We’re now just two weeks away from the publication of The Company of the Wolf by David Wragg, and we have an excerpt of Chapter 1 to celebrate!

The Company of the Wolf is the sequel to The Hunters, and Beth and Nils are huge fans of this series. You can find Beth’s review of The Hunters here, and Nils’ review of The Company of the Wolf here.

Before we treat you to the excerpt, let’s check out the blurb:

Full of David Wragg’s unique blend of humour, heart, and high stakes, The Company of the Wolf is the epic next instalment in the Tales of the Plains trilogy.

Seeking a better life, Ree and Javani have travelled west into the mountains, and left their pasts – and their troubles – behind. But new places bring new problems, and when they stumble across a lone traveller under bandit attack, they make the mistake of lending a hand.

Forced to take refuge in the traveller’s village, they quickly find allies among the lush, wooded hills. But then the true nature of the bandits is revealed.

With winter approaching and a vengeful company of mercenaries circling like wolves, Ree and Javani must uncover the secrets of this peaceful valley … or risk the ruin of it all.

The Company of the Wolf is due for publication on 29th August. You can pre-order your copy HERE

ONE

They were definitely lost.

The mist was getting thicker, swallowing the forest around them, taking all sound with it, leaving only a smothering hush. The morning sun was an ivory smear somewhere overhead. Javani stared up at the nearest trees, pretty sure they were oaks, their neighbours dwindling dark stripes in the grey fog beyond. The broad leaves were undeniably orange. The entire forest had been gloriously autumnal for some time – vivid shades of yellow, amber, viridian and indigo – and the foliage was becoming sparser by the day, a slow rain of golden leaves accompanying every breeze. Beneath Javani’s boots, a lush carpet the colour of blood stretched away into the mist, punctuated by fists of lichen-rimed rock and springing shrubs of vivid green. Fallen trunks, furry with moss, lay half-swallowed by the forest floor. Unseen birds chittered mutely overhead, the odd grey little finch swishing between branches, murky shapes in the fog. Everything smelled wet and fresh. If the sun ever made it through, Javani thought, it might be quite pretty here.

The hush was broken by some vicious swearing from down the slope, where her mother was attempting to coax the last of the ponies up to the ridge.

‘Do you want a hand?’ Javani called.

‘No,’ Ree snapped back. ‘Stay with the others.’ A grunt and another stream of invective followed. ‘If either of those little bastards decides to follow you down, we’ll never get them all up again.’

‘Is your leg all right?’

‘Fine. It’s fine. Nine fucking hells!’ Javani heard the swish of Ree’s walking staff. ‘Listen to me, you plum-brained plug, in the sight of all the gods I will beat you insensible if you do not move your stubby little arse up this fucking hill!’

‘She knows you won’t.’ Javani didn’t bother hiding her smile. ‘They’ve travelled with us too long.’ She stroked the nose of the pony beside her, who offered a polite snort in return.

A cry of triumph indicated the last pony’s belated change of heart, and a moment later Ree crested the slope beside her, near-dragged by the stout animal, despite its load. Her limp looked no better.

‘See?’ she said, between pants, her thick white hair plastered around her face. ‘I can be persuasive, kid.’

‘Don’t I know it.’ Javani waited for her mother to catch her breath, allowing her a moment of rest before the inevitable: ‘We’re lost, aren’t we?’

Ree didn’t miss a beat. ‘We are not.’

‘Would you say you know where we are?’

‘That’s not important.’

Javani rubbed her arms. The forest was definitely chillier, as well as increasingly leafless. ‘You don’t think it’s important?’

‘We know where we’re going: over the Ashadi. We just keep heading west, and we’ll get there.’ Ree started forward again, staff in hand, yanking the pony from the wiry shrub it had begun munching. ‘Come on, we’ve wasted enough daylight for one morning.’

Javani reached out a hand to intercept her. ‘Ree! Ma. Listen.’ Keeping a tight grip on the lead rope of the other two ponies, both happily investigating the same bank of ferns, she shuffled in front of her mother. ‘We have been crossing the Ashadi for weeks now. Months, even. And we’re still not across. Look around us.’ She swept a hand around the mist-choked forest. ‘The leaves have turned, and now they’re coming down in spades. There are more beneath our feet than above our heads. It’s colder and colder in the mornings.’

‘Nice to see a season turn, eh? Makes a change from the plains. You don’t get colour changes like this with a load of sandy rocks.’

‘Ma!’ Javani scratched at her neck. Something had bitten her there, she knew it. ‘Do you think we might have gone wrong somewhere? There are . . . There are more mountains than there should be.’

She already knew the answer – their westward progress across the mountains had been impeded by peaks of staggering height, and their efforts to find a way around had merely driven them further south along the range for weeks while getting them no closer to their goal – but the real question was whether her mother would admit it. That the landscape had changed was undeniable – they’d journeyed from arid slopes, through juniper forests, now into cloud and mist and autumn colours, ever-changing birdcalls and night-sounds, new trees and thorny carpets – yet somehow they were still no closer to their intended destination.

