Chapter 7 A Foxy Challenge
A Foxy Challenge
Brok
“One more. Come on, Barnaby. Just three more. Fight through the pain!”
I watched Barnaby heave as he struggled through his last push-ups, and suppressed the urge to scream in frustration.
From the moment we’d arrived in the Iron Grove this morning, it had become obvious that it would be a bad day. Whatever miracles Hazel was pulling off with her cooking normally worked wonders on Barnaby’s moods. But today, he seemed to have woken up rebellious and was refusing to cooperate fully.
I was at my wit’s end. But I couldn’t give up, not now.
Hazel’s voice echoed through my head, sweet but chastising. Be encouraging, Brok! You can do it!
“You can do it!” I echoed my mental version of Hazel. I wasn’t a good cheerleader by any account, but the real Hazel hadn’t led me astray so far.
Barnaby’s body trembled, but against all odds, he finished his set. Then, he moaned in protest and collapsed onto the ground. “I can’t. This is… too much.”
I checked my stopwatch and frowned at the pathetic numbers glowing back at me. “Hardly. You’re getting better. We just need a little extra push.”
“An extra push? My body is staging a coup.” He leaned against a stone and clutched it close, as if it was the only thing keeping him tethered to earth. “My glutes have filed for political asylum. My hamstrings are writing a strongly worded letter to the United Nations.”
I hauled him upright, refusing to let his dramatics get to me. “Your body is not staging a coup. Your body is adapting. That is what bodies do. They adapt or they die.”
“I’m choosing death.”
I pulled out my training log and flipped to today’s schedule with more force than necessary. “Death is not on today’s agenda. Sprints are on today’s agenda. We finish the sprints, we complete the hill work, and then we can stop by The Cocoa Bean.”
Barnaby’s ears perked up slightly. “Hazel’s?”
I grabbed his water bottle from where it lay in the grass and shoved it into his trembling paws. “If you complete the workout.”
This was strategic motivation. Barnaby responded to food-based incentives the way normal people responded to oxygen. The promise of Hazel’s chocolates could make him do things that no amount of yelling or scientific explanation could achieve.
“She mentioned testing a new recipe yesterday.” I watched him chug water like a man—well, a rabbit—dying of thirst. “Something with ginger.”
“Ginger?” Barnaby shot me a tremulous smile. “That sounds heavenly.”
I was pretty sure that if I’d tried feeding Barnaby ginger last year, he’d have thrown it at my head and started crying. But Hazel had a way of making even the craziest things work, and both Barnaby and I were weak for it.
“Fine,” Barnaby decided at last. “But if I die, you have to tell Hazel I died dreaming about her chocolates.”
I pointed up the hill with my stopwatch, ready to start his pathetic shuffle toward improvement. “You are not going to—”
Barnaby went completely still.
His entire body locked up like someone had unplugged him. His whiskers started twitching, and his fur stood on end. The water bottle slipped from his paw and hit the grass with a wet thud.
I inhaled deeply, expecting the regular scents of the Iron Grove. Hazel’s chocolates, Barnaby’s sweat, and fresh grass. Instead, I got a faceful of musk.
Heavy, aggressive, and primal. The kind of scent that made my shoulders tense and my hands curl into fists without conscious thought. Underneath it, I detected expensive leather, dry-cleaned wool, and something metallic that I recognized instantly from my days on the Iron Steppe.
Dried blood.
Not fresh. Old blood. The kind that never quite washed out when you were in the murder business professionally. “Predator,” I growled under my breath.
At that exact moment, a figure stepped out from behind a large oak tree. It was almost as if he’d been waiting for his cue in a pretentious theater production. I hated him already.
He was tall—almost as tall as I was. Impressive.
Few creatures could match me in height, and those who did were always a threat.
His charcoal gray suit looked like something straight out of Grix’s closet, which wasn’t an encouraging thought at all.
His thick grey hair was swept back in a way that screamed ‘I have a personal barber who charges hourly rates.’ His eyes were a startling, predatory yellow.
Humans might see him as a corporate executive. The kind who fired people before breakfast and felt nothing. But I knew exactly who and what he was.
Isengrim. Also known as The Big Bad Wolf. A pretentious title, since I’d known bigger wolves than him. But everyone who’d ever met him agreed that it fit.
Barnaby let out a squeak of profound terror and scrambled behind my legs. Given that I was roughly the size and shape of a concrete barrier, this was a tactically sound approach. It also did absolutely nothing for his dignity.
