15

You carefully shape the words of the Primal Tongue—the ancient language of the Garou, which you learned almost instinctively after your First Change—as you cannot speak human language in your wolf forms.

Black Tarn howls with delight at that. Then her luminous eyes fix on you.

"Will you kill many of them, little champion?" she asks as Clay gorges on horseflesh. "Will you drag them from their warm beds, still wrapped in their pajamas, and slay them for Gaia? You couldn't even kill the Bane; Scarper had to do it." Her black head inclines toward the man's slashed throat.

You sputter. Where to begin? The "Bane" was the horse, not the man. The man was already dead—you're sure you killed him. You finished them both without help, even though the others were supposed to back you up, were supposed to…

What would be the point of arguing? You look from Clay's blood-smeared face to Scarper's gleeful smirk to Black Tarn's hard, mad glare, and know that you will find neither mercy nor fairness here. You could almost choke on your Rage. The "Litany" is a collection of rules and punishments without sense or reason, wielded by the powerful out of spite. You will win no arguments here, nor find any Honor among these sad old wolves.

"Get back to the van," Scarper tells you. "Get yourself cleaned up. You look like shit. We're going to have to clean up your mess." He flings the keys at you, expecting you to miss them in the darkness, but you catch them in your teeth. He snarls, but Clay just returns to feeding on the horse-thing.

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