The Warden and the Wolf King

by Andrew Peterson

  Then, to Leeli’s great relief, Podo and Freva (along with little Bonnie) arrived. Leeli was glad to see that some of her grandfather’s old fire had been kindled.

  “Praise the Maker, yer safe!” Podo roared as he limped through the wounded to his daughter and granddaughter. He hugged them both so long and so tight that Leeli had to ask him to let go so she could breathe.

  Freva’s face paled and she lifted Bonnie to shield her eyes from the gruesome sights in the hall. “I’m going to go back, ma’am,” she said to Nia. “Bonnie shouldn’t be here, and we’d only be in the way. I just wanted to be certain you were safe. Chimney Hill is untouched.”

  “Good.” Nia pried Podo’s arm from around her shoulder and pecked his grizzly cheek. “We’ll need every empty bed to tend to the wounded, so please get the house ready for visitors. Thank you, Freva.”

  “Ma’am?” Freva asked, with some hesitation in her voice. “Is Master Janner coming back soon?”

  Podo, Oskar, and Leeli were all silent, looking first at the floor, then at Nia.

  “I don’t know,” Nia said. “Guildmaster Clout says he’s due back any time now. These new Fangs were concentrated here, on the city, which means he should have been as safe as ever out in the hills.”

  “Which isn’t very safe,” Oskar said quietly, clearing his throat.

  “He found us in the Ice Prairies,” Leeli said, taking Nia’s hand. “That was much farther away, and the Stony Mountains were crawling with Grey Fangs. Remember?”

  Nia took a deep breath and looked around the room, as if remembering where she was. “Yes, I do. Janner’s going to be fine.”

  “Where’s Tink?” Podo asked with a pirate’s growl. “I want to squeeze that lad like a pumpkin. The whole city is blubberin’ about his flight to the Field of Finley. They say he dusted a thousand bats!”

  “Carnack says he’s recovering at the field, under the care of his own mother. He said she’d send him back here as soon as he wakes.” Nia smoothed the front of her dress and knelt to change a woman’s head bandage. “He did well, didn’t he, Papa?”

  “Aye. And I’m gonna squeeze him like a pumpkin.” Podo lowered his bushy eyebrows and looked Leeli in the eye. “What about you, Lizardkicker? You all right?”

  “Yes sir,” Leeli said. She added some growl to her voice and swung her crutch in the air. “I ain’t afraid of no bats.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  “Grandpa, can you take me to the houndry?”

  “Aye. If it’s all right with your mother.”

  Nia didn’t look up from changing the woman’s bandage. “If you think it’s safe. I’m sure the O’Sallys could use her help. We’ll need the dogs ready for the next attack, and some of them will be grieving.”

  Leeli and Podo limped from the hall, speaking words of encouragement to the wounded and woeful as they weaved their way toward Podo’s sled. The sun was setting, and its light caught both cloud and smoke and turned the sky buttery and bright.

  “The sky is pretty even if the city isn’t,” Leeli said as Podo lifted her to the seat.

  “Aye, lass. The sky may be the only beautiful thing left to us for a while.” He grunted his way into the sled and shook the reins. “I wish I were younger. I’m as useless as a bad tooth out here. Look at Rudric.” Podo’s voice grew quieter as they moved away from the Great Hall, as if he were speaking to himself. “He’s doing the work of ten men. And that’safter the battle. He’ll be doing the work of twenty when the fighting starts again. I need to do something, lass, but I don’t know what. These fighters are all stronger than me. There’s no use for an old pirate when there’s a war boiling.”

  “You can help me at the houndry,” Leeli said.

  “Aye. I can do that, I reckon.”

  The streets of Ban Rona told the story of the battle. Many buildings were destroyed, and it was clear that if the clans at the Field of Finley had come a moment later the Fangs would have overrun the city. Everywhere Leeli looked she saw pain and destruction.

  Several minutes later they found the Guildling Hall teeming with children and parents, dogs and guildmasters. During the battle, many of the Hollowsfolk had fled either to the Great Library or to the Guildling Hall, because the larger buildings afforded more space, more rooms, and more places to hide. But now, as in the Great Hall, there were wounded to care for.

