The Wolf of Lageta

They said the Empire sent only a scout force that spring, but to the ragtag children of Lageta it may as well have been an emperor's host. They came on lean horses and iron-banded wagons rattling with spearheads, bows and leather water skins knocking in the rain. The hills above the city, stripped bare for timber and stones when Cid and her wolves first laid claim to Lageta, gave the scouts no cover, so they tested the walls with arrows and probing strikes instead, laughing when they saw farmers and deserting conscripts in mismatched leathers standing rank on the parapets. They thought it would break before supper. They thought peasants and whores would run. They thought the Wolf of Lageta was just a rumor, the kind to frighten lords' sons at night. They did not yet know the truth: that this city was not a prize. It was a den. And every soul behind its crude walls had staked their blood, their children's bellies, and their last prayers on Cid Lavelan's promise that no lord, no gilded armor, no Empire scribe could take them back to chains again.

When dawn bled grey over the plains, the scouts made their push at the old western gate where the merchant caravans once poured coin into the nobles' coffers. There were no more merchants, no more nobles. Only barrels packed with pitch, muddy trenches that swallowed horses to the belly, and barricades of stripped doors nailed into walls until they leaned with the weight of a hundred shields. Cid was awake before the horns called, standing in the churned mud beside her shieldwall, her feet bare, her tunic belted tight to hide the braid she'd tucked beneath her collar. The blind white of her left eye caught the dawn light as she turned her face to the enemy ranks and simply nodded. She was a small thing among the broad-shouldered deserters and battered freedmen, her arms marked with whip-lashings, burns, the deep red collar where a noose once bit down and nearly claimed her for good. She carried no lord's longsword, only a short iron blade no finer than the next man's, but every soul there would have killed or died if she commanded it. She did not shout. She did not bellow. She lifted her scarred hand and the front rank braced shields rim to rim like shutters against a storm. When the Empire scouts charged, it was not iron that turned them but the fact that not a single man broke rank, not even when the first lances cracked a shield in two and pinned a boy's chest to the gate. Cid stepped over him without a prayer, blade out, thrusting for the soft eye of a mounted rider who swung too wide to skewer her belly. She fought not with grace but with a fury that made her seem larger than her thin bones allowed. Each cut clumsy but unstoppable, her breath harsh but steady, her good eye locked on the next man even as her blade stuck in the ribs of the last. When her own sword snapped on a spear haft, she ripped the broken shaft from the dying man's grip and drove it butt-first into another's throat, roaring for her line to hold. They did. Not for gold. Not for land. For her.

By mid-morning the scouts found their horses dead in the ditches and the alleyways dripping with pitch and blood. They slashed through a breach by the vineyard wall, thinking they might reach the old lord's keep and break the Wolf's back by surprise, but Lageta was no longer a court of marble and silks. It was a fortress built from the guts of its own decadence. Mansions ripped down to stone to make new walls, cellars repurposed as storerooms for pitch and lumber, every doorway turned choke-point where the same peasant spearmen fought like packs of cornered dogs. When the Empire men found a street open ahead, they ran for it and were crushed beneath logs rolled from the rooftops. When they clambered over barricades, they found boiling cauldrons of rotten hay and horse shit that blinded their visors and made their swords slip from raw hands. And always, above it all, the rumor: the Wolf is here. She is on the walls. She is in the alleys. She watches.

She was. Cid's tunic clung black and wet with other men's blood by the time the last scout patrol fled the city's edge. Her freedmen cheered on the parapets, waving splintered spears at the handful of riders that limped back to report Lageta was no easy meat, it was a garrison of rabid, half-starved mongrels who would tear a horse apart with their teeth if it meant one more dawn for their children.

Cid did not cheer. She gave no speech. She found a quiet corner of the barricade, sat in the filth beside the moaning wounded, and held the hand of a boy no older than fifteen while he bled out from a gut cut that no poultice could mend. She stroked his sweat-slick hair until he stilled, then she rose, cleaned her blade on her bare thigh, and ordered the next watch to patch every breach before nightfall. When asked if she would sleep, she said nothing and shouldered her own length of lumber to help shore up the broken gate. When they begged her to rest, she only reminded them she was a woman who had once built walls with a collar on her neck, and if she could lift stone then, she would lift it now, free.

By nightfall the square was a makeshift hospital. No silk drapes, no candles, only pitch torches and fresh hay, the stink of blood and sweat and packed bodies pressing shoulder to shoulder for warmth against the rain leaking through the gaps in the tiled roofs. Cid gave a last round of orders, watched the quartermaster count sacks of grain by torchlight, and slipped away into the hollow keep she refused to call her throne. She had no crown. She wore no ring. She walked the halls barefoot so the stone would remind her she still lived.

Inside her chamber, little more than four walls and a straw mat, she pulled off her tunic, wincing at fresh cuts crossing old lash scars, the delta brand tight and red from sweat and salt. Her braid, half-undone, spilled black and thick down her spine, brushing the soft swell of her hips, tangling against the wild growth of hair that crowned her sex like a wolf's pelt. She pressed her palm to her blind eye, breathing slow, tasting the iron still on her tongue. For a heartbeat, she allowed herself to feel how close death had come, how a better spearman would have gutted her clean, how her people would have found her on her knees in the mud, crownless, no more than the slave they once branded her.

The door opened. Not a knock, only a hesitant squeal of the rusted hinge. A soft, timid breath. "Lady Cid?"

