Page 4 of Blood of Wolves

“Fangs?” someone asked.

“No. They’re wearing mail.”

“Aeretollean?” someone else asked, voice surprised.

“Must be.”

“But how?”

“Who…”

The little drake butted Náli hard in the shoulder with his nose, his gaze clearly distressed.

Náli rubbed at his shoulder and glared at him. “You woke the whole camp. Are you happy?” But inwardly, he’d gone clammy cold. The drake had sensed an intruder before the horn sounded; he might have saved any one of them being stabbed in their sleep. He reached then to pat his muzzle, and the dragon leaned into the touch gratefully, eyes closing.

The snap and furl of wings overhead revealed Percy had leaped aloft; his wing beats stirred the tents, and Náli’s hair; kicked up a fine spray of snow.

Náli gripped his sword hilt, his fighting muscles springing to life, as Leif clambered out of the tent behind him – and the forward guard of Beserkirs herded their captives into the center of their small clearing.

“Shit, is it Fangs?” Leif asked.

Náli didn’t answer him – he couldn’t.

“Hold,” Oliver called up to his drake. “Percy, hold, wait.”

Yes, that was good. Náli laid a hand on the neck of the agitated drake beside him, willing him to hold, too.

He’d caught a glimpse of bright, clean mail, and of brown leather; of soft gray wool, and a standard picked out on the breast of a jerkin: a skull. The skull of Naus Keep, of the Corpse Lord.

Náli let go of his sword, heedless that it dropped to the snow, and took off running – heedless too of Leif’s shout, and the drake’s whining cry. Someone tried to grab him, and he slipped through fingers, ducked under an arm. People were shouting, but he ignored them.

“Move!” he shouted at the Beserkirs in his way – and when they wouldn’t, only stared at him in bemusement, he ducked around them, too.

The prisoners had been stripped of weapons and had their hands bound with crude rope. Their noses were red, their faces chapped from the cold and the wind, but there was no mistaking them, no doubt that they belonged to him.

They had come. His Death Guard had come.

Mattias walked at the head of the group, as befitted the captain’s crossed swords stitched beneath the skull on his jerkin. The hood of his cloak had slid back, or been pushed back, more likely, and he bore a fresh, nasty scrape along one cheekbone, marking where one of his captors had struck him. His eyes glittered, angry and worried, dark as river stones, and his jaw was clenched, muscles leaping in his throat as he turned his head side to side, searching.

“Mattias!” Náli burst out, before he could take hold of himself. “Mattias, you’re here!”

His gaze snapped around, and widened. The tension bled out of his face in a sudden rush, and his lips parted. “My lord,” he breathed.

Náli could feel his face aching in the cold – aching from smiling so wide. He’d flung open his arms, and he was running, still, barreling toward his Guard captain.

Until the memory of his mother’s voice washed over him like cold water.He’s your guard, Náli, not your friend. Your servant. Don’t ever get confused about that.

Mother, home now in the Fault Lands, trying to find him a bride so that he could continue the line; so he could plan for his inevitable early death.

He pulled up short, chest and throat aching, and let his arms fall to his sides. “You came,” he said, and it wasn’t an effort to stow away his smile; to drag on an imperious expression.

Mattias blinked; the glimmer faded from his eyes. He ducked his head – as did his comrades, all four of them. “We came, my lord. You are well?”

It hurt to swallow. “Yes. I am…well.”

Erik appeared at his side. “Untie them. Mattias,” he said, as the Beserkirs complied. “How did you make it up the pass?”

“Majesty, we–” The flap of wings overhead caught his attention, and then he was cursing, and reaching for the sword that was no longer on his hip.

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