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Well, I'm back. Again.

This story's been floating about in my head for a fair while. Since I finished that thesis on the Black Death, in fact. And that's what the setting is: 14th-century Germany, during the Black Death. It's a mighty grim period of history, but a fascinating one. A relatively rudimentary understanding of the time (as in five-minutes-on-Wikipedia rudimentary) should be sufficient to follow the story's events. Historically-themed furry stuff is a bold thing to opt for, admittedly, but I reckon there's someone out there who'll read it. It's the internet, after all.

One last thing I'd like to clarify: yes, this story does use Christianity as a minor theme. However, my intention is neither to promote, nor to denegrate it; nor do I assume, in using it, to put forth any profound thoughts - I mean, I'm not Ingmar Bergman. I simply thought it would be interesting to use as a background theme - I want this story to be relatively serious, after all. That and, well, you really can't write a story set in medieval Europe and not bring up Christianity at some point.

As you can see, I've finished the first two chapters; should be about two more. As usual, reviews are enormously appreciated; and as I'm about to advertise on the forum, I'm very happy to exchange reviews of my story for reviews of your stuff.

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'Father abandoned child, wife husband, one brother another; for this illness seemed to strike through breath and sight. And so they died. None could be found to bury the dead for money or friendship...And I, Agnolo di Tura...buried my five children with my own hands.'

• Agnolo di Tura, 1350

A dusty, stifling gust of breeze picks up, whipping my grimy rags about me; but I do not allow my steady stride to falter even slightly.

Lifting my eyes from the ground, I see that we are now but yards from the town square. The bright afternoon sun has mounted the sky, casting a bright glare over the dusty stretch of cobblestone.

Amidst the cacophony of howls and drawn-out, thespian wails of my compatriots, a particularly piercing shriek of pain sounds from beside me; and glancing down, I see that Brother Naaman has stumbled to the ground, clutching his lower leg.

I hesitate, and at once almost lose my balance as the others shoulder their way past me, jostling me violently back and forth. Hastily arighting myself, I step off the street and flatten my back against the wall of a nearby house, watching the others pass me by, all bent double, their rags fluttering in the breeze, the tails of their whips flailing wildly back and forth as they viciously flay their backs, groaning histrionically.

The last of them shuffles by, and I step toward Brother Naaman, still crouched in the middle of the street. By now, the long, wide gash running down his lower leg, and the blood soaking the young leopard's thick sandy fur, have taken on the tone and texture of thickly caked black tar.

Bending down slightly - wincing as the pain of hours upon hours of crouched marching bites into my spine - I grasp his upper arm with one paw, wrap my other arm about his sharp, bony shoulders, and with one terrific tug, wrench him to his feet.

He does not even glance at me; but snatching up his whip from the cobblestone, he surges forward after the others, his broad blue eyes bulging and wildly aflame once more, already whisking his whip once more at his scabbed and bleeding back.

I hasten after them, catching up just where the tightly packed houses open out onto the sunny expanse of the town square, where the villagers have already begun to crowd about, exchanging bewildered whispers, every one of them fixing us with that familiar stare of wide-eyed, transfixed, quietly horrified awe.

And in the centre of the square stands Brother Gregor, whip dangling from his right hand. The towering stallion raises his head as a fresh gust sweeps across the square, the long, dark locks of his mane billowing about his tall neck and broad shoulders, the tattered ribbons of his rags fluttering about his bare upper body. The sunlight seems to intensify as we approach him, glistening brilliantly off the tousled, clammy chestnut fur that coats his firm, sinewy torso, and off the dark streams of fresh blood that dribble down from the open wounds that crisscross his back.

Our own role in this, by now, rigorously rehearsed, it is but a few seconds before my fellows and I have sorted ourselves into a wide circle about where Brother Gregor stands, and are kneeling on the cobblestone, facing inward, whips in our paws, our eyes turned reverently up toward him. Behind me, I hear the crowd's baffled muttering intensify.

I glance down at the whip in my paw, a hardy little thing in the shape of a bundle of long, thin leather strips, twisted here and there into tight little knots. And poking through each knot, a thin, sharp sliver of metal, all thickly coated with dark, dry globules of my blood, and a few tiny, festering clumps of my flesh...

Slowly, steadily, his head held high, Brother Gregor raises his arms skyward. And with rehearsed instinct, we at once begin to lift our whips in response. I feel my spine stiffening, my teeth sinking down on my lower lip, and my shoulder blades impulsively clenching inward.

