Requiem for the Wolf

by Tara Saunders

  It was a simple thing to reach for the man-Breag and hold it close. Through raptures of agony Breag felt himself expand--or, maybe, shrink--to make it fit.

  A whisper came to him from somewhere outside. "Goodbye, silent ones."

  And Breag was himself again, drenched with sweat, on his knees, huddled at the empty bed's foot. His body and his soul keened for what he had lost.

  Sionna was there too; man-shaped. Woman-shaped. As naked as he.

  Breag reached a shaking arm to snag a blanket from his supporting bed. A coincidence; the motion turned the flat of his shoulder to Sionna. In the bed Laoighre squawked and locked his elbows around the blanket, bracing himself with downturned heels.

  A farce, this. Breag didn't turn to see whether Sionna agreed, or sniggered, or focused instead on troubles of her own. He quick-stepped towards his pack, where soft woollen trousers offered salvage for his decency. His hair hung unbraided around his face. Behind him Laoighre huddled again under the blankets, his breathing fast and ragged.

  Part-clothed, now Breag could think.

  Fallen.

  The word drummed inside him like rain on a tin roof. Filthy. No different from any of the others his knife had freed in the eight long years since he was put from his home. It branded him, choked his throat with the thick coils of its meaning, and offered no cautery.

  Abomination. The Eolaí would know it the moment he walked through the pass. No welcome home for him; no Eithne waiting. Instead a collar and the shame-scald of failure. The look on his grandfather's face wasn't difficult to imagine. Harder to see his mother's.

  He would never see it now. Even the pale hope of eight years lost to him.

  All because of the girl. Before her he had been whole. She and the guard had connived against him, used him as poisoned bait to be dropped when the pack snapped too close. And now this. She had made him what she was.

  Unclean. Abomination.

  He turned to face her, gritty-eyed with all that he had lost. She had found time to slide into a tunic, but the woven trousers were still in her hands. Cú lay beside her, his stump of a tail trying hard to thump out his approval.

  At Breag's movement, Sionna's ceased.

  “Hurry up, we’re losing the morning.” Safer to pretend that they shared nothing more than a thirst to be on the road. That Cú’s intoxicated bouncing was nothing but a beast’s high spirits. If he pretended long enough, hard enough, he might make it true.

  “You were beautiful.”

  Sionna’s raised head magnified the fizz of her, and Breag smothered under an effervescence of green apples. Life crackled over her skin, claiming her and proclaiming her. Breag couldn't bear it.

  Would not bear it. She dared too much, to rip his life into five pieces and then name the devastation beautiful.

  "No more of that. Get ready." The words grated through tight-clenched teeth.

  Laoighre's bed creaked a protest, but the boy said nothing.

  "It's too late for this, Breag. We can't ignore it to make it go away." Even her voice bubbled, loading her words with all that he didn't want to face. The joy she found in it stoked the red of his rage to white-hot phosphorescence.

  "You did this to me."

  Sionna was already shaking her head. "I know you don't want this. I remember. But it's a thing we need to learn to live with. It’s what we are."

  Breag would not be this. Revulsion filled his throat with acid and his heart with maggots. Abomination, thanks to the guard's manipulations and this girl's pull. Time to remember that he was Marbh. Time to capture his Lost One. Let Tearmann and its welcome bring whatever it would.

  "Don't speak to me. Get ready, we leave in an hour." Careful words, holding tight to the fraying tails of his rage.

  "I won't go. Not like this." Sionna had found calm somewhere in the ugliness of the morning. This was how he should be. Calm and cold. No feeling, just duty. Instead feeling loosed the flame in him that would devour them all.

  No more talk. Marbh don't negotiate with Lost Ones.

  Two strides crossed the cramped room. The Fiacal Knife glittered in his hand, ready. Not hungry yet. Sionna tried to pull away, eyes huge in a blanched face, but she was small and fine-boned. He held her easily.

  "Please." A tiny word.

  A whimper from where Laoighre curled himself more tightly against the sour bite of violence in the room. Cú was on his feet now, the noise in his throat neither growl nor whimper. Breag ignored them both.

