I crept to the hall’s entrance and pushed my nose to the crack in the door, testing the air. With the building in the way, I hadn’t seen the mage enter. There were several other structures nearby, but this was clearly the most important one. There, beneath the dry straw reptile mustiness, I caught the scent of olive oil, limes, and sweat. This time, with the dragon gone I got a strong enough whiff to know Airyn Thelm had been here. I couldn’t be sure she was still in the building but was certain she’d entered. Since she hadn’t already blasted me to ash, I decided she must be within, and hopefully too distracted to notice her dragon had decided snacking was more important than standing guard.

  ‘Careful,’ I imagined Vigilant Aggression warning me as I was about to crash through the door.

  Once again, he was right. Wizards were dangerous and tricky. Much as I hated Thelm, I respected her power.

  Nudging the door open, I slipped inside, closing it gently behind me. I stood in a short, candlelit hallway, the walls decorated with paintings depicting the Demon Emperor looking impressive and shelves crowded with strange little statues. Some were women so fat they’d have to waddle to walk. Others looked like an unlikely blend of people and animals or people and trees. They were, I decided, probably local godlings representing ponds, groves of trees, or particularly fertile meadows. The paintings looked pristine, colours bright, but the totems looked old and worn, like they’d been touched and rubbed many times over generations.

  An open door stood at the end of the hall. Past that lay another length of hall, with two doors on each side, that opened into a much larger space. Three candelabras hung from the ceiling and fat grey candles crammed the many shelves lining the wall. The place smelled like burning fat, dust, and singed goat hair.

  I saw neither Sahar nor Thelm, though most of the room was out of sight around the corner.

  My paw reached for my sword only to discover I’d given it to my friend. Stupid paw. Creeping forward, my back to one wall, I saw Sahar alone in the centre of the room. She sat in a chair, muscles rigid like she strained against invisible bonds, teeth bared in a savage snarl of hate or pain or maybe both. Her eyes twitched toward me, wide and bloodshot, but otherwise she didn’t move. Without a breeze, the room was warm and stuffy but not hot enough to justify the sweat pouring off her.

  Scanning the room, I saw no sign of the mage.

  ‘Patience,’ Vigilant cautioned.

  Ears perked, nose searching, I moved to check around the far corner. The smell of Thelm grew stronger. She’d been here recently.

  When I’d seen the entire space, I returned my attention to my friend. She still sat, unrestrained, lips pulled back to expose blunt teeth, sweating profusely, shaking.

  ‘It’s a trap,’ I imagined Vigilant Aggression saying.

  I rolled my eyes the way Sigaria did when a wardog offered her a particularly pathetic excuse as to why they hadn’t completed some task.

  Obviously, it’s a trap.

  I imagined the pleased wag of my mate’s tail. ‘Thelm wants you to run to Sahar to make sure she’s not hurt.’

  That made sense. She must have imprisoned her in the chair. Judging from my friend’s expression, she was suffering considerable pain. Stifling the urge to growl, I forced myself to think this through.

  ‘Thelm thinks you’re stupid,’ Vigilant told me. ‘She thinks you’re predictable.’

  So how do I be unpredictable?

  ‘Do the predictable thing, but with a plan.’

  What was the predictable thing? Well, I wanted to rush into the room and rescue Sahar. I wanted to get her away from that chair or whatever was hurting her and then tear the mage limb from limb. Doing the predictable thing seemed like a really stupid plan, but my mate was rarely wrong about such things.

  I lost the spear, I told the memory of Vigilant Aggression. She can paralyze me and then I’ve lost everything.

  ‘Then don’t let her paralyze you.’

  I heard nothing but the agonized hiss of Sahar’s breath begging me to act, to save her. How do I do that?

  ‘You’ve seen them cast this spell,’ Vigilant explained. ‘It’s directed. To target you, she must point at you. When she does, be somewhere else.’

  She’s invisible!

