Chapter 28:
Drekkh Thar
The fire crackled louder than usual tonight.
Rhel sat cross-legged near the edge of the gathering circle, close enough to feel the heat but far enough not to draw attention. The older warriors and hunters took the places of honor nearest the flames. Behind them, the elders sat in silence, cloaked in heavy furs, their breath visible in the cold spring air. Snow still clung to the rocks above the hollow, but here, in the low bowl of the clan’s meeting ground, the fire held it back.
His fingers drummed lightly against his thigh. He tried to stop. Failed. No one had scolded him yet.
This was his first Thing.
He was old enough now. Fourteen winters. His name had been called when the messenger arrived. His father hadn’t looked at him when it happened, just nodded once, as if to say you’re ready now. Rhel had wanted to shout, to grin, to do something, but he didn’t. Not in front of the others.
He was proud. But also nervous.
Everyone knew the message was important. The rider had come two days ago from Korr Veth, dust-flecked and half-starved, bearing a sealed scroll with the mark of the Ursin. Even before it was opened, the older hunters had looked at each other with knowing expressions. They had all felt it coming.
Drekkh Thar.
The words echoed in Rhel’s mind. Heavy. Final.
A call to arms. The war summons. Every able-bodied beastkin over twelve would be expected to answer. Refusal meant shame. Cowardice. Exile.
Rhel shifted where he sat, adjusting the way his cloak hung across his shoulders. His wolf ears twitched under the hood. His heartbeat felt too loud.
The elders hadn’t spoken yet. They never rushed. When the fire was high enough, when the silence had settled, only then would they speak.
His father sat near the front, legs folded, hands resting on his knees, his face unreadable as always. Garran of the Stonefang Clan didn’t show emotion. Not even pride. But Rhel had seen the way he’d looked at the fire when the news came. Not surprised. Ready.
He wondered if Kael would have sat beside him.
The thought came uninvited.
Kael had disappeared two winters ago during a hunting patrol near the high ridges. Some said he fell. Others whispered worse things. Human things. Rhel didn’t believe any of them. Kael was too smart to die. He had promised to return.
The snow shifted as more figures arrived, forming the full circle. There were more here than usual. Almost all the Stonefang were present, even the crippled ones, even the sick. It wasn’t just about listening. It was about being seen. I am here. I hear the call.
Rhel’s ears turned slightly as he picked up a low murmur behind him. Some of the younger ones, just-passed-twelves like himself, were whispering. One asked if they’d really go to war. Another said his brother already packed.
Rhel didn’t speak. He just stared at the fire and waited.
The snow was falling again, light and slow.
A long silence passed.
Then, finally, one of the elders stood.
He didn’t raise his arms. Didn’t clear his throat. Just stood, and the murmurs died instantly.
His voice was slow, worn by age and years of wind.
“The Drekkh Thar has been called.”
Rhel felt something shift in his chest.
The elder turned slightly, gaze passing over them all.
“The Ursin has spoken from Korr Veth. The clans are to march. Over the mountains. Into Virethorn.”
No one cheered. No one clapped. The words didn’t need ceremony.
Rhel’s heart pounded harder.
So, it was real. They were going to war.
Another elder stood.
This one was older still, bent, wrapped in three layers of fur, but his voice carried better. Rhel had seen him only a few times before. He was one of the story-holders, a memory-keeper of the clan.
His voice was slow, but steady.
“Young ones,” he began, “this is not the first Drekkh Thar. And it will not be the last. But this one matters. Because the humans have grown forgetful. And bold.”
He looked out over the circle. Snow drifted behind him. The fire cracked once, loud in the silence.
“They mine the sacred passes again. The high routes. They place walls where no walls were allowed. They cross the rivers at night and claim what was never theirs. They call the peaks by names they made up, forgetting who walked there first.”
Rhel listened, still as stone.
