by Leah Swann
‘Forty years in the muck and still sharp enough to save us. It was forged by Peylor, the famous blacksmith. See the sigil? A royal mark.’
They set out, glad to breathe the clean forest air after the putrid atmosphere of the tunnels. After a while, Niklas seemed to fall into a trancelike sadness and Andor knew he was thinking of his men, fighting for a false cause. Now and again he noticed a rustle in the bushes and saw a single pair of dark eyes staring from the undergrowth. A little later, he saw the tips of two very long, delicate ears.
They came to a stream. Lying face down beside the river to drink, Niklas saw visions of beautiful faces under the water: undines with silvery hair, calling his name.
Come to us, dear Niklas. Come to us.
How enchanting they were! He dipped his hands into the water, reaching for them. ‘Irresistible,’ he muttered, feverishly. He pushed his face, then his whole head into the stream until Andor pulled him away.
‘Undines,’ said Niklas, shaking him off.
Andor grasped him more firmly. ‘Up we get, Father,’ he said, urgently. ‘Lean on me.’
At that moment, the hare showed itself fully to Andor. With its tall bearing and intelligent eyes, the hare seemed almost human. Andor half-expected it to speak. When he was a boy, he'd seen a hare like this, dashing through the crowds in Ragnor's town square to hide under the cloak of an old woman. A hare just like this one. The same hare? he wondered. Surely not. The hare hopped forward and paused to look at him. Andor understood he was to follow.
The hare led them through a passageway of willow trees and away from the river.
‘No,’ said Niklas. ‘We need to stay close to the water. When the undines sing I feel better.’
‘Trust me, Father,’ said Andor.
The pair soon reached a very dense part of the forest, where the vines and leaves and branches formed a fibrous canopy barely penetrated by sunlight. The hare led them to a clearing where there stood a hut made of kenda saplings and covered with green creepers. There were animals around; a few chickens and some ravens, and Andor saw the pale shape of a goat moving in the trees. At the doorway of the hut a crone appeared, all brambles, hair and flickering veins. Her eyes were like charcoal.
‘Raizel,’ grunted Niklas, rousing himself from his haze of feverish pain. He bowed his head in a gesture of respect.
‘Welcome, rightful king. You need rest.’ Raizel's voice reverberated like an echo in a cave. It sounded like a man's, yet it resonated with a female quality. She took Niklas's arm and the great man went as meekly as a kitten, even allowing her to lay him down onto the mat on the floor.
‘It’s the wolf bite,’ she said to Andor. ‘The wolf's saliva contained poisonous magic.’ She looked at the Prince and it was as if her charcoal eyes could see into his soul. ‘You’ll have to go on without him.’
Chapter Thirty
Surrender
Vilmos strode towards the battle with hordes of wolves streaming out behind him like a dense, living cloak.
May I strike terror in every living soul! he thought, feeling the gaze of two armies turning towards him. The wolves stayed behind their master, enslaved by his magic. Vilmos moved with the same swift grace as the wolves themselves. His face was distorted by the inhuman additions of fur and fangs, and he wore a smug expression of twisted glory.
‘Look at me now!’ he shouted. ‘Look at the poor executioner's son! Now I am a great magician. I command all the wolves of the realm!’
A wolf snapped at his left hand and he began chanting the special incantations in one long, continuous stream. As he sang his menacing song, his eyes sought out King Harmon.
I'll have you eating out of my hand. I'll have you begging on your knees, my old enemy, Vilmos thought with relish. Maybe I'll make you watch me marry Chloe before you die! Then we'll see who is truly the stronger.
Harmon's tactics had been working, but unexpectedly the lines began breaking up and dissolving into chaos. Only moments earlier his cavalry had almost wiped out the right flank of the enemy, and he had allowed himself a moment of hope. The battle had been turning in their favour. But now the battleground was full of dark agile bodies leaping and great toothy jaws snapping. Harmon gaped in disbelief.
They were being overrun by wolves.
The shock of his soldiers rapidly gave way to shouts of fear as hundreds of overgrown, snarling wolves came towards them, baying and gnashing their teeth.
