He waited for Draki to see through his deception, to tell him he’d just sealed the fate of the Daughters of Aillira.
Draki’s smile was a flash of white against the backdrop of black rock. “My clever brother, always one step ahead. That is why I keep you around. However, it has not escaped me that you’ve spent a great deal of time among my enemies recently, on Glasnith and Iseneld. If you want to serve me again, you must prove you have not turned traitor. Meet me here at sunset in three days. You will accompany me to an assembly where your guidance may be of use.”
“What sort of assembly?”
“You will see.” Draki waved a hand in dismissal.
Reyker held his breath for a beat, letting it out slowly. He turned Vengeance, but Draki called after him.
“Until you have proven yourself,” the warlord said, “you are not welcome in Dragon’s Lair.”
Reyker glared at the stark gray outline of the fortress. He wished he could burn it down or dump the whole monstrosity into the sea. “Good.”
Vengeance carried him away in a flurry of hooves, Dragon’s Lair shrinking fast, but never fast enough.
Three days. Not enough time to get to Fjullthorp and back, but enough time to visit a place he hadn’t been in years, a place that haunted him as much as Dragon’s Lair.
Reyker rode for the better part of a day, crossing from the Lavalands into the Streamlands, until the sparse woods of his childhood home came into view. Riding over the hills to Vaknavangur didn’t feel real. He’d done it hundreds of times as a boy, but only a handful as a man.
He expected it to be a ghost of what it once was, tumbled stones and rotted wood sticking up from below a sea of frost, just as it was the last time. But someone else had been here recently, digging up the remains of cottages and the feasting hall.
They were still here.
A boy of ten or so was walking up a path through the woods, carrying a bucket. When he noticed Reyker, the boy gave a shrill whistle and darted through the trees toward the far corner of the village. Reyker followed and came across a group of children. They were about to run, but one girl stepped closer, eyes wide. “You’re him.”
“Who?” Reyker caught himself looking around, as if someone might be behind him.
“The Wolf Lord.”
“The . . . who?”
“Get away from them!” someone shouted. From different directions, twenty young men and women rushed out, all Reyker’s age or a bit younger. Their swords and axes were raised, ready to defend the children.
The girl pointed, bouncing with excitement. “The Wolf Lord is here! He’s come home!”
They stared at him—men and women, boys and girls. The oldest among them, a sandy-haired man who held his axe like someone who’d used it before, spoke first. “Who are you?”
They knew. Everyone knew. Draki had made certain of it, tattooing Reyker’s identity onto his face for the world to see. Reyker’s hand went to the hilt of his sword, an unspoken warning. “Who is asking?”
The axe inched higher. “I am Hamund Akesson of Vaknavangur. And you?”
Hamund, son of Ake. Reyker remembered Ake, a quiet man with a hearty laugh, good with a spear, better with a fiddle; he’d had one daughter, one son. Hamund—Reyker knew this boy from long ago. His eyes grazed their faces, recognizing some of the others. These were his people. Like Brokk, they’d been children when Draki destroyed their village, forced to watch the men in their families fall beneath the Dragonmen’s swords.
“I am Reyker Lagorsson of Vaknavangur.” It came out strained by the knot in his throat.
“Are you here on behalf of the Dragon?”
“I do not serve the Dragon.” He looked at the ruins around him. Somewhere beneath the frost was his father’s body. Draki didn’t cut Lord Lagor’s corpse up and put his bones into the fortress as he had with the other fallen men of Vaknavangur. A kindness, for Reyker’s sake, so he would not have to pass the bones of his father every day—this was what his brother had claimed, not acknowledging the insult of leaving their father to be buried by winter, ravaged by animals that came to gnaw at his frozen flesh. “I am here for my father, Lord Lagor, to reclaim and rebuild these lands. Our lands.”
“We’ve heard stories of what happened to you in Dragon’s Lair, how you fought to resist the warlord. Are they true?”
Memories of those days rumbled in Reyker’s soul, pressing at his mind. He shoved them back down again, somehow kept his voice even as he said, “They are.”
Hamund kneeled, holding his axe up on his palms. “Then I pledge my aid and my axe to you, Reyker Lagorsson, in the name of your father and mine.”
The others followed Hamund’s lead, kneeling on the cold ground, swearing their lives to him. Something twisted in his chest—shock and pride and gratitude. He dismounted and went to kneel with them. “I pledge myself to you, heirs of your fathers, and to Vaknavangur. May it rise to greatness once more.”
One by one, they introduced themselves. Not all of them remembered Vaknavangur’s destruction, but all had been there for it. Children who had been just babes in their weeping mothers’ arms circled him, cheering and chanting. “Wolf Lord! Wolf Lord!”
“Wolf Lord?” He looked at Hamund, who grinned.
“Dragons and serpents are Ildja’s creatures, but wolves belong to no gods. They rule themselves, and each leader is sworn to protect his pack. That’s what you were to us when you raised your father’s sword against the warlord. A wolf fighting a dragon. A boy fighting a god.”
That twinge came again, beneath his ribs. He hadn’t earned their esteem yet. He didn’t deserve the title they had bestowed upon him, but he could try. With the Mountain Renegades’ help, he could finally end the battle he’d started that moment he picked up his father’s sword. But it would have to be done carefully—this was a walk along a rope strung above Ildja’s crater. One misstep and everything would burn.
Hamund showed Reyker what they’d accomplished, leading him past buildings in various stages of reconstruction, to the only one that was livable, a half-finished cottage in the center of what had once been Vaknavangur. Reyker’s father’s home.
His home.
“With a few more days of work, it will be done.” Hamund passed Reyker a large stone from the pile beside the doorway. “It will go faster now that you’re here.”
They entered the house and Reyker’s breath caught. Their possessions were long gone, the floor was filthy, but the space was the same. How many times had he sat here before the hearth with his parents? With Aldrik? “If the warlord finds out . . .”