Everyone knew the stories. The mountains weren’t always human land. Five hundred years ago — maybe more — the beastkin had ruled the high ranges. Their clans had lived in the caves, the forests, the slopes that now bore human forts. Rhel had seen drawings, carvings in stone that showed the great wolves of old standing above snow-wrapped valleys.
But now?
Now the humans called those valleys “Ashford land.”
The elder continued, eyes narrow. “We fought them before. And sometimes, we won. But always, they returned.”
A younger warrior growled quietly, just once. The elder let it pass.
“The last Drekkh Thar called us to defend. This one calls us to take back.”
That made Rhel blink.
Take back?
The elder’s voice grew colder. “The Ursin does not march to frighten. He marches to reclaim. This time, we cross the mountains. Not to send a message. To plant our feet where they once stood. Where they belong.”
Rhel’s chest tightened. It felt heavy and right at the same time.
His people had lost so much. Stories, land, names. But not memory. Never memory.
And now, for the first time in his short life, the clans would rise together.
The fire flared as another log cracked.
The elder’s final words cut through the circle:
“Five hundred winters. They took our home. We never forgot. Now, it’s time to take back what belongs to us.”
Snow fell in silence over the circle. The fire crackled on.
Rhel sat still, heart loud in his chest.
For a moment, no one moved. No one spoke.
Then a single voice rose, deep, steady, full of conviction.
Another joined. Then a third.
The howl spread through the gathering like wind through pine, rising and folding, young and old, high and low, one voice becoming many.
Rhel tilted his head back and let his own voice join them.
It echoed off the stone, carried up through the cliffs, and into the night.
The Thing was over.
--::--
They left the hollow at dawn, three days after the Thing.
There were no ceremonies, no banners. Just movement, quiet, fast, purposeful. The Stonefang Clan traveled light, like always. Furs, weapons, dried meat. Nothing else. The snow was thinning now, crusted and sharp underfoot, but it slowed no one. The cold was in their blood.
Rhel marched beside his father, silent unless spoken to. He had never seen so many warriors leave the hollow at once. Too many to count for him. Old and young, broad-shouldered and scarred, fast-footed and lean. Most bore axes or spears. Some carried bows strung with sinew. All wore the same mark, three notches cut into leather bands wrapped around their right arms.
They were answering Drekkh Thar.
The organization was instinctive. No one barked orders. The elders set the pace. The rest followed. Every clan did it differently, but the Wolfkin always marched in silence until the second day. The first day was for thought. The second for bond. The third for readiness.
Rhel learned quickly how little his training had prepared him for real movement. His legs burned by the end of the second day. His boots wore raw at the edges. His father gave him no comfort, just a glance at nightfall and a nod when he saw Rhel still standing.
He nodded back.
The Seers traveled behind the warriors. Always last. Wrapped in bone-woven cloaks, eyes half-lidded, whispering to stones or smoke or each other. They weren’t many. Three, maybe four. None from Rhel’s age group. Their eyes were strange, always looking at something beyond the real. No one called them “mage.” That was a human word. They were Seers, because they could see the essence of the world, the mana. They practiced Seidr. And they spoke only when the ancestors did.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
On the fourth day, they reached the great border.
It wasn’t marked by anything special, just a change in the earth. The trees grew thinner. The hills sloped harder. The wind tasted sharper. And the smoke lines in the sky told them other clans had arrived.
Tents rose in the lower valley like teeth in the snow. Dozens of them. Different shapes, different furs, different symbols. Not just Wolfkin — but Bearkin, Boarkin, Leonin, and many others. Some towered. Others crouched. Some moved with grace, others with force. But all had come.
Rhel had never seen so many Beastkin in one place.
He walked through the camp beside his father, eyes wide but lips closed. Some stared back. Most didn’t.
The army was forming.
Not just a warband. An army.
They weren’t organized by clan, but by task. Scouts in the north ridge. Shield lines drilling at the base. Hunting units around the edges. Seers weaving binding charms into furs and blades. Rhel saw a Bearkin boy no older than himself lift a stone heavier than Rhel could dream of and laugh as he threw it.
