"The news from the far south was bleak. The Bastion had fallen. Wolves roamed the southland, raping and slaughtering at will. None could stand against them. A few survivors had fled but there wasn't much for them to flee to. The land around the Bastion was hard country."
- Chapter Two of The Wolf In The Blood
*
‘Why do I have to look after him?’ Sieglind said, pouting furiously.
‘Because you do,’ her governess said.
Baby Lothar, the subject of the argument, paid no attention, being wholly engaged in building a wall of animal letter blocks. They were in German, in obedience to their father’s insistence that his children learn the language of their ancestral homeland, long since cut off for them by the closing of all gates on Shambhala. E ist für Einhorn was not cooperating, but the boy was persevering.
Sieglind gave her governess a filthy look. ‘That’s your job.’
‘Today it is yours,’ said the governess, whose name was Erentrud. ‘Your mother says I must attend your sister and teach her about -’
She stopped and considered what exactly she could say about sex to a ten-year-old.
‘The duties of marriage,’ she continued firmly. ‘Graf von Sorg is older than Karin, he will have... expectations, about... how your sister... performs as a wife.’
‘What could you possibly teach her that she doesn’t already know?’ Sieglind said angrily. ‘She’s eighteen! She speaks three languages, she knows how to defend a hold and play the psaltery, she knows needlepoint and the words of the Faith and the longbow and the Zweihänder, and, and, ... all that stuff!’ she finished with unwarranted certainty, her eyes flashing. ‘There is no need and you can look after the brat.’
‘There are things she does not know,’ said Erentrud primly, feeling the heat in her cheeks and hoping it looked like annoyance. ‘Or she better not know,’ she added under her breath, ‘or I will be teaching her how to pretend she doesn’t know. Damn soldiers and their - girl is a born hussy - And don’t call your brother a brat,’ she said loudly.
Sieglind scowled so hard her eyebrows almost met the tip of her nose. ‘He is a brat,’ she said, turning her rage on the oblivious three-month-old. ‘He yells all the time, and he cries and poos, and he’s stolen half my room and you don’t pay attention to me anymore!’
She threw herself onto her four-poster bed with theatrical abandon, checked to see whether Erentrud was watching, and slammed her head into the pillow hard enough that dust billowed from each end like a tiny sandstorm.
‘I must chastise the day maids,’ said Erentrud to herself. ‘Now you listen to me, young lady,’ she said severely, sitting with dignity on the side of the mattress, pushing aside the thick blue bed curtain then folding her hands across her waist. ‘This jealousy of your brother must cease. He sleeps next door with me at your insistence when by rights he should be here in the nursery with you. His toys take up almost no room and would take up less still if you ever cleared anything away. And you can learn to sleep through the noise. Babies cry. You did, he does, your babies will too.’
‘I’m never having babies,’ said the child, her voice muffled. ‘They’re disgusting.’
‘You will have no say in the matter,’ said Erentrud. ‘You will play the part the Constant allots you, as do we all.’
Sieglind raised her head slightly. ‘That’s so unfair! Everything is unfair! It’s all Lothar this, Karin that, Adalbert, Adalhard and Filibert the other! What about me? What about what I want? You don’t love me anymore!’ She concluded the accusation by plunging her head back into the pillow. Erentrud tried not to laugh and turned the severity up a notch.
‘Sieglind von und zur Bastion, hear my voice. This is very immature behaviour. Babies need attention, that is just how things are. Your day will come again. But this day belongs to your sister. Your father may be Keeper of this place and you may be the apple of his eye, but she is his daughter too. She is making a good marriage for the benefit of your family and you will play your part in making this day happy, do you hear?’
‘Will not,’ said Sieglind, from within the pillow.
‘Or your mother will hear of it,’ said Erentrud, deploying her ultimate weapon.
Sieglind raised her head from the pillow again, just a fraction this time. ‘Don’t do that,’ she said, before plunging her face back into the feathers once more.
‘Then stop this nonsense,’ said Erentrud, breast swelling at her gentle victory over the recalcitrant child. ‘It’s not much to ask. Think on the sacrifice your older brothers have made, travelling all the way to Grand Atlas to collect Graf von Sorg and escort him here. The world being what it is and all.’
‘They got to go riding with a troop of Bright Helms and then take a pleasant sail to a tropical island,’ Sieglind pointed out, back within the duck down. ‘That is not exactly a hardship.’
‘Nor is looking after Lothar,’ Erentrud pointed out reasonably.
After some seconds of internal conflict management, Sieglind emerged from the pillow and sat up. ‘Fine,’ she said, as if it was the least fine thing that had ever existed in the history of everything. ‘But if he poos, someone else is cleaning it up. One of the maids.’
‘The maids are all busy hanging taffeta and laying tables, and later they will wait on the freifraus and grafins. You know how to change your brother, it is about time you took responsibility.’
Sieglind began to reply but something caught her attention. ‘Get off,’ she shouted, as Lothar made a game attempt to gum the leg of the rocking horse. ‘That’s mine.’
‘You are too old for it,’ said Erentrud complacently, ‘and he is too young.’ She pushed off the bed and scooped up the child, who gurgled happily as she carted him up to her shoulder. Sieglind glowered.
‘It is time for his nap. He was up half the night.’
‘I know,’ said Sieglind in a disgruntled tone. ‘I heard him. For hours.’
Erentrud ignored her. ‘When the bell strikes midday, change into your white dress and put Lothar into the laces I will lay out, then bring him down to the great circle. Everyone will be gathered there.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Check his breechcloth carefully before you put the dress on. And bring the changing bag, you will assuredly regret it if you don’t.’ She fixed the child with a piercing stare. ‘Do not be late. Or your mother with certainly hear of it.’
‘Urrrgh,’ said Sieglind, which was Sieglind for ‘yes.’
‘Most ladylike,’ said Erentrud. She smiled slightly, trying not to show how amused she was by the child’s theatrics, or how much she loved her. ‘Did you do your reading?’
‘Of course,’ sulked the child. ‘It’s a stupid story.’
Erentrud pursed her lips; even by Sieglind standards, this was hard going. ‘I am pleased you have an opinion on it,’ she said evenly. ‘Then perhaps tomorrow we can discuss the moral over dinner.’
‘The moral is, don’t stupidly let stupid people do stupid things to you.’
‘Can you please behave?’ Erentrud asked, losing patience. ‘Don’t spoil it for everyone. Once the ceremony is over there will be feasting and cake and dancing and music into the small hours. You can stay up late, past Silence, which is suspended tonight. Isn’t that good? And I expect someone else may hold Lothar for a while. If you are good for the entire ceremony, which I doubt is possible.’
Sieglind started to respond hotly, but another thought independently inserted itself into her mouth and came out first.
‘What kind of cake?’
A colossal boom made Sieglind come awake. For a moment she didn’t know where she was. The red, orange and yellow snowflakes embroidered on the canopy of her bed suddenly seemed to be falling for real. Then there was another boom, and Sieglind saw that dust had shaken loose from the canopy and was floating gently down on her, illuminated by the full moon streaming through the window.
‘Surely the party isn’t still going on,’ she yawned. ‘It’s the middle of the night!’
Another boom, right underneath her window. And now she could hear the cries of men, calling to each other across the parade ground. They were not shouting in celebration.
A long waaaaaah from the other side of the wall evidenced that Lothar had heard the noise too. Sieglind ignored him; night howls were Erentrud’s problem.
She slipped out of the covers, grimacing as the frigid air hit her. Erentrud insisted she sleep with the shutters open and the fire out until the first snows fell, because night air was good for the lungs, according to Erentrud, and because she was put in this life to make Sieglind suffer, according to Sieglind.
Caltrops in the shape of unseen animal blocks nearly sent her flying and made her use some bad words her brother Filibert had taught her for his own amusement when she was five. D ist für Drachen got angrily punted across the room. Sieglind wasn’t tall enough to see out of the window easily, so she dragged the high-backed armchair across to it and stood on the seat.
Her tower window overlooked the parade ground on the east corner, set back beyond the maze of alleys. All week she had watched as the servants had made it ready for her sister’s wedding. She expected to see a party. What she saw was the preparations for war.
Hundreds and hundreds of soldiers massed in the great parade ground, a forest of pikes bristling as they took up formation. A troop of Bright Helms mounted on warhorses towered over the infantry, moonlight burnishing their armour to a mirror finish, thick lances lowered and pointed at the bridge gate, their horses pawing the ground nervously. From where Sieglind watched she could see ranks of archers on the battlements, both on the wall facing outward to the bridge across the chasm which separated the Bastion from its only approach road, and on the other walls too, all aiming at the gate. And from the turrets on the facing corners, fat bombards like huge metal toads squatted and smoked as their bombardiers loaded them with massive stone shot.
She saw her mother, distant and indistinct but instantly recognisable to her daughter’s eye, from the way she stood, the way she moved. Her scale armour glistened as she strode back and forth along the walls, commanding her bowmaids to hold their arrows, screaming orders to the captains and cavaliers below. As she followed her mother’s path Sieglind caught sight of her sister, armour as bright as her mother’s, arrow trained unflinchingly upon the peril beyond the walls. Beneath the armour her white wedding dress was visible, torn off at the knee so she could move freely.
Sieglind knew her brothers would be among the men below; they were impossible to see in the throng. She didn’t look for her father. She knew where he would be; at his station before the other gate, with the knights they called Martyrs, swords drawn, ready to spend every ounce of blood to defend that which must be protected forever. To defend the reason for the Bastion’s existence. The gate at the heart of the fortress.
Beyond the wall, beyond the bridge, snaking up the wide road into the mountains, stood a seething mass of... something, it was impossible to tell exactly what from this distance. Something black and hairy and terrifying, tens of thousands marshalling as one. The way they moved, surging and writhing, the movement of one rippling through the crowd to affect all, reminded Sieglind of a nest of centipedes Adalbert had once shown her, roiling across each other in a mindless lump. But Sieglind knew instinctively that the things across the bridge were not mindless. The silence told her that. Even at this distance she could hear panting from many mouths, see the steam rising from their bodies, but they raised no voices to answer the shouts of war from behind the thick walls of the Bastion. Whatever they were, whoever they were, they had discipline. They were an army.
