The Warden and the Wolf King

by Andrew Peterson

  That was the real reason she didn’t want to play the melody. She was afraid it would do more than madden the Fangs and rouse the Hollowsfolk.

  It might summon the Dragon King—and if it did, something terrible would happen.

  56

  Kicking Despair in the Rump

  Leeli woke at dusk to the familiar sound of battle.

  “Sweetie,” Nia said.

  “They need me,” Leeli murmured with her eyes still closed.

  “Yes. I’m sorry to wake you, but the sun is setting.”

  Leeli stretched and sat up. She sighed, grabbed her crutch, and pushed herself to her foot. Her lips felt better, but they tasted even worse than her breath. She grabbedCousin Joe Bob’s Slappy Swinefrom the shelf by the bed but left the lip salve.

  “Don’t forget your medicine,” Nia said.

  “I’d rather bleed,” Leeli muttered.

  “But your people would rather survive.” Nia’s voice was still quiet but it had taken on a tone that Leeli knew well. “You’re the Song Maiden, and whether you like it or not, your music has done more to win these battles than all the swords in the city. Apply the balm.”

  By the time they arrived at the fourth floor of the library, in the room labeled Books About Tree Roots and Jewel Thievery, Leeli was wide-awake and hungry. Rudric and several Hollish chiefs and chieftesses rose when she entered and waited for her to sit before continuing their meeting. Podo clomped into the room with a tray of redberry porridge and a spinnamon roll. He set it on the table before Leeli and gave her a whiskery kiss on the cheek.

  “Maybe two days,” Danniby was saying. “Maybe less.”

  “Where did all those blasted ships come from?” Guildmaster Clout said, banging his fist on the table.

  Madame Sidler, the head librarian, peeked her head around the corner. “May I help you?” she asked.

  “For the fiftieth time, Sidler, no!” one of the men shouted.

  Madame Sidler bustled away, looking deeply offended, as the council resumed.

  “Sorry, all. I’m getting here late,” said one of the chieftesses. “Why can’t we open Watercraw long enough to get our ships out?”

  Leeli dipped her spinnamon roll in the porridge. She liked to listen. She also liked the chieftess who had just spoken. Some of them were all gruff and no grin—especially the women who, whether beautiful or as rough as their husbands, could be so unruly that fights occasionally broke out among them. But Hemmica the Hairy (as Podo called her) was as sweet as she was sour. She was huge—so tall and bulky that she hunched over the table like a troll—and her skin was saggy and speckled with moles where there were no wispy whiskers. But her eyes were bright as candles and when she smiled her wrinkles smiled with her.

  “Because, Hemmica,” said a chieftain named Kayden Evergreen, “we can’t spare the warriors. If we send out a fleet to stop the Fang ships, the city will be weakened. Our defenses will crumble.”

  “Not only that,” added Rudric, “the Fangs have yet to turn their attention to the gatehouses at the Watercraw. They’re locked up tight. But I fear that as soon as we send soldiers to open the gate they’ll be under fierce attack, and if we lose the gates we’ll only regain them at the cost of many lives.”

  “But sooner or later we have to open the craw.” Hemmica cleared her throat and adjusted the battleaxe slung over her shoulder. “We’ll have to risk them getting in in order for us to get out.”

  “And once we’re out, what then?” asked Nibbick.

  “Fight the Fangs,” Hemmica said, as if it were obvious.

  “Oy,” said Nibbick, “but there are—how many ships did you say, Rudric?”

  “Sixty, at least.”

  “Sixty ships!” Nibbick leaned back and put a hand to his forehead. “We’ve half that many. And it’s been so long since most of our boys have sailed they hardly know a poop deck from a chamber pot!”

  Hemmica frowned and scratched her warty chin. Everyone sat in silence while Leeli finished her porridge.

  “So even with our fleet of thirty ships,” Rudric said, “we can do nothing but wait for Gnag’s new fleet to arrive. We might be able to fend off the Bat Fangs and the rest—they die by the hundreds every day. But the fleet is another matter. Maker knows what beasts prowl those decks, or where they came from.”

  “If I were them,” said Hemmica, “I’d make it my first business to take the gatehouses and lower the chain at the craw. Then the ships could sail in and Ban Rona would be sacked like a spadge of totatoes.”

