“Because you are human; and we are not.” Isiah said with a calm determination.

The phrase hung in the air for a while. It brought the entire conversation to a stop.

The silence was palpable; thick, like a heavy soup.

Mark stood there with his jaw agape, unable to say anything. He closed his mouth, opened it and closed it again. He was like a fish. He swallowed a couple of times. Then he exploded.

“What do you mean you aren’t human!? We grew up together. I have known you since birth. We used to play soldiers together!” he turned and pointed at Josiah. “I was there when he was born! I saw him grow up! We were all there when that vicious little bastard started picking on you. We were all here when we saw you cower and retreat from your own brother; choosing to hide in the woods rather than stand up to him”

“…I’m sorry…” Josiah said from the side

“What does me being human have to do with defending MY village? Why does my being human make me inferior to you?! How dare you prevent me from defending my own village!!” Mark was panting by the end of his speech.

“It isn’t about you being inferior to us…” I said trying to calm him down.

“Then why didn’t you take me with you?! Why did you leave me behind? I am supposed to be the leader of this squad, yet I was kept in the dark and lied to. This was insubordination! It was tantamount to mutiny!” he was getting hysterical. This conversation wasn’t going anywhere. Mark wasn’t listening. He was spiralling within his own neurosis; we needed to snap him out of it.

“Because you would have died… and worse than that you would have gotten in the way” Isiah must have been thinking along the same lines as me.

Mark was taken aback.

“What do you mean gotten in the way? I could have helped. Maybe, if I was there Mathew wouldn’t have lost his arm!” Mark exclaimed. Mark was about to say more but-

“You would have been a distraction and gotten us all killed!” Isiah shouted over mark

“You seem to think we are disparaging your bravery or calling you weak. We aren’t. This isn’t about whether you are brave enough to fight; or whether you have the right to fight for your own home. This is about capability. This is about ability.

Earlier you called us monsters… that’s precisely what we were fighting out there tonight; Monsters. Monsters out to kill us all and all the people we care about. Terrifying monsters that were targeting us.” Isiah waived his hand around pointing at all of us in squad nine.

“This wasn’t about some misguided glory seeking. Or a way to undermine your authority; this was about survival. They were hunting us; we decided to hunt them back. We decided to ambush them at night before they could attack us. We didn’t tell you because you are a human. You aren’t capable of fighting against the monsters. This was a night raid, you can’t see in the dark. You needed a torch to move around in the forest, where as we can see in the dark. You move slower than them, you are weaker than them in every single physical aspect. And a silvered sword as only as useful as where you can stick them.”

“We didn’t know whether we would win… quite honestly we didn’t expect to come out of this so unscathed.” I said quietly. Mathew’s wife started to say something, but I cut her off. “Mathew shouldn’t have been out there with us either. He is a human. His future sight might make him a better fighter when compared to other humans; but he was out matched against even the weakest of werewolves. It was the 4 of us against 15 werewolves. We had no right to survive. It is a miracle that we survived. We had no right to survive.” I repeated

“We didn’t expect to survive…” Isiah said.

“We left you back here so that you would be able to protect the village against any werewolves that got past us.” I said, again, for what must have been the 20th time. But this time the message seemed to get through.

Mark looked at us; then turned his head to the floor, ashamed. “Sorry…

But I still don’t understand the not human part. Emris, yes, he I know is something different; but you two? I grew up with you two. I trained you two, I saw Josiah almost die a week ago from a shield strike to the head. How are you more equipped to deal with a pack of werewolves than me?”

Isiah extended his arm outwards and then selectively transformed each of his fingers and then slowly transformed the rest of his arm. It was actually a bit weird to see him transform each of his fingers individually as the finger expanded outwards; he looked like he had one really fat big furry finger, whilst the rest remained normal. I had seen his transformed arm before, but the out of scale-ness of one finger was weird.

Mark jumped back, scared, his arm reaching towards his belt for his sword; which wasn’t there. Everyone had taken their swords off and placed them behind the bar at Bess’ insistence.

“You’re one of them?!” he accused back, his anger flaring back again. Only to be smacked on the back of the head by Bess.

“Stupid child. If he was one of them why would he help you fight them.” she said calmly

“Look at his arm! He is one of them. He is a werewolf!” Mark exclaimed again.

