I Swear I'm Not A Dark Lord!

Wolf Season I

Winter was wolf season. The animals lived in tall, forested mountains on the far west edge of the province and liked to come down to the lowlands for milder weather and tender livestock. The province was starved for fighting men, so Taylor spent a week or more in the field at a time, hunting wolves.

These were not small wolves, gray starvelings barely the size of a grown man. These were big white wolves nearly as large as Ted, fast lopers with chilling howls and cries. His job wasn't to kill them all, but only those who wandered onto human-occupied lands. He'd often flash a hunting pack with light and noise to drive them away, and they usually didn't return. Packs that persisted were annihilated with Taylor's force spells.

Wolves lived in the mountains, and people lived in the lowlands. Those were the rules in West Estfold. Any wolves that refused to follow the rules ended up as food for villagers and pelts for Taylor. A few times, he returned home dragging a sled piled high with meat and pelts.

With all the practice, Taylor got pretty quick with his skinning knife. So much so that, by spring, he developed a magic to do the skinning for him. It was the creepiest thing he'd ever invented. The pelt would split open, writhe around as it loosened from the flesh, and then crawl away from the animal before collapsing into a heap. It was probably best if he didn't let anyone see it in action.

The meat went on sale at the nearest settlement, heavily discounted, while the perfect pelts fetched a good price. Taylor kept sixty percent of the sale, plus bounties. The remaining forty percent was split between whichever township he was in at the time and his hometown of Mourne.

Deputy-X soon had a reputation for fast hunts, clean kills, and perfect pelts. Watchmen saw his mask and his warrant card and waved him through their gates, where Taylor did his business, settled into a tavern for a hot meal, and made himself scarce before his curse could make enemies.

But wolves were not the only threat in Estfold's unsettled spaces. Weather was the most persistent adversary, snapping cold for days, followed by almost spring-like warmth that turned the lowlands into a damp, marshy consistency as ice and snow turned into muddy slush. Then it would freeze again. Taylor had occasions to rescue lost livestock frozen in the muck and bring them home, which earned him more gratitude than all the wolves put together.

Once, he came across an unlikely caravan, iced into place by the thaw-and-freeze cycle. They were outsiders who'd never heard about the cursed son of Mourne, or Deputy-X, and feared the stranger was out to rob them. They had been stuck for two days, and were out of food for horses and people.

Taylor showed them his warrant card and, though it didn't make them friendly, eased their minds enough to not attack him. After he got them on the road again, he ended up feeding them most of his provisions. The leader, a man shivering from more than cold, approached to thank him.

"Are you passing through Mourne?" Taylor asked.

"Y-y-es, sir."

"See the curator about reimbursement for the food."

The driver fell to his knees. "We don't have any gold, sir! What little we have is everything we have to settle down with. Please don't punish us. M-m-my wife could keep you company for a while, just please leave our daughters in peace."

"I'm not trying to rob you!" He said in anger. "I just don't want fourteen meals and a full bag of oats coming out of my pocket. See Curator Jane. She'll arrange a fair exchange. Never offer me flesh again — it offends me!"

"I swear it will be done, my lord. Please forgive my impertinence!"

Taylor realized where he'd gone wrong.

Deputy-X: Found those travlers and got them going again. I had to feed them and their horses. 14 meals + 1 bag of oats. They will see you for payment.

Curator-J: Was there some reason you didn't ask for the money yourself?

Dputy-X: I forgot to wear my mask. They thought I was going to rob them. Even offered a wife so I'd leave the girls untouched.

Curator-J: I look forward to their version of events. Should be entertaining.

Curator-J: A new dark lord arises. In peaceful Mourne, of all places.

Deputy-X: Please don't.

Curator-J: I won't have to. At this rate, it'll happen all on its own.

Taylor grinned at his tablet. Since he started working for Jane, he'd discovered she had a sense of humor. Not many people would joke with him. Actually, nobody did, since Kistur.

Curator-J: New job. Maintenance crew came back from the quarry camp. They say something big has come downriver and sniffed around. Whatever it is, it left claw marks. Resupply and investigate. If it's something scary, we'll call the governor for help.

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Dputy-X: I have supplies at the training camp. I'll go directly.

Taylor and Ted made good time to the stonecutter's camp. Something large had been in the quarry, sniffing around the empty buildings. One of them, a hut with a cellar used for food during the cutting season, was demolished into splinters. The animal had three claws on each foot, with a spread of over two feet wide. It could easily gouge rock, a fact that did not sit easily with Taylor. He suspected the animal could fly, as the tracks appeared and disappeared suddenly, with nothing to indicate where it had come from. Some birds could have done it, especially if a large bird of prey got ahold of a mana source. Even a monstrified buzzard could be to blame. He was looking for some oversized animal looking for food, not a manabeast that escaped from a dungeon.

He headed upstream to his training camp, which was blissfully undisturbed. Not a surprise, since the entrance was protected by wards. He had to refresh them every couple of months to keep the dwelling hidden and the vermin out. As usual, he pulled a trout from the water to add to his dinner and thanked the goddess of rivers.

The next day, Taylor had to charm his already excellent clothes and Ted's saddle blanket for warmth before they stepped into a winter day so brilliant it cut painfully at their eyes. Perfectly blue sky. Pristinely white mountains. The river frozen down to the bed. It was a cold snap to kill armies with.

They crunched their way up the frozen stream until they reached a junction where it was joined by a tributary from the left.

