Queen of Fire

by Anthony Ryan

  Vaelin and the Gifted were given places on one of the huge boats, whilst Orven’s guardsmen and the Sentar were obliged to crowd into the smaller craft, some newly constructed to accommodate the increased number taking part in this yearly migration. Scar trembled a little as he was led onto the canoe, pacified only slightly by a handful of berries. The warhorse had grown partly accustomed to the presence of the wolves but the proximity of so many in a confined space was clearly trying his patience.

  “Calm now, old fellow,” Vaelin said, trying to soothe him with a scratch to the nose. Today, however, Scar was in little mood for reassurance, eyes wide and fixed on the silent mass of wolves as he tossed his head, teeth bared in alarm.

  “Let me try,” Dahrena said, moving closer to press a hand to the warhorse’s neck. She closed her eyes, a small line appearing in her forehead as she concentrated. Scar calmed almost immediately, his head lowering, eyes blinking in placid contentment.

  “I showed him the stables back home,” Dahrena said. “He thinks he’s there now.”

  “Your skills grow, my lady,” Vaelin said, inclining his head.

  “A little.” She turned to the nearest shaman, a lean-faced veteran standing with five wolves arranged in an unmoving circle. “Though I doubt any of us will ever match them. Some skills require a lifetime’s teaching.”

  All hands save the shaman were expected to take a turn at rowing, two hours or more spent ploughing at the water with a broad-headed oar. As ever, the constant exertion gave Lorkan much to complain about, though Vaelin noted he displayed little actual strain when rowing. He seemed to be taller now, his back straighter and shoulders broader. For all his grumbling, Vaelin knew the boy he had met in the Reaches had been lost somewhere in the tide of war and the privations of the ice. Though, from his constant glances at Cara, it seemed one thing hadn’t faded during the journey.

  The surrounding islands grew larger and taller the farther south they went, great mounds of snow-topped granite and thick forest from which more canoes would emerge as they neared. There was little celebration in the greetings exchanged between the Wolf People, some waves or nods of respect between shaman, a few calls from old friends, but for the most part they formed their ever-growing convoy with quiet efficiency. Vaelin also found it strange none seemed particularly surprised or perturbed by the presence of so many outsiders, most just eyeing his motley company with grim acceptance.

  “They knew we would be travelling with you,” he said to Astorek during his twice-daily rowing shift. The shaman spoke little on the water, his face set in a mask of constant concentration as he worked to keep his wolves in check.

  “Hawks can do more than kill,” he replied, jerking his head at the sky where a great swirling flock of spear-hawks kept track of the convoy. At night they would descend to the forest of perches that sprouted from the canoes, gobbling down the slivers of meat provided by their shaman, most of whom seemed to be women.

  “They carry messages?” Vaelin asked. “But your people have no writing.”

  “No, we have no books.” Astorek pulled something from a pocket in his furs and tossed it to Vaelin; a length of elk bone, etched from end to end in straight cuts along a single line. “Each mark represents a sound,” Astorek explained. “Put them together and you have a word.”

  “What does it say?”

  “‘Long Knife is shaman of thirty wolves.’ Many Wings carved it when I reached manhood and sent copies to all the settlements. It’s the only time I’ve seen any of my people indulge in boasting.”

  Vaelin glanced around at the other packs on the canoe, noting how small they were in comparison, none numbering more than a dozen. “It must be a trial to command so many.”

  “Command is not really the right word. They … accept me.”

  Vaelin looked closer at Astorek’s pack, seeing how their gaze was uniformly fixed on him, enthralled and barely blinking. “They can hear it,” he realised. “The echo of the wolf’s call. It’s still in you.”

  Astorek’s expression flickered in momentary discomfort, one of the wolves turning towards Vaelin with a snarl burgeoning on its lips. It calmed as Astorek reached down to play a hand along its head, gazing up at him in wide-mouthed adoration. “They can hear it in you, also, Raven’s Shadow. Some things never fade from a man’s soul.”

  They rowed south for three days, gathering ever more Wolf People on the way. By the time the broad coast of the mainland came into view Vaelin estimated their total number at well over a hundred thousand. More were waiting on the shoreline where settlements could be seen amidst the trees, the dwellings larger and covering more ground than those on Wolf Home.

