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Buried Secrets

Cloaked in a veil of secrecy, we marched through the rough hills of Bosnia.

The land was truly stunning. Just about every hill we climbed provided glimpses of endless forest valleys and lakes; it almost reminded me of my days in the Alpinis.

Unfortunately, the same problems from the Alpinis came into play. We weren't on the main road leading through the territory and were forced to use a series of narrow, inconsistently groomed dirt paths. At certain points we were merely following faded cartwheel paths in the ground.

Likewise, there was a threat of bandits. Although the main road would provide more ample raiding opportunities, there was the risk of them running into patrols, which were non-existent out where we were. Most bandits would not be ballsy enough to try and face down a force such as ours, but I couldn't help but look at the terrain we were traversing and making a mental note of ambush sites. If someone had wanted to trap us, there would be very little we could do about it.

Brushing some dirt off of my half-plate, I ordered my horse to trot up beside the small wagon led by a pair of mules that Sophia was resting atop, her two kits sleeping peacefully while slung across her breasts. Goliath was walking beside the cart, the huge fox having such a long stride that he had no trouble keeping up with the beasts of burden.

I wished we could have left her back in Dalmatia, far away from the upcoming fighting, but we just could not maintain a garrison back there just for her sake, especially with the risk of her being captured. I already knew just how weak I was when I thought she was in chains and knew just what kind of fantasies Philippe had in mind for her, all to make me suffer.

The same could be said if he were to capture Taj. Before leaving, I ordered a team of scouts to check the coast to investigate the rumors of fennecs causing havoc, along with a handkerchief bearing my scent. Words could not describe how much I missed her.

The thought of thiswas galling, so I smiled for her sake.

"Lovelyday, isn't it?" I cocked my head to the right. A small lake was resting below, a blue eye in a green forest. "This would make a fine place for a vacation manor! When this is all over I will make sure you and your kits can live wherever you've dreamed of. Nothing but the best for my sister!"

Sophia shuddered, her hackles going up on ends, "This morning's divination brought out the scent of cornflower and dried dung.Cornflower represents wealth while dung being drawn after it means that careless spending of wealth will result in an investment that will backfire."

I laughed, "If only our Father got a divination of that sort! Would have saved us a load of suffering when we were kits!"

"I just want this to be all over with, brother," Sophia stroked the head fuzz of one of the kits, Violetta. "My nerves are shot,they've been that way since you were imprisoned. My heart can't take much more of this, I've seen it in the herbs!"

"Everything's going to be alright, I won't let-"

"Four of my litter were stillborn because of this," she looked away from me with sadness in her eyes, "that's what the midwife said. My womb is full of black bile, it's a miracle these two survived!"

"Sister, don't talk like that!" I admonished her. I was worried for her, don't get me wrong, but I had to suppress a laugh because it had been so long since I last lectured Sophia on keeping herself together. Marrying Goliath had done nothing to salve her anxieties. "We're both the sole survivors of our litters, it merely runs in the family! Nothing to be ashamed of."

"You're not the one who has to live with it, Marco!" Sophia snapped.

I was dumbstruck. Goliath hopped onto the cart, causing it to rattle dangerously with his weight, and wrapped his meaty arm around her shoulder, whispering gently in her ear.

"I'm sorry, brother, that was unkind of me," she sighed and tucked her snout into her husband's chest. "Please let me be for a moment, I'm not well."

"Alright," I frowned deeply. After all this time, I thought she would have been more eager to have me around. I knew she cared for me but my sister's emotions were always fickle, "Goliath, if she needs me just come running, okay?"

"You got it, boss."

My horse trotted slowly around the cart, taking the inner action of the road, and I made my way up the train. All along the path, solders stopped to throw up a salute or give me a cheer, which I responded with a friendly wave. One was even about to break out into a song praising my name, but all it took was a quick hush to get him to stop. There would be time for that when we weren't sneaking through the Balkans.

My nose twitched when a familiar scent wafted towards me. A lovely smell that managed to overpower the scent of un-bathed foxes and horse. My mouth went dry and my paws began to quiver as my cravings returned. I bade my horse to continue down the path, growing closer to the front of the legion until I found its source.