  Head Guildmistress Olumphia Groundwich stood at the base of the courtyard statue, one hand on the forearm of the stone horseman, and the other pointing in whatever direction she shouted her orders.

  “Podo!” she bellowed, in a voice that made her whiskers curl. “Take over!”

  “Eh?” He reined up the sled at the gate and climbed down. “I thought ye said fer me to take over.”

  “Oy! That’s exactly what I said!” Olumphia’s lanky body leapt down from the statue and landed on her tiptoes between two wounded women. She flung her arms about to keep her balance, then danced from spot to spot, over and around people, until she stood beside the sled, panting. “Hello, Leeli.” She nodded at Leeli curtly, then hurled her attention back at Podo. “I need to get inside and make sure the Cookery Guild is supplied—and someone needs to oversee the Fletchery. Rudric says we need more arrows. Most of the adults are either busy or wounded or—”She glanced at a passing stretcher bearing someone who was worse than wounded. Olumphia clenched her jaw and narrowed her eyes. “The Fangs will be back. Maker knows when. And we need to be ready. I need you to make sense of this chaos. We can’t have people lying about in the sun, and we’re running out of room here.” She glanced at the sky, dismayed by the fading light. “Take charge. Understand?”

  It was odd to see someone give orders to Podo, but Groundwich’s urgency seeped into the old man. His eyes narrowed like Olumphia’s, and for a moment they looked like the same person—just as whiskery, just as fierce, and just as masculine. Whenever the next battle happened, Leeli was sure the safest place to be was right between the two of them.

  “Aye. I can do that, ma’am.” Podo smiled a terrible smile and clambered up the base of the statue. He held to the stone horse’s neck like a ship captain at the mast and picked up exactly where Olumphia left off. “You!” he cried. “Count the wounded! You, lad. Figure out how many can walk, and send them to the Great Hall! They may be hurt, but they’re in the way. Oy, the name’s Gruk, ain’t it? Grak. Sorry. Spread the word that the guilds are to gather in their own guildery. The night is coming, and the Bat Fangs may come with it!”

  People nodded and obeyed. It was doubtful any of the Hollowsfolk in the courtyard could tell the difference between Podo and Olumphia, nor did they care. They needed someone in charge, some order to push back the disarray. They were adrift, and Podo gave them a port.

  “You should get to the houndry, Your Highness,” Olumphia told Leeli. “Biggin is distraught. Many dogs were lost today.” Olumphia directed a horse and sled to the gate, shouting for someone to load it with wounded and transport them back to Ban Rona.

  Leeli hurried to the houndry. Before she opened the door she could hear the whines of many dogs in pain and distress. Torches burned on the walls, illuminating more dogs than Leeli had ever seen in the barn. Not a single tail wagged. Biggin O’Sally sat on the floor, holding a brown and white dog in his arms. When he looked up at Leeli, she saw that he was crying.

  “They got Sounder,” he said. “But he put up a good fight, didn’t he?” The dogs nearby rumbled with half-barks and licked the dead animal’s fur. “He took down the Gray Fang before it could get to the pups. That’s my boy.” Biggin stroked its head and pointed at another heap of fur lying beside the bench. “That’s Barala. She and her pack kept a whole flap of those bats out of the Dining Hall until help arrived. Saved many children.”

  “Where’s Thorn?”

  “Out at the Field of Finley with a houndrick, looking for the wounded.”

  “Then he wasn’t hurt? He’s safe?”

  “Oy, thank the Maker.” Biggin wiped his no
se. “It’s the hounds that took the bludge of it.”

  Leeli made her way through the dogs, touching their heads as she passed and thinking of Nugget. Brave Nugget who had leapt into a company of Fangs to protect her.

  When she reached Biggin, she sat on the floor beside her Guildmaster. A resurgence of the day’s horror washed over her as night fell on the Hollows, and her soul was dark with sorrow. She saw the same sorrow in the eyes of her dogs, and heard it also in Biggin’s voice. There had been so much death, so much suffering—and yet, in the face of it, so much bright defiance. So many brave men and women whose stories would be in the hearts of the Hollowsfolk for the rest of time, because they had died for the sake of their friends. It did little to ease the present sadness, but she wept—for she knew her tears were medicine—and she realized that Gnag the Nameless’s best efforts to blacken the world would only serve to scatter light like the stars in the heavens.

