The howls grow closer.
I start counting my heartbeats, focusing on the steady rhythm to keep the fear at bay. To keep myself from thinking about those skulls on the roadside, about tributes who never came home.
One. Two. Three. Four.
I will survive this.
Five. Six. Seven. Eight.
The howls grow louder. More insistent.
Something crashes through the underbrush to our left—heavy and fast. The boars squeal, pulling at their reins. Soldiers draw weapons with the rasp of steel on leather.
But nothing attacks.
The sounds fade back into the darkness.
We ride faster.
We crest a black ridge just as the last light bleeds from the sky, and there it is.
Ironhold Fortress.
It doesn’t look real. Can’t be real. Too massive, too brutal, too much nightmare given form.
The main structure is carved directly into the mountainside—or maybe grown from it. Black iron and basalt fused together into something that’s half castle, half living thing. The walls rise up and up and up, disappearing into shadow. Towers spiketoward the sky, crenellated and sharp. Smoke pours from forges built into the cliff face, casting everything in shades of red and orange that make it look like the mountain itself bleeds fire.
The outer walls bristle with battlements and arrow slits, scarred and pockmarked from old sieges. Some of the stones are scorched black. Others look melted, warped by impossible heat.
Wolf banners snap in the wind, silver on black, dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. They cover every tower, every wall, proclaiming this territory belongs to the Iron Warlord.
And the howling. Gods, the howling. It comes from inside the fortress itself, echoing out from somewhere deep within. Dozens of voices, maybe more, all crying out at once in a chorus that sounds almost human.
My stomach tries to crawl up my throat.
This is where they’re taking me.
I force my face into a mask of boredom. School my expression into something that suggests I see fortresses every day. Not terrified down to my bones. Not shaking in these chains.
Hadrun glances back at me, checking my reaction. Whatever he sees makes him grunt. “Impressed?”
“I’ve seen bigger.”
It’s a blatant lie, and we both know it. The biggest building in Red Hollow is the elder’s hall, and you could fit three of them in just the gatehouse.
But his mouth twitches. Appreciating the lie.
We descend toward the fortress, following a switchback road carved into the mountainside. The howling gets louder with each turn. Closer. I hear individual voices now—some high and keening, others deep and guttural.
More soldiers appear on the road ahead, pouring out from hidden positions in the rocks. They line both sides, forming two ranks that stretch all the way to the gates. At least a hundredof them, all armed with spears, axes, and swords that catch the torchlight.
They pound the butts of their spears against the stones in rhythm—BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. The sound shakes through my bones, up through the boar’s body and into mine.
Then they start chanting:
“Iron Warlord! Iron Warlord! Iron Warlord!”
The sound is massive. Overwhelming. It echoes off the cliff face and comes back doubled, tripled. The boar beneath me shudders with each impact, its muscles jumping under my legs.
