Page 112 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

“Because their focus is centralised here,” a harried looking man said. He had on a doublet and trews that were tailored finely enough to make him appear relatively well-to-do, but not ornate enough to be a lord. A steward, I assumed. One of those men left in charge of a noble’s land, the de facto lord while his master was away. “They daren’t leave the capital for fear of losing what place they’d fought for in the hierarchy and so all they care about is their balance sheet. I’ve told Lord Fulder that I cannot get him the same returns as I did before the Reavers came and the bastard…”

He stopped for a second, then raked a shaking hand through his hair.

“I’ve done my duty, made sure the taxes were all paid, but some of our people… They come to town on tithe day and they’ve got nothing but the clothes they’re standing in. And, more besides: injuries of the like I’ve never seen. And that’s the ones that can walk. We have wounded coming into the estate every day and we’ve got no medicine for them and—”

“Peace, Virgil,” Pepin said, placing a hand on his shoulder and, just like Del, he seemed to deflate under that touch. “Tell us what you need, and we’ll send what we can out to your people.”

“The lords don’t see what’s going on, protected here,” Virgil said in a much smaller voice. “They never see how hard people toil. I’m just told to tax the others harder to make up for the lack and I’m bloody worried that there’ll be an uprising if I try to do that again.”

Pepin’s eyes glittered then, and, for the first time, I wondered if she was two-souled. Her eyes were brown, not blue, but something sparked deep inside them which made me wonder.

“The festival is a time for truth and lies,” she said. “Everyone attends masked.”

I watched her walk over to a large box, then pull out a mask that I knew all too well. When she raised it up to put on her head, I went very still. Pepin. Now placing a wolf mask on her head, her face shrouded by a cowl of grey-flecked fabric until only her eyes and her very sharp teeth glittered from its depths.

Wait, what?

As I watched her, I could hear the words of another woman in my ear. “I’m all the wild, viciousness of youth. The part of a woman who won’t sit down and submit.”As the Maiden’s voice began to fade away, I heard a low chuckle.

“Not quite as fancy as what you’ll be wearing,” Pepin said, but… was it Pepin? She seemed transformed by the mask, becoming something else altogether. “But it’ll do the job. Survivors, people from the country, will swarm into the city to celebrate the festival of the triple goddess and with it will come a freedom.” She ran a finger along the papier mâché skull, her finger tracing the shape of a long canine. “You’ll be able to tell people what’s going on, Virgil. Everyone will. The city and all its people will know about the fate that awaits them if they won’t wake up.”

“And will they care?” Virgil snapped. “They’re protected behind their massive wall with the king to oversee them.”

“You’ll have to make them care, in any way you can. Come.”

The only time that strange timeless state used to come over me, when learning rather than doing, was when I was left to my own devices in the library of the keep. When I pulled down book after book of my own choice, discovering things about Granian geography and history, of tales of knights and queens. Of Strelan society structures, of all the things a son should learn, but not a daughter. Linnea had tried to teach me more appropriate topics, but when my interest waned, so did my attention, even if she struck me across the knuckles with her wooden ruler each time I drifted off. And right now, I felt that same strange focus kick in. Pepin was showing me how this place worked, everything she and her people had achieved, and my mind had decided that I needed to learn all of it.

The place was massive. There were meeting rooms and storage facilities that had been repurposed as emergency housing, with families set up on camp stretchers, many huddled together, blinking as they tried to take in everything. I found myself filing the information away, forming a map inside my mind.

Food that had been brought in from the estates by the stewards was stored in great larders and a kitchen had been set up where provisions were being handed out to the masses of people. I took it all in. The places people came in, where they were sorted, places to heal, places to get clean, places to eat, to sleep, places to share. My eyes felt like they were getting bigger and bigger, my sense of my body falling away. I was watching a catastrophe play out in slow motion and I had this feeling that I needed to catalogue it. But that ferocious need stuttered, then stumbled, when we got to the next room.

Pepin led me into one of the intake rooms and I saw people staggering in through the tunnels, then taking a seat, waiting their turn to be admitted. It felt like I floated after Pepin then, moving from person to person, hearing their stories. Some wore their scars openly, the blood of the Reavers still on their skin. Others you had to look a little deeper for it. They might have wiped away the soot, and the bruises might have healed, but there was no missing the shadows in their eyes, the scars on their spirit. For the first time in a long time, my breath stuttered in my chest, and my ribs felt like they’d been forged from iron.

“They raped my daughter over and over,” one man said, his face a mask of disbelief and misery. “I heard her screams, and she kept screaming until finally they were done. I was trapped under too many bodies; the rafters of our house had fallen on the lot of us and when I crawled out—”

I was dragged forward.

“They cut my son in two,” a woman whispered, rocking back and forth on her stool, her eyes wide and opening. That’s all she would, could say, over and over, a sad faced man at her side.

I was moved on.

“Gutted the cows, the sheep. Just left them screaming there as their entrails fell onto the ground in a bloody mess,” said a grizzled man. “Went for the dog and dispatched him too, then came for me. Was only the scent of better prey that pulled them off me. They found the widow next door and her children.”

On, always on.

Their stories, their feelings, they were a massive wave, and I was just a tiny shell on the seashore. I didn’t want them to come crashing down on me, but crash they did, pulverising me with all their tales, too many tales of pain. What I’d seen in Wildeford was an open sore on my soul, but this? Each story was another sharp slash across my heart.

Or my lungs.

I sucked in a breath and that’s where it stayed, the oxygen trapped in my lungs, unable to escape.

“Nordred…” I squeaked, the words barely making it past my lips. “Nordred….”

“Darcy!” Weyland’s face swum into view and as he blocked out the sight of the rest of the room, of everyone else, my chest eased a little. But when I tried to suck in a breath, my lungs burned with the need to, without the ability.

“Nordred!” I yelped, clawing at Weyland’s arm and he nodded.

“Nordred!” he shouted, his alpha bark cutting through the noise and the chatter, the pain and the stories, the rolling waves of pure bloody misery. Darkness fluttered at the edges of my vision and with it I thought I heard the caw of a raven. “She can’t fucking breathe!” Weyland snapped when the horse-master appeared.

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