How they’d managed to attack without warning was a question that kept rattling around in Gwen’s mind. The rumors of invasion were true, but hadn’t come from Phanes, as expected. Instead it was the Calypsians.
Alastair said, “Happy bonding day,” and picked a sword from the ground. The previous owner wouldn’t need it anymore, his eyes blank and staring.
Gwendolyn said, “Fight with honor,” and obtained her own weapon, a long metal bow and a satchel of arrows.
As one, they joined the fray.
Alastair may have been injured, but he was highly trained, and he likely had plenty of adrenaline to chase away the pain in his twisted ankle. Still, Gwendolyn kept an eye on him as he fought his way toward a platoon of men and women who found themselves backed against a wall. They were in danger of becoming dragon fodder if they didn’t push their enemies back. Alastair managed to defeat two Calypsians before coming up against a determined trio with crackling whips. With their long range weapons, they landed several blows, eventually forcing him to his knees.
Gwen took aim as they closed in, three arrows simultaneously strung on her taut bowstring. Alastair raised his sword to defend against a potential killing blow that would never come.
With a melodic twang! her arrows flew. Two easily passed Alastair on either side, finding their targets’ throats, while the third whizzed by his left ear and entered the third soldier’s mouth, which was open wide with a snarl.
His enemies collapsing before him, Alastair looked back and mouthed a silent Thank you, and then continued onward, uniting with the platoon. In the midst of allies, Gwen felt he would be safe, so she turned away, seeking others in need.
As it turned out, she was the one in danger now. Several of the enemy had seen her triple-arrow feat, and raced toward her, leading with broad shields to protect themselves.
Her heromark burst to life once more. Shooting arrows straight and true was something she’d learned the hard way, through countless hours of practice, but this next challenge required power beyond that of a mortal. Instead of running from her foes like they might expect, or trying to pierce their shields with her arrows, she wrenched two arrows from her satchel and charged them.
Surprised, their pace slowed, but didn’t stop. She reached the first enemy, a woman with silky black hair twisted into a braid and a black whip. The soldier swung the whip with a crack, but Gwen moved like lightning, dodging the blow, swerving around the woman’s shield, and jamming the arrow through her leather armor and into her chest.
Before the woman had fallen, Gwen was onto the next two enemies, a pair of men who seemed intent on using their shields as battering rams, coming at her from either side. This time she went airborne, leaping far higher than any normal Orian, much less human, could jump. Soaring over them, she kicked one in the face, while flinging an arrow into the other’s eye.
The remaining enemies fled, but she shot them in the backs, dropping each in turn. She felt no remorse, not after what had happened to Arwen and so many others.
Despite her efforts, it wasn’t nearly enough. The dragons wiped out entire platoons with their flames, while the foot soldiers continued to herd the remaining legionnaires deeper into the inner castle circles. Eventually they would run out of room to retreat and would be sitting ore monkeys.
That’s when reinforcements arrived, from both the air and the forest.
Legionnaires riding ore hawks descended on the city, ripping holes in the clouds, attacking the exposed flanks of the dragons, sinking their talons into the riders, throwing them from their mounts. Like dead flies, they dropped from the sky, landing with screams and sickening thuds. The dragons fought back viciously, melting the skin of several ore hawks and slapping them from the air with their spiked tails. But there were hundreds of ore hawks, their metallic wings reflecting the sun in blinding bursts, and eventually the dragons had no choice but to retreat, heading for the ocean. The ore hawks and their riders chased them off amidst cheers from the soldiers below.
From the forest came the ore cats. Sasha was not amongst them, Gwen noted with pride—her friend had kept her word and stayed with the young boy. The agile beasts slashed through the invaders, ripping out throats and clawing through leather armor. Gwen helped where she could, sending volley after volley of arrows into the enemy, until there were none left standing.
The fighting ceased, though ore cats continued to prowl amongst the piles of bodies, seeking injured Calypsians to finish off with animalistic fury. One by one, the ore hawks and their riders returned, landing atop the high castle walls to provide a warning in case the dragons arrived with reinforcements. The surviving legionnaires searched for survivors, directing Orian healers to those in need.
And Gwendolyn searched for Alastair and their fathers.
She found her father first. When he saw her, he ran to meet her, one of his arms hanging unnaturally, tucked into his side. Rather than chiding her for disobeying him, he said, “I’m not surprised you came to fight. You are my daughter, after all.”
She hugged him and he grimaced. “Your arm,” she said, searching his flesh for the source of the river of blood cascading down his arm, dripping from his fingertips.
“I took a blade through the shoulder. My arm is dead for now, but perhaps the healers can help.”
Gwen nodded, thankful it wasn’t worse. “Have you seen Alastair?”
A pained expression slashed across her father’s face, sending a ragged bolt of fear through her. “I have not, but his father is dead,” he said. “Levi was killed. I’m sorry.”
Gwen hated herself for the relief she felt in that moment. She’d feared it was Alastair who was dead. Though she could feel the sadness and pain at Alastair’s father’s death, she was overwhelmed with gratitude that it wasn’t her bondmate.
