The Heart Grows

"They're not wasting time. When do you think they'll be done?" Words spoken lower in volume than anything outside the tight huddle of three could hear, rose and fell in the cadence of the Northerner language. The speaker, a wiry man shrouded in a cloak of black feathers kept his eyes fixed on the growing fortress to the south.

"Before the thaw." The clipped tones of someone used to command and having their orders followed flowed from the stocky woman. Adorned with a similar cloak, she shook her head. "Ivar isn't going to like this. With all the gold that whelp got, he's expecting a soft target."

"There's not much Ivar does like lately. Since Hilda got away without telling him about this place, it's been a far better job scouting away from home." The first speaker looked at the single member of their group not to have taken part in the conversation. "What do you think, Egil?"

Egil had years of experience on his companions. Frida had joined the Ravens in the spring, while Dag, the squad's leader, only had two more years on her. "If our Warmaster knows what he's going to face, no castle can stand before him. We have two more weeks of watching this target being built before we need to go back North and report."

Dag cleared his throat, softly. "There's more to this one. We are to scout the holes here and report on their status. The beasts to the east will be first. Hilda's sister…" He faltered for a moment. "Was it Donna?" At a nod from both his cohort he continued. "Field Captain Donna brought a godmetal chain. Testing that on a hole, for the priests, was half the reason they were allowed to bring their war band south. Hilda said they lost it in the hole when a monster assassinated the thing."

It was new information for Egil, and he mulled it over and the implications. "Ivar wants to know if the Southerners got it?"

"Yeah. He also would be perfectly happy spending our lives getting it back."

Egil and Frida both nodded to that, knowing how little scouts were valued unless they delivered important information. At last Frida asked, "So what do we do?"

It was a stupid order, in Dag's estimation, and he'd already decided how to deal with it. "What we can. We'll check that beast hole, sneak around to the south side and investigate these new walls. If we see any godmetal chains, we'll take 'em back with us."

The relief was palpable. Frida and Egil nodded to Dag and, when he stalked off to the east, they followed, keeping low even within the treeline to remain out of sight.

It took them the better part of a day to slip through the forest, each ensuring they weren't seen, sometimes even crawling and stopping when there was movement in the fields beyond the trees. Finally, though, they were within two hundred paces of the gnoll dungeon's fortified entrance.

"I count five guards." Frida gestured to the four towers and the gate. "Any wandering?"

Egil nodded. "Two. Random path. Random time. If this is how well defended the hole is in peacetime, with those brutes, I'd hate to see what they do when threatened. There's no knowing how many more are within."

"It's focused on big brutes. There won't be a lot, but this hole is more than we can deal with. That makes this part easy. Let's keep moving." Dag gestured to his chosen path, giving the dungeon a wide berth.

They paused for nearly a whole week to watch the workers building the star fortress. Watching the walls taking shape as they slowly circled around and past the eastern outpost of the city.

"You still think the Warmaster can break this when it's done?" Frida asked.

Shaking his head, Egil pointed toward the nearest wall where a large cat woman was organizing work teams. "You saw what they're doing? That's adamantine they're working into the wall. Who would waste so much of that metal on a fort's wall?"

Frida shook her head. "I've never heard of a fortress doing this. Look, they have huge lengths of it. They're working it around the stones. No amount of rock thrown at that will break it down."

"What else have you noticed?" Dag asked, pointing at the wall and passing the small piece of finely scraped deer hide to Egil.

Reading the notes, Egil said, "This can't be right. It has to be on the side we haven't had a good look at yet."

Dag shrugged. "I saw that side when we came in. There're no gates on this fortress. There's no way in or out."

"That can't be. They have outposts. The fort we passed and the one ahead." Egil felt rising dread at the situation. "Have they tunneled under the ground itself?"

"It's the only explanation that makes sense. With the other holes inside the city, they would have food and water. What need do they have to leave?" As she said it, Frida spat. The idea of never seeing the outdoors and roaming a forest to hunt was abhorrent to her. "I don't like it here."

"Yeah. You're not alone there." Egil copied Frida's example and showed his disdain by spitting into the leaf litter of the forest. "Let's get this over with."

After checking the westernmost of the two forts, and finding a railway snaking out of its main gate, all three scouts breathed a sigh of relief.

Dag gestured at the long steel rails being hauled out of the gate of the little fortress—far more than would be stored in such a structure. "Tunnels. That will make the sappers happy. If they've built tunnels big enough to move wagons and carts through, they can be dug into." The supplies were being loaded onto a wagon on the train track.

"Let's circle back and leave. I don't see any godmetal chains." Egil looked at Dag, waiting for a nod from him.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"Yeah. No chain, but we have valuable information that will make this worth it." Dag made a few more notes in his hide folder and closed it as they slunk back the way they'd come. All told, it took them a month from the moment they arrived near the old goblin dungeon to reaching it again. The weeks spent returning had been fraught with delays as the city workers built more and more of the walls—and the gnolls patrolled the woods.

Frida was uncovering their cold weather gear from where they'd hidden it when something made her alert. She turned her head and looked off into the forest, her senses growing sharper by the second. "Wolves," she said.

"Wolves? Get your bow out an—" Dag said.

"No. Wolves." Frida put extra emphasis on the word and, in the process, tapped her chest. "Both of you, run. Take all the gear and get as far as fast as you can." She bundled up her own notes, already wrapped in hide, and passed them to Dag.

The forest around Frida was dead silent except for stray rustling of leaves and barely perceived movement. She reached into her pack and pulled out the folded pack stowed there for emergencies. Her hands shaking as Dag and Egil grabbed what equipment they could and ran, she poured some of her water from a sack onto the dried meat and mushrooms.

