Requiem for the Wolf

by Tara Saunders

  His vision lost its colour and greyed under the weight of reality. The boot-steps were Aod's. And the piss wasn't Carad’s.

  "You have something to tell me, I think." His breath came in gulps.

  "I'm afraid that there are only rumours yet from this one, Tánaiste. With time, though--"

  "There is no more time."

  The Allsayer nodded, composed still. "I suspected it when you brought that one."

  Aod. Carad had forgotten.

  "You wonder why I did it, of course. The answer is simple."

  "I didn't come for answers."

  The Allsayer continued as though he hadn't heard, small hands folded neatly over the bulge of his gore-spattered belly. "You shouldn't have lost faith in me. A single slip in all the years that I served. You shouldn't have slighted me by honouring that one."

  Carad stood silent, wondering at the Allsayer's need to explain. He wouldn't have lasted a slow morning on the streets.

  "I have some influence in the Citadel--you won't find it as easy as you think to twist the Athair's mind against me. My calling is a powerful one, and I have potent friends."

  Carad had heard drivel enough. He reached across the body of the supplicant and slammed his knife into the Allsayer’s neck just below his ear. The rattle of the old man’s passing was the most satisfying thing he had heard in a season. A barrel of blood more or less would make no difference in this charnel house. A pity only that the plague-shitter died quick.

  The shuffle of living feet on flagstones reminded Carad that he wasn't alone. Aod's face was white and lumpen as two-day-old curds, but the man stood his ground.

  "Can you read?"

  "No, Tánaiste." Aod's voice was as weak as his stomach. Somewhere in the work of the morning he seemed to have lost his swagger.

  Good. “Search the place. Bring any records or writings to me, then burn it to the ground around him."

  "What about that one?" Aod managed to indicate the supplicant without looking at its stillness, or the swell of its flayed-open belly.

  "Living or dead put her into the street. The Allsayer left us trouble enough. Make the search a quick one."

  Carad stepped again into the rain.

  * * *

  "Forgive me Tánaiste, but was that wise?"

  Although it was Conn the Dependable who spoke, Conn who had saved his life, Carad scarce kept his temper.

  There had been no recriminations while the sun still shone, but now that darkness offered absolution to guard and disciple alike, the challenge had come. Pray the guard made less leeway in destroying him than Carad's own men had.

  "Wise or no, it's done now. The Allsayer’s powerful friends can take it how they will.”

  Connlech’s flush tinged his face for those who knew him well enough to see. "I meant for you. To walk through these streets with only one man at your back."

  For him. A novel idea.

  "What’s done is done, Conn. I came to no harm, so leave it. We have bigger fish to fillet."

  The rap of knuckles on board and Garbhan burst into the room, bringing the damp of Ullach entwined into the fibres of his cloak. Nuada followed a half-step behind.

  "Tánaiste--" Garbhan gulped a mouthful of air into empty lungs. "--the town is rising."

  "We're burned out at the tavern; we hold the stables, but barely." Nuada's feet skittered under him almost of their own volition.

  Carad found himself running, centre of a tight knot of his men. The night was a cloudless one, made all the more bright by the fires that burned through the town.

  "Who?" Let it at least be the guard. To be burned out by the Brotherhood’s own military was too much humiliation to face.

  "Hard to know." Nuada panted alongside. "The whole place is turning on itself like a rabid wildcat. Far as I could make out there's three factions."

  "It was soldiers that burned the tavern, they made no secret of it." Garbhan ushered the group into the cow-barn, peopled now by horses. A strained-looking disciple held the gate, and seemed to fight the urge to look over his shoulder.

  "Doesn't matter who or what, just the getting away for now." Nuada, as usual, had no grasp of the situation's nuances. For him survival was success.

  For Carad the opposite. What had he now?

  A horse was pressed on him, not his own grey, and Carad swung into the saddle. It was headlong, this rout; noplace left for them to go.

  "All accounted for?"

  "All save Aod." Garbhan spoke before Nuada could. "He's at some task you set him in the Allsayer's den."