  “Why not live here all the time?” Cara asked Astorek as they neared the shore. “It seems a more comfortable place.”

  “The elk roam south in the winter,” he replied. “Too far for us to follow, leaving a frozen wilderness in their wake. But in the isles walrus and whales appear when the ice forms.”

  The evening saw a celebratory feast where the last of the winter stocks were consumed. The Wolf People clustered around several huge fires to roast their meat on skewers and share horns of pine ale, clicking away in their indecipherable tongue as they exchanged tales of winter hardship. Despite the generally convivial air Vaelin knew this to be a muted affair, noting the many faces regarding him with tense expectation. As they had no word for lie these people also had no word for secret. They had been making pilgrimage to the painted cave for centuries and knew his face, and his name.

  He sat with Dahrena away from the main throng, building a smaller fire so they could share a supper of walrus stew. He did the cooking, slicing the meat into strips and seasoning it with herbs and the last of the salt he had carried from the Realm. “I knew brothers who would rather abandon their sword than their salt,” he told her, with only slight exaggeration. Life in the Order made most brothers skilled in the art of campfire cookery, and appreciative of the precious comfort offered by a small amount of seasoning.

  “Do you ever miss it?” she asked, accepting a bowl of stew. “You were raised to a life in the Order. It must have been hard to leave it behind.”

  “I had already lost my brothers by the war’s end, along with much else. There was nothing to return to.” He settled beside her and they ate in silence for a time. As ever the sensation of shared understanding banished his worries with comforting ease. When he was with her it was almost as if his song had returned, her moods being so easily read. He could see it now, the faint tension in her face as she ate, the way her eyes strayed constantly to his face.

  “You worry for the future,” he said.

  “The world is in chaos,” she replied. “Worry seems appropriate.”

  “Were I still a man of the Faith, I might quote a pertinent catechism about the virtues of hope.”

  “You believe the queen’s invasion will succeed?”

  “I believe in her. She is … more than she was.”

  “And if we do succeed, what then?”

  “We return to the Reaches, where I suspect we’ll spend much of our time protecting them from gold-hungry idiots.”

  “That is your ambition? Just the tower and the Reaches?”

  “The tower, the Reaches”—he reached out to take her hand—“and you. Also, the peace to enjoy them.”

  She smiled, but he saw it was forced. “Father wanted peace too, and hoped to find it in the Reaches.”

  “Caenis told me he had been exiled for questioning the King’s Word. I always assumed it was because he had refused to do what my father did in the Meldenean Isles.”

  “A climax to a long argument. Father began his career as a guardsman in the Al Nieren House Guard, when the Asraelin noble families feuded endlessly over the Lord’s Chair. He told me once Janus had promised him peace, in the days when the Red Hand had finally faded. They were both little more than boys then, facing an onslaught of a dozen houses allied against them, the Al Nieren line having been weakened by the plague and
seemingly ripe for plucking. ‘We’ll kill all these fools together, Vanos,’ Janus had said. ‘Then we’ll make a Realm.’

  “And they did, year after year of war, the other houses shattered and brought low, the fiefs hammered into submission, all on the promise of peace. A peace that failed to appear with the birth of the Realm as Janus turned his gaze to foreign lands. So, unable to face another war, Father begged for release, imagining he might find an untroubled retirement in the Reaches, far away from the Realm’s troubles and Janus’s ambition. But war still found him when the Ice Horde came.”

  Vaelin squeezed her hand tighter. “With this war won there will be no one left to fight.”

  “I see the queen, as you do. I met her once before, all those years ago when Father took me to the Realm. And you are right, she is greatly changed. But I still see in her what Father did, that day as she took us on a tour of the palace gardens, all laughter and charm. Father smiled at her witticisms, accepted her flattery, and made a gracious farewell. As we rode away his smile faded, however, and I heard him say, ‘And I imagined Janus to be ambitious.’ It may have changed but it hasn’t gone, Vaelin. When she’s done with this war, what then? What will sate her when she’s conquered an empire? What more will she ask of you?”

