Page 77 of The Wolf Queen

Chapter44

I readied myself to say no, that I had four mates and needed no more, that a very nice Granian woman would make him a far greater queen than I, but then he said the words. Just like the Devil in the stories, he offered me everything I ever wanted.

“The Granians won the day against the Strelans because they knew the only way to fight fire was with an answering fire. Some of the scholars discovered this chapel when we took what would become Aramathia, and they recognised the statue here, the stories. The wolf that ate the world? Many cultures tell of his story in one way or another, because at some point his worship was widespread. But those penitents wouldn’t have dared do what the general of the Granian army did. Gods and goddesses need avatars if they’re to have a direct impact on the world, but few are willing to host the dark power of the wolf…”

His smile spread slowly, all sharp white teeth.

“None but the desperate, and none were more desperate than them. The general bound his bloodline to the wolf in return for his power…”

And that’s when I saw it.

Granians didn’t like to admit it, but when I was growing up there was a kind of grudging respect for the two souled, able to fight as both man, wolf and a combination of both. Half of the revulsion towards contemporary Strelans came from the fact they’d lost that martial form when the queen came across the border.

But what if they’d possessed a similar power themselves?

Heavier armour would’ve only gotten them so far, especially if they didn’t have the might of the empire to keep supplying troops. The Granians had committed so much blood, sweat and tears into the invasion of Strelae, so to lose in the crucial last push was unacceptable. But with the break in supply lines, that’s what they’d be facing. The Strelans didn’t have to occupy and hold the land. It was theirs, they just had to push the Granians back and so the general would’ve been looking for any possible advantage to decisively win this last battle. I looked up at the wolf statue, seeing the bottom of its jaws from this angle, then back to the king.

The king of what exactly?

A stolen land, a stolen power? My hand shook as I reached up, watching those golden eyes darken, right before they closed. Because when I touched the side of his face, feeling the strength in his jaw, the stubble on his chin, those fangs pushing against soft, soft lips, he moved his face into my hand and told me.

“Granians feel like they sit in a position of superiority. Human ingenuity beats animal might, but they don’t know. Callum came onto the battlefield in full wargen form, but…” One eye opened to regard me steadily. “So did the general. The letters from the time back to the empire make it clear. He didn’t think he had any other means of winning the day.”

I’d seen visions of the final battlefield, but they always showed what happened after the dust had settled and so many Strelan men’s bodies littered the field. The ravens had croaked overhead, then picked through the corpses for the tastiest of pieces, but what if…? What if we rewound time to several hours before? My hand spasmed, gripping Bryson’s cheek, hearing his breath match mine, growing fast and raspy as I saw this.

Callum storming onto the battlefield,any number of two souled warriors at his back, all in the half-wolf form. They fought with devastating effectiveness, smashing into lines of knights on foot, clawing those on horseback down from their steeds to the sounds of men and horses screams. They were saving nothing back because they couldn’t. This was their last stand, because the Strelans were weakened as well. They’d been fighting for too long, on too many fronts, having lost key areas of land due to Eleanor’s prevaricating. Everyone was pulling out the stops, including him.

The general tossed off his cloak in my mind’s eye, leaving one of his squires to fetch it, still others rushing in to help him with his armour. Not to don it, but to remove it. The sight of this was hidden, could be explained away by the church as some kind of divine event later, or just simply hushed up and ignored, because in the end they and every other Granian would have what they wanted. The good land, the fertile one, to create the empire’s breadbasket, if they could only defeat the Strelans decisively. I felt my fingers dig into the side of Bryson’s face, into his chest when I saw this.

Men always looked so naked when they were out of armour, thin, spindly legged and vulnerable, but while the general was all of those things, it wasn’t for long. He raised a golden medallion, one I recognised from Rake, later the king’s possession. Rough warriors clustered around him chanting words I didn’t understand in a language I didn’t speak until this happened.

No smooth shift for the general, it was as if his flesh fought the process, the muscles jumping and twitching on his bones. He tried to shout, to scream, but the warriors around him began chanting louder, drowning him out. As the Strelans grew closer, smashing through the Granian front line, their words came faster and faster, until… The general dropped to his knees, hands slamming down on earth he had no legitimate claim to, as his head was thrown back.

I slipped from one form to another, just like breathing, but the general, black smoke poured from his lungs only to resolve itself as this, a very familiar black wolf. It didn’t look surprised to be here, unlike most other people around it. Those not fighting pointed or gaped at the sudden appearance of a massive black wolf on the battlefield, all but the Strelans and the warriors who had summoned him. Cheers went up within their number, right up until those golden eyes landed on them, then there was only silence, as the wolf stepped out.

Dying men were silenced as he passed, going limp as they finally crossed over into death. Any grass or foliage that had managed to survive the battle died as soon as those paws touched it. Horses stopped screaming, armour rusted, leather rotted and then there were the Strelans. Some of Callum’s warriors paused in the face of it, which was not smart.

That massive muzzle darted forward, gripping them between its teeth before shaking them the way a cat would a rat it caught. The two souled didn’t expire like the humans did, that detail I caught, but they died of much more prosaic means. Spines snapped, skulls smashed back and forth and necks were broken before they were tossed aside, then it went back for more. Callum paused where he was, his wolf sniffing at the air, trying to ascertain what this new threat was and decide on a response, right as he saw his men killed.

His cry, as it raked through the air, was part wolf, part man and all pain. He’d already endured so much, from ineptitude and apathy, to misdirection and mismanagement. All he wanted to do was keep his country safe and now… He stared at the black wolf, his brow creasing, his mouth sucking in breaths as he felt something die.

Hope.

But he couldn’t relent. He knew what would happen if he did. He’d already seen the massacres when the Granians took over an area. They picked off his people one by one, like a farmer might rats in a granary. It was only when the land was completely denuded of its native occupants that they would shift their focus to another area and another. The process wouldn’t end until the country was scoured clean of Strelans, and Callum couldn’t allow that to happen.

He roared to his warriors, the process somehow similar and completely different to the way he was with his Reavers. Those fighters were two souled, where the Reavers had none. So they rallied, coordinated, worked out how to stage a response to the appearance of the massive black wolf and they tried, gods how they tried. Strelans attacked the beast from all sides, stabbing blades into its flanks and clawing their way up, swarming around it, trying to take it down one piece at a time, but…

“Do you know when the first Strelan earned another soul?” Bryson’s voice was that of a storyteller gone hoarse from delivering too many tales by the fireside. “Do you know how they went from human to wargen?”

“The goddess—” I said, but he cut me off.

“This temple predates the Granian invasion. It predates the Strelans even. They conducted rites in the chapel of the Morrigan during the winter but…”

I saw a woman dressed in a long, severe gown of black, stepping into this cave, a golden crown on her head. She moved with a grace I’d never imitate, her dress pooling around her on the mosaic floor as she passed. The queen did not falter when she saw the black wolf statue, nor when its golden eyes gleamed, not even when it shivered, coming to life in her presence. She merely held out a hand for the massive muzzle to snuffle, then stroked her hand across the broad space between his eyes.

As I did Bryson now.

I blinked and all my visions fell away, replaced only by this. By him and by me, standing in this old, old temple.

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