The Wolf didn’t even twitch. Even his whiskers were absolutely still and calm. How did he manage that?
“Mr. Warren,” he drawled. “And Brok, I presume? The hired muscle.”
I stepped fully in front of Barnaby and planted my feet in my preferred immovable-object stance. “State your business, Isengrim.”
“That is Mr. Isengrim,” he corrected me, not seeming very upset about my less-than-enthusiastic greeting. “I am here in my professional capacity as legal counsel. I have papers to serve to the Osterhase.”
So what I’d heard about him was right. He did commit murder. Just not the kind we practiced in the Iron Steppe. The… legal kind. “Serve papers? For what?”
Isengrim took a step closer without blinking. Wolves never blinked enough. It was deeply unsettling. “For the Title, of course. What else could the Osterhase have that would matter?”
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a thick envelope sealed with burnt-orange wax. The seal bore a design I recognized from historical texts: a fox’s head in profile, grinning.
He held the envelope out, his claws scraping against the expensive paper. “A formal Challenge of Competency. Filed this morning by my client, Mr. Reynard de Maupertuis.”
Behind me, Barnaby gasped so hard I thought he might achieve accidental hyperventilation. “Reynard? He’s back?”
“The Osterfuchs himself.” Isengrim’s yellow eyes locked onto Barnaby with the focused intensity of a predator selecting the weakest member of the herd. “The original.”
This was bad. This was catastrophically bad. I’d thought training Barnaby would be a challenge without him having competition around. But now… Forcing myself to appear nonchalant, I said, “He retired centuries ago.”
“He was pushed out.” Isengrim’s snout twitched in something that might have been a snarl, a smile, or possibly both. With wolves, it was hard to tell the difference. “By the people. By humans who couldn’t appreciate excellence when it bit them on the—”
He caught himself and smoothed his tie with his paw. “They wanted something softer. Rounder. Cuter.”
The way he looked at Barnaby sent every protective instinct I had slamming into overdrive. I wanted nothing more than to grab Isengrim’s well-groomed tail and toss him into an entirely different dimension. But I couldn’t, and he knew it.
He sneered, practically radiating hostility. “They traded a predator’s efficiency for a prey animal’s aesthetic.”
“I tested better with focus groups!” Barnaby pressed himself harder against my legs. His voice climbed into registers only dogs could hear. “I increased market share by thirty-seven percent in my first decade! I helped global economics! I brought approachability to the brand!”
Isengrim tapped the envelope against his palm with infuriating precision.
The rhythm reminded me of war drums on the Steppe.
Steady. Relentless. Counting down to battle.
“You brought mediocrity. Mr. de Maupertuis was never late. He never missed a house. He never stopped for a snack break, never needed a personal trainer, never required motivational speeches about the importance of cardio.”
“The Title itself picked me!” Barnaby snapped. “You can’t argue with that.”
Barnaby wasn’t lying. If he was the Herald of Spring, it was because the Title had decided he deserved to be. But Isengrim didn’t seem particularly impressed by his argument. “But the Title can change its mind. Magic is fickle like that.”
Yes, it was. And I should have seen it sooner, damn it.
Barnaby had almost choked in Hazel’s kitchen the day of our taste test. That should have been impossible for a powerful magical entity.
But I’d been so busy looking at Hazel’s curves that I’d forgotten about the magic that should have protected him.
It didn’t matter. I knew now. And knowing the problem was the first step in fixing it. I took one step forward and watched Isengrim’s pupils dilate slightly in response. “Get to the point before I make you eat that envelope.”
The Wolf’s smile widened as if he’d been hoping I’d threaten him.
“My point is simple. The Osterfuchs is suing to reclaim what is rightfully his. He argues that the Bunny Experiment has conclusively failed. He cites your client’s current physical state as Exhibit A, arguing that the Soft Approach has been a disaster for operational efficiency. ”
He looked Barnaby up and down as if he was assessing livestock at auction.
“Mr. de Maupertuis argues that the holiday requires a professional operator. Not a mascot who gets winded climbing stairs. The Title has yet to disagree.”
This was getting better and better. “What exactly does that mean?”
Isengrim rolled his eyes. “It means that this is your three weeks’ notice. Then the Fox and the Hare face the Challenge. Fail one benchmark, and Reynard assumes the Title. The Fox becomes the face of Spring again.”