Vito and Livio were riding side-by-side at the head of the army. With his one free paw, Livio dangled a long pipe with a thin trail of smoke wafting up from it.

I just about pressed my snout right into the burning cup before Livio noticed my horse had crept up beside him. He withdrew the pipe, clutching it to his chest shyly.

"It's opium, Marshal," Livio explained as he took a short, controlled puff of it. I licked my dry lips as he did this. "Got shot with a bolt a few weeks ago by a bandit, right in the chest. Missed my organs, thank Canis! The surgeon told me to smoke this awful shit until the pain goes away, reckon I got another week left."

"Can..." I swallowed. My skin was burning, something I hadn't felt until now, now that the poppy was so near, "...can I give it a taste?"

"Fuck, why not? Just don't smoke it all, okay?"

I tried to retain my composure when Livio passed me the steel pipe but I'm afraid I might have made myself look a little anxious in the process. I yelped when my quivering paws almost dumped the pipe onto the ground but I recovered from the fumble with no opium lost. A few foxen solders were gazing at me, including Vito himself,and I turned back with a confident smile before taking a long, smooth toke.

Whatever lapse in confidence I might have given off to the soldiers at the front soon faded as I coolly smoked. My quivering paws soon when still and my skin cooled down. All my anxieties: the war, Sophia, everything...

All were gone.

Isolated in my tent, having made camp for the night at a clearing by a forest, I was left alone with my thoughts. It had been the same every damned night since we parted. The canvas fabric surrounding me might as well have cut me off from the entire world, an oubliette where I could do nothing more than think:

Taj, where are you?

It used to be that I was quite fond of sleeping alone when on campaign. I could content myself with a good meal and a night's sleep back then, but now the desire for company was blanketing me and I could no longer deny it.

All those nights spent with a fennec in my arms and occasionally a captive to share our company with. It was a wonderful sensation...feeling someone...smelling someone next to you.

Africa had changed me and given me a list of contradictions: I had only one eye now but I could see more clearly. I had grown harder but yet in some other ways, softer. Before I was exiled, I liked to keep my distance between me and my soldiers when I wasn't commanding them, it helped add to the mystique of the commander.

The entrance flapped open and a thin fox entered.

I was no longer capable of keeping my distance.

Spend enough time on campaign and even the most vixen-hungry fox will at the very least help paw off one of his fellow tods, usually it went even further than that. Beyond that, the army also attracted ambitious young tods who were more than eager to do certain things to ensure a promotion. Some were just attracted to power and considered pleasuring a superior to be a badge of honor.

I have no idea which of these this fox was, all I cared about was that he was slim, covered in a coat of orange fur that was pale enough to pass for white on a cursory glance, and I could smell his arousal when I walked past him in the camp. When I passed along the order to a lesser officer to order him to report to my tent after nightfall, he grinned bashfully even when his comrades started to make fun of him.

The horny little tod knew exactly what he was here to do and was not in the slightest surprised when I threw off my blankets and stood up, proudly showing off my perfectly sculpted body and my bulging sheathe.

"Come closer..." I whispered, beckoning him with a finger.

The soldier stepped in slowly, attempting to act shy but his coy grin projected his thoughts as bright as the sun. He was dressed in a simple tunic and trousers, just as I had ordered him to be, and the material was rough when I placed my paws upon his shoulders.

"Marshal..." he gasped as I pressed my nose up against his. It took only one lick before his lips peeled away and we kissed.

Rubbing my crotch up against his hip, I began untying the strings of his tunic.

"Where does such a handsome fox come from?" I whispered lustily.

"Greece."

"Oh?" I pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it to the side. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"I was a slave of a rich family."

"Poor thing," I began undoing his trousers. "You must have suffered greatly."

"Actually, ah..." I wrapped two fingers around his sheathe and began to tug at it, "...they treated me as a member of the family, they were very nice."

"A rarity," I snorted, unimpressed. The soldier was getting distracted and I was having trouble pulling his pants down, "if they were so nice, why are you here?"

