The Huntsman and His Wolves

[follow_the_wolf]

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]

Comments

[buryyouwithmysound]

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.

[follow_the_wolf]

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.