As she watched, one of the bombards fired. The ball screamed through the sky toward the whatever-they-were, and Sieglind followed its arc, looking away at the last moment so she wouldn’t see the creatures smeared across the road. She expected cries of horror and death, and when they didn’t come, looked back.
The stone ball was hanging in mid-air, stopped dead, high above and just ahead of the things that massed outside her home. As she watched it dropped, landing neatly beside two more stone balls exactly like it, the shot from the firings that had woken her up.
The moon went behind clouds. As one the mass of bodies seemed to pause, shrink, settle, and wait. The clouds passed almost immediately, impelled onward through the sky by nervous breezes eager to be elsewhere. As the white orb became visible once more, the creatures howled.
Sieglind screamed in absolute terror as the ear-splitting pandemonium consumed her, driving all other thought from her mind. When the noise abated, after how long she could not tell, she found herself curled in a ball on the floor, arms wrapped around her head, squeezing her ears so tightly she thought they would burst.
The animal blocks strewn around her forced a connection between the horror outside and the world she knew.
W ist für Werwolf.
Lothar was crying non-stop now, a terrible, heart-wrenching sound of unknowing fear. Sieglind scrambled up and dashed through the door, desperate to hold her brother, and to be held in turn.
The child was in the crib at the foot of Erentrud’s bed, lying on his back, bawling at the top of his lungs. Even though this room faced away from the parade ground the howling had terrified him. He looked impossibly grateful to see his sister and held out his arms. She picked him up. This reduced but didn’t quite end the crying.
Erentrud was nowhere to be seen, her bedsheets still as crisp and well-made as they had been that morning. Sieglind’s ten-year-old sensibility resurfaced through her fear.
‘Where is she,’ she muttered, absently bouncing Lothar and rubbing his back. ‘She’s never not here.’
She tried to remember when she had last seen her governess. She could only call up a vague jumble of memories, confused by tiredness and sugar consumption - a whirl of dancing and strangers and laughter; unusual women in unusual clothes and men of Tibetan cast come from far away to pay their respects to her father; Erentrud, with a cup of small beer tilted dangerously toward her dress, deep in conversation with a Northern freiherr, shooing Sielgind away when she tried to claim her attention... Then later, a very sleepy Sieglind being put to bed in a hurry, without even a single story if you please, while a flustered looking Erentrud told a maid to watch the baby... and now, no sign of either maid or governess and Lothar left to his own devices...
Erentrud and the maid were not warriors like the women on the walls. There was no reason for them not to be where they should be. None of it added up to anything Sieglind could make sense of, but the plain fact of it was that Erentrud was not there when they needed her.
‘That means it’s my job to look after you,’ she said to Lothar severely. ‘Again.’
Lothar stopped crying and giggled at her scowl. This, Sieglind felt, meant he was not taking the situation seriously, but she rose above it. She knew how to be calm; she knew how to be a lady. It was a life-line in her mind now that the world seemed suddenly unmoored, and she grasped for it.
‘Come, little brother,’ she said, as sweetly as she knew how. ‘The wolves cannot breach the walls. Mama and Karin and the boys will deal with them. We will snuggle on my bed and I will sing to you until you sleep. You need your beauty sleep. More than most,’ she added a little unkindly, regarding the slight piggieness of the retroussé nose characteristic of men in her family.
She carried the baby into her room and had just set him down on the bed when the world exploded.
The noise was extraordinary, like nothing she’d ever heard before, as though lightning had burst a mountain. The tower shook so violently that it knocked Sieglind from her feet. She twisted as she fell and caught her temple on the edge of the bed. She grabbed at the bedpost, missed, and fell back, deafened, stunned, confused, her ears ringing, eyes flooding with tears.
A few moments later a thick cloud of white dust billowed through the window, writhing like a hunting ghost, folding over itself and filling the room, rebounding from the walls and pouring toward her as if it was seeking Sieglind out to envelope her in her last shroud. Then the choking dust was upon her, making sight, speech, breath impossible.
In the utter silence that followed, Sieglind distinctly heard someone say, ‘Ta-da!’
Sound returned, and with it the sound of Lothar screaming. Screaming and choking together.
Coughing violently, Sieglind grabbed hold of her blankets and hauled herself up. She rolled the infant onto his side and slapped him hard on the back, as she’d seen Erentrud do when his milk went down the wrong way. He hacked up white slime, dust and vomit all together. She slapped him again, just to be sure. Once she was convinced her brother was breathing properly she collapsed standing up, over the bed, lacking the energy to crawl onto it properly, ignoring Lothar’s continued yelling as she tried to put her fractured senses back together.
‘Great Fathers,’ she gasped, imitating the way her somewhat prudish father swore. ‘What was that?’
She steadied herself and stood up again, pulling Lothar to her, holding him tightly so he felt safe and secure, sensations she assuredly did not feel herself.
The dust was settling; she could see moonlight again. She carried Lothar over to the window, clambered unsteadily onto the chair and peered out.
The wall was destroyed. Not just the gate, which the bombards or something like them could have burst given enough time, but the entire bridge wall. Massive blocks of solid granite, layered and buttressed to withstand the mightiest siege engines, simply obliterated. Some of it had vaporised, turned into the dust which covered them both and everything else. The rest had either shattered into deadly shards, or had blown backwards as if giants had rolled them, crushing the men and horses massing in the square beyond but, somehow, missing the standing stones of the gate circle completely.
The result was an atrocity. Everyone who had stood on the forward wall was simply gone. Many hundreds below had been blown apart, their lives ended as a smear of red against stones. Some still lived, irretrievably crushed, men and horses alike screaming as their lives ebbed away in the cruellest death, a death without hope. Others, limbs shattered or missing, wounds pumping blood into the gravel, crawled across the charnel field, begging for rescue. Some wandered, shocked beyond reason, not knowing where they were, or who.
Sieglind’s little eyes searched desperately for her family. It was impossible - but then someone moved, and the way she moved set Sieglind’s heart fluttering in her chest.
‘MAMA!’ she cried.
Her mother could not hear, but the word gave Sieglind hope; hope that the world could still right itself, hope that all was not lost.
Her mother, on the ground now, was limping badly, her armour now as white as snow save where long red streaks wrapped themselves around her like vines of summer roses in full bloom. Behind her she dragged a badly wounded man who was screaming obscenities that merged with the cries of pain and despair raised by every voice still sounding in the wreckage. As Sieglind watched, he convulsed and fell still. Her mother glanced at him, and let him go, and limped faster toward the circle of stones.
Of her sister and brothers, Sieglind could see no sign.
Behind the circle, white-dusted warriors recoiled in horror, clutched at bloody ears which no longer heard the world, or wept freely, unable to accept the havoc the sudden demolition had inflicted, or the downfall of the fortress they had all considered unbreachable.
Behind those men, others who had not endured the explosion drew their swords, set their spears, made their defences, and waited.
They don’t have silver, Sieglind thought. Not enough of them, anyway.
The werewolves came. They poured through the breach like a storm surge after an earthquake, swamping everyone and everything in a tidal wave of violence. They came in absurd numbers, more werewolves than could possibly exist, fur as burnt black as the forest after wildfire, teeth flashing white like the full moon itself. Not simply wolves but men as well, they swung rusted blades torn from dead human hands, each one a testament to a battle fought valiantly by men, but lost. They swarmed the defences, tore into the wounded and the dying, pushing forward as though gale-driven until they crashed against the lines of soldiers, who fought as though the edge of each sword was the last line between victory and oblivion. The soldiers struck, parried, thrust - and fell back, deliberately.
Sieglind could no longer see her mother.
She turned away and slid down the chair back onto the seat, cradling Lothar. Her young mind could barely comprehend what she had seen. She had no experience, no frame of reference which could equip her to respond to the things she’d seen. She did the only thing that made sense; she burst into tears.
Lothar did not join her. Instead he smiled, and the sight of his tiny round face staring up at her dried her tears almost immediately.
‘You’re right,’ she sniffed. ‘This is no time to be childish. We are the people of the gate. We exist to keep it safe. We are the last bastion. We will give our lives.’ She said the words like a catechism. She had learned them by heart, like all her family since her family had existed.
It was not possible to hide the truth about the world from a curious and determined child. People talked, and this was the subject of generations. The great migration of the werewolves, destroying every village, town and city they came across. Even so, no one had ever thought the Bastion was under threat. A range of mountains divided the far south from the rest of the continent, barely passable for humans let alone an army of starveling beasts. Whenever troops set out under the Keeper’s writ to settle a dispute, or suppress some bandit, or put an errant Lord back in his place, the toughest part of the journey was always the first. The land around the Bastion was hard country.
There was no reason for werewolves to attack the bastion. The only thing in it that mattered, mattered only to men. Yet here the werewolves were. But how? The mountain passes were manned. Filibert’s first captaincy had been at Far Approach, the fortified pass that commanded the view of the plains beyond the mountains. He had spent a lot of time on his leave home complaining about the boredom and had received a lecture on the responsibilities of his family from their mother for his trouble.
The soldiers would have seen a multitude of werewolves. Yet for weeks, months, all anyone had talked about was Karin’s wedding. No talk of imminent invasion, no preparations, nothing.
‘I don’t understand,’ Sieglind said to Lothar. ‘I just don’t. But we must be sensible. We must do our part. Our part is to stay here and be safe. The alleys will be their doom. We are perfectly safe.’
I believe it. I believe it.
Do I believe it?
‘I do,’ Sieglind lied to herself. ‘Perfectly safe. Stay here, stay here. Here is safe. Wait for Freiin Erentrud or the boys or Karin or Mama and Papa or, or - somebody. Somebody will come. When we have won. Stay here, stay safe.’
The repetition calmed her, held the panic at bay, and this respite let her essential self resurface.
