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The Huntsman and His Wolves

Stories of the Huntsman and his Wolves were traded over the fires in the camps at the edges of Roman territory. Those whispers twisted with each telling, changed in the inflections and origin of its speaker. The Roman Empire spanned continents and pulled its soldiers from every territory, but no matter the language of those who shared the story, every tribe had a word for 'wolf.'

Some said they were outlaws who had been brought under the heel of the Emperor and had agreed to follow his orders in exchange for the sparing of their lives. Some said they were soldiers who had moved too smoothly through battle and been hand chosen by their commander to join his elite unit. Still others claimed they were shapeshifters who changed shape with the moon and so only struck enemy forces on those three nights of every month that the moon was at its fullest. There were whispers that each Wolf stood towering tall and lean under daylight, and became monstrous creatures under the fall of night. Most shocking of all, there were even whispers that there were women among their number who fought alongside the men as equals.

All agreed that the Wolves wore heavy mantles of thick fur across their shoulders, the long cloaks that fell behind them the color of the forest at night. They moved like ghosts through the forests they struck from, attacked only at night and fought with sword and bow and what could only be imagined as strange knives by the wounds left on the dead they left in their wake.

The Huntsman stepped at the forefront of his Wolves then, as dusk fell heavy among the trees, and looked over his shoulder to inspect those who ranged behind him, readying themselves for the strike ahead. He lifted his chin and spoke to the nearest of his Wolves, "You prepared?"

[AU and open to any who might like some leather and fur clad warriors in the Northern reaches of the Empire. Obviously any who are already shapeshifters could remain so, but others (such as the Huntsman himself) are purely human warriors]

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Marceline gives the leader a wide, fanged grin and shifts the fur around her shoulders. She doesn't need the warmth but it makes her feel powerful. There've been other Wolves who say this is no place for a woman, but she had changed shape and loomed over them, fangs bared.

There had been no more objections since.

"I'm always prepared."

The newest of their number, the girl (if you could call her such a thing) was one of the strangest creatures the Huntsman had come across in his years. A shapeshifter who bared her teeth at the hint of a slight against her position, he could not say he might have chosen her to replace the comrade who had fallen before her, but neither could he say that the decision had been his to make. He led the ones he was given and expected only that they fall into line and held to the rules of the Pack.

He did not know her age but suspected she stood years beyond what she appeared. As with her gender, the question of her age mattered little to him. Whether she could move swift and quiet, kill quick and clean, and be brought under control before he had to take a sword to her to back his word, those were what concerned the Huntsman.

"No tricks this time," he told her, lifting a finger as he looked at her. Although his voice brokered no room for argument in that statement, it was finality and not anger that held him. "No swords glued into scabbards."

They've all had words for her. Spirit, witch, lemure. There are whispers that she is a curse from the gods themselves. She welcomes them but none will speak them to her face and Marceline continues to offer too sharp smiles and aloof behavior until someone else had the courage.

"I never play tricks," she replies, face innocent. "Not on my allies. No glue either."

If she's gluing swords to scabbards, she'll use her powers.

Outside the realm of the wolves who run the night, as the those who changed their shape with the moon who had raised him and a good portion of the Wolves themselves were, the Huntsman had little love of magic. Of course, neither did he have much love of humans and their concept of humanity without honor, but his allegiance was owed to Caesar with the agreement that the wolves be kept safe.

He had little personal rancor for the woman he spoke to then, for all her strangeness and fangs. While there was nothing on his face then that suggested he wholly believed her, let along anything like innocence on her face, he nodded. "See that it stays that way."

With one hand, he pulled his bow from where it had been looped around his back and retrieved an arrow to make ready. "When the clouds pass across the moon, we go. Understood?" He waited only for an acknowledgement before he moved on to assure that the others were ready as the light of the full moon above faded with each passing moment, eaten up by cloud cover. When all was dark, he brought two fingers to his mouth and let out a short, high whistle to signal the attack.

