Next to him Lamar propped himself against the stone wall of the keep. Hugh leaned next to him and began pulling at the wraps on his fists. In front of them the western end of the bailey stretched, filled to the brim with tents. It had been three weeks, and still more than half of his people were camping out in the open. He’d left the barracks renovation to Elara. She had insisted on it, and he gave it to her to avoid having another delay on the moat. His wife was dragging her feet on renovations. At this rate, they would still be in tents at first frost.
“What did you find out?” Hugh asked.
“Pretty much what we suspected.” Lamar kept his voice quiet. “Elara is at the top of the food chain. Below her are the two advisers. Savannah oversees the covens, infrastructure, and internal administrative issues. She also heads their legal department. Dugas deals with logistics, imports, exports, trade agreements and so on. Their powers overlap somewhat, so they have oversight over each other. Elara views them both as her parents. No clue what happened to her real family.”
In a war against Elara, the witch and the druid would be priority targets.
“What about Johanna?”
“Research and development. There are other administrators. The head accountant, for example. But none of them hold the power those three do. Most major decisions are made by them and Elara. Elara has the power to overrule them, but she almost never does. There is a fifth person involved too.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know,” Lamar said. “But some of our people have seen him. He moves very fast and seems to disappear into thin air. We don’t know what or who he is. We’re not getting anywhere with the locals. They’re all nice and friendly until we start asking leading questions about Elara and the Remaining.”
“Keep digging. There are thousands of Departed between the castle and the town. Someone will talk.”
“They’re really interested in our barrels.”
“Of course they are.”
A tent nearby collapsed. Iris crawled out of it, swore, and kicked it.
Lamar fell silent. Hugh glanced at him. “What?”
The centurion hesitated.
“Lamar?”
“None of the bulldozer operators showed up for work this morning.”
Fury began to rise in him. “Why?”
“According to the foreman, they and their bulldozers have something more important to do. They are digging on the north side.”
Hugh forced himself to sound calm. “Are we upside down on the salvage?”
“No. According to the smiths, we still have three days of work paid for.”
“Did you tell that to the bulldozer foreman?”
“I did.” Lamar nodded. “He said the orders came from Elara. He says he isn’t allowed to talk to us about it.”
Hugh tossed the hand wraps on the wall and marched to the keep.
Elara did most of her business in the small room off her bedroom, where she kept a desk, a computer she could access during tech, and paper files. Today she sat behind that desk, her head down, looking at some papers. Hugh strode through the door. A heavy-set Latino man was standing next to her, pointing at a paper in front of her. They both looked up at him.
Hugh unhinged his jaws. “Leave.”
The man grabbed his papers and took off. Hugh waited until he ran down the stairs and turned to Elara.
“Yes?” she asked.
“You pulled the bulldozers off the moat.”
She leaned back. “Yes, I did.”
His temper threatened to gallop off like a horse running for its life and Hugh made a valiant effort to hold on to it. “For what reason?”
“I felt like it.”
He stared at her. Elara stared back.
Hugh bit off words, pronouncing them with icy exactness. “Our agreement was, I get the salvage and you let us have the bulldozers. I have three days’ worth of salvage credit left.”
“Yes, but we didn’t specify when the bulldozers will be available to you. There is nothing in that agreement about any kind of timeline. You will get your bulldozers back. Just not right now.”
He couldn’t kill her. If he killed her, he would have to kill everyone else in this damn settlement. His rage was boiling over and he distilled it to a single word. “When?”
“When I feel like it,” she told him.
She was toying with him now.
Elara reached over, picked up a folder from the desk, and held it in front of her so only her eyes were visible.
“What are you doing?”
“Waiting for your head to explode. I don’t want to miss it, but I don’t want to be splattered with gore.”
He reached over, plucked the folder from her fingers, and dropped it on the desk. “I’ve explained the reason for the moat. It’s an urgent matter. We’ve been here for three weeks and my people are still in tents. They haven’t been paid.”
Elara crossed her arms on her chest. “Nothing you said indicates that I’m in breach of our contract. It specifies that quarters for your soldiers will be provided in a reasonable time. I can’t help that my definition of reasonable is different from yours.”
“Elara!”
“They are soldiers, Preceptor. They are used to sleeping on the ground. Now then, I have two stacks of paperwork to go through. Why don’t you go and punch that heavy bag some more? Take the edge off.”
That was it. He needed to take his people and go. “I’m done,” he told her.
“Excellent. Please go. And while you are out there venting your rage, if you’re so interested in what the bulldozer team is doing, why don’t you ask them yourself and stop wasting my time?”
Hugh walked off. A haze of fury floated around him. He walked into the bailey. The sunlight burned his eyes. He strode to the gate, flicking his fingers at a group of the nearest Iron Dogs. They fell in behind him. He marched outside the walls, turned, and headed north.
It was simple. He would remove the bulldozer crew, confiscate the bulldozers, and put his own people on them.