'Behind us...' Brother Gregor's smooth, thunderous baritone rings out across the town square; and the crowd, with a collective intake of breath, falls abruptly silent. 'Behind us lie the lands of the heathen Tartars and the once-proud lands of the bloated Romans, all dust beneath God's heel.' He stretches a hand out behind him. 'Before us...' - he stretches another hand out in front of him, his gaze drifting over the horizon - '...lies Avignon, where the godless gluttons of our papacy stew in their filth, awaiting God's terrible judgement.'

He stands, deathly motionless, arms outward, for nigh on a minute, the crowd immobile, staring in silent, spellbound fixation. Then, quite suddenly, his arms fall to his sides, and he lashes his whip across the raw flesh and blood-drenched fur of his back.

And with mechanical obedience, we respond at once, raising our whips and, with practiced synchronisation, strike at our own backs. Sharp grunts of pain erupt all about me; and I wince as I feel the metal shards bite their way into my bleeding flesh.

'Farmers fall dead into the earth they till.' Brother Gregor goes on, his booming voice not faltering even slightly as a wave of fresh blood trickles down his back and seeps into his fur. 'Whores wither in their beds of sin. Your heathen priests choke on their own blasphemous sermons.' He raises his whip and strikes his back again. We do likewise, with another cacophony of groans; the shards dig into me again, and as I wrench them loose, I feel them tear chunks of flesh from my back. 'And here you stand, profane fools that you are, happily wallowing in your sin as Death raises his scythe.'

He strikes himself again. We do likewise, the deep gashes across my back stinging hotly.

There is a pause. A heavy silence, broken only by the afternoon breeze whistling over the rooftops, quite suddenly envelops the square as Brother Gregor, his whip still held at the ready casts his piercing, icy stare across the wide-eyed crowd. Then he stops, his gaze suddenly fixed; and the crowd is, end to end, absolutely still as, with deliberate, agonising slowness, Brother Gregor raises his hand and points a finger across the square at a stout, middle-aged grey wolf clad in a silken red tunic and wrapped in a garish tangle of multicoloured cloaks, the smooth and aggressively glossy texture of his fur giving him the appearance of an overstuffed cushion.

'You, bloated with earthly excess,' says Brother Gregor, biting down with scorn upon his words, 'do you imagine your riches will buy you absolution? Do you imagine that, in these final hours of our doomed mortal realm, your pretty material veneer will shield you from the all-consuming embrace of Death?'

The wolf stares back blankly. Brother Gregor shifts his gaze ever-so-slightly, and quite suddenly turns his accusing finger toward a young red vixen in a green kerchief, minutely built and barely out of adolescence, who, as he does so, all but collapses in horror.

'You, girl,' Brother Gregor booms, 'do you imagine your zest for life will somehow inspire the Lord to spare you? Do you imagine that simply being young grants you the right to live? Do you fancy that He will see the shameless hedonism of youth as a virtue?'

The young vixen stares back, wide-eyed and silent. Her lower jaw trembles slightly; and quite suddenly, she collapses to her knees, her face buried in her paws, coughing up a succession of choking, hysterical sobs from her throat.

Brother Gregor sweeps his stare over the crowd as he strikes himself once more. We do likewise. A sensation of sharp, fiery pricking now runs up and down my back. Then, his jaw rigid, his unblinking eyes ablaze, Brother Gregor turns his finger toward a stooped, withered black Labrador with a snowy-grey muzzle, clad in spilling, outsized priest's robes.

'You, Father,' he spits contemptuously, 'do you presume, in all your sheltered officialdom, to be the voice of God? When these wretched people come to you, demanding to know why the Lord strikes them down with pestilence, will you presume to speak for Him? You, who have never known the beautiful agony of true submission to the Lord?'

The priest stiffens his jaw, staring back mutely. Brother Gregor's piercing gaze drifts away from the crowd, upward, and out over the horizon once more.

'You have days at most.' Brother Gregor goes on, the hiss of vitriol in his voice subsiding slightly. 'The pestilence will come down upon you. In your petty ignorance and pride, you will rage against the divine justice of the Almighty; you will plead and bargain for mercy you do not deserve; you will fancy that you understand better than He the fate that you have truly earned. You will do just as all the others did as the Lord's wrath engulfed them.'

He pauses. Silence trills out over the square, the wide-eyed crowd staring dumbly back. Then, slowly, deliberately, his gaze drifting further upward and growing ever more distant, Brother Gregor raises his arms skyward.