  “Well, why don’t ye all just give up now and make it easy for ’em!” Podo growled from the corner where he’d been whittling angrily at his legbone.

  “What do you propose, old man?” said Nibbick Bunge.

  “A hundred things besides sitting here waiting for the end to come,” Podo said. He got up from his chair and stomped to the table. Leeli noticed that Hemmica was smiling at him, her eyes twinkling like diamonds in dirty linen. “This is just like Ships and Sharks,” he grouched. “If ye can’t meet the fleet on the open sea, then pile every ship in Ban Rona around the Watercraw. Lash ’em together and drop anchor on the whole lot. That way they can lower the craw chain if they like, but they still won’t get through. In fact, once they see the snaggle of ships they’ll likely leave the gatehouses alone.”

  Nibbick’s face changed from scrunched to thoughtful. “Not a bad idea,” he said. “But we’re still in the same boat, so to speak. The only difference is, once they take the gatehouses, they’re burning our ships.”

  “But it gives us a little more time. It’s something isn’t it?” Leeli said.

  “Oy, that’s something,” Rudric said.

  The conversation continued, and Podo plopped back into his chair and lit his pipe. Leeli excused herself and joined him.

  “Sometimes,” he whispered with a wink, “somebody needs to kick despair in the rump. There’s always a way out, eh lass?”

  “Aye,” Leeli growled like a pirate.

  “Ye know,” Podo said after a moment, “I’ve been talking with Oskar, and he thinks—”

  “He thinks I should play ‘Yurgen’s Tune.’”

  “Aye,” Podo said quietly.

  “Well, I won’t.”

  Podo drew on his pipe and considered her. “And why not? There may come a time when we’re outnumbered and those dragons might be our only hope. They fought for Anniera a long time ago.”

  “I don’t trust them. Andthey don’t trust you.”

  “Aye, that’s true.” Podo scratched his whiskery chin. “But I don’t aim to be anywhere near the water. Should you choose to call them, that is.”

  “But Grandpa, even if I called them, even if it worked and I played the song and they came—who’s to say they’ll help us at all?”

  “Who’s to say they won’t? You?”

  Leeli fussed with the hem of her dress. “You didn’t hear his voice like I did,” she said. “There’s something dark in that old dragon. There must be another way. Like Ships and Sharks, right?”

  “Aye. I don’t like those dragons any more than you do.” He blew a puff of smoke. “Let’s hope it don’t come to that.”

  Leeli relaxed, and realized she had been clenching her jaw. She would never call Yurgen. Not for anything. The only thing worse than facing Gnag the Nameless himself would be seeing that wretched old beast again.

  A Hollish warrior entered the room and called for Rudric. It was Ladnar, who had lost his tooth. “Keeper, the nighth’s battle ith begun. The batth are on the wing and a new wave of Grey Fangth ith creeping over the cliffths. We need the printheth.”

  Rudric cast his weary eyes on Leeli. She smiled, though it hurt her lips to do so. She pulled her whistleharp from the folds of her coat as if she were a knight drawing a sword, then followed Ladnar from the room.

  57

  Songs to Play, Battles to Fight

  Leeli climbed the steps to the roof of the library, flanked by a company of soldiers, men and women arme
d to the fingertips and looking warily at the air. Leeli couldn’t see much over their shoulders, but she saw enough. Out beyond the harbor and the cliffs of the Watercraw, backlit by the purple dusk, a shadow moved slowly toward them.

  “Thank you for coming, Your Highness,” said one of the women. Her reddish hair was braided and hung over leather armor plated with rusty metal. She bowed her head. “I know you’re tired.”

  “You’re tired, too,” said Leeli. “Where are the O’Sallys?”

  “Right behind you,” answered Thorn, who stood in the company with a dog on either side.

  Leeli turned and accidentally let a smile spread over her face. “Ow,” she said, touching her lips. She was embarrassed to be so happy to see her friend. She didn’t want him to think she liked him. Or maybe she did. Suddenly her cheeks were rosy as the morning sky. She took a deep breath and straightened, just like Nia, then said as seriously as she could, “I’m glad to see you. What’s the plan?”