Marceline nods. Not beholden by the moon, she's already half-shifted, granting her the hearing and sense of smell of her animal self. Bloodlust is bubbling through her stomach, but she keeps a handle on it, listens to the human side of her instincts. It's what she needs to keep to her commands.

As the clouds pass, she straightens and draws her sword, running at the whistle.

No matter his desire to stay his hand, the group of warriors they tracked had gone too far in their strikes against Rome. The Huntsman would have kept the Wolves from action had it been a fort or an imperial camp ahead, not a village, well believing that the soldiers of Rome needed to defend themselves, not be defended.

His allegiance had been sworn, and no matter his personal feelings in the matter, they needed to be set aside in favor of seeing the Gauls stopped. There was no room for mercy in the first volley of arrows, nor the second, as the men were surprised in their fireside waiting. Sheer numbers played no part in the equation, not where twenty overcame three times or more times that number, the Wolves rushing from the cover of the woods on two legs or on four, using steel or the flash of teeth to tear apart the haphazard Gallic defense.

The scene was moonlit melee, and soon finished, leaving the Huntsman standing at the center of the camp with his sword in his hand and pulling in shallow breaths.

If any had doubted her abilities because of her sex, they were proven wrong on the battle field. In a long-limbed and massive monstrous form, she tore through her attackers and shielded her allies. The Gauls, overcome, ran from her path. Some made it to escape but others ran directly into steel and arrows.

Marceline howled at the moon as she let her body revert to human and looked over her shoulder at her captain.

Where he took little pleasure in each kill, in the destruction they wrought on the orders of their Emperor, the Huntsman was nothing less than satisfied to see the aftermath of their attack. Not for the many who lay dead at their feet, still in their sprawl across the ground, their blood seeping into the dirt, but for the skill of each of the Wolves under his command.

None of their number had been lost in the violence, few bearing so much as injury, stealth and planning as much on their side as their competency in battle and the ferocity with which they unleashed it upon those who opposed them.

Beyond steel, there were those who slipped liquid from one form to another and caused as much havoc in the panic they inspired in their enemies as they did destruction. The sound of their howls, Marceline's included, were a sound that had been his lullaby so long ago and now stood as a call of victory he could be no less comforted by. He nodded to the (apparent) young woman in approval. For all her strangeness and love of tricks, he would no sooner have denied her ability as he would have returned to Rome to live a life within its walls.

Not only was Jon a Wolf, he also walked with a wolf because there was nowhere that he ranged that Ghost was not by his side. When snow covered the ground, Ghost was nigh invisible but even in the forest he could make his steps light and his presence unknown.

"Always prepared," he confirmed, grinning a little in response. He had both sword and bow and felt confident he could take down anything that came his way. And, if he couldn't? Ghost could.

The white wolf drew the Huntsman's eye, as it ever did. Not for any idea that a wolf at a man's side might be the least bit strange, but in the flicker of something like familiarity at the back of his thoughts whenever he saw the great white beast. He got the momentary impression that its appearance was not quite right. That its eyes were too evenly colored. But even that thought faded away with the resurgence of determination for the strike ahead of them.

His lips curled almost reluctantly as he nodded to the younger man, straightening his own shoulders as he looked ahead of them again before he reached out and patted the other on his shoulder.

The sword that hung at his hip was a weight as familiar as the quiver of arrows strapped across his back, and as the Huntsman paused to finger the grip of the bow he held in one hand, he watched the flicker of fire in the distance. "We do what we must," he told the man beside him, knowing he would understand the meaning of his words. That, far more importantly, he would understand the need of honor even as they were wielded as a weapon against their Emperor's enemies. "No more."

No, only just what was necessary. Jon did not believe in excess and he did not take joy in killing outside of what fell within duty. It was messy, miserable work usually and while he did not complain, it was not something that truly made him happy either.

"No more," he echoed in return. "Just to fulfill our duty."

According to all that existed in his head then, the Huntsman should have been anything but distracted by the presence of the great beast at the young man's side. He should have been immune to an awe at the size of it, or at the very least not felt that nagging familiarity that had him looking again down at it before he nodded to Jon.

