses kicked off of." At that, all our grins disappeared, but before we could argue, he held up a hand and continued. "However, you can worry about that after your eighteen. For now, I want the three of you to plan a raid to the Nightstalker pack."
"Y'know, da, correct me if I'm wrong, but I could swear that for years you've been telling us to stay away."
"Y'know, Nat, correct me if I'm wrong, but you clearly didn't listen to me and don't really have the high road here." He warned me, letting his wolf show through his eyes. I had to break eye contact, just to stop us from getting into a pissing match that I would inevitably loose.
"Right, puppies, you done with the stupid questions? Can I continue telling you what to do?" He asked, only for Gwenna to break in.
"Don't think this is stupid, but you probably will, but fuck it. Why do you want just the three of us to raid Nightstalker?" She asked, prompting a purely evil grin from the leader of the rogues.
"Because I'm going to kidnap and ransom back the new alpha puppy."