Requiem for the Wolf

by Tara Saunders

  The wolf stood on a small embankment to the east. A massive silver grey, black maned, and with darkness mottling its head and chest. Head down, it bunched the muscles at its haunches and leaped towards the busy field.

  Breag raced around the market’s edge to meet it, coming to point like an old, well-blooded hound. He had hunted many Lost Ones, put many into the ground, but never one so lost to reason that it would show its wolf’s shape in a crowded place during full daylight. It was this, not the thrill of the hunt that brightened the day’s colours for him, made its scents richer.

  Of course it was.

  The wolf trotted faster, unwavering. Breag broke into a run, knowing he wouldn’t be in time. He could feel the prickle of Bliss across his skin, coaxing him to look for it inside himself. The feeling was easier than usual to resist. Only the now mattered; the moment and the hunt.

  The wolf felt him coming and stopped, ears pricked and tail high. Its eyes met his, daring him to look away.

  A bright green flutter turned the wolf’s head, breaking eye contact. Breag felt an instinctive surge of triumph, followed by a sickening plunge in his belly.

  The wolf moved again, quickly now, its tail beating with obscene eagerness.

  Breag’s blood thundered in his ears. He elbowed his way forward, his gut telling him that this would be bad.

  Heads turned, watching him instead of the wolf. Voices raised, bodies blocked his path. He would be too late.

  The wolf was no more than three bounds from the crowd’s edge when the first scream sounded. One, two more followed, and a breaking wave of panic surged to block Breag’s view.

  He cursed, pushing forward against the crowd. Too slow. Screams came louder, pain mixed with the fear now. A space opened to Breag’s left and he took it, skirting the thickest press of people, pressing forward where he could.

  The beast stood in a space that a moment before had been busy with life. Muzzle and chest sticky with gore, it stood over the mangled form of a small girl, her bright green dress fluttering slightly at its edges. Nearby, the body of a man sprawled carelessly, throat torn out and eyes empty.

  This warg killed efficiently.

  From somewhere near the Harvest fire the gadhar roared, a sound that started deep and vibrated through Breag’s boots. She pounded from between two wagons no more than an indrawn breath later, head down and eyes fixed on the wolf. Teeth stripped, she threw herself towards it.

  The wolf turned, snarling, manoeuvring to stand over its prize.

  Breag drew his knife and moved towards the wolf, coming at it from its blind shoulder. From the corner of his eye he saw a limping figure in grey push its way out of the crowd and close in, shortsword in hand.

  The wolf’s grey-black head swung from the gadhar to Breag, its tail twitching like a cat’s.

  The gadhar took advantage of the distraction to try for its throat. The wolf whirled, deflecting her so that her teeth opened its shoulder to the bone. It bellowed in pain, lunging towards her. Breag slashed for its flank, his knife finding only hair.

  The wolf turned again to face him, and the gadhar struck, clamping her massive jaws onto its foreleg. The wolf bellowed again, a harsh, defiant sound. It attacked her head, shredding her cheek and ear to red ribbons. She squealed and released her hold on its leg.

  Breag felt something at his shoulder and caught himself a hairsbreadth from turning his knife on it. The guard, Tarbhal, was there, stabbing at the wolf’s flank. The strike connected, barely, and it spun, its red eyes rolling.

  The gadhar attacked again, slashing the loose skin on the wolf’s neck with dagger-sharp claws. Breag lunged, his knife finding flesh this time, scoring a short line of red along the wolf’s haunch.

  The Lost One screamed. It shook itself free of the gadhar and threw itself at Breag. He met it with his knife, slicing its cheek. It screamed again and turned its head to tear him with its fangs, flaying his forearm to the wrist.

  The wolf broke free and retreated, shaking its head with a whine. The gadhar closed with it again. The wolf fled, retracing its path up the embankment where it paused, its tail a twitching metronome of anger, its eyes fixed on Breag. And it was gone.

