Chapter 9 – Part 8

“Geddup!” Young Red heard. He snarled in his sleep, twisting deeper into his thin blanket, trying vainly to shelter himself from the cold morning. Let the human find him well-dug, he would not come out! Young Red had been in a wonderful dream. He’d been back in the Deep Wood, hunting with his pack, shifting his teeth long to catch a fat rabbit.

The reality of where he was wasn’t exactly something he wanted to wake to.

“GEDDUP!” bellowed the sergeant. Cold water hit Young Red as the human dumped it on his head, and wakefulness rushed into the young shifter like an avalanche.

His body hair bristled and lengthened as he rolled out of the blanket, hissing and snarling, his teeth growing long. The others in his tent may have been tempted to laugh, but they held their tongues. He’d kill them all if he had to!

The human sergeant stood there grinning, not even drawing his sword as he let the empty bucket clang on the floor. “You’re late for your shift, again,” the man said.

Young Red screamed, hurling himself forward, ready to bite them man’s neck out. The human didn’t flinch.

Pain, scraping, falling backwards. The magical, invisible armor had been conjured about the man. Young Red had slammed full force into a shield that he could neither see nor smell, and now he lay on the ground, stars in his vision, shivering in the cold.

“Do it again and you’ll be at a court-martial,” the human sergeant said calmly. Four months back when the sergeant had come to command their unit, he’d told them that there was the way that they’d known before, and there was the Deneith way, and they’d better do things the Deneith way.

“No difference between you and Aundair!” snarled Young Red, feeling the swelling on his bruised face begin. A few others in the tent hissed at this insult, but the sergeant remained unmoved.

“You have three minutes to be at post,” the sergeant said. “Understand?”

Young Red didn’t answer, but he didn’t snarl either. For now, the sergeant had the power. For now.

The sergeant must have seen something that satisfied him, so he turned and left. Once he was gone, Young Red howled at the others, but they would not meet his gaze, would not give him the satisfaction of a fight.

With twenty seconds let, he’d gotten into a somewhat drier uniform, and headed to guard the pile of barrels filled with lamp oil.

Boring duty, guarding huge stacks of barrels. It wasn’t like they were going anywhere.

As he took his post, he began to fantasize about biting the sergeant in all of his veins.