A dirge for the fallen… (WoD)

There was blood on the snow.

The absence of the normal sounds of wildlife moving through the forest gave the scene an almost surreal quality, light filtering from between bare branches and naked undergrowth with the fading strength of an elderly man’s voice. Jack straightens up, his spine cracking and popping like a campfire. The hole he’d just dug had been huge; any hole big enough to inter a crinos Garou had to be big enough to bury a sedan in, and Jack had never been noted for his engineering abilities. After several false starts and a few cursing episodes later he’d finally set to, and the job had gotten done in less time than he’d expected. Thank Gaia for small favors.

He looks over at Amelia as she stands panting, her reddish fur stained with dirt and the blood of their fallen… whatever Silver had been. The thought of how far the ronin had traveled, carrying the unconscious form of the injured Lady, made his blood run cold. What kind of person… creature… had that kind of willpower? Three days of wandering, bleeding from more than a dozen near-fatal wounds, burned terribly and almost delirious, the Lady’s faithful lieutenant had borne her towards the only sanctuary he knew of. The tired Silver Fang reaches for a non-existent flask of whiskey before he catches himself. Damn. He runs a shaking hand over his face. He hopes Silver hadn’t known what had hit him, or who had killed him.

Guilt washes over him and he shakes it off, now angry despite his weariness. How the hell was he supposed to recognize the bastard anyway? It wasn’t as if he’d ever really known who the ronin was, they hadn’t run in the same circles, if you will. He’d never been in close enough proximity to the man to have been able to pick his scent out of the mingled stench of blood, gunpowder, singed hair, and the unmistakable reek of Wyrm taint. It hadn’t been until the crinos had turned to defend himself and his Lady allowing Jack to see the flash of silver teeth that he’d known they’d made a fatal error. And by then Marcus and his .45 had already sealed the crippled Garou’s fate.

He stands up, his scarred face a mask of guilt and fury. As Amelia places the last stone of the cairn on the top of the massive pile of rock, Jack turns his face to the sky and howls, his low hoarse voice soon joined by the pure resonant tones of his lupus packmate. As they howl their dirge for the fallen, the distant voices of other wolves, miles off, mingle with theirs until the evening horizon reverberates with the deep, eerie harmonies of a doomed race.

Jack and Amelia weep as they sing. They weep as the sun sets and they sing, and the blood turns black on the snow.

They weep for their own.