  “I was going to ask you the same.” Thorn tore off a piece of hogpig jerk, chewed on it for a few seconds, then spat. “The dogs are worn out, but they’ll do whatever you ask.”

  “How many did we lose yesterday?”

  “Forty three.” Thorn shook his head. “Hard to say how many are left. A few hundred, maybe. It’s real bad.”

  “Really bad.”

  “Oy. Like I said.”

  It was a terrible thing, sending the dogs into battle. It weighed on Leeli every time she gave the order, knowing that many of them wouldn’t return. But they were as eager to fight as any of the Hollowsfolk, and in their simple way they seemed to understand what was at stake.

  Many of the Houndry Corps spent every waking hour scouring and sniffing the city for spent arrows, returning them to the makeshift fletchery at the Orchard Inn. Another company of dogs dispatched messages from Green Hill Press on Cherry Lane to different parts of the city. Since the enemy wasn’t gathered in a clear line on an open field, but rather came from above and could drop Grey Fangs in different parts of the city, communication was crucial.

  Days earlier, Leeli had asked Rudric what the dogs could do to help, short of accompanying the warriors in battle. He had just entered the war room of the Great Library, fresh from a battle. He was sweaty, dirty, and exhausted as he answered questions from every direction at once. Leeli knew there were a thousand more important things demanding his attention so she stood near the wall and listened.

  “We need soldiers at the south of the craw. Wolves are coming in over the cliffs,” panted one of the men. Rudric gave him his new orders just as someone else burst into the room asking for more arrows at the Guildling Hall. Rudric gave another order, and another, and Leeli noticed that the men he dispatched were exhausted. That was when she had come up with the idea for the messenger dogs.

  Dogs were faster, more agile, lower to the ground and therefore harder to see. She hobbled over to one of the men and asked him to write the message down and go find water and rest. She would see that the message was delivered. It would have been better if Rudric had approved it, but Leeli was correct in her belief that the less Rudric had to think about, the better a leader he would be.

  She had asked Thorn O’Sally to call for Leaper. She dogspoke to Leaper, telling him that he was to bring back any reply, secured the note to his collar and sent him off into the night. Only minutes later the dog had returned, unharmed, having delivered the message and brought back a reply.

  Rudric hardly noticed—until the next day when he realized that most of the battle’s correspondence was being handled by brave Leaper, aided by Leeli’s gift of communication. He had winked at Leeli and flashed a smile. That was the final approval she had been waiting for.

  In the few spare moments when Leeli wasn’t needed with her whistleharp on the rooftops, she and Thorn had gathered a passel of the smartest dogs: Leaper, Flag, Baxter (who had already recovered enough to help), and feisty little Frankle among them. Leeli knelt before them in Gully’s Saloon and conveyed the plan to them in dogspeak. It was difficult, even for Leeli, to communicate it all to the dogs in such a short time, but the whole pack had sat at attention and locked their eyes on the Song Maiden as if they understood every word, and Leaper filled in the blanks for her with whines and little barks.

  Thorn and Biggin fashioned tubes to the dogs’ collars for the purpose of holding written orders. Leeli taught Thorn and Biggin how to dogspeak each of the commanders’ names and positions, and it was up to the dogs to find them in the various sections of the city whenever they were sent with an urgent message.

  It had worked brilliantly, but after the second day Leeli realized that half her messenger dogs were dead or wounded. Not only did that mean her soul was heavy with sorrow, it meant she had to train more dogs every day even as she grieved the ones who had fallen.

  At Leeli’s urging, the rest of the Houndry Corps bounded into the battle alongside the Hollowsfolk. They fought with a will and purpose that none of the Hollish warriors had ever seen. Dogs leapt from stone walls to snag Bat Fangs’ legs; they circled Grey Fangs and either attacked or held them until Hollish warriors arrived.

  There were no prisoners taken—not because the Hollowsfolk were unmerciful, but because the Fangs never, ever stopped fighting. Each morning, a film of brown and gray dust coated the city. And as the warriors bound their wounds and rested, the conversation in Ban Rona always drifted to the courage of the Houndry Corps and how indispensable the dogs were to the night’s striving.

