Page 102 of Obsidian Throne

ROWAN

Word of mouth spread quickly among the Unclanned.

Once I gained the first band, it was surprisingly easy to gain others. Thank the stars that Andrei had influence, even outside of his own group. Whenever I mentioned his name, the people sat up a little straighter and listened a little closer.

Of course, there were still those who refused, but they were by far the minority.

I left my room at the inn and moved into Andrei’s camp. We were in this together, and my leaving them each night to stay somewhere else didn’t encourage that unity I was working so hard for.

It wasn’t like I was getting sleep anyway, in the cold, empty bed that reminded me of everything I stood to lose.

Everything I already had lost.

I kept busy enough not to think about that, though, because our camp grew by the day. Eventually, the bands of Beskalonovvy started coming to us. Our party of fifty quickly became one hundred, then two and three before I lost count.

I used the ample coin I had to purchase the little food available in the villages while we supplemented it by hunting and fishing each day.

Well, the men hunted and fished.

They did try to teach me to do those things as well, but they were not skills that came naturally to me, as they required a person to be very still and very quiet, neither of which was my strong suit.

Mostly, I learned how to survive on much, much less than I was accustomed to. Surrounded by the too-thin faces of the Unclanned and their families, though, I certainly wasn’t complaining about that.

While I was out securing what meager food I could wrangle, I also made my way to every village blacksmith I could find.

Andrei had stepped in as the spokesperson for the entire group, and soon, he was coordinating with some of the men to send runners back and forth to report on the battle.

The news was not promising.

Bear forces were moving toward the estate in droves, but so were Wolf’s and Elk’s. Ram had finally joined the fray, fighting Bear’s forces on the west.

Was it too much to hope that Mikhail was the one leading his troops? I doubted the aging, portly man would fare well in a battle. The thought almost made me smile.

Lynx and Crane were still barred on the other side of the battle. The line at the Crane border was holding, if only barely, which was about the only positive news we had.

On the sixth day, a man came to tell us the estate was officially under siege.

My heart seized in my chest. It wasn’t only Evander I stood to lose.

Mila.

Taras.

Yuriy.

Kirill.

Henrick.

I had made friends there, and every single one of them was in danger now.

We sat around the campfire that night, trying to devise a strategy that might actually work. It was strange, the combination of deference and familiarity with which they treated me.

I had learned that no one here would ask for your story until you were ready to share it. There was a comfort in that acceptance, in the way that not one person had asked me why I was out here in the middle of Bear without my husband or a single guard.

“We have hundreds of men to their thousands, no horses, and are severely under-armed,” Andrei said bluntly.

“I’m...working on that last one,” I countered. “And the enemy’s forces are being depleted.”