I Enlisted for My Father, Now the Wolf Army Answers to Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Levy
The Greyfen Alpha puts the smith's daughter on the army levy list, Marlis signs herself in so her lame father can stay, and the Oath Stone cracks under her palm.
The Alpha read my name off the levy list in front of the whole common, and my father stopped breathing beside me.
"Marlis Morcant, the smith's daughter."
He said it flatly, with no pause before or after.
Twenty riders in Host grey sat their horses along the edge of the common.
Behind them stood a wagon with a knee-high slab of grey rock chained to its bed.
That was the levy stone.
Every wolf on the list laid a hand on it, and from that moment the King's army owned them for three years.
The levy was one wolf in four.
It had not come to Greyfen in twelve years.
I stood in the third row with my apron still on, because the forge had been hot when the horn sounded.
I was twenty-three and I had not shifted since I was nine years old.
The only thing I wore that wasn't work clothes was my mother's iron bead, on a leather thong under my collar.
Everyone in the valley knew it.
That was why my name was on the list.
"She doesn't run with the pack," the Alpha said to the officer with the ledger. "She's no use to us. The Host can have her."
The Alpha was a heavy man in a fur-lined vest, and he did not look at me once.
My father's hand closed on my arm.
Dunstan Morcant had a bad hip and a grey beard and huge forearms.
He had been the valley's smith for thirty years, and he had never raised his voice to anyone.
"Take me instead," he said.
The officer lifted his eyes from the ledger.
"You can barely stand in a line, smith," the officer said.
"I can swing a hammer. I can dig. I can hold a gate."
"You can't march."
"Then I'll be carried." My father's voice cracked. "She's all I have. Her mother is dead. Please."
Nobody on the common made a sound.
I looked at the Alpha.
He studied the sky.
I looked at the riders, and my eyes stopped on the man at the front.
He sat a tall grey horse, a broad man in a Host coat with a brass wolf at the collar, and he was not looking at my father.
He was looking down at a folded paper in his hand.
He had a broken nose, grey at the temples, and a face that showed nothing.
My father was begging, in front of the valley, for the one thing I would never have asked him to give up.
That man read his paper.
I stepped out of the row.
"Marlis," my father said.
"Cross his name off, Da. He was never on the list."
"The list says the smith's household owes one," the officer said.
"Then it owes me."
I walked across the common alone.
I could feel the whole valley watching my back.
I had made a hundred horseshoes and a thousand nails.
I had never done a thing in front of anyone.
I stopped at the wagon and held my chin up.
"Name," said the officer with the ledger.
"Marlis Morcant. I'm signing for the household. My father is lame, and he stays here, with his name struck from the levy for good."
"That's not how it works," he said.
"Then write it so it does."
He scratched at his ledger and sighed.
He wrote something.
"Palm on the stone."
I peeled off my glove.
My hands were covered in old burn scars, white and shiny.
I put the right one flat on the cold grey rock.
For half a breath nothing happened.
Then the stone gave a sharp cracking sound.
A crack ran from the top of the slab to the bottom.
It was thin and straight and black, and it ran straight through the place where my fingers lay.
The officer swore.
The riders shifted in their saddles.
"Flawed rock," the officer said loudly, to everyone and no one. "Old stone. Mark it down."
I lifted my hand.
The skin of my palm was warm and faintly silver, and then it was only skin.
Nobody in the crowd had seen it, because they had all been behind me.
Only one man had.
I looked up and met the pale eyes of the man on the grey horse.
He had folded his paper and tucked it into his coat.
He had seen the crack.
He had seen my palm.
"Commander Stane," the officer said, "recruits go to the Yard for their drill."
"Not this one."
The commander's voice was level and low, and it carried across the common without effort.
He took the paper out again and read it a second time, his jaw tight.
"Morcant goes to the Ninth," he said. "Mine."
The officer opened his mouth, shut it, and wrote the name down.
They loaded me onto the wagon between two farm boys who would not look at me.
The Alpha turned his back.
My father came limping across the common as fast as his hip would let him, and the riders let him through.
He caught the wagon's tailboard and reached up for my hand.
He wasn't crying.
I had seen him cry exactly once, at my mother's grave.
He held on to my fingers until the wagon jerked.
"Listen to me," he said, very low. "Whatever you feel in your hands, don't let them see what they can do."
"Da, what are you talking about?"
"Your mother died of it, Marlis."
The wagon rolled, and his fingers slid off mine.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend