Page 106 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

We’d been so organised, regimented before, but apparently there was no time to organise another such stratagem. As one, we stared down the Reavers waiting for us and then we charged.

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“We’re taking the bastard out, not you,” Weyland snapped as we sprinted across the battlefield, but I paid him little mind. I couldn’t afford to cater to his masculine sensibilities, not while we were dodging flickering flames, jumping over dead bodies, scattering ravens in our wake.

“We need to make this a decisive victory,” Dane said. “Take Callum out at all costs. Because if Darcy’s theory doesn’t hold true…”

“Any chance of sending some of that fucking lightning down on the bastard?” Selene asked Nordred. “Would make this job much easier.”

“Do it, but not too soon,” Axe said, eyeing the Reavers. “My blade thirsts for blood.”

They argued about that between pants, our legs moving like pistons, surrounded now by all of Strelae’s armed forces as we ran towards destiny. The golden light filled the lot of us, forcing our hearts to pump harder, our muscles to contract faster. But I knew. What mine was, how this would end, and why Nordred had been tasked with teaching me how to fight for so long. So when he waved a hand, muttering those arcane words, I hadn’t been surprised to see a bolt of lightning striking down from an increasingly angry sky. The clouds had darkened exponentially, becoming a sullen bruise purple. I equally wasn’t surprised that the bolt aimed for Callum went veering off sideways, stabbing down into several of his Reavers.

“Bastard has all the luck!” Axe grumbled.

“No,” I replied, “he’s god-touched.”

Goddess touched, really, I could hear her chuckle in the back of my head. For some bloody reason he and I had the goddess’ hand laid upon us and now was the time to work out who would walk away with her blessing on their shoulders. Me, I wanted that as much as the breaths I sucked in as I ran. Neither of us I suspected. We would be sacrificed on their altars as sure as if we were dragged into those caves, a knife sliced across our throats, and I swallowed convulsively at the thought of that, almost able to feel the sharp edge against my skin. But I just pushed on, forcing myself to move faster, hearing the war cries of those around me right as I met my first foe.

I was forced to slide to a stop when a Reaver burst through a wall of flame, claws at the ready. My bow was off my back, an arrow in my hand with a speed I couldn’t credit, but that wasn’t my focus. I found his heart without a second thought, drawing the bow and then letting the arrow fly, the Reaver choosing that moment to rush towards me.

And meet the point of my arrow.

His roar was abruptly silenced, his body falling to the ground. My mates said something by way of congratulation, Selene and her Maidens sending up some kind of cheer, but that all fell away. I was on the hunt. I moved forward now on light feet, dancing across the earth as I got closer, my next arrow in hand. I shot the next Reaver I saw, not even stopping to watch him fall, feeling the reverberations in the earth the moment he did, before I was loosing another arrow and then another. I shot the quarry out from under our own men, leaving them standing there, watching the Reaver slump over at their feet before they charged on. Again and again, I shot my arrows until my finger closed on the last one.

When I drew it, I held my fire and my mates charged forward, meeting the Reavers that struck out for us, Selene and her Maidens striding to take out any others. I was surrounded then by a strange honour guard as they worked to protect me from every other enemy but him.

“This is it, lass,” Nordred said, a strange kind of calm settling over me. He waved his hand, sending a gout of fire veering off and after some charging Reavers, seeking them like hunting hounds, another gesture striking others down where they stood. He manipulated the elements with a kind of casual ease that must’ve given rise to the legends about them. “I can’t kill him. If I’d been able to, I would’ve…”

As his words faded away, I saw Callum bursting into a much younger Nordred’s chamber, staring down at him and his sister queen with a look of abject disgust.

“I’d have flayed the fucking bastard’s skin from his bones, forced him to endure all the pain he visited on her, on his people. I knew this day would have to come, as soon as I sensed his presence, but she…”

“Don’t kill him!” Eleanor’s voice contained all of the alpha bark she’d never seemed to muster at any other point in her life as a naked Nordred rose to protect his mate.

“She made me promise, and she was my mate. I’d do anything for her, always.”

Just what that sacrifice entailed became clear as he wielded fire and lightning with merciless intensity, the only indication of what it cost in the shake of his hands, the ragged rasp of his breath.

“Pepin told me to train you first, then look after you when I saw what kind of bastard your father was, but she never specified why. Bloody vague goddesses. It’s this, though. It has to be this. He’s what drove Eleanor across the border. He struck this dire fucking bargain with the Morrigan when Eleanor left. It’s you or him, lass, and I vow it’s you.”

I nodded then, not letting him know what my own bargains entailed, and then strode forward, across burned wheat and through flickering flames, their bite barely felt as I reached him. Soldiers fought valiantly, some successfully, some not, but this time, thankfully, I didn’t feel their pain as their throats were torn out by snapping jaws, their guts dragged out by raking claws. But I saw no evidence of pain on Callum’s face as his own men were hacked, slashed, sliced open and then as they fell to their knees, their wolfish heads struck off. Not even when it was my mates doing the slaying.

The Maidens danced through the fire, with all of the balletic grace they’d displayed on the dance floor, and as they did so, I saw a shadowy figure pass with them as they attacked their enemies. Pepin had come to see them perform their rite on the holy day, but what demonstration of worship was greater than this? The wolf pack hunted and she hunted with them, phasing in and out of existence at their sides, tearing through their enemies. But a sharp caw from above had my eyes jerking upwards to see the flock of ravens had expanded exponentially, their black feathers barely visible against the storm clouds, until it looked like they had become one.

“Eyes forward, lass.”

Callum stepped down from his horse when I looked back down the battlefield and that’s where he stood, waiting for me. I moved, just as I had on the moors that day, with the kind of swift, silent steps that would lull a deer into a false sense of security, but this time I didn’t bother to stay downwind. Let him suck in my scent, smell the disdain, the deadly intent there. He would die or we would die, those were the only options right now and that’s when I realised I might have the Morrigan’s favour in this. He didn’t care who he killed to achieve his goals, but I didn’t care if I lived or died, as long as I achieved mine.

Will the sacrifice of two of those you deigned to touch be sufficient? I asked the Morrigan.

Only time will tell, little queen, she replied. Fight or die. Show me what you’ve learned.

My arms trembled with the effort of keeping the bow drawn, but for some reason I couldn’t let them unbend. My focus narrowed down to the point of my arrow and where Callum lurked.

“Watch out, lass!” Axe shouted, lumbering in front of me to block the strike of a Reaver, then tearing him in two. His wolfish head was thrown back, howling a savage song of victory as he moved onto the next. I felt the hot splash of Reaver blood against my boots as I got closer, closer.

Back on the moors, a millennia ago, it had felt like I was possessed by some kind of strange spirit, one which guided my arm, my eye and, right now, as I lifted my arrow, sighting the smug fucking bastard down the shaft of it, I felt the same thing. I sent up a prayer to different gods this time, ones I was much less certain of their regard, but could confirm with greater confidence their existence. I sucked in a breath as Callum’s chin lifted, challenge flashing in his eyes. I muttered a curse, damning him, damning his twisted fucking vision, injecting all of the pain and suffering I’d been witness to as a different kind of savage prayer. Then I let the arrow fly.

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