  He was empty, his rage and his fear fastened tight in a bubble of decision, where he could see them but not touch or feel. Here was the path, smooth and flat under his feet. He would follow it to its end.

  Just one shallow slash across the back of her right hand. The knife woke immediately, exulting. Its need seared through his bloodstream, absorbing him, filling him. His left hand clenched around the greasy-smooth handle, the other fisting at his side.

  Blood.

  Salty and sweet. Sundered from her body; ripped, shredded, eviscerated. The blade's hunger became his. He would drink her dry. She was prey; the knife knew it and so did she, now.

  Fat beads of sweat broke on Breag's forehead. Clenched teeth and tight-squeezed eyes forced the Fiacal Knife back to its sheath. It called to him, hungering; needing. In the blessed silence of its sheathing Breag raised two trembling hands to his face.

  What have I done?

  Sionna knelt silent, nursing her violated hand. Thin rivulets of blood crawled from the wound to manacle her wrist. Cú stood in front of her, shielding her, his teeth stripped and his tail plastered between his legs. All eyes fixed on Breag.

  Even now he could feel the eagerness uncoiling in his belly. He was hunter and here knelt his prey for the taking. Alive, as he was only when his knife had tasted blood and the hunt beckoned.

  Nothing here for him but shame, and of his own making.

  No point in apologies; they would change nothing. He had bitten the boar’s snout, and the mouthful was his to chew. The rage bled from him, leaving his cup empty except for the bitter dregs of disgust. Once again he lifted it to his lips and tasted what he had brewed for himself.

  Anú had the right of it. Eolaí or Dílis, he had no place in either. Deep thoughts were for great men. Think, Anú had ordered. Make your own choices. She had chosen the wrong man for her lectures. Breag had been in the Tiarna too long. His choices took him home.

  To Tearmann, then. His welcome would be what it would be. Let the Lady have the judging of it.

  “Pack up your things. You have no choice now. The knife owns you, and what it has, it holds.” Until the hunger becomes too much. Proinsis was far from the first.

  A blackness fluttered at the window, there and gone. Not the raven; that he could even think so showed how much the old healer had wormed herself into his thoughts.

  “It burns.” Sionna used the heel of her left hand to scrub upwards from the congealing wound to her elbow. Her eyes met his in appeal, the pupils huge and dark.

  What have I done?

  Would she even survive the journey now she was Fallen? But no, the others he took--the others who had whimpered and faded and died on the road--had been in the wolf’s shape. Sionna was human-shaped now. That would make a difference. That make what he did right.

  "Come on now. If we're on the road early enough we might make it home before first snow." Find a point. Stick to it. No thought; no argument.

  "I don't want to go." Again the naked look.

  Breag was eviscerated by this; everything inside of him torn away, leaving only a gaping hole.

  Unbidden he saw Eithne again, clearer now than she had been by many solitary firesides, when he had tried and failed to sear her face into his memory. So much failure.

  Eithne had smelled of mint the day they exchanged knots of private promise. On their own rock by the river they had sworn solemn oaths and quibbled on the number of their children. Four, Breag thought, but Eithne favoured five. Numbers enough to fill their home with noise
and laughter; to remind them of how it felt to be young.

  A thing The Ceann had forgotten long years ago. No shouts or laughter in the house the old man had opened to his sole, silent daughter and her unlucky son. Ill-fortuned to have lost his father before birth, they whispered, as though he would have chosen it that way.

  The Ceann, tall and silent, had been the only one to watch the new-made Marbh walk through the pass that spring morning bright with promise. His mother wasn't there; he hadn't expected it of her. But Eithne?

  The cold, hard fingers of his disbelief clenched again around Breag's heart as he remembered again Odran at her father's door, his arms full of daffodils and his first-hunt hide at his feet. And Eithne, who welcomed Odran with a smile that stomped on everything Breag had counted on to be his. If he waited. If he worked hard enough.

  "I don't want to go." Sionna's words could have been his own.

  "The choice is made. The knife is blooded and there's no taking that back."

