Requiem for the Wolf

by Tara Saunders

  But they were fallen however it came to be, and nobody cared about a tree's love or its death. Not when the moon shone bright, a sliver of promise glimpsed through fallen branches.

  * * *

  Every night Heliod's rattle-feathered flight into camp with the setting sun caught Breag unawares. However the bird spent his days, his ability to find their night camp could only be called uncanny. The girl fed him the occasional chunk of cheese or dried meat, but doubtless he filled his belly somewhere on the road.

  They skirted towns and farmland, keeping to the high places. People on Ciarraig didn't show the same bone-deep suspicion as an Ul, but only a madman admitted to travelling North. It wearied Breag sometimes.

  Laoighre revelled in his first time off the Island, eyes sharp to every nuance. He set himself the task of collecting firewood at the end of every day, and seemed to welcome the time away from his road companions and the strange burdens they carried between them. The lad said nothing, but Breag suspected he registered every landmark to guide his journey home.

  Cú both brought in a steady supply of fresh meat, and devoured the greatest portion of it himself. Hare, pheasant and, once, a wild goat. The occasional scraggy deer whose rack had won him mates in breeding season and now grew too heavy for straining muscles to carry through a hard winter.

  Such is life.

  They saw a nathair once, its iridescent blue wings folded along the curve of its scaled back. It stomped across their path on short, wide-spaced legs, the jewel of its eye analysing them as they shrank into the shade of an ash tree’s winter-barren trunk. Evidently it found them wanting, for it turned its flat snout back to the path and moved onwards, its tail whipping towards them in threat or warning as it plodded out of sight.

  Sionna should have been captivated by the encounter. Instead she barely lifted her head as she dragged herself away from the tree’s support and shuffled onwards.

  The bite of harvest changing to winter drew them closer to the fire. Breag sat within the corona of light and pretended not to miss the guard's easy company. It would be hard on old bones, this cold.

  Tonight the stars promised a night of light-banked fires and broken sleeping. Soon it would be too cold to sleep unsheltered outside. It felt strange to march an entire day without a word of civility then share body heat as they slept back to back all night.

  This night Laoighre was first to fade. His yawn, his slit-eyed look, held the grains of approaching sleep. Of course, the lad might be covering for his appropriation of the sleep-heavy Cú, the only effective night heating.

  It was long past time that he did what he could to fix this. Thorn. He would remember.

  "Sionna, I'm sorry." Breag ignored Laoighre's long ears under a mound of heaped blankets, and Heliod’s rattled feathers from a wintergreen branch above. None of that mattered any more.

  "Breag..." Sionna's voice was tired.

  "I need you to hear this."

  Sionna's silence was not so much agreement as exhaustion.

  "I'm sorry. I don't ask you to forgive me, I just want you to hear the words."

  "Why did you do it?"

  Breag allowed a moment to pass before he answered. "Because I was angry. And frightened. It seemed the only way to get to the future I wanted to be in."

  "You didn't care whether I wanted it or not." Scorches of anger crept into Sionna's voice, animating it, and her, in a way Breag hadn't seen since he had forced her from Caislean.

  "It was easier to believe that I knew better for you. It fit so neatly with my plans." Breag smiled, the first in a long time. This was right; he could feel it.

  "I'll do what I can to put it right."

  "Can you fix me?" So much hope in Sionna's voice that it hurt Breag to shatter it. Again.

  "I can't take back the knife." He would smash it to splinters if he could.

  Its howl twisted through him at the thought, hungry for the blood that pumped so warm, so close. Each time Breag found it harder to separate himself from that need. When finally he forced it from him he was shaking.

  "I can't take back the knife," he said it again, defiant, "but the Eolaí will know how."

  "Back to that! I should have expected it." Sionna's voice rose to sizzling, and it warmed Breag to hear it.

  "No, not back to that."

  "What's different now, that the words and the doing won't twist in your mouth again?"

