He didn’t argue. He glanced once at the slope, measuring. “You have anything fast?”
“Not elegant,” she said, already digging. “But fast, yes.”
She pulled a squat jar from her satchel, wax-sealed and smudged with soot. She cracked the seal with a thumbnail, whispered a string of ugly little syllables, and slammed the jar down. Flames crawled out like a curious animal, then roared. The wolves recoiled with a hiss.
Wesley had flint out and a bundle of twigs gathered in seconds. He fed the jar’s blaze, coaxing it along the iron-salted arc he’d scratched, turning the firewall into scalloped teeth. The air heated so fast, Maude’s face stung.
The wolves shifted tactics.
They bled upward into the smoke—then dropped, raining down like shredded cloth. One hit just beyond the salt line, shoulders driving through, jaws snapping for Wesley’s throat.
Maude didn’t have the angle or time for a pretty spell. She threw her body into his, shoving him sideways. The wolf’s teeth scissored shut on empty air.
He rolled with her, came up on one knee, and—damn him—laughed once, short and unbelieving. “You’re very strong for someone I could carry with one arm.”
“Saints, you never shut up. Hand me the branch.”
He did. She plunged the end into the flame; it came out a screaming brand. She slashed it through the wolf’s face. Fog peeled back, soot-blackened and unsteady. It snarled and leaked away.
They moved together after that because there wasn’t any other option. She handled heat and iron; he handled speed and angles and the blunt mechanics of staying alive. Twice he dragged her coat out of the snapping mist. Twice she scorched beasts off his boots.
And through it, the alpha waited. That was the worst of it. It paced beyond the fire’s tongue, eyes two careful coals, letting the underlings tire themselves. Trying to read the seams in their defense. And Maude knew, with the part of her mind that still calculated under panic, that they couldn’t hold a wall forever. The jar would give; the salt would dampen; the iron would cool.
“We need rock,” she panted. “Stone holds wards. This—” She gestured at the slab of moss under their feet. “—is soup.”
“Up there,” Wesley said, chin jerking at a shoulder of granite showing through the green thirty paces left. “We sprint. On three.”
“You’ll never make thirty paces.”
“We’ll make it together.”
“I hate that you sound so certain.”
“One,” he said, because of course he would.
“Wesley—”
“Two.”
“Fine,” she snarled, and grabbed his wrist.
“Three.”
Maude slashed the air, and the wall of fire split open, a jagged wound of light. They ran. Pickles—long accustomed to her madness—swerved to flank them, ears pinned, head low and snaking. Wesley’s bay plunged once, then surged forward, hoovestearing clumps of soil loose. The wolves poured after them, fog breaking like foam around their legs. At last, the alpha moved—uncoiling into a long, black ribbon of killing intent.
She threw the last of the iron shavings in a fan and felt the pouch go light. She lost a step swearing. Wesley took that half-stumble on his own body. His arm came around her waist without asking and hauled her forward. They hit rock and skidded. The granite was slick with a skin of fern, but it was stone, and that mattered. She slapped both palms to it and spat a ward so old she tasted blood.
Lines burned outward beneath her palms, etching a spiderweb of fire into the lichen—knot after knot, the net weaving itself bright and unyielding. The first wolves struck it and dissolved, collapsing into water for a single offended heartbeat before misting back together on the far side. But the far side wasn’t inside. They prowled just beyond the barrier, reforming with low growls, their shapes circling, testing. The alpha only watched, eyes narrowing to slits, hunger sharpening in the dark.
“Keep them busy,” she said through her teeth. “I’m going to anchor it. It’ll hold better if it’s fed.”
“Fed with what?”
She looked at him, breaths quick. “Me.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Move, baker.”
