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  WARRIOR

  TOR BOOKS BY JENNIFER FALLON

  The Hythrun Chronicles

  THE DEMON CHILD TRILOGY

  Medalon (Book One)

  Treason Keep (Book Two)

  Harshini (Book Three)

  THE WOLFBLADE TRILOGY

  Wolfblade (Book One)

  Warrior (Book Two)

  WARRIOR

  Book Two of the Wolfblade Trilogy

  JENNIFER FALLON

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  WARRIOR

  Copyright © 2005 by Jennifer Fallon

  Originally published in 2005 by Voyager, an imprint of

  HarperCollins Publishers, Australia

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  Map by Ellisa Mitchell

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Fallon, Jennifer.

  Warrior / Jennifer Fallon.—1st ed.

  p. cm.—(The Wolfblade trilogy ; bk. 2)

  “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

  ISBN-13: 978-0-765-30990-7 (alk. paper)

  ISBN-10: 0-765-30990-4 (alk. paper)

  I. Title. II. Series: Fallon, Jennifer. Wolfblade trilogy ; bk. 2.

  PR9619.4.F35W37 2006

  813’.6—dc22 2006044462

  First Edition: September 2006

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Sue Irvine,

  who understands the

  true meaning of courage

  part I

  STRANGE ALLIANCES

  Prologue

  Damin Wolfblade wasn’t sure what had woken him. He had no memory of any sound jarring him into instant wakefulness; no idea what instinctive alarm had gone off inside his head to alert him that he was no longer alone. Straining with every sense, he listened to the darkness, waiting for the intruder to betray his presence. He had no doubt it was an intruder. Uncle Mahkas or Aunt Bylinda had no need to sneak around the palace. Any other legitimate visitor to his room at this hour of the night would have announced themselves openly.

  It might be one of his stepbrothers, Adham or Rodja, looking for a bit of sport, Damin thought, as he inched his hand up under the pillow, or even his foster-brother, Starros, trying to frighten him.

  Maybe his cousin, Leila, or one of the twins had sneaked into his room via the slaveways, hoping to scare him. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d tried. There was a great deal of amusement to be gained by sneaking up on an unsuspecting brother and making him squeal like a girl. Then again, it might not be one of his siblings. It might be an assassin.

  It certainly wouldn’t be the first time in Damin’s short life someone had tried to kill him.

  Damin’s fingers closed over the wire-wrapped handle of the knife Almodavar insisted he keep under his pillow, the hilt cool and reassuring in his hand. There was still no betraying sound from the intruder, a fact that made the boy dismiss the idea the trespasser was simply one of his friends looking to play a joke on him. There would have been a giggle by now; a hissed command to be silent, a telling scuff of a slipper on the highly polished floor. But there was nothing. Just a heavy, omnipresent silence.

  Not even the sound of someone breathing.

  Damin opened his eyes and withdrew the dagger from under his pillow with infinite care, the thick stillness more threatening than the shadows. There should have been a guard in the room. For as long as he could remember, Damin had slept with subtle sounds of another human presence nearby.

  The faint creak of leather as a watchful guard moved, the almost inaudible breathing of the guardian who stood over him as he slept—they were the sounds he associated with the night. With safety. With comfort.

  And they were gone.

  Was that what had woken him? Had they already killed his bodyguard? Any assassin worth his fee should be able to take out a single guard silently, Damin knew. It also meant there was little point in trying to raise an alarm. His room was large—a suite fit for a prince—and the nearest guards would be out beyond the sitting room in the hall. Even if a palace patrol was in the vicinity and they heard him on his first cry, the chances were good he would be dead long before they were able to get through the outer room and into his bedroom.

  There was no help from that quarter. Damin was going to have to deal with this himself. Alone.

  Forcing his breathing to remain deep and even, Damin cautiously brought the knife down under the blanket and ever so carefully changed his grip so the blade lay against his forearm. He flexed his fingers and wrapped them around the hilt again, to make certain he had a good grip. Then he froze as the faintest sound of leather on polished stone whispered through the darkness.

  It was close. Very close.

  There was no longer any doubt in Damin’s mind. There was an assassin in the room and his bodyguard was probably dead.

  How he had got into the palace was a problem Damin had no time to worry about right now. He judged the man to be almost at the bed, which meant he had only seconds before the assassin’s blade fell. Do the unexpected, a voice in his head advised him. It was one of Elezaar’s infamous Rules of Gaining and Wielding Power, but the voice sounded suspiciously like Almodavar, the captain of Krakandar’s Raiders, his weapons master, instructor and mentor.

  Where is he now? Damin wondered. When I actually need him?

  Another barely audible scuff of leather against stone and Damin realised he had no time left to wonder about it. He felt, rather than heard, the intruder raise his arm to make the killing stroke. With a sharp, sudden jerk, Damin threw back the covers, tossing them over his assailant, blinding him. Then he rolled, not away from the assassin and his blade, but towards them, slicing the man with all his might across where he thought his midriff might be, before kicking his legs up and ramming them into the space where he thought the assassin’s head was located. It was impossible to tell if his aim was true between the darkness and the man fighting to get clear of the bedcovers.