'Heavenly Father,' he intones heavily, his voice, now steady, controlled, and hummed from the depths of his gullet, sounding positively thunderous, 'as you deliver your judgement upon these your subjects, help them to understand that you do so out of the depth of your love for them; to understand the glory of being delivered by your divine hand from this wretched world with which we have surrounded ourselves. Help them to see that those of them who have been true to you - who have served you as they should - will be taken into your arms.'

His arms, quite suddenly, fall limp by his sides; and at once the tumult of a hundred strident, impassioned wails and shrieks of pain erupts from the circle about him as, recognising our cue, we begin, once more, to lash at our backs with rapid ferocity. My back is now afire with fresh, scorching agony; I feel the blood saturate my fur, feel the knots wrench out lump after lump of my flesh.

I fix my eyes upon Brother Gregor, whose gaze only seems to drift ever further into the heavens as he flogs himself, his whip, with every lash, spraying his blood out over the cobblestones in great arcs.

A moment passes. If any noise comes from the onlookers, it is swallowed up by the unyielding cacophony of our howling.

Then, quite abruptly, a woman - an aging white wolf in a flowing, outsized beige kirtle - elbows her way out of the bewildered crowd, dashes forward, and, all but leaping over the kneeling circle, flings herself onto the stones behind Brother Gregor. She kneels there, her arms spread outward, her head arched back, her eyes squeezed shut, her jaw hanging open, as Brother Gregor's whip splashes droplets of his blood over her. Dark globules spatter their way over the front of her kirtle and the fur of her face and neck. Somewhere above the agonised wails of my compatriots, I think I hear her groan with ecstasy.

Another woman - a heavily greyed, sunken-eyed brown housecat in the threadbare gown of a beggar - emerges from the crowd, kicks her way through the circle, and kneels down beside the white wolf, holding up a strip of rag before her. About me, I become aware of the crowd steadily beginning to stir here and there as more and more figures wrestle their way out. At the other end of the circle, I see the young red vixen, the fur of her muzzle and cheeks still sodden with tears, as she kneels behind Brother Naaman, whose teeth are bared and eyes screwed tightly shut in rapturous, intoxicated agony.

And at that moment, I feel a long, slender shadow falling over me; and stilling my whip a moment, I glance over my shoulder.

She stands behind me, towering, slender, motionless. The sun glares over the crown of her head. I squint slightly; a lizard girl, twenty years at most, the sunlight glistening dully off the sheen of her olive scales. She wears the clothes of a farm girl, her colourless, weather-shredded gown and apron fluttering limply in the breeze, a frayed white kerchief twisted askew about her head. And her wide yellow eyes are fixed upon me, unblinking.

I hold her stare as, slowly, she drops to her knees; and as I turn away again, I feel long, spindly fingers sink into my shoulders. Raising my whip, I strike eight, nine, ten more stinging lashes across my back; and from behind me, a long, rattling, tremulous hiss of ecstasy sounds in my ear. Her squamous fingers wrap themselves tighter about my shoulders; and I shudder as I feel something with a warm, clammy texture sink into my back and run along the burning, throbbing, damp groove of a particularly deep wound. Glancing over my shoulder once again, I swallow uneasily as I see the lizard girl running the tip of her long, slender grey tongue down my back. Flecks of my blood are splattered across her muzzle; and her eyes remain fixed upon mine, piercing, intense, unreadable.

I turn back to Brother Gregor; a gaggle of nigh on a dozen young women is now kneeling in the dust behind him, their paws upheld as his whip, now a flailing blur, continues to spatter them with his blood. About us, the crowd grows restless, rippling with agitation, exclamations of shock and befuddlement arising above our own passionate wailing.

Several minutes pass as, from behind me, I feel her tongue's sharp tip scrap its way through the blood-soaked fur of my back. Finally, it stops, and I feel her pull it away; and instinctively, I lift my whip and continue to rain down thrashes upon myself. By now, as per usual, my head is beginning to gently reel, my vision to mist over slightly; but the fresh wave of ecstatic hissing sounding sharply in my ear remains clear as day.

The fiery orange glare of sunset peeks thinly and intermittently through the breaks in the leafy canopy; but it does little to illuminate the gloom of the forest, an expanse of shapeless shadow in the midst of which our tiny campfire sputters feebly, throwing little more than a few faint, fluctuating flecks of light over the undergrowth.

