AllFreeNovel
Share Us
With a sigh, I continued it. “Like I said, once Dmitri figured out I was Peter’s friend, he wouldn’t leave us alone. Even though we tried everything we could to shake him.”
I glanced to Ludvig, unable to tell if he was awake with his eyes closed or asleep. All those things we’d done to try to lose Dmitri in the forest, to bribe him to go away, even to threaten to fight him, were between me and Ludvig. The conversation we’d had late into the night where I’d offered to throw myself at Dmitri and to let him fuck me so Ludvig, Riley, and Barber could get away hung heavily between us. Ludvig had refused to let me use myself that way, but in the end, that was where things were headed anyhow.
“Wherever we went, Dmitri followed us,” I said, lowering my head and rubbing my temples. “We spent nearly two weeks traveling from one small pack to another, trying to avoid General Rufus’s soldiers on the one hand and Dmitri on the other while making contact with as many wolves as we could and sending them south.
“We were forced to give up and accept Dmitri into our group when our camp was raided by a detachment of soldiers,” I said, raising my head and facing the grimmest part of our story. “We suspected but didn’t know that Dmitri had been hiding within earshot of our camp. He’d been tailing us like that for several days, always staying just out of sight. But he knew where we were at all times, and we suspected he was there.
“All that came to a head when the soldiers found us and attacked us,” I said, taking in a shuddering breath at the memory. “It was the middle of the night. We were sleeping. It had been an exhausting few days of arguments with tiny packs and lone wolves who didn’t believe a thing we said and thought we were trying to cheat them. I didn’t hear the soldiers coming because I was so deeply asleep. And then suddenly, I was awake, being dragged to my feet in nothing but my drawers.
“Ludvig was already engaged in the fight—that was how he received the sword wound—and so was Barber. Riley was the one who roused me and handed me a sword, but no sooner had he done that than he was grabbed from behind. I did everything I could to get that soldier to let go of him, but he wouldn’t budge. I’d never really been trained in swordplay before, although Ludvig saw to it that I was taught a little after the Battle of the Coronation. I held my own, but only for a few minutes.
“Dmitri either knew the soldiers were going to attack or was awaken by the noise in whatever shadowy place he’d made camp. He flew in out of the blackness wielding two short swords and attacked the soldiers—who, by that point, were trying to subdue and shackle us. They wanted to keep us quiet. Our mission had started to stir up discontent in the forest by that point.”
I glanced to Magnus and continued. “I heard the commander of that group give the order to take us alive because we would be useful for General Rufus’s plans. ‘Not like the pitiful whelps we’ve rounded up so far,’ he said. But they knew Dmitri. As soon as he got involved, the entire mood changed. The commander ordered us taken prisoner, and I knew he meant something other than as recruits for the army.
“This was only a week ago,” I explained, glancing around at the others. The amount of attention they paid me was almost eerie. “We were within half a day’s march of Seymchan at the time. There were three times as many soldiers as us. We didn’t really stand a chance. We held out as long as we could, but they captured us all, even Dmitri, and marched us back to Seymchan.
“I got the impression pretty quickly that the original plan had been to just fold us into whatever army General Rufus already out in the forest. But General Rufus and his men had apparently just taken Seymchan and were still trying to organize things, so instead of making us into soldiers, we were held prisoner.”
“A week ago,” Sebald said, frowning in thought. “Right about the time we were all making plans for the meeting. Even if King Sai had received word of the capture—and there’s no guarantee a messenger would have reached him in time—I’m not sure he would have been able to do anything with the information.”
“Exactly,” I nodded to him. “But I think it worked in our favor in the end. Seymchan was in chaos when the soldiers who had captured us marched us into the city. The kind of chaos that comes from the tail-end of a siege. Like things were just at the end of the Battle of the Coronation. There were still pockets of city-dwellers fighting. I hope at least some of them were able to get away rather than being killed.”
I paused to swallow sickly at the memory of fresh corpses in the street, of women screaming as General Rufus’s soldiers did unspeakable things to them. I could still smell the smoke of burning buildings and the metallic scent of blood as skirmishes finished up in the streets. I hadn’t been back to a city outside of the Wolf River Kingdom since being kidnapped and ending up with Ludvig, and any hope I’d had that the civilizing influence of that way of life would mellow the wolves or the soldiers from the Old Realm had been immediately crushed.
At that time and now, I remembered the things Magnus had always talked about—about how the frontier couldn’t afford any more deaths or any more destruction. But that was all I’d seen in the eastern forest and in Seymchan.
But I had more story to tell.
“Without Dmitri’s intervention during the attack, I’m sure we would have been hauled off to the army.” I continued, lowering my voice. “I…I don’t think they would have kept Ludvig alive. I heard more than one comment about him being too old, and he’d already sustained one injury tht was starting to slow him down.”
I glanced painfully at Ludvig, who was definitely asleep now, loving him but not loving him, and feeling miserable because of it.
“Dmitri also kept us safe, or at least safer than we could have been, once we got to the palace, which General Rufus had made into his headquarters,” I said.
“How?” Jace asked with a frown. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
I shook my head. “As soon as the leader of the men who captured us explained what had happened, General Rufus gave the order for us to be killed,” I explained. “Some of his guards had already drawn their swords and approached us, but Dmitri shouted out that we couldn’t be killed, we were citizens of the Wolf River Kingdom and directly connected to King Magnus.”
I glanced apologetically to Magnus as I spoke.
Magnus looked surprised. “And that stopped him from having you killed?”
“It sewed just enough doubt in General Rufus’s mind to order his guards to stand down,” I said. “General Rufus approached us, sizing Dmitri up. He thought Dmitri was our leader.” I let out a heavy breath. “I should have contradicted him. But Dmitri figured out what General Rufus wanted to hear and fed him a heaping spoonful of lies laced with just enough truth to be taken seriously.
“The Old Realm knows vaguely about the Wolf River Kingdom,” I went on. “They know what it is, and they know you, Magnus, are its leader. They know you are King Julius’s brother as well. That’s why he changed his mind about killing us.”
That bit of information sent ripples of shock through everyone. Their shock surprised me a little. I would have thought they’d’ve figured out King Julius knew his brother was calling himself a king as well.
“They all think you’re a whore,” I told Magnus, feeling extraordinarily sheepish about saying so. “Your brother doesn’t think much of you at all, so no one else in the Old Realm does either. From the way he talked, General Rufus imagines that the Wolf River Kingdom isn’t much more than a small pack somewhere farther to the south and the west, and because they see it as being run by a whore, no one imagines it has any strength.” I hung my head, feeling terrible. “They…they laugh about you and make jokes about the wolf kingdom in the Old Realm.”
“But this is brilliant,” Magnus said, acting as though I’d given him a Solstice gift. “We have the greatest advantage of all if they are so greatly underestimating us.”
I lowered my head, feeling horrible. “I started out arguing, telling them there are tens of thousands of us, that they wouldn’t stand a chance if they attacked us. I didn’t think.” I sighed. “I didn’t realize it would be in our best interest to conceal our numbers instead of bragging about them.”
I swallowed, then added, “That’s another reason Dmitri saved our lives. He cut me off and belittled me, saying I was just a bragging pup. I don’t know if it did any good, though. General Rufus was suspicious by that point. He ordered us held prisoner in one of the rooms in the palace.”
“Why not the dungeon?” Jace asked. “Doesn’t the palace in Seymchan have a dungeon?”