There was the sense somewhere in him that the sort of honor this young man wore across his shoulders as he did his cloak was rare among humans. That he had doubted its presence in all but the animals, although the Huntsman did not doubt its presence in him then.

"At my signal," he told him, pulling his bow from his shoulder as he made ready himself, an arrow extracted from its quiver. "We will unleash two volleys from the trees, then move in to finish our work with sword and steel." He waited only for the man's acknowledgement before he checked the others, then brought two fingers to his lips to whistle high and short.

Bow work was something Jon was comfortable with. He learned how to draw a bow before he ever touched live steel and letting loose arrows in a deadly rain was something he felt confident in no matter how the world had changed.

The Huntsman was a good commander, mindful of the strengths of his men, and Jon felt no shame in following him. There was honor here, in this legion, and he knew that he would follow the Huntsman until the end.

The sword the Huntsman carried was one issued to him, carefully chosen but made in the smithies far from where he himself had stepped. It was a good weight in his hand when he took to it, well-balanced and well-made, and yet it was forever his secondary, rather than primary, weapon.

The Wolves weren't allowed the luxury of horses as those archers were given in the east, the trees too thick in the forests they ranged through for such things, but every arrow was owed a place in the flesh of men, not a single one of the animals used by the Gauls they attacked. As with each other attack the Wolves had set upon Caesar's enemies, they aimed with a careful eye to avoid nicking one of the beasts. Through the two volleys, and the strike that followed on foot, with sword in hand the Huntsman led his men (and women) in to fell all those who stood before them.

Only when the camp was quiet save for their own breathing and the crackle of fire, the snorting, whickering distress of the horses silenced with the slice of swords through the leather that tied the animals in place to allow them run off, did the Wolves come to a stop.

"You have good aim, as always." Jon could be appreciative of the talents of others and there was no denying that the Huntsman was brilliant with his now and his arrows always found their marks. Jon's arrows found theirs too, no doubt, but he had nothing approaching the mastery of his commander and had to defer to his superior skill in this particular matter.

"Clean kills, all of them."

The younger man's praise did not fall flat as much as strike the Huntsman as strange, although he could not understand why that was. It was not for any deception he could read in that voice, or that he was unsure of his own capabilities, but the for fact that anyone might remark on it as being anything other than of use to themselves.

He stilled a moment, then gave a stiff nod. "If it must be done, it should be done clean." It felt as if he were supposed to offer something in reply, and while there was a strangeness in quiet speech there had not been in the draw of his bowstring back or in the cut of his sword, he did want to do what was right. Even so small a thing as offering a deserved piece of praise. "You did well."

"I aim to do well in whatever I endeavor," Jon said. The praise warmed him, though, and it felt good to have skill recognized instead of taken for granted. The Huntsman was a good commander in that regard.

"What are my orders now?"

Whether the other felt the sense of companionship or not, the connection the Huntsman felt then like the electric static before a lightning storm, he did not know. It did not, he thought, matter in the longview of things or change anything of his position as the younger man's commander beyond that they belonged then to the same pack. The other was hardly out of his teens, if he was at all, but carried a sharpness to him that spoke of a hunger for approval long held back from him. Or, if not of a need for approval, of the need to be seen as an equal, of a man of worth.

"Take your wolf and take up a patrol," he told him, "We will clear the camp of the supplies we might have use of or information Rome might want, but we need to be sure that we have missed no scout, no errant soldier."

Jon smirked a little. He preferred ranging to almost anything else and patrol sounded like a perfect way to be alone with his thoughts.

"Consider it done. I'll report back as soon as possible."

Command had fallen only to the Huntsman when the last of their commanders had gone too far, had turned against Caesar or at the very least the ideals of Rome too far to have been forgiven. She had been executed for her rails against the Empire, but had truly been removed from her post for her excesses in battle, the blood lust that had ruled her after too long at the Wolves' head.