‘Here is filthy. How will the maids ever clean this dust? It has ruined my things.’ She surveyed the child critically. ‘You are filthy. And what must I look like? A whiteface clown, no doubt.’ She wrinkled her nose and looked severely at Lothar. ‘And what is that smell? Have you soiled yourself in the heat of battle, man of the Bastion? How will you live with the shame? Father will exile you for cowardice and take your name from you. Come on.’ She lifted the child onto her shoulder and took him back next door.
The dust hadn’t reached Erentrud’s room. Sieglind closed the shutters to muffle the hellish sounds outside, and as the battle noise receded slightly, she felt better. She knew it was ridiculous, but the simple act of making the fighting sound further away made her terrible fear recede a little. The cries and snarls and barks of the wolves spoke to things she didn’t want to think about, shouldn’t have to think about.
Sieglind poured out a dish of water, changed and washed the child, and found fresh clothing for him. Then she did the same for herself. Sensible clothing, suitable for wartime, she thought.
This was difficult. Being Erbfürstin carried with it many rights and privileges, but princesses must look like princesses, and there was nothing in her chests of dresses which approached practicality. She chose her sturdiest, plainest riding dress, in Friar grey, which was still fairly flouncy.
Then she sat on the edge of Erentrud’s bed and waited.
Lothar showed no desire to sleep, but seemed content to lie in his crib as long as he could see his sister. Sieglind ignored the residual noise, smiled and played peek-a-boo with her brother, and waited.
And waited.
‘Do you like stories?’ she said after a while. ‘I will tell you a story. So you are not scared.’
She knew the boy wouldn’t understand; that didn’t matter now. It wasn’t for him.
‘It’s called “The Dawn Woman and the Fruit of the Sun”. It’s a stupid name for a story but that’s what it’s called. I didn’t write it, don’t blame me. Erentrud made me read it. It’s got a moral. All the stories she sets me have a moral.’
She peered down her at the child. ‘Pay attention. We will discuss the moral over dinner tomorrow.’
Lothar paid attention to the toes he was trying to put in his mouth.
‘On your own head be it. Get it wrong and write out the Night Prayer nine times as punishment. It has difficult words.’ She folded her hands just the way she had seen Erentrud do and began.
‘In the story there’s this village which sits at the foot of a range of hills. In a cave in the hills there’s a huge monster, maybe like a dragon or something? It’s not clear. A non-specific monster. Anyway, the monster comes down to the village now and then and goes on the rampage and gobbles up people. And the people loose arrows and throws stones and poke it with swords, and they hurt the monster, but not enough to kill it, just enough to drive it away for a while.’
There was a sudden crescendo of noise from outside; wolves raising their voices to howl. Sieglind snatched up her brother before he could cry and sat back against the pillows, cradling the boy once more.
‘This goes on for years,’ she continued brightly. ‘Neither side winning and the villagers getting slowly eaten up. Then some unpleasant clever-clogs in the village gets the bright idea of going to talk to the monster. Because it’s a talking monster, did I mention that? Well, it is. And nasty clever-clogs and the monster strike a bargain.
‘The bargain is, once a year the village will offer up a beautiful young maiden for the monster to eat - because it’s always girls who get the short of it in this kind of story - and in return the monster will leave them alone the rest of the time. Now, naturally -’
Sieglind bit her lip and broke off from her tale.
‘Except monsters don’t leave you alone,’ she said. ‘Lothar, this is stupid. I’m being stupid.’
Lothar did not opine on the subject of his sister’s stupidity.
‘There’s no way out of here. If the wolves come, they’ll... they’ll eat us.’
She looked around as if the room held answers and would give them up under her stare. This did not happen.
‘What to do, what to do... Be prepared. Be prepared. That’s what to do. Come on.’
She hauled Lothar on to her shoulder. Lothar chuckled in delight.
Cautiously, she descended the spiral stairs to the landing. She knew, knew there was no danger. Mama was dealing with the werewolves. She believed this. But the part of her which did not believe it guided her steps; careful, quiet, slow. The rich red carpet on the landing silenced her footsteps, the tapestries absorbed all other sound. She moved like a phantom into her parents’ bedroom.
Her mother and father kept one bedroom between them. Sieglind had overheard gossip that this was Not Done and slightly scandalous, but she wasn’t sure why. It was large compared to most bedrooms, taking up most of this side of the tower. An imposing bedstead dominated the available space. A large trunk contained her father’s belongings. Beside it, a slightly smaller trunk contained those belongings he couldn’t stand.
Sieglind opened that one. Various gifts it was impolitic to dispose of filled it to the brim. Glass niknaks, ugly jewellery, everything given to him by his least favourite aunt - and something else Sieglind had seen a long time ago, which she now dived for in the junk.
As she rummaged, she sang a song she had learned as a tiny child, which had meant nothing then but meant everything now.
Walking in the forest
Dark of the night
Carry the metal which shines moon-bright.
A few moments later she emerged, clasping the gaudy ceremonial dagger given to her father by Frieherr Straub, a particularly toadying vassal that he couldn’t bear but couldn’t afford to offend. Straub’s lands covered fertile farm country and provided the grain and meat which made life at the rock-bounded Bastion possible. The dagger came out once a year when her father travelled that way and once more when Straub reciprocated. Between times he affected to have misplaced it, which everyone knew meant he hated it.
It had a grip made from a whole centaur’s foot, the hoof gilded and hung with gold chains, and the blade strangely wavy in a way which Sieglind, a military child, knew was designed to look impressive rather than be efficient, as if looking like a Flammenschwert would turn an ornament into a fighting weapon. It was hundreds and hundreds of years old and extremely expensive, and would have been a princely gift if it hadn’t been so ugly.
On her father, a big man, it was a belt dagger of no significance. For Sieglind it was almost a short sword, awkward and heavy. But none of that mattered. What mattered was the gleam that ran around the cutting edge of the blade. The gleam of silver.
Sieglind found a belt and strapped on the scabbard; the belt wound around her twice before the prong found a hole which held it tight. The dagger sat hard on her hip and slapped her leg annoyingly when she took a few experimental steps.
‘I must look ridiculous,’ she said. But she didn’t feel ridiculous. She felt like her mother, and when she looked in the mirror, she saw her too.
Sieglind transferred her attention to the wall behind the mirror. She had read stories of castles riddled from top to bottom with secret passages, with portraits with eye holes to see through and concealed exits in locations of convenience to the plot. Sieglind found these stories highly believable because her home was just like that.
The Bastion had many secret passages. Most were down in the alleys, the one place Sieglind knew instinctively would be a terrible destination to seek. That was where –
- she paused mentally, then continued with the thought her mind assured her was true even though her heart convulsed with the fear it might not be –
- that was where the archers and oil burners were wreaking terrible slaughter upon the werewolf army, even as they herded them to their certain deaths in the killing yards.
The hidden paths in the main castle were made for escaping, not killing. Sieglind, who in the way of royal children had talked extensively with the castle masons once she'd discovered they existed and couldn’t say no to her, had learned more about them than even her brothers. Like all children in the Bastion she was under strict instructions never to go into them, but to Sieglind’s mind this only went to show that adults were very stupid, and like all children in the Bastion she had been to them all and knew them like the back of her hand.
There was one here.
Sieglind stood on a particular flagstone and pushed a particular block and twisted a particular candleholder. There was a loud click and a section of wall popped outward, swinging on disguised hinges. She peered into the darkness within. Narrow stairs with very little headroom spiralled downward, following underneath the main stair. Sieglind has no desire to use them. The space behind the door itself was big enough to hide in. That was all she needed.
‘Perfect. We’ll be safe here. Karin calls this the hidey-hole and we are strictly forbidden from opening it.’ She narrowed her eyes at the baby. ‘Tell no one. No squealing.’
Lothar, on his parents’ bed, yawned, and put his thumb in his mouth.
‘Good boy. No one likes a tattletale.’
Sieglind set up pillows for them to sit on and candles to light the darkness, and then after a moment spent realising that some simple things were outside her direct experience, found a fire steel and kindling to light the candles. She took two blankets from Lothar’s crib. She pulled the wall closed and smiled in satisfaction. Then she sighed, kicked the mechanism which released the latches from the inside, and ran up to Erentrud’s room, leaving Lothar by himself.
Seconds later, before Lothar had registered her absence, she returned with the changing bag, spare muslins, and the bottle of cow’s milk Erentrud kept in ice water for the days the wet nurse could not keep up with Lothar’s prodigious appetite. The ice had long since melted but the milk looked fine. She drank some. ‘You’re too fat anyway,’ she said to the child, and drank a little more. Then she gave the rest to Lothar, who sucked it down greedily.
‘Do not sick that back up,’ Sieglind commanded.
She closed the wall, made sure she’d locked it, and sat down with a satisfied smile. There were no convenient eyeholes, but she’d be able to hear anyone calling her name.
Lothar looked very comfortable on his pillow bed. He yawned, and that set Sieglind off. She shook her head a little to ward off sleep.
‘So, the story. Where were we? Oh yes, nasty clever-clogs has done his deal. He returns to the village and tells them what he’s done. Naturally the village is all ‘Our girls! Oh no! We can’t!’ Quite rightly. But then monster-fighting time gets closer and they think, ‘Well, we do have quite a lot of girls just sitting around the place and the monster will definitely eat more than one,’ so lo and behold, someone gets offered up. I think she didn’t volunteer. The book didn’t say. Who knows though, people have strange ideas.’ She glanced at Lothar. ‘Not you. You have no ideas. I have to do all the thinking around here.
‘So, the monster scoffs her and being a monster of his word leaves the village alone for a year. I don’t know what he does instead, probably eats another village’s maidens. I don’t think the villagers really thought through their monster management strategy,’ she added critically.
Lothar’s tiny fist curled around her index finger. She smiled down at him. ‘Sorry I called you fat,’ she said. ‘You’re not really. You’re big-boned fat like papa says he is.’
Lothar accepted this judgment with relative good grace; he burped, looked surprised at it, and then yawned again.