Ree took a long breath, still fighting the effects of the climb, and rested her staff against her shoulder as she slicked damp hair from her eyes. ‘Come on, kid, we skirted the big ones; these are barely even mountains. Just, you know, self-important hills.’

‘But we’re not over them, are we? We’re not in Arestan, the land of rice fields and vineyards and a sea as blue as sapphire, are we?’

‘No. Not yet. But we know it’s to the west, and we know which way that is.’

‘Do we?’ Javani gestured at the misty glare overhead. ‘We can’t see the sun through the trees and the mist for half the day, and the days are getting shorter and shorter. We’ve not seen our lucky hawk for ages, although I know he’s still out there.’ For once her mother did not attempt to disabuse her of the notion that the hawk she claimed to see from time to time was likely multiple birds and none was imbued with the spirit of a man who’d died to protect them. ‘And Moosh’s tip about the moss on the trunks . . . Well, it was horseshit, wasn’t it?’

Ree gave her a sad smile. She knew Javani still cried, sometimes, for her friend; more than once she’d wrapped her arms around her in the night, when the sobbing was too much. ‘It was. But I’m sure he believed it when he told you.’

Javani sniffed. ‘Poor Moosh. He’d have laughed to see us now. Wandering the Ashadi, supplies dwindling, one pony lost, following what I’m pretty sure is an animal trail, not any kind of actual path.’

‘It’s a path.’

‘Can we head back to that road? If we check the map again, maybe we can—’

Ree fixed her with an icy glare. ‘You want to double back? To travel days backwards, and downwards, and upwards again, gods help us, just in case . . . What? In case we missed a turning?’ She wiped a hand across her clammy brow. ‘Kid, you need to understand something: it was not a very good map. You get that? The map was, what’s the word, indicative at best. But we know where we’re going, and if we keep putting one foot in front of the other, we will get there. You hear me? These mountains can’t fight us off forever.’

Javani’s head was shaking. ‘I don’t like it, I don’t like it up here. It’s so quiet! You can’t see more than ten feet in front of you! It feels like the trees are trying to eat us!’

‘Now you’re just being silly. Have some water and let’s get moving.’ Ree held out her waterskin.

Javani reached for the skin with a scowl. ‘Fine.’ Ree did not release her grip.

‘Uh, Ree,’ Javani said, tugging gently on the skin.

‘Shh. Don’t move a muscle,’ Ree growled out of the corner of her mouth. She was holding herself rigid, staring over Javani’s shoulder.

Javani fought the urge to turn and look, instead keeping herself still. ‘What is it?’ she mouthed.

Ree’s voice was a low murmur. ‘Fallow deer. Upwind of us, but watching. Move slowly. Get the bow.’

‘What? Me?’

‘You’re closer, and the pony’s between you and the deer. Come on, before it spooks.’

‘But—’

‘Kid, you want to moan about our supply situation or do you want to do something about it? Move like ice, get the bow.’

‘But I don’t want to—’

‘Now is not the time for infant squeamishness, kid. I will watch but you must shoot. And gods know your archery needs practice.’

‘Can’t I use the little crossbow—’

‘Not at this range, and not with any chance of killing it cleanly. Get to it!’

Muttering to herself, Javani reached a slow hand to the pony’s laden side where their hunting bow was stashed. ‘Bad in the wet, bad in the dry, not enough bolts, never goes where you aim it – might as well sling the wretched thing.’

‘Hush your grumbling. You never know when a little surprise might come in handy. Now string the bow out of its eyeline.’

Javani did as she was told. Stringing the bow was hard enough at the best of times, let alone when attempted in absolute silence behind a pony’s legs. It wasn’t as if the hunting bow was any more accurate than the little hand crossbow, anyway . . . at least in her hands.

She slid one of the few remaining arrows from the quiver at the pony’s withers and notched it in the bowstring, then stepped carefully back as she drew, lining up her shot on the still-oblivious deer. A gorgeous thing, now she saw it clearly as the mist rippled between them: tawny coloured, its upper coat dappled with fine white spots, small antlers branching up from its head like cupped hands. It was standing completely still.

‘I want it recorded that I strenuously object to this action,’ she muttered.

‘Objection noted. Now remember what I taught you? Hold your breath, draw when you’re ready to shoot—’

‘Yes, yes! I’ve got it.’

‘Then get a fucking move on!’

Javani sighted along the arrow over the pony’s back, and drew back the bowstring. ‘Sorry, deer,’ she whispered. She loosed.

The arrow screwed off into the oaks, wide and high and wobbling as it flew, skimming off the underside of a branch and crashing to the leaf-thick floor. The deer started, dark eyes wide, then sprang away into the mist and out of sight.

