Page 31 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

“Oh, this will be good…” Pepin muttered with a grin.

“You should stay here,” Axe said. “Bad enough that you’ve come out this far, but you could perch on the walls, use that bow of yours to take down many a Reaver. We saw no arrows at Wildeford, so we can assume they don’t use them.”

“You’d help with the defence of the manor and if we fail…” Weyland’s voice trailed away as he blinked, like he was only considering this possibility for the first time. “If we fail, you’ll take Arden and hightail it out of this bloody place.”

“Wolves run towards a fight, not away from it.” A firm feminine voice had us all turning to see Selene and her Maidens had arrived. She ran her eyes down my body, seeming to note each weapon with an approving nod. “I told you to have a care with Darcy. She’s not a girl to quiver behind a closed gate.”

She turned around then at the sound of women doing just that, talking rapidly with their menfolk as they were hurried inside the walls, their voices growing louder and higher pitched as they went. Pepin seemed to watch every single one of them as they rushed in.

“Darcy’s a wolf and a wolf hunts. She’ll fight with us,” Selene said in a tone that allowed for no arguments.

But she got them anyway.

“She’ll stay with us if she’s mad enough to go beyond the wall,” Axe blustered.

“She’s also got a mind of her own.”

Everyone fell quiet at Gael’s comment. He regarded me steadily and the expression was a complex mix of fear and pride. I nodded then, wanting to rush over and bury my nose in his neck, to drive out everything but my mate, but I couldn’t. Not yet.

“I’ll fight with the Maidens,” I said. “They’re sworn to keep me safe.”

“And they better,” Axe growled. “If this is part of Mother’s schemes…”

“And you’ll be by my side, my pack,” I said, my voice wavering slightly at that, emotion I hadn’t acknowledged rushing in. I’d wanted to fight, to become a knight, just like my father’s men, but right now every single bloody awful thing they’d told me about the realities of war hit me. Blood and shit, that was the most common response. “I keep getting told we’re stronger when we’re working as a pack, so we’ll stay together.”

“Well, it’ll put an extra fire in my belly to take these bastards down,” Weyland said with a rueful shake of his head, but when he looked at me, I blanched at the very real pain in his eyes. “Nothing can happen to you, Darcy. Not a single scratch. By the goddess—”

“Let’s save our blasphemy for later, shall we?” Dane said, appearing beside his brother’s shoulder. “The rest of our soldiers should arrive in a few hours, but we may not have that long. We need to get outside the gate, set up a shield wall and dig in. We may have minutes, hours, we don’t know, but we must be prepared.”

And with that, any debate was quelled and replaced by action.

Men streamed out of the gates, even as women and children struggled to get in. Hysteria was starting to build, I could see that in the way their eyes were too wide, their mouths pinched. Mothers ushered children forward in gentle tones, but the shake in their voices betrayed them. We emerged out into the main street of the small town, Dane leading us further down to meet a cluster of men already standing there.

“We need to form a line across the entrance to the town,” he ordered, and people scrambled to do his bidding. Some men had swords and bows on them, but others just held pitchforks and the long knives that people used to cut down vines and weeds. Not a terribly impressive force, but this was all we had, so we needed to make use of it.

“Find what you can,” one of the officers that had ridden with us said to the poorly armed men. “Tables, chairs, crates. Create a blockade, something to try and slow the bastards down. Our goal is a simple one. Do whatever we can to stop them from getting past the gates.”

He didn’t need to explain why. Everyone’s eyes strained to take in the host of women and children still being hurried into the manor. The people of Aramoor had seen evidence of what the Reavers would do with the refugees. And those were the ones who could walk the distance to make it here. We scanned the treeline then, imagining what destruction had been left in their place of origin.

“Don’t stay behind the barriers when they come,” Pepin said.

A strange kind of silence had fallen over the valley. Everyone who was supposed to be inside the gates, was. Then there was us. It felt like the fields, the animals, even the trees themselves held their breaths, just like we did.

“Shut the fuck up, Pepin,” Axe growled, “Darcy, come stand here.” He dragged me over until I was squarely between the four of them and they closed around me as a result. The feeling of their bodies pressed into mine, of their shields locked tight in front of me was both comforting and constraining.

“You get a pass for that, being a prince of the blood,” Pepin shot back and when she grinned, her fangs flashed in the afternoon sun, but then she turned back to me. “These Reavers, they fight in wolf man form?” I nodded. “Then they’ll be able to punch through these crates with little effort. The barrier won’t keep you safe, so keep that in mind. Only She can.”

“Religious fervour is no bloody protection either,” Weyland snapped, then his eyes jerked down to me. “We’re your pack. We’re put on this earth to keep you safe. Stay with us, stay behind us…” And that’s when I stiffened. My gaze hardened and he at least had the wit to see it, something rising inside me that always did when someone did this. Underestimated me, chided me, put me in a little box for my own protection.

“How many Reavers have you faced, Weyland?” I asked, my voice hard.

“Well, none, but—”

“Then we’re all inexperienced in this.”

I had more to say, so much more, my chest puffing up, the words forming, but then my head whipped around. Selene caught that, as did the other Maidens, their hands going to their bows the moment mine did.

“Look lively, lads!” she shouted. “We’ve got company.”

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