The guard’s other eyebrow joined the first. “A very useful tool.” He eyed the knife carefully.
Breag shook his head. “It only works on Lupes.” And only for the Marbh, the one consecrated to it.
The Faith Eaters taught that the knife was a tool handed down from the Dawntime, when the Daoine had arrived in the Tiarna in their horned boats. Its hilt was carved from the bone of a Marbh who had gone before; a great honour, or so it was told. The knife was consecrated only to the most talented, the most dedicated, of the Daoine. Whether he wanted it or not.
Breag’s fists clenched again as he remembered heat and pain, the Eolaí’s chanting and the loss of everything important to him.
Eithne.
Not a memory for now. A remembering to be buried but not forgotten, like the promise knot in his backpack.
“Useful even so. Makes the man holding it a valuable ally.” Again Tarbhal twisted a familiar thought into something Breag had not considered.
The clouds unfolded the moon to light their way as Breag allowed the knife to lead them into the mountains.
“Is that what’s doing it?” Tarbhal spoke during one of their too-frequent breaks, kneading at his leg. They rested on a flat rock at the foot of an unsteady-looking drystone wall.
Breag didn’t understand Tarbhal’s question. The effort it took to hold to the ribbons of his shredded will left no energy aside for thinking.
“The moon.” Tarbhal indicated it with his thumb. “Is that what’s making the Lupe attack?” Carefully unspoken the notion that what maddened one Lupe could affect another. Like, for example, Breag.
“No.” Breag was too tired to pick his words, to pretend. “Those are just stories. The Lady watches and guides, she doesn’t make us Fall. This one’s a warg, gone mad from the life he’s been living. No way back for him, whether the Lady shows her whole face or not.”
Between them lay the knowledge that too much had been revealed between them. Breag reminded himself that he had two problems to find solutions for.
But first he had to deal with the Lost One. Even sheathed, the blade’s call was strong now.
“What’s to stop him shifting back to man shape and none knowing any better? If that knife of yours leads us to a man’s hearth, or to an inn, how do you explain to his friends and family that you intend to cut his throat?”
“No.” Breag tripped over his tongue again. “Now that the knife has his taste, he can’t change his shape. How he looks when it bloods him is how he stays.”
“Until you catch him?”
No knowing. If Breag had found a Lost One who wasn’t lost in Bliss, he would be home by now.
He pushed himself back onto rubber legs, his hand on the wall’s cool stone for support. The warg would be weak, confused and suffering. Time to make an end to this.
He gritted his teeth against the necessity of unsheathing the knife. It filled his mind with images he didn’t want: hot, salty blood pumping across his bare arms. Warm flesh soft as butter, the knife slipping through to the bone. Viscera, organs and, above everything, blood.
Sweat popped on his brow. He struggled to hold on to himself and to follow the knife’s promptings northwards.
The night passed in a blur. Distantly Breag was aware of slopes and inclines, bare rock and scrubby brambles, the guard’s hand at his elbow when the ground was particularly rough. And, over everything and tangled with every other thought, the knife’s hunger.
“We’re close.” The words tore from his raw throat. He staggered to his knees by a bottom-heavy blackthorn, slipping the knife into its sheath with a shaky sigh. His fingers ached from their all-night clench, and his jaw throbbed with the aching rictus of bared teeth.
Would this hunt have been easier or more difficult on his own?
Tarbhal eased to the ground beside him, a bitten back groan telling that his own night had been no pleasant stroll in the moonlight. “Where?”
Breag motioned to a straggly stand of ash, sparse and half naked now that the season had reached its midpoint. In the pre-dawn’s grey chill he felt tired and cold. The Fiacal Knife’s greedy bloodlust had quenched his own to cinders.
They moved silently towards the trees, the guard slightly ahead. No trace of Bliss would warn that the Lost One was close now that the knife had claimed it. Breag should be holding the blade naked in his hand, but its distraction was too much. He would draw it when he needed to.
The decision almost killed him.