  "I'm frightened."

  A creak from the room's forgotten corner. The thump of bare feet on floorboards and Laoighre was there. "I'm coming with you. You don't do this on your own."

  "You can't come where we're going, boy." Breag needed no extra burdens, not so close to the finish.

  "I'm going, else she's not." Laoighre's voice wobbled but his eyes held steady.

  The boy's face was white and pinched, and he skirted Breag with eyes turned to the floor as though he were something unclean. Laoighre's steps were uncertain, but one followed another until he stood in front of Sionna, matching her height for height. His battered face, the arm held tight to his body, distinguished him more than flags or fetes could have.

  "Whatever, so long as you don't hold us back. Keep up or you’ll be left behind." Not worth the trouble of forcing the point. The Eolaí would know how to deal with a stray.

  Like Cú was a stray? Would they deal with him too?

  Breag turned from them, wordless. His fingers crept to trace the bones of Cú's head. The animal rumbled but allowed the caress. Swiftly, Breag wove his hair into its tight braid. Back to normality, his control forcing order's return.

  Again the flutter of black through the room's filthy window. Breag turned from it.

  Let the girl have her hero; let the boy have his moment. It would come to nothing in the end. They would walk the pass. They would go to Tearmann. He would be free.

  Echoing in his head a single, unfledged promise; a name. Thorn.

  20

  “I'm sorry you’re leaving me." The pleasantly toned voice spoke from behind Sionna.

  She turned automatically. Everything automatic, now, until she could fix a shape on what had been done to her.

  The innkeeper’s hair was as smooth as ever, his eyes dark and disturbingly empty. His palms smoothed the dark green fabric on his thighs again and again, each stroke leaving dark streaks of damp that clenched Sionna's gut into an even tighter knot.

  "You've hurt yourself." Without permission he took her hand in both of his, the fleshy softness of him distilled into his clammy touch.

  Sionna shrank against the table's edge. Too much like the other one; the man on the mountain. That one had also touched without asking.

  "Time we were gone." Breag stood a head shorter than the keeper; it must have been the set of his jaw or the tension in his shoulders that made him loom so large.

  The keeper's paws released hers and he backed the length of two strides. "A shame to lose you. We don't get many strangers through the town." Wary; watching.

  "I'd be grateful if you could check what we owe. Your girl seems unconfident with the reckoning."

  The keeper's face changed like dark clouds smudging the sun. He left them with a hasty word, and Sionna found that the pity she rejected for herself flowed unasked and unwelcome for the flustered girl who fidgeted over the tally-book.

  Alone, finally, to think. Or not. Carefully Sionna ran exploring fingers over the knife wound that ran along the back of her hand.

  Clean--the knife had been sharp. Not so deep. Unlikely to scar. Hard to tell, now, that the ache pulsing through her body came from here. The burning ran along her fingers and climbed her arm to the shoulder. She curled the fingers, stretching the wound, and noted the flash of pain it prompted. A single bead of blood leaked from a gash already trying to close.

  "Are you ready?"

  She jerked from exploration of her pain. Another town left behind. More trouble, more deaths, more moving. Sionna swung her pack onto the shoulder on her uninjured side and shuffled doorwards through the common room's false night. If the innkeeper spoke to her again she didn't hear it.

  Outside was brighter but no less false.

  Laoighre, with Cú by his side, stood already in the street. They didn’t look at each other as they waited for Breag.

  "You're a brave one to stand in front of me again, sewer rat."

  The rasping voice stroked the hair on Sionna's neck in the wrong direction. She would have known it even without Laoighre’s cringe. It should have sparked her temper to see her friend nurse his injured wrist into the curve of his skinny body. Instead tears prickled her eyes.

  "No words, boy? No uncle with you to save your scrawny neck?" The soldier towered over them, his whole body a threat. He was by himself this time, which should have made them safer. The teeth-bared twist of his smile told her that it didn’t.

  Laoighre didn't answer. His bowed head hid his expression, although its tilt hinted that he watched the inn’s closed door for rescue. For Breag.

