I Enlisted for My Father, Now the Wolf Army Answers to Me novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Line

At Fort Marrowfell Marlis cannot shift on the dawn whistle in front of eighty recruits, and the commander who took her into his company warns her about tomorrow.

Fort Marrowfell stood on the north bank of the Dree with the Fenmark across the water, and it smelled of wet wool and boiled cabbage.

The wagon rolled through the gate at dusk.

A stocky woman in a sergeant's grey coat stood in the mud of the Yard with a lantern, counting heads as we climbed down.

She had cropped red-gold hair, freckles, and a left hand with no ring finger.

"Thirty," she said. "The Ninth drills the new levy this season, so every one of you is mine. I'm Sergeant Brigid Tolley. Say it back."

"Sergeant Tolley," thirty voices said.

"Louder. I've heard rabbits with more spine."

"Sergeant Tolley!"

She grinned, which was worse than if she hadn't.

Her eyes stopped on my apron.

"Morcant. You're the one the Commander signed for."

"Yes, Sergeant."

"Smith's girl. Soot on your face and not a mark on your boots." She held the lantern up. "Don't look so pleased. He doesn't take favorites. He takes the ones he wants to keep an eye on."

That was an odd thing to say, and she moved on before I could ask her what it meant.

The barracks was a long timber hall with sixty bunks in two rows and one stove at the far end.

I got the bunk by the door, where the draft came in.

The bunk beside it belonged to a tall skinny boy with a cowlick and enormous hands, who had been talking since the wagon.

"Wick Alderby," he said, and stuck one of the hands out. "Marsh Hollow. They put my brother on the list but he's got the baby coming, so I said I'd go. Did you sign up or did someone sign you?"

"Both," I said.

"That's honest. I like honest. Do you think the stew is poisoned?"

"It smelled all right from the wagon," I said.

"It smelled like a wet dog's dinner."

"That's what I said."

He laughed so hard he had to sit down on his bunk.

I hadn't known I was funny until that moment.

The stew was grey and thick and it tasted of onion and nothing else, and I ate all of it.

I sat on the edge of my bunk afterward with my boots still on and my mother's iron bead warm against my collarbone.

My father had never taken it off me, not even to wash my neck.

I had never asked him why.

At the whistle the next morning, thirty recruits stood in a line on the frozen Yard in their underclothes and coats.

The sky was low and grey.

Sergeant Tolley paced in front of us with her arms folded.

"Every wolf in the Host shifts on the whistle," she said. "Not when you feel like it. Not when you've found your courage. On the whistle. If you can't, you're no use to anyone who needs to run."

She raised it to her lips.

I felt my stomach go to ice.

I had been trying to shift since I was nine years old.

I had tried in the pasture, in the river and alone in the forge with the doors barred.

Nothing had ever come, except a hum in my chest that felt like a note held too long.

The whistle blasted.

All around me, in a rolling ripple of fur and bone, twenty-nine recruits dropped to four legs.

Wick became a gangly brown wolf with a white tip on his tail.

I stood on two legs in my coat in the frost.

I closed my eyes and reached for it.

Nothing.

"There's one," said somebody on the other side of the Yard.

A big corporal, half-shifted at the shoulders, was laughing at me with a split lip.

Others took it up.

My face went hot.

I did not look at the ground.

"Corporal," said Sergeant Tolley, without raising her voice.

He stopped.

"I remember your first shift. You wet the grass in front of the whole barracks and cried for your mother. Do you want to tell this recruit about that?"

The Yard went still.

"No, Sergeant."

"Then run the wall. Twice."

He ran.

Sergeant Tolley turned to me and her voice dropped.

"Late shifters happen. It's not a sin." She looked at my hands. "Try again tomorrow."

"Yes, Sergeant."

The man who had signed me stood on the barracks steps with his coat open at the throat.

I had no idea how long he had been there.

Commander Stane was bigger on foot than he had been on his horse, and he had not laughed.

He raised one hand, and the Yard fell silent, wolf and human.

"There is one rule in the Ninth," he said. "Nobody is left behind. If you can't keep up, say so, and we'll carry you. If you lie to me about it, I will not."

He looked at the line.

Then he looked at me for exactly as long as he looked at everyone else, and not a moment longer.

I didn't believe it for a second.

That night I lay awake listening to sixty people breathe.

The lamps went out one by one.

A boot scraped on the boards beside my bunk.

I held still.

Commander Stane stood in the dark at the foot of my bed with his hands behind his back.

"You swear tomorrow, Morcant," he said, so low that Wick didn't stir. "Say the words with the rest."

"Sir?"

"Say the words. Do nothing else," he said.

"What would I do?"

He didn't answer.

His boots went away down the long hall, and the door shut behind him.

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