  In years past, though dogs had always been central to the culture and community of the Green Hollows, the dogs had been trained to fight with their masters, and their masters taught their dogs individual skills as they saw fit. That meant that one dog wouldn’t necessarily understand the command of another dog’s master. Not only that, there were often fights between dogs, each seeking dominance or the establishment of territory.

  But Leeli had changed everything on that moonlit night at Chimney Hill. Every single dog had raised its head and howled its allegiance to the Song Maiden, and from that moment, to Leeli’s embarrassment, many of the dogs had begun ignoring their masters altogether. They had, in the face of battle, transferred their allegiance to the little girl with the twisted foot, the one whose music sang in their blood, the one who spoke their own language.

  At first they had congregated on the lawn at Chimney Hill and were reluctant to leave if Leeli was there. When she did ride into town, the dogs followed her in parade. But she had dogspoken to them outside the Great Library and encouraged them to rejoin their masters, who no doubt needed them. The dogs dispersed, but not before each approached Leeli and nosed her open hand. It was a relief, because she heard angry mutterings from Hollowsfolk whose dogs had suddenly gone odd and only listened half the time.

  Then she began to receive word from Biggin or Rudric’s men that this front line or that was under heavy attack and there were no available warriors in reserve. So Leeli whistled a call to the dogs across the city and sent pack after pack to the battlefront. Biggin and Thorn O’Sally were the best dogspeakers in the Hollows, but they couldn’t have done as much. And so poor Leeli was not only needed on the rooftops to play her music and confound the Bat Fangs; she was also needed throughout the night again and again to command the dogs.

  All who saw Leeli Wingfeather looked on her with wonder and whispered among themselves with awe, for she never complained, never flagged, and never showed any sign of fear. She played song after song, beating back the enemy with all the passion in her soul, then knelt and stroked the wounded heads of her loyal dogs as she whispered and clicked to them her encouragement and commands.

  When the dogs were off, she drank or ate enough to sustain her, then she mounted the rooftop, tucked her crutch under her arm, and shot her song into the bat-winged sky like a volley of arrows. Her guards, which shifted throughout the day, fought not only for Ban Rona, or even for their very lives—they fought for the Song Maiden of Anniera, who emptied her stren
gth each night the way a cloud empties itself of rain.

  Frankle never left her side. Leeli had ordered him away time and again, tucked messages in his collar tube and pointed, but the little whip happily disobeyed her every word. Irritated, she gave up and turned her attention to her music. But soon Frankle’s steady presence became a comfort, a quiet companion in the heat of battle. He yipped and snapped at the air whenever Bat Fangs swooped low, as if he were as big as a bomnubble. Leeli’s guards came to value his presence, too, and if he trotted off to relieve himself or eat, they seemed uneasy until he returned to plop his wagging tail on the ground at Leeli feet.

  Now, Frankle was tumbling about on the ground and leaping at Leeli’s crutch, snapping at it playfully with his sharp puppy teeth. Thorn tossed him a piece of hogpig jerk.

  “I reckon it’s the same as yesterday. Pa told me there was a breach in the barricade over on Apple Way and they likely won’t have it repaired before the night wave crashes. Be ready to send a pack or two that way, first thing. I’ve done my best to teach the replacements the messenger posts, but I ain’t sure all of them got it. If it gets confusing I may have to bring them to you.”

  “That’s fine. Just don’t bring them until there’s a break in the battle. Things will get bad if I have to stop playing in the thick of an attack.”

  “Oy. Want some hogpig?”

  Leeli crinkled her nose. “No, thanks. Just ate.”

  Thorn shrugged as he took another bite and chewed on it, looking out over the rooftops. “I like you, Leeli. Pa says if we make it out of this, we should marry. I think that would be real good.”

  Leeli had no idea what to think or say or do. She wasn’t even sure he had actually said what she thought he had said. Thorn chewed his hogpig jerk, bent over, and scratched Frankle behind the ears. A few of the warriors tried to hide smiles, which made Leeli’s cheeks turn from red to pale white. She gripped her crutch because she felt a wave of dizziness. An onslaught of Bat Fangs would have been preferable to the strange, delightful, and terrifying feeling that crackled all over her skin.