A big fat mosquito landed on Grimmwald's nose and started to scrub its head. It had filled itself with wolf blood and it seemed to find the promontory it had landed on as an attractive place for its siesta. Grimmwald crossed his yellow eyes and looked at it curiously <I wonder if you could be trained, little bastard> Grimmwald snorted and wrinkled his muzzle in a grin, making the tiny vampire insect take off in a sloppy manner and watched it as it flew into the marshes, hovering into the air like a flying machine lead by a driver dizzy on ale <I'd send you over to the grazers and have you bite Gohrthaak on the pink truffle he calls a nose just to see him gracefully hop all over the place>. That thought cheered the Alpha Wolf up as he strolled over to the Northerners, balancing his bushy tail from one side to the other, making him look like a careless pup meeting his mother in front of a den.
He sat by the seven Northerners after nodding them to not get up. He paused for a little while, feeling their weird eyes pinned on him and sensing their awaiting shiver although not one single hair had moved on their strong bodies. <By my fathers tail, those eyes are creepy> Grimmwald thought to himself <such an odd light blue, almost silver, white and green all mixed together and that tiny black and oval pupil are not natural. And their coats...they have adapted, yeah and the color is a light grey now after a few generations but they used to be white...I should know, I knew one once...probably the last of this breed. Good thing to have in the winter heh but so odd. Hm I think I will never grow accustomed to having their colorless eyes thrust into mine uh. No wonder some wolves were not happy when my father rescued the remains of their Clan from certain death and brought them to Ragnarok> . But Grimmwald knew the seven were the most reliable soldiers he had. They were simple, yet very insightful, loyal to him to the death, didn't talk much and were able to keep their temper even when the world was being turned to ashes around them. Perfect, silent killers he could almost use as if they were inanimate. It was like throwing an arrow at a bird and not having to wonder if it would hesitate before piercing its heart, you only had to set it on the right course. They were happy to live or die for him, for the special missions they were trusted with, and that meant a lot, although Grimmwald was not too sure that they could actually be happy, or sad or angry. They waited silently, looking at him as if there was nothing else around them. Eight dark silhouettes sitting head to head like a council of mute elders. He decided to speak:
"Something or someone has been watching, spying on us. I am very sure of that. I hoped I could find out what it was by sending the regulars in, but you saw that didn't work too well. I am sure that someone has avoided being dug out by that tactic so that means they know what they are doing or have seen that before." Grimmwald thought for a moment about sharing his suspicions with them, that the presence he had felt was not an enemy but rather one of their kind and that hunting it down seemed more like a game to him, a competition between him and the hidden spy instead of a bloody business of taking out an enemy and moving on. Yet he avoided doing it, they did not have to know it. All they needed to know was what their task was. Grimmwald would have trusted them with stealing a child from its mothers breast without her noticing it, so he resumed, this time focusing his attention mostly on Haati, the commander of this small but lethal group. "I want you to sneak in the woods and capture it. Try not to harm it unless you have to but try not to kill it. I want it brought to me in one piece and if possible able to spit its guts. We need to know if the grazers are spying on us. How you do it is your choice. Onnellinen metsästää!" After wishing them 'happy hunting' in their native dialect, Grimmwald stood up and so did they. He watched each and every one of them again, with a circling gaze, and nodded, moving away toward the lower side of the bank, seeing the tip of the Black Tumul growing larger in the distance as he approached the sand wall overgrown with huge weeds. He wasn't sure if the strangers eyes were still watching them and he wanted to avoid giving it any chance to know what was coming. He leaned against the same watch-tower he had used as cover before and started chewing on a minotaur bone, his fangs nibbling on the massive femur of the vanquished bull, trying to unload on the bone the hunting frenzy that was taking over him. He kept a good corridor open for him to be able to see how the seven Northerners would go about starting their mission....
