Marsheila Rockwell - Legacy of the Wolves

She smiled at him, baring her teeth. “No, but I know who might.”

“You want to do what?”

Irulan sighed. For an inquisitive, Greddark was pretty slow on the uptake.

“Look,” she said. “They’re wolves, and territorial. They’ll know where any other pack is lairing, including the werewolves. It shouldn’t be too-”

“Dire wolves, didn’t you say? About as big as my horse? Six of them? On the hunt?” Greddark turned to Andri. “She’s lost her mind.”

The paladin just shrugged. He’d been withdrawn and taciturn all morning. As irritating as his fervent prayers had been, his silence bother Irulan even more. She knew the memories he’d dredged up the night before still plagued him, and his pain was palpable.

All the more reason for them to go after the wolves-or, rather, have the wolves come after them . A fight would do the paladin good.

“I’m not crazy. They’ll think we’re easy prey-”

“And they won’t be wrong,” Greddark muttered, but she ignored him.

“-and try to attack. We defeat their pack leaders, and they’ll have no choice but to help us.”

“Pack leaders? As in, more than one?”

Honestly. Had he never been out of the city?

“Two. The dominant male and female. Usually the parents of the other wolves.”

“And what if we can’t defeat them? They lead the pack because they’re the biggest, strongest, and fiercest of the lot. If the rest of the pack can’t beat them, what makes you think we can?”

“Simple. We’re smarter and better armed.”

“Better armed, anyway,” the dwarf grunted, pulling his short sword from its scabbard.

“That’s not what I meant,” Irulan said. “If we want the pack’s cooperation, we can’t kill the leaders outright. We have to challenge them. Though, if they’re not a mated pair, we may only have to deal with the male.” She flexed her fingers in anticipation of shifting. She wouldn’t mind a good fight, herself.

“Challenge?” Greddark repeated, looking at her in frank amazement. “You mean, wolf to wolf?”

He’d no doubt meant the phrase to be disparaging, but Irulan chose to ignore it. She wasn’t so much of a hypocrite that she wouldn’t utilize the abilities inherent in her bloodline when it was to her benefit, regardless of how much she detested the source of that advantage.

“Something like that, yes.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

She shrugged, an unconscious parody of Andri’s earlier gesture.

“Then I’ll use magic.”

The dwarf didn’t even try to mask his disbelief. He grabbed at his beard, which wasn’t nearly long enough for such abuse, then shifted to his hair, tugging on lanky strands in sheer frustration. Irulan would have thought it comical, if that frustration weren’t quickly morphing to anger-anger that was directed at her .

“Magic? You’re going to try and charm a dire wolf? When you can’t even control a Host-damned horse?”

Irulan felt her own patience slipping. There was no way they’d find the werewolves’ lair on their own. They had to have help, and it wasn’t as if they could summon up a House Tharashk Finder to locate the lycanthropes for them. Especially not when at least one of the werewolves had some sort of ward powerful enough to interfere with both dragonmark abilities and magical means of scrying. The wolves were their only option.

“You have a better idea?” Irulan asked. Her mare, sensing her own mounting ire, chose that moment to begin chomping at the bit, earning a smug smirk from the dwarf. Irulan could have kicked the stupid beast- both of them.

“As a matter of fact-”

“Stop it.”

Though he didn’t raise his voice, Andri’s words carried a sharp edge of command. Both Irulan and Greddark turned to look at the paladin in surprise. He’d reined his own mount in and was grasping the reins so tightly his knuckles were white. But when he spoke, his tone betrayed neither impatience nor temper, only the expectation of obedience.

“Irulan’s right. The pack Quillion spoke of could be anywhere in the forest. Wolves and dire wolves have an empathetic connection with werewolves. They will know where the lycanthropes are lairing. It would be better if we could separate their leaders out from the rest of the pack, but we are short on time and resources. We will go with Irulan’s plan.”

Irulan hid her own smirk while the dwarf started to protest.

“But-”

“If this plan is not agreeable to you, Master Greddark, you are free to consider your employment terminated. I’ll give you a letter of credit to cover the fee you’ve already earned, along with your share of the rations that remain, and you can follow the edge of the wood to Olath. You can resupply there and book passage back to Sigilstar, if you so desire.”

The paladin and the inquisitive stared at each other for a long, tense moment. Greddark was the first to look away. Seeing the bleak expression in Andri’s eyes, Irulan didn’t blame him. It was as if something vital in the paladin had perished, draining away the warmth and compassion that Irulan had come to admire so much. A coldness radiated from him now, one borne not of anger, but of black despair. When his dead gaze flicked over her, she shivered.

“I was hired to find a killer,” the dwarf said finally. “I don’t quit with a job half-done.”

“Very well. Then we’d better prepare.”

The preparations, such as they were, took little time. Irulan scouted out a small clearing beside a muddy brook where deer and other wild game often came to drink. The wolves had been headed in this general direction. It was an obvious choice for a hunting ground.

Or a trap.

The tricky part would be making sure the wolves thought they were easier prey than their horses. But Irulan had a spell that would hide the mounts from detection, as long as the steeds didn’t accidentally touch another living creature. She solved that problem as best she could by tethering the mounts at intervals along the downstream end of the small creek, on the opposite side of the clearing from where the wolves would be approaching. She would just have to pray to the Flame that no curious chipmunk or darting bird bumped into one of the horses before the wolves arrived, thus negating the spell and revealing the mounts for all to see, friend and foe alike. She pulled out a small knife and notched the bark of each tree where one of the horses was tied, so they would be able to find the mounts again afterwards.

Assuming they survived that long.

Andri’s vote of confidence notwithstanding, she wasn’t sure her plan was actually going to work. Irulan had always put more stock in her claws than in her spells. Though she was loathe to admit it, the dwarf had been right to doubt the efficacy of her magic-wielding capabilities. She would try to charm the pack leader. Hopefully she would only have to worry about the male, because she wasn’t sure she could hold two of them in thrall at once. But she knew she’d better be ready for a fight, because chances were good that it was going to come down to whose claws were faster and whose bite sank deeper.

Greddark built a small fire and they took their positions around the circle of rocks, pretending to chat and snack like frivolous nobles out picnicking in the woods on a lark. Of course, since Andri had gone back to being his usual uncommunicative self and Irulan needed to focus her senses outward, on the wolves, that left Greddark to chatter along inanely with himself, a situation that the shifter suspected she would have found wildly amusing under other circumstances. As it was, she had to tune most of the dwarf’s blathering out in order to track the wolves’ approach, although random phrases periodically threatened to draw her out of her reverie.