Isiah bared his teeth and hissed, at being called a werewolf

“No he is not a wolf… he is a cat.” I said “A werecat.”

“How… what…?” Mark said flummoxed.

“Werewolves aren’t the only were creatures in existence, just the most populous. There are weres of most higher-order predatory mammals.” I explained

Everyone looked at me funny

“Higher-order, predatory mammals?” Mark asked confusedly. Oh-shit, those words meant nothing. And they wouldn’t for another 1200 years.

“Large predators with Fur: Like lions, wolves, bears, etc.” I explained hastily

“How did you turn into a werecat?” Bess asked Isiah calmly, everyone was still giving me the side eye, but thankfully this question took the attention away from me.

Isiah looked around the room everyone was looking at him, curiosity in their eyes… and fear. Everyone wanted to know the story, even me. I knew the short version, but was curious about the full story. He took a deep, lung clearing breath; breathing out explosively. He slumped in resignation.

He pulled a chair and sat down, his left side leaning against the side of the table.

“It was the fall of the year I turned 19, the Sunday after the harvest festival. I was wearing the new clothes I had bought at the harvest feast. Josiah was 13; he was drunk on stolen harvest mead. He had confessed his love to daisy again. She refused him, again. He was in a foul state of mind and drunk. He was already larger than me and in need for an outlet for his frustrations.

He found me.” Isiah took another deep breath and shook his head.

Josiah had his head down in the corner; trying to make himself as small as possible. I saw a teardrop fall from his eyes.

“I’d like to say that I gave as good as I got, but that would be a lie. Josiah went too far, in his drunken rage he managed to break my arm and I was bleeding from a cut to my head. I couldn’t tell anyone, I was embarrassed; I had been beaten up by my own kid brother… and despite everything he was my brother. and I had promised mother that I would always look after him.” Isiah looked down hiding the tears that threatened his eyes at the mention of his mother.

Isiah’s mother had died shortly after giving birth to Josiah. She had succumbed to what was called childbirth fever, known as puerperal fever in modern times; a bacterial infection of the reproductive tract, contracted after the birth. Maternal mortality rate in the sixth century was close to almost 5%; mainly due to the poor sanitation (also the solution to a haemorrhage was not a venesection, why did they love venesection so much?). So that meant that if a woman had 4 pregnancies (which, considering the lack of contraception wouldn’t be uncommon) she would have a 20% chance of death.

“I remember that! You told your drunken father that you were going away hunting, and the fool told us that you had run away.” Bess said exasperatedly

Isiah shook his head and continued: “I ran away into the woods hoping to explain away my injuries as a fall. I collected up some rabbits that I had snared as proof of my activities. I was in the woods and thirsty, so I made my way over to the stream for some water. That’s when I found her; the werecat who turned me.

She was hurt and bleeding, covered in so much blood that I didn’t even notice her nakedness. She had been attacked. At the time I thought it was bandits, but I later found out it was an ambush by a pack of werewolves with silvered weapons.” I raised my eyebrow at this. A pack of wolves ambushing a lone cat with silvered weapons… seemed like overkill. And they failed to kill her outright.

“I made my way over to help her. She had been hurt badly and with silvered weapons, so the wounds weren’t healing, she was hurt, hungry and more than a little paranoid. She was feral. She reacted on instinct, mistaking me for a threat. She attacked me, slashing me across the chest at a speed not possible by humans… and then I died.

Well that’s what it felt like, I felt more pain than I ever felt and then the world went dark. I felt like I was in hell; for what felt like years. It was dark and cold, it felt like every bone in my body was breaking and reforming and then I felt nothing.

Next thing I remember it a sharp pain on the back of my neck and a feeling of comfort I hadn’t felt since when mother was alive. I woke up a few hours later naked as the day I was born and hungrier than I had ever felt. The woman was still there, looking much calmer, well at least less bloody. She still looked a little feral. She was sitting there, leaning against an oak tree, observing me. I noticed she was wearing my clothes and eating the last remaining rabbit I had snared. I hadn’t noticed earlier in her more red state, but she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She was tall, taller than me, lithe and with a gorgeous bosom. She was a perfect goddess, even in her shabby less than perfect state. Her skin was dusky and she had flowing long black hair.

