Anna von Wessen (45 page)

~

The seven thousand attacked from all sides, and assailed the wolves like rain made of stone. Much by a miracle, they had lost none of their numbers by the second assault; but the very first moment this third arrived, they began very suddenly to fall.

Neither Anna nor Vaya had deemed it prudent to abscond from the battleground, while the castle was still so full, and their companions seemed in so little jeopardy. But with the arrival of this new unfortunate circumstance, they communicated immediately each to the other that the time had come. As the whole thing had been devised already down to the last detail, Anna gave the signal; and in an instant, a large portion of the Weld broke away from the fight, in order to follow her. She remained with them to counter any enemies who might come; but Vaya shifted ahead, and was invisible to them till they had reached the entrance to the castle (which they did very quickly). After having fought almost effortlessly through the guards behind the heavy doors, Vaya pushed them open, and admitted the swarm of wolves into the castle.

And hence, by dint of the choice which had seemed to Ephram the only one he could make, Josev’s earlier fear was realised: and the castle was invaded.

Anna’s party crashed like rumbling thunder through the entrance hall, divided like rivers of the sea into the many corridors, and overtook the unwitting Lumaria with deadly force. Even the power to shift, as you may well imagine, is somewhat overshadowed by the oldest and most valuable element of surprise. For, when you have no idea that a pair of wolfen jaws shall be coming at your neck within a matter of seconds – when you have no sight of them, either, as they approach – there is no time even to dissipate into thin air, before the mighty vise removes your head like a wine-cork.

What few guards managed to escape the fray went immediately to Ephram, and told him with all manner of stuttering and nearly unintelligible screeching that the castle was compromised to the extreme. Ephram heard this without a word, but to be sure, his death-like countenance grew paler than perhaps it had ever done before. Josev nearly fainted; Abrast uttered a cry of horror; and Koro frowned with all the weight of sudden and absolute fear upon his lips.

War was raging, now, both within and without the castle. Vaya moved like a gust of wind, swifter than all the rest, taking heads much like they were tokens, and she the operator of a toll. Anna set upon a rampage through the chambers where the Lumaria were gathered, stunning them first with her size and strength, and then knocking them as little more than pins down the alley. When she received sword thrusts through her flanks, she paid them hardly more mind than an elephant would a pin-prick, and bent every offending blade into a most harmless pretzel-shape. The bolts were a different story, however, and were not so harmless; but the crowd was shocked all the more when she, the Narkul amongst them, began suddenly to shift from place to place, to avoid their shots. And this time there was no Sonorin.

She was invincible.

~

They fought all through the night. But by dawn the wolves were just as exhausted as they had thought they would be; and the Lumaria were much more of the same, than
they
had thought they would be. Involuntarily, then, the fighting grew less fierce on each side. Yet the Lumaria kept their strength just long enough, to shove each and every wolf from the castle, and bar it effectively against their immediate return. Then they went to gather together in the royal chamber, to bolt
those
doors just as fast, and to curl up to sleep on the floor at Ephram’s feet.

The wolves, meanwhile, retreated into the forest. They spent a long while sleeping in shifts, and tending their hurts. All the time they watched over their dead, for whom they had made one great bed of leaves, upon which to lay them till the end of battle. Silent tears soaked every inch of the dry, hard ground, and made it a field of mud.

Anna could not take her eyes from the spot where the Narkul Doric lay, with the eyes of his earthly face closed in eternal slumber. She recollected the morning he came to her in the cabin of Dio Constantín’s ship – a small and brief circumstance enough, but sufficient to mark clearly the reality that he had lived, and now was dead. His mother and father knelt beside him, weeping bitterly.

A little farther away, the Endai’s fallen were gathered together. Balkyr was standing with Dahro, who stood beside Ceir; who stood behind Nessa; who stood before the prostrate form of a golden wolf. Her eyes were dry, but her cheeks were deathly white, and her expression was one utterly stricken. The young man dead, it seemed, was he who had been meant for her own mate, and whose heart she had broken, when she gave it away for Cassie’s sake.

Ceir’s hands grasped Nessa’s bare shoulders. She leant forward to kiss her daughter’s fair head, but to none of the latter’s comfort, apparently.

“I only wish,” she said brokenly, with her eyes ever fastened upon Orin, “that he could have loved something else. I wish he had been happy. I wish . . .”

Weakness felled her to the ground, where her parents came down to console her. But she would not leave Orin’s side.

It was in the midst of these terrible displays of grief, that quite suddenly Koro appeared. Every wolf rounded on him – less because of who he was, than for the simple fact that he dared to come to them, at
this
time.

But Koro was wisest of the wise. He would not fail to speak with the utmost diplomacy, even to such an audience as they, when he had cause to believe that the degradation was to his own express benefit.

“What you must think of me,” he said very softly, “stepping amongst you at such a moment as this – well, you may believe I have an idea. But I come to request a parley.”

Vaya rose up beside Anna, and looked upon Koro with eyes which may well have cut more than diamonds can do, if only the object of her attention had taken but a few steps nearer to her.

“Your audacity goes without reference,” she said. “Even the likes of yourself can gauge its impropriety. Speak quickly, before I take your head.”

Koro evinced no symptoms of fear or hesitation, but simply went on to say, “I come to offer you a chance to retreat.”

Now, the truth was that even Ephram had not known Koro would go, before he shifted without warning from the royal chamber. The truth was that he lied. The truth was that he offered no mercy, and no great gift; but had merely come to find that he had no more confidence in his own victory.

Vaya opened her mouth to offer some retort, but was not given the chance to speak it. In an instant Leventh had stepped forth, and stood directly before Koro, gazing at him with eyes devoid of either wrath or blame. They were writ only with pity.

“I am sorry, Lumarian King,” said he. “It is too late. You have taken too much.”

