by Brandon Mull
There in the shadows, she could see the dark outline of an animal — a wolf. The creature’s hackles were raised. It let out a low growl that sent vibrations through her bones.
“Hey!” she shouted, leaping toward it, not pausing to think about what she was doing.
Like a flash, it turned and bounded away through the woods.
It was gone, and so were all of her supplies.
The only thing left behind was the message. A clear warning from the wolves, and from Briggan himself. Stay away.
But that was not a message Katalin could afford to heed.
The farther they walked in the Granite Hills, the more frequent the howls and barks of the wolves became. Tero stayed close to Katalin now. He didn’t show fear, but she could tell he was wary, uncomfortable. Of course his natural instinct would be to get away from this place filled with wolves.
One afternoon they were forging a path up a rocky hillside when Katalin heard a whining sound. She turned to see if Tero had heard it as well, and he was already frozen, ears perked. With his sharp hearing, he’d have heard it well before she did.
“Should we go check it out?” she whispered to Tero.
He darted along beside her as she made her way closer. It sounded like some kind of animal was in pain. Then she froze.
Voices. Human voices.
“He doesn’t look that tough,” a man’s voice said.
“Not now, he doesn’t,” a woman answered. “But he will soon enough.”
The animal let out a series of scared yips.
Katalin peered around the trunk of a thick tree. She could see a wolf caught in a trap. He didn’t seem to be injured, just stuck.
Around him, at a safe distance, were two men and a woman. One of the men inched forward toward the wolf, then gave it a sharp kick. The wolf bared its teeth and tried to lunge at the man, but he quickly skipped back out of its reach. The movement only made the ropes that held the wolf tighten further. The animal yipped again, a mix of fright and outrage.
The wolves had been tormenting Katalin — scaring her and destroying her campsite — so that at times it felt like they were her enemies, instead of the pack of the Great Beast she was trying to convince to join their cause. But no matter how angry she felt at them, she never wanted this.
She could only make out small glimpses of the people between the trees, but one of them, the man who had just kicked the wolf, looked familiar. He glanced up, and she caught a better glimpse of him. Yes, it was definitely him — the Conqueror with the bat spirit animal that she’d escaped from a few days earlier. And now that she knew to look for it, she spotted his bat too, circling the sky above his head. She’d have to be very careful. The bat’s keen hearing and higher perspective might give them away.
Katalin noticed another animal in the clearing — a fox. The animal was pacing back and forth in the grass. There was something about its face that looked unusual. It had the same alert look that many spirit animals had, but there was something darker in it too. She couldn’t tell at first whether it belonged to the woman or the other man.
The man with the bat stepped forward, toward the trapped wolf. “He’ll make a good spirit animal for you, Mako,” he said to the second man. “The Bile will bind him to you, so that he’ll have to do whatever you say. You’ll be able to send him to the passive form at any time. And when he’s not passive — he’ll be fierce. You can see it in his eyes.”
Katalin couldn’t make out anything in the wolf’s white-ringed eyes except for a desperate fear. What was this Bile that the man mentioned?
The other man, Mako, looked slightly younger and sounded nervous as he spoke. “The Bile will make it so that he’ll have to obey, even though he’s one of Briggan’s own, one of the Great Pack?”
“That’s the whole point of this,” the woman said exasperatedly. “If we wanted just any wolf for your spirit animal, there are plenty we could have used. Why do you think we’re still here? Briggan’s Silver Wolf talisman is with the army, already halfway back to the Reptile King by now, and yet we stayed behind.”
“It wasn’t so that you could back out now, I’ll tell ya that,” the man with the bat muttered, in the same peevish voice that Katalin remembered.
“Hush, Ugron,” the woman hissed. She crouched down, beckoning the fox toward her, and it trotted over immediately. So it was hers, Katalin realized. There was something eerie about the way it obeyed her. Something very different from the loyalty that Tero showed her.