  You’ll kill for your faith, for your king, and for the Queen of Fire when she arises … Words from a long-remembered dream. Perhaps not all prophecy is false. “I think she is wise enough not to ask for what I won’t give.”

  Astorek came to fetch them to council in the morning, tracing a path into the forest until they arrived at a tree so large Vaelin at first wondered if it wasn’t some shaman-conjured illusion. The trunk was covered in reddish brown bark and stood near thirty paces wide at the base, ascending to well over two hundred feet in height, the top lost somewhere above the forest canopy.

  “The name loses much in your tongue,” Astorek said. “Wolf Lance is the closest translation. The oldest great tree known to us. Even the grandfathers of our grandfathers couldn’t remember it a sapling.”

  The base of the trunk featured a large, cave-like hollow where a number of Wolf People waited, standing in silent regard as Astorek led Vaelin inside. He made no introduction, simply standing to one side as they stared at his face, recognition and disquiet evident in every gaze. The silence stretched as he stood there, wondering if there was some ritual observance he had failed to make, until Wise Bear came to his side, speaking softly, “They want your words.”

  “Words?”

  Wise Bear gave the assembled Wolf People a tight smile, resembling a parent apologising for an ill-mannered child. “Words of war. They expect you to lead them.”

  His gaze roamed the assembled council, finding Whale Killer among them, the others also marked as elders from their various accoutrements: necklaces of bone or beads, a knife with an ornately carved handle. Only those ice folk of sufficient age and influence had the time or opportunity to accumulate trinkets. “There are no shaman here,” he observed to Astorek.

  “Shaman are forbidden leadership,” he said. “Too much power sickens the soul. A lesson the Cat People never learned.”

  Vaelin nodded. “How many warriors do they command?”

  Astorek conversed briefly with the council, receiving clipped but swift responses. “We do not reckon numbers as you do,” he reported. “But perhaps a quarter of every island’s people are of age to fight.”

  Little over twenty thousand. Hardly the Queen’s Host, but they do have their wolves and their hawks. “Have they seen any sign of the Volarians?”

  “Scouts were sent south with the first thaw,” Astorek related. “As they are every year. They will return when the Volarians cross from the hill country into the plains. They usually come when the sun rises higher, some two months from now.”

  Vaelin recalled No Eyes’s words on the ice; I am patient and I suspect you still have far to go. “They will come sooner this year, and we cannot afford to wait. Your people must gather their warriors, and all their wolves and hawks, and come south with me.”

  The unease of the elders deepened visibly as Astorek translated, though no words were spoken as they exchanged wary glances. Even after a lifetime’s belief, Vaelin surmised, still hard to trust your fate to paint daubed on a wall centuries before.

  Finally, one of the elders spoke, a stooped old man leaning heavily on a staff, his voice thin and strained, but still capable of commanding deep respect from the way Astorek related his words with precise solemnity. “Far Walker, oldest and wisest of the Wolf People, asks what promise the Raven’s Shadow can offer. Are the words of the Great Boat People made true?”

  “I can offer no words regarding your beliefs,” Vaelin replied. “And any man who leads others to war on a certain promise of victory is either a fool or a liar. I offer a chance to defeat your enemy and prevent their coming again. Nothing more.”

  The old man spoke again when Astorek finished his translation, moving closer to stare up at Vaelin, his ancient features alternating between confusion and wonder. “As a child I would ask the elders, ‘When will the Raven’s Shadow come?’ Over and over I would ask them, for I knew he had not come in the time of my parents, or grandparents, or throughout the many Long Nights before then. ‘Not as long as you live, little one,’ they would tell me, and so I would sleep well, knowing your time would bring great torment and trial for the Wolf People, but I would be spared the sight of it.”

  He continued to stare at Vaelin for some time, finally speaking a short question in a soft rasp. “How will you defeat our enemy?”

  “With your warriors, your shaman, your wolves and your hawks. With the steel of the soldiers I command, and the fierce skill of the allies who followed us here.” He paused to glance at Dahrena and the Gifted who lingered at the edge of the hollow. “And the courage of bright and powerful souls.”