  Unfair; he had never promised her freedom. Until now. It was the blood-price he owed, even if it meant the Naomh spun him by the shoulder and sent him back into the Tiarna.

  Lady, not that, please, if you can find another way.

  Breag pulled his pack into his lap and poked inside it with fingers cramped from their endless struggle with the knife. It took a moment to find what he searched for.

  "Somebody very important gave this to me." Breag took both of her hands in his and laced the promise knot around her right one, close to the puckered mouth of the wound that would not close. "A promise the Daoine made to the Lady ripped my heart out and forced me into the Tiarna. This time the choice is my own and my word makes the promise binding."

  "What about your home in Tearmann? Is that irrelevant all of a sudden?" But Sionna's fingers clenched around the ironwork's fine-linked chain, her head bowed to conceal her face.

  Was it forgotten? Breag wouldn't know, couldn't know, until he walked through the mountains and delivered himself into his past.

  "I don't know how that will work for me." The only option now was to be honest. "The man who returns isn't the one who left eight years ago."

  "Can't you just break the blade? Or throw it into a forge somewhere and let the magic melt out of it."

  "They warned me against damage to the knife when I first came to the Tiarna. Breaking the knife won't break the magic, and there's no telling what difference the smallest chip will make to how it works. We can't take that chance."

  Sionna sighed. For herself or for him? Between them the fire hissed and sparked. Beyond it, not a living thing in the world stirred, not even one-eyed Heliod, silent on his branch above them.

  "So be it." Sionna made a decent fist of certainty. "Until Tearmann I'll pull with you. This thing's unspoken, though, not forgiven. When we reach your people you'll find a way to fix this. And you'll let me free."

  The accounting seemed so simple laid out in plain terms. He would face the Eolaí and turn them with his fine words or his strong left arm. He would allow his feet to tread the old paths and see where they took him. Eithne. The Ceann. His mother. From there he would stay or he would go.

  It felt good to repurpose the promise knot into something hopeful, a vow to fix what he had broken. Maybe he could be a better man than the one Eithne had weighed and found wanting.

  Under the glory of a star-filled sky Breag lay on his back, drunk with possibility. He could feel the box that had forced his actions along so narrow a path now burst its straining seams. The future was his now. He would not give that up again.

  Sionna came to lie between him and Laoighre, her back warm against his.

  * * *

  The day dawned foggy but dry. Good weather for stealing horses.

  They needed three at least; remounts if it could be managed. Beasts with leg enough to outrun the heat of first pursuit but not flashy enough to catch the eye of any who might question their riders.

  Only the Brotherhood and the military had horses. There were no Brotherhood strongholds in the vicinity, thank the Lady, so they would rob the military.

  It made perfect sense, although the Breag of last season might not have seen it. That man saw value in making no impression; in passing through a place and a people leaving no trace of himself behind.

  This Breag had people who relied on him and an end in sight. This Breag ran through dark dreams pursued by a knife.

  The theft would proceed flawlessly; there was nothing in the Tiarna Beo that could force him to draw that blade.

  "No!" Laoighre squawked loud enough t
o startle Heliod into a shake of his feathers.

  "We have no choice."

  "No choice but steal from the military? Are you listening to yourself?"

  "You listen to me." Breag pitched his voice low enough not to wake Sionna. "She can't walk all the way to Tearmann, and without the holy men there she's not going to get any better."

  "So we're going North on Sionna's account?" Laoighre fixed bright blue eyes on Breag.

  "That's right." Breag owed the lad no explanations.

  “And there’s no other way?”

  “No.”

  "Then we do it." Laoighre's look was unreadable. "We rob the military."

  * * *

  "Are you sure about this?" Sionna had insisted on coming, even over Breag's strongest protests.

  "Sure enough to think you should have waited by the fire."

  "I'm a part of this. You can't leave me behind."

  She was right. "Then sit tight and remember the plan. Do exactly what we decided and this thing can work." Might work.

  "I’m still not confident in the plan."