  Pain pulsed red from Breag’s injured arm and through his body – not his knife arm, thank the Lady. He panted, hand shaking as he wiped his knife with a rag from one of the nearby handcarts. Blood had found its way into the whorls and chevrons etched into the blade; this was not a knife that wanted to be clean. He slid it into its sheath.

  Until next time. It had the warg’s taste now.

  “Let me see, lad.” Tarbhal was there, turning his right arm upwards to inspect the wound. “Not as bad as it could have been, but this needs to be washed and wrapped if it’s to heal clean.”

  The field boiled with uproar. A woman rocked the scrap of bright green in her lap, her head bowed and her eyes closed. The huntsman crooned to his gadhar as he dressed her wounds with careful hands. From a branch nearby the raven watched them all, its black eyes solemn. Everywhere, people wailed and whispered, clustering to talk and point and stare.

  Pain fogged Breag’s mind making it difficult for him to think. He would dress his wound and he would sleep.

  And then he would hunt the Lost One and slip his blade into its throat. The knife had tasted its blood now. The warg’s life was his.

  * * *

  The moon rose bright and full over the town of Dealgan, lighting the corner where Gerud hid almost bright as day. It shone through the quarter-paned window where his Mam and the other women clucked around Calla’s mother, bustling and useless.

  Mam had warned Gerud not to follow her, and she would tan his hide if she knew he was out on his own. Especially tonight, after what had happened to Calla at the market. But he was man of the house when Da was away, so Uncle Ardal always told him. He would keep Mam safe, like Da would if he was here.

  Gerud turned his head at the whirr of feathers, his brows quirked in surprise as a bird was thrown in the air somewhere in the market field. The bird circled once, twice, then beat its white-barred wings powerfully in the direction of Shand. Towards the Citadel, where the Brotherhood waited.

  Gerud saw, but he didn’t understand.

  What happened to Calla was too big a thing to hold in his mind, except to know that all was different now. Death was come, and the Brotherhood would follow close behind like grey crows after a hunter.

  Gerud shivered and turned back to watch the moonlit kitchen. He hoped that Da would come home soon.

  2

  Breag slammed awake.

  His bandaged forearm pulsed, his gut rumbled and his head ached. His left hand was wrapped tight-fisted around the knife’s bone hilt; its greedy whispering had chased him through hours of unquiet dreams.

  None of those minor hurts had woken him, not with his body so badly in need of a healing sleep.

  Outside the door of his room a floorboard creaked. Breag dragged himself from disordered blankets with a swallowed groan. His injured right arm throbbed hot and swollen. Not his knife hand; that one thing went right at least.

  Through the door’s thick pine he heard whispers, a hissed argument. Not unexpected after the mess of the day’s market. The cramped room had one tiny window, too small to slip through. No matter. Brotherhood or vigilante, his knife was ready for them.

  A soft knock came, almost apologetic. Breag blinked. This wasn’t how the game usually played itself.

  Twelve breaths later the knock came again.

  Breag had no advantage left but surprise. He threw open the door and stepped backwards, knife ready.

  A skinny man faced him, hand raised to knock again. His other hand twisted at the waistband of his innkeeper’s apron, alternately pleating and smoothing the dark green fabric. Not even an Ull could find a threat in this one. Behind the innkeeper, other bodies squashed shoulder to shoulder at the head of the staircase, squabbling for room.

  Not Brotherhood, then. Not yet.

  “Pardon for waking
you.” The innkeeper’s head bobbed. “But people would like a word from you if you’re willing.” He kept his eyes glued to the battered floorboards at his feet.

  Breag took a moment, reassessing. Not what he had expected, this call to explain himself. Citizens elsewhere had favoured a more direct approach.

  He had no need to slip his questions under their guard now that his Fiacal Knife had tasted the Lost One’s blood. That taste would allow the blade--and him--to find the warg wherever it holed up to lick its wounds. But his only way out was past this crowd and down the stairs.

  Besides, whatever waited for him at the bottom of the staircase was unlikely to be an attack. Else why throw away the advantage of a sleeping man in a room with a single door?