And with that, he changed his shape in a winking, and knocked down Koro’s head.

Perhaps the old King was not so wise after all.

~

When the wolves had recalled their strength, and had tucked their fallen friends into their bed of death, they rallied themselves with no less purpose than before, and flew towards the castle.

The righteous rage they had felt earlier was, to be true, no more powerful than the deep, cold sadness which came now to take hold of their hearts. They stood waiting patiently outside the entrance to the castle, while Anna and Vaya (accompanied by Greyson and Clyde this time) shifted inside to drive their enemies out. With only the claws and swords of these four, violence was incited quickly, and the water came once again to a boil.

Vaya shifted for a moment to the platform behind Ephram’s throne, and shouted to the crowd of Lumaria, “Your King is dead! Koro’s head is no more!”

Her capture was attempted immediately, but of course she could not be caught. She only shifted, again and again, leading her foes ever on towards the castle doors. Anna flitted round them from side to side, back and forth, much as if she were rounding up cattle. Abrast faced her at the junction of the corridors, and raised a bolt-gun towards her head. But Greyson leapt upon him, wrested the weapon from his hand, and shot a bolt through his chest. The throng flowed on unheeding, and trampled him flat.

Whether they were chasing the hated Vaya Eleria, or being driven forth by Anna, or crawling from some hidden nook towards the last stage of battle, in that moment all of Drelho was making towards the place where the wolves were waiting. Even the little ones belonging to the castle, who were born such a very short time ago, were coming on. These were very small indeed, and appeared as nothing more than four- and five-year-old children. In fact they were sent first out the doors; and the wolves were stymied for a moment by their arrival, unsure whether to deliver the death blow. But as soon as a little one invaded their lines, leapt atop a wolf, and ripped out his throat with its very teeth, their doubts were immediately dispelled.

The two armies crashed together like lightning bolts. The front lines melded quickly into the rear ones, the formations were broken, and both races were mingled like a great lake of oil and water, slipping round each other with aversion, and taking as many lives as they were able. When the wolves pressed all the way through, and reached the front of the castle once more, they crushed the winged demons upon the stairs, almost as if this task were just as important a one as the crushing of Lumarian heads.

During this chaos (and being wearied with hunger after many hours of fighting), Vaya was for the first time caught off her guard, by no less than Valo and Ari. They cornered her at the forest-line, where she had shifted to aid a group of Endai who were being dragged away by Lewig’s guards. They managed to pinion her, and to rip apart the front of her mail. Then they began the lodging of a blade through her breast, so that she could not shift. She looked to the Endai behind her; but they were already dead, and their persecutors were vanished. She looked hatefully into her brother’s eyes, and spit at his face.

No one saw Anna coming. She rushed in from the blank grey mist behind them, and removed Valo’s and Ari’s heads with two snaps of her jaws. Then she changed her shape, and knelt down beside Vaya, to work the blade carefully from her skin.

She paused in her task, however, when she felt Vaya’s eyes upon her. She looked down, and tried to smile.

“I knew this would come,” Vaya whispered to her, as she glanced all around at the madness which reigned. “But it’s still very terrible – isn’t it?”

Anna lifted her to her feet, and tossed the blade to the ground. She stood quiet for a moment, with Vaya held tight in her arms. As their thoughts locked, so did their eyes; and the sweet pressing of their lips sealed the moment of their separation. War was calling – and they could not tarry.

But they returned to find that they were too late to save the life of Leventh. The cascading Lumaria had pierced the thoughts of the frazzled wolves, and had learnt by them the identity of Koro’s killer. Xeros’s Lieutenant, therefore, lay presently dead upon the castle stair, his great dark head matted with blood, and resting atop one of the red-slick stone steps, much as if it were naught but a gory pillow.

Yet they were not allowed much time to mourn this unfortunate circumstance; for just then, there drifted from the South a most ominous howling of approaching wolves.

Wolach was come.

Nearly all battle paused in that moment – for it was not only the wolves who recognised the dire prospect of the situation. Wolf and Lumarian, then, pulled apart briefly, to stare anxiously in the direction of the Narkul leader’s army. They saw the black, fur-covered heads crest the small hill just below the tree-line, with the great beast Wolach at their front. Their proportions were massive. They bore down like a storm.

The battle of before, which had seemed desperate enough, was all swept away by the new arrivals. They ploughed ruthlessly into the midst of the crowd, sent it soaring in every direction, and took full advantage of those who fell, to snap their necks. They fought against the Weld and the Endai for possession of the entrance hall. Xeros’s and Balkyr’s wolves tried as best they could to stave them off, but had at the same time to contend with the Lumarian soldiers. What a hopeless muddle it was!

But just then there happened a most incredible thing. You recall that before the battle, Ephram ordered all the servants locked tightly away. Shortly after Wolach’s arrival, however, they succeeded in breaking free, and in removing the Turins from each other’s throats. Much to the surprise of all, they came bursting suddenly through the castle entrance, and joined the fray as a mighty swarm. Their weakness and frailty, brought on by many years of cruelty and ill treatment at the hands of the Lumaria, was all cast off in an instant, and they were no less formidable than any other wolf that day.

And so the insanity continued. Anna’s and Vaya’s comrades were aided infinitely by the presence of the escaped prisoners; but still no headway might have been made in any direction whatever, till each and every last wolf and Lumarian lay dead upon the ground, and no one had won at all. Yet Wolach had come for one reason, and one reason only. This reason was Anna.

It took him not long at all to find her, for she towered considerably over friends and enemies alike. What foes she had been combatting scattered quickly at his approach, and she was left standing alone to face him. She merely growled, and curled her upper lip – though to be sure his wolfen form was a frightful one, more frightful perhaps than any other save her own.