  ‘Yes, but mages are smug and lazy, which makes them predictable.’

  He was right. I’d killed Thelm’s mate, and she’d want to hurt me as much as possible. She’d wait until I thought I was going to rescue Sahar before striking. She was somewhere in this room, watching, waiting. Only the fact I hadn’t yet moved saved me from being rendered helpless.

  You better not be wrong about this, I growled at Vigilant.

  He ignored my toothless threat. ‘Move carefully, but like you think it’s just you and Sahar in the room. And stop your tail from slashing back and forth like that!’

  I crept toward my friend and the closer I got the more panicked she looked, breath hissing through clenched teeth as she fought to say something. I wanted to tell her that I knew but dared not, in case Thelm was close enough to hear. Ears flicking every which way, I let my head sway as I walked, as if exhausted from my mad sprint here. This let me build a better image of the hall in my mind. I heard the room’s tone, the way every sound reflected off the hard wooden surfaces, and the way they died when interrupted by something soft, like a wizard. I smelled sawdust, burning candles, and the oily citrus tang of mage soap. Thelm was here, somewhere off to my left. I paused, pretending to hear something to my right, and heard the low moan of wood as the mage shifted her weight.

  ‘You know exactly where she is,’ Vigilant whispered. ‘That means you know where the attack will come from.’

  Once again, I crept toward Sahar, waiting for the mage to prove Vigilant wrong and turn me inside out or send me toppling to the ground, paralyzed and helpless.

  Remembering what little I knew about the mage, I thought Thelm would let me say something before striking me down. She’d want to cause the most pain and to do that she needed me to think I’d won. But would she let me complete an entire sentence or just get the first few words out?

  I didn’t know.

  I couldn’t know.

  A few words, I decided, and then I’d hurl myself to the side, away from where I thought Thelm would point, but angling so I could rush her before she managed more magery. At the worst, my sudden movement should startle her, cause her to launch her spell.

  I reached Sahar and she stared up at me, eyes wide and pleading and desperate. A wardog whine slipped between her clenched teeth and I loved her all the more. Trying to warn me caused her incredible pain and yet she would not stop trying.

  “I know,” I said. “I understand—”

  ‘Wait!’ Vigilant barked. ‘Thelm wasn’t there when you escaped! She might not know it was the spear—’

  I threw myself to the side, spinning to face where I knew the invisible mage lurked. Something bright and vicious flashed from the shadows at where I’d been. Not a paralysis spell after all. Thelm had decided to impale me with a dart. It was too small to cause real damage and yet the mage knew wardogs, she’d know that a little pinprick would only annoy me.

  And so, it was more than a dart.

  As the last thought coalesced, I realized what I’d done. I’d been standing between Sahar and the mage. In stepping out of the way, I’d left my friend exposed. If this dart could kill a wardog, I had no doubt it would end Sahar.

  Too small, too thin. It was a needle and would punch through meat and muscle.

  Only bone would stop it.

  Reversing my spin, I stepped into the path of the streaking missile.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The needle pierced my side, so sharp I felt nothing. A note hummed through my bones as it grazed a rib and then finally slammed into my spine hard enough to stagger me to my knees.

  Kneeling before Sahar, my eyes level with hers, I tried to say, “Everyone has a plan until they get stabbed in the guts,” but only managed a low groan. Fire swept through my veins, a storm of raging flame turning my blood to ash, searing the strength from my muscles.

  I failed.

  My last friend would die because I’d misjudged Thelm. She had no interest in torturing and only wanted me dead. With me out of the way, she’d kill Sahar next, vengeance for her part in the death of Thelm’s husband.

  Eyes locked on mine, Sahar hissed in agony and then looked down and to her left.

  She’s ashamed.

  ‘No,’ Vigilant Aggression said, ‘she isn’t.’

  I followed my last friend’s attention and saw she stared at the sword still hanging on her hip. Overconfident, Thelm hadn’t taken it.

  The mage also hadn’t moved from where she’d launched the cruel needle.

  With the last of my dwindling strength, I snatched the sword from its scabbard. Letting my collapsing body weight turn me—I hurled the weapon at the mage.

  Airyn Thelm stood transfixed, the hilt jutting from the right side of her chest. “Fuck.” Blood bubbled from her lips. “Fucking demon,” she coughed. “You think this will end me? I’m a battlemage. Healing myself is simple.”

  The last of my strength fleeing, I looked for something else to throw and found nothing.

  Grinning bloody teeth, Thelm reached up to grip the sword’s hilt and pulled.

  It didn’t budge. When she tried to turn to see why, she couldn’t move.

  She groaned, coughing more blood down her chest. “What the fuck?”

  Craning her neck to see over her shoulder, she learned what I already knew. The sword had pinned her to the wall. More blood gushed from the wound and when she tried to speak, she spattered the sword’s grip with red. Once again struggling to pull it free, her fingers slipped in the gore. When she lunged forward, the flared hilt stopped her from escaping the blade.

  Lips moving, eyes blinking faster and faster, her fingers twitched and danced in jagged patterns.

  She’s trying to cast a spell, I realized.

  Airyn Thelm sobbed, spewing red down the front of her white robes, and started again, gestures ever more uncoordinated.

  I lay helpless on the floor, watching her die. “You’re drowning,” I told her. “I’ve seen it before.”

  A terrible way to die, I wouldn’t have wished it on my worst enemy. I was, however, just fine with the mage going out this way.

  As Thelm gasped out her last and then hung limp on the sword, Sahar drew a deep, shaking breath. “Dogged!”

  She slid from the chair to kneel at my side, brow crumpling as her nimble fingers searched through my fur for the wound. When she found it, the tiniest hole, they came away red.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked.

  “No,” she lied, “I’m fine.” Parting my fur, she squinted at the little hole. “Doesn’t look too bad. It’s just little. Tiny little. Is it bad?”

  “It’s bad,” I said, voice cracking with the effort of not showing how bad. The dart had been enchanted and while Thelm’s death had freed Sahar, the missile’s foul magic still seared through my body, devouring.

  “Poison?”

  Explaining was too much effort, so I said, “Yes.”

  “Don’t die,” she said, rising to stand over me. “Don’t you dare fucking die.”

  Realizing I should have lied, I wished Vigilant Aggression were here to explain to her that, when it came to dying, I didn’t have a choice. He’d find a way to do it so it wouldn’t hurt so much. He was good with stuff like that, good at explaining tricky things. I missed him. I missed Balen, too. And Sigaria and even Blood Tooth. I longed to stand among a great pack of wardogs, tails wagging in excitement as we prepared to bring the emperor’s peace to yet another world.

  Nhil and Henka, the Queen of the Dead, I decided I didn’t miss so much. They scared me a little. Not that I wouldn’t fight them, mind, just that I wouldn’t expect to win.

  At least my last friend was safe. I hadn’t failed at everything.

  “I’m going to fetch the town shaman,” she said.

  I couldn’t understand why but it didn’t matter. “No,” I said, voice barely a whisper. “Too dangerous. Dragon. Outside.”

  She glanced toward the door, hesitating, and then returned her attention to me. “If I was on the floor and you could save me, would you go?”

  “Of course.”

  “Right.”

  Too late, I realized she’d tricked me. People were too clever by far. “I’m a wardog,” I forced past the burning agony. “Wardogs are born to die.”

  My eyes felt like someone had dropped them in boiling oil, so I closed them.

  Roiling steam filled my lungs and it hurt so much to breathe I stopped.

  Peace would come.

  This couldn’t go on forever.

  Or at least I hoped it couldn’t.