The woman spoke coldly. “Wolves can’t normally be summoned as spirit animals, so putting one of Briggan’s own into the thrall of a so-called Conqueror will send a strong message to him. When the ‘Packleader’ can’t even control his own pack, he’ll think twice before coming after his missing talisman, like Uraza and Jhi did.”
“It’ll be a message to all the Great Beasts, that they better not mess with us!” Mako exclaimed.
“Yes, that’s what I said,” the woman answered disdainfully. She extended a long arm that was covered in scars. Even from her remove, Katalin could see the raised pink marks all over the woman’s skin. She’d clearly been in more than her fair share of fights. With a brief flash of light, the fox leaped up, becoming a red ring around the woman’s upper arm.
Katalin’s mind was racing. The Reptile King was the man that she and the rest of their Marked resistance called the Devourer. He was the leader of the Conquerors, the one who had led his army through Zhong, through Nilo, and up into the edges of Eura. He was the one who gave the order to have her village sacked and burned.
And the curious thing about the Devourer’s army was that all of them had spirit animals. No one Katalin had spoken to knew how this was possible. Their resistance was a small and scattered group because so few people ever summoned a spirit animal, and not all of those could be convinced to rise up against the Conquerors. So how had the Reptile King, from the relatively small continent of Stetriol, called forth a whole massive army of the Marked? Did the Bile have something to do with this? Katalin looked with renewed attention at the group huddled around the wolf.
“Now, are you ready to do this?”
“Yes,” the young man said immediately. Then he hesitated. “Does it hurt?”
“You’re a soldier,” Ugron said. He spat on the ground. “Or at least, you’ve been passing for one.”
“The taste makes our army rations seem like a treat,” the woman said. “But I wouldn’t peg you for someone with a discerning palate. Drink up!” She pulled a bottle out of a pouch at her waist and handed it to Mako. He held it up to the sky. In the light, the liquid looked murky and almost oily. Thick currents moved slowly through it.
Katalin couldn’t let this happen. She touched the knife that she kept on her belt. It was sharp and could be deadly, but she knew she, Tero, and a knife were no match for three armed soldiers and two spirit animals.
Mako uncorked the bottle and sniffed gingerly at the liquid inside.
“This really smells bad,” he complained, pushing the cork back in. “It smells like old garbage” — he wrinkled his brow, thinking hard, and then continued — “mixed with older garbage.”
Katalin exchanged looks with Tero. He was ready for action too. She could feel his eagerness. They didn’t have time to waste on coming up with a plan. Any second now, Mako would gather his courage and drink the Bile — and Katalin didn’t want to see what would happen after that.
She placed her hand on Tero’s back. With his velvety coat under her fingertips, she could feel the electric energy that zipped through him. Her anger at the treatment of the wolf focused into a thin line of energy that felt almost like joy. It was like a spear of fire that burned out any fear and doubt, and cracked her heart open into a feeling that was exhilaration and speed all at once.
That was when she realized they were moving, dashing side by side toward the clearing.
Tero headed straight toward Mako. With her senses clear and keen, Katalin could make a split-second decision about her own plan of attack, while noticing that the little mink was leaping, claws outstretched, at the bottle Mako held in his hands. Just as Tero made contact with the bottle of Bile, sending it flying out of Mako’s hands and spinning away onto the ground, Katalin went into a slide aimed right at the legs of the scarred woman. Katalin took her right off her feet, and the woman came toppling down with a hard thud. Luckily, her fox was still in the passive state for the moment, and she was flustered enough not to be able to call him up right away.
Katalin froze for a moment, hand on her knife — it was wartime, but she had never harmed a human before. To her great relief, the woman was ignoring her, scrambling toward the bottle of Bile that was rolling away. With Mako, Tero, and the woman all lunging toward the bottle, Katalin took her chance. She dodged the large man as he came at her, using her speed and nimbleness to somersault right under him and toward the wolf.