  "Would you prefer that we run in there with swords and chop them all to bloody lumps?"

  "No." Sionna's scent thickened, and Breag was reminded that she already carried a full measure of dead soldiers.

  "Then we stick to the plan."

  The garrison stood on the outskirts of a small town whose name Breag didn't know. The ramshackle main building was squat and long, and was overgrown almost to the door with shrubs and long grass. A pair of bata propped up the garrison's gable wall and two pairs of mucky boots bracketed the main door's shallow step. The stablehouse, a title of courtesy more than of fact, was barely visible through the morning's fog, but Breag could scent the fresh rowan branches nailed to the wood above its lintel.

  Did it even hold horses? There was no flesh to their plan, only possibles and hope.

  The first move was Breag's. He had thought that it would feel wrong, drawing the attention of the soldiers he had avoided for so many years. Instead adrenaline made the blood buzz in his ears and he was glad to be alive.

  It was a detour from the plan, but it scorned the Lady's bounty to leave the bata propped so conveniently within reach. Even in late Harvest's phase of dying, the greenery allowed enough cover to collect them without too great a chance of being seen.

  He slipped into the cover of a growth of bramble behind the stable building, wrinkling his nose against the warm prickle of hay and fresh dung. There were horses here. One hurdle vaulted at least.

  Now to see if it could be done. The idea was his, and he had kept his doubts well hidden from the others. He needed this to work, and work fast. If they failed there would be no second chances.

  For the first time in a life spent hunting the Lost, Breag turned inside himself and reached for Bliss.

  There was nothing. His depths loomed dark and empty. Breag panicked. Just like in Caislean, he would fail. Long years of denying what he was had cauterised the talent, leaving only scar tissue, raw and proud. The gift, the curse was gone from him.

  The spark was tiny at first. He would have missed it but for the tide of clarity that bubbled through him, scorching each nerve as it passed. Now Breag could understand the fizz he had felt in Sionna, back when she was whole.

  So joyful and alive, the inner pit of Breag. So much himself, stripped of the accumulation of difficult years. No wonder the Lost Ones wouldn't give it up.

  He could feel Sionna where she knelt with Cú pressed against the curve of her chest, the spirit of her strangled like an ivy-choked sapling. No fizzing now for her.

  Time to do this, if it could be done.

  Breag plunged himself into Bliss, shivering as waves of searing brightness threatened to swamp thought in a revelry of sensation. He felt his nipples harden.

  Too close! He drew back from the effervescent flame; only by a breath, but loss dug cruel claws into the pit of his stomach. He reached again, more cautiously, and felt the twin aspects of himself there in the flame. Man and wolf. Balanced and equal.

  He reached for the wolf and drew it close, but not inside himself. He could feel it: coarse black hair and hard black nails, mobile ears and long legs twitching their desire to run all day.

  It was the smell of it he needed. Breag found the scent glands of the head and anus and separated them from the rest. All of it Breag, but for now he would be a man who smelled like a wolf. The strain made fat beads of sweat pop on his brow, and his clenched jaw was all that forced both parts of himself together.

  Daoine are both man and wolf, but not at the same time.

  What he did here was a very dangerous thing. It wasn't hard to remember Proinsis.

  Breag used the cover of fog and long grass to reach the stable's rear wall. Twin slatted wooden gates allowed light and clean air into the building, and, from the clatter of hooves inside, they also admitted his scent. He prowled all three concealed sides of the building, allowing predator-stink to grow strong and threatening.

  The noise inside was frantic now, the clattering punctuated by high-pitched sounds of fear.

  It took longer than Breag would have liked for the garrison door to jerk open. A fat man in dark militia blues burst through it at a run and trotted across the courtyard. Two others hopped behind, attempting to pull on their boots as they followed.

  Breag released the wolf-scent with a sigh. His part done, unless something unexpected happened. Just as well; his limbs trembled and he had little left to give.

