The Border Fortress

A few days later, Ren could feel the forest listening.

The birds had gone silent, and the wind carried a strange stillness, as if it were bearing whispers from far away.

The Beastmaster was moving.

Ren had learned the truth only last night. The other skinwalker was not merely gathering beasts; he was weaving them together with enthralled humans into a single living army, each creature linked to him by a monstrous will. The first wave would crash against the borderlands, but if the kingdom fell, the tide would sweep onward until nothing remained. His village would burn. His family would vanish. Annalise’s laughter would be silenced.

Ren’s decision was already made.

That night, he glided from one body to another.

First a hawk, wings cutting the air above the dark treetops as his sharp eyes searched the winding roads for movement. Then a stray dog, weaving between the dirt-streaked legs of men in enemy camps, its nose filled with the scents of smoke, sweat, and blood. Through every host, Ren saw fragments of the Beastmaster’s growing horde, wild-eyed men whose minds were no longer their own, wolves whose hackles never lowered, the restless shapes of predators caged only by their master’s will.

The Beastmaster’s lair lay within a crumbling watchtower swallowed by ivy and rot. The stones were slick with moss, the air thick with the stench of wet fur, rotting meat, and unwashed bodies. Black-feathered crows lined the ramparts, their glassy eyes tilting in eerie unison to track Ren’s borrowed gaze.

At the heart of the ruin crouched the Beastmaster. His frame was little more than skin draped over bone, his flesh mottled and half-hidden beneath matted hair. Antler-like growths curled from his skull, twisting as if they had grown in the wrong world.

Ren could not tell if this creature had once been human. Perhaps he had started as a man and had worn too many skins, human and beast alike, until the line between them had dissolved. Perhaps it was the countless taboo acts that had broken him, wearing the minds of others like stolen coats, feasting on the flesh of men until he no longer remembered what it meant to speak as one.

The Beastmaster’s eyes glimmered faintly in the shadows. He did not blink. His breaths rattled like wind through a hollow tree, and his head tilted as if listening to voices no one else could hear. When he spoke, it was not through his own cracked lips, but through the mouth of a man who stood beside him.

The man was broad-shouldered, his beard plaited with leather strips, a scar cutting his brow in two. His name was Jurgan, once a bandit leader, now the Beastmaster’s voice and right hand. The enthralled soldiers followed his commands without question.

Ren understood what was happening. The Beastmaster had forgotten the human tongue, but not the will to command. He spoke directly into Jurgan’s mind, and Jurgan became his mouth, shaping the words the creature no longer could.

Jurgan’s voice rumbled through the watchtower. “Border fortress. It falls within the week. Then the gates of the kingdom will lie open.”

Ren’s claws flexed against the damp earth of the fox’s body he wore. The fortress was more than a wall of stone. It was the first and last defense of the borderlands. If it fell, the Beastmaster would have a staging ground for his war.

Ren had to stop him.

Three nights later, the siege began.

Ren was already inside. He had flown in as a raven hours before, settling among the crenellations to watch. When the moment came, he shifted into the body of a weary soldier on the walls and rang the alarm bell before any lookout saw the first enemy shapes.

The horizon churned with movement. Wild dogs padded forward with their eyes glazed in unnatural light. Bears lumbered through the ranks. Boars snorted and scraped their tusks against the dirt. Among them marched men with dull, empty expressions, their steps too precise to be their own. Behind them, siege engines groaned forward, pushed by oxen whose muscles bulged with unnatural strain, guarded by grim-faced human thralls.

Ren saw his chance.

Slipping from the soldier’s body into that of a thrall, he seized a catapult lever and yanked it too early, the stone payload shattering uselessly on the ground. He leapt again, taking an ox, forcing it to lurch sideways and snap the ropes that held another siege engine. Then a soldier, spilling barrels of pitch where the flames could not be controlled. In moments, chaos rippled through the enemy lines.

The defenders surged forward, loosing arrows into the broken ranks. For a heartbeat, it felt like the tide might turn.

Then Ren felt it, a cold, focused attention locking onto him.

Jurgan.

The man’s eyes narrowed. “You,” he barked, pointing straight at the soldier Ren rode. “What are you doing?”

Ren forced the soldier to smirk. “Trying to kill the bastards. What else would I be doing, captain?”

Jurgan’s gaze lingered. His lips curled, but he turned away. Ren exhaled silently and abandoned the soldier for the sharp eyes of a crow circling above.

From the air, the battle’s pattern became clear. Without their siege weapons, the enemy faltered. The fortress gates opened, and the defenders poured out in a roaring charge. Thralls fell beneath their blades. The beasts scattered, retreating into the trees.

Jurgan fought to the last, arrows sprouting from his chest, roaring his defiance until the final one brought him down.

By sunset, the field was a wasteland of bodies, human and animal alike. The Beastmaster had not come. He remained deep in his lair, untouched for now.

Ren stood on the battlements in the body of a blood-spattered soldier, the wind carrying the smell of ash and iron. The victory felt incomplete. The Beastmaster had lost his top lieutenant and most of his forces, but he still lived.

The forest was silent now, but Ren could feel the listening had not stopped.

The final confrontation was coming.