The heavy machinery sat unmoving on the north side of the hill. The crew, a woman and three men including Jay Lewis, the foreman, sat on the grassy slope, drinking from thermoses and eating sandwiches. At Hugh’s approach Lewis scrambled to his feet. He was about fifty, a shade under six feet tall, with a ruddy face that came from having northern European genes and spending too much time outdoors in the hot sun.
Hugh nodded, and the Iron Dogs formed a line between the crew and the four bulldozers. He fixed Lewis with his stare.
The foreman swallowed.
“What are you doing here?”
“Um, the thing is, sir, I’m not supposed to tell you.”
Hugh sank menace into his words. “Are you afraid of me, Lewis?”
The foreman nodded several times.
“Do you see my wife anywhere?”
“No, sir.”
“That’s right. She isn’t here, but I am. Do we understand each other?”
Lewis nodded again.
“Tell me why you’re here.”
Lewis opened his mouth, hesitated, and gave up. “The septic.”
“Explain.”
“We’ve doubled the personnel for the castle and the septic was never meant to handle that much volume. We had a bit of a problem, but it’s all fixed now, you see?” Lewis waved his hand at a patch of freshly turned over dirt. “It will be great. You’ll love it.”
The septic did take priority. They didn’t want to drown in sewage. She could’ve told him that. But no, the harpy took a chance to stab. He would remember that.
“Finish your lunch,” he told Lewis. “Once you’re done, I expect you back in the moat.”
“Yes, sir.”
A walk back to the gates took another five minutes. The Iron Dogs trailing him walked in silence.
Hugh walked through the gates and halted. The sea of tents had collapsed. The Iron Dogs crowded by the doors of the left wing. His gaze snagged on the pale spot of
blue in the mass of black. Elara waved at him. She was holding giant scissors.
There was a blue ribbon strung across the doors of the left wing. It had a giant bow on it.
He’d been had.
“Will you do the honors, Preceptor?” Elara held the scissors out to him.
He would kill that woman.
He marched over, took the scissors from her, and cut the ribbon. The door swung open under the pressure of his hand revealing a front hall with a desk to the side. To the left and right, hallways shot out, their walls peppered with doors. In the middle of each hallway signs marked the stairways. In front of him double doors stood open, showing rows and rows of tables. She’d made them a mess hall.
“Since you’re here for the long haul,” Elara said behind him, “we felt dormitory style would be better than a single room with cots. There are twenty-eight dormitory rooms on the second floor, each containing four beds. There are two large communal bathrooms on each end of the second floor. On the first floor, you have ten more four-bed rooms downstairs and four pairs of single bed suits for officers. Each pair of suits shares a bathroom. You also have two large rooms to be used as you see fit.”
Above the mess hall doors, a black wrought iron crest hung, shaped like the head of a snarling dog.
The Iron Dogs streamed into the barracks.
Hugh stood still and stared at the crest. Elara halted next to him.
He didn’t say anything.
She leaned forward to get a look at his face. A smug smile curved her lips. It touched off something inside him, something new he couldn’t quite grapple with.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“I’m picturing cutting your head off with these scissors.”
Elara laughed and walked out of the barracks.
Hugh raised his head from the purchasing agreement for the volcanic ash.
A teenage girl hovered in the doorway of his bedroom. He’d seen her before. Where was it? The stables.
“Let me guess. Bucky’s gotten out again.”
She nodded wordlessly.
“Did you chain the stall the way I told you?”
She nodded again.
“What happened?”
“The chain was on the ground.”
Hugh sighed. “Fine. Wait for me downstairs.”
He put away the paperwork. He’s spent most of yesterday getting everyone into the new barracks, then went back to the moat, and when he’d finally gotten to bed, it was past midnight. He’d woken up early and went straight back to the purchasing agreements. It was close to nine am now. His stomach growled. After he caught that damn horse, he would have to get something to eat.
No matter how hard they tried to restrain Bucky, the stallion took off during the night. If he was corralled, he jumped the fence. If he was locked up in the stables, in the morning, the stall would be open, and Bucky would be gone. He always went to the same place.
Hugh made it downstairs. The teenage girl had fetched a length of rope from the stables and was waiting by the wall.
“Let’s go,” he told her.
They walked out of the gates and curved to the left, down the path toward the nearest patch of woods. The sun shone bright. The sky was a painful blue. It would be another hot, sunny fall day. He noticed days now that he knew his were numbered. Immortality had its perks, but with Roland gone, it was out of his reach.
He cut off those thoughts before they led him into the void.
The path brought them to the edge of the woods and dove under the canopy of hemlocks. They followed it a few dozen yards to a glen. Here and there, the sun managed to punch through the leaves, dappling the forest floor in golden light. The air was clean and smelled like life.
Hugh whistled. The shrill sound cut the air. The stable girl jumped.
They waited.
A streak of blinding white appeared between the trees and accelerated toward them.
Idiot horse.
The stallion was running at a near gallop. Any normal horse would’ve broken its legs by now, but for some odd reason Bucky dashed through the woods with the agility of a deer 1 /10th his size. He never tripped, he never put his feet wrong, he never ran into the branches. And he galloped around the woods at night, in near pitch-black darkness.
