Page 9 of The Wolf Queen

And ready to ally themselves with the other side.

“Create a warg army from good Granian soldiers?” I said. “Killing all of the soldiers in Grania was never going to help our cause, but winning them to our side.” I nodded slowly. “That may be just what we need.”

Chapter7

The refugees arrived the next morning, when we were packing up camp. Every able-bodied person picked up all they could carry or strapped it on the backs of horses and mules. It was as they were doing this, the refugees staggered out of the forest like the walking dead of myth and, for a moment, I froze when I saw them, fancying that was what they were. Bloodied and broken, they shuffled towards us, but as the cries of children and the moans of the injured let us know they were human, not shamblers, I tightened the clasp of my saddlebag and then walked closer.

“Greetings—” I started to say, my mates swearing as they strode forward, rushing to join me, but I was quickly silenced.

“Are you her?” the woman at their head asked in a harsh voice, whilst staring fixedly at me.

I knew her look, one of barely suppressed horror, honed into rage.

“Which ‘her’ do you seek?” Weyland asked, his voice silky smooth as he appeared at my shoulder.

“You know which one.” The woman’s eyes narrowed as her lips thinned, the skin around her mouth tight and puckered. From the look of her, she hadn’t eaten or drunk water for at least a day or two. “You are, aren’t you? The outsider who wants to be queen.”

She tossed a bundle at me. In the same moment, Weyland’s sword was out of its sheath and pressed against the woman’s neck, the rest of her group hissing. But this was all background noise to me. I was transfixed by what she had thrown my way, my hands reaching out, shaking, to accept her ‘gift’.

At some point in time, this poor little bundle had been treasured. The fine stitching on the blanket, the way it was tightly swaddled around the tiny form. But tears filled my eyes, blurring my view of the bluish body within.

“Darcy…” Weyland’s hands were on my shoulders, steering me away, but I resisted. I couldn’t, wouldn’t look away. The baby’s neck hung at an unnatural angle, purplish blood having clotted around it at some point.

“Join him, that was the message I was charged to tell you,” the woman spat in my face. “King Callum killed my baby and told me to tell you this, lest he kill me too. Join him and become his queen…”

She had more to say and I was honour bound to listen to it in the face of her loss, her pain, but I physically couldn’t hear, the sound of my blood pumping too hard and fast in my ears, drowning everything else out. When I spoke, my voice had taken on that echoey quality it sometimes had in the past and my words carried, silencing everyone else.

“Never,” I assured the woman, meeting her gaze easily now and looking past her, across the distance, to the man, no, that creature that had so traumatised her. “I will never bend a knee to that usurper and I’ll be damned if any other Strelan does. We ride for Grania, to find food, men and weapons, so we can fight back and reclaim our lands. You can ride with us or stay here and wait for our return.”

It felt like my voice echoed across the whole clearing, the only sound that of birds rising in a great flock from the nearby trees, though there were no ravens amongst them. Then one man stepped forward, his eye hastily bandaged with a grubby piece of cloth, stained with old blood.

“You mean to take those bastard Reavers down? And to do it with steel you take from the bloody Granians? Well, count me in.”

More men and even women stepped forward then, swearing the same thing, their enthusiasm helping lift my spirits, if not those of the mother of the dead baby. She shook her head slowly, then bent down, singing a low, shaking song as she collected her child again. She crooned to it as she walked away, tears finally filling her eyes.

Why did she cry now?I wondered later, as we walked, rode towards Hartley Garrison. Why did she cradle a dead child close to her chest, one she had tossed at me like it was a sack of potatoes? I stared out at the moors of home, seeing the purple heather and the sparse trees and feeling a strange mixture of familiarity and contempt. Perhaps it was this: It was only now that she could allow herself to grieve for her child, let all the emotions she’d kept battened down inside her out. It seemed an odd thing, to be envious of a woman who had suffered so much, but I was. My eyes were dry, my hands on the hilt of my sword, because that’s what I had to do. Del rode up beside me, Jan sitting astride his pommel, cradled between her brother’s arms. My time for grieving would come, but it was not yet.

Chapter8

Garrisons and border castles used to be built differently to the way Hartley was designed. The walls of my father’s keep flared out slightly, like the mouth of a pot. The reason for that was because, when the older buildings were constructed, they were made to defend against wargen that could take the half-wolf form, then claw their way up the walls and over the parapets.

As we were about to do now.

The women and children were stationed further back in the forest, away from where the fighting would ensue, protected by those that were wounded. Selene and her Maidens, along with the general and a select group of soldiers, stood at the forest’s edge with us.

“Looks poorly defended,” General Rath said with a sniff. “Barely more than fifty men.”

“There have been few real conflicts of late,” Dane replied. “As soon as Father fostered the idea of being ‘trading partners’ with our usurpers, the Granians became less vigilant.” He turned around and faced the soldiers. “A weakness we are going to exploit. Everyone knows what to do?”

This was just like being back in the field outside Ironhaven again, but I wasn’t keyed up and excited this time, nor fearful. I felt empty. More exactly, I felt nothing but a sense of dreadful purpose, one that must be fulfilled. This garrison wasn’t full of men forced to serve there against their will, the men here were an obstacle to what needed to happen. It was either my people or theirs. And I would always choose mine.

“Take the beacons out first,” I added, nodding toward the wide braziers placed up high on the walls. They would be kept stocked with dry kindling and firewood and quickfire powder. It’d make the fires burn a bright red when lit, more visible at night, which was one of the reasons for our daylight attack. But the fires, more so the smoke, would still be seen by anyone on the lookout for warning beacons. “We don’t want to alert every garrison along the border that there is an incursion taking place.”

“Well, if we do, we’ll fight them, too.” This soldier was an older man, with a little grey in his beard, but his rakish smile had the others laughing which was exactly what we needed.

Even though we outnumbered them, we still had to believe we could do this. Otherwise our steps would falter, our sword arms would be raised too slowly. I felt the need rise, the desire to see this done, as I wrapped my hand around my hilt, and I looked around to see if anyone else felt the same. When I caught Selene’s eye, she nodded, smiled—a rakish wild expression that blazed across her face—and then stepped out of line to face everyone.

“You are wolves now, every single one of you,” she said. “The Mother has returned our queen to us and we are a pack.” No other person could’ve injected the same kind of feeling into that word—pack—like she could. “A pack runs together.” Soldiers started to shift restlessly. “A pack stands together.” When she pulled her sword from her scabbard, I did too, instinctively knowing what would come next. “A pack fights together!”

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