But for the crackling of the flames and the growing shrieks of the crickets, all is silent as we sit about the fire. Most of my compatriots are all but swallowed up by the murk of the forest, little to be seen of them but a few vague suggestions of hunched shoulders and pointed ears; even Brother Gregor, who stands directly before the fire, towering silently over us, is reduced by its dull glow to a hazy half-impression of his hefty torso, fluttering rags, flowing mane, and the whip dangling from his hand.

Minutes, perhaps hours - I have long since learned not to be mindful of the difference - drift by in silence. The last remnants of sunset fade into the blackness of the forest. The icy dampness of the grass beneath me soaks its way through my rags. The ever-cooling breezes pick up, rustling my fur, whipping my rags about me, and steadily numbing the fresh stinging of the wounds running down my back. From amidst the tightly-packed circle pressing in about me, I hear the rhythmic whispers of a few quiet prayers breaking the silence.

And quite suddenly, from behind me, I feel a familiar set of long, bony fingers sink into my shoulder; feel the tip of a sharp, clammy tongue slide its way down my bloody back. A gasp of bewilderment dies in my throat; and I remain silent as a cold, scaly hand wraps itself tight about my forearm, pulls me to my feet, and begins to tug me across the grass, away from the campfire's rapidly dimming glow.

My head reeling with bafflement and weariness, I find myself without the faculties to resist as I am tugged through the darkness of the forest, stumbling blindly over irregular patches of rock and root, feeling my guide weave her way effortlessly about the trees.

I have no inkling of how long we walk; but the weak light of our campfire and the faint murmuring of my compatriots - as well as the faintest notion of just where I am - have long since faded by the time that, quite suddenly, the trees and the shadows part, and we enter a broad clearing. The glare of the full moon shines unhindered here, illuminating an uneven, rock-strewn stretch of tangled grass and weed - and, at its centre, a cottage of brick and thatch, squat, unadorned, shadowy, and decaying, the walls visibly weather-battered and festering. And as the moonlight falls over her, I see her clearly again; her gangling frame, her frayed, fluttering gown, her glistening scales...

She gives my forearm another wrench. My foot catches in a tangle of bramble, and I stumble awkwardly forward; but she does not even glance about as she tugs me over the grass.

Steadily, we near the cottage. Something stiff and brittle crunches beneath my foot. I glance down; but in the darkness, I catch only a brief glimpse of a shapeless, jet-black something jutting out of the grass beneath me before I am wrenched forward, through the open doorway, and into the cottage.

Within, all is pitch-black and gravely silent, but the odour that at once clogs my nostrils is an intimately familiar one; the thick, damp, bitter stench of the plague. It hangs thick in the air, and gathers in the pit of my gullet. The same stench that clung to those empty, decomposing ruins that dotted the desolate countryside across which Brother Gregor had marched us; that wafted in sickening waves from my dying compatriots as, in their final hours, they descended into fits of coughing, choking up throatfuls of bloody sputum; that had, in those last few days, seemed to cling to the very walls of the priory...

From amidst the impenetrable shadows, a dull orange glow flickers feebly to life; and out of the murk, I can just barely discern the lizard girl across the room, her eyes fixed upon me, a sputtering candle in her hand. She stands stark naked, her gown in a ragged heap about her feet; and as my gaze instinctively drifts up and down her frame, I am struck. Wrapped in her shapeless, voluminous gown, she had simply appeared thin; but now, even in this faint glow, amid the thick shadows, I can see that she is, in fact, hideously emaciated. Her torso is warped and sunken inward, the flesh and scales of her gangling limbs wrapped tight about her bones. Yet even in this feeble glow, her scales glisten; and still, she holds me with that stare. That unblinking, piercing, hungry stare.

Slowly, she saunters toward me, cutting a dull swath through the gloom, rhythmically flailing her hips - her sharp, jutting, jagged hips - back and forth. And I stand motionless as I just barely register my whip slipping out of my paw.

Grabbing my wrist once again, she tugs me aside; and digging a paw into my chest, she gives me a hard shove, and I feel myself toppling backward, collapsing softly upon a shapeless expanse of spongy, coarse-textured something.

A stiff, icy gust blusters through the open doorway, snuffing out the candle's feeble glow; and the girl's bony frame is swallowed up by the shadows.