‘Anyway, story. This sacrifice business goes on for years, and everyone gets used to it, even if they don’t exactly like it. People can make themselves do anything if they think it’s the right thing, Papa says. I think that’s a bit... what’s that word I always get confused with sarcastic? Clinical. He’s a clinic.
‘Eventually this one girl gets chosen as the sacrifice. Her name is... is... I can’t remember her name. I will call her Sieglind because she’s the heroine and I am the best. Can you say “Sieglind is the best?” Well, we’ll practice it. When you’re older.
‘In the story, Sieglind gets chained to a tree near the monster cave at midnight, presumably while the monster is out on business, and there are bones all around it because the monster is a messy eater who doesn’t clean up after himself, like men don’t. Did you see those soldiers at the feast throwing bones over their shoulders to the dogs? Heino the pot boy had to keep ducking. I wonder if they’re still alive.’
This last thought made her shudder. She tried to ignore the fact she could still hear werewolves howling.
‘So, Story Sieglind resolves to meet her fate and is waiting to join the bones around the tree. Then a man appears. All smiles and eyes like he’s there to woo her or something. How do you woo? No one will tell me. Then Story Sieglind, whose real name I’ve remembered now but too bad, says “Oh, kind sir, are you here to rescue me?” like a total drip. But the man says, “No, but I’ll help you rescue yourself if you’d like,” which she does like, having thought better of sacrifices now she is the one being sacrificed.
‘Chappy wiggles his fingers and the chains fall off her. “You’re a magician!” says Story Sieglind, who has a knack for the obvious. “I am,” says the magician, who has it too. “You can run along now, but that will mean the monster attacks your village again. But I will tell you how to stop the monster forever if you like.”
Now Story Sieglind does like, but she is also not a fool. “What is the price of this knowledge?” she says. “No price,” says the magician. “But remember I helped you and do come and visit me if you are lonely.” Well Story Sieglind somehow can’t see through that so maybe she is a bit of a fool after all and she says yes. The magician says -’
There was an unexpected sound. Sieglind froze and put her hand down to stop Lothar crying out. Then she realised the sound was coming from Lothar. He was snoring gently, his mouth slightly open, tiny lips forming a heart, eyes tightly shut.
‘You really do take after papa,’ Sieglind whispered. ‘I can hear him snoring through the floor sometimes.’ She pulled Lothar’s pillow closer to her and pulled a blanket over him. ‘I never snore. It’s not ladylike. Erentrud imagines things.’
It was cold in the walls. Sieglind hunkered down and wrapped herself in another blanket.
‘I will keep watch,’ she said.
Eventually she closed her eyes.
Sieglind woke with a start. A glance at the candle told her she hadn’t slept for long. Maybe half an hour. Just rested her eyes. It was the middle of the night after all. Lothar snored on beside her.
She took a moment to register that the howling had stopped.
Before she could work out what that meant she heard a muffled ‘Fürstin Sieglind! Fürstin Sieglind!’ coming from somewhere away and above, then a loud thump and a crash of something she couldn’t identify. A woman’s voice, calling for her.
‘Erentrud!’ she gasped. She jumped on the wall mechanism and, leaving Lothar asleep on the pillow, dashed out of the room and up the stairs.
She rushed to her bedroom, but as she reached it her budding hope turned to choking panic in the space of a heartbeat. She skidded to a halt, sliding down onto her backside and pushing away with her feet and hands, desperate to get away from the dreadful, shocking scene inside. She had the strongest sensation that time had slowed down. She was able to take in everything she saw, to the smallest detail, even as the fear rose from within to engulf her.
The woman who had come for her wasn’t Erentrud. Sieglind recognised her; she worked in the castle, doing something, what was her name? Gertraud? Gerwine? She didn’t know, and it didn’t matter, because she was dead, slammed to the floor across the back of Sieglind’s rocking horse, her spine broken and skull shattered against the hard floor. The horse had broken apart; gore spattered across its head made it look as though it were weeping crimson tears.
A huge werewolf knelt next to the woman, lit by bright moonlight, tearing at her flesh, its grey pelt painted with fresh blood. It looked up as Sieglind slid to a halt. It rolled its lips back horribly, revealing canines so large they could pierce her arm on one side and show an inch of white fang on the other.
‘A sweeter mouthful,’ it said thickly, the words strangled by its muzzle-jaw. It stood up.
Sieglind ran. She tumbled headlong down the stairs, miraculously landing on her feet. She scrambled into her parents’ bedroom and pulled the wall closed as she dashed into the gap, hearing it catch and lock as she ran headlong into the wall behind. The werewolf, inches behind her, slammed into the hidden door.
Sieglind felt blood burst from her nose and she reeled sideways as her legs gave way. At the last second, she lurch-dived forward over the still-sleeping Lothar to land in an ungainly heap at the top of the hidden stairs, gasping in pain and crying as her head span violently.
Outside, the werewolf pounded and clawed at the hidey-hole door, but its ancient builders had known their business; the door didn’t even move.
Sieglind lay there, trembling, waiting for her panic to subside, but it didn’t, not at all. She held her head between her hands and forced herself to focus on the candle. After the longest time it swam into focus and was still.
‘I can smell your blood,’ said the werewolf. Its voice was shocking close. Its words were clearer now; Sieglind knew enough about werewolves to know it must have become more manlike once it stepped out of the moonbeams. The change had slowed it and probably saved her life.
She remembered something else about werewolves, and said words she’d heard her father say, recounting bold deeds from his youth. She tried to sound fearless and confident; to say them as her mother would say them.
‘Can you smell my silver, dog?’
The werewolf laughed. Somehow this was more terrifying than the howling. It was the sound of utter contempt. Not just of her, but of humans.
‘Come out and kill me with it, bitch,’ it said.
‘That’s a rude word,’ Sieglind said, her understanding of events suddenly on a firm footing, the conviction in her voice cutting through the wall like a drill bit. ‘Freiin Erentrud once gave Adalhard five strokes with the ruler for using that word. And he was twelve,’ she added, as though the thought of anyone chastising someone of such maturity was a scandal to rock society.
‘I will give you more than five strokes,’ said the werewolf. ‘I will make a real bitch of you.’
‘I don’t know what that means, but I told you before, that word is rude.’
Sieglind had noticed when the werewolf spoke that his voice was a little further away. She heard a quiet scratching sound, near the hinges. Sieglind put two and two together. This is not a dog, no matter what I call it. They are clever. It will find a way in. I need to leave. We need to leave.
What do I do?
Lothar was a late baby, a sixth child conceived long after everyone thought the marriage of the Keeper and Herzogin Sieghilde had settled into an easy familiarity and ceremony. He was definitely coddled, but actually wasn’t too fat, despite Erentrud’s concerted attempt to stuff the world’s sugar jelly supply into his mouth. That said, he had heft to him, as Sieglind’s father was fond of saying when bouncing Lothar on his knee. There was no way a ten-year-old could carry him, a knife and a candle in her arms for any length of time.
She surveyed her materials. She briefly considered stuffing Lothar into a pillowcase and carrying him like a pig in a sack, but that wouldn’t help and would certainly make him cry. The blankets on the other hand...
She folded one lengthways twice, then knotted it around her neck to make a sling, then she heaved the boy into the makeshift carrier and shifted him around until she found a comfortable position, which turned out to be with him in the small of her back. Then she tied the blanket much tighter and as securely as she knew how. Lothar snored through the whole thing.
She contemplated the almost-stairs. Dark, narrow, low, dirty. She had played in these passages many times, but now it was not a game she dreaded the thought of leaving the hidey-hole and venturing into them.
‘I’m not going, I’m not going, I’m too scared, I’m too scared,’ she sang under her breath, to the tune of a round Erentrud had taught her as a baby. Then Sieglind took up the candle, loosened the centaur hoof dagger in its scabbard, and started down the stairs.
‘You are moving,’ said the werewolf at once. After a few more seconds it said, ‘You are going down. I smell your blood. I will hunt you. The slaughter is done. The Wolfmaker does her work. There are many for her. She will not miss you. I will hunt again.’
Sieglind tried not to cry out at the words, and what they implied.
She felt momentarily safer when she went below floor level. She had to crouch; an adult would have had to crawl. Then the staircase turned to follow the spiral of the main stairs and she heard the werewolf above her head, bare feet slapping stone as it kept pace with her exactly.
She felt stirrings from within the sling. ‘Shall I continue the story, brother?’ she whispered, trying not to panic at the thought of the monster directly above her. ‘So you are not afraid.’ She wasn’t sure if Lothar was awake. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t him she was trying to make brave.
‘The magician says, “A hundred leagues from here a mountain range towers to the sky. On the highest peak of these mountains, a tree grows by itself. And this tree bears special fruit. Magic fruit, which ripen on only one day of the year.” Which is conveniently the very next day. “The fruit will end the hunger of anyone who eats it. Feed one to the monster and he will never want to eat your sisters again.”
‘I can’t remember what Story Sieglind says next, but it’s something like “What’s the catch?” because she’s not that much of a fool. And the magician says “The fruit only appear when the sun’s rays hit them. Then they burst into a magical flame so hot and bright that no man” - or woman, because that’s not the twist here, which would be very predictable - “can pick them. But I will tell you how. Give all of your soul and think about what tomorrow means. Do this and the fruit will be yours.”
‘Well, Story Sieglind doesn’t ask what this gibberish means so maybe she is a shocking fool after all, but she does ask the obvious question, “How do I travel a hundred leagues before day break?” Expecting him to conjure up a magic carpet or something. Instead - what do you know? - feathers grow from her shoulders until she has two pegasus-sized wings there, just like that. And the magician points and says, “You should go that way,” and off she flies, as light as a bird.’
Sieglind frowned; despite her sorry situation, the story deserved commentary.
‘I don’t understand this part. Why wouldn’t she fly away? She has wings. I would fly away. I’d take you with me,’ she added over her shoulder, almost certain she was telling the truth, ‘but anyone who tied me to a tree to get et is on their own.’
‘You prattle,’ said the werewolf. ‘To cover your fear. But I can smell your blood. And soon I will taste it.’
