Requiem for the Wolf

by Tara Saunders

  23

  The barely-there curve of a new moon