  Still? "Make sure there's a horse for him. Swords out; take us clear."

  Nuada was first through the barn door, legs too long for the horse's girth, raised sword a ribbon in the moonlight.

  They followed one by one, these men who were Carad's. Cloaks folded behind them, without supplies or any clear destination, they raised their swords high and did as he asked.

  There were shouts, but no man of Ullach stepped up to challenge them. Through streets too bright and busy for night-time they clattered, scattering the strays that stopped to point and gawk.

  The Allsayer's workshop burned bright and high, throwing up sparks that seemed minded to challenge the stars themselves. Fitting. There was no sign of Aod in a street quiet enough to make the skin on the back of Carad's neck twitch.

  "Garbhan, take two men and check the buildings either side. We don't have long." Unspoken that Aod was either here or on his own.

  A roar from where the twisting street emptied into the main one. None of the heave of men who boiled towards them wore either grey or dark blue, although some might again come morning.

  "Belay that. No more time. We've done what we can."

  Garbhan wanted to protest, it was plain, but good sense prevailed. Instead he motioned his men forward and the three pelted into the crowd of torch-waving rioters.

  It was a scene to make the Allsayer proud. Firelight plated friend and foe alike in ruddy russet. The street was too narrow for the mob--mostly unarmed, the fools--to draw back and allow the Brotherhood to pass freely. Carad's remaining disciples gladly joined their three fellows in slashing, trampling, sanctifying a path to freedom.

  It seemed like no time until the street was theirs. Miraculously, no brother had fallen. Carad's heart lightened as he pulled his horse up and took a final look at Fairge, Tir of Ullach.

  To Caislean next, then? If they rode all night it could be reached by midday.

  And then what? Four hands of disciples ride sleepless through the town only to be toppled by a three-year-old girl throwing a stuffed bear? No, better they find a place to regroup. Caislean would be there when they came for it. If that continued to be their path.

  The muffled voice that shouted from the still-bleeding side street could not have been worse-timed if it had been planned for a month. Garbhan hadn't heard yet, busy clucking at the scorched neck of another man's mare. Certain sure Nuada heard more than he wished to, though.

  The second-in-command grimaced a recognition of Aod's voice, mobbed, no doubt, when he emerged too late from his hidey hole. He didn't need words to communicate that he intended to hear nothing and ride on, heedless.

  "Go fetch the pup, Nuada."

  Carad's work-horse nodded and kicked his gelding back into the alley. Aod was held by two men. The boy thrashed like a copperfish, and it caused Nuada twice as much work to avoid his flailing as it did to neatly spit the two who thought themselves free to manhandle a disciple. Aod's scramble onto Nuada's horse was graceless but effective.

  A hiss-thunk, and Nuada slumped onto his beast's chestnut neck with a groan. He held tight, Nuada war-horse, although blood already bloomed circular from the arrow lodged half way up his back.

  "Ride!" Carad grabbed the reins from nerveless hands and wished away his earlier image of corpse's fingers. Aod bounced like a scarecrow on the spare horse.

  A glance told that the bowman didn’t risk himself amongst the mob in the street but instead held a window ac
ross from the Allsayer's blaze. Only his head and shoulders visible now, but no doubting he wore grey.

  Garbhan led them north and east, away from the sea. No bad thing, as it turned out, that he had headed so many patrols. They pulled up as soon as they put space enough between them and the town of Fairge to quiet Carad’s guardians.

  It shocked Carad to find Nuada already dead. Stupid, to think that his second-in-command would wait an order before taking himself off to find his judgement.

  "A good man." Connlech had known him as well as any.

  "An able soldier." And well fitted to his harness.

  The farm Garbhan chose was large and recently deserted. Carad eyed the main bed's feather mattress with covetous eyes, but a true man worked before he slept, as Brother Ultan was fond of saying. Strange what could become habit under the weight of years.

  "Garbhan, in the field you're second in command. See to billeting and rations as best you can. We'll reckon up properly tomorrow."