‘The story is not for you,’ Sieglind said sharply. ‘And no one likes people who interrupt stories.’ She channelled her father again. ‘Shut up, dog.’
‘I am Wolf,’ said the werewolf. ‘We are all Wolf. We have killed everyone who matters to you, bitch. You’re next.’
‘Rude. You will die first. Shut up.’
The werewolf laughed again, then fell silent.
Sieglind arrived at the foot of the stairs. There was another hidden door here which led to the hall of her ancestors.
Sieglind didn’t like the ancestors. She always ran through the hall when she was by herself; their stern faces looking down disapprovingly from their portraits made her feel frightened and unworthy.
Black oak panelled the hall. From where she stood she could see the gap between the panel and the stone wall which was her path onward. It was narrow, barely wider than her shoulders. Her father would have gotten stuck.
The problem was that the path onward didn’t lead very far. It would have been better to go out into the hall and cross the few feet to the opposite wall where another hidden entrance led to far more useful passages. But that meant death. The wolf was out there.
As if on cue, the monster spoke.
‘Wood,’ it said. It tapped on the wall, directly above Sieglind’s head. ‘I will claw through it, and then you.’
‘Good luck,’ said Sieglind in a superior tone, feeling a bit smug that she knew something the werewolf didn’t. ‘That oak’s so old it’s harder than iron. One of Filibert’s stupid friends tried to stab it once, to test his new sword. His blade completely shattered, and it didn’t even scratch the wood. The weapon-master gave him twelve lashes at the whipping post for his trouble, and he had to buy a new sword. Feel free to break your claws though. Or your sword, werewolves have those, don’t they? I bet it’s cheap.’
She started down the concealed path, burning off cobwebs with the candle flame as she passed. She felt rather than heard the werewolf keeping pace with her. It did not try to break through the wall.
The part of Sieglind that often bossed people around found that very interesting.
‘More story, Lothar?’ she said loudly, in her best royal voice, enunciating every syllable as if it came with a coronet. ‘I expect our audience will be quiet, so you can hear what happens next, now it knows how rude he was to interrupt.’
Lothar, who seemed to be awake now but also seemed perfectly happy snuggled against Sieglind’s back, gurgled at the sound of his name.
The werewolf said nothing. Very interesting, Sieglind thought.
‘So, Story Sieglind got wings and off she flapped. She thought the magician was helping her, but I don’t think I’m giving the plot away if I tell you he wasn’t, really. Magicians never help in stories like this. They just help you get it wrong.
‘Swiftly she flew and blah blah blah and sure enough there are the mountains, and at the top of the highest is a tree. She arrives just as dawn breaks, as though she’d brought it with her. On cue, the fruit - what kind of fruit though? - burst into blinding flames. And she doesn’t know what to do. At which point I would have flown off somewhere nicer. But instead Story Sieglind thinks about the magician’s words, and bends all of her will and all of her soul to the task, and she thinks about what tomorrow means, just as had told her to. And the book doesn’t explain what this means, which is very annoying and actually means I must suffer interrogation by Erentrud over dinner again until I come up with something which she finds acceptable.
But anyway, Story Sieglind steps forward and gathers the fruit into her arms, plucking every bit. And she is blinded and burned to a crisp, head to toe. Which you might think is just deserts for being stupid and listening to a magician.
‘But when she steps back she is whole again, and the fruit undamaged, because, because - well, because magic. The story didn’t say exactly how. This bit is a moral about embracing your fears, I think. Told you it was a stupid story.’
She stopped, having run out of corridor. She could see the latch mechanism which worked the hidden door at this end of the path. But that opened onto the portrait gallery where the werewolf was waiting. That was no good. Sieglind had thought about this and had a plan.
Above her head, high but within jumping distance, was an opening to the outside world. When they’d built the castle it had been an arrow slit, and its embrasure was wide enough for a child to sit on comfortably. After they’d enclosed the wall, it acted as ventilation. It was a tall, narrow slit, made for straight-limbed bows, but at the bottom it widened into a triangle shaped fishtail. A fishtail wide enough for Sieglind to get her head and shoulders through. She knew this because she’d done it.
Like all the adventurous children of the Bastion, she’d looked down to the base of the castle wall hundreds of feet below, and the precipitous sweep of the castle approach, a barren rock face which fell away sharply until it met the ravine which separated the Bastion from the mountains on this side of the castle. Sieglind did not understand what kind of enemy the builders of the Bastion had expected might attack this way that they thought they needed arrow slits. Superb mountaineers, clearly.
Directly below the arrow slit, on the next floor down, was another arrow slit almost identical to the first, which led into one of the copying rooms near the library. Sieglind had poked her head out of that one too. Underneath the second arrow slit was a ledge.
In her mind’s eye it was a decent-sized ledge, built into the stones of the wall. Made to aide repairs to the walls maybe, far too high to assist any attacker. Given how bright the moon was, Sieglind expected she would be able see it. It was quite a short drop from the fishtail of the first arrow slit to the ledge beneath the second. That was what she planned to do.
In her imagination, the werewolf would then lose her scent. She didn’t expect it to give up, but the route from the portrait gallery to the copying room wasn’t direct or particularly obvious from the internal plan of the castle; it was possible the werewolf wouldn’t find her again. That still left all the other werewolves, but this one was trying. They’d designed the defences of the Bastion to winnow down massive numbers of attackers so - she steeled herself, and forced herself to think the thought - so even if her side had lost, maybe she wouldn’t meet any more werewolves. If only one had made it this far…
She shook her head and focused on the problem at hand. Which was that the plan was ridiculous madness, and she was fooling herself.
She carefully untied the bundle of Lothar on her back and set him down. He burbled cheerfully at her. She scrambled up into the embrasure and looked through it. Sure enough, the short drop she had imagined was fifteen feet or more, and the decent-sized ledge was a narrow sill. Jumping down to it would mean jumping to her death and taking her brother with her.
She slid back inside, scrambled back down to her brother, sat down beside him and tried not to cry.
‘I knew it was impossible,’ she whispered to her brother. ‘I just wanted it not to be.’
‘You have stopped,’ said the werewolf. ‘What is impossible? Is there no way on? Is this a door, like the one above? Come out, little bitch. Or I will come in.’
The whole wall shook as the werewolf shoulder-charged the door. The latch, although ancient, was as heavy and sturdy as the one upstairs. It held. But Sieglind knew a few more blows like that might test it beyond its endurance.
‘Stop that,’ she commanded. ‘Has no one taught you manners? It is rude to listen in on other people’s conversations.’
Sieglind waited for the door to shake again, but nothing happened. Instead the werewolf laughed, the deep, violent, humourless laugh of a creature that despised her.
‘I can be patient. The other bitch led me a merry dance through these halls. She thought she’d escaped, but I had her scent. I have your scent. I can smell your blood, bitch. You can’t escape me.’
It obeys. Someone has taught it to obey. It doesn’t know it’s obeying. I don’t think I can get it to not eat me. But maybe I can use this to my advantage…
Sieglind thought of a plan. It was a terrible, dangerous plan, which might well see both her and Lothar die horribly in just a few minutes, but it was better than the certain death that awaited them in the monster’s jaws once it finally broke down the door.
I don’t want it to lose my scent. I want to use my scent to fool it.
‘A warrior must prepare for battle,’ she said, with a boldness she did not feel. ‘Then I will come out and kill you. You just wait there.’
The werewolf laughed again. It was close to the wall, listening to her, smelling her.
‘I will wait for you, sword maiden,’ it said. ‘Come and face me and die.’
Sieglind breathed a sigh born of equal parts relief and fear. She looked down at her cheerfully compliant brother. She wondered whether it was just a coincidence that Lothar had chosen this fraught moment to be on his best behaviour, or whether the Constant was looking down on her, enveloping them both in its infinite compassion. Her father and mother were deeply religious; Sieglind had accepted their faith without question. Now she thought on the light in the darkness and hoped it shone for her.
‘We will save the rest of the story until later, brother,’ she said. ‘For after we have dealt with the dog. Don’t worry. Life never leaves a story unfinished.’
She lifted Lothar back into the sling. His weight felt reassuring. She slipped out of her shoes. She took out the silver knife and contemplated her hand.
Sieglind had never experienced real pain. Her brothers had broken bones; as a young man Filibert had taken a sword wound which had made the priests cover the mirrors and caused her father to sit vigil by his bedside until he recovered. Even Karin had taken her share or knocks and scrapes. But Sieglind had glided through her ten years with barely a stubbed toe to her name. But now she intended to hurt herself.
She put the point of the knife to the palm of her left hand, frowned, and took it away again. That would be stupid, she thought. I might need to hold something. Somewhere else.
She pushed her sleeve back and looked at the smooth, unblemished skin of her arm.
A pin prick won’t be enough. Be brave. I am the daughter of warriors.
With one sharp motion she dragged the knife along the back of her arm from elbow to wrist as deep as she could bear it. The urge to scream was incredible, but not a single sound passed her lips. Blood pulsed from the wound, thick and strangely black in the flickering candlelight. Searing pain brought tears to her eyes, but she bit her lip hard and concentrated on her task. As quietly as she could, she approached the back of the door and pressed the wound against the wood, smearing the blood against it again and again, squeezing the wound to make more come out. She stood back and let more blood drip onto the stone floor. Then she wrapped her arm in the spare blanket as tightly as she could, picked up her shoes, and crept silently back up the corridor toward the other door, trying not to breathe, trying to slow her pounding heart, leaving the candle behind, its little flame dancing against the darkness.
Sieglind prayed.
Light in the darkness
possessed of infinite compassion
consumed by unimaginable wisdom
I honour you with my being.
Heart of existence
embodying indescribable nobility
exemplifying purity and virtue
I worship you with my existence.
Flame of the universe
eternal selfless benefactor
unflinching guardian visionary
I subsume myself into your completeness.
I embrace the pure light of your perfection.
The words distracted her from the pain in her arm and the bleak certainty in her soul. With each silent syllable she took a silent step, part of her begging the Constant to keep Lothar still even as she prayed.
Soon she was at the foot of the stairs again.