The girl was young, barely more than seventeen winters, parchment clutched to her chest, ink on her sleeves and a quiver in her voice that belied how many times she had braved this same moment before. Cid did not move to cover herself. She turned, full scarred back and bare chest plain in the flicker of her single lamp, and fixed the girl with that unblinking, terrible good eye.

"Report," she murmured, the word half a growl, half a lullaby.

The scribe stepped forward, chin trembling. "The western wall held but the breach at the vineyard will need more stone. They ask if we--"

Cid stepped into her before the next word left her lips, pressing her palm flat to the parchment until it crumpled to the floor. The girl's breath caught, eyes darting down to the black hair between Cid's thighs, to the scars crossing her belly, the muscle coiled beneath thin skin like corded rope.

"You smell like lamp oil and lilac soap." Cid's voice was soft as a prayer. Her hand found the girl's chin, thumb brushing over her lower lip, smearing a trace of blood from her own knuckle. "I have slaughtered men for three days in their own piss, and you come to me smelling like a fresh bed. Do you think that is kind of you, little quill?"

The girl's throat bobbed. Her lips parted. No answer.

Cid laughed once, a low, raw rasp that scraped her throat. She shoved the girl gently but firmly until her back hit the wall, her own body pressing flush, scarred flesh to soft belly, heat to heat, the scent of iron and sweat overwhelming the faint soap.

"Did you think, behind your neat desk, how I would break you open if I lived through today?" Her hand slipped under the girl's tunic, tracing the trembling belly, the fine down of hair lower still, until she cupped the slick heat that pulsed against her palm. The scribe's whimper melted against Cid's mouth as she kissed her, tasting the salt of fear and want.

"You are wet before I even say it," Cid breathed into the girl's lips, fingers teasing slick folds until the girl bucked into her palm. "My soft, tidy little quill. You want your Wolf filthy, do not you? You want the same mouth that tore a man's throat to tell you how your cunt tastes, say it."

"Yes, Lady, please, gods, please."

Cid dragged her mouth along the girl's jaw, nipped at her throat where the pulse jumped. Her fingers dipped deeper, crooked, spreading that heat open until the girl's moan broke into little choked cries. "You will stand like this, back to the wall, legs wide like a sow, while I taste every drop. You will keep your hands behind you or I break your pretty fingers, do you understand?"

The girl gasped her obedience. Her legs spread wider, tunic rucked to her waist, her own arousal dripping onto Cid's scarred thigh. Cid growled approval, licked a slow path from collarbone to the soft swell of her breast, biting down until the girl shuddered against the stones.

She was just kneeling, scarred knees in the dirt, mouth open to feast, to drown in that sweet, terrified heat, when a fist thumped at the door.

"Empress, Quartermaster Harun, forgive me, we need your word to open the reserves. There is talk of more deserters, they come hungry."

Cid's low snarl softened against the girl's trembling thigh. She pressed a final, lingering kiss there, as if tasting the promise of tomorrow in the salt on her skin, then rose in a single fluid breath, bracing the girl's flushed face between her scarred hands. She made her look up, into that wolf's eye, pale and bright with a hunger that was more than carnal, a hunger that had carried a thousand broken souls on its back and given them walls to sleep behind.

"Not tonight, little quill," she murmured, voice low and suddenly gentle, almost shy around its edges. Her thumb stroked the girl's bottom lip, wiping a glisten she had put there herself. "You have done your duty twice over. You will go rest now." her grin broke, soft and human,

She turned to the door without covering the body she no longer hid from any soul in Lageta. "Open the reserves, Harun. Feed them, clothe them. Arm them if they can hold a spear. And remind them the Wolf does not hoard what her people need."

Harun's voice came muffled, a grunt of apology and retreating footsteps, the echo swallowed by the stone hall. Cid drew her eyes back to the scribe, whose thighs still pressed together, heat leaking down her leg, breath ragged with both relief and quiet regret. The girl dipped her head, voice still small but duty-bound even now. "Lady, and the vineyard wall? The breach? You never said yes."

Cid blinked, a heartbeat of raw humanness in the Wolf's hungry eye, and then a soft, rueful laugh rumbled in her throat as she pressed her scarred brow to the girl's for a fleeting second. "Ah. Clever little quill. Yes. Yes, have Harun gather the stone cutters by dawn. Fill the breach twice over and bury our dead beneath it if you must. No Empire dog comes through that hole again."

She kissed her forehead, a promise, a command, a lover's soft claim, then nudged her gently toward the door. "Go on now. Sleep. You are safe because you made me strong enough to win today. A chance next time and I will take my share of you slow, and I will take it all."

The girl stumbled out, tunic askew, scroll forgotten at her feet, face bright with a dazed, secret joy that no fear could shake. Cid watched her until the shadows swallowed her soft footfalls, then she crossed the stone floor alone, each step a quiet protest from bruised, blood-caked feet. She tugged at the braid that clung wet and heavy to her spine, let it fall free, and sank onto the straw pallet that passed for her bed, no silks, no down pillows, only the warmth of her own spent bones and the weight lifted from her people's hunger.

She lay back with her arm draped over her eyes, a ragged breath escaping her cracked lips, and this time it ended not in a growl, but a small, private laugh. A smile curled there in the dark, for the scribe, for Harun, for the stubborn fools rebuilding her walls tonight instead of fleeing into the hills. For Lageta, poor, battered, stubborn Lageta, that needed no throne and no crown so long as its Wolf still drew breath.

And with that smile soft on her mouth, Cid Lavelan, the Wolf of Lageta, let sleep take her for the few quiet hours she would allow it, before dawn called her back to stone, mud, blood, and the people she had sworn to hold free forever.