As danger drew closer, Frida could feel differences in it. They weren't being stalked by the wolves she knew. There was fire in the air—a smell of burning and excitement while the night felt a little warmer. The brew she was mixing wouldn't be as strong as a fresh batch, but she nonetheless hoped it would be enough to buy her fellow Ravens some time to get away.

The wrongness grew as Frida's changes came onto her. Without the dreadnought armor that the wolves of the North were known for, she wouldn't stand much of a hope even against some weakling southern pack.

As she heard the first of the not-quite-wolves approaching the small clearing she was in, Frida reached to her back where the one concession to the armaments of her heritage was carefully hidden. Drawing the adamantine long sword her bones and muscles stretched, reshaped, and a deep red fur sprouted all over her body.

"A Raven! Find the others!" Astrid shouted. What she didn't expect, though, was to see the Raven grow into a wolf. "Liv! Get in this one's face and give her a good fight!"

For Liv, it was a surprise to face off against a wolf the likes she had been. She was bigger, taller, and broader than Frida. "You fight to buy your squad time to escape?"

The beast before Frida looked vaguely like a wolf. It had armor adorned with some dreadnought styling, but Liv was a full foot taller than Frida, had more reach, and carried a shield the likes of which would bankrupt most Northern warriors to own. "You're a wolf? From the North?" The weakened berserker brew wasn't enough to push Frida into a killing rage, much as she wished it would.

"Born in the snows of the North, suckled and raised in a longhouse, and first howled sixteen seasons ago now. You want to die this day?" Without Astrid or Elanor slowing her down, Liv's bloodlust was growing. She held back only because her opponent hadn't yet swung at her.

"If my gods will it." With that, Frida drew up what little frenzy she could and set about trying to fell Liv. Her first swing was meant to get Liv to raise her shield to block, instead the bigger wolf lashed out with it, trusting the mass and size to force Frida back.

Having taken a liking to the huge shield, Liv had been working with her pack on tactics to make the most of it. She expected her current shove to push Frida off balance and backward, when one big fuzzy hand grabbed the top and the wolf was climbing over it, Liv's heart soared in joy. She had to toss the shield and draw an off-hand weapon, a hatchet, to match her long sword.

Frida had to fall back. She'd hoped for a chance to pierce the helmet's eye slits, but Liv had threatened to disembowel her in trade. Tossing her long sword from hand to hand, trying to confuse Liv, Frida feinted left and then tossed the blade back to her right and wove her tip up to find one of the few gaps in dreadnought armor, just under the arm.

When the adamantine sword was checked by her armor, Liv cracked a big smile at the shock on Frida's face. She brought her hatchet down first, the fastest of her weapons, taking the wolf's right arm off at the shoulder. Then, rounding with her sword, she punched Frida in the face with her fist—backed as it was by the weight of the sword. "What's your name, wolf?"

"F—" Looking up into the sky through the trees, Frida could swear the gods were sending their greatest to collect her. She'd done everything she could, even died well in combat. "Frida."

"You want a rematch, Frida?" Liv asked, but the woman died before she could answer. "Ah fuck."

It was a surprise to Frida when she woke. She clearly remembered her arm being taken off, her blood leaking all over the ground—so much so that it had soaked the fur of her back—and her vision fading to black. It had all the hallmarks of death, to her. Sitting up, she felt a chill suffuse her.

"Calm yourself, cousin. You are safe here until you decide to be otherwise." Astrid sat, the only wolf in the room with Brayden when he raised the wolf who'd fought her pack to save her squad. "You got Liv's blood pumping so much she killed you before she could ask you the one thing that mattered."

Ignoring the small beast man who walked from the room, Frida looked at the wolf beast sitting at the far end of the surprisingly large hall they were in. A million questions circled in her head, but there were only three important ones. "My squad got away?"

"They did. Surprisingly fast once they got onto the snow, and we were not equipped for chasing them." Astrid watched Frida explore the church with her eyes. To one side was a set of custom armor made in her size, her own long sword and a choice of off-hand weapons. "More talk, or do you want to return to death?"

"'Return to death'? I was dead?" Feeling even less sure of herself, Frida's palm itched to grab the sword and charge the wolf beast. She looked at Astrid, though, and could see where the wolven influence met with something else. She'd never seen a dragon, but she'd heard enough to recognize the wings and scales. "You brought me back. Why?"

"To give you a chance you'd never been given before. When a wolf bloodline breeds true, the child is marked for a future under the boot. You've never had full control of your body. You've never changed into your true shape just to feel the wind on your fur. And I know you have never spent a night running with a pack and hunting game for the pure joy of it." Astrid let her form recede to her human shape. She knew the training she'd done as a wolf carried over such that she carried as much muscle as Hilda did. "I'm offering you the chance to be free. You can fight me if you want. We can wrestle, duel, or hunt and kill each other again and again. But only if you want to be free."

Frida was frozen in place. Astrid's words, and her willingness to forsake her wolf beast form while Frida still had hers in place, was a shock. The question even more so. "Freedom? What have you done to yourself?"

Watching as Astrid retook her huge shape, Frida felt a weight of presence suffuse the room. It felt like there was only room for one wolf to stand, and Astrid was bigger and broader and far more in command of herself than Frida had ever been. Without even knowing what she was doing, Frida walked forward, closer to the wolf beast, and found herself bowing her head as tears streamed from her eyes.

"Raise your damn head and look at me in the eyes!" Astrid said, snarling. "Don't you dare bow your head to me!" The shocked expression Frida wore salved Astrid's anger. "You are a wolf! Stand proud and tell me what you want. Death or freedom?"

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This story is released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. If you are paying money to see this or the original creator, Damaged, is not credited, you are viewing a plagiarized copy of the story.