And where is the wolf? I didn’t hear it move. Oh mama, am I as foolish as Sieglind in the story? Better to wait! Hide here until you come! No. You’re not coming. You’re fighting the wolves! Yes! Yes.
She lifted the latch and pushed the wall open.
The werewolf was at the far end of the hall, leaning in to the wood behind which she’d smeared her blood, breathing deeply, enraptured by the scent of her. Almost a man without the moon to make it wolf, but not a man, not like her father or brothers. A man-monster, a beast uncontained, ready to kill her, ready to consume her.
When she moved, it saw her. A moment of confusion passed almost instantly and then it was running fast, so fast, directly at her, rage suffusing its face. But Sieglind ran too, a few steps across the corridor. And just before she reached for the secret panel which opened the door she shouted at the top of her lungs, a voice that her father would have been proud of.
‘STOP!’
The werewolf did not stop. It wasn’t a dog. But someone had taught it to obey. One leg twitched and hesitated slightly; one foot did not land where the werewolf expected. That was enough. It twisted and fell, tumbling over itself. As it fell Sieglind pressed and twisted the panel, so it did not see how she’d opened it. The door popped open, and she was through it and had closed it before the werewolf was back on its feet.
Seconds later it crashed against the door, howling obscenely, clawing and scraping and battering it with all its might, and this time it didn’t stop. That was it for Lothar, who emitted a terrified wail loud enough to wake the dead and kept going, his silence ended by the creature’s raging.
Sieglind didn’t wait around to congratulate herself or recover. No time to light another candle. She turned and fled into the pitch blackness beyond, relying on her memory of the tunnels for her direction.
She’d played in these passages all her life, but night and fear betrayed her. She careened into walls and tripped and fell, Lothar in full voice still without the candle and his sister’s face to calm him. Onward, downward, legs buckling, arm dripping blood, until she hit a dead end. A few seconds of frantic fumbling later and she was through the wall, out into the moonlit corridors of the castle proper, more terrifying for the monsters that moonlight would release. She ran, not thinking about where she was going but desperately trying to keep ahead of the jaws that would surely close around her head if she turned to see if they were there.
She burst through the door of the great library, slammed it behind her and stopped dead. A dozen doors led from the great circular room. She had no idea where to go next, where was safe, where wasn’t.
The slamming door must have shocked Lothar, because he was suddenly silent, as if he’d never opened his mouth.
‘Hello,’ said a genial voice.
Sieglind looked up into a man’s smiling face, full and handsome, with a moustache and whiskers and twinkling blue eyes. The man towered over her, easily as tall as one of the Bright Helms. He wore a strange, tall hat shaped liked a chimney pot, which he removed as he bowed to her. Behind him a cube of white stuff floated above his head. It oozed within itself, lurking like some gelatinous monster ready to consume her. Sometimes a streak of red smeared itself along the surface before disappearing into the ooze once more.
A short lifetime of training made her curtsy without thinking.
‘Guten Abend, mein Herr,’ she said politely.
The man raised an eyebrow. ‘Do the Almain retain their German? How interesting. I had thought you completely integrated with the Shambhalhai culture. I must make a note. Dragonville’s my name,’ he continued pleasantly. ‘Belmont Dragonville. At your service, fürstin Sieglind. Guten Morgen.’ He bowed again.
It didn’t seem strange to Sieglind that he already knew her; everyone she had ever met already knew who she was.
‘What’s that?’ she said. Dragonville arched an eyebrow and followed her gaze to the cube.
‘Oh, that. I was cleaning up. These books are irreplaceable. Not to mention this extraordinary ceiling.’ He stared up at the glass expanse, the universal map that showed the gates of magic which stood on each world, which had once allowed travel between them, but hadn’t worked in sixty times Sieglind’s lifespan. Then he waved his hand and the dust underfoot swirled up to join the cube, followed by specks and grains of detritus from across the library. And as if did, Sieglind realised what the red must be.
‘I’m afraid so,’ said Dragonville, gently. ‘There’s a lot in the air. Don’t give it another thought, though,’ he continued, and Sieglind did not give the blood another thought.
‘My dear, are you injured?’
‘It’s nothing,’ Sieglind lied. She felt strangely calm despite the terrors she’d experienced; just talking to another human was an immense relief. But he wasn’t family. ‘I don’t know you. Did you come for the wedding?’
‘I arrived somewhat later,’ said Dragonville easily, his voice merry with amusement. ‘May I assist you, fürstin?’
The fear flooded back. ‘A werewolf is hunting me! They’re everywhere! You should hide! Or come with me!’
Dragonville’s eyes widened slightly. ‘Not here though, surely? I have forbidden them this floor. I will have stern words with any who have disobeyed me.’
Sieglind opened her mouth to insist she was telling the truth. But she realised the import of Dragonville’s statement, gasped, and stepped back.
‘Disobeyed you? But that means -’
‘My, you are quick on the uptake,’ said Dragonville. ‘Don’t remember that, it’ll spoil our little chat.’
Sieglind did not remember it.
‘May I assist you, fürstin?’ said the man called Dragonville politely.
Sieglind’s mouth wanted to say something, but the words were not there. She felt the shape of the something, but couldn’t call it to mind.
Instead she said, ‘I want my mama.’ Without her meaning it to, her lip trembled.
‘Such vulnerability,’ said the man, clasping his hands to his heart and affecting a sonorous tone. ‘Who could not be moved? The pathos! The child ripped from her mother’s breast. There’s a broadside in this, no doubt. I may publish.’
Sieglind couldn’t quite tell whether Dragonville was mocking her. Then she thought he might always mock everyone. That was not something someone in her position had to put up with.
‘I want her,’ she began impassively, ‘because she is the greatest swordswoman within a thousand leagues and she will kill every werewolf until there are none left in the world!’ Her tone changed as she finished until her voice was ringing with defiance.
‘Bravo,’ said Dragonville, putting his fingers together in a brief, polite clap. ‘I hope she is still alive. Although she may wish she is not if her way has taken her along the Wolfmaker’s path. No, forget that, no need to be morbid or engage in long explanations.’
Sieglind forgot it. She saw the magician looking down at her, a kindly look on his face.
‘I hope she is still alive. Yet I fear there is no path from this place which will take you to her, unless it is the path to join the choir invisible, or to your next turn on the wheel. Wherever she is, wolves are.’
Sieglind’s whole body folded in on itself a little as he said the words. She knew it was true. And as she accepted it, really accepted it for the first time, guilt flooded through her - as if by accepting that her mother was probably dead, she was betraying her living memory.
‘They’re all dead, aren’t they?’ she said.
‘That, or something like it.’
Sieglind couldn’t speak. Then Lothar shifted a little, not enough that the man saw him, but enough to remind Sieglind that she still had family, and was responsible for him.
She noticed for the first time a red and white cube floating in the air. She felt strangely incurious about it. But a different thought felt easier to think, and easier to say.
‘You’re a magician.’
‘I am the magician,’ corrected Dragonville, puffing up slightly. ‘The greatest there has ever been.’ He seemed to reflect on that statement momentarily, for he added, ‘Certainly in the top ten.’
‘I thought people couldn’t do big magic anymore,’ Sieglind said. ‘Just tricks and things.’
‘That doesn’t apply to me,’ said Dragonville grandly.
‘Magic never helps,’ Sieglind said, repeating the words Erentrud had drilled into her when she’d first wondered if she could be a magician when she grew up. ‘It always hurts.’
‘I agree,’ said Dragonville affably. ‘The worth of man is in his sinews, and his understanding. The wit to know the world, and the strength to reshape it. Magic resents this. Have nothing to do with it.’
‘But you could help. As a man. You’re a man.’
Dragonville didn’t reply immediately. With a final flick of his wrist the last of the white dust joined the cube. Another gesture sent the cube scudding through the air and through an open door which closed behind it.
‘I regret I cannot assist you after all. The werewolves have their Great Matter to prosecute. I have my own affairs to attend to. Now my dear, we must part ways. Good day.’ He put the tall hat back on his head and made to leave.
Lothar chose that moment to make his presence felt, with a querulous wah of mild annoyance. Dragonville raised his eyebrows and peered over Sieglind’s shoulder.
‘Babes in arms, is it?’ he said, smiling again. ‘I am very unobservant today. Well. Perhaps I am not wholly...’
He looked around him, contemplating the exits. ‘I believe it would be best if you went... this way.’ He pointed to the door the cube had passed through.
Thank you for your help. Mein Herr,’ Sieglind added, remembering her manners.
‘I haven’t helped you,’ he said. ‘We don’t, you know. You must help yourself. Just like in the story. That way.’ He pointed again.
Sieglind hefted the child again, turned to go, then looked back. ‘You should run too. The wolf is coming.’
The man smiled again, but it was different now; he was thinking of something that hardened his eyes and made Sieglind think it had been a mistake to turn back.
‘A wolf is already here, my dear. Ich bin jenseits der Erlösung. Cheerio.’
He swept out of the room.
Sieglind ran. The door led to another corridor, then another and another, which eventually led to a narrow, unlit staircase. The steps spiralled downward into terrifying blackness. Sieglind thought she knew where she was then and suddenly had hope again. She reached for a candle, then thought better of it. I know where this goes. I think I know. Better to save it until I really need it.
Moving as quickly as she dared, hugging the outer wall of the spiral, she descended.
Ten steps, twenty, thirty, more and more and more. She lost track, and this itself was terrifying. It felt endless, like one of the hells in Earth religions, where the damned were forced to repeat a worthless task for eternity. She knew this was nonsense; it had been a few minutes at most. But fear created time for it to fill. On and on she crept, ever downward.
Eventually her leg buckled as it looked for a next step that wasn’t there. She adjusted Lothar onto her hip and sat down on the bottom step. He seemed unfazed by the total darkness. She cuddled him closed, sharing her warmth. If she had been able to see she would have seen their breath, condensing in the air.
I think these are the siege stores, in the deep cellars. If I’m right, there’s a way out of the castle. A disgusting way.
