Page 1 of The Wolf Queen

Chapter1

I was having a nightmare.

I had them so often now that it was hard to remember which I had while awake, and which came to me in sleep. I looked about me and all around was an endless, desolate forest. The leaves had all fallen and crunched under my feet as I walked deeper; the empty branches above me stark and black, raking the grey skies. And the clouds, they loomed, grey and swollen, making me shiver with a sense of foreboding as they hung over my head like an executioner’s axe.

“Mother…?” I said, in a small voice, one which I rarely allowed myself to use. The dead forest swallowed the sound and answered back with the breeze rustling through dried leaves, coupled with the skitter of hidden lizard feet. “Maiden…?”

I restricted my prayers to the two more genial forms of the triple goddess.

But they didn’t answer.

A harsh caw had my head whipping up and the whirr of wings alerted me to the fact I wasn’t here alone. Ravens came to land on the branches in a great flock, those ebony eyes shining as they watched me walk.

“Mother…?” I was pleading now. “Maiden…!”

Crone.

The Morrigan’s voice was both the sound of a sword’s blade sharpening on a whetstone, and the wet slice of it through flesh and blood.

“Mother!” I shouted, wanting to drown out that voice; but how did you do that when it was inside your own head? “Maiden!”

They were not who I would have cried out to for help in my waking life, and that was how I knew it was a dream. Instead, I was forced to do something that my non-dreaming self would find nonsensical: to passively watch, with a growing sense of horror while the ravens flapped their wings and cawed, as she landed.

The golden sheen of her feathers let me know who’d joined us, but if that wasn’t enough, there was this: the golden-headed raven clacked its beak as it stared at me and then said the word.

Crone.

“Moth—!”

Crone.

“Maid—!”

Crone. Morrigan.

Then I heard her low laughter, saw her focus shifting down my body. My gaze followed the path of hers, and what I saw had me stumbling backwards. Blood covered my hands, and when I slapped them down on my dress, more spread. I realised with horror that, beyond what was on me, blood also bloomed from deep within, seeping free with that ponderous dripping feeling of a woman’s moon time, and more besides.

I clutched at my stomach, feeling the searing pain that came, but it was nothing compared to that which stabbed at my heart. I had sliced off my hair with a knife; I had watched Nordred be burned on his pyre; I had seen the Reavers swarming up the walls of Snowmere like rats in a wheat silo. And now I saw this.

My unborn child dying.

They’d told me I needed to be a mother to my chosen people, but to do that I’d had to lose the baby that grew within me.

“No…!” I wailed, my voice ringing out through the trees, plaintive and despairing, the ravens’ caws a harsh counterpoint. I sank down to my knees and wrapped my arms around my middle, as if I could hold the child inside me, keep the babe safe and secure.

You’ve developed the strength of the Maiden, the Morrigan’s pitiless voice told me.And loved with the warmth of the Mother, but you’ll need my cruelty before this is done.

“No!” I barked that out so loudly, so vehemently, that I startled myself awake. Blinking my eyes, I realised that I was sitting up on my bedroll, one hand stretched out before me, the vision of that nightmare forest in my mind superimposed over the darkened canvas of our tent as the first few tendrils of dawn began to slowly lighten it. Beside me, Axe had rolled upright, grabbing his weapon and looking for the threat, before turning to stare at me.

I stared back.

Tears streamed down my face, shed silently, even as the others shifted restlessly in their sleep. I loved that they could sleep on, but hated it as well. How dare anyone, anything, enjoy a moment’s peace when all of mine was gone?

Axe moved closer, moving slowly in the way that people did when gentling wild animals, and for good reason. Ever since that awful moment of realisation in the cave below the citadel, when I’d learned that I’d lost the babe I hadn’t known I had—gods, was it only a week ago?—I’d shied away like I was half-wild whenever one of them approached me. But when I didn’t pull away from him, he gathered me close and simply held m. The tremendous bulk of his hard body was exactly what I needed. My eyes closed and I sank into him, drawing comfort from his strength.

“C’mon, lass,” he said, finally, nodding to my bow that I’d left beside me the night before. “We’ve got to find meat if we’re to feed the masses. We may as well get a head start on things.”

Chapter2

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