The stallion tore through the woods towards them, slid to a dramatic halt in the glen, and reared, pawing the air.
“Did you have fun?” Hugh asked.
Bucky trotted over and nudged him with his big head. Hugh slid a carrot into the stallion’s mouth, took the rope, and looped it over Bucky’s head.
“Let’s go.”
Bucky followed him, docile. The picture of obedience.
“There are dire wolves in the woods,” the stable girl said.
“He doesn’t care.”
“You could get a different horse,” she said. “The Lady would give you whatever horse you wanted.”
“Is that so?”
The stable girl nodded. “Yes. Any horse. She told us to give you whatever you need because you’re protecting us.”
He filed that bit of information away for further reference.
“So, you could trade him for a different horse.”
“No. He’s my horse. That’s that.”
She sniffed and squinted at him. “Is it true that you can ride standing up in the saddle?”
“I don’t need a saddle.”
She squinted harder. “Prove it.”
Hugh hopped onto Bucky’s back and nudged him into a walk. The stable girl followed. He pulled his legs up and stood on Bucky’s back.
She grinned. He dropped, swung his leg over, and rode Bucky with his back to the stallion’s head, facing her.
“How did you learn to do that?”
“Practice. Lots and lots of practice. The man who raised me came from steppe country. A place with mean horses. He taught me to ride when I was little.” Voron had taught him many other things, but horses had been the first lesson.
“Can you teach me?”
“Sure.”
A piercing scream rolled through the orchard from the right. Hugh jumped off Bucky.
“Help! He’s got the dogs!” A man screamed. “Help!”
A wolf howl rose from the woods, floating above the trees.
Hugh tossed the rope to the girl and lifted her onto Bucky’s back. “Get to the castle,” he ordered. “Tell any Dog you see to send Sharif and Karen to me.”
The girl nodded.
“Don’t throw her,” Hugh warned.
Bucky snorted and took off toward the castle.
The body of the dog sprawled under a bush. Blood stained the brown and white fur. Next to the dog, Sharif crouched, leaning close to the ground, staring unblinking at the crushed bushes and red-stained leaves. Karen, the other shapeshifter, dropped to all fours on the other side and took a long whiff.
Shapeshifters had their issues, but Hugh never agreed with Roland’s disdain for them. He understood Roland’s position well enough and recited it with passion when the occasion called for it, but when it came down to it, shapeshifters made damn good soldiers and that’s all he cared about.
He braced for the uncomfortable flash of guilt that usually flared when he thought Roland was wrong. It never came. Instead the void scraped his bones with its teeth. Right.
“He got some bites in,” Karen said softly, her voice tinted with sadness. “Good boy.”
Sharif bared his teeth.
The dire wolf was big and old. One of the shepherds had snapped a polaroid of him two nights before when the beast prowled the tree line, studying the cows in the pasture. From the paw prints and the pictures, the old male stood more than three feet at the shoulder and had to weigh damn near two hundred pounds, if not more.
Wild wolves didn’t follow the strict alpha-beta pecking order people assigned to them. That structure was mostly present in big shapeshifter packs, because hierarchy was a primate invention. Instead wild wolves lived in
family groups, a parent couple and their young, who followed their parents until they grew up enough to start their own packs. But this beast was solitary. Something happened to his pack or they ran him out, and now he was a lone wolf with nothing to lose. A night ago, he tried to take a cow. The dogs and guns chased him off. Then the magic hit.
The old wolf was a smart bastard, smart enough to figure out that when the magic was up, guns didn’t bark. Still, he stayed away from the pasture and went for the easier target instead, a ten-year-old girl picking pears from the ground in the orchard while her parents were on ladders harvesting the fruit.
A dog’s job was to put itself between the threat and the human. The two dogs with the harvesters did their job.
Hugh and the shapeshifters had found the first dead hound at the edge of the woods. The second was here. Now it was up to human Dogs to settle the score.
“Heartbeat,” Sharif whispered.
Hugh reached out with his magic. The dog was a mess, torn and bitten, but a faint, barely-there heartbeat shivered in his chest. Hugh concentrated. This would be complicated.
He knitted the organs together, repairing the tissue, sealing the blood vessels, mending the flesh like it was fabric, muscles, fascia, and skin. The two Dogs by his side waited quietly.
Finally, he finished. The dog raised his head, turned in the brush, and crawled toward them. Sharif scooped the hundred and twenty-pound hound up like he was a puppy. The dog licked his face.
“Blood loss,” Hugh said. “He won’t be walking for a bit.”
“I’ll carry him,” Sharif said. His eyes shone, catching the light.
“We’re only a mile in. Take him back and catch up,” Hugh told him.
The werewolf turned smoothly and ran into the woods, silent like a shadow, the huge dog resting in his arms.
Karen took the lead and they followed the scent trail deeper into the woods.
If he never saw another rhododendron bush until his next life, it would be too soon, Hugh decided. The damn brush choked the spaces between trees and getting through it wasn’t exactly a cakewalk.