Chapter 748: The Beast Pavillion Once More...

Chapter 748: The Beast Pavillion Once More... [Bonus Chapter]

"Spider eggs," he said out loud with a wince. "I left Reina with six of them."

Lupina shivered and her ears flattened back.

"Spiders... I don’t like things with too many knees, Lord Silas. They walk without any rhythm."

"Let’s hope they’re small, then," Silas said dryly.

They followed the winding lane down past the Barracks.

A pair of Shieldmaidens on their evening rounds passed them going the other way and saluted the Lord, and both of them did a double take at the silver wolf-girl walking at his side with her tail wagging like a flag in a gale.

Lupina pretended not to notice as her tail wagged harder anyway.

’He’s walking with me,’ she thought, sneaking little glances up at his face. ’My Lord is walking with me hehe~ Morrighan will be so jealous...’

Silas slowed a little so she wouldn’t have to hurry, and if she noticed, she didn’t say anything about it.

Above them the fog had thinned just enough to let a few faint stars through, and down in the valley the lanterns of the settlement glowed in long warm rows.

Behind them on the slope the three new smokestacks of the Titan’s Anvil Forgeworks were already breathing steady gray plumes into the night, and every so often the ring of a hammer carried all the way here.

Lupina’s ears swiveled toward the faint sound of the hammers, then back toward him.

She walked a little closer to his side, close enough that the tip of her tail brushed his leg with every wag... however he didn’t move away.

Ahead of them, nestled in a sheltered grassy hollow at the foot of the eastern cliffs, the long low buildings of the Beast Pavilion came into view, and with them came the rumble of dozens of contented wolves settling in for their evening meal.

The Beast Pavilion was a sprawling compound of heavy cedar logs and dark stone, with open training paddocks, wide shaded kennels lined with fresh mountain hay and a row of stone troughs fed by clear spring water that ran down from the cliffs.

Warm lantern light spilled out between the slats of the long main barn and as they came up to the split-rail gate, the low throaty rumbles and happy yips of dozens of wolves filled the evening air.

Lupina’s nose twitched.

Her ears swung toward the noise, and her tail slowed its wagging as the smell of so many big predators in one place reached her.

Inside the main feeding yard a pack of big silver-and-gray wolves crowded around a line of low wooden troughs, tearing eagerly into fresh cuts of meat.

Their breath steamed in the cold as tails thumped against the fence posts.

Two younger ones were having a tug-of-war over a single bone and growling at each other in that half-serious way young wolves did, until an older female shouldered between them and took it from both.

...And standing in the middle of it all, a full head taller than any of them, was Valkyrie.

Silas’s personal mount stood with her thick fluffy golden coat glowing in the lantern light like a field of wheat at sunset.

She had a huge marrow bone pinned under one paw and was gnawing on it with complete unbothered dignity while the smaller wolves jostled around her flanks then her ears went up as her head came up.

Her amber eyes found Silas at the fence, and the bone was forgotten.

"Ah," Silas said. "Here we go."

Valkyrie came across the yard in three huge bounds, scattering wolves out of her path like leaves, and cleared the split-rail fence without even seeming to try.

WHUMP!

She landed in front of him, reared up, put both enormous front paws on his shoulders and dragged her wet sloppy tongue straight up the middle of his face from his chin to his hairline in one long affectionate swipe.

SHLLLLURP!

"Bleh... Valkyrie..." Silas sputtered, laughing, as he wrapped both arms around her thick neck and buried his fingers in her golden ruff. "Yeah, yeah, I missed you too, girl."

Valkyrie dropped back to all fours with her tail wagging so hard that her whole back half shook.

She shoved her huge head against his chest, nearly knocking him into the fence, and made a low happy rumbling sound deep in her throat.

Beside him Lupina had gone very still.

The wolf-girl and a giant golden wolf stared at each other for a long careful moment with their ears tipped forward then Valkyrie sniffed once at Lupina’s hand, decided she approved, and went back to leaning her full weight on her Lord.

Lupina let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

’She’s huge,’ she thought, her tail curling uncertainly against her leg. ’And she smells like him all over. She’s been his far longer than I have naturally... I recognize Valkyire after all.’

Silas gave Valkyrie one last scratch behind the ears and wiped his face on his sleeve then he looked past her into the feeding yard.