Sieglind realised she could see. There was a light in the far distance. Just a candle flicker, maybe two or three, too far away to do more than lend edges to the shapes in the darkness and reveal the low, arched ceiling of the cellars. But light meant people, and people meant hope.
She resettled Lothar and reached for a candle of her own. Then from somewhere in that distance there was a ferocious barking and screams, human screams, and fear clenched Sieglind’s heart until she felt it might stop.
Instinctively she started back up the stairs, then stopped as her common sense reasserted itself.
There’s nothing upstairs but death. Ahead, there’s death and a way out. It’s the better choice.
There are wolves there. But they’re... busy.
We have a chance.
Her legs disagreed. The distress she’d pushed down inside herself robbed them of their strength, and when she made to stand they made her sit right back down again. Terror ahead, terror behind. Her mind might tell her she had a chance, but for the rest of her, it was too much to cope with.
‘I’m not go-ing, I’m not go-ing, I’m too scared, I’m too scared,’ she whispered to herself. ‘I’m not like Sieglind in the story. I’m not this brave.’
Is the story about embracing your fears?
This curious thought appeared in her mind without her reaching for it first. She thought about the thought, turning it over and over, looking at it from every angle she could think of.
No, it isn’t, really. It’s about something else. It’s about... acceptance. I don’t have to be a hero. I don’t have to be gallant, or intrepid, or bold. I don’t even have to not be scared. I just... I just have to accept I don’t know what will happen next. And life is always like that. That’s why the magician tells her to think about what tomorrow means. Tomorrow means nothing. We make tomorrow by our actions today.
She pushed up suddenly, daring her legs to give way. Then she pulled Lothar close and edged forward quietly.
The siege stores were plentiful, neatly stacked and ordered. That there had never been a siege of the Bastion in the thousands of years of its existence had never caused any Keeper to stint on their preparedness. The history of Shambhala was the history of people who let their guard down and died - sometimes killed by werewolves, more often by other people. That was the lesson, the moral of that story - people who let their guard down, died.
The werewolf had let its guard down.
A different werewolf, smaller than the one who had chased her but still huge, with lampblack hair and clad in ill-fitting scraps of armour, armour which looked made for a man not a beast. Sieglind stopped far away from it and hid. She watched the monster.
It had cornered three people in an alcove and eviscerated them. A soldier, and two others, a man and a woman, impossible to tell who as the werewolf was gulping down the flesh from their faces. They lay spread-eagled in an abattoir of their bodies, their blood drenching the floor and walls.
The soldier had done his duty; the werewolf was wounded. One arm hung limp against its side. Sieglind knew no common soldier of the Bastion would have a silvered blade. Such things were the stuff of gifts between die reichen Männer. Which meant that soon the werewolf would heal.
Which means now is the time to kill it.
How do I do that? I’m ten!
It is swilling flesh and blood from the dead. The smell must be overpowering. Mustn’t it? It won’t smell me.
It’s facing into the alcove. If I creep along the line of crates, I can get behind it without it seeing me.
Will it hear me? Lothar stays here. I’ll take my shoes off again, shallow my breath, I know this works, I’ve done it already. It won’t hear me.
It will feel my blade!
To her astonishment and horror, the soldier groaned suddenly. Blood spurted from his mouth and he stretched out a shaking, scrabbling arm, hunting for a sword that was no longer at his side. That there was still life in him came as a shock to the werewolf too. It stopped eating and stared at the stricken warrior. Then it gave an experimental push on the soldier’s breastplate. More blood bubbled from between his lips. The werewolf gave a throaty wuff of laughter and did it again.
Now. Now, while it’s distracted.
She set her brother down, folding the blankets under him to stop the cold stone floor from causing him distress, praying again for his silence. She placed her shoes next to him and drew the centaur dagger. Then she slid toward the werewolf in her stocking feet, staying in the shadows, barely breathing, scared to death.
She got halfway there before Lothar started crying.
The werewolf heard him immediately but did not react immediately. Instead it listened, gauging the distance to the unexpected noise. Working out what it was. Cautiously, it stood up.
Sieglind stepped into the shadow alongside a crate, heart pounding so loudly in her ears she thought it might as well be screaming her name. She heard the slow clack-clack of the werewolf’s clawed feet as it stepped slowly toward the hidden baby. Sieglind held her breath as it drew level.
I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t I I I I just
No tomorrow without this. This makes tomorrow.
She moved, and as she did so the werewolf turned toward her, but it moved too slowly. She thrust upward with all her strength. The dagger punched into its stomach and tore up under its ribs, where it lodged.
The werewolf reeled away taking the dagger with it, but as it did it swung its claws wildly at her, slashing her across the face and lifting her bodily into the air even as it fell. Sieglind screamed as unimaginable pain shredded her senses. But when she landed, she was up again instantly, instinct and adrenaline giving her the knowledge that if she lay down now she would never rise again. But she couldn’t stay on her feet; blood streaming from her face, she crawled toward the alcove.
The strike had damaged the werewolf, but it was not dead. Its face twisted in rage as it saw who had attacked it. But it couldn’t breathe properly; it gasped for air that did not come, even as it swung around and staggered, flailing at the knife, dropped to one knee and rose again, and half-fell toward Sieglind. She scrambled away. There was only one hope, and she knew it. She reached the bodies, looked and saw nothing; fear pierced her like the sword she sought. Then she saw it, half pinned under the dead woman’s body. She grabbed at it, pulled, turned and pointed it bolt upright just as the werewolf fell on her. The blade entered its jaw and then its skull and it collapsed beside her, arm around her in a false embrace, dead - dead - dead.
Not dead! Not dead! Sieglind’s mind screamed at her. W ist für Werwolf loomed in her imagination; silver-bright stories, night after night, teaching her about the magic of werewolves, about how they lived and why they didn’t die. The knife in the lung was a silver wound, but was it enough? She didn’t know.
Sieglind slid backwards, out from under the maybe-lifeless arm. She pushed the corpse with all her might, ignoring Lothar’s screams of distress, until with one last push she turned the massive body over. Blood poured from its wounds, but she was beyond that, beyond caring. She jerked the silver dagger, once, twice, three times before it came free. Then with a strength of purpose which called upon her father’s years to fortify her own few days, she put the tip through the werewolf’s eye, and lent down upon it, as hard as she could, until something crunched, and it slid suddenly, finally into the brute beast’s brain.
‘Now you’re dead,’ she said, and burst into tears.
Then she felt the pain.
She wiped away the blood that insulted her face, the sting of her wounds trivial compared to the soul-destroying exhaustion that pressed her into the ground. With shaking arms, she pushed herself off the corpse and half-crawled, half-slid back through the cellar, her blood adding to the slick coating the flagstones. She gathered up her brother and held him close and rocked him back and forth, over and over and over.
Sometime later Sieglind became aware again. Her face throbbed painfully; she felt the skin tear as she winced. It joined the dull ache in her cut arm as wounds which should hurt more than they did. She didn’t know why. She felt icy cold and couldn’t stop shaking. But she could see through both eyes, which was better luck than she could have expected. Being alive at all was better luck than she could have expected.
Lothar had stopped crying, but there was another sound, a harsh, slow rattling that echoed against the stone.
The soldier was still alive.
Sieglind wanted to give up and die. It was too much. She imagined just taking Lothar and leaving, running past the horror ahead on leaving the soldier to embrace the Constant in his own time. That thought felt guilty and low, but also honest. It was too much.
But then she remembered when she’d felt lonely or scared, and her mother or Erentrud had held her in their arms until she felt at peace again. And that had been for nothing. What fears did a ten-year-old princess have, really? That was nothing. This was everything.
She swaddled her brother in his blanket and walked unsteadily back to the bodies.
The werewolf had devoured the dead worse than she’d imagined, but she felt curiously indifferent. Dead was dead. Everyone was dead. Everyone except Lothar, her, and the soldier. And it was obvious he was not long for the world. The gaping wounds and the blood foretold the end of his story.
She knelt next to him and took his hand. It was cold, cold like the fire-frost in the first flash of winter, the frost that cracked the flesh and exposed what lay beneath. The soldier felt her touch nonetheless and twisted his head slightly to see her. His mouth gaped a little, but no sound emerged. He looked lost, and Sieglind didn’t know how to find him.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I can’t make you better.’
She saw a look in his eyes; her words had registered. She tried to think what her father would say to a wounded soldier. There had been so many, brought back to the Bastion from battles beyond the mountains, wounds of pride and terror carved into their war-worn flesh.
‘You did your duty,’ she said.
This didn’t seem adequate.
‘Thank you for your service,’ she added. She patted his hand.
That wasn’t enough either.
‘I was telling my brother a story,’ she said. She displayed Lothar’s bundle with her free hand; then scowled slightly. ‘He’s dropped off again. He’s not a good audience. It’s that one about the Dawn Woman. Have you read it? She gets sacrificed to a monster by her friends and a magician frees her. I thought it was a bit rubbish, but I’ve changed my mind. We’re on the bit where she’s collected the fruit of the sun and got burned up but is magically not burnt after all. I couldn’t remember her name at first, so I’ve been calling her Sieglind, which is my name. Would you like to hear it? You can’t answer. You would. Yes.
‘After that she flies back to the monster’s cave and finds it back from calling on its friends or whatever, and unhappy about the absence of its dinner. And it sees her and goes to scoff her up. But she feeds it one of the fruit of the sun and immediately its hunger vanishes. And presumably because hunger is the only thing making it a monster, it doesn’t kill her. Which is fantastic news for her.
‘Then she goes back to the village. They’re alarmed to see her because they supposed her to be inside the monster and also suddenly she has wings, but she tells her story and they gasp and cheer and say, “It’s a miracle!” and imaginative stuff like that.’
‘Then she gives them the rest of the fruit. One bite for everyone. They eat the fruit and marvel at its sweetness. And they feel their hunger vanish. Vanish completely, forever.
‘And this is Story Sieglind’s vengeance upon them, for because they’re never hungry again, they never eat again. And they starve to death. And that was just, because anyone who would offer a young girl to a monster rather than face their fears is too dangerous to live.’
