Chapter 1: One Cycle of the Moon
A werewolf can kill you with a single scratch.
Nine of every ten people wounded by a werewolf will contract lycanthropy. Of those, all but one in one hundred people infected will die of it rather than become a werewolf. Lycanthropy gestates in the body for roughly four weeks, give or take. Then symptoms manifest. It’s like rabies with extra teeth.
Amber stared at the claw wounds on her calf and her forearm. Ugly red gashes across pale flesh, open and leaking blood. Then she stared at the dead werewolf ten feet to her right. Smoke drifted from a cavernous wound in its chest. Her bodyguard had unloaded silver grapeshot into the beast.
The wound should hurt. Instead she felt numb. Twenty eight days, give or take, and then she would know if she would live or die. Then she would know if she was going to howl at the moon or curl up into a ball of pain as her body stopped working.
She looked at what remained of the carriage and the castle guards assigned to go with her. The remains of the guards were not recognizable as people, only as meat. The carriage still looked like a carriage if you squinted. The wheels were nowhere she could see. The walls had been torn to shreds. The head of the driver sat impaled on a shattered piece of board. She looked away.
Lycanthropy could be cured, she knew this. They had been carrying purification potions. The potions could flush nearly any disease or poison from the system. That is provided one took the potion before the damage became fatal or the changes permanent. Amber looked at the supply crate, upside down in the middle of the road. The different potions sat mixing together. She pondered drinking the mixture. It was mostly healing potions or other medical potions. But there might be something dangerous or poisonous in the crate. And so, she did nothing as the potions leaked into the soil.
Her bodyguard, Theresa, did do something. Theresa flipped the supply crate upright. She took her broad bladed dagger and forced the lid open. Theresa sorted through the potions. She retrieved three that were not broken. She recovered one broken but still containing liquid, a silver iridescent mixture.
“My lady,” Theresa said as she approached, “Do not move.”
Theresa poured the contents of the broken vial onto Amber’s wounds. The skin hissed and Amber flinched at the pain. And then she watched as her leg began to knit itself together before her eyes.
“I’ve never seen a healing potion work before,” She said.
Theresa did not respond. Instead she uncorked one of the vials and poured the contents over Amber’s still healing wound. The wound sizzled and white bubbles began to froth up from the wound. Amber bit her lip and looked away, gripping the cloth of her dress to manage the pain. When the pain subsided, she looked at Theresa.
“Was that a purification potion?” Amber asked.
Theresa shook her head, “Disinfectant only, my lady. It will not cure the lycanthropy if you are infected. But it will prevent mundane infections from killing you. No purification potions survived intact and unmixed.”
“What are those two?” Amber asked, pointing to the two remaining potions.
“An appetite suppressant and an adrenaline booster. Not useful at the moment.”
“Is that all we have?”
“That and my own monster hunting gear. What is left of it. Much I damaged in the fight.”
Theresa offered a hand to Amber and helped the young woman up. Theresa was at least forty. She had been in the service of Amber’s father since Amber was five. That was when the woman had first become Amber’s bodyguard. The age to join her father’s military service was twenty years old. But Theresa had never told Amber her age. So Amber could not narrow things down further. The woman looked ageless. She looked handsome rather than pretty. She had a few laugh lines and more scars, which prevented her from looking young. Theresa wore an eyepatch over her left eye and had a prominent scar across her lip.
“How far are we from the City by the Sea?” Amber asked.
“By carriage? A week. On foot? In formal dress? Much longer.”
Amber looked down at her blush pink ankle length maxi dress. She considered this, and didn’t like where her mind went.
“More than four weeks?” She asked.
“We must assume so, my lady.” Theresa answered.
“If I’m infected, I’m going to die then. We won’t be able to get me a purification potion in time.”
“We may stumble across people before that. And you may not be infected. We must try.”
“You should go alone,” Amber said. “You aren’t wounded. You can make it.”
Theresa shook her head and lifted the gambeson she wore on her torso. Something had torn a jagged hole in the gambison, and three gashes marred Theresa’s chiseled six pack.
Amber clenched her teeth, “You should have used the healing potion on yourself! My wound wasn’t that bad!”
“I’m your bodyguard,” Theresa said, as though that was explanation enough.
“And you never listen to me!” Amber found she was yelling.
“I am employed by your father, my lady. He gives me orders.”
“I don’t want you to die.” Amber said, her voice low.
“Everyone dies. That won’t stop me from serving my lady.”
“You should have healed yourself.”
“It would have wounded me more to leave you injured.”
Amber stood, silent, contemplating. Either of them could be infected, or both. Either of them could become werewolves and devour the other. They might both tear each other to shreds. Infected werewolves were rarely able to maintain control after a transformation. Such monsters ran wild, killing and devouring what they could. She tried to imagine Theresa losing control like that, and couldn’t. But she could imagine herself doing so. She could imagine herself as a werewolf killing her wounded bodyguard. She could see herself waking from the transformation to discover what she had done. She shuddered.
“It’s too much,” Amber said. “I can’t manage. I can’t go forward. It’s too much to bear.”
Theresa shook her head. “You’re stronger than that. And if we reach a point where you can’t go on, then I’ll carry you. We may yet live, we must push through.”
Theresa scrounged what she could from the wreckage. This included food, though not enough to last them four weeks. It included a few firearms and several bear traps, which Theresa kept. It included some scavenged cloth. Theresa said she would use the cloth to make a tent and bedrolls for the two of them. Amber could only stare at the food, knowing it was not enough.
So would they die of lycanthropy? Become monsters? Or would they starve?
Theresa built a travois she could pull behind her. She loaded their new camping gear onto the travois. They said prayers over the bodies of the fallen guards. Then the two survivors set off down the road back towards the City by the Sea.
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