‘Reform the line!’ Harmon roared, but the marauding creatures were already among them. The King's heart quailed. Was this the end? Forming a line of defence seemed impossible. The warrior king slashed his sword wildly at the wolves snapping at his legs and leaping up Skyloch's sides. The stallion reared in fright and the King held on for dear life. He had fought ogres before, but never forest creatures with a deathly glaze in their eyes. Grim-faced, Harmon listened to the Pavellian soldiers give whooping cries of exultation. Victory would be theirs now; they were sure of it.
Irina could watch no longer. She withdrew abruptly from the window, turning to curtsy to her mother. ‘You’ve forbidden me to ride out against men, but you said nothing of wolves. Forgive me.’
Before her mother could order her to stop, Irina fled. Hurrying down the staircases, almost falling over in her haste, she ran along the corridor that led to the stables. Amicus followed her, flying down to her shoulder.
‘Robin!’ she cried. ‘Bring Adriel.’
Adriel trotted out from the shadowy stalls, brushed and glossy as a sea-pearl, and saddled, just as she had asked. The mare's eyes shone with eagerness. Irina put her foot into the stirrup and leapt into the saddle.
‘Thank you, Robin,’ she said.
‘Here, Your Highness,’ he said, handing her a bow and a quiver full of arrows. ‘I’ve heard rumours that you're a fine archer.’
‘Heard rumours? From whom?’
Octavia stepped forward from where she had been waiting. ‘I knew you would be here sooner or later,’ she said. ‘I don't want you unprotected. Take this shield.’
‘It’s too heavy,’ said Irina, handing it back. ‘Truth is my shield, remember? Look after Amicus. The battlefield is no place for a sylvan.’
Octavia scooped the bird from the girl's shoulder. Irina rode out from the stables, through the castle gates and along the main street. Adriel's back rippled with muscles as she cantered over the cobblestones. Before long they reached the city's outskirts. Veering north-east, they left the road and sped across the plains towards the battleground.
‘May Jun protect us now!’ Irina cried, leaning towards the horse's neck, her gut churning with fear.
As they approached, Irina winced at the swords clashing and men shouting. Worst of all she could hear the ferocious noises made by the wolves as they attacked. Up close, the battle was even more terrifying than she'd imagined.
She caught sight of King Harmon in his feathered helmet, his sword drawn and catching the sun. She saw William further afield. Her royal father and her farm father were fighting side by side. What if she saw Torg – her wolf father – among the wolves?
Casting aside this dreadful thought, she urged Adriel into the fray, her ears full of the clamour of weapons and cries as men tried in vain to overpower the wolves, who were fighting to kill with no thought of eating. They were swollen and savage and mad with bloodlust. For Irina, who loved the wolves, it was a sickening sight.
What has Vilmos done to them, she wondered, trying not to panic. He's made them cruel.
That was when she saw the magician. Beside him was Seeley, the hugest wolf of all, baring his teeth. Irina gasped in recognition.
‘No!’ she cried.
She knew this wolf. It was Durrell.
Involuntary tears of horror came to her eyes as she saw the evidence of killing all over him. There was no mistaking Durrell, despite his grotesque appearance. She recognised the markings of his pelt, the glittering brightness of his eyes, so like Sheka's. Her childhood companion. Her wolf-brother. Would he
recognise her now? If he smelled her, would he remember their friendship, the bond that was once so strong between them? Perhaps she could make him remember, if only she could get him to look her way, to hear her voice. But how on earth would she break the enchantment that held him?
‘What is she going to do? Is she going to fight?’ said Mahila, watching her sister from the castle window. Octavia was beside her, with Amicus on her shoulder.
‘I can't bear it, don't tell me,’ wept Chloe, her hands over her eyes.
‘My father is riding towards her,’ said Mahila, ignoring her mother's plea. ‘He’s stopped. Irina is getting off her horse.’
‘Getting off her horse? Why, for pity's sake. She will surely be killed!’ cried Chloe, digging her fingernails into her forehead.