  The inn was full to its rafters. Townspeople wedged themselves elbow to elbow at every bench and board, and more leaned against the walls with tankards balanced on the narrow sill. A pair of serving girls rushed from kitchen to tables and back, hair plastered to their foreheads, lacking any sort of professional good cheer.

  Some of the faces Breag recognised: a handful of soldiers out of their uniforms, some farmers from the market field, the oldster with the turnip cart who had chosen not to give him directions. Faces that had looked at him with suspicion and hostility last he’d seen them.

  Leaned near the door, the guard, Tarbhal, and his scarred colleague paid a carefully casual attention to the room.

  When Breag descended the staircase every tongue stilled and every eye fixed on him. He could feel them picking him apart seam by seam. For the first time in his life he felt glad to have grown up as a fatherless boy in the house of the Ceann, under the close attention of all five villages of Daoine.

  “Over here.” The huntsman, the one that owned the gadhar, stood and motioned him to a table where the room’s only empty chair had been pushed out for him.

  Breag sat straight-backed against the chair’s wooden slats. Across the table, two more hunters leaned towards him, avid. The hum of conversation in the room inched upwards again, but the people at the surrounding tables still seemed to listen more than they talked.

  “Name’s Raghlan, and I wanted to thank you for what you did today.” The hunter’s face twisted. “If it wasn’t for you and my gadhar, Cealg, it would have gone much worse. I’ll light a candle for you tonight, and pray your wound heals clean.”

  Breag squirmed. Nothing he had done had been for these people. “I was in the right place is all. You would have managed without me.”

  Raghlan shook his head. “We would have tried. Whatever your blade did to the Lupe was what turned the day.”

  Not a healthy direction for their thoughts to take. Breag hurried to redirect them. “I’ve fought Lupes before, is all. Without your beast and the guard’s help I wouldn’t have got far.” He tilted a nod across the room towards Tarbhal and received one in return.

  Heads nodded around Breag, and the level of whispering spiked once more. He wondered what he had said to drive curiosity in the wrong direction.

  “That’s what we thought.” Raghlan spoke, and people at the other tables murmured agreement. All conversation in the room had hushed again, and every ear was bent to their words. “Especially with you coming from the North. You fight like a man that knows Lupes.”

  Breag’s heart stuttered. His left hand wrapped tight around his knife-hilt before he realised that the attention was approving and not threatening.

  “Seems like the Lupe knew plenty too.” Breag tried again to turn the conversation.

  Raghlan nodded. “We’ve had some trouble here. Animals killed, a boy savaged. A woman and child attacked, but that time we were able to drive it off.” The deaths at market hung heavy over his words.

  Their talk was interrupted by the innkeeper, who arrived at the table carrying a bowl of brown stew and a mug of thick, malty ale. He slid both in front of Breag without a word and was gone with no time for anything but surprised thanks. Breag’s stomach rumbled its gratitude as he went to work with a will.

  He twitched at the feel of so many eyes fixed on the rise and fall of his spoon. He had been more than long enough on display. The Fiacal Knife called for him to hunt, to track down the warg and to glory in the spill of its blood.

  “A pity none of the soldiers were close enough to be useful.” He spoke between mouthfuls, to give the people something to consider apart from his every bite. The muttering that followed his words told him he had hit a sore point.

  “That’s our sorrow and our shame.” The voice came from a table near the hearth. “The child had two uncles in the ranks.”

  Breag turned his head to see a lean man in military blues – a captain to judge by the yellow-wood bata handle visible over his left shoulder – with hair as tightly braided as Breag's own and almost as black. The only soldier in the room to come in uniform, and no doubting that meant something too particular for Breag to fathom.

  “I didn’t mean any insult.” And he had not. Breag felt doomed to step wrong with these people. He spooned up the last bite of stew and stood. “I should go.”

  “Yes, you should.” A new voice sounded in the hushed room. The speaker was another soldier, the Boulder from the marketplace who had taken such particular care to catch a guard on his own.

