Page 108 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

His eyes flicked upwards, lightning striking down around us, creating an electrical barrier that none dared cross, Nordred murmuring the words over and over. Callum’s black blade seemed to gleam in the flashes of phosphorescent light.

“In your name, dread queen,” he said, right before he attacked.

54

I’d fought plenty of duels on the training grounds, even tackled real opponents, but as soon as his sword hit my outstretched shield, I knew I was out of my depth. He grinned, as if he caught the moment I recognised that, then he pulled his sword back and struck again.

“Trained you up to be a little warrior, did he?” Callum asked, the person he spoke of apparent. Nordred was focussed now on stopping the Reavers from approaching us and helping their master, just as our troops worked to do the same. “Thought he’d raise up a ‘strong’ queen, in every way that Eleanor was weak.”

“Must’ve gnawed at your balls, having to bow down before a woman,” I ground out, then shoved my shield up, forcing his blade away as I struck out at him. But with his greater reach, he was dancing away before my blow hit. “Everyone focussed on sister dearest to the exclusion of you. Especially if you were only barely allowed to live, some sensitive soul not wanting to drown a newly born baby.”

I blocked, blocked his strikes, watching his lips peel back from his fangs more in response to my words than my strikes. He couldn’t parry what I spat at him.

“Of course, they fucking should’ve anyway.” I could see it then, two heavily lined hands holding a squalling baby boy, small for being forced to share a womb with his twin. “It’d be a sad thing, a little mite lowered into the water, crying, thrashing out but unable to do anything as they pushed you under. That open mouth would’ve filled with water, it would’ve been rushing in your nose.”

He let out a guttural cry, swinging wildly now. His strength was so bloody evident, making the metal layer on my shield buckle, the wood beneath splintering. If he connected with my body even once, I would be done, the power of those blows enough to shear my head from my shoulders.

“Your cries would’ve been muffled, heard but not answered, as they held you down, the water lapping around their arms as your arms and legs thrashed, a ‘humane’ end to a useless, unneeded boy.”

“Unneeded?” Apparently I was mining a rich vein here. “It was Eleanor who deserved to be drowned like one of a litter of unwanted kittens! What did she do but wander around the castle like a lost lamb? Pleasant, amiable—”

“So she had that on you, as well as the crown. How unfortunate.”

He snarled before shifting his angle, trying to stab upwards and under my shield, forcing me to jerk it down and then dance back to evade his blade. I was on the back foot, dodging, dodging before I swept sideways, leaving him to stumble forward and then dealing a stinging but non-lethal strike across his back.

I should’ve pushed my advantage. Nordred shouted something to that effect as I stood there, just watching the blood well. My success took me utterly by surprise, and I had to shake myself out of my reverie as Callum wheeled around. He had no such qualms with making use of the opportunity, dealing me a flurry of blows, my arm burned with the effort of blocking.

“So everyone hated you, or worse, just overlooked you,” I said, somehow able to see the ‘spare’ child that people paid little to mind to when he was a boy. Some recoiled from him, born to a queen when only daughters had traditionally been produced, seeing him as an unlucky creature. “And your poor bloody sister. She felt sorry for you, didn’t she? Little baby brother who no one cared for. Not even your mother. She died rather than bear the consequences of bringing you into the world.”

“Don’t talk about my mother!”

I snorted at that, parrying, parrying, then striking, but my lack of reach was stymying me at every turn. I was faster, more responsive, able to see him telegraphing his hits before he made them, but it wasn’t helping me. Because I would only stay faster for so long. Already my muscles were trembling, my feet stumbling over the rough terrain in an attempt to twist clear of him, before ducking in under his guard.

“Why? She would’ve despised what you’ve become, wished she’d listened to the priestesses and aborted you before you were born. She could’ve tried again with her mates—”

“No, she couldn’t. My fathers were an… inconvenient match,” Callum told me, his voice becoming deadly quiet as he marched closer. “They were dispatched, before I was born, for the crime of thinking they could assume control of the throne though their baby daughter.”

“So all the men in your family are bastards. Got it. Some would take that as an opportunity to not repeat the mistakes of the past.” Gods, he was hitting hard. My hands vibrated with the power of his sword striking my shield head on. “But no one could accuse you of being perceptive enough for that.”

“Is this your ploy?” I peered past the rim of my shield, seeing him standing there, looking just as fresh as when we’d started this fight. “Let me guess. You’ll bait me until I tire, then deploy whatever showy tactics Nordred taught you, slicing my head from my shoulders?”

“You have to admit, it’s not a bad plan,” I said, eyeing his neck covetously, almost able to feel the slice of my blade through cartilage and bone. “Blood for blood. Yours spurting out onto the earth, payment for everything you've done. All these casual acts of fucking brutality, performed with no more thought than a boy pulling the wings off flies.”

I stepped backwards, letting the weight of my shield sag, both to give my arms a rest and hopefully to lure him forward.

“I’ve met men like you before, puffed up by their own importance and sadly, somehow gathering the power behind them to ensure your pathetically tyrannical reign. You’re a bully, a bastard and I wish to all the gods you had been drowned at birth, because it would save me from having to end you now.”

“That’s what you think is going to happen?” His head tilted to one side. “So I haven’t been indulging your delusions of grandeur, just as you have mine?”

The fact that we both might be using the same ploy only now occurred to me, an oversight I was about to pay for. But I’d been working with another theory, one I was willing to test. When he attacked, I reached down, pulling up the biting scratching beast that had been lurking inside me the whole time, letting her free, just as she’d been howling for. I got taller, my arms longer, muscle packing my frame in a way that made no sense in terms of physics, yet here I was. Facing down a man the same height, the same strength, but with one crucial difference.

“You have no wolf.”

His strike faltered as I said the words, neatly sidestepping him as I tossed my shield away, knowing I had to rely on her now. On her instincts, her blood lust. She wanted this man’s throat between her teeth, his life blood in her mouth right before she tore the life out of him.

I’d seen the Reaver wolves running over the mountains, massing as a pack, but I had just assumed he was one of them. But at my words, Callum, he grunted, a psychic pain followed quickly by a physical one as my blade caught across his chest, parting his armour like butter and biting down into the flesh beneath.

“It's not just that you were male that made you unworthy.” I caught his blade on mine, twisted it and then slashed out, forcing him back. “You were a dog in a pack of wolves, always watching them and their strength with eyes filled with the most awful of envy, something that stabbed into your guts, and keeps twisting even now. You command a regiment of wolf warriors that are invulnerable, brutal, but you’re just a man.”

---