  The pounding of his pulse seemed loud enough to be heard in the hall.

  Damin’s blade had sliced across hardened leather and made little impact on his assailant’s chest, but the boy was rewarded with a satisfying grunt as his heels connected with something solid, presumably the assassin’s head. He sliced with his arm again, this time a little higher, hoping to wound the man. The intruder leaned back to avoid Damin’s blade and momentarily lost his balance.

  His blood racing, filled with a strength born of desperation and fear, Damin threw himself at the assassin, knocking the man off his feet. He landed on top of the killer, slamming the man’s head into the stone floor with one hand as he changed the grip on his knife with the other and raised it to plunge his dagger into the throat of his assailant. He drove the blade downward, his heart hammering . . .

  Then he stopped, a whisker away from killing his attacker. “Almodavar?”

  The man beneath him relaxed, smiling as Damin recognised him in the darkness.

  “Not bad,” the captain said.

  Lowering the blade, Damin sat back on his heels, breathing heavily, still astride his would-be assassin, and grinned broadly. “See, I told you . . . I could look after . . . myself.”

  “Aye, you did, lad,” the captain of Krakandar’s guard agreed. “Pity you’re so damn cocky about it, thou
gh.”

  As he spoke, Almodavar gathered his strength beneath him and threw Damin backwards, his blade slicing across the boy’s throat as he lashed out. Damin landed heavily on his back and skidded on the polished floor, coming to rest against the wall. He scrambled to his feet, blade at the ready, stunned to discover blood dripping from his wounded neck.

  “Ow!” he complained, gingerly touching the long, thin cut across his throat.

  “That was a stupid mistake, boy.”

  “But I beat you!” Damin protested.

  “I’m still breathing,” Almodavar pointed out, as he climbed to his feet. “That’s not beaten, lad.

  It’s not even close.”

  “But I’d won! That’s not fair!”

  “What’s not fair?” a voice asked from the doorway.

  Damin turned to find his Uncle Mahkas striding into the room holding a large candelabrum, his face shadowed by the flickering light of half a dozen candles. Mahkas was still dressed, so he hadn’t been called from his bed, nor had the room suddenly filled with guards, as it should have done following an attack on the heir to the throne.

  Which meant Mahkas knew about this little training exercise, Damin realised; had probably sanctioned it. It might have been his uncle who had suggested it. Mahkas did crazy things like that sometimes.

  “Almodavar attacked me!” he complained. “After I’d won.”

  “If you’d won, Damin, he shouldn’t have been able to attack you,” Mahkas pointed out unsympathetically. “Always finish your enemy, otherwise he’ll finish you. You should know that by now.”

  He turned to the captain of the guard with a questioning look. “Well?”

  Almodavar sheathed his knife and nodded. “He’ll do, I suppose.”

  His objections about his unfair treatment forgotten, Damin glanced between his uncle and the captain as he suddenly realised what this meant. “I’ll do?”

  “You’ll do,” Mahkas told him, with a hint of pride in his voice. “If you can take down Almodavar, there’s not much else that’s a threat to you around here.”

  “Really?” Damin couldn’t hide his grin. “You mean it? No more sleeping with a bodyguard in my room?”

  “No,” his uncle agreed. “You’re almost thirteen and I promised we’d dispense with the guard when you could prove you were able to look after yourself. If Almodavar is content you can, then I’m happy to accept his word on it.”

  “Just wait ’til I tell the others!”

  “You can tell them in the morning,” Almodavar informed him. “After you’ve done forty laps of the training yard. Before breakfast.”

  Damin stared at him in shock. “Forty laps? For what? I took you down, Almodavar! I won!”

  “You hesitated.”

  “You think I should have killed you?” Damin asked, a little wounded to think Almodavar wasn’t thanking him for staying his hand; instead he was punishing him for it. He’d come awfully close to killing the most trusted captain in Krakandar’s service, too.

  “How did you know I hadn’t really come to kill you, Damin?”

  “You’re the senior captain of the guard.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “There’s a comforting thought,” Mahkas muttered with a shake of his head.

  Almodavar glanced at Mahkas, a little exasperated that Damin’s uncle was making light of his point. “He needs to understand, my lord. I might have been subverted. For all any of you know, my family has just been taken hostage by your enemies and I came here willing to kill even the heir to Hythria’s throne to save them.”

  “But you don’t have a family, Almodavar,” Damin pointed out. “Except for Starros.”

  The captain ignored the comment about Starros. He always did. “You have no way of knowing the mind of every man in your service, Damin. And any man who can get near you is a potential assassin.

  You shouldn’t hesitate just because you think you know them.”

  “I could have killed you,” Damin insisted. “If I really wanted to.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I knew you weren’t really trying to kill me.”

  “How?”

  “You sliced the blade across my throat. If you were serious about killing me, Almodavar, you would have stabbed me with it. Straight through the neck. Up into the brain. Splat! I’m dead.”

