Circle of Reign (19 page)

“Go back to sleep,” Hedron mumbled in a daze.

“Wolves,” Reign whispered again. She did not take her eyes from the foremost wolf that stood in front of the others. In normal circumstances, even a child wood-dweller would likely be able to outrun a wolf or predator of almost any create. But the late Thannuel Kerr’s twin children were starved, malnourished, cold, and emotionally drained from their flight.

Reign pushed down on Hedron’s face with the palm of her hand. This time, Hedron sat straight up ready to slug his sister. Instead, he saw her face, pale as death. He recognized this particular shade of pale as fear, not cold. Following her gaze, he caught sight of the pack. The largest wolf, head lowered and shoulders hunched, bared his teeth and snarled.

“Don’t move, Reign.” It was not even a whisper that came from Hedron.

“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” she said shaking her head. “I can’t…”

The wolves charged, snarling and snapping at one another as they closed the distance, each vying to be the first to reach their prey but not daring to pass the leader.

Hedron sprang up with speed, grabbing rocks in both hands. Fingers nearly frozen made precision challenging, but he hurled them nonetheless with all the force he could muster. His short blade had frozen to breaking several nights past, leaving him with
only the weapons the earth put within his reach. Reign sat in what looked to be almost nonchalance until the last moments before the wolves pounced upon her.
It
pushed against her again, the same force that awakened her earlier, and somehow seemed desperate. She knew this time that it was something foreign, something real. It enraged her.

The wolf sprang directly at her, arms and claws outstretched with teeth gnashing. Right as the wolf should have throated her, Reign slammed her back down against the frozen earth too fast for the wolf’s teeth to find purchase. The wolf slipped a few inches forward from its momentum so that its belly was directly over her. Reign did not hesitate. With all the strength of an eleven-year-old girl, she grabbed her short blade from under her torn and tattered tunic, and slammed it upward into the wolf’s abdomen, its hot blood spilling onto Reign’s hands bringing temporary blessed relief from the cold. It howled with pain. Reign retrieved her blade and rolled out from under the bleeding beast. It collapsed down and whimpered in pain. She began to run.

Hedron screamed in pain. Reign turned to see one wolf dragging him by his ankle and another tearing viciously at his cloak. He was wailing on the ground, trying to free himself. Reign ran toward him with her blade in hand, but felt the warning vibrations too late. Another wolf jumped into her, knocking her down. Instantly yet another was on her back clawing at her clothing, digging to find hot flesh. She screamed in terror.

Hedron kicked violently, blood flowing from his lower leg. He managed a kick that caught one of the wolves square in the snout, sending it back whimpering, but only for a moment. Hedron rolled as the other wolf tore his tunic free from his torso, leaving only his cloak upon him, it being nearly shredded past recognition. He rose to his feet and stumbled as fast as he could toward Reign’s two attackers. He could feel his own two wolves practically at his back.

Tackling the wolf on Reign’s back allowed her a moment of respite to crawl forward and get her footing. The wolf threw Hedron from its back with little effort and clawed across his
chest, finding purchase against his flesh. He grunted in pain, but the adrenaline dulled the full effect the wound would have normally carried. With no weapon of any create, Hedron bellowed a cry and attacked, driving all his weight into the beast, praying it would be enough.

Run, Reign!
She can outrun them, he knew. It would only take a short amount of time to build up the speed necessary.
Run!

Reign did run, but not away from the wolves. She sprang against the wolf that Hedron had charged, falling on its back, and reached her hand around front, driving her short blade into its throat. Hedron grabbed her hand to add his strength and pressed the blade until only the hilt protruded. He pushed the dead wolf from him, but loss of blood and exhaustion were overcoming him. Blood flowed liberally from the gash on his chest. He felt dizzy and weak in the knees.
Only three left
, he wearily thought. Just before slipping from consciousness and collapsing, he heard Reign scream.

The wolf’s jaws grabbed her leg, tearing flesh and yanking so forcefully that she fell hard upon the ice-ridden earth. Her short blade was knocked from her hands by the force of her fall. The wolves advanced slowly, encircling her. As she wearily raised herself to her knees, she pleaded for Hedron to come, but she couldn’t see or feel him.
It
pushed against her again, more urgently. Forcefully. Defiance still held her, and she fought back against it, even now in her exhausted state.

She felt the presence come toward her from behind, even through the frozen ground. The vibrations told her it was moving with intent and purpose. She could tell it was another wolf, a sixth. Reign sat with ironic calm and waited.
It will only be a few moments, then over
.

A wolf of size exceeding the others jumped over Reign and landed in front of her, placing itself between her and the remaining
three gray wolves. The new wolf, whiter than the driven snow and the size of a small bear, pulled its lips back and uttered forth a deep guttural growl that gave the other wolves pause. The white wolf stepped forward, slowly advancing, forcing some distance between Reign and her attackers. Snarling and snapping in threatening gestures as they were driven backward, the gray wolves did not take kindly to this interruption. Still, the white wolf did not relent and continued to press them. Suddenly, one of the gray wolves made a start to run around the new wolf toward Reign. It was cut short in its effort, as the white wolf jutted to the side and flanked the wolf just as it jumped in midair, throating it before it hit the ground. The blood pooled around the now dead wolf and flowed to the paws of the white wolf, its pure white coat a stark contrast against the now crimson snow. It turned its attention back to the remaining two. With blood dripping from its white fur around its jaws, the wolf growled another deep warning. The two remaining gray wolves ceased their growling and lowered their heads toward the larger white wolf. Their ears almost lay flat against their heads. With a last deep bark, the bear-sized wolf sent them running away whimpering.