A tangle of shadow to his left came together into a black mane and huge, mottled grey muzzle, its low-throated growl blasting his face with the stink of rotted meat. Its stare challenged Breag, its ears pointed and its tail upright and twitching. The injuries on its shoulder and foreleg stole nothing from its power.
Its mane bristled, growl deepening and haunches tensed to spring.
Breag’s hand flashed across his body to wrap around the hilt. The knife’s hunger roared through him, irresistible now that its prey was caught. This time its greed worked in Breag’s favour.
The warg lunged for his weakened right arm, and Breag twisted, meeting it with his blade. He jabbed forward and the wolf retreated a pace, its growl dropping into its chest.
The guard approached the Lost One’s other side, shortsword leading. He would be lucky to do more than get himself killed.
The wolf lunged again and Breag threw himself sideways, his knee squelching into slime. He used his position to thrust upwards, aiming for its throat. The beast pulled back again, wary of the blade, and the thrust drew no blood.
Tarbhal attacked from its injured shoulder, driving it away from Breag. It snapped long white fangs in the guard’s direction but kept its focus on the knife.
Breag used the distraction to climb to his feet. His intent matched the knife’s now. He would make prey of this Lost One. He would rip out its throat.
He moved sideways, looking for an opening. The wolf was faster. Unexpectedly quick, it plunged forward and closed its carnassials on his injured arm.
The world blackened as Breag struggled for control. If he faded he was dead. The knife helped this time, pumping him with the need to finish this. To win.
He raised his knife hand as the wolf released his mangled flesh. Aiming for its throat, he sank the blade deep into its shoulder.
The wolf screamed, an agonised sound that chilled the thirst in Breag’s blood. It turned its attack to its own wound, biting deep into the flesh where the knife had been. Its body convulsed into huge, violent contortions. Its back arched, the scream in its throat peaking to a shriek. Slowly it quieted, coming to rest with sluggish, gentle shudders. Its lungs emptied and did not refill.
Breag sank to his knees by the carcass, his own breath coming in chest-aching gulps. His arm was a ruin, a red-black pulse ebbing and flowing through his consciousness.
The Fiacal Knife’s demands had silenced. For now, until the next time it tasted Daoine blood, it was nothing more than a knife.
“Are you all right, boy?” Tarbhal’s question came from a long distance away.
Breag forced the tremble from his hand and straightened. The work here was not yet done, the most dangerous part yet to come.
“Watch him.” Pain made him sparing with his words. He hunkered by the wolf’s head, alert for the first signs.
The guard picked him over with sharp eyes before turning his attention to the wolf’s remains.
The moon burst from behind a cover of clouds; the Lady came in glory to welcome her lost child home.
Under Her pale light Breag watched the Lost One’s shape become indistinct, as though he looked at it through filthy glass. Its shape became somehow more, a distillation of its true self instead of a reflection of its outside form.
Its legs lengthened, its shoulders broadened and changed shape. Silver-grey fur rippled and was gone, exposing pink flesh. Its snout retreated, revealing blunted human features. Finally, a man’s body sprawled inelegantly on the damp grass.
The miracl
e stole Breag’s breath every time. His awareness was shapeless with raw feeling.
“I never thought to see anything like that.” The guard’s voice throbbed with wonder.
The beauty of the moment scoured Breag, peeled away his defences. This change was so necessary, so right. The knowledge burned through him. This was the Lady’s blessing, Her true gift to Her people.
How could he reject it?
A tiny warning voice spoke somewhere, but he paid it no heed. Lost in Bliss, Breag felt change shiver through him, natural as his next breath. He reached for it, drew it closer. Until now he had only been half of himself. Soon he would know everything.
A pair of strong hands clamped onto his shoulders, shattering the moment.
He was holding Bliss. He was going to Fall.
3
Carad conquered the urge to pace. He forced his body to relax, his peripheral vision pinned to the stiff-backed armsman who blocked the Athair’s door.
Ludicrous, to think of a Tánaiste of the Brotherhood of the Lone Man forced to mind his manners for fear of the tales a common soldier might carry. Galling to cool his heels in the hallway while Fodhla made a grab for the ring of power.