At first, he didn't know which way to turn or even if he should follow the river at all. He spread his sense wider, looking for anything at all: the tiny motes of simple wildlife, the buzz of people with mana, or the deep thrum of a fellow magician. There was something, a distant trill of magic higher in the mountains, so he followed the small tributary. Before long, he had to dismount on the rough terrain and shape the hillside so it would hold him and Ted. They walked over the frozen water, to where he could feel the faintest motes of mana: fish frozen in the stream, alive and hibernating. Some animals in Aarden could remain that way for years and wake up as soon as the ice melted.

Ted and Taylor climbed carefully, sometimes walking on the stream, sometimes shaping narrow paths on the steep hillsides that formed its channel. The banks were clogged with thorny vines and clumps of bare brown cattails, and Taylor used his sword to cut paths through the thickets. Jane didn't need to know, and with a few enhancements, the mithril-infused blade was a fabulous tool for the job.

They steadily moved closer to the mana source, and Taylor started to worry. The source was farther away than he expected. And far larger.

Hours of effort brought them to a marvelous waterfall. Fifty feet of falling water was frozen in turbulent flows, smooth sheets over stone, and ghostly blue icicles. The pool beneath was frozen deep, in a ring of trees burdened in hoarfrost like old men gathered to stare into the water, hoping to glimpse themselves in warmer days when sap ran quick and buds sprouted into green leaves.

"Look at that, Ted. There's something you don't see every day."

Taylor dismounted and slid carefully onto the pool. He cleared some snow away and looked to the very bottom of the pond, where streams of air lay trapped in ice among the yellow carp and blue crawdads. He looked down into the pond, his mask, and the sky above him.

He was crouching and still. That's probably what saved him. His reflected patch of sky was blotted out, and he made an awkward dive toward Ted. But the thing dropping out of the sky wasn't aiming at him. Taylor was too small to be worth eating, especially when there was pony flesh just a few feet away. Something huge and winged crashed into Ted, claws first, and broke the pony's back. Ted screamed. A heavy leather wing cracked Taylor on the head and sent him sliding, spinning, to the other side of the pond, spots of blood marking his trail.

A second something fell with ice-breaking impact and fought the first for posession of the meal. Ted was mercifully silent, and the screeching horrors filled the mountain with their complaints. There was something wrong with Taylor's eyes. They were filled with flecks of light, and his head felt like it was split open. He lay very still and cast minor healing spells on himself. By the time he could see properly again, Ted's heart and lungs were in the jaws of one creature, while his head was in the other's.

Leather wings, reptilian scales, two feet with three claws each. Wyverns. He gently pushed himself away, inch by hand-numbing inch, while they argued back and forth in their raspy voices over his Ted's choicest parts.

Playing dead wasn't going to save him. Wyverns ate anything as long as it was meat. It wouldn't take them long to finish off one pony; then, they'd look to him for dessert. Carefully, he pulled two steel bullets from the dozen he kept tucked away in little loops on his winter coat. He didn't have the means yet to create real, non-conjured tungsten carbide. But steel was easy to get, and with time and effort, he could shape perfect bullets for his non-systemized Rock Shot.

He rose slowly, hoping the wyverns wouldn't notice him, but the two heads snapped around to look at him. They looked surprised to see him there, as if an unwanted neighbor had dropped in on a tea party uninvited. Taylor hit the one on the right with Rock Shot, and it hit the ground in agony, thrashing out its last moments among the trees, knocking away their glorious frosty beards.

The second spread its wings in menace and screamed to the blue sky. Taylor misplaced his shot, taking out the wyvern's eye but not its brain. The wounded beast screeched a pain so piteous, Taylor almost felt sorry for it. He thumbed a third round from his coat, but too slow.

A spined tail whipped at Taylor, surprising him enough to nearly get cut by the spine on the end. The books called it a "spine," but it had edges like a sword, plus some wyverns had poison. It nearly stabbed him in the belly button, but he turned far enough away that it grazed against his armor, leaving behind a gouge coated in poison. He didn't give the second wyvern a second chance. He hit it again with Rock Shot, and it went the way of its recently departed relative.

Just to be safe, as if the word applied around such creatures, Taylor backed far away from their death throes to watch from the snowbound shore as wyverns writhed away their lives on the far side of the pond. Wings beat at trees, and tails whipped against the ice. Ted was dead all over the place, his blood and pieces thrashed into the ice and snow until the scenery was tinted red.

He had less than a second of warning — too little time for his shaken condition. A massive form dove out of the sun and hit the ice like a meteor. The center caved, and a wave of broken blocks of ice rushed out in all directions. Taylor stumbled to get behind the nearest tree and was almost buried by the onslaught. An avalanche of ice flowed through the grove and knocked down frost, snow, limbs, and the smaller trees. Taylor was relatively safe behind a thick trunk, wedged into a clear space surrounded by shoulder-high debris. But he didn't dare move, not while something so terrible might be hunting him.

And yet, he had to look. He had to know what he was facing or what he was running from. The monster was stamping around a lot, so he used its noise as cover while he scrambled carefully over the wall of ice around him.

That's when he saw her, one hundred feet from fang to stinger, dark blue scales against light blue sky, wreathed in a cold deeper than the mountains. When she roared, the ground trembled, and all of Taylor's courage coagulated in his veins.

Then, she looked at him. She turned around, taking her time, knowing he couldn't run away.