THE CART RATTLED up and over a hard rocky ridge where the trees grew thin. There was no birdsong under those bitter limbs, but far off, we could hear the weeping and wailing of the lost ones. The snake-face seemed untrammeled by the sound, but with each scream, I saw the tension rising in Param’s black-robed shoulders. She sat hunched, curling slowly in on herself.

What of my own children? I only vaguely recalled them, in the way one remembers they once knew someone’s name, but can’t pull it from the din of other thoughts and impressions. I worried at it like a tongue over a sore tooth, but nothing came. A wife, and children, but no names or faces to fill in the gaps.

I was still lost in the dark labyrinth of my mind when the cart stopped. The snake-face roused me with all the sympathy one might expect of a demon. It grabbed my by the ankle and dragged me from the cart bed. My head struck the ground hard enough to make my vision dim. The snake-face didn’t care. It dragged me behind it like a tiresome burden, lumbering forward on its shriveled legs, tall head reared with wicked arrogance.

All I could make out at first were dark forms. They huddled back away from the demon, away from Param, who strode beside, unwilling to be led along by the creature. She carried the long, thin bundle under one arm. In the other hand I caught the occasional flicker of her bared blade.

I heard whispering from all around me, but I was unable to sort the sounds out. Everything seemed smoky, uncertain, as if my consciousness would blow away with the barest breath of wind.

Larger forms, houses or tents flowed past us. We passed under a great dark form that gave me the impression of stone, and then stopped. The snake-face dropped me, and my legs involuntarily curled in around my belly, protecting me as I gathered my wits.

That was when I realized they were arguing.

“He is mine,” snarled Param.

“You are nothing!” hissed the snake. “A thrown-away relic! You will not go before the Wolf!”

I blinked, rubbing the bleariness from my eyes. My wrists were still chained together. I touched the bolt, ensuring that in my confusion, the snake-face hadn’t fixed it tight. No, it was too fixated on Param. They went back and forth, thought I only had the barest sense of the conflict between them.

Pushing myself up on my elbows, I looked around. We were in the yard of a black, squat tower. A curtain wall ran around the tower, giving perhaps twenty paces of space between tower and wall. This area was packed with tents, around which sat despondent-looking men in scraps of iron and mail, with a bewildering array of helmets that seemed to mark them from every kingdom on earth. And some besides. Spears and thick-poled pikes leaned up in racks around sad little fires where the wretches sat. Some seemed to have been doing one chore or another, tending to gear or working at blades.

Now they were all looking at me.

Gaunt fingers of smoke trailed up over the fires, threading up into the cavern’s dim sky. On the wall, patrolmen stood at even intervals, and each held what looked to me like a flatbow. They didn’t watch the ground outside the wall; they were watching the sky.

“Enough!” the snake-face roared. “I have brought you to the den! Beware, little woman, that only my oath to him keeps me from tasting your blood. A little scrap of words is all that hangs between you…and suffering beyond your mortal mind.”

“I swore no such oath,” Param said. She moved quicker than the eye, striking in one flash. The snake-face reeled its huge head back, and I saw the hilt of one of Param’s knives protruding from its eye. It screamed, clutching at the knife. Param dove after it, knives in both hands now, the bundle forgotten on the ground.

“Param!” I shouted. A wave of nausea threatened to send me back into the dark depths. I groaned and crawled toward the fighting, but it was useless. She was slashing at the snake-face, tracing arcs of bright, radiant blood as it backed up. The men around the fires were leaping to now, seizing the spears and tearing iron swords from their belts. They moved like shadows, dim dark shapes beyond the violent combat.

The snake-face snapped at Param, sinking its needle-like teeth into her forearm and tearing her off balance. She went reeling, toward the spearmen, but came up rolling. Three knifes flew from her fingers, each finding a home in the chest of a charging spearman.

I kicked myself forward, letting the radiance in my blood burn until the nausea passed. My fingers pried at the bolt until it came free. I flung the chains away and got my hands on the bundle, tearing the tattered cloth aside and freeing Bloodfang.

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I smell a wolf, it murmured. This ground will forever be stained by those who he bled here.