Sieglind frowned again. ‘I think this bit is a moral about how people are the real monsters. But I don’t think I agree with that. I did at the start, but I’ve changed my mind. They weren’t. The monster was the monster. The people just got scared and tired and forgot they were supposed to fight it. Even if that meant they died.’ She looked at the dying man, and the bodies with him. ‘You fought. You tried to save them. Thank you.’
He mouthed for a moment, unable to speak, then swallowed, and nodded, and found a breath.
‘Con... rad… in,’ he whispered. His gaze travelled to the two dead people. ‘Dank... mar. Ger... it.’
Sieglind understood. ‘I will remember you,’ she said. ‘I promise.’
Conradin’s eyelid flickered. He said no more.
Sieglind didn’t know how long to wait. She didn’t know how long death took, or whether the soldier still knew she was there. She remembered the prayers she’d heard, prayers for the dead which were really for those left behind. The words appeared in her mind unbidden.
Light in the darkness
consolation of the sorrowing
Brighten the way these souls now travel
Call them by their names
And deliver them to their destination
Embrace them in your perfection
Or let their wheel turn forward
Let them walk in righteousness forever.
She knew she should snuff the flame at the end of the prayer, a symbol that no worldly light could complete with the light of the Constant, but she didn’t dare. Instead, she re-tied Lothar’s sling, took up the guttering candle and the centaur knife, and walked on.
She knew where she was going. Adalbert and Adalhard had brought her here once. The twins were seven years older than her, although as far as Sieglind was concerned she was far more mature. When she was eight, they’d brought her this way, perhaps hoping to scare her a little, or at least amusingly disgust her with their destination. But she’d felt nothing other than safe with her brothers. They’d been very disappointed. She imagined them now, one either side of her, pulling her onward, laughing together.
The masons had told Sieglind many interesting things about the castle. One thing they’d told her was it wasn’t as old as people thought it was. It was still ancient, well over three thousand years old in its foundations, which had been built on and rebuilt many times over the centuries. Nowhere near as old as the gate that stood at its heart, which had stood in this place for as long as there had been people on Shambhala to know of it. But still venerable by the standards of the All-men, who had been in wooden halls when the Bastion was first raised. Sieglind had wondered once who came before them, but that wasn’t the sort of thing she wondered twice and she’d never heard an answer.
Its ancient builders had been forward thinking. Among its innovations had been what Erentrud had delicately referred to as a via cloaca; a central shaft for night soil, leading from each garderobe to, eventually, the outside world. The poo chute, the boys had gleefully called it. And somewhere nearby in the gloom of these cellars, was a way into it, and therefore a way out of the castle.
It was secured. A thick iron grill with hefty locks, covering the hole in the shaft which allowed access for the unfortunate boys whose job it was to clear blockages from time to time. But the hope that had brought her to this point was the hope that others would have come here too. And she was right, they had.
The grill was open; the locks broken off by force. The stench was terrible; the mere act of looking inside made her gag. She knew vaguely that it led down and out, but how and where she did not know. There was a river at the base of the crag on which the Bastion sat, woodland too. It seemed likely the sewer would lead there, but she didn’t know that either.
And if it does, what then? Where do I go? How do I survive? I don’t know. I know nothing.
But at least one other person had thought it wasn’t futile. Even in the flickering candlelight she could see the scraping trail made by someone who had gone before.
‘One thing at a time,’ she said. ‘This will be nasty,’ she warned her brother, who repaid her concern with a snore so loud she jumped at the sound. She wriggled him around so he was lying on her stomach, climbed into the shaft, successfully managed to not throw up, and shuffled down the tunnel on her backside.
‘I will never make fun of the servants again, Lothar,’ she said, as the chute made a sharp angle downward - not quite enough to become a slide, but enough to make her scared that she would lose control. ‘They have the worst jobs. I thought cleaning you was bad. Cleaning you was bad. You must start eating meat immediately. But cleaning this, urgh. I can’t imagine it. When we retake the castle, I will give them all a pay rise.’
She shuffled on, holding the candle ahead of her. The flame guttered; there was an opening somewhere ahead. She bashed her head on a protruding block, but barely noticed. All that mattered was going forward.
‘We haven’t finished the story,’ she blurted. ‘We have to finish it. Stories have endings. This one is a moral story, so it’s not a happy ending I’m afraid.’ She swallowed and continued.
‘So Sieglind’s village starved to death, even though they never hungered. I think the fruit must have stopped them eating as well as feeling hungry. I’m sure I’d remember to stuff in a pie or two even if I didn’t fancy it, if the alternative was death. But they died, boo-hoo. And the monster too, which served it right. And then because everyone she had ever known was dead, even though she thought they deserved it, Story Sieglind became lonely. So she flew off to be with the magician. And that was what he wanted all along. Someone to share his loneliness.’
She stopped and frowned. ‘I am not sure I got that part of the story exactly right,’ she said critically, ‘but that’s how it should go, I think. That seems right. I think. I don’t know why.’
A flash of blue eyes appeared in her memory. Blue eyes and a smile which didn’t always reach them. She opened her mouth to say something, but the thought evaporated as she realised she’d reached the end of the tunnel.
Dawn was coming. The rear of the Bastion faced south; in the east, the slate grey sky was yielding to a rosy pink. She could hear rushing water below her. Where below her she couldn’t tell. It was too far away to see. The tunnel opened onto bare mountainside, with a sheer drop beneath it.
Sieglind sat on the lip of the tunnel, legs dangling over the edge, and let the cool breeze of the morning lift her hair. Then she looked down and sighed.
‘I thought the drop from the arrow slit would kill us, Lothar,’ she said to the still sleeping child. ‘Now what do we do?’
She watched the sky. It was nice to just sit there for a moment - nothing chasing them, no blood to see, no fear, even. Nice just to hold her brother and watch the sun come up, watch it bring the world to life as light poured across the landscape. She wondered whether, on a mountain far away, a woman was gathering fruit.
‘Maybe we’re not meant to live, Lothar,’ she said. ‘Maybe this is it. Maybe it’s a test. The compassion of the Constant is unknowable.’ She looked tenderly at him and ruffled his hair. He stirred but did not wake. She realised for the first time just how much he looked like her.
‘Was it a coincidence that Erentrud set that story today? I’ve learned a lot from it. She will be pleased. When I see her at dinner, I think I can explain the moral. The fruit of the sun is the hope you can change your circumstances. The trial of plucking it is accepting that you don’t know what will happen when you do, but there are consequences. You might burn to a crisp or escape unharmed. Whatever happens, it changes you. And what you do next is up to you.’
She pushed out into the air.
Sieglind woke up. She felt so cold she felt nothing else at all. She was lying on dirt and leaves, half immersed in water, on the bank of the river.
‘I’m alive,’ she said.
Lothar lay next to her. He had a leaf between his feet and was busily transferring it to his mouth. With a trembling hand she reached out and took it away from him. He mewled in discontent.
‘We made it,’ she said, astonished to hear the words out loud. ‘Great Fathers, we made it.’ She laughed, and drew her brother close, and kissed him.
‘You are awake,’ said a voice.
Sieglind closed her eyes. Tears didn’t come. There was no fear, or anger, or even despair. She just felt cheated.
‘It’s not fair,’ she said. ‘I thought we’d escaped. It’s not fair.’
‘I had your scent,’ said the werewolf. ‘I told you. I could smell your blood.’
‘I thought I’d won.’
‘We win,’ said the werewolf. She felt it get closer and opened her eyes. In one motion she caught Lothar up and rolled to her feet.
‘Stay back,’ she said.
‘We always win,’ said the werewolf. ‘This is the Wolf Age. All men will be wolves. But not you. I have a worse fate for you.’
It held something out to her. She saw the silver dagger, somehow still wet with the other werewolf’s blood. Or maybe it was her blood. She was so cold now.
‘You are brave,’ it said. ‘I like it when they fight back. Try again, if you like.’ It tossed the blade at her feet. ‘I like it better when they run,’ it continued. ‘Run from me, little bitch. Take the child and run for your lives.’
‘Just a moment,’ she said.
Gently, she kissed her brother again. He smiled at her. That was enough.
‘I didn’t tell you the end of the story,’ she said. ‘There’s only a little left. Sieglind and the magician go off together. But they don’t live happily ever after. They live forever. And who wants to live forever? That would be... hell, I suppose. A hell caused by magic. And that’s the true moral. Magic never helps. It only hurts.’
She put Lothar down. She picked up her dagger. She turned to face the werewolf.
‘I’m ready for you,’ she said. ‘I won’t run. I’m not scared.’
Erentrud crawled the last few steps to the nursery. Her wounds were terrible. She’d lost more blood than she thought she had. But one thought had driven her on. To protect the ones she loved, her children in all but name. To find them and keep them safe.
She saw the blood before she saw the body. She cried with relief when she saw it wasn’t Sieglind or Lothar. Guilt followed; she’d known Gerwine since birth. But Gerwine wasn’t her baby.
They weren’t here. Something could have taken them. But they could be somewhere else.
Erentrud fell back down the steps. Something ruptured inside and suddenly everything was blood. She ignored it; only one thing mattered.
She fell into the Keeper’s rooms and collapsed. With no strength save that which her will gave her, she crawled to the wall. She pulled herself up it, inch by inch. Then she stood on the block, and pressed the wall, and twisted the candleholder.
As the door opened she saw the pillows, and burst into tears of relief. She fell backwards and sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. Her legs felt hot, then cold, then nothing, then agony.
There was a sound behind her. Erentrud turned to see a werewolf, as grey as the granite of the Bastion, overwhelmingly huge, streaked red with blood. It watched her from the doorway without emotion. It didn’t seem angry, or lustful, or hungry. It seemed preoccupied.
It watched without moving as she pulled herself up to her full height, and raised her chin defiantly, even as she bled to death.
‘She’s not here,’ she said, her voice ringing with pride. ‘She’s not here. They escaped. They escaped!’
It nodded, almost thoughtfully.
‘You’re here,’ it said.