  “He’s got a point,” Mahkas agreed with a faint smile, and then he glanced at the thin cut on Damin’s throat. “Although you came close enough.”

  Almodavar shrugged. “The lad needed a scare.”

  Mahkas squinted at Damin in the candlelight, shaking his head. “Let’s hope that slice has healed without a scar before his mother gets here. Seeing Damin with his throat almost cut is a scare I’m not sure Princess Marla is ready for.”

  “He’ll be fine,” Almodavar promised Mahkas. “Anyway, it’d take more than a cut throat to put Laran Krakenshield’s son down.”

  A part of Damin wished he’d had a chance to know the father Almodavar spoke of so admiringly.

  All his young life, he’d heard nothing but great things about Laran Krakenshield, so much so that Damin sometimes wondered if he would ever be able to live up to his father’s legacy.

  “That’s true enough,” his uncle agreed with a fond smile. “For now, however, I suggest we try and get some sleep. Well done, Damin.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Mahkas left the room, taking with him the only source of light. It took Damin’s eyes a few moments to adjust to the darkness again. He turned to Almodavar, grinning like a fool, his blood still up from his close brush with death.

  “I could have killed you, you know.”

  The captain nodded. “I know.”

  “So do I really have to do forty laps?”

  “Yes.”

  “I should have killed you,” the boy grumbled.

  Almodavar smiled at him with paternal pride. “If you’ve worked that out, lad, then you may have learned something useful from this little exercise, after all.”

  Chapter 1

  Selling off the slaves she had known all her life was the hardest thing Luciena Mariner had ever had to do. Watching them being loaded into the wagon from Venira’s Slave Emporium, chained and forlorn, was the most heartbreaking scene she had ever witnessed in her meagre seventeen years.

  Some of the slaves had been with her family since before Luciena was born. Young Mankel, the kitchen boy, was born in this house. He had never known another home. Her voice quivering with emotion, she turned away from the boy’s distraught sobs and instead tried to explain for the hundredth time since her mother had died how much better they would fare in Master Venira’s exclusive showroom than if she’d simply sold them on the open market.

  Her words were little comfort. The slaves weren’t fools. They all knew the chances of finding a household as good as the one they were leaving were remote.

  What choice did I have? Luciena asked herself bitterly, as she climbed the stairs once the wagon had left. The heavy purse she carried made her feel worse, not better, even though it would go some way to reducing her debts. The big house echoed with loneliness, the blank spaces on the walls where paintings had once hung glaring at her like blank, accusing faces. On the first-floor landing, the pedestal where her father’s marble bust had always taken pride of place stood empty now. It had been one of the first things to go, sold to help pay the huge debts her mother’s death had revealed.

  Luciena made her way along the tiled hall towards the small study where her mother had spent so much of her final days, trying to conceal the seriousness of their desperate position from her daughter. Her slippers hissed softly against floors that had been covered with expensive rugs. Luciena had sold them to pay the livery bill. The upkeep on the coach-and-four hadn’t been paid for months.

  She’d sold the coach and the four matched greys without much emotion, but parting with her horse, Wind Hunter, had almost gutted her.

  A
nd I’m not out of the woods, even yet, she thought as she pushed open the door to her mother’s study. To maintain their lifestyle, her mother had mortgaged the house, her jewellery, even the furniture and the slaves. Luciena would be lucky if she could keep the clothes on her back by the time the debts were paid. She stopped in the doorway, looked at the pile of paper on the small table, and felt tears welling in her eyes, yet again. It didn’t seem to matter how much she sold, how much she sacrificed—that damn pile never seemed to get any smaller.

  “Luciena?”

  She turned to find Aleesha standing behind her with a tray bearing a tall glass of something gold and sticky and several slices of flatbread and cheese. A year or two older than her mistress, Aleesha was the only slave Luciena had not been able to bring herself to part with. The young woman was more than just a slave. She was Luciena’s best friend.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You have to eat.”

  “I can’t afford to eat,” she sighed, holding the door open to allow the slave through with the tray.

  Aleesha walked past her mistress and placed the tray on the side table by the window before turning to face Luciena, hands on her ample hips. “I’ll hear none of that, my girl. I know this is difficult, but we’ll find a way to survive it.”

  Luciena smiled wanly at the slave’s determined enthusiasm. “How, Aleesha? I’m running out of things to sell faster than I’m running out of creditors.”

  “Is there nothing left of your father’s money?” the slave asked, obviously puzzled by how easily their fortune had evaporated.

  Luciena knew how she felt; she had trouble believing there was nothing left, too. “Mother wouldn’t have mortgaged the house to that leech, Ameel Parkesh, if there was any money left.”

  “But she always claimed your father had made generous provision for you,” Aleesha insisted.

  “When he married the princess . . .”

  Luciena’s expression darkened at the mention of her father’s only marriage, very late in life, to the High Prince’s sister. “That was a marriage of convenience, Aleesha, and the only one who seemed to do well out of it was Princess Marla.”