How to Raise a Dumb Wolf - Chapter 13

The soldier quickly unlocked the cage holding Aisha and Elizabeth. Aisha’s heart hammered. She knew how frightened she was, but the darkfolk men were powerfully built. If she resisted, they would only handle her more brutally, as they had before.

After a moment, Aisha took Elizabeth’s hand and rose of her own accord. Keeping herself half between Elizabeth and the soldiers, she lowered her head and walked out of the cage.

The darkfolk soldier paused. The hand he had extended to drag them out stopped in midair. Several seconds later, he withdrew it and adjusted his cap with an awkward gesture.

There were more than thirty blond girls in all. Their wrists were shackled and linked with iron chains. Under the watch of two darkfolk soldiers, they formed a line and marched forward.

The sensation was dreadful, but no one dared whisper. Aisha forced herself to calm down and raised her head, committing the nearby passages to memory. Perhaps she might discover a suitable escape route.

Unlike the prison she had imagined, the place outside their holding room was remarkably luxurious. Intricately carved walls, oil paintings hung along the corridors, gleaming marble floors, and beautiful red carpets all proclaimed the status of the owner.

Aisha thought she knew where they were.

Dimska, capital of the darkfolk kingdom.

And more specifically…

Inside the darkfolk queen’s castle.

A princess inheriting the throne in Duke was no small event. Even setting aside every other factor, it had once seemed impossible. Duke had not produced a princess in almost two hundred years.

In all honesty, even with only one darkfolk infant in four born female, the royal family ought not to have gone so long without one. But they encountered an extraordinarily unlikely run of chance all the same. When the current queen was born, the former king was said to have been so shocked that he turned the newborn over and over more than ten times. Only after using every available method to confirm that the child was not a prince with a congenital defect but a genuine princess did he finally believe that he had fulfilled his ancestors’ hopes and his people’s expectations by producing a daughter. The old king burst into tears.

As for the succession, her two elder brothers ceased to matter.

The old king lived a very long life, however. The queen had ascended the throne promised to her only six months ago. She was already forty-five and had a son nearing twenty—presumably the prince these soldiers meant to show them to.

Although the queen’s right to inherit had been settled beyond dispute, her actual accession still shocked the world. It overturned everything people had long assumed about the darkfolk. Even a small town like Aisha’s heard plenty about it. Newspapers dug up nearly every detail of the queen’s life.

After thinking hard, Aisha vaguely recalled that the prince’s name was Brandon.

They wound through the corridors for several minutes before the soldiers halted them before a great door. Both men snapped to attention, knocked, and pushed it open.

“Your Highness, we have brought the girls who might be the princess.”

“Send her in.”

“Uh… no, Your Highness. There are rather a lot of them…”

Boots thudded against the floor inside. A moment later, a black-haired young man emerged. At the sight of more than thirty blond girls lined up outside, he frowned visibly.

The girls at the front stared despite themselves. None had expected the prince to be such a handsome man.

The darkfolk were called darkfolk because their skin possessed an unnatural lead-gray cast, said to be the mark left when the gods abandoned them. A mark bestowed upon a race guilty of grave sin could hardly be expected to suit anyone’s idea of beauty.

And yet… on this prince, even that color was pleasing to the eye.

The girls had little time to admire a prince of an enemy race. He surveyed them for only a few seconds before striding forward. He stopped before the first girl, seized her wrist amid her startled cry, and searched it. When he failed to find the mark he wanted, he released her wrist without hesitation and grabbed the next girl’s.

Aisha and Elizabeth stood at the very end, since they had been the last to leave their cage. Aisha gathered her courage and watched, bewildered. The prince plainly saw nothing unusual in his own behavior. Within a few dozen seconds, he had already seized and released the wrists of seven or eight girls. Their turn would come soon.

“What is he doing?” Aisha whispered to Elizabeth.

The soldiers were too startled by Prince Brandon’s abrupt behavior to watch them closely.

Aisha felt the hand Elizabeth had wrapped around her wrist begin to tremble violently. Elizabeth’s voice shook as well, but she answered.

“Two years ago… at the entrance examination for the Advanced Warrior Academy on Wold, he… he broke the princess’s wrist and left magic in it that sealed her power. So…”

Wold, the Heart of the World, was the world’s only island removed from war and political conflict. Many races lived there together, and disputes between them were forbidden. It was also the center of education, so there was nothing impossible about a human princess and a darkfolk prince of similar age meeting there.

But…

“He didn’t see her face?” Aisha asked.