I gained my feet and joined the fray, swinging wide with the blade, cutting at the backs of men who had closed around Param. The snake-face had its own blade out, the ghostly white blade I’d seen consume the lost child in a flash. It had torn Param’s dagger free of its eye, and radiance leaked freely down the side of its face from the ruined socket.

“I will enjoy drinking your blood, sangkva witch, until you have not a drop left to give,” it said, lowering its head in icy menace.

The ill-equipped soldiers spun as I crashed among them, driving them backward, killing enough to warm my blood with the radiance that threaded from them to me. They fell back out of the greatsword’s reach, until I was standing beside Param.

“This was not the plan,” I said.

“Your plan would never have worked.”

“And this is working?”

There was a thunderous crash as the doors of the tower were thrown open. The soldiers didn’t look away, though. They were well-enough trained to hold form. But the snake-faced demon paused. Its gleaming black eye cast a withering look at us, and then it turned its head enough to seek the tower.

Framed in the doorway was a towering man. He was so tall he needed to duck under the lintel. His limbs were bound with heavy muscle that corded and bunched under his gray skin. Black hair covered him like a bear’s pelt. And vibrant radiance glowed from three wounds on his chest: one in the heart, one just below the ribs, and one by the hip. I could see they were gaping even from where I stood with Param. Radiance shone out of them, and no meager light. They shone fiercely, as if he were holding back the a kiln fire in his heart.

I felt Bloodfang’s hackles rise through the hilt of the sword. Butcher! it snarled. He reeks of tainted blood!

The huge figure lifted his head, as if scenting the air. His nouse was broad, almost flattened against his face, and his wide-set eyes had a fire to them like the light leaking from his chest. Jutting cheekbones broadened his face, and the thick mane of black hair that sprouted from his neck and ran like a mane around his head was distinctly wolfish. Dim lines of radiance traced paths from the corners of his mouth, down to the jutting cliff of his chin.

“Harald,” Param said.

The Wolf put one hand on hte door frame and levered himself through. I could almost feel the heavy footsteps as he loped down the stone steps toward us. Behind him, several faces appeared in the door. Women, I realized. They emerged no further, but I caught the sight of pale shoulders as they peered around the door.

“Xatham,” the huge man said. “What is this mess youn bring me?” Half a dozen of the spearmen lay dead or bleeding on the trampled ground.

“My lord,” the snake-face fell to its knee before the Wolf. One by one, the soldiers knelt, until only Param and I were left standing at the center of the ring. “At the Stone of the Vigilant, I found this one, who calls herself Param.”

The giant stiffened, and his eyes narrowed. He wiped at his chin, smearing the radiant paths away. “Param?”

“What have you become, Harald?” she said. “Where is the man who sent me away? Where is the proud knight I knew?”

The Wolf’s lip rose in a snarl. “I sent you away? You chose to leave, woman. You feared the forest. You feared what we would find!”

“And what did you find?” she demanded. The snake-face hissed at her insolence, but Param paid it no mind.

“A god,” he said, feral grin stretching across his face. “A ripe, bloody god.”

“What have you done, Harald?” she cried, shaking her head. “I can smell it on you! Blood! Torture! What have you done?”

Killer, Bloodfang muttered. I could feel it slinking along a the edge of my mind.

Harald laughed at Param, but it was no mirth. His slavering, thunderous voice was full of scorn. “You smell strength, Param! Strength you rejected.” His eyes turned to me, and widened slightly. His lips curled back over bloody fangs. “A Cinderborn? What feast have you brought me, woman?”

Bloodfang’s rage was so fiery I nearly lost control of it. My knuckles creaked on the leather-wrapped hilt, and my own lips drew back in a snarl.

But Param acted before I could. Suddenly, her arms had coiled around my neck. I felt the thin blade of a knife on my throat.

“Tell the priest,” she whispered in my ear.

“No!” Harald snarled. “His blood is mine!”

Cold pain like nothing I’d felt before tore across my throat. Hot, wet radiance splashed down my chest as I gasped for breath that would not come. Bloodfang howled in my mind, louder than the ringing in my ears. But not as loud as the Wolf’s bloody laughter.