Near the central trough, tending the hungry pack with calm practiced efficiency, stood Reina.

The territory’s Beast Tamer had her back to the gate.

Her wavy ash-blonde hair was tied up in a messy practical bun at the nape of her neck and stuck through with a carved bone pin.

Over her plain linen tunic she wore her heavy waterproof leather apron, stained with water marks and feeding mash and tied tight around her waist and she wasn’t wearing trousers.

...She was wearing shorts.

Reina was leaning far over the edge of a timber feed bin, scooping out another heavy wooden bucket of meat scraps.

The angle hitched the hem of her dark cotton work shorts high up her thighs and put the full generous curve of her rear on display.

Her long toned legs were braced wide in the dirt, the muscles of her calves flexing with every scoop, and her backside was sticking straight out into the yard.

Silas stopped dead at the fence line as his brain stalled for a moment.

Beside him, Lupina froze.

The wolf-girl looked at Reina’s bare thighs then she slowly looked down at her own frayed denim shorts.

She looked back up at Reina, and her eyes narrowed into two sharp suspicious slits.

Her fluffy silver tail gave a sharp indignant snap in the air.

’Hold on a minute...’ Lupina thought, her jaw tightening as she glared at the Beast Tamer’s backside. ’I’m the one who wears shorts in Blessed Land! That’s my thing! Everybody knows that’s my thing! Why did Reina steal my style?!’

A quiet territorial growl rumbled in the back of Lupina’s throat, and her silver ears twitched in deep annoyance.

Silas cleared his throat loudly and leaned one forearm on the top rail of the fence to break the awkward silence before it could get any worse.

"Reina!" he called, and his voice carried across the open paddock.

The Beast Tamer jumped and nearly dropped her heavy wooden scoop into the bin.

She spun around on her heels and wiped a loose strand of ash-blonde hair off her forehead with the back of her wrist then she saw who it was, and her whole face lit up.

"Lord Silas!"

An enormous radiant smile wiped every trace of tiredness from her face.

She tossed the scoop onto a hay bale, scrubbed her hands against her leather apron and hurried over to the gate, kicking up little puffs of sawdust with her boots.

’He’s back,’ Reina thought, her heart giving a silly little skip as she ran. ’He’s back, and he came all the way out here, and I’m covered in meat mash and wearing shorts...’

She couldn’t help it.

Every time she saw him now, she thought about that evening at the incubation pedestals.

His big warm hand landing on top of hers at the exact same moment with their mana pouring into the circle together.

The golden-blue light and that one ridiculous thought she still hadn’t been able to get out of her head.

’We brought them to life together... so does that make me the mama and Lord Silas the papa?!’

Her cheeks went pink all over again, and she very firmly told herself to stop it.

Then her eyes slid sideways to the silver-haired wolf-girl standing at his elbow, and she blinked.

The wolf-girl was glaring at her.

’Why is Lupina looking at my shorts like I stole them off her clothesline?’ Reina thought, baffled. ’It’s hot in the pens! The heat runes run all day for the eggs... What was I supposed to wear, a fur coat?’

"Welcome back, my Lord!" she said brightly, resting her hands on the top rail as she smiled up at him. "The riders said you’d come back through the Keep, but I didn’t think you’d walk all the way out here so soon!"

Silas couldn’t help smiling back.

Of all the girls in Blessed Land, Reina was one of the lot who still lit up like this every single time, as if him walking through the gate was the best thing that had happened all week.

Valkyrie pushed her big golden head between them and shoved her nose into Reina’s apron pocket, hunting for treats.

Reina laughed and swatted her away without even looking, it was the way someone swatted away a sibling.

"How are you holding up, Reina?" Silas asked, smiling. "How are things down here?"

Reina puffed out her chest under her leather apron, her eyes sparkling with confidence.

"Better than ever, my Lord!" she said. "The pack’s thriving and my Beast Taming powers have gotten a lot stronger too!"

As if the yard had been waiting for her to say it, a sharp snarl broke out behind her.

GRRRAAH!

The two young wolves from the tug-of-war had found a new bone and a new reason to fight.

They were up on their hind legs now, snapping and lunging at each other’s throats while the rest of the pack scattered out of their way, and one of the troughs went over with a clatter.

Reina didn’t even turn all the way around.

She raised one hand toward them, palm out, and let out a slow breath.