The white wolf stared after the two fleeing gray wolves for a time, then turned to Reign. Her adrenaline had faded and she was too weary to be afraid any longer. Again, she closed her eyes, knowing she was the prize won by the larger wolf.
Just a few moments, then it will be over. No more cold. No more pain
.

But the wolf did not attack. Instead, it turned from her, its nose searching for a scent. Finding it, the wolf quickly ran to where Hedron lay unconscious. With its snout, the wolf sniffed Hedron for a few moments, licked his face and then howled. It howled for several moments before Reign finally came to herself and realized she was not being eaten. She arose, shakily, and limped over to where Hedron lay nearly naked on the ice. He was wounded badly, but the blood had frozen upon his torn flesh, closing his wounds for the time. The white wolf howled again.

In the distance, Reign felt the presence of a human approaching. An elderly person, she guessed. She reached down for Hedron and lifted him to her, cradling him against the cold. Their innate bond felt frayed to the utmost tether, weakened and about to snap. His lips were blue and his cheeks purple and white. She tried to keep him warm, but she was smaller than him and had little chance of protecting him from the elements.

Reign was overcome with anger more than sadness. “You cannot leave me! You cannot leave me!” she shouted over and over again in a staccato rhythm as she beat her fist upon his wounded chest. “You cannot leave! Everyone leaves me! Not you, too!
Not you
!” Her tears were freezing to her face before they could fall as she screamed her demands to her dying brother.

“Not you, too!”

And then, she could stand no more of the mental, physical and emotional onslaught, and she passed out with her head upon Hedron’s shallowly rising chest.

When the old woman arrived, she looked down at the children. The wolf, which stood several heads taller than either youngling, sat over them with its large chest lowered gently over the girl as she lay on top of the boy. The bushy tail was also wrapped around her shoulders, providing protection and warmth.

“Up, Elohk,” she said. The wolf removed itself from its position of covering the younglings. The woman pulled the girl off the boy, who was gravely wounded in his chest, though they both had sustained wounds. The boy was bare-chested except for a dark-green shredded cloak loosely hung around his shoulders. She turned him on his side gently and saw the sigil sewn into the cloak. Jayden gasped. She knew the sigil of House Kerr, but even more, she knew
this
cloak around the young boy.

“Thannuel,” she said out loud.

The wolf whined softly. It knew the scent the cloak carried, although it did not know the boy in it. The scent alone, the old woman knew, would be enough for the wolf to instinctively recognize that the boy and girl were important and worthy of its protection. It howled another long note that echoed through the morning.

THIRTEEN

Shane

Day 18 of 3
^rd
Low 407 A.U.

IT WAS A COMPLEX SEA
of thought that careened within Shane. Currents threatened to send him into fits of madness, from whence he feared never to resurface if swept there. He struggled to remain conscious. Not to avoid sleep, but to keep a grasp on his identity.

“Why have you summoned me here?” he asked the older, bald man in front of him. They stood in the charred courtyard of the ruined Hold Kerr, no one else present. Shane briefly wondered how Tyjil had come to be here, so far from Wellyn’s hold. No horse or carriage was present, none that he could see anyway.
I could do it
, Shane admitted to himself.
I could break him, extinguish him. Snuff out the pathetic man’s flickering flame of life before he knew what happened. I have done it before
. But then the former fisherman realized it was quite unlike Tyjil to put himself knowingly in danger, or even the smallest perception of potential danger. It was unlikely he was alone after all, though his wood-dweller senses could still not decipher anyone else’s presence. If someone else was here, they were in place before he arrived and had not moved since.

The fire’s ravages from earlier this year remained undeniably visible. Khans had executed a controlled burning of the hold after Moira and her servants were killed. The High Duke had ordered
the use of fire, to symbolically purge the Realm of the treachery that had been brewed within these walls. The evening’s mild breeze carried the lingering scent of ash mingled with dead foliage. Vines, shrubbery and frondescence of all kinds were either consumed in the fire or had faded to lifelessness against the hold’s walls. The sun’s light had recast itself to the deep orange luminescence that accompanied the last hours of light before first moon.

Shane did not like this place, not since he had carried out the first part of his mission. The fires he and the Khans set had consumed all around the hold and the dead within its walls. But the stone of the edifice remained—its tint black and brindle from the furnace, covered in soot—and Shane did too. He realized he was now more closely related to stones and dead things than the forest and things of life. He visualized the flames that leaped upon Moira’s body, how they had reduced her to ash and bone.
Why? How could I have done such an act? I am only a fisherman; I am only
—

Only a predator!
a louder voice within him said, one that had been increasing in volume internally.

“It’s only appropriate, of course, that we meet where you first learned of your higher capabilities, yes?” Tyjil answered. When he smiled, Shane fully expected to see a forked tongue slither out of his mouth.