Choose an heir, old man, else get on with the business of dying and let me solve this for myself.
And if he chooses the wrong man?
Carad caught himself mid-pace, and traded his anxious steps for a determined stride. He stopped at the long, narrow window as though he’d aimed for it from the beginning, stroking his fingers idly along the wall’s rough granite. Outside in the bailey, two lines of novices with wooden practice swords quickstepped through their paces under the watchful eye of Disciple Luca.
He shivered. The Citadel had been designed for security, not comfort, and it showed in the bare walls and stone floors. The fortress spanned the mouth of Slate Pass, the primary route into the Corcra Mountains, protecting the Tiarna from the nest of Lupes that swarmed on the other side of the mountain range.
None of which provided any ease for a man who had grown up on the stifling streets of Dun, nine hundred miles to the south.
He had, at least, despatched Fodhla’s hangers-on about their business. Searlas had defied him with heavy, insolent eyes, but Brotherhood hierarchy allowed no challenge from lower to higher. Searlas had nodded with exactly the right degree of deference and not a hair more, and he had gone where he was told.
Nobody here to see Carad’s skittishness except this sole armsman. Not much threat in a single man in a boiled leather breastplate, if it should come to it.
How long since Fodhla went in there?
The massive yew door ghosted open, forcing Carad into a startle. The armsman responded only with a widening of his pale blue eyes, and Carad knew that by lunchtime the entire Citadel would hear about Tánaiste Carad, jumpy as a cur in a thunderstorm.
Anger steadied his nerves and he faced his rival with a smile.
Fodhla was everything Carad was not: tall, broad, handsome, and with the inherent air of entitlement that came with a long pedigree. He greeted the armsman with a shoulder-slap that should have rocked him on his heels. “Well, Edda, how goes it today? Only the best of us to guard the Athair, I see.”
His camaraderie always seemed genuine, confounding Carad’s best efforts to find it otherwise.
The armsman’s stone face cracked a smile and Carad swore silently. He’d made a bet with himself, while he waited at the door like a beggar, that it had been sewn into its humourless glower. Now, though, creases bracketed the slash of his mouth and laughter lines crinkled his pale, piggy eyes.
The soldier wriggled under Fodhla’s approval and, despite himself, Carad felt a familiar inadequacy sear his insides raw.
And a matching determination, bone deep.
“Well met, Fodhla, all good in there?” Carad’s tone of concern fit his tongue as awkwardly as new boots on old feet.
The Tánaiste’s return smile seemed as genuine as ever. “Well met indeed, Carad.” The smile dissolved. “Our Athair’s not so strong today. Won’t take his medicine, the stubborn man. What are we to do with him?”
“Or without him.” As soon as the words slipped from Carad’s tongue he wished them unsaid. No chance now to ask about the Athair’s mood. Would he ever learn to moderate his words before they bounced back on him and knocked him flat?
Fodhla’s brow knotted and Edda’s face calcified back into its lines of stone. Another black mark on Carad’s slate.
“I’m sure our Athair’s passing is a long way in the future.” Fodhla’s tone carried an unfamiliar sting.
In that moment they were disciple and penitent again, Fodhla giving orders and Carad taking them with his tongue clenched tight between his teeth.
But those days had gone, and his teeth had points now.
“’The time of each man’s passing can be known only to Sagart, the Lone Man.’” Carad recited a fragment from the One Book, allowing the rest of the quotation to remain unsaid. Any disciple would recognise the lines that named it blasphemy to augur a man’s death.
The Lone Man was no fonder of blasphemers than he was of Lupes.
“You should go in now. He won’t rest until he sees you.” Fodhla turned away.
Carad nodded stiffly and pushed past, forcing Fodhla to step back. From the corner of his eye he caught the tightening of Edda’s mouth, and the satisfaction drained from him. Once again word would spread of Carad the Troublemaker, Carad the Uncouth, Carad the Unworthy.
So be it.
* * *
The Athair’s chamber stank of death.
