The fighting became a confused turmoil of slashing wolf attacks and a cacophony of growls and snarls. Gyada felt a bullet ricochet off the armor on her side. It barely registered as a problem when she heard a distinct ‘p-thump’ accompanied by a slight whistling sound. She knew immediately what that meant, having experienced a similar sound pattern while watching the militia train with their few mortars.
They only had one option for survival — move forward and fast. If the enemy were using standard mortar tactics, they would walk their fire forward into the defenders’ front line. Gyada’s team needed to move quickly to deal with the artillery threat.
She finally caught sight of the enemy soldiers, but could only hear the wolves around her. They were obviously belly crawling in the snow, but were not as well disciplined as the wolves she trained with. Her Weres would have behaved similarly, but without the reassurance of snarls and growls.
Her’s would have been silent.
As Gyada continued forward, bullets glanced off her armor more frequently. The hope that the enemy soldiers would perceive her as the greater threat was playing out. None of the eight that she could see were aiming at any of her team, focusing on her as the greater danger. Her armor was holding up. She had a distant thought that she would have to find out what it was made of once she returned. A slightly louder ‘crack’ from farther away split the background noise and one of her wolves yipped. The rest of the team circled around it, covering their fallen comrade in motion and the presence of their bodies.
Gyada’s choices had just been reduced. The enemy had what had been described to her as a sniper, a remote marksman.
She growled at the top of her lungs and charged the soldiers. If there was a sniper out there, she was between a rock and a hard place when it came to protecting the wolves traveling with her. The sniper would be at an angle to the soldiers, so Gyada could not use her armored form to protect them from both directions.
She charged. Her bellow was loud enough that it could be heard miles away in the crisp air. She rushed the cluster of men in foxholes. Several were trying to get bayonets on their rifles as she advanced, while three others were frozen in fear as her enormously loud roar made their minds retreat down to a primal level of fight or flee.
These men wanted to flee.
There was a significantly harder thump on her flank armor as one of the sniper rounds bounced off her. It was more of a distraction than the other hits, but at least the sniper was no longer targeting her wolves.
Gyada hit the three still motionless men like a rolling tank, digging in her claws instead of moving on tank tracks. The bleeding bodies that were there after her passing showed that there would be no threat to her from the rear. Even if any of them were still alive, their backs had become a shredded, bloody mess.
Two of the entrenched enemy kept firing on her, as three struggled to their feet to charge out to meet her, with bayonets affixed.
Rising onto her hind legs, Gyada swatted two of the bayoneted rifles slashing toward her, knocking the soldiers and weapons aside. The third soldier was determined and more clever. His bayonet came directly toward her face, and she twisted aside just in time to only lose an eye, rather than the death strike intended. The vision from her remaining eye took on a red sheen. She bellowed, and all rational thought departed. She didn’t think at all but moved with a speed that the remaining wolves, on either side, had never seen from anything in their experience.
A fine mist of blood and scattered body parts was all that remained of the soldiers in less than a few seconds more. Every single body part was either mauled or bitten. None of the soldiers had time for even a scream of pain.
The Chinese Weres gathered their wits quickly and charged the small group of Russian wolves. Hearing this, Gyada turned and countercharged the largest group of about fifteen of the Sacred Clan. She was beyond any concern for her own safety, indifferent about the overwhelming odds, undaunted by the fact that she had never been able to take on more than seven of Danislav’s wolves at once. She had to protect her packmates.
Rage and the instinct to protect had taken over. Her body ejected, unnoticed, two silver sniper rounds as she moved quickly against the snarling, ravenous enemy pack.
Gyada was a female Berserker, in the full depths and power of her rage. She’d been a shield biter in her days as a human, to her shame, but something had changed. Her experiences had changed her.
Paul had explained there was no shame in letting her Beast free on people committing beastly acts. That she had done it as a protector, not as someone who reveled in violence for its own sake. It was also how her rage differed from the normal Pricolici. It had a defined purpose behind it. To protect those that she felt responsible for.
She had become more now, but felt no guilt, no shame. There were only enemies trying to harm her allies. Her heart responded and her actions were focused.
Gyada, the Berserker, the Protector, went to war.
She went through the pack of wolves like a mechanical reaper. Despite having vision from only one eye, she landed her blows with a vicious and preternatural precision. With each blow, an enemy wolf was incapacitated or killed. To Gyada, they moved with an exaggerated slowness as her mind mapped the best path of violence faster than any ordinary mind could have.
Behind her, the three Russian wolves made short work of the five surviving Chinese Weres. More comfortable in their forms than their opponents, more confident in their skills, Gyada’s team ripped out throats as hesitation and inexperience betrayed these Chinese wolves.
On the nearby truck, the mortar operators were desperately trying to re-target their weapons on the living weapon of destruction that had eliminated their guards. The sniper had stopped firing and was frantically struggling to start the truck when the furred and armor-covered monstrosity that was Gyada tore the driver’s door off. Rolling desperately across the cab seat, he slammed open the opposite door and slid out, changing as he moved.
Li Wen had feared that they had encountered one of the werebears that were known to be among the enemy. That they were not fighting one of them was a relief. The comforting thought was short lived because what they had encountered seemed far worse.
As Li Wen finished his change, a tiger’s snarl rippled through the air. The Weretiger found himself conflicted. He felt a need to rend and tear at the creature that had decimated his force but also felt a tingle of actual fear. He had hoped to face off against one of the bears with a full pack of commoners at his side. Instead, his team was gone, as were the mercenaries his brother had given him for support.
The beast nature overwhelmed his thoughts and took over, as he jumped onto the roof, positioning to use his favorite tactic — landing on an adversary’s back. When the strange beast pounced hard on two of the fleeing mortarmen, Li Wen seized the opportunity.
Though his front claws scrabbled uselessly against the armored forequarters of the creature, his bite found the gap between the helmet and the body armor and his hind claws savagely raked its flank. He slid from side to side to dodge the defensive swinging paw-strikes. He continued to rip at its side, using one hind paw at a time, keeping the other fixed for purchase.
Gyada roared in fury and frustration, and Li Wen could sense that he had the upper hand. He heard the approaching wolves but was sure he could remove the threat this creature presented to his cause before they could intervene.
He was wrong. On both counts.
Suddenly, Li Wen found himself being crushed under the weight of the beast as it slammed completely onto its back before he could release his grip on the neck. Pain stabbed through him as ribs broke and he yowled in pain. Equally suddenly, the crushing, grinding weight was off of him, and he could see the wolves moving in to finish him off. Without hesitation, he fled into the concealing woods before the creature could recover enough to give chase.