  When Leeli closed her eyes and inhaled the pleasant musk of the many hounds and felt their noses nudging her shoulder and shins, she recalled the look on Nugget’s face as he clawed at the Fangs on Miller’s Bridge. His courage was as big as the world, and when he died a bit of the world died with him. And yet here she was, months later, on another terrible day, experiencing a miraculous lightening of her heart’s burden at the memory of Nugget’s selfless act. It was as if a strand connected that day with this one and the Maker’s pleasure was coursing through it like blood in a vein. Then she thought of this one battle, in which there were countless acts of heroism, sacrifice, and honor, which were seen and would be remembered long after the heroes died and became points of light in a dark sky, connected by memories like constellations, each of which painted a picture that all the darkness of the universe could never quench. Light danced along the strands. Gnag couldn’t stop it in a million epochs. Leeli grieved but knew, in a way she couldn’t explain, that her grief would lead to something good.

  Sometime before dawn, Thorn returned from the Field of Finley.

  “Leeli,” he said.

  She lifted her sleepy head from Biggin’s shoulder and saw her friend standing in the doorway. The tremble in his voice told her something was wrong—something more wrong than the battle, and the deaths of his countrymen and his dogs.

  Thorn stepped aside and Baxter limped into the light. His front paw barely touched the ground, and blood matted his fur from his shoulder down. Baxter’s tongue drooped low and he whined once before collapsing to the houndry floor.

  Leeli rushed to his side and flung her crutch away. “Baxter! Where’s Janner? What happened?” The dog’s eyes fluttered, then closed. He drifted into unconsciousness as Leeli sat and placed his head in her lap. She looked up at Thorn. “Where did you find him?”

  “A scout spotted him a few hours beyond the field and brought him back. He’s hurt real bad. I’m sorry Leeli.” Thorn gently slid Baxter’s legs out of the way so he could close the door. “Is he alive?”

  “Yes, but not by much.” Leeli listened to Baxter’s breathing. “Did you see Kal?”

  “No, I reckoned he was with you.”

  Leeli’s head shot up. “I haven’t seen him since the dungeon.”

  “An old woman said he came back to the city just after noon.”

  “That can’t be right. We would have seen him.” Leeli imagined Kal slinking around looking for food or trying to avoid whatever it was kings were supposed to do after a battle. She felt guilty and dismissed the thought. That was the old Tink. Maybe he was off doing some secret Durgan thing for Clout or Rudric. Still, she felt a tremor of worry, an intuition that Kal was in trouble.

  She sat up straight. “Thorn, quick. Get me some paper and a quill. Dugger, come!” She clicked her tongue and a young herder dog padded to her side. Thorn returned with a roll of parchment, already uncapping an inkbottle. Leeli scribbled a note to her mother explaining that neither Kal nor Janner had returned. She slid it into a tube fastened to Dugger’s collar, then held the dog’s face in her hands. She clicked her tongue and whispered, “Find Nia. Hurry!”

  With a bark that filled the other dogs in the room with excitement, Dugger bounded through the dog door and into the night. Leeli took a deep breath, stroked Baxter’s fur, and pulled her whistleharp from her cloak. “Maker, please let this work.”

  “What are you doing, Highness?” Biggin asked from across the room as she tuned the strings and strummed.

  “Looking for my brothers.”

  17

  General Fithyhoop’s Scout

  Kalmar ran across the snow-swept hills, his cape flying out behind him. He ran by the light of the moon and, when the moon sank, by the light of the cold stars. Unlike Janner, he had no map in his mind, no real memory of the geography of the Green Hollows to guide him. He gave himself over to instinct, to smell and sound, to the peace of the wild, though he was careful to remain conscious of what he was doing. Kal was too afraid of the Fang inside him to allow it free rein. Instead, he imagined that he was riding the wolf, the way a man rides a horse—a dangerous and unpredictable horse.

