Page 21 of A War of Crowns

“Good,” he finally rasped to Calix. At last, he set aside his whetstone.

There was no point in delaying the slaughter further.

Aldric lurched to his feet and made for where the horses waited, hidden deeper within the cave. “Beck,” he called to his second-in-command and oldest friend. “Make ready. We’re moving.”

The rising tide of excitement was a nearly palpable thing. Even Calix had a visible spring to his step when he bounded off to find his mare.

Sliding his polearm through the harness strapped across his back, Aldric stepped toward his own horse, Mourn, and greeted the great brute by tapping his fingertips against the destrier’s shoulder. With a snort, the stallion responded to that nonverbal command by lowering his bulk to the cold dirt so Aldric could mountmore easily.

Luck had been the only thing keeping his well-trained boy alive all these years. He didn’t know what he would do when he finally lost him.

Aldric’s gauntlet-clad fingers skimmed across the many scars ridging his stallion’s neck before he finally hoisted himself into the saddle. With a nudge of his heel, he urged Mourn into rocking back up to his full, towering height.

What Aldric lacked in vertical presence, his destrier more than made up for.

While his largest Son, Rakon, doused the campfire, his eldest, Leif, led a few of the others in a quick prayer to the Lord. Aldric curled his lips at the sound of it. But he wouldn’t deny his men their freedoms. They could pray to a god who never listened all they liked.

On their own time.

“Mount up,” he barked to his loitering Sons, and they hurried to obey.

Mere moments later, their band of thirteen rode out in silence. Only the thud of their horses’ hooves against the earth as they picked their way out of the cave disrupted the mist-drenched stillness of the night.

It was a quiet ride toward the valley where the Kunishi had made their ill-fated camp—uneventful yet rife with tension. Aldric rode at the front of the pack next to his second, Beck, with Calix and the others just behind.

They were drawing close now, close enough that he couldsmellthem. A Kunishi camp always had a distinct sort of scent to it: thescent of horse coupled with the exotic spices they always burned during their prayers.

Reining Mourn to a halt, Aldric lifted his left hand in the air to signal his men to hold. But they lost their element of surprise when a whinny from one of their own horses pierced the night.

Aldric cut a glance to the side and hissed at the sight of his youngest Son, Sven, losing control of his gelding. The horse jerked against the boy’s reins and thrashed its head wildly from side to side. The whites of its eyes gleamed in the darkness.

Sven struggled to rein the beast back in.

“Shut him up,” Calix snarled.

“I’m trying, I’m trying—”

Beck warned, “He sensesyourfear.”

“It’s not me. I swear—”

“Shut him up, or I will,” Calix warned one final time while raising his bow and drawing taut the string.

Aldric’s nostrils flared as he suddenly caught the whiff of another strange scent on the wind. Something musty and edged with a tang of theother. Magic.

The reports had been true. The Kunishi had a Fangtalker.

And the Fangtalker had a pet.

“Warg!” Aldric shouted in warning before the monster in question shattered what was left of the stillness with its heart-rending roar. From the mist, the great beast emerged, its eyes aglow like smoldering embers in the darkness. It was coming in fast, surging forward in a flash of shadowy fur and dripping fangs.

Another of his Sons, Eisway, shouted, “The villagers reported a large dog, not awarg.”

Beck snarled, “If that’s a dog, then I’m a duke.”

Aldric ripped free his glaive and barked out another order of, “Archers!”

Arrows rained from his Sons’ bows like hail. Three slammed home into the warg’s throat.

---