And still, more arrived.
By the sixth day, the valley could barely hold them.
That night, when the fires were high and the cold began to settle again into the bones of the mountain, a horn sounded low and deep from the eastern ridge.
Rhel looked up.
Movement.
A wide path opened near the cliff’s edge, not made, but parted. And from that path came the warband of the Bearkin. Thick, towering, slow. Not because of weakness, but because they didn’t need to hurry.
And at their head was the Ursin.
The leader of the Beastkin tribes. Chosen every five years in a trial of strengh. Still in power after forty.
Rhel had never seen him before.
Now he would never forget.
The Bearkin did not wear a crown. Unlike the Wolfkin, who looked mostly human, he resembled a true bear. He stood nearly ten feet tall, covered in thick white fur that gleamed in the firelight. His shoulders were broader than most men were tall, and he wore gold-plated armor fitted over his massive frame. A regal red cloak, fastened at the collar, trailed behind him across the stone like a shadow. He didn’t raise his voice when he began to speak.
When he spoke, it was with a deep, mighty voice, not loud, but resonant.
He didn’t need to shout.
The entire valley was already listening.
“I see you,” the Ursin said.
His voice rolled across the valley like slow thunder, deep, steady, undeniable.
“I see warriors from every bloodline. Every peak. Every path. You came. You answered. As you should.”
He paused, his eyes sweeping across the crowd. No one moved. Even the fires seemed to burn quieter.
“For too long, we have stood still. We have watched the humans climb our mountains. Build on our soil. Cut into the stone that remembers our names.”
A low growl stirred in the gathered ranks. Rhel felt it in his chest, not fear, but heat.
“They call it peace when they take small bites. They call it progress when they drive our kind deeper into the dark.”
He raised one clawed hand, not in anger, but in declaration.
“This is not peace. This is forgetting.”
He let the words settle like falling ash.
“But we do not forget. Not our lands. Not our dead. Not the sound of our true name carried in the wind.”
Another pause.
Then: “This Drekkh Thar is not a warning. It is not a border raid. This is a march.”
His voice grew harder, without rising.
“We will cross the mountains. We will take back what was promised in blood. And if they resist, we will remind them what it means to face the strength of the tribes united.”
A ripple of breath moved through the valley.
“You are not alone. You are not scattered. Tonight, you stand with thousands. Different faces, one purpose.”
He turned, his cloak sweeping the ground behind him.
“Let the humans call us beasts. We will answer as beasts do. With claw. With tooth. With truth.”
He looked back once, voice steady.
“The last war ended at the edge of their walls. This one ends at the heart of them.”
And then, without a signal, the horn sounded again, one long, slow note that echoed off the cliffs.
And the valley roared.
--::--
Snow crunched beneath his boots.
Not the soft kind. The brittle kind, thin, frozen, dry. It broke like bone underfoot as Rhel moved.
The mountain wind cut harder here. Not like home. Higher. Thinner. Sharper.
They had climbed for five days. Across ice trails and goat paths, through narrow passes and frozen ridgelines. The army moved in staggered columns, clan by clan, beastkin by blood and purpose. Scouts at the front. Seers walking behind the second wave, whispering to the wind and rocks.
They met almost no resistance.
A few scattered humans. Empty watchposts. Two hamlets already abandoned. No smoke from chimneys. No footprints in the snow except their own.
Some of the older warriors called it cowardice. Others called it a trap.
Rhel just called it strange.
Now they stood on the edge of the first plateau, wide, exposed, and cold.
And here, the silence ended.
The humans had made their stand.
Low wooden barricades. Spikes in the snow. Archers behind logs. Smoke from burning pitch. Their banners flew stiff in the wind, silver and black, trimmed in red.
House Ashford.