  "Hey Beauty, hey Snow. What's the trouble out here, eh?" The fat one looked only at the stable, arm shading his eyes in a pointless effort to see through the fog.

  Now, Sionna!

  Cú exploded out of the browning greengrowth, his growl deepening to a roar. He had grown in the months on the road; no cub this but a black beast standing tall as a man's waist and broad as a barrel.

  Here, the plan fell asunder.

  Cú's task was to show himself, draw the soldiers' attention with some frightening noise and melt back into the fog at Sionna's call. He performed his part beautifully.

  The problem was with the militiamen. Instead of grabbing their bows and following Cú, every one of them screeched like a girl-child and took off in the other direction. Past the stable and into the woods, where Breag watched and worried.

  He wondered, as he watched the fat legs pump past his hiding place, what relation these spun-sugar soldiers had to the sculpted precision of the Ullach patrols.

  Breag had no trouble creeping back to their meeting point. Even the smallest creatures seemed keen to scuttle from his path.

  It seemed a lifetime before he heard the crash of careful footsteps, and man, woman and gadhar emerged from the fog like the creatures of story.

  The flush of success tinted Sionna's cheeks a healthy pink--rare on her face since Ullach--and she smiled; rarer still. She and Laoighre led two horses each; a pair of bay geldings, a roan mare and a glorious, pale grey vision of equine perfection.

  We did it. Breag realised that he never expected that they would.

  "So, Breag, look what we found wandering the woods." Laoighre’s smile crinkled his eyes near to closed.

  "Very handsome. Should we keep them, do you think?"

  "It would be a shame to leave them to starve." Breag joined in the game. "We should do the noble thing."

  "I always do the noble thing." Laoighre brushed an imaginary speck of dust from the sleeve of a tunic almost too ragged for scaring crows.

  "This is something you've done before." Breag waved a hand towards Laoighre's masterful grip on two halters. Sionna, by comparison, was barely in control.

  "My father was Damh mac Breacan." Laoighre waited for Breag to recognise the name. "A bandit, known for plaguing soldiers. Although not so well known outside of Ullach, it seems." The laugh ripped from his chest.

  "You said 'was'." Breag could see ahead to the twists of this story.

  "The militia caught up with him, finally. Ma too, an
d the other kids. Everyone but me."

  "I'm sorry for your loss, Laoighre. How did you get out?"

  "I'm a survivor." Laoighre used the horses' high-footed dance as an excuse to turn his back on Breag. For a moment he looked almost as uncomfortable as Sionna did.

  Breag was happy to follow the boy's lead in letting the subject drop; he had massacre stories of his own that stole his sleep at night. He skirted the horses, admiring and nervous. He hadn't realised they would be so tall.

  The beasts balked at his scent, dancing and tossing their heads. The grey pivoted to face him, arching her black-maned neck and flaring black nostrils in his direction. Breag back-pedalled fast.

  "We best leave this one."

  Sionna's look spoke volumes, even more than Laoighre's snort.

  "Too striking. We'll draw attention enough on horses without them being so easily identified." It even made sense, Breag was amazed to realise.

  "So, what are we waiting for?" For a moment Sionna seemed to have regained some of her bubbles.

  "I'm waiting for my noble friend to lead the way." Breag doffed an imaginary hat to Laoighre and the boy laughed with a child's delight.

  "And I'm waiting for you to get a bath. You don't smell good." Sionna crinkled her nose, straight-faced.

  She was right, the wolf-stink billowed thick around him. A good thing he realised it before trying to climb onto the horse or not even the Lady could have saved his hide.

  He was going to climb onto a horse. There was a thought worthy of terror.

  Breag left girl, lad and beast to make what they could of the horses while he took a change of clothing to the river. It would be freezing this late-Harvest morning.

  As Sionna moved to tether one of the horses Breag glimpsed a flash of grey at her throat. The promise knot. She saw his eyes on it and smiled, eyes bright.

  Tarbhal had been right. Force was rarely the right option, with a woman least of all.

  Where are you now, old man?