She hugged her father again. “Will you help me find Alastair?”
“Of course.”
They searched together, starting at the last place she’d seen him, with the platoon that’d been backed against the wall.
The bodies were piled three high. “Alastair!” she shouted. The silence was deafening.
They picked through the bodies for a long while, and Gwendolyn felt her heart stop every time she spotted a face that could be him. She only started breathing again when she determined it was some stranger.
Then her father found him. “Over here!” he said.
She ran to him, dropping to her knees beside the man she loved, the man who was still alive, still breathing, though his breaths were ragged, his lips cracked and slick with blood.
“It’s too late,” her father said, placing a hand on her shoulder.
Gwen shrugged him off. “It’s not!” she snapped. “Healer!” Alastair raised a finger and pressed it to her lips. That was when she noticed the blood flowing freely from the edges of the armor across his chest. A pool had already collected beneath him.
“I am lucky…to have loved…one such as you,” he said, his voice weak and trembling.
“No,” Gwen snarled, tears swamping her vision. “You are not going to die on me. I won’t allow it.”
Alastair didn’t seem to hear her, his eyes distant. “I was saving this poem…for our bonding night,” he said.
“Then keep saving it,” Gwen said. “I’m not listening. Tell me tonight, when you’re bandaged and clean.”
“Night black, day bright,
Stars sparkle, moonlight.”
“Stop,” Gwen said. She grabbed his hands, squeezing. “Please, stop.”
“Leaves rustle, streams flow,
Lightning flashes, winds blow.”
“Please,” she said, but there was no command left in her voice, which had been stripped of all strength.
“Gleaming ore hawks, a silver dove,
So much beauty, but none like you,
My love.”
She choked out a sob and pressed her head into his chest. His lips were cold on her brow. “Don’t go,” she begged. “Don’t leave m
e.” She remembered the night her mother had died. How she’d begged her the same way. How it hadn’t made any difference, in the end.
“It doesn’t hurt, Gwendolyn,” Alastair said. “Do not fear for me. I will wait for you in Orion’s Forest.”
“No. I need you now. I need you here.”
“I will wait.”
And then Alastair died.
The sudden Calypsian attack had been coined the Dragon Massacre. Evidently, more than a dozen enemy ships had sailed from Calypso days earlier. They’d not been spotted by eastern scouts, because they’d travelled in a wide arc, so far offshore as to not be visible from land. By the time they’d made their move back toward shore, on a collision course with Ferria, it was too late. Though the Southroners were defeated, they continued to attack the borders to the south. Gwen’s father was killed shortly after in Barrenwood. Several witnesses informed her that it had been Emperor Roan Sandes, the famous dragonrider, who had killed him. She cursed his name every night, along with every Calypsian and Phanecian. All told, ten thousand died before the easterners fought off their enemies. More than six thousand had perished in the assault on Ferria alone, including both Freestep men.
Before Gwen’s father had departed on his final ride south, he’d told her what Alastair had said to win him over. “I will love her until the day I die,” Alastair had promised. And that had been enough for Boronis Storm to give his blessing. “All I ever wanted was for you to be loved,” he’d said, with tears in his eyes. And then he’d galloped away, never to return.
Every day Gwendolyn would place fresh flowers, their petals wet with tears, on the graves of her lost loved ones.
Her mother.
Her father.
Arwen.
Captain Levi Freestep.
And Alastair, her beloved legionnaire poet. Her reason for breathing.
And each day she vowed never to love anyone as much as him again.
7: Bear Blackboots
The Northern Kingdom- Circa 352
Back then, he wasn’t known as Bear Blackboots. Back then, he was just Henry, a boy of sixteen, undersized for his age, timid and quick to tears.
On this night, the tears wouldn’t stop falling, a waterfall of despair, streaking his pale cheeks so smooth he might’ve been a boy only ten name days old.
His mother had been sentenced to die. And die she would, on the morrow, burned to ash by fire as western law required for condemned sorceresses.
The thought drew a fresh wave of tears from his eyes, blinding him as he stumbled along the dark, stony corridor.
She is all I have. What will I do?
“Hurry up, boy,” the dungeon master growled, shoving Henry from behind. He tripped, almost falling, but managed to steady himself with a hand on the rough wall. Heat washed over him; he’d almost plunged headlong into a torch. He squinted and jerked away, the thought of fire on skin bringing bile to his throat.
I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to see her, I just want to go home…
It was too late. He was already here, manhandled to the front of the cage holding her. They called her the Black Witch. They called her the Western Oracle. They called her Evil Incarnate. Once, she had been known as the first of the Three Furies, a Wrath-loving woman who advised the king on spiritual matters. Henry knew her only as Mother, the woman who kept him safe, who fed and clothed him, who comforted him when he awoke sweating and screaming, in the throes of one of his night terrors.
“Dear Henry,” his mother said now. Her dark hair was unwashed and greasy, hanging in listless curls to her shoulders. Her eyes were a rich brown, flecked with forest green. She wore a dirty brown dress. The dress she would die in.