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Haati watched his master move away and waited for him to disappear beyond a bend of the sandy bank before turning his eyes to his brothers. "Alright, we know what we have to do. If musta isäntä [trad. note - the black master - the name that the Northerners had been using when referring to Grimmwalds father and that had been passed on to Grimmwald himself as the son of their saviour] has felt the presence, it must be there and we will find it, track it down and bring it to Him or die trying. Geirrodur, you take Uroc and Ulfrin and make your way into the woods. Identify the presence but keep out of sight. When you have, climb up and sleep. Me and Rime will follow within a bulls agony [expl.note - time measurement unit describing ~ 10 minutes originating in the period a minotaur needed to die by strangulation. Northerners had been used for a long time as prisoner executioners in the wars the werewolves were fighting] Yimir will follow us in half of that and act as back-up. We will meet up below you and let ourselves be seen. After a while we will head back with Yimir hiding in our path in the underbrush. When the presence will close on us to observe you fall on its back. Yimir will engage from the front. Strangle it until it goes soft. When you fall on it howl and we will hurry in. Onnellinen metsästää!"
With that, Haati stood up and walked away followed by Yimir and Rime, the three making their way through the trenches and soon moving out of sight. Geirrodur, Uroc and Ulfrin seemed to disappear instantly, as if the earth had swallowed them. Anyone watching them would have lost their sight in a blink and would have thought nothing had been there in the first place. They started crawling through the long, yellowish grass toward the woods and when they reached the underbrush they accelerated their pace with all their over-developed senses alert, moving forward like shadows, always against the wind and not making any noise. Uroc was the first to spot the white wolf on a higher ridge to his left and froze. At first he had just guessed its presence there, stretched on a log, but the white of the fur stung his eyes painfully. The other two stopped as well and followed his colorless gaze, identifying the target. They slid to the right and when they found a good place they quickly climbed up in the trees, pressing their bodies against the bark and fading in the growing darkness.
Shortly after, Haati and Rime appeared from the bush. They were walking on the hind legs and looked like they were tracking. After sensing their brothers in the trees they stopped at a fair distance, looked around for a while then turned and went back after urinating on a huge fallen trunk, agonizingly slow for the airborne hunters who were hugging their trees. The three were barely breathing as the white fur started to move on the trail of Haati and Rime. They allowed it to pass under their trees and then Uroc leaped like a big owl. Within a fraction of a second, the other two launched themselves too. Uroc fell on the the white wolf with the full weight of his massive body, throwing it on its back with a twisting powerful move that catapulted Uroc a few feet away off his trajectory, going through the young underbrush like a cannonball, while Geirrodur and Ulfrin landed. The first touched the ground and jumped on the white wolf and closed his huge paw on its neck while Ulfrin flung a devastating blow at its stomach that pumped the air out of the white wolf's chest with an oooffing sound. Yimir closed in from the underbrush and twisted the victims upper limbs above its head while Geirrodur 's grip was tightening. By the time Haati reached them, the job had been done and the white wolf was hanging like a soft cloth. They tied the spy's body with ropes and started along the trail, back to the river bank. The few birds who had been disturbed by the short struggle barely made any noise and cuddled back to sleep in their feathered blankets.
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Grimmwald was sniffing the air nervously and kept looking at the underbrush, hardly managing to hide his agitation. The light had dimmed away and a bloody dusk was coming down upon the river bank, as a thick layer of mist covered the moist plains in front of him. Viermee was walking the same short path for the 50th time at the side of his master, his tail sweeping the dirt and his pointy ears laid back, but Grimmwald seemed to not be bothered by the annoying pendulum of his servant.
When he saw the seven Northerners slowly descend to the bank, carrying their odd load between them, Grimmwald gasped for air and stood up: <I am either having odd visions or they are bringing us a ghost...that is a white wolf> Viermee had stopped his circling and watched the scene with wide-open eyes. An electric silence began, as the dog soldiers started to stand up and following Grimmwalds and Viermees eyes, saw the descending cortege. Short barking in high notes broke loose after a few seconds and the troops started to climb the sandy bank to welcome the successfully returning party. Nocturnal birds took off in a hurry, startled by the sonic outburst while the small Pipistrelle bats, seemingly not disturbed at all by the wolfish concert, were chasing the fat bugs in the fresh air of the fallen night, in unpredictable, criss-crossing paths, a few feet above the head of the cheering pack. Fires began lighting the bank as the seven approached with their precious prisoner.