Rhel gripped his short spear tighter. His hands were slick, not from sweat, from the snowmelt on his gloves. But his palms felt warm inside.
Ahead, his father crouched beside the forward stone, signaling with two fingers.
Movement.
The enemy had seen them.
Shouts rose across the field. Orders in the human tongue. Horns, thin and bright, cut through the cold air.
This was it.
No drills. No practice. No sparring with friends in the hollow.
This was real.
Rhel’s heart thudded in his ears. He felt it in his jaw. His ribs. His throat. His arms felt light. His legs, heavy.
A hand rested on his shoulder, his father. No words. Just pressure.
Then the horn blew, their horn, deeper, harsher.
And the Stonefang charged.
Rhel moved with them.
Snow kicked up around him. Arrows flew past his ears. Someone screamed behind him. Another howled ahead.
He didn’t think.
He ran into his first battle, and Rhel did not hesitate.
The first line broke like brittle bark.
The elder warriors had shifted into their wolf-form before the charge even reached full speed, bones twisting, limbs elongating, muscle surging. They crossed the snow as shadows with teeth, white and gray blurs crashing into the enemy’s outer line like a flood.
Rhel followed, legs burning, eyes wide.
He barely saw the first humans fall. A burst of red, a scream swallowed by wind, a shape folded in the snow.
Then he was in it.
A human, young, maybe seventeen, just a little older than him, stepped into his path. No helmet. A battered chain shirt. Sword held high. Rhel’s feet didn’t stop moving. The spear dipped. The human shouted something he didn’t understand.
There was no fear in his eyes.
Only determination.
They clashed.
Rhel’s arms moved before his mind could catch up — deflect, push, thrust. The human parried once, twice, then swung wide. Rhel ducked. Cold air rushed past his cheek. He countered, low and fast.
The spear struck.
The boy’s breath caught.
Then he fell.
Rhel stood still for a moment, chest heaving. Blood steamed in the snow around the body. His first kill. His first real fight.
It wasn’t like the stories. It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t glorious.
He had expected fear. Screaming. Retreat.
But the humans didn’t run. Not all of them. The second line held.
Some of the younger human fighters had broken, running back through the trees or collapsing behind the barricades. But as they scattered, a new sound rose, metal, heavy and steady, marching over snow.
And then they came.
The knights. Not fast. Not frantic. Just there.
Steel armor. Greatswords. Tower shields. Ashford’s black stag gleaming on their breastplates, smeared with smoke and frost.
They didn’t charge.
They waited.
And when the next wave of Wolfkin hit them, they didn’t move.
The first warrior Rhel saw reach them — a big one, in mid-shift, already half-wolf — raised both claws and leapt.
The knight stepped once, pivoted, and cleaved him in half.
Not metaphorically.
Rhel saw the upper body twist away from the legs, a curtain of red flaring wide across the snow, steam rising like breath from an open wound.
Then two more Wolfkin went down. One screamed as a shield rammed into her chest and crushed her ribs inward. Another lost an arm trying to slash past the wall of blades.
Blood sprayed in arcs across the field. Snow turned to slush, red and black. Bone cracked. Muscle tore.
The charge slowed. The howls turned to growls. And the growls turned to shouts.
The line didn’t break.
Rhel stumbled back a step, panting, his hands sticky, the taste of blood in the air sharp like iron.
These weren’t panicked villagers. These weren’t soft nobles or merchants in armor.
These were Ashford’s real soldiers, and they were not afraid to die.
And then the air changed.
It wasn’t sound. It wasn’t movement. It was something else, something Rhel couldn’t name.
The hairs on his arms stood up. His ears twitched, turning without permission. The snow felt thicker beneath his boots, like it was holding its breath.
Then he felt it, pressure, like the mountain itself was bracing.
One of the Seers, farther behind the line, raised her voice, shrill and urgent.
“Fall back!”
Too late.
The front of the human line parted, not much, just enough.
And through that gap stepped a man in black and silver, robes flaring, hands bare.