(Already, the other Furies and their followers, the furia, had adopted the practice of dying their own hair red to distance themselves from their condemned leader.)
Her long spindly fingers reached through the bars, trying to touch Henry, to wipe away his tears. Even as a prisoner, she thought it her job to comfort him.
“Mother, no,” Henry said, shaking his head. However, his actions belied his words, and he fell into her arms, letting her cradle his head in the crook of her shoulder and chest.
“Hush, sweetness, for the night carries a weight of its own enough for all of us.”
Her words, as always, felt like a wash of warm breeze on his skin, melting through him, calming his heartbeat and nerves. She was doing it again, using something unnatural, something that went against the Laws of Wrath, to make him feel…right.
Nothing was right.
He wrenched himself back, tearing his small-framed body from her grasp. His feet tangled together and he tumbled backwards onto his rear, the stone rough and cold through his baggy trousers.
“Henry,” his mother cooed. “You fear me too?”
He bit back tears, swallowing hard. “Never, Mother, I could never.”
“Come here.” Once more she held out her arms.
He wanted to. Wrath, how he wanted to.
“I can’t,” he whispered, the words seeming to rip out his breath as they escaped his lips. He felt empty inside. Numb.
“Henry?”
He looked down, inspecting his feet, those narrow, short boots that were small enough to fit a child. Two years earlier, his mother had had them custom made for him by the best bootmaker in the realm, a man named Vaughn. Henry still hadn’t outgrown them, a fact he was teased about mercilessly by the other boys his age.
“Touch my hand, Henry,” his mother said, and this time it was a command. No, he thought, not a command, not exactly.
A spell.
He began moving forward, marveling at his mother’s power. Who can cast a spell with naught by a few words? And if she can, why doesn’t she save herself, melt down the bars, break through the walls? Perhaps the Furies are right. Perhaps my mother is too dangerous to live.
He hated himself for thinking it.
Of its own accord, his hand reached out to meet hers. He stared at it, willing it back, but his body was no longer his own. Her fingers were surprisingly warm as they threaded through his.
This was what she had become. It had all started when they’d gone on a journey south, beyond Phanes and Calyp, sailing across the Burning Sea, all the way to Teragon. “A journey of revelation,” his mother had called it.
She’d never been the same since.
“Henry,” she said, her eyes pouring into him, as if they were liquid copper, seeming to fill his entire field of vision. “I need you to gather my notes, my prophecies, to hide them across the kingdoms. They shall not be found until their appointed time.”
He wanted to speak, to say all the things he’d been feeling, to release his anguish, his fear, his desperation, but his mouth was sealed shut. Again, his dark thoughts about his mother returned. No one should have that kind of power, should they?
Not that it mattered—he knew he would obey, as he always had.
His mother’s eyes rolled back into her head.
He wanted to look away—please look away—but couldn’t, his eyes tethered to hers by a force he knew he might never understand.
She spoke, the timbre of her voice deepening, like someone else was communicating through her:
“Their hearts will fail, their lives will end,
But yours will last, it will extend,
Beyond all measure, on land or sea,
From skin to skin, from teeth to teeth.”
The dungeon master growled something unintelligible, stepping forward. On the edge of Henry’s vision, he saw the man freeze. The hunched prison keeper strained to push forward, but an invisible force held him back.
She is doing it. Does she control us all?
His mother continued speaking, the second stanza of what was sounding more and more like one of her poems, her prophecies.
“Fang of wolf and fur of bear,
To warm, to change, to save, to tear,
A climb to the mount, a jaunt through the wood,
Their fates will be yours, to help them is good.”
With a swiftness that took Henry’s breath away, his mother’s eyes rolled forward once more. She blinked. Whatever force held him to her was gone, and yet he refused to pull back, to let go.
Like so many of her other words, Henry didn’t know what these ones meant.
All he knew was that something had changed forever. He could feel it in his bones, in the beat of his heart, in the breaths pulling themselves in and out of his lungs. He could feel it in the silence and in the growl of the dungeon master as he was released.
“Enough!” he snapped. “Your time is up.”
Henry clung to his mother, forcing the man to pry his fingers away one by one.
“Mother?” he said as he was dragged away. “Mother?”
She said nothing, watching him go.
And then she was out of sight.
Three years earlier
When Henry and his mother had departed on their journey south to Teragon, he had been excited. No, more than excited. He was going to see the world! He’d loved seeing the jealousy on the faces of his tormentors, the obnoxious youth of Knight’s End who built themselves up by tearing him down. Most of them would never leave Knight’s End, much less go on a real voyage across a real sea. Their jealousy had grown even greater when they’d learned Henry and his mother were departing with the king’s full blessing.
And, for a while, the experience had been everything Henry had hoped it would be. Riding in a horse drawn carriage along the Western Road, stopping in famed wayvillages like Restor, teeming with travelers, merchants, and outlaws; hiring seats with a floating barge company that roamed the Spear, riding the currents all the way to the ocean; boarding a large merchant ship and riding the tumultuous waves over the Burning Sea…it had all been so wondrous that Henry hadn’t even minded the seasickness.