  “Aod.” The captain jerked his chin upwards. “Enough!”

  Boulder settled back into his chair, face an angry red and lips sneering. His look poured particular venom across the room towards the pair of guards by the door.

  “Be careful.” The captain spoke to Breag this time. “We won’t forget what you did for us.”

  Boulder humphed under his breath.

  Breag squirmed again at the undeserved praise. He muttered a platitude and side-stepped towards the door.

  The cool night air came as a relief after the stifling heat of the inn. Something strange had happened in there, something that had twisted the currents of this town in a direction he couldn’t understand.

  Breag needed to concentrate on the Lost One now. He would leave the small town politics until later and hope that the delay didn’t cost him his skin.

  Although he doubted the good people of Dealgan had time to turn on him before the Brotherhood arrived.

  * * *

  The evening had turned dull, hiding the full moon behind a canopy of cloud. Breag strode towards the market field. He would start his hunt where the morning’s work had ended.

  The field stood empty, its Harvest fire banked and the ground littered with the detritus of the day. Most of the stalls had been removed, but here and there a cart or wagon stood abandoned, surrounded by nothing. Raghlan’s cart of furs was one of these, and a moment too late Breag remembered that the warg wasn’t the morning’s only worry.

  A growl rumbled from under the cart and the gadhar slid from shadow, her snarl making it plain that her hate was entirely personal. Her cubs followed, ears and tails high, questing for a scent.

  The brindle stood a little apart from the others. Unlike its littermates, it seemed to find Breag’s scent, yet it alone didn’t echo its dam’s growling rumble.

  Breag stepped slowly backwards, cursing the lack of cover in the near-empty field. The gadhar didn’t follow. For all her warning, she seemed unwilling to attack.

  “She certainly doesn’t like you, does she, laddie?” The words came from behind a rag-cart near the edge of the field. “Now why would that be, I wonder?”

  Tarbhal. The guard stood on the cart’s lee-side, watching.

  Breag’s hand slid to his knife-hilt. “Sounds like you have some ideas on that.”

  “I do lad, I do.” Tarbhal stood still, confident. “And that’s why I’ll come with you while you take care of our problem.”

  Not possible. Breag shook his head, scrambling to find words that would change the guard’s mind without betraying his secrets.

  “Not a request, I’m afraid.” Tarbhal stepped out into the open. “You have a lot to lose if that baneling’s to be believed. Easier to
humour an old man. My memory’s not what it was. I’ll likely forget I saw anything here tonight.”

  Breag tried only to kill Lost Ones, and only when they turned warg. This guard left him no option but to act.

  Quietly he drew his blade. Now that the Lost One’s blood had flowed across its blade, the knife hungered. Its whispers flowered immediately into demands, the filthy-sweet ache of it settling into his jaws and his throat.

  Forget the guard. Find the prey. Hunt it, kill it, sunder it.

  Tarbhal raised his hands, chuckling. “A good thought, but my mind hasn’t slipped so far that I’d forget to take precautions. My good friend Ushna knows where I am, and why. You met him earlier, I think?”

  Breag forced the knife back into its sheath, his hand trembling. “Why?”

  Tarbhal didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “We need the Lupe gone, and if you can do that then I don’t care who, or what, you are. But I’ll watch you all the same. Just in case.”

  Breag was out of choices. He would allow the guard to follow. And he would watch for an opportunity to deal with this second problem in the same way as the first.

  * * *

  Breag’s fingers sweated around the Fiacal knife’s old-bone hilt, his teeth gritted against its whispers. Each time it tasted Daoine blood its song became more powerful, its hunger more insistent. Its need drove him onwards even as the struggle to hold against it drained his strength.

  Breag needed to find his Lost One soon, else the blade’s will would swallow his and he would be as lost as any warg.

  “This way.” Breag’s voice grated. He pointed north, towards the mountains where the wolf had disappeared.

  A raised eyebrow showed what Tarbhal thought of this.

  “The knife can feel him. Once it tastes blood there’s no escaping it.”