  Garbhan nodded and left the room, walking taller already.

  "Conn, get what sleep you can. I'll need your pretty tongue tomorrow to pitch this just right to the Athair." Carad clenched his teeth on a giggle.

  He waited until Connlech left to fix his eyes on Aod. Black-streaked where he wasn't bloody, the boy would have been a pitiful sight to any who had the capacity for pity.

  "So, do you have something to tell me?"

  Aod attempted to fall into his usual strut and failed miserably. "Not much, but I saved what I could."

  The words made no sense. Carad had expected a shame-faced account of how the lad had planned to fade into the night. Nobody deserted from Carad's command.

  "I didn't think until the flames were already jumping. The loose stone in the hearth was just like the one my Da had. There was more above, but they scorched before I could get to them."

  Carad accepted the browned bundle Aod held out with an amazement he wouldn't dream of showing. To think, not even novice yet and he risked his life on a throwaway command. There was no accounting for the stupidity of a man following orders.

  "You did better than you know. Sleep now, I'll praise you properly in the morning, when the men can hear."

  Aod's face flushed red, what could be seen of it, and he was still stammering his gratitude when Carad shut the door in his face.

  Letters; just the three of them. The first was a copy of the last one Carad had received in from the Athair, complete even down to the epithets.

  The second Carad read from first to last, put down, lifted, smoothed, read again. It had not struck him that the Athair might have an Ear amongst his men, and if it had he would not have suspected the Allsayer. The truth of it grabbed him by the windpipe and he choked, nauseated.

  The Athair had never meant him to succeed. The seat was Fodhla's in all but name. Always had been. All that was in question was how badly Carad could be made to fail.

  His hands shook as he lifted the third letter. A coarser pen; a different writer. The Lupe he followed had left Caislean, travelled hard for Tearmann. Had likely already left Ullach for the mainland.

  Sparks popped and drifted in Carad's vision. The Lupe meant nothing except as a symbol; never had. Tearmann, though. The disciple who ground that Lupes’ nest under his heel was a man to be watched, no matter what views the Athair might personally hold.

  It wouldn't hurt a disciple with his eyes on the Athair’s chair to hold Fodhla's very life in his hands. A brother who flouted the Lone Man's strict words on chastity so completely that he housed a wife and three children in the town of Shand itself could never be named Athair. That brother would be well advised to flee the Brotherhood entirely, because he risked their lives along with his own.

  A chance, then; slender but sturdy. Strike at Tearmann, outmanoeuvre Fodhla, and the tabard might still be his. It could be done, but only while the Athair lived. A man impugning the new prime, even with the truth, would learn the value of silence a stretched neck too late.

  Carad climbed between the bed's thick cotton sheets, his mind busy. Tomorrow they would leave for the ferry and race the Lupe to Slate Pass. It would be tight, but the animal didn't expect pursuit. Thank the Lone Man that Shand had planted an Ear on him.

  Behind them the farmhouse would burn, and Nuada along with it. A final mark of respect for any disciple who fell in the field, that his flesh was saved from the savagery of Lupes.

  22

  Breag clenched his teeth on an offer of help. Last time he had suggested carrying her pack, Sionna had given him a slow look that roasted him like a potato in its skin and had turned again to the track without replying.

  Even a man who didn't want to see could recognise that she struggled with the hill. Head bowed, breath gasping, Sionna's battle made the climb painful for all of them.

  It was killing her.

  He had tried to deny it. Had explained away the dark circles under her eyes with the excuse that her sleep would settle once she accepted Tearmann. Had tried to force anger at the thought that she ate so little on purpose, to prick his conscience. That she grimaced to remind him what he had done to her.

  And all the time he had known, with a certainty that weighted his gut like a stone. So many years he had hunted the Lost, had used his knife to cleanse the Tiarna of warg. So many wolf-shaped Lost Ones had died on his long road home. Never before had he been forced to watch as the knife hollowed a person dry.

  A person he cared about.