It was yipping furiously now. Katalin was afraid to draw too close to it — its understandable rage at humans might well spill over to her right now — but she had to take the risk. She whipped her knife out and started sawing at the rope that bound its feet together. Her knife was sharp, but the rope was thick.
With a flash of perception, she could sense Ugron’s hulking shape charging at her from behind, and spun around into a low crouch, her knife aimed up at him. He had his club in his hand, and it was poised to swing at her. Her knife would be useless. Katalin was sure it was all over for her. Then she became aware of a flurry of movement above her — the stupid bat!
Tapping into Tero’s hunting instincts, she snatched the bat out of the air and clutched it to her chest, the knife tip pressed up against its tiny body.
“Stop right there,” Katalin said, her voice somehow steady despite the potent rush of fear and excitement that filled her veins.
The man froze, his club in midair.
“Put down the club. If you even begin to swing that at me, I will slice your bat right open.”
“Come on, little girl, let him go. You’re outnumbered. You don’t want to mess with us. Give up, and we’ll have mercy on you and your skunk.”
Katalin pressed her knife harder into the bat. It let out a pitiful squeak. She could feel its heart thudding against her palm.
“Okay, okay!” The man slowly put his club down on the ground and nudged it away with his toe.
“Farther!” Katalin grunted.
He kicked it away.
Katalin circled around the wolf so that she could keep the man in her sights, and attempted to go back to sawing through the rope while keeping the bat pinned against her. But the second her knife was off its body and on the rope, the bat started squirming and biting at her hand.
Out of the corner of her eye she could see Ugron hovering, torn between attacking her and playing it safe. Behind him, Tero was ducking and diving, a blur of movement. He was dodging the woman, her now-active fox, and Mako, and playing the ultimate game of keep-away with the Bile.
The wolf craned its neck back at her, snapping its jaws. Katalin gave the rope one last slash, and the constraints fell away. The wolf leaped up — for a split second Katalin was sure it was going to attack her — but then it simply shook out its fur, like a wet dog. It gave Katalin a gentle snarl and bounded away into the woods without a second look.
Her mission accomplished, Katalin lost her euphoric rush. She realized with a sinking feeling that she’d gotten herself into a terrible situation. They were outnumbered, and these Conquerors likely now knew she was a member of the Marked resistance. She was doomed.
As though he could read the realization in her face, Ugron took that moment to hurl himself at her, knocking her knife from her hand, then slamming her to the ground. She felt her back hit the earth with a sickening crack, and fingers of pain wrapped themselves around her. She looked frantically for Tero, craning her neck around Ugron’s heavy bulk.
Now that the wolf was gone, Tero had stopped trying to keep the Bile out of the Conquerors’ grasp, but he was in grave trouble himself. The mink was halfway up a tree, but the Conqueror’s fox had Tero’s tail between its teeth, and was shaking him down.
While he struggled, the woman approached with a burlap sack and scooped it over Tero, capturing him inside and tying it up with a tight knot.
“Well, that was a surprise,” she said. Katalin could hear that she was trying to play it cool, but she was nearly breathless after the chase. “See what happens when you muck around, letting your fear hold you back, Mako? Things get messy.”
Mako picked up the bottle of Bile and swung it back and forth. “Yeah, okay, I see. I’ll drink it now.”
“No, you fool,” she snapped at him. “Now? There’s no wolf now. You want to bond with a squirrel?”
“Calm down,” Ugron said. “It’ll be easy enough to capture another one of those mangy overgrown dogs. First we dispose of this green-cloak girl and her pet rat. Then we capture another one of Briggan’s wolves and get this thing over with. We’re not going back to the Reptile King until we’ve finished this.”
He reached for the ropes that had bound the wolf, and easily tied Katalin’s hands behind her back so that she could barely move.
“I’ll do it,” the woman said. She stalked over to a scabbard at the edge of the clearing and pulled out a long, gleaming sword. Katalin squirmed, but she couldn’t free her hands. She tried to tap into her bond with Tero. More than ever before, she needed some of his clever thinking, his impulsiveness. She needed courage.