King Harmon pulled his sword from a wolf's belly. Swinging his horse around, ready to kill another, he saw the bright figure of Irina on Adriel, the crooked crown flashing atop her scruffy bunches of hair. He galloped towards her, his thoughts racing. She had disobeyed him! She was endangering herself and the battle. Irina dismounted from Adriel and stood beside the mare, holding the bridle, her lips moving.
‘What’s she doing now?’ Harmon muttered through clenched teeth.
His daughter looked up and saw him. There was no fear or madness on her face. She called to him, ‘Please, Father, please – keep your soldiers back – away from me.’
‘Go back to your mother!’ Harmon thundered. ‘This is a battlefield!’
Irina shook her head and shrugged, as if to say the King had misunderstood her. Frightened for her life, Harmon shouted a command to the nearest soldiers to form a half-circle around Irina to defend her.
Vilmos and the great wolf approached. When Vilmos saw the girl standing on the battleground, his mouth opened in amazement. Harmon must be desperate, he thought. He's bringing girl soldiers to fight. Then he saw the crown that Irina had pinned into her hair. He noticed how still she seemed in the fury of the fighting around her. When their eyes met, Vilmos knew it was Irina.
So the rumours are true, he thought, gazing at her malevolently. The baby I left for dead has, by some miracle, survived. Vilmos was filled with unthinkable rage. He felt it rising from his stomach and into his throat like a cloud of moths.
Fear turned Irina's stomach. She saw the hatred on Vilmos's hairy, distorted face.
‘This is the end,’ she said to herself. ‘If I must die, let it be by Durrell.’
Vilmos chanted to the wolf, whose hackles rose as he paced forward. The other wolves sensed the change in their leader and they too drew near Irina.
The Princess turned briefly towards Harmon again and called in a clear, penetrating voice, ‘Do not harm the wolf.’
Quietly, Irina began to sing. It was the song the birds had taught her, before she had words. It was the song she had sung to calm Durrell when he'd been caught in the net and she had untangled it with her patient, childish hands. Even as she trembled with fear, her voice grew, pure and tender, rising above the clash of iron swords. In that corner of the battleground, the forces of combat broke. Into her song she poured her love for Durrell, along with her anguish at what he'd become under the magician's power. Her voice was both the desolate cry of a bird and as soothing as a lullaby. It was unlike any song anyone had heard before.
Durrell heard the song through the hazy layers of poison travelling through his veins. He recognised Irina's familiar smell. The hulking brute moved forward eagerly. Vilmos sensed the savagery leaving the wolf and this frightened him. The magician chanted his spell more loudly. In the wolf's ears, Vilmos's magic mixed with the beloved voice of Irina.
Durrell was only a few feet away from her. His hackles had dropped and he seemed ready to lie down at her feet. In desperation, Vilmos issued his strongest command. A single word like a slap broke Irina's song, such was its violence and power. The wolf had to obey.
‘Slay her!’ cried the magician.
Durrell leapt, fangs bared and snapping, and would have forced Irina to the ground but she was ready for him. She tumbled nimbly to one side as they used to do as pups. Durrell nipped her ear as she fell. He snarled and stood very still as he sniffed her again. Who was this human who behaved like a wolf? Why did she smell like home?
Irina rolled onto her knees, breathing hard, holding her hand up to stop any soldier coming to her aid. She knew what she must do. Blood dripped from her ear. Kneeling before Durrell, she bowed her head and pulled her hair to one side, offering her bare neck to the wolf.
‘Kill me if you dare,’ she whispered.
There was an audible gasp from Harmon and his men, but Irina and the wolf ignored it. They were deep in a place of their own – the wolfish world of Irina's childhood. Her bare neck was like a white flag; her bowed head a gesture of surrender. Irina was speaking to him in the way of the wolves. It was written into his deepest nature, far deeper than Vilmos's evil magic.
With a whimper, Durrell turned away. The spell was broken.
Vilmos had lost control. Losing power over the pack leader meant he had lost power over all the wolves. Shrieking with fury, he struck a soldier down from his horse, grabbed the reins, swung himself into the saddle and galloped towards the forest.
‘Not this time!’ shouted Harmon, charging after him with a band of soldiers.
Arrows rained down on the figure of Vilmos, yet onwards he galloped until he had vanished among the trees.