His presence hit harder than the charge. It stung. Rhel couldn't see what the Seer saw, but he felt it. The mana around the man hummed — not like music, but like the moment before thunder.
The war-mage didn’t chant. He didn’t need to.
He simply raised his hands, fingers spread.
And the earth screamed.
A sound like splintering trees and breaking bones tore through the air as the ground beneath the Stonefang surged upward. Not gradually — violently.
Stone erupted in pillars.
Thick, jagged, twisted masses of earth burst from the snow like spears from the jaws of the world. They punched through fur, through leather, through muscle and bone. One slammed into a warrior mid-shift, lifting him into the air like a ragdoll.
Another tore through three more at once, a tangle of limbs and blood and steel.
And one —
One burst directly beneath his father.
Rhel saw it.
He saw it.
His father had just begun to signal the flank when the ground shattered. The stone tore up through his ribs and out his back, lifting him clean off his feet. His spear dropped from limp fingers.
For a breath, Rhel couldn’t move.
He heard his own voice tear from his throat, a scream he didn’t remember starting.
“FATHER!”
The mage didn’t even look at them.
More pillars erupted.
The front line collapsed. Not from retreat — from slaughter.
Rhel started forward, or maybe just fell, but something grabbed him from behind.
A hand. Thick. Calloused.
An older warrior, one of the rear shield-bearers, grabbed him by the back of his cloak and hauled him up like a child.
“No!” Rhel shouted, kicking, thrashing.
But the man didn’t answer. He just ran.
Ran back toward the Stonefang’s rear line, past the dying, past the snow, now stained dark, past the air still crackling with broken mana.
And behind them, the mountain closed its mouth again.
The frontline was gone.
--::--
They gathered in silence.
No victory cry. No boasting. No howling.
Just the low murmur of the wounded, and the sound of boots crunching blood-packed snow as the Stonefang survivors pulled back into the hollow they had claimed two nights before.
Rhel sat alone near a cold firepit, his hands still red up to the wrists. The older warrior who had dragged him from the field hadn't said a word since. No one had.
There was no need. They had lost.
Not just the battle, but the belief that this campaign would be like the ones before.
Word spread quickly. Quiet, but firm.
The Ashfangs had held the first plateau. The Boarkin were repelled in the west pass, ambushed before they could even deploy fully. The Leonin were bogged down in ice-channel skirmishes and never even reached human lines.
Only the Ursin’s warband — the main force — had broken through. The Bearkin crushed a wall of pikes and drove the defenders into retreat, pushing forward into deeper valleys.
But the rest?
The rest had bled.
Rhel sat without speaking, staring at the blood dried under his fingernails.
He hadn't even cleaned his spear.
He hadn’t cried, either.
Not yet.
Across the camp, the Seers moved slowly, their faces drawn and pale. One of them had dropped to her knees when the pillars erupted, she had felt it before it happened, but not fast enough to warn them all. She’d whispered something about “the signature” being set, like it had been there long before the mage cast the spell.
The elders knew what that meant. The defenders were prepared. The humans had known.
And that changed everything.
Rhel heard one of the senior warriors say it aloud: “They weren’t reacting. They were waiting.”
That was the truth that twisted in the gut of every warrior who had marched with confidence only days ago.
In every past Drekkh Thar, the war-mages and knights were kept deeper, near the cities. The mountains had always been a struggle — hard ground, hidden traps — but not fortresses.
Not like this.
This was something else.
A choice.
The humans had known the Beastkin would come. And instead of defending their lands, they had built a wall of blood at the threshold.
Rhel clenched his fists.
His father was dead. The frontline was gone. And yet they were still alive.
The Stonefang had been stopped. Not broken, but cut. Hard.
And somewhere ahead, beyond the pass, the Ursin was still moving.
Still pushing forward.
Rhel didn’t know what waited for them next.
But whatever it was, it would not be easy.