The fox shrugged and finally began stepping out of his pants, "I was still a slave. No freedom, my future was all decided for me...so I ran away to seek my fortunes."

"An adventurer, hm?" I cupped his cheek in my palm and sniffed the side of his neck. I cannot remember his scent, it was unremarkable and I willed myself to catch a whiff of Taj's scent instead. "You sure that's all it is? The wolves didn't make you do anything naughty, did they?"

"N-no, uh..." for the first time that night, the soldier was flustered and not because his sheathe was beginning to swell between my fingers and a pink tip had just begun to poke its way out, "...like I said, they were very nice, didn't so much as spank me!"

"I see..."

"But..." the fox's paw suddenly caressed my sheathe, rubbing the foreskin back and forth while my own cock began to grow, "...the master's son and I, we were the same age and we fooled around a bit."

"Tell me more about that."

"When no one else was around, we'd go to a quiet corner of the manor and challenge each other to a wrestling match. The winner got to make the loser do whatever he wanted."

"Mmmmm," I grunted as my bulge grew too big for the sheathe's confines. The fox peeled back the foreskin and started stroking my red shaft, "and who usually won these games?"

"I won a few times but usually I'd lose!" the fox smiled as he reminisced. "And when I did, he'd always tell me to get on my knees..."

I placed my palm on the top of the fox's head as he lowered himself.

"...like this..."

He caressed the tip of my cock with his nose, which was warm and sticky from the humid summer air.

"...and then do this..."

His breath was hot as he opened his mouth, placing his tongue over the bottom rows of his front teeth and slid my cock in between his fangs, into his mouth.

The fox had been trained well, far too well for the adopted kit of a rich wolven family. I knew better than to buy his silly little lie, he was used to sate the carnal desires of his masters just as he was doing to me right now.

His tongue pushed against the bottom of my shaft and the tip of my cock brushed against the ridges of the roof of his mouth. Each bump created an intense sensation of pleasure, a powerful maneuver that he must have learned after years of sucking his wolven masters.

At no point did my cock scrape up against his teeth, the greatest challenge for a fox giving head. My cock was nestled safe in the center of his mouth, blanketed at the bottom by his tongue as he bobbed his head back and forth.

"You're good at this..." I grabbed him by the scruff of the throat and thrust my cock. At one point, I hit him in the back of the throat but he did not so much as gag.

"Mmmm," he mumbled over my cock. My knot was just beginning to swell, pinpricks of joy popping up over my cock.

"Almost as good as a human is at sucking cock..."

BOOM!

A sharp explosion shot through the air and the soldier immediately jumped back, it was a miracle that my cock wasn't sliced open from his fangs. Cries of anguish and alarm were rampant. We were under attack.

"Get me dressed, soldier! Now!" I barked.

The soldier obeyed silently and retrieved a burgundy gambeson, fitting it over my torso and fastening the strings in a flash. I stepped into my trousers and then my boots; grasping my sword, I waved the soldier away when he began to dart over to my half-plate.

"No time! Get yourself ready and report to your unit! MOVE!"

Breaking out of the tent, I found myself in a strange situation. The camp was calm, despite the cries ringing out, the night patrols were casually strolling with their torches and no one seemed particularly bothered. The noise was coming from the forest, just outside the camp's perimeter.

"You!" I grabbed one of the foxes, he was clad in a boiled leather cuirass and looked visibly confused when I accosted him. "What's going on!?"

"P-permission to speak freely, Marshal!"

"Granted."

"Didn't General Vito brief you on the area we're in? It's been cursed by Ursus!"

Vito had mentioned something of the sort when we entered Bosnia proper but I had been a little tired that day and had just taken my share of Livio's medicine, so I was not in the best state of mind to memorize things.

"Remind me."

"The humans, long ago, disgraced Ursus by spilling blood on his earth and Ursus' rage grew and grew, until magma swelled up beneath the ground, just below the surface. If you step in the wrong spot, Ursus' wrath will explode! Only when every human rejects bloodshed will Ursus' rage fade!"

"What!? Why would we go through such a wretched place!?"