  With mages, you never knew.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  I woke with many people gathered around me, all looking down with worryingly concerned faces. Sahar knelt at my side and a wrinkled old woman, with a face the colour and texture of the sun-dried turd of a wardog who hadn’t been given enough water, crouched beside her. The old woman looked tired, but old people always looked tired, which seemed like yet another good reason not to live too long. When I turned my head to get a better look at the strangers surrounding me, they flinched back a step and gasped with fear. Except the old lady, who poked me in the ribs and muttered something about stupid demons.

  I was so far gone, so near the edge of death, I’d gone numb. It was nice not having to spend my last moments in searing agony.

  Rolling my head in the other direction, I saw the doors to the long hall had been smashed inward, their splintered ruin littered about the floor, allowing sunlight and fresh air inside.

  “Horror lizard?” I asked.

  “I told it Thelm was dead,” Sahar said. “It jammed its face through the doors to get a look and then left.”

  “Took goats,” grumbled the wrinkled poo woman.

  “Goats are tasty,” I explained.

  She scowled at me like I’d said something dumb, but I didn’t care because they really were delicious.

  Unsure how I felt about Sahar gathering all these people to watch me die, I closed my eyes and waited for the long, dark night. Where had I heard that? Couldn’t remember. Didn’t matter. At least no one was sobbing or doing anything embarrassing. Maybe she wanted them to howl in mourning with her once I was gone. I liked that. People rarely sang our one-note song and never for wardogs.

  I wished I’d be there to hear it but that wasn’t the way death worked.

  “Are you sleeping?” Sahar asked.

  I opened an eye, confused that she’d already forgotten. “Dying.”

  “No, you’re not. Shaman Kyrhalot removed the dart and healed you.”

  “Not dying?” I opened the other eye.

  “Not dying.”

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. While I didn’t want to die, I’d saved my friend and killed the person who meant her harm. If I didn’t die now, the possibility of living a lot longer than I should seemed frighteningly real.

  “Are you in danger?” I asked Sahar.

  She smiled down at me, plucking a burr from the fur around my neck. “No. You did it. I’m safe.”

  I resisted the urge to growl in frustration. What use was a wardog to a safe person?

  “The entire village is in terrible danger,” creaked the turd-faced woman.

  That sounded promising. “It is?”

  “Forest dragons raid our farms, carry away livestock and children.”

  “Children?” I bared my teeth at the terrible thought. “People pups are special.”

  “They are,” the old woman agreed. “There are also wolves and coyotes.”

  “They’ll leave once I’ve peed on a few things,” I promised.

  I’d have to make the rounds urinating on stuff at least once a week, but that was hardly living a worthy life. As there were bound to be a limited number of forest dragons in the area, this was at best a brief reprieve from meaninglessness.

  “The Demon Empire has fallen,” the old woman added. “The Wizards’ Guild has retreated to the mainland, abandoning us. Civilization is collapsing. There will be raiders, wars as petty tyrants vie for power.”

  This sounded better and better.

  “You don’t need to protect your friend,” the old woman said.

  I didn’t? My tail would have sagged were it not pinned beneath me.

  “You must protect all of us,” she finished. “The entire village. Every person. Every child. Every chicken and goat.”

  “Every goat?”

  “Except the ones we say you can eat.”

  “You all need me?”

  The entire crowd nodded and now I saw that it wasn’t fear on their faces but desperate hope—which looked oddly similar. Vigilant Aggression would probably have said that they were afraid I’d refuse. When I pushed myself into a sitting position, they didn’t flee. Near the back of the gathering I saw the girl who called me a big puppy.

  This was a dangerous world that had just become even more dangerous. That girl needed me. Sahar, who was still pregnant, still carrying Balen’s pup, would need me. There was no way the old turd-faced woman could fight or run away; she was desperately slow, her arms twig-thin.

  I stood and they all stared up at me. No one fled or screamed.

  “I will protect this village,” I said.

  These were now my people, and I would allow no harm to come to them. I would kill anyone and anything that threatened them.

  Wardogs were born to die, but not today.

  Not as long as I had a purpose.

 

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