Page 90 of The Wolf Queen

“The bastards are coming,” a gruff voiced northerner said as I appeared. “But we’ll set their loins afire with this.”

The northerners who dared build castles so close to the border of the two countries had to be ingenious. They were holding a part of the world that was hotly contested, and in the early days that was against the formidable wargen enemies. So they’d ensured to build the entrance to their keeps like this.

A portcullis was set up at the very entrance to the keep, not often used. We’d had to work all day oiling the chains and getting the mechanisms moving again before lowering it. But beyond that was not the gate? There was a long corridor of stone walls that herded the enemy into a closed space, one we would use well.

“Pitch and oil is all set up, milady,” one man barked, gesturing to every pint of oil, pitch and flammable fluid we could find in the surrounding land.

“We’re ready to burn every single one of them.”

I stared out into the battlefield, watching the Reavers draw closer and closer.

“Raise the portcullis!” I shouted to the men manning the winding mechanism.

They’d argued with me about this, the Granian veterans. Wisdom was that you’d let the walls do their job, holding off the enemy, only surrendering ground behind the portcullis when you had to, but what we fought weren’t wargen. These beasts had no sense of self preservation, would batter their fellows to death to provide them stepping stones to get over the walls. I knew the keep’s were strong. The duke that had built them had ensured it stood during the border walls and it did still. But we needed to protect them, lure the Reavers to the fight on a ground that suited us better. So when the portcullis slowly raised, the Reavers did just as expected, roared and then ran faster for the ground they felt was being ceded.

“Ready!” the grizzled northerner in charge said, each man moving to get behind the vat, bucket, barrel or Cook’s good stock pot that we’d requisitioned. We’d managed to fill many of them with fuel for this fire. “Hold!”

That command was necessary, because when the Reavers burst into the narrow entrance, the sound they made was terrifying. Their bestial roars, their snarls, reverberated off the stone walls, getting louder and more monstrous as each second passed.

“Steady!” the commander said, eyeing the men and with good reason.

“The fight is ours to win,” I urged and the nearest men flushed then and nodded.

They wanted to tip the oil over the beasts as soon as they came in sight. The instinctive need to run the hell away from such danger burning bright inside each of their chests. I knew that because I felt the same, the sharp blade of fear cutting into my confidence.

I’d been here before, heard those roars, saw them shoving their claws into mortar between bricks and then clambering their way over the walls, but they had no such luck here. Granians might not have wargen strength, but they did have other skills. Each stone was perfectly cut to interlock with the others, something my father had pointed out with pride more times than I could count, so the Reavers raked their claws over a surface that gave them no purchase. But while the corridor was filling, we couldn’t move, couldn’t drop our payload until now.

I’d seen cattle readied for transport to markets far away, watching the massive beasts pushed in tight into the back of a cart, with barely enough room to move their head, let alone their bodies. The Reavers looked like that now as they became wedged in tight, that need to kill us overcoming good sense.

Just as we’d predicted.

Like this?I asked the Morrigan, before giving the order.

She would feed richly today and I was the one serving her grand meals. I jerked my hand down and each man moved as one, splashing everyone and everything within that corridor with oil. Burning brands were snatched up and hurled down with all the desperation of frightened men, but it wasn’t them under attack but the Reavers.

Burn… I hissed inside my mind, stabbing the Sword of Destiny down into the stone to help send my order wide.

A boom of energy rattled the very stones of the keep, but it wasn’t the walls that were affected, but these invaders. Fire exploded out, forcing everyone back, to the sound of my men’s cheers. I looked back into the keep, saw my mates ranged there and Selene and her Maidens. The veterans of Snowmere shouted loudest, needing a victory after such a stunning defeat, the sounds of the Reavers’ screams music to their ears.

And a battle hymn for mine.

I snatched my sword up, going to stand at the edge of the parapets, stepping between the crenellated stone walls to get a bird’s eye view.

A woman shouldn’t glory in the way fire burned fir from skin and then skin from flesh. She shouldn’t drink down the sight of blood and bone being exposed, nor the second souls stolen by a ravaging enemy. But I did. The Morrigan was right. I didn’t need her at all. We had everything we needed to win the day right here. So for just a moment I treated myself to the sight, the sound of their screams, watching Reavers turn to men, then to corpses that were ground back into the earth they were born from before I turned to the commander.

“The next phase begins.”

“Gods be with you, milady,” he said with a nod, right before I ran to the opposite side of the parapet and leapt down.

I should’ve broken all of my bones at this, but instead I landed light as a cat.

“Darcy!” Axe shouted, eyes wild and rolling, the blue blazing almost too bright to look at. “We’re ready, lass. We’ll bring every single one of those bastards down, just you wait!”

His roar was infectious, other men and some women making the same sound, reminding me of what they were. Granian, Strelan, those labels were meaningless now. People desperate to protect their homes, others wanting to fight to get theirs back, believers in the goddess, the gods or the wolf that ate the world themselves were all clustered close, forming something I needed.

“Get me near the gate,” I told Axe and he plucked me from the ground with incredible strength, putting me on his shoulders before wading forward and placing me on a decorative plinth by the gate.

“Good people!” I hadn’t used this voice, the one that seemed to capture everyone’s attention, since entering the court and watching a king die, but I used it now for far greater purpose. “What lies beyond these gates is a foe the like many of you have never seen.” I scanned the crowd, seeing Selene and Orla, seeing Annis and so many of the refugees. “Or an enemy you know all too well. Before at Snowmere, we were caught unawares, but not so this time. Those beasts burn right now.” A roar went up across the courtyard. “But more will come to step over them, to come for you and the family you keep safe beneath this building.” The old, the weak and those that needed to be protected had been quarantined in a massive cellar beneath the keep. “These bastards will kill every single one of them if they get past us.”

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