Reluctant as he had been to take command, the Huntsman sought only to do his duty and assure that his fellow Wolves were taken care of. That their tasks were tailored to their abilities and their temperaments. Command had him holding back from patrolling himself, but he understood the shift of the younger man's eyes out toward the horizon well enough to recognize that he and his wolf were best allowed loose to do the task he would rather have taken himself.

"Keep both eyes open," he instructed, though his words were not spoken without care of the younger man's well-being. He did not reach out again to pat the other on the shoulder, but did give him a considered nod before he dismissed him in turning back to all else that had to be done.

The smell is impossible to mistake. One whiff of it and Hal is back in 1955 with the hounds, the cages strong and the blood staining the floor. He sniffs and follows his way to the source, only realizing when he arrives that it may have been a mistake. There had been a door, but when Hal turns around, there is none and when he stares down at his garb, he finds himself in the clothes of some time past.

There is a panic, but there is an even deeper hunger that makes itself known quickly, as though being amidst wolves is going to bring him back to the person he had once been. No, not person. It brings him back to the monster that he always is. "Prepared for what?" he remarks icily, holding onto his control by a tenuous string.

Those of their number who could not shift from one form to another adjusted their weaponry in their grips, making the last preparations before the raid on the camp of warriors no more than a half mile ahead of them. The Wolves had tracked them through the forest for a great distance, waiting for the absolute moment to strike out against those who threatened the Empire and its men. The Huntsman had kept his Wolves back from engagement until they were sure of the barbarians' goals, that the path they took had them straying toward Roman citizens and a village that had no other defenses than an outpost too far from them to do more than raze the ruins and its ruiners to the ground once all else had burned.

Although he had never before seen this Wolf, memories crowd into his thoughts and supply the name and history of the last to join their waiting number. This one was one only on the edge of being controlled, who had had the Huntsman so often fingering the fletching of an arrow in the none so idle consideration of what might have to be done if he could not follow what the Wolves were. "The Gallic warriors ahead," he reminded the other man.

The brutality the other was capable of was as familiar to him as the breath in his own chest, but where the Huntsman took no pleasure in the acts he committed in Caesar's name, he suspected the other took all too much.

Hal feels the stretch and the pull of another life inside of him, but it is not a future pulling him to remember. No. It is the demonic part of his soul that yearns to pull at the flesh of their offenders and that wars with the stable, sensible part of his mind. He casts his glance to his comrade, breathing in the blood in the air raggedly, his control fraying by the second. "Do you wish for any parts of them to remain?" some part of him spoke, as if separated, culled, and removed before given leave to speak. "For I believe there will not be much otherwise."

"Dead or driven off into the night to tell the others what we have done," he answered, eyeing the man before him not with distrust as much as in searching for what he could expect of him. "They cannot make it to the village."

The Wolves had made a name for themselves in their tactics, the strikes they made from the darkness to decimate forces who had let their guard slip or would soon be too ruled by fear to act clearly. As little as the Huntsman liked the slaughter that inevitably followed, and never did they take prisoners as such a tactic could not survive for such a mobile group, it was the best way he knew how. "On my signal, wait for two volleys by the bowmen, then attack."

A brief check of their number and their readiness, and the Huntsman brought two fingers to his mouth to loose a whistle, the sound singing through the air for a second before it fell again into the darkness.

Each breath that Hal takes begins to rumble, as if the control so inherent for so long has begun to fracture and the sick, dark, monstrous parts of him are coming out of the cracks. In the back of Hal's heads, it's as though he can hear a sick, weak tinkle of laughter that does not belong to him, but he pays it no mind, eyes going black as he turns to the forces approaching the village.

Parts of him warred inside his mind, the good and the evil, both fighting to be in control. His skin itched, as though on too tight, but he listened to the commands. Hal is terribly used to commands, by now.

When the volleys are through, he runs, drawing his sword from its scabbard and charging, showing little mercy with every movement. This is inherent to him, this battle, but when blood is spilled, the entire world comes to a screaming halt. Four of them have been disposed of, but Hal stays shakily in one place, staring down in horror at the body beneath him.

...at the blood.

