Page 61 of Blood of Wolves

It didn’t make Tessa feel any safer. She wasn’t sure anything could, at this point. She’d never lived through a siege, and wasn’t sure she would now. Wanted to help, to be one of them.Our people. But was terrified down to her bones. She wanted to cry, and bit her lip hard to keep the tears at bay.

“Here,” Revna said, when she was done, and Tessa looked down to see she was being offered a dagger. A large one, with an antler handle and a sheath set with tiny rubies in the shape of the family stag. “Just in case.” Revna smiled.

Tessa had never held a knife larger than what she’d need for dinner, but she buckled this one on, and, surprisingly, felt a little better with its weight against her hip.

~*~

“Two-thousand, you think?” Rune asked, squinting toward the mist-shrouded harbor, and its ever-thickening forest of lit torches.

Beside him, Bjorn clucked. “Look at those ships. I’d say at least ten-thousand.”

Rune gulped. “Right. Ten.”

The Great Norther Phalanx – with Uncle Erik at the head of the spear and all his lords and bannermen behind him – could have repelled ten-thousand Sels.

But the Great Norther Phalanx wasn’there.

He gripped the edge of the parapet and tossed his hair back when the wind blew it across his face. Torches streamed over the tall sides of the Selesee ships, marching like ants down into rowboats, and onto barges strapped with siege engines; crawled along the coastline, and up the docks; flooded the narrow, sloping streets of Aeres proper, where shops, and sod-roofed houses sat dark-eyed, and silent.

Bjorn said, “They’re going to burn the city.”

“What?” Rune whipped around to look up at him – at his stern profile backlit by torchlight, his jaw set at a grim angle. “Why!? It’s empty!”

Bjorn let out an agitated breath, nostrils flaring. “This is why everyone’s always telling you to pay attention to your studies, you sheep head. War isn’t just about doing what you have to to win; it’s also about crushing your enemy’s spirit.” He tapped his temple. “It’s as much a head game as anything else. They want to make you desperate.”

Rune’s heart leaped against his ribs, hard knocks that left him dizzy. “Right.”

Bjorn nodded. “Watch.”

Rune had grown up hunting; had killed, and gutted, and skinned rabbits and deer and even a spotted cat, once. He was no stranger to blood. The hardest kill of all had been recently, when he’d been forced to put down his own horse, his head ringing from the fall, the young stallion screaming in agony before he set his blade to his throat. He didn’t think of himself as squeamish.

And yet his belly squirmed as he turned his head, slowly, so that he could see the tiny lights down in the city again. It took a long time for anything to happen.

“They have to lay down the oil,” Bjorn said.

The moment the words left his lips, a single flame licked up, high and bright, larger than all the torches. It danced, a lone banner against the indigo of dawn – and then it spread. Sputters, sparks; a soft orange glow like a sunrise. In a matter of minutes, the log walls of the homes, and of the temple, were ablaze.

“Gods,” Rune murmured.

“Go and braid your hair,” Bjorn said. “Dress in mail and leather. And put on Erik’s cloak of ceremony. They’ll send a rider, and you’ll need to be the one to meet them…your grace.”

Rune shuddered, and turned away from the blaze, whole body pulsing with the frantic beat of his heart.

Down in the common room of the royal apartments, he met his mother, and, a few steps behind her, Tessa. He stumbled to a halt, and did a double-take. Someone – Revna, of course – had dressed her in a lady’s leather armor: corset, collar, breastplate, and the heavy leather skirt, divided down the center to accommodate a riding dress. She carried a heavy knife on her belt, and her face was the color of sour milk, her freckles stark across the bridge of her nose.

Revna caught his gaze and sent him a warning look before he could speak.Don’t say it. He ground his molars, and nodded. He could comfort his betrothed, but today was not a day to coddle; to pretend that all would be well and that armor was unnecessary.

“We’re going down to the great hall to let everyone know what’s happening,” Revna said.

Beyond the diamond window panes, the sky was beginning to pink.

“They set fire to the city,” he said, miserably.

Tessa gasped.

Revna nodded. “I expected as much. They’ll send a rider.”

“I know. I’m off to make myself look like a prince.”

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