Chapter Thirty-One
Irina the Wolf Queen
Irina put her arms around Durrell. Then, taking a leather jack of water from Adriel's saddle, she poured the blood away from the wolf's teeth and chest. The watery blood ran over her fingers and onto the ground and Irina couldn't help crying. As she washed him clean, his fur smelt peppery and good. Somehow, she had to get him and the other wolves away from the battle.
‘May I ride on your back?’ she whispered. Durrell lowered his huge body to the ground and Irina climbed onto his back and plunged her hands into his thick, soft pelt, as she used to so long ago. How pure and clean life had seemed then, among the animals and trees and the river and the sky.
Around her she saw the bodies of fallen men and horses and bloated wolves with chalky eyes. Some men were still fighting. The wind blew in hot gusts and the sun's bruised yellow light shone pitilessly upon the ugly battlefield. Irina felt the sickness in Durrell's body and urged him in the direction of Ragnor Castle. The spell was indeed broken; but the wolves were confused and lost and ashamed. They seemed to know they had betrayed their own natures. The beasts dumbly followed Durrell and Irina, not knowing what else to do.
‘Come, Adriel,’ Irina called, and the sleek white mare came and trotted beside Durrell fearlessly.
‘What’s happening?’ asked Chloe. ‘I can't look.’
‘Irina is riding the biggest wolf,’ reported Mahila, from the window. ‘All the other wolves are following her towards the city. Perhaps she's coming here.’
‘Here? The wolves? Oh no!’ cried the Queen.
‘Don’t fear, Your Majesty,’ said Octavia, who was packing a basket full of medicines and bandages to take to the castle steps to meet Irina. She had found Raizel's bottle of healing potion. ‘The wolves are part of Irina's family. You're not in danger.’
As Irina rode, many of the exhausted soldiers joined her, some on horseback, most on foot. Some thanked Irina for her bravery. The wolves no longer frightened them: it was obvious that whatever magic had bound them was broken.
Women and children looked through their windows at the curious sight of the girl on the back of a wolf as big as a pony, leading a procession of wolves and men.
A little girl watching from her doorway said, ‘There goes Irina the Wolf Queen.’
As they neared the castle, people came out of their houses to cheer Irina and the soldiers.
‘What happened?’ they asked.
‘Why have the wolves turned as meek as sheep?’
‘Where is Vilmos?’
B
efore long, everyone knew the story of how Irina had knelt before the fiercest wolf and bared her neck, risking death.
Finally, Irina halted in front of the castle. What a crowd she had brought, of wolves and soldiers and onlookers. She was glad to see Octavia. Mahila and Julene had appeared beside her, ready to help, along with the younger ones, Kenenza, Damaris and Talita.
The princesses moved among the soldiers, many of whom had collapsed on the steps, bringing them water. Octavia dabbed Raizel's potion on the blood trickling from Irina's ear and a scab instantly crusted over her skin.
‘I can't send these wolves back to the forests as they are,’ Irina said to Octavia. ‘They could harm other creatures. We must disenchant them somehow. How do we do it?’
Andor left Raizel's hut feeling troubled. He took some food out of the bundle Raizel had given him and was eating as he walked rapidly towards Ragnor.
I must keep my strength up, he thought, chewing on some kind of hard grain cake. Just eat. Get strong. How will I convince the people that I have not deposed King Niklas?
Andor heard the sound of someone on horseback, moving quickly through the trees in the direction of Raizel's hut. He glimpsed a cloak, and a streak of pale skin covered in hair. From some distance further away came the sound of hoof beats and of branches breaking and falling.
That's more than one horse, thought Andor. This one's being chased.
Andor saw the rider weaving through the trees.
‘Stop! Wait!’ he called. The man's head jerked backward and Andor glimpsed his face.
‘Vilmos!’
The magician kicked his horse. Andor picked up a stone and threw it hard and fast into the back of the magician's skull. Vilmos fell to the ground, not far from the hut, while his horse – glad to be rid of its rider – galloped off into the forest.
‘Curse you!’ screamed Vilmos, scrambling to his feet, one hand clamped to the back of his head which was dripping with blood.