  The memory played itself again and again in Breag's mind. He had taken that small hand in both of his. He had used his strength against her when she tried to protest. He had taken his blade and he had made her bleed.

  She said nothing, but the way she held herself told him that the knife's hunger had taken her arm to the shoulder and moved rapidly into her chest. She heard no better, scented no better, than the boy. And she was cut off from the place inside herself where she could be whole.

  No surprise that she cringed from him; that his body near hers made her afraid. He had hurt her before, and that time he had sworn that he would find a way to fix it.

  This was more than harsh words on the road from Macha. The scent of her filled his nose from waking to sleep; not green apples now but the brown of fruit too long on the ground. No fizz of life; instead rust and old blood. Breag's knife was eating her from the inside.

  There was no way to put it right. No cure once the Fiacal Knife tasted blood and woke to hunger. And no way to tell whether the blade sliced the talent from her flesh completely or merely smothered it still living.

  And that was another problem. The knife. The chill whine of its demand for blood grew every day, every minute. It had shared the sweetness of its hunger with him from the first. Now that a silver-wing nathair in breeding season couldn't force him to wrap his fingers around that oily yellow hilt, the knife chased him into his dreams.

  The inside of Breag's closed eyelids played blood-spattered visions over and over until he cried out in his sleep. Visions of Sionna. Her body flayed and gutted, the satisfying salt of her blood as it pumped from torn arteries. The glorious glisten of her innards as they spilled through splayed fingers. His fingers.

  Breag could still feel the slipperiness of Sionna's intestines as they snaked through his hands. There was time only to turn his head before he vomited into the road.

  I need to fix this.

  No way to fit the shards of the doing back together. Broken, he and Sionna both.

  The girl had turned at the sound of his distress. She said nothing; waited only until she saw that he was done before turning again to her battle with the hill. Cú whined, confused, as he looked from one to the other of them. The gadhar's choice was made already; he had been Sionna's shadow since she had begun to fade.

  "It sickens my stomach too, what you've done to her." Laoighre watched a moment longer, then hurried to offer Sionna a shoulder even thinner than hers.

  She took help from the boy. Not a wonder, though, that she distrusted
what Breag seemed to offer freely. Like the river that flowed southwards along the road that took them North, he was part of their journey but other. Similar but not the same.

  His place behind the others allowed much time for thinking. He had made a mistake that last morning in the room they shared in Caislean. Sionna had bounced in, life sparking from her like a fire of new wood, and offered to go with him. Breag, great hunter, finest of his generation, had twisted it so that she fought him at every step.

  It would be easy to turn, to slink on his knees to Anú's skirts and beg her help. She would have answers, she who knew so much. But at what price?

  No. They could not turn and cower at Anú's feet. Too far, besides, to take the smuggler's road and travel back to Ullach. They would continue to Tearmann. The Eolaí had tasked Breag, and the Marbh before him, to quarter the Tiarna for Lost Seed. They had given him the knife; they could fix what he had used it to break.

  And make her whole again?

  No way to know. Likely he was first to ask the question.

  It helped to have the decision made. Now came the doing. Travel from Caislean to Laoighre's crossing point had taken all of Sionna's strength. She wouldn't survive the long walk North.

  Horses. There was no other answer.

  Breag was quiet through an afternoon of walking. Restless. The others didn't seem to notice; the past weeks had taken him outside of their easy camaraderie. Surprising how much he missed that.

  He found the stopping place in one of his forays off the road; a pair of fallen tree-trunks that crossed in a natural windbreak. The black bones of another fire named it no stranger to this use.

  Breag wondered if they had fallen together. Perhaps the conkers had sprouted together one wet spring long ago, and they had kept one another company in the long climb towards the sky. It made sense that they would fall at the same time, each one losing heart for the bitter struggle of life without the other to keep it strong.

  Or one had toppled the other, maybe. Had grown beside its twin through green and silent centuries until finally, unaccountably, it had embraced the high wind to drag its beloved into ruin.