Elizabeth shook her head. “To keep the Advanced Warrior Academy’s entrance examination fair, magic blurs every candidate’s face. Neither examiners nor other students can see anyone clearly until the results and rankings are final. Their identities are kept secret too… He must have… investigated afterward. In truth, that was supposed to be the princess’s only chance to leave home…”

Elizabeth lowered her eyes as she spoke. The shadow of her lashes made her look very pitiful.

Something stirred in Aisha’s heart. Without drawing attention, she shifted the small Elizabeth behind herself.

But in the blink of an eye, the prince had already examined nearly half the line. He drew closer and closer. At the same time, the anger suppressed beneath his handsome features grew steadily more visible…

“Your Highness!”

A darkfolk dressed as a servant hurried down the corridor, anxiety written across his face.

“Her Majesty requires you at once. It seems… the human army…”

The servant wiped sweat from his brow; the urgency seemed genuine. Brandon’s hand stiffened. After a moment’s hesitation, he withdrew it.

“Very well. Tell Mother I will come immediately.” He turned to the soldiers. “Record the remaining girls and send them back. I will search again later. And one more thing…”

Brandon paused.

“After you return them, bring me the keys to every cage.”

“Yes, Your Highness!”

The soldiers suspected nothing. They snapped to attention and answered loudly.

Aisha watched the darkfolk prince hurry away and breathed in relief. Elizabeth went limp, collapsing against her as though all her strength had vanished.

Aisha supported her shoulders. After a moment’s thought, she said softly, “There has to be a way for us to escape.”

Elizabeth pressed her lips together and nodded hard.

…

While luck allowed Aisha and Elizabeth to escape notice, Les had already reached Dimska.

An ancient direwolf could run as fast as the finest darkfolk warrior could fly. Les merely had to contend with winding roads and obstacles. Along the way, he also brought down several darkfolk patrols who saw and recognized him. Plainly, his beast form placed the soldiers on high alert.

After entering Dimska, Les stopped outside the city. The darkfolk queen’s castle stood not far away. By tradition, abducted women were temporarily confined there.

Aisha… should be inside.

Night had fallen. The thought that the girl might be terrified, perhaps even crying, tangled Les’s thoughts into knots. His fur rose involuntarily as his body assumed an attacking stance.

“Les—you have reached Dimska, haven’t you? What is your situation?”

The Beast Emperor’s grave voice sounded suddenly in his ear.

“…Yes. Safe. No enemies. I can see… the castle.”

Les paused and forced his voice to remain calm. His claws had already hooked into the ground, however, as though he might launch toward the castle like an arrow from a bow at any moment.

He could smell the comforting scent that reassured him within those walls. But it was surrounded by threat—the rank reek of darkfolk feathers…

“Les, listen to me. Stay calm. You cannot storm a heavily guarded castle alone.” Hearing the threatening breaths rumbling in the wolf’s throat, Carter III frowned. He feared Les might do something irrational, even if he… understood how the young wolf felt.

After several seconds, Carter III continued, “Wait where you are for a few minutes. I have your coordinates. This afternoon, I sent a unit to join you, and they should find you soon. To reach you quickly without being detected, the unit contains no large beasts. Most are leopards and foxes. I will have the army mages establish contact between you. Come to think of it, one of them is a distant uncle of yours on your mother’s—”

Before Carter III could finish, Les’s ears snapped toward a sound.

He heard the sounds of an army, but not the leopard and fox reinforcements the emperor described. These were human voices. Human scents, heavy with fresh blood.

And…

One particular scent demanded his attention.

Les frowned and ignored the rest of His Majesty’s words. He broke into a run. Several minutes passed before he slowed, lowered his body, and concealed himself in tall grass. He approached with care and peered through the gaps.

Then…

He froze.

It was a vast human army. The nearest human front should have lain more than ten kilometers (over 6.2 miles) from Dimska. Heaven alone knew how they had reached this place. Fresh blood stained every soldier’s armor, and exhaustion covered their faces. No one would doubt that they had just fought through a brutal battle.

But the commander at their head was what truly shocked Les.

At any mention of a woman general among humans, the first name in every mind was Tina Killott. Les had always fought the darkfolk on the western front, while human forces operated almost entirely in the east. This was the first time he had seen the legendary commander who became famous more than a decade before him.

But that was not what astonished him most.

The scent he had noticed—the one so similar to Aisha’s—came from Tina Killott.

And looking carefully…

They looked perhaps fifty or sixty percent alike. Above all, Aisha possessed the exact same hazel-green eyes as Tina Killott.

At that moment, Tina had no idea a beastfolk major general was hiding nearby. She rose, swept her gaze over the soldiers, lifted her spear, and shouted,

“Rest where you are for three hours! We move before dawn! Is that understood?”