And he's so very hungry.

The Huntsman could not but attempt to keep an awareness of the world around him as the Wolves attacked, keeping himself distant from the death of each man at his hand and the blood that he spilled, even as he tracked the movements of those under his command within the fray. The Gauls had expected nothing of them. Had thought they had owned the night and been protected by their fires, and for that he pitied them.

He had heard the whispers of the reputation of the Wolves on those rare forays into the camps of the Roman army, those rumors beyond the truth of their strange humanity to the ability of some of their number to change their shape with the moon. They were spoke of as ghosts, but equally as cowards, their stealth and their preference for the night seen as cowardice rather than prudence.

When the world fell silent and he stood in the aftermath, drawing a rag from a pocket to wipe his sword clean of the blood at its edge, he looked to his wolves and knew different.

He turned to see the sharpness of one man's features, that haunted expression that had him moving quiet but swift toward that Wolf to speak to him. "You are through?" he asked, watchful and calm as he sheathed his weapon.

Hal breathes and it all comes back to him.

He is not to do this. He has sworn to give control to the sane parts of his mind and not the monster. It still gnaws at him, but he fears it will always do so, because to tell the truth, it is a part of him that cannot be shaken. Hal slowly and methodically wipes the blood from off his sword until there isn't a trace of it left, taking care not to breathe in through his nose until he was finished.

"Do you think the fear of the gods is in them?" he asks, for if not, they have not done their task well enough.

Beneath the steadiness of his gaze and the purposeful efficiency of his stance, his hands at his side nonthreatening though still ready for what might come, he was glad when the other man eased. There was an element of uncertainty of having that one among the Wolves. A cast to him that the Huntsman was not unfamiliar with, having seen too much of the war, those endless wars, and those who made it. The pawns and the controllers, the fallen and the craven.

At the edge of the camp now littered with the bodies of their slain foes, looking around himself earns Hal's question only one answer. "I think the gods are all that matter to them now," he said, his brows drawn together. Resignation, not victory, triumphed in his voice, drawing his words flat from him and emptying them of all inflection.

And though Hal has suppressed the hunger, it is still a hungry and vile smile that crosses his lips as he stares at the destruction around them, caused by their own hands. It is everything and it is wonderful and he had a part in it. Some thirsty part of his soul (if ever he still had one) calls out for more of it, but he tempers it with the knowledge that he must keep allies if he wishes to keep his life comfortable.

His gaze skirts over his companion. "And how many lives did you take?"

The Huntsman caught a glimpse of that smile only out of the corner of his eye, a moment turned away to check the others as they moved through the camp and fell to the familiar tasks required to clear it before they left it for the woods again. Whether it was discomfort or disgust that curled in his belly at even that glimpse, he did not know, but made a note to keep a closer eye on the Wolf.

"Six, this night." How many had been taken by his hand, at the edge of his sword, or at the tip of an arrow from his bow, he had long ago lost count. Their faces had long ago blurred into a mosaic of fury and of pain and of desperation, buried under the weight of necessity and set as distant from himself as he was able. He took care not to kill the innocent, to keep harm from women and children, to spare animals wherever he was able. The life he bought in blood spilled was often a thin thing, but it was his all the same. It was all that was his.

It was a subject he did not wish to discuss and indeed pulled himself physically back from, choosing instead to tell the other man. "We will finish here, then move on."

Moving on meant there might be other skirmishes like this one and Hal places the promise of bloodshed to the side of his thoughts, not wanting to yearn and crave it so desperately. Calmly, he watches the leader of this group, smoothing his doublet cautiously and catalogued each precise movement. "Perhaps when we move on, it will be seven next time," is his reply, slightly caustic as if to gauge the response.

Although unaware of why the world felt so distant then, or that the overlay of the man he had been made to be in this world did not felt quite securely across his shoulders, the Huntsman still pitched a brow at the other man's tone. "I do not need to add to my number," he replied, tone echoing in subtle reprimand. "My list of nameless men is already too long to count."

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The Huntsman and His Wolves

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