Warrior of the Moon

29

The Wolves walked up through the streets of their city with only the ghosts of those who had been forced to leave it behind.

They had left their horses under tree cover in Lymeryth and crept up to the city, worried about Infernal companies scrounging about the Azurian fields or keeping watch from the forest. Tarin knew his mother would never have left the city undefended, so they had cloaked themselves with magic to assist in their camouflage.

They scaled the walls rather than risking walking through the gate, though they did not see any Infernals stationed there. Even when they dropped down onto the streets, they went through much of the city before even hearing signs that it was being inhabited by anybody at all. Vice and Vex were the ones who warned him from the start that there were definitely still people about, but grouped together near the castle. They were not afraid, evidently, that anybody would come back for the city they had stolen.

They got close enough to the castle to hear the whooping from the front courtyard before Tarin signaled for his Wolves to climb onto the nearest roof to get a better view of what was going on. They sheathed their weapons and followed his orders, and he waited till they were all perched above him before following them. He could not understand why the streets were deserted. That was, until he saw the castle.

The courtyard used to be beautiful. It had had winding paths that the queen would go for walks around with her ladies, with lush, colorful gardens around every bend. Tarin had always thought the glow of magic in the atmosphere was more visible in that courtyard than anywhere else. He had theorized that it was because the royals were so close that it was almost like a beckoning to the rest of the Fae, helping them to realize the power of the Dusk's presence.

The Infernals had destroyed that beauty. They had built a barricade out of heavy pieces of the castle's marble rubble to block the castle off from the city more than it already was with its courtyard walls and guard towers - though, granted, parts of those walls had come down with the castle.

The worst of it was the way they had decorated. Plants were ripped up all over the courtyard, trees dug out and used as benches for the dark-armored soldiers hanging about. Piles of furniture and other treasures Tarin recognized from inside the castle had been dragged out, used for more lodging. That meant that there were too many Infernals to house inside of the castle. And that they must have been ordered not to bother with the rest of the city, but to stay and defend the broken palace itself. That was the part that was symbolic, not the houses of the residents. His mother would not care about those.

Then there were the heads lining the walking trails.

He could see the pointed ears on each of them. Fae, their heads cut off and their necks skewered so that the stakes could be used as gruesome Infernal totems. Tarin had to swallow to avoid being sick right over the edge of the roof, and he felt the disgust radiating from the Wolves behind him as they saw the same thing. Warriors that had fallen, he was sure. Simkin was probably one of them.

At a whisper from Birches, Tarin saw that bodies had been thrown onto the barricade as well. The stench reached his nose even from here. He felt his nostrils flare as his gaze skimmed over the castle itself. A good third of it had collapsed in on itself; from Serena's room and directly downward, it was as if a hole had opened in the ground and sucked everything in from above it. There were other parts that Tarin was sure the Infernals had destroyed since. His mother would want to hold the castle, but she would not care about it looking intact. She might love ruling from within the white ruins of the Fae castle, the marble stained with the blood of the Fae who died fighting for it. Or from trying to get away.

Vice gave him the needed distraction from looking at it all. "There are more Fae here than Infernals, Sir."

Tarin nodded absently. He had already noted the turned Fae, and understood his mother's strategy. Send more men to the north to take the towns than get left in Azure, but make sure the ones that are left in Azure are the better fighters. A couple thousand Fae would at least stop the Wolves from taking the city on their own, no matter how skilled they all were. He would guess that there were plenty of traps to stand in his armies' way if they were to attempt a full-scale invasion to take the castle back as well.