  After hours of scaling steep hills on all fours, then bounding down into valleys to leap over creeks or gullies, he realized he was tired. He stopped to rest, panting like a dog, and drank from a stream under the stars.

  Where am I going?he asked himself. He had to keep his mind active in order to subdue the inner wolf.To stop Gnag.

  As crazy as that sounded, it was better than being stuck in Ban Rona to languish in counsels, listening to wiser men discuss strategies he didn’t understand. Back there they’d force him to give speeches or to order people around. He didn’t want that. Most of all, he didn’t want to wake up one day with something worse than hen blood on his hands. People already looked at him like he was a monster. They had been nice enough lately, but Kal could always tell that their eyes lingered on him a little too long, that they laughed a little too hard at his attempts to be funny, that they seemed anxious to escape the room when he was present. How would they behave if they knew what really lurked inside him? Their worst suspicions were true. Hewas a monster. At least, he was becoming one.

  Kalmar wiped his mouth with his forearm and straightened. He hadn’t even noticed that he had been crouched at the creekside, lapping up the water like a dog.

  “What’s my name?” he asked himself. “My name is Kalmar. My father was Esben Wingfeather, and I am his son, the High King of Anniera.”

  Those were the words he had spoken on theEnramere all those months ago as they sailed to the Hollows. Again and again, Nia, Janner, Leeli, and Artham had asked him his name—his true name. Janner had told him stories, and those stories had called him home. Now those stories were like lampposts along the pathway, guiding his course. Whenever he remembered his name he felt more like himself and less like the Fang. So he repeated it into the cold air of the valley floor, “I’m Kalmar. My father was Esben Wingfeather.”

  As he watched the fog of those words rise and vanish, remembering Esben’s last breath on the boat that night, he caught the sound of voices somewhere to the north. He held still, then sniffed at the air and sensed a sweet, leathery odor. It divided itself into several shades. It was a group of—something. He couldn’t tell what. The scent was familiar but he couldn’t place it. They were at least three hills away and still talking, which meant they didn’t know he was there.

  Kal hopped over the creek, crept up the far side of the hollow and scanned the next hill. Even with his wolf eyes and the bright stars, he detected nothing. As quietly as a breeze, he trotted down the hill and up the next. The voices were louder. As soon as he made out a few words it was clear that they were ridgerunners.

  “I think we should go back and get it.”

  “Well, I think that’s a fruitless idea.”

  “We’re already fruitless!”

  “And we’ll be headless if that troll has its way.”

  “What about the boy?”

  “He’s probably already in the troll’s belly.
And good riddance, for all the trouble he caused. Even if he liked plumyums.”

  It could have been any boy, Kal told himself. Surely not everyone in the Green Hollows had come to the Field of Finley. Surely there were those unable or unwilling to fight, families who stayed home to tend their flocks and farms. But Kalmar knew, in the same way he knew which direction to run, that it wasn’t justany boy they were talking about.

  Kal lay on his stomach and inched forward until he could see the huddle of ridgerunners a little way down the slope. They hunkered around a small fire in a stand of squat, bare clumpentine trees. He knew already, by the different shades of scent, that there were eighteen of the little creatures. Spears and swords leaned against tree trunks and several unstrung bows lay among the roots. Narrow ridgerunner faces glowed in the firelight. Kal waited to hear more but they said very little and sat puffing pipes and staring at the embers.

  Kalmar stood up, took a deep breath, then strode down the hill to the ridgerunners. As he assumed they would, they scrambled for their weapons and hissed at him as he approached. Some of them scrambled into the trees.

  “Put down your weapons, fools,” he growled in his best Grey Fang voice.

  “What do you want?” One of the ridgerunners stepped forward with a spear raised.

  “I’m a scout. Scouting the land. For scouting purposes.” Kal folded his arms and stood as tall as he could. “We got word of a troll. Something about a boy and a troll.”

  The ridgerunner narrowed his eyes. “We sent no such word. What did you hear?”

  Kalmar should have come up with a good story first, but it was too late for that. “That’s none of your business. I’ve been sent to scout for trolls. We need them in Ban Rona.” That sounded better, Kal thought. “The battle went badly and General, uh, Fith—uh, Fithyhoop . . . sent me to find help.”