Every morning an army of soap-fisted cleaning women threw open the windows to admit sweet, fresh air. They changed bedsheets soaked with sweat and decay, and they scrubbed every surface that could be reached by rag or sponge or stiff-bristled brush.
Even so, Carad could taste mortality on every breath. The stench of it oozed from the Athair’s pores, infusing every particle of air with the knowledge of a passing too long delayed.
The old man lay beneath a single sheet, his face sunken, cheeks gaunt and eyes hollow. The last of his teeth had gone the winter before, and he spoke now with a mushy mastication that reduced his lesser advisors to tears.
Tradition surrounded the Athair with men of birth and privilege to ease his burden where they could. Perhaps Fearg, the first Athair, had benefited from their wisdom, but this old man trusted no head but his own, and took advice only from his Tánaiste. This left the advisors with little option but to make their own power.
A brow of enquiry raised towards the healer – one of three who took their turn in attending the old man day and night – earned a nod from the sombre-robed dignitary with folded hands standing in a shadowed corner. Awake then, although it hardly seemed possible. The sheet rose and fell scarcely enough to notice.
Carad stepped lightly to the bedside and sank to his knees on the blood-red rug. The old man allowed none to sit in his presence.
A hand slipped from beneath the covers and Carad leaned forward to brush his lips against the ruby that slid loosely around a withered finger. Leaning back on his haunches he watched the Athair struggle to sit up.
He had tried to help, once. That had been a mistake.
The old man’s struggle was a torment to watch. Effort beaded the yellowed skin of his brow as he dragged himself onto his elbows. From there he shuffled backwards until he found the headboard with the back of his skull. Time slowed to a trickle as he used the support to inch himself upright.
Only when the most powerful man in the Tiarna Beo lay spent and gasping against the head of his deathbed did Carad allow himself a miniscule sigh of relief.
“Prompt as usual, eh Carad? Hoped to find me stiff and cooling, no doubt.” The Athair’s voice quavered with age and ill-health, but his words carried their familiar bite.
“Not at all, Athair. I’m glad to find you still in life.” Full truth. Although Carad diligently prayed for the old man’s death, being the one to find the re
mains would bring too many complications.
“Liar.” The Athair tailed off into a paroxysm of coughing.
The healer was by his side in an instant. He pushed a kerchief into the old man’s hand and uncorked a small bottle of foul-smelling green unguent. His profession no longer had anything useful to offer their lord, and the knowledge of it twisted his features.
Slowly, more slowly than any time before, the spasm eased. The kerchief, pristine white a moment before, was now a gore-streaked crimson.
This dying was slow and without dignity, and Carad wouldn’t wish it on the worst of men.
“I find your presence restful.” The Athair spoke when he was able. “You don't fawn, and you don't pretend you'll be grieved when I go like those fool advisors of mine do.”
Carad didn't protest. Too late now to force a charade of affection.
“What news from the birds?” The Athair's breath whistled on every word. “That imbecile Fodhla gives me only prayers for my swift recovery.”
“We had word from Dun yesterday.” Carad spoke the bare facts. “The Ard sends the wish of his heart that your health be restored, and hopes that the stirrings throughout the Tiarna don't disturb you over much.”
The Athair's breathing deteriorated to gasping heaves, and only when a skeletal hand waved the healer away did Carad realise that the old man was laughing.
“That man tickles me.” His chest heaved. “It's always the way with The Ard that he uses courteous words to slide his knife between your ribs. Is there news from the provinces?”
“Nothing concrete.” No point in holding back. If the old man chose to cling to life then let him make a decent fist of it. “Mutterings from all four Tiarna, though nothing worse than usual. Ullach mutters loudest and holds tightest, as always.”
The Athair nodded, eyes bright in a death-mask face.
“The guard causes small disruption, act with no authority outside of tradition. The people look to them for peacekeeping instead of the army. The usual complaints.” Carad numbered the points on his fingers. “But they have no organisation except on a local level, no leadership, and no purpose. They're a nuisance, not a danger.”
Requiem for the Wolf Page 4