  Sionna had no words either. What use were words? She could smell spiced meat on the soldier's quickened breath.

  "He told me to call by, sewer rat." The soldier loomed closer until he stood toe to toe with Laoighre, and a head taller. "Here I am. What do we do now, do you think?"

  The inn doors swung open and Breag strode through, his face set. He hesitated for the length of a hissed breath, then stepped into the street.

  "Come on you two. It's time we were on the road." No softness here now.

  The soldier laid a knot-knuckled hand on Breag's arm. "Not just yet, stranger. I'm not done here."

  The muscles in Breag's arm tightened and relaxed. Slowly he raised his head and looked at the soldier.

  "We're leaving Caislean now. I wish you a trouble-free winter." Flat voice; words clearly spoken.

  It was the mention of trouble, maybe, that pulled the soldier’s mind back to military business. Slowly he moved his hand from the swell of Breag's bicep. Wordlessly he took a single step backwards.

  "You can't change what he is." The soldier sneered, but his eyes were deadly cold.

  He knows!

  But it was Cú's blackness that had caught his eye.

  The soldier swaggered through the inn's double doors, a look arrowed over his shoulder before the gloom inside swallowed him.

  Sionna could still feel him watching as they left town in the direction they had come from so short a time before.

  Again she walked the roads with the smell of rotted seaweed in her nose. Again the hurry to get where she didn't want to be, to rush from where she didn't want to stay. She should be used to it by now. This time the burden was more, and different.

  Enough whining. She hurt; she would heal. Sionna knew this game.

  She knew this game, true, but she had thought the last hand of it already played. A shock to find it waiting where she thought herself most safe.

  The rhythm of walking felt good in her thighs and calves. Seeing the dunes that hid the sea and Caislean sink slowly behind her was better by a Slaidh carter's mile. The town joined Macha on a short list of places she would lose a toe rather than see again.

  If she was not already reduced to four.

  The flicker of her own humour shocked her. Not broken this time, then? Good. She would go on, stay small, watch for her chance.

  Sionna's eye caught Laoighre's and he graced her with a twitch of his lips before fixing his eyes back onto t
he ruts in the track they followed. Small beginnings. So be it.

  She stretched her arm to ease its burning and left Caislean one step further behind.

  Not broken yet, Breag, but what you did to me won’t be forgotten.

  * * *

  By the time Breag found a place that suited him for their camp, Sionna’s legs no longer rejoiced in their return to the road. The sand-mixed earth made heavy work of walking, and time ran slow as syrup in a group in which each of them had so little to say to the others. The meal they snatched beneath a stand of wintergreen was cold and silent. Despite sore-muscled legs, Sionna was glad when Breag cut the rest break short and they got back on the road.

  Every step beat with Tarbhal’s absence. Every breath carried with it the knowledge of the wolf. The hiss of the knife.

  Cú was the only one who seemed to feel joy in the day, bouncing from one to another and shoving his spade of a head wherever it would be least welcomed.

  He spoke; no doubting this time.

  Sionna prodded the notion with her mind, tracing the shape of it without tasting its implications. Time enough for that. Here, in this moment, it was enough to understand that it gave her fall an entirely new complexion.

  How was it that Anú didn’t know about that part of it? Or was her denial just another lie to tie Sionna closer to her apron strings? No way to know. Anú was left behind, and the choice to stay left with her.

  No regrets for that decision. There were other, bigger griefs. Forcing came in more than one stripe; with sibilant words as much as with a strong right arm. How could she have fooled herself into the thought that Breag would welcome her choice to go with him? Men didn’t share; they took.

  The terrible beauty of him, though. Smooth-flanked and massive shouldered, his entire body a living song. Black-faced; green-eyed; white-throated.

  With a huff of self-contempt Sionna prisoned tears behind tight-squeezed eyes. No more damp-eyed stupidity. Breag had shown who he was, and what he thought of her. She wouldn’t forget again.

  Sionna kept her distance from that new-made flame; its brightness a lie, for it gave out no heat. True fire belonged to the blade, the one whose dark burning now squeezed her shoulder with acid fingers.