But she could feel nothing from him except for a mounting claustrophobia. Across the clearing, she could see his thrashing as he squirmed his small body against the sack.
“Head up, girl,” the woman said, approaching with the sword. “Make it easier on yourself.”
A prickling feeling raced up Katalin’s spine. She thought it was fear, but then the now-familiar sound followed — the distant howling of a wolf. The proud, somber noise seemed to summon up some final bit of nerve in Katalin. She lifted her chin defiantly. She had saved one of Briggan’s own wolves from these horrible Conquerors, and if she had to lose her life to them, well, she would show them the bravery of the resistance.
But then there was another answering howl, this one closer.
And another.
Suddenly the hill was echoing with howls, so that the sound became endless and swirling.
A pack of wolves burst into the clearing — maybe fifty or sixty, perhaps even a hundred. Katalin thought she saw coyotes and jackals and foxes too; she couldn’t keep track of them all, though her eye was immediately drawn to the animal at the front. There was the wolf she had freed. She could recognize the white patches circling its eyes, and the look it gave her. It was not thanks, exactly, but the look of a proud creature repaying a debt.
Katalin stumbled back as the wolves tore at the Conquerors, a blur of gray and white fur. She felt a tug, and turned. One of the smaller wolves had the rope in its teeth and was yanking it off her hands. With a painful burn, the rough rope slid free. “Thank you,” she gasped, already running away toward the sack that held Tero.
The wolf pack had so surrounded the three Conquerors that Katalin could barely see them through the flash of fangs and fur. She looked away, unable to stomach the scene, and unknotted the bag. She pulled Tero out gently. He immediately leaped onto his familiar place on her shoulder. She ran her hands over his body, checking for wounds, and sprinted toward the trees.
There, as massive and unmoving as a granite wall, was a huge wolf. He stood nearly as high as a house, and was looking down at her with eyes the color of sapphires.
Briggan.
“Normally,” he said, in a voice that rumbled like a rock rolling down a hill, “normally, I would not allow a person to get this close to me.”
>
For once, Tero was holding completely still. He was plastered low on her shoulder and staring up at the Great Beast in awe.
“Normally,” Briggan continued, “I would flatten you with visions, make it so that you were unable to see the road in front of you for the dreams that would wrap themselves around your eyes.
“Normally, I would have my pack chase you from these hills before you had taken another step. Or I would have sent a landslide rumbling down, crushing your camp, so that you would have to retreat.
“But you put your own life on the line for one of my pack. I heard what you did, that you rescued him from a destiny worse than death, from a terrible bondage. And that you did so with no thought of repayment.”
Katalin gave a tiny nod. She remembered Adelle’s words, that she had to maintain her own courage and strength in the face of Briggan’s enormous presence, so she spoke up. “Yes . . . sir. I did. With Tero’s help.” She inclined her chin toward the unusually meek mink.
“So then tell me,” Briggan said, lowering his massive head down to her level. “What are you doing here? Why have you come all the way through the forest, across my valley, and into the Granite Hills, where no humans live?”
“I’ve come because we need you. Conquerors, people like the three who were trying to harm one of your pack, have come from Stetriol under the leadership of a terrible man called the Devourer. They have conquered Zhong, conquered Nilo . . . and soon they will conquer Eura, if you don’t help us.
“I belong to a resistance of Marked people. Nearly all of us have bonded with a spirit animal. We wear green cloaks to distinguish ourselves from the enemy. But our forces are spread out, unorganized, and afraid. We need you to inspire and unite us. . . .”
As Katalin continued with her explanation of all the troubles in the world, she tried to read the expression in Briggan’s great eyes. But he stayed as still and unreadable as a statue. Eventually she came to the end of her story. She had told him everything she knew of the Conquerors’ activities, all the information that Adelle had coached her to say clearly and powerfully.