Beside me, I hear the candle clatter to the floor. I feel an eager tugging at my rags, which quickly fall apart; and another breath of frigid night air rustles the fur of my bare midsection. Thin, gangling, icy cold fingers run their way through my chest fur. Short, searing bursts of breath bluster over my face; and I feel a thin, clammy tongue sliding its way down the length of my muzzle.

I feel cold, scaly flesh against my bare torso. My breath catches in my throat, and blood races to my groin. Those bony, frigid fingers wrap themselves about my shoulders; and the tip of that clammy tongue runs through the fur of my neck. I feel her straddling my hips; feel the tip of my now erect phallus brush against the icy flesh of her inner thigh...

And quite suddenly, she thrusts her hips downward, and I feel myself enter her. I grasp at her sturdy thighs as a fierce spasm rips its way through my body; and before I can draw breath, my hips jerk impulsively, and I feel my warm seed spilling forth.

My head reels wildly; and I feel a weight lift itself off my hips. Stretching out my paws, I grope about blindly for a brief moment; but no longer do I feel that scaly form looming over me. My paws fall to my sides as I feel my naked body sinking deeper into the soft, flat surface beneath me; and despite the fresh gust of chilly air I feel rustling its way through my fur, I sense, as my head spins ever faster, and dull, formless colours swim before my eyes, that I will not be able to hold onto consciousness much longer...

The dull light of day glares through my eyelids; but I keep them clamped tightly shut as I groan with weariness and turn myself onto my side, curling slightly inward. My naked body is frigid to the bone; and beneath me, I suddenly notice a slight coarseness to the soft surface upon which I lie. My eyes still shut tight, I stretch out a paw; and through my fingers, I feel the rough, wiry texture of stale hay.

Several moments pass before I finally bring myself to open my eyes, wincing as I do so, the morning glare awakening a piercing throb behind my eyes. Blinking away the grunge, I weakly heave myself onto my elbows and gaze about me. I find myself curled up in the corner of what may, once, have been the interior of a cottage. The bricks in the walls are cracked and crumbling, the windows shattered, and the interior partitions - if there ever were any - have apparently long since fallen away, lost amidst the undulating heaps of debris that cover the floor end to end. The few remnants of furniture are toppled, battered, and layered with dust; all is silent but for the stiff morning breeze whistling through the windows; and of the girl, there is no sign.

What strikes me most strongly, however, is the smell which, I suddenly realise, hangs chokingly thick in the air: the foul, heavy stench of the pestilence, clogging my nostrils and gullet. An intimately familiar stench which hangs perpetually over the countryside through which we march like a fog, yet which I have not smelt this strongly since that day some weeks past, when Brother Gregor lead us through that lifeless village where the dead had choked the streets and the smell of death seemed to waft forth from every darkened doorway; where he had lead us into that chapel where festering plague corpses, many with paws still clasped in silent prayer, had lined the pews; and where he had ordered us to fall before the altar and plea for the salvation of these countless damned souls.

Yet in spite of the overwhelming stench, it is several minutes before I can muster the energy to push myself to my feet; and carefully picking my way over the rubble-scattered floor, I make my way toward the door, which hangs open, swaying limply in the breeze, its mechanisms having apparently long since given out.

Leaning my weary, dully aching body against the doorframe, I gaze out across the clearing, which is likewise scattered here and there with jagged heaps of debris. Aside from the morning gusts wafting their way through the clearing's tall, weed-choked grass and through the trees around its rim, all is still and silent; and yet it is several minutes before my eyes fall upon the patch of ground, some yards from the doorway, where the grass is severely burnt, reduced to a broad circle of dust, ash and cinders. And within the circle lie several charred, blackened lumps, most of them broken and splintered; but in the very centre, half buried in the ashes, lies one, thin and oblong in shape, which seems intact. And as my eyes adjust to the dim, grey glow of the early morning, I begin to discern its features: the long, thin ridge of a reptilian muzzle; the row of pointed teeth along its side; the broad hollows of its eye sockets...

I swallow dryly; and turning about, I hurry my way back across the cottage's interior, snatch up my robes from the floor by the straw, and fling them about my shoulders; and making my way out the cottage's front door, I hastily start out across the clearing. Quite without direction, I head blindly for the trees, but do not hesitate once. And as I step back into the cold, dim shadow of the forest, I glance ever so briefly over my shoulder back at the decaying structure; and for one fleeting moment, I fancy that I can discern the broad, pale shape of a long white gown, fluttering limply in the breeze, in one of the upper windows.