  Far Walker lowered his gaze and turned away, stalking back into the depths of the tree with a weary stride. He spoke again before the shadows swallowed him, the words causing an instant gasp of shock from the other Wolf People. Some called after him, urgent questions cast into the dark, but there was no answer.

  “What did he say?” Vaelin asked Astorek, who stood gaping in the old man’s wake.

  “His will,” the Volarian replied in a tone that discouraged further questioning. He turned his gaze to the other elders, asking a question to which they all responded with a series of nods, some more reluctant than others. “We will come with you,” Astorek said.

  Dahrena sat amidst a circle of fires, eyes closed and face growing paler by the minute as Marken, Lorkan and Cara worked to keep the flames high. Vaelin remained at her side, keeping a seal fur wrapped tight around her slender form until she gave the shudder that signified a return. She sagged against him, groaning as he rubbed her shoulders. “You might think this would get easier with practice.”

  Cara handed Dahrena a cup of warmed pine ale, which made her cough a little but also restored a pinkness to her cheeks. “They’ve yet to reach the hills,” she told Vaelin. “But they’re coming, a great host led by seven generals. I could see them riding out ahead, their souls so dark it seemed as if they swallowed the light, and they were all the same. I’ve only seen one like it before. On the ice.”

  “No Eyes,” Vaelin said and she nodded. Seven souls, all the same, he thought. The Ally sends the Witch’s Bastard with an army. How much does he fear what we seek?

  The Wolf People insisted on a full week of hunting before setting out. Despite the thaw, life on the northern tundra remained precarious throughout the year and stores were needed for the people who would be left behind when the warriors started south. Astorek invited Vaelin and Kiral on his expedition, each shaman being required to lead a hunting party, though he forbade him from bringing Scar. “We hunt on foot, the elk will feel his hooves through the earth.”

  They trekked east for a day with twenty hunters, Astorek’s wolves ranging ahead in a wide arc, pausing constantly to raise the
ir snouts and sniff the air. The wolves would often spur into a run, disappearing over the horizon for an hour or more, but were always found waiting for them a short while later. Their direction changed frequently, veering north then south without warning.

  “How far can they travel before you lose them?” Kiral asked the shaman, who seemed puzzled by the question.

  “The bond goes deep, so deep distance means nothing. They could be on the other side of the world and I would still feel them.”

  He stopped, straightening as the wolves came to a halt, all crouched low, noses pointed to the south west. The Wolf People all dropped to the ground as one, Vaelin and Kiral sinking down at Astorek’s side as he raised a hand to the air, turning it to gauge the wind. He gave a brief jerk of his head and the wolves immediately streaked off towards the south, moving in a tight bunch. “They will bring them to us.”

  The hunters crawled forward until they formed a line parallel to the shaman, lying prone with spears in hand. The grass that grew on the tundra was stunted, providing little cover but also a clear view of the horizon. Each hunter carried three spears, all with barbed iron heads, Vaelin noting the scratchlike script with which they had decorated the hafts. Every spear had its own story, it seemed.

  “Ever hunt the great elk?” Kiral asked, notching an arrow to her bow.

  Vaelin shook his head, readying his own bow. His arrows were all suited for war rather than hunting, narrow and pointed to pierce mail or armour, so Kiral passed him three of her own, barbed like the hunters’ spear-heads but fashioned from the same unbreakable black glass used by the Seordah. “One won’t suffice,” she told him. “Ignore the flanks and aim for the neck.”

  He heard them before he saw them, a thunderous tremor reverberating through the ground accompanied by the faint yelping of wolves. When the leading elk came into view it seemed at first as if a tree had suddenly sprouted on the skyline, a broad-branching silhouette bobbing as it grew in size, a small forest springing up around it. He had seen the Eorhil sporting fragments of elk antler and gained an appreciation of their size from the Wolf People’s cave painting, but the sight of a living beast was truly impressive. The first stag to appear had antlers fully ten feet across, the animal itself standing almost as high as two men, raising a thick cloud of dust as it sped towards them, head low, the tips of the antlers as long as sword blades.