HUUUM!

A soft green pulse of mana rolled out from her palm across the yard like a ripple across a pond.

It passed over the two snarling wolves, and both of them stopped in the middle of a lunge as their hackles went down and their ears went flat.

A heartbeat later the pair of them had dropped onto their bellies in the sawdust side by side, licking each other’s muzzles as if nothing had happened at all.

Reina lowered her hand and turned back to Silas with a slightly smug little smile.

Silas whistled low and beside him, Lupina’s ears had shot straight up.

’She stopped a wolf fight with one hand,’ Lupina thought, grudgingly impressed. ’Without even looking. I’d have had to jump in between them and get bitten.’

Her tail gave one slow reluctant wag. ’Fine... She can be strong but the shorts are still mine.’

’That’s good,’ Silas thought, a wave of relief washing over him. ’A territory’s strength isn’t just walls and cannons... If her taming’s growing this fast, we’re going to need her more than ever.’

"That’s great, Reina," he said, resting his hand on the smooth wood of the gate. "Actually, that’s part of why I came... In a bit, once you’re done with the evening feeding, I want you to come up to the Keep."

Reina blinked and tilted her head in surprise.

"To the Keep, my Lord?"

"Yeah," Silas said. "I want to link you up with Rika... She’s the Goddess of Beasts and I want you to learn more about Beast Taming from her."

Reina’s gray eyes went perfectly round, and her mouth fell open in breathless wonder.

She had heard about Rika, of course.

...Everyone had.

The Lord’s new Hero who stayed in her quarters in the Keep and almost never came down.

Some of the girls whispered that she was shy while some whispered that she was scary.

Reina had only ever caught sight of her once, a tall woman that had crossed through the Keep’s courtyard at dawn with her head down, and every single wolf in the pavilion had gone silent and lain down flat the moment she passed the fence.

’The Goddess of Beasts,’ Reina thought, and her fingers tightened on the rail. ’The one the whole pack bowed to without being told and he wants me to learn from her?’

"The... The Goddess of Beasts...?" she whispered, her hands trembling against the cedar rail. "You want me to learn from her? Oh, by the ancestors... Lord Silas, I don’t even know what to say! I’ll be there! I’ll finish the troughs right now and run straight to the Keep!"

"Take your time and clean up first," Silas laughed, waving a hand. "She’s not going anywhere. But before that... there’s one other thing I came to check on."

He shifted his weight and looked past the feeding troughs toward the dark insulated pens at the back of the pavilion.

...That was when he noticed the rafters.

High up in the shadows under the cedar roof, strung from beam to beam, were threads.

Dozens of them... They were fine, pale, almost invisible strands that caught the lantern light and glittered like frost on a spider web at dawn, crisscrossing the whole back half of the barn in long loose loops.

One of them had snagged on a lantern hook and was swaying gently in the draft, and even from the fence he could see that it hadn’t snapped under the weight of the iron.

’Silk,’ he thought, and something in his chest gave a sharp greedy little jump. ’That’s silk.’

That had been the whole plan from the very first nest.

Royal spiders that could be tamed meant a supply of silk right inside Blessed Land’s walls, that silk was tougher than anything the merchants sold, and he’d never have to buy a single bolt of it again.

He had lost the first clutch of eggs when the dead Spider Queen fell right on top of them and he’d fought his way through a second nest to get these six.

Through the open door at the far end he could just make out the row of round stone incubation pedestals where he and Reina had set the eggs.

The magic circles carved into their tops had gone dark and on every single one of the six pedestals, scattered across the stone like broken stained glass, lay curved shards of translucent sapphire-blue shell.

’They’re empty,’ he realized. ’All of them.’

"How are the spider eggs?" he asked carefully. "Have they hatched?"

Reina’s awestruck expression vanished, and an enormous mischievous grin spread from ear to ear in its place.

’Oh, he has no idea,’ she thought, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.

She had been sitting up with those six eggs for days, checking the heat runes every hour, talking to the shells when nobody else was around to hear her and trying very hard not to think about legs and then, sometime after midnight, with nobody else awake in the whole pavilion but her and the wolves, the shells had started to crack.

"Oh, they did!" she chirped, crossing her arms over her chest as laughter bubbled in her voice. "They hatched, Lord Silas! And you missed it!"