"The roads are safe but if you're not careful, if you go off into the woods, you might anger Ursus," the fox sighed and folded back his ears when another heart-wrenching screech cried out. "Poor bastard probably went to the woods to take a leak. Vito told us not to do it but he must've done it anyway and there's nothing we can do now."

The screams, oh Canis...the screams...was there nothing we could have done? Nothing!?

Aye, that soldier was right. My ears might have hurt and my stomach might have squirmed, but that was a small sacrifice to make compared to risking another soldier's life or legs to the infernal wrath of Ursus.

So I put up with it. One life, one stupid life sacrificed. A tragedy, one that I hoped that the rest of the army would learn from.

I was in no mood for fucking when I returned to the tent.Nor was I in the mood for sleeping, but my soldier did return for the night and I clutched him naked against my chest while I laid on my bedroll, failing to find sleep as the screams rang out for another three hours until they finally stopped.

Despite the fierce reputation Bosnia had for bandits, in the end, our trip was remarkably uneventful beyond that one incident. We never did recover the soldier's corpse, not deeming it worth giving him a burial with the risks involved. Whatever lurked under the ground, whether it indeed be Ursus' wrath or some unknown abomination created by the humans long ago, we could not risk losing any more foxes.

In fact, it was only when we reached Velika that was so much caught wind of the telltales signs of a raid. Thick plumes of smoke rising from thatched roofs, hoofbeats and twangs of bows; screams.

Velika Fortress was merely a good hour away North on foot, but perhaps the raiders didn't think the fortress would be able to respond in time. Whether they were right or not, it did not matter, we were here now.

"What do you make of this? Who're we dealing with?" I slapped Guy in the sides as he peered down a brass spyglass.

"Wolves..." Livio sniffed at the air, "can't ya smell 'em?"

I sniffed at the air, the most I could pick up was smoke, horseshit, and blood. Wolven nomads tended to smell more like horses than wolves on account of their close proximity to the beasts, mind you.

"The nomads have been getting ballsier by the day," Vito snorted as he brushed the mane of his horse, "Philippe is too cowardly to risk war with the Alphate over the Basin again and they damned well know it."

"Aye, so why not? Carpathia's probably been looted down to the nails by now," Livio scratched at a red patch of bald skin around his whiskers. "Only figures they'd cross the borders to get fox gold, food, and mates! If Vulpezzia knew about this, they'd string Philippe up by his balls!"

"Vulpezzia and the Alphate would have to begin a joint invasion in order to avoid risking war," Vito shrugged, "something that neither Aokus nor Philippe are capable of."

"Thirty wolves," Guy suddenly whispered, instantly bringing our discussion to a halt, "five noble heavy cavalry and twenty-five light. Unknown number of local militia but they're there, trying to fight back."

"Disappointing," Vito's tail, covered in metal scales, swished, "it would be easier for us to ignore this...just move on and avoid any witnesses."

"Bullshit!" I bellowed. "The enemy is giving us a wonderful learning opportunity! Lets cut the bastards down!"

Vito smiled and lowered the visor on his helmet, covering up his snout, "I knew you'd say that, Marshal."

"Have the soldiers been drilled properly, Vito?" I asked my dear General. "Do they know anything about the Waterspout tactic?"

"Marco, with my hands tied and nothing better to do than to wait for your return, I certainly have been drilling the soldiers non-stop. Shall we begin?"

"Begin, double-time!" I ordered.

Vito was not exaggerating. Within ten minutes the light cavalry had been divided into two units, both containing a mixture of skirmishers and lancers, and I joined up with one of them, wanting to personally take part in the mission, while Vito joined up with the other.

Truthfully, Waterspout had been a purely theoretical stratagem of mine. It was a counter-raid tactic for towns that had a lot of flat ground on all sides and the last time I was doing counter-raid tactics was back in the Alpinis where just about every damned town was surrounded by hills at best. I wanted to see if it worked and if it failed then I was certain we could rout the wolves with a bit of improvisation.

"CHARGE! CHARGE!" I ordered and we burst forward.

It was a hot summer day but compared to Africa it was nothing. My palms did not so much as sweat a drop as my horse galloped at the head of the party, my saber gripped firmly in my gloved paw.

