Page 10 of Anton

“Dmitri knows a lot of things,” I said, rubbing my aching head and wishing it weren’t so. “He has traveled extensively in the eastern forest since being cast out of Sascha’s pack. He…he isn’t a good man, but he has a way of making…not friends, but allies. People see that he’s strong and clever, and they want him on their side. Riley and Barber were like that.”

“And who are Riley and Barber?” Lefric asked.

I felt a little sick at the memory of the two men who had been my friends for a short time. It had only been a week since General Rufus’s soldiers had killed them. Part of me couldn’t believe they were dead. Another part of me felt like I’d dreamed them up, like they’d never existed at all.

I took a deep breath and moved back toward Lefric, reaching for the glass of water. I drank several gulps, then adjusted to sit with a crate supporting my back.

“Riley and Barber are two wolves who had been living in the forest for about three or four years,” I began their part of the tale. “They were together, and they had been since they were cast out of Berlova. Riley was a printer’s apprentice and Barber worked with an apothecary. They were found out as lovers and cast out of the town. Most of the wild wolves of the eastern forest are men who were cast out of the cities, but who weren’t lucky enough to stumble across any of the larger, more civilized settlements.

“I think they would have come back with us if…if General Rufus hadn’t had them killed,” I said sadly, staring into my glass of water for a moment. “A lot of wolves out there don’t believe anything other than what they see around them. They don’t believe the Wolf River Kingdom exists, or that any wolves would band together to form larger settlements. But when we explained everything to Riley and Barber, and when Dmitri inadvertently confirmed everything, the two of them wanted to come back with us right away.

“Only, as Ludvig and I told them, we weren’t going back immediately. We had too much work to do seeking out other wolves and recruiting them. So Riley and Barber agreed to come with us and to show us other settlements they knew inhabited by wolves who might be willing to join us.

“It was a good plan,” I went on with a sigh. “They were good men. They would have been an asset to the kingdom. So were many other men we encountered in the forest. We sent as many back with directions to Kettering and Meadowbrook. Dushka and Erik, who Ludvig put in charge of Meadowbrook in my absence, would have known what to do with them. We had almost reached the point where we were ready to head back ourselves when we ran into General Rufus’s army.”

“How much of an army is it, really?” Sebald asked, nervously stroking Avenel’s head. “Sai was under the impression that the Old Realm didn’t have any presence on the frontier, but now I worry that that was a lie Hadrian fed to him to keep him from being alarmed.”

Everyone else seemed to know what Sebald meant by that, and they reacted with thoughtful frowns or hums.

I only knew what little I’d seen.

“The army is bigger than the one Yuri and Bela brought to the coronation,” I said. “I’ve never seen a real army other than that. But General Rufus was recruiting wolves to join the army at every turn.

“Well, if by ‘recruiting’ you mean forcing them to become soldiers or be run through,” I added. “General Rufus, as far as I can tell, has been given orders not only to take back what parts of the frontier he can easily capture, he’s been told to increase the numbers in his army by impressing wolves to serve. I think he told them that they could get their revenge against the cities that cast them out, or something, or that they could kill the men who once scorned them if they joined his ranks. I really don’t know.”

Magnus hummed, looking serious, but as though it was all good news. “This is important information,” he said. “It tells me that this General Rufus fellow, perhaps my errant brother as well, is not aware of the wolf kingdoms at all.”

“Which is something you speculated about,” Olympus said.

Magnus nodded to him. “It would be a stroke of luck for us if the Old Realm truly is ignorant of the strength of the western wolves.”

“And if he thinks the cities are weak and growing weaker,” Lefric added. “King Julius, and maybe this General Rufus fellow too, are definitely underestimating the frontier. Especially if they’re recruiting wild wolves as soldiers.”

“Why would that represent an underestimation?” Magnus asked. I was surprised at the way he took Lefric so seriously. I would never have taken Lefric seriously about anything. It made me wonder what I’d missed in the last two months. “Would it not stand to reason that if this general is seeking to increase his army, he must think the force that will meet him in the cities will be great?”

I could tell Magnus was asking the question as though it were a problem on an exam he was giving Lefric, and that he had his own thoughts on the matter, but I was still in awe of the way he asked Lefric for his line of logic.

Lefric shook his head. “If General Rufus thought he would have a huge fight on his hands with the cities, he would seek out experienced, trained soldiers. He would have brought people over from the Old Realm. He must not think the cities are capable of defending themselves if he’s willing to fill up his ranks with untrained men who abhor organization, many of whom are probably starving and desperate. Isn’t that right?” he asked me at the end.

“It is,” I said with a nod. “And I hadn’t thought of that. Most of the wolf recruits were men who would have done anything for a heel of bread.”

“So they aren’t going to be very effective when and if General Rufus wants to attack any cities,” Lefric said, looking at Magnus.

“Unless, as we discussed at the Sons meeting, the Old Realm is so desperate for soldiers after their failed war that recruiting wild wolves is the only option they have,” Sebald said. “From what I know, what Sai told me, the Old Realm is in as bad a condition as the frontier. Maybe this General Rufus person thinks recruiting wild wolves is the best he, or anyone else, can do.”

I blinked at the exchange. I hadn’t thought about any of those things. Thinking of them now made me question everything. Was General Rufus really trying to form an army from scraps, and if so, why?

“You still haven’t really explained Dmitri,” Jace interjected into the middle of my thoughts. “Why is he still with you? And what happened to the other two? And how did you end up around General Rufus.”

“Didn’t you say you escaped fromSeymchan?” Sebald asked. “I hadn’t realized Seymchan had fallen to the wild wolves in the first place, although there have been worries and rumors about that for a while.”

“It was newly fallen,” I said. “Which is why things weren’t as organized as they could have been. We were lucky, believe it or not.”

Riley and Barber hadn’t been as lucky, though, but I was getting to that part of the story.

Everyone was watching me, and I could only delay for so long by finishing my glass of water. It had helped my head a little, but I really just wanted to sleep.

I couldn’t avoid telling the rest of the story, though.

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