I tried speaking to her, but my throat felt like it had been ripped to shreds. After I woke up my mind was still fuzzy and I didn’t seem to be in full control of my body, there seemed to be something else in my mind, something more primitive. I seemed to be in a heightened state of awareness, I could hear every bird call and leaf rustle in the forest, the stream seemed louder than thunder, my own heartbeat seemed like standing next to war drums. I tried again to speak but all I could muster was (what seem to me) a deafening croak.

She interrupted my failed efforts. “Easy cub, it will take time for you to re-learn how to speak.” Her voice was raspy and taut, like she was in pain. “You must be feeling hungrier than you have ever felt; try to control that hunger. Don’t let the hunger consume you. Carefully, try to get up on two feet, your instinct will be to be on all fours, don’t give into that. Control your hunger.” She gave me a small hunting knife, my own small hunting knife, which she seemed to pluck out of nowhere and told me to go hunt something but only using the knife.

It took me a long time to go hunt a straggling old doe. When I brought it back to the camp, she ordered me to start a fire and roast the deer. The hunger inside me wanted to eat the dear raw, and it wanted to start from the liver. After roasting and eating most of the dear, my hunger somewhat subsided and my mind started to return to me.

That night she explained what had happened to me. What she had done to me. She told me her name was Kora and that she was a werecat; specifically an aberrant form of a were-tiger, called the night tiger.

She told me how she had been ambushed by the wolves and that she had barely escaped from them. She lifted up the shirt to reveal a deep throbbing scar running across her abdomen. The wound had an unnatural purple hue to it; she explained that it was caused by a cursed blade. She told me that in her injured state her inner cat had taken control. She was hungry and in desperate need of nourishment to heal her wounds (the ones which weren’t caused by the cursed blade) and that the inner cat smelt the rabbits; she reacted on instinct and attacked me to take the rabbits. She regained enough control to give me some of her blood which kept me alive and transformed me into a werecat.

We spent the next two weeks together as she taught me how to adapt to my new circumstances and how to control my hunger and how to control the inner cat. She taught me how to adjust to my new senses, as they threatened to overwhelm me and how to control my new strength; so that I could safely live in human society.

She taught me how to transform into my various forms including my war form. She taught me how to hunt in my transformed state without giving in to my inner cat. She also taught me how and when to give control to my inner cat. The cat demands freedom and the occasional releases help maintain an inner balance.

She taught me about our history and how most werecats were originally from Egypt and the Africas and had been brought over to Europe by the Macedonians during Alexander’s triumphant conquest. How we, the night tigers, were from the Indian subcontinent and how we were said to be descended from the mount of the goddess of motherhood, Ma Shashti.

She taught me about the laws of the weres, about the relationships and customs between the various were-tribes. About how to identify different weres, and even how to guesstimate the approximate age of weres. She taught me about how weres are turned and about how 9 out of 10 sires can’t handle the gift and die. She taught me how the gift was passed on through the bodies vital fluids and how the curse only lasted a very short time outside the body. She taught me how to control sires by forming a sire link by biting the sire in the back of the neck and how the sire link allows you to feel how the sire is feeling and to help the sire.

She taught me all she could, but the curse was killing her. Each day she would manage to stay awake for shorter amounts of time, until the tenth day when she didn’t wake up at all. It took another 3 days for her to die. I buried her corpse underneath her favourite tree, the tree where she used to sit and tell me tales of our tribe’s history and legends.” Isiah finished his tale.

He had tears in his eyes as recalled Kora. I looked around the room to see tears in the eyes of the women and Josiah, who was openly crying in the corner. Mark was looking down at the floor ashamed at his previous conduct. Bess got up from the chair and grabbed Isiah in her warm and loving embrace.

We spent the night at Ian’s monitoring Mathew’s condition, at one point in the night Josiah and Isiah went outside to talk, and even without my super hearing I could tell that Josiah was apologising to his brother for his previous behaviour. When they came back they both had puffy red eyes.

We spent the rest of the night in contemplative silence. Mathew broke the silence in the morning waking up in considerable pain. I inspected his wounds and gave him some more painkilling tea.

It had been a long night.