Someone blew a horn as we grew near the village, letting the enemy know we were here. The goal of my tactic was to make the enemy panic and chase after us after all.

Barreling past some shacks, I caught a blurry visage of a gray wolf atop a brown horse and swung my blade. I'm not sure whether I hit the wolf or the horse, but I heard something hit the dirt behind us as we swerved through the cluster of shacks.

I heard bows twang and one arrow thumped harmlessly off my chestplate. Gray figures atop horses were lurking in the alleyways, preoccupied a minute ago with raping and plundering, but now very quickly adjusting to the new chaos we were causing.

Nomads were good at that, my time with the fennecs had only enforced that, but the wolven nomads in particular had a sort of rigid Alphate sensibility buried deep within them and had a nasty habit of organizing quickly under duress. This was why they were one of the most feared wolves to face on the battlefield.

Our skirmishers threw javelins in response, enough to delay the nomads rallying and advancing on us. We wanted them to follow us but at a distance, of course.

The town square approached us, such as it was, a round patch of well-trod dirt, with two paths leading to the right and left, both trailing out of town.

"SPOUT! SPOUT!" I shouted.

Vito's unit went left and I led mine right.

A wolf clad in fur armor was hauling a kit wrapped up in a net towards his horse. He didn't even realize we were there to save the day, not even when my blade sliced through his neck and sent his head flying.

"MARSHAL! PREDATORS!" Guy shrieked behind me.

They were following us, must have been ten of them. I could feel an arrow or two thunk into the shield resting on my back. Far too many commanders make the mistake of chasing after horse archers and they gradually get worn down by a foe that can move and attack at the same time. Instead, it's far better to get them to chase after you.

We emerged from the town and immediately made our horses swerve right. The nomads followed, completely ignorant that they had only a few minutes left to live. The rank of foxes wielding crossbows, who had briskly marched towards the town while we harassed the nomads, would make sure of that.

"SPLASH!" I screamed and we swerved to the right. This served as both a command for us to make our final maneuver and also an order for the archers to let loose, which they did less than a second after the last horse had passed out of their line of fire.

It was a massacre, I understand. I did not bother to look around once word that they had been slaughtered was relayed to me from Guy, which was very quickly.

I did witness Vito's unit making the same maneuver, just a few seconds after we did. Heavy and light cavalry alike were cast down to the dirt, no match for the might of our crossbows. We could not match the sheer mobility and rate of fire that the nomads had, but we could lure them into a trap like any other rat.

Only one of the wolves managed to survive the onslaught. Two bolts in his gilded breastplate wasn't enough to end him and he charged towards Vito from behind, swinging his saber wildly.

"VITO! WATCH OUT!" I bellowed.

Vito swerved around just in time for the blade to catch one of the snarling foxes on Vito's pauldrons in the snout and my beloved General slashed with his own saber, but the nomad was able to effortlessly parry it.

I kicked my horse and with a fierce warcry, charged. The wolf turned and saw me, his eyes flickering beneath the tiny eyeholes of his gilded face-mask, and he was ready for me when I got near him.

I aimed for his neck but met his blade and he deflected it with enough force that I almost was knocked free of my horse. Stunned, I was unable to stop my horse from galloping past and the nomad returned to Vito. By sheer luck, the nomad's blade slipped between one of Vito's plates on his gauntlet and I heard the General hiss with pain.

Before I could swing my horse back and return to the fight, I found it was unnecessary. Guy, golden Guy, atop his white horse, had charged forward like some knight out of the storybooks and skewered the wolf on the end of his lance.

For one brief moment, I respected the former Marshal's old sycophant. I was mature enough to admit that.

Between Vito and I, we had killed about eighteen wolves. Waterspout had been a success, we had flushed out the majority of the enemy without having lost a single soldier. Howls were ringing out in the village still, more panicked than victorious. It would be a simple clean-up job, if Guy was correct about his sightings.

"FOXES!" I addressed the line of archers and the infantry trudging up behind them. "A gold piece for every wolf-tail you bring back! GO!"

From here on out, we left the gory details to the soldiers. The enemy were dead, they simply didn't know it yet.