Behind her came Ree’s heavy sigh. ‘Damned right you’re sorry. You shut your eyes, didn’t you? Nine hells, kid, we talked about this. Don’t hesitate. Identify what you want and go for it, don’t second-guess yourself.’ She leaned back against her pony’s side, shaking her head. ‘Well, what are you waiting for? Go and get the arrow.’

Muttering and huffing, Javani trudged through the shin-deep dead-leaf carpet, kicking red and soggy foliage up before her. She hadn’t shut her eyes, she was sure of it. Maybe it was just the will of the gods that she shouldn’t be taking the life of an innocent animal. No matter how hungry she and Ree got. She bit her lip at the thought. Their travelling provisions had been generous, Ree planned like a pessimist, but most of the packs over the ponies were tending to empty. And when they ran out, she knew Ree was going to suggest eating one of the ponies. That was something she absolutely would not—

What in hells was that?

A sound, from down the ridge’s far side, through a thick cluster of moss-furred trunks, the branches above increasingly skeletal. It had sounded like a, not a shout exactly, more like a cry. Someone in distress? Her pulse quickened, and she stopped herself, forcing a slow breath. Probably just an animal. They’d seen no other humans for too long, and now she was anthropomorphising the call of a, uh, quail, probably. Or maybe a partridge. She had no idea what either sounded like.

No. She heard it again, and this time she was sure – it was a person, and they were in trouble. She stood paralysed: run to help, or go back for Ree? What if it was someone cornered by a dangerous animal? She hadn’t even found the arrow yet. But getting Ree meant doubling back, marshalling the ponies, Ree limping over with her staff . . . Nope, no time.

With only a mad, expressive wave back to her mother and the ponies, she set off for the clustered hornbeams at a run, marvelling as yet more forest loomed out of the mist as she crested the ridge. She half-slid down the slope, dodging thorny shrubs, leaving dark and muddy grooves in the leaf-covering, keeping her attention fixed on the origin of the sound. She could hear other things now, over the sound of her thumping feet and the rush of blood in her ears – the burbling splash of moving water, metallic jingling, possibly murmured speech? She reached the trees, still half-sliding, and slung her way through the nest of trunks and out the other side, inwardly delighted at her nimble steps. She erupted from the grove down a slippery chunk of bank, and tumbled down onto a wide, empty patch of ground, devoid of trees and kicked mostly clear of leaves. A trail. No, a road!

A few feet away, a mule stood. It looked at her sidelong, then flicked an ear and returned its attention to cropping at the brush along the roadside.

Her excitement drained. Had she simply heard the mule? They could be noisy buggers, that was true, and a fellow who’d come through Kazeraz once had claimed he’d made a mule sing. The mule hadn’t been around to corroborate, of course, but that was rather the nature of the teahouse stories. This one might be a chatty cousin. ‘Shit,’ muttered Javani. She’d gone through one knee of her trousers, was covered in mud, and a throbbing from one forearm suggested she hadn’t navigated those trunks quite as deftly as she’d thought. She looked back at the mule, which was now pointedly ignoring her, as mules do. It was heavily laden with sacks and had a lead rope hanging loose on the soft mud of the road.

Brushing the worst of the mud from her knees, Javani stood, and froze. Beyond the mule was a stretch of open road, curving away down the slope, then another mule. Another three mules, in fact, all equally laden with heavy sacks. And between those mules and the first stood three men, their cloaked backs to her, looking down at something on the ground.

Javani edged sideways until she could see what it was they were standing around. Her gut sank as her suspicions were confirmed. It was a huddled figure. One of the men swung a kick at it as she watched.

‘Shit,’ muttered Javani.

‘Had enough?’ the kicker spat at the person on the ground. His accent was thick, from far to the south and east. ‘Or still got that mouth on you?’

‘Sounds like he’s done talking,’ chuckled another, with a similar accent. ‘Come on, Fingers, let’s get the goods and be off.’

The man called Fingers was narrow and stringy, looming like a birch-trunk over the prone figure, fists clenching and unclenching. All three men were very dirty, as was the man on the ground, but presumably for different reasons. ‘What’s that? You still got some fight in you?’

Javani was shocked to find herself edging closer, and vowed to discipline her heedless feet. Craning forward, she just caught the strained words of the beaten man.

‘I only said . . . please let me take the mules back . . .’ 

Fingers kicked him again. ‘No. You fucking dolt.’ He swept one hand around in a narrow circle. ‘Come on, boys, let’s get back to the fire. And we know there’s good eating on a mule.’

Javani swallowed. What we have here, then, is a robbery; these men are brigands, and they’re robbing this man, who is, what, a merchant? A farmer? She peered at the sacks on the nearby mule. One seemed packed with wool, another grain. Was there a market somewhere nearby? Either way, it was a pretty solid assumption that the brigands were armed, and that in a moment one or more of them would come up the road towards her to get the last mule, at which point, she would . . .

She would . . .

‘Shit,’ muttered Javani.

The Company of the Wolf is due for publication on 29th August. You can pre-order your copy HERE