Wolf-speaker Read Online Free Page B

With a sigh the girl told the horses to move on. “The wolves won’t touch you,” she said when Spots wavered. “Now go!”
    Follow me, Cloud told the horses; they obeyed. Daine, with Kitten peering wide-eyed over her shoulder, followed Numair.
    Blackened earth sprayed from the crater’s center. Other things were charred as well: bones, round metal circles that had been shields before the leather covers burned, trees, axheads, arrowheads, swords. The heat that had done this must have been intense. The clay of the mountainside had glazed in spots,coating the ground with a hard surface that captured what was left of this battle scene.
    Numair bent over a blackened lump and pulled it apart. Daine looked at a mass of bone close to her, and saw it was a pony’s skeleton. Metal pieces from the dead mount’s tack had fallen in among the bones. Looking around, she counted other dead mounts. The smaller bone heaps belonged to human beings.
    Grimly Numair faced her and held up his find. Blackened, half-burned, in tatters, it was a piece of cloth with a red horse rearing on a gold-brown field. “Now we know what happened to the Ninth Rider Group.”
    Daine’s hands trembled with fury. She had a great many ties to the Queen’s Riders, and the sight of that charred flag was enough to break her heart. “And you stopped me from shooting those Stormwings.”
    â€œThey don’t kill with blasting fire like this,” Numair replied. “This is battle magic. I have yet to hear of a Stormwing being a war mage.”
    â€œI bet they knew about this, though.”
    Numair put a hand on her shoulder. “You’re too young to be so closed-minded,” he told her. “A little tolerance wouldn’t come amiss.” Folding the remains of the flag, he climbed back up to the trail.

TWO
    THE VALLEY OF THE LONG LAKE
    Three days after leaving the cave, the wolf pack led the humans and their ponies through a gap in the mountains. At its deepest point they found a spring, where they ate lunch; from there they followed a stream downhill, until Brokefang stopped.
    You must look at something, he told Daine. Leave the horses by that rock—they will be safe there, with the rest of the pack to guard them.
    Daine, with Kitten on her back in a sling, and Numair followed him up a long tumble of rock slabs. When they came to the top, they could see for miles. Far below was the Long Lake. Daine noticed a village where a small river—part of the stream they had followed—met the lake. Not far offshore, linked to the village by a bridge, was an island capped by a large, well-built castle.
    Numair drew his spyglass from its case. Stretching it to full length, he put it to his eye and surveyed the valley.
    What is that? asked the wolf, watching him.
    â€œIt’s a glass in a tube,” Daine replied. “It makes things that are far away seem closer.”
    â€œThis is Fief Dunlath, without a doubt.” Numair offered the spyglass to Daine. “I can’t see the northern reaches of the lake from here. Is that where the damage is being done? The holes and the tree cutting?”
    Most of it, Brokefang replied. That and dens for the soldiers, like those they have at the south gate.
    â€œSoldiers at the northern
and
southern ends of the valley?” asked Daine. “Then why not here, if they want to put watchdogs at the passes?”
    Most two-leggers follow the river in and out, answered Brokefang. Few come here as we did. When they do, usually the harriers catch them outside, as they did those Riders you spoke of.
    Numair listened as Daine translated. “This is not good,” he muttered, squinting at Dunlath Castle. “There is no reason for this fief to be heavily guarded. Under law they’re only entitled to a force of forty men-at-arms….May I see that again?” He held out a hand, and Daine returned the glass.
    They continued to examine the