Tennech
The wolves came with the fury of a storm and the fierceness of a fire. There were not many of them, but that didn’t matter; they tore through men like a tide, unstoppable, unyielding. Tennech watched his two captains, Hullis and Dhrostain, shout orders to the men under them, trying to quell the chaos.
Tennech, the Dagger of Derenar, smiled. He lived for moments like these. The archers on the wall had done a lackluster job of defending the compound against the invading army, and he wasn’t surprised. From the looks of Yelto, it had been a long time since they had needed to fend off invaders.
Crashing over the rough-hewn stone came the fierce, rugged men of the tribes, swords and daggers in hand. They were olive skinned and strong, covered in scars and wounds that were undoubtedly the product of a lifetime of battles. He noticed that a few of them had an unusual hair color that somehow did not look out of place against their black-haired tribesmen: red. Farsteppers, Tennech thought with a frown. He knew the Otherworld had been closed and that the source of their power would have been cut off, but it did nothing to ease his mind. They were still deadly. They swept over the wall, yelling and frenzied.
“Sera,” he said calmly over his shoulder, “I hope you’re ready.”
His answer came in the form of a groaning iron door and a rumbling pair of growls behind him. Just in time, he thought. The talons of the Gwarái struck the stone of the compound floor as they walked, high pitched and hollow, and Tennech remembered just how much damage those talons could do when properly employed. And though there were no Shapers here to feed their bloodlust, he knew they would be as savage as these wolves seemed to be—if not more so.
When the first wave of warriors dropped below the wall, Tennech learned just how savage two cornered Gwarái could be.
Sivulu
Sivulu came from the east with the men of the Kuufi and Ohmati. The walls surrounding the compound were solid and tall, and the only way through them was over. He narrowed his lupine eyes as he surveyed the wall, maybe eighteen feet high. The heavy gray rock that made up the wall had not been smoothed out when it was placed, making hand- and footholds for any thief brave enough to scale the wall—or for any wolf crazy enough to try. Khuufi and Ohmati warriors flooded past him, brandishing steel. Occasionally, one would catch an arrow somewhere on his body. Sometimes they would flinch; mostly they just kept running. It made Sivulu shiver with pride.
He hunched down low, eyeing the wall one more time, and sprang forward.
Tennech
It had been a long time since Tennech had drawn his sword in battle, but his old friend was there at his side as if he’d never put it down. A general usually had the luxury of commanding his troops to do the fighting for him, but Tennech was never one to shy away from a fight, especially one as exciting as this. He locked eyes with an encroaching tribesman and could almost feel the fury coursing through him. The warrior wore his hair in long braids, tipped with white beads too many to count. Shirtless and scarred, he was pulling his sword out of the midsection of one of Yelto’s guards. He grinned at Tennech, yelled something in Khôl, and ambled toward him amid the sea of bloody chaos.
“Come get yours then, young pup,” Tennech growled. He flexed his fingers around the hilt of his sword and readied himself.
War had come.
She was here, and Tennech knew of only one way to greet her.
Sivulu
Sivulu felt the craggy walls between the pads on his feet as he pressed against them, digging deep, pulling with every ounce of strength in his formidable lupine body. He defied gravity as he leapt, surging upward, cresting the wall as if the feat itself were effortless. On his way up, he flew past two surprised guards who watched his impossibly high arc that brought him well over the height of the wall. Their shock at his sudden appearance gave them no time to react as Sivulu crashed into them on his way back down into gravity’s capricious clutches.
In wolf form, time seemed to slow for Sivulu; he was lighter, faster, stronger. He moved more gracefully, more fluidly. His jaws found the throat of one of the guards he’d landed on, and his teeth sank into the man’s flesh as effortlessly as if he were closing his eyes. Mouth wet with the copper taste of blood, Siv found the exposed flesh of the second guard as quickly as he’d found the first. A chance and his ground were two things that the man never stood.
Siv peered over the edge of the wall to see Hroth pulling his sword from the stomach of another fallen guard. He saw the Hedjetten make eye contact with an older man standing in the center of the swirling storm of swords like an oak tree. He heard him utter an elegant curse that called into question the man’s heritage, mental capacity, and sexual ability all in one. He’d never seen Hroth so energized. Which was why, when the aging man in platemail sank his sword deep into the decorated warrior of the Ohmati, Sivulu nearly swallowed his own tongue.
Tennech
The tribesman came at him like a whirlwind. He’d picked up the curved sword from the guard he felled and, brandishing a blade in both hands, looked like a silver storm of light and sound, yelling and spinning and slashing at the air.
“All wind and no lightning!” Tennech shouted at him. “Let’s see what you’re made of.”
Tennech watched the man’s movements. They were quick but undisciplined, strong but unfocused.
He’d seen it before when he was at the military academy in Khala Val’ur: strong men who relied on nothing but the fact that they were larger than the others, putting the full force of their weight behind their swings and relying on brute force to get the job done. Tennech, falling neatly in the middle of the distribution of size among the warrior men, had learned to rely on his wit as well as his strength to come out on top. Over the years, as he packed on muscle on top of skill, he saw the two begin to blend together seamlessly.
A man whom the other cadets called Behem after the mountain itself, was pitted against Tennech in a duel one day. Smaller by almost half his body weight, Tennech knew there was no way he was going to come out on top in a purely physical battle.
And, as the braid-wearing tribesman surged forward, Tennech relived the duel in his mind.
Behem had come at him with both swords raised high, his right arm trailing his left, and Tennech had his sword raised to block the blows; but at the last second, Tennech slipped out of the way and let the massive warrior’s momentum carry him forward and off balance, bringing the butt of his hilt down on the warrior’s head, stunning him. He stepped back to avoid a follow-up slash from the stunned man. Gliding backward, Tennech gracefully parried two more blows from the big man and countered with a slash of his own. Of course, they had been using wooden swords, but the bruising they left was very real—and the blood that came from the Khôl warrior before him was real as well. Like the blackness that came between blinks, the difference between what was real and what was memory was indistinguishable to Tennech, but it didn’t matter; his body knew what to do after years of training. He shifted his weight from his back foot to his front, thrust forward cleanly with his sword hand, and found the weakness in the flesh that all warriors wear. He felt the resistance when his blade bit bone, and heard the groan that all dying men share.
He pulled his blade back, wet with fresh blood, and it reminded him of his first blade, Glamrhys—the blade he had given to his first love, all those years before.
The love that had spent the night with him, beneath that starry Thurian sky.
The love that he had promised his life to.
The love that he had killed for.
The love that had left him.
All those years before.
Nessa . . .
Nessa. He had loved her, once.
The memories hit him like a flood, and as the man before him collapsed onto the dusty earth below, Tennech found himself unable to move.
He looked at the tribesman, reality and memory winking in and out like two sides of a spinning top.
His face was numb; his body, unresponsive. And when the streaking black wolf made its way to him in a flash, he almost didn’t see it.
He felt the jaws and teeth, though, and he had no defense against them as they closed around his throat. He did not try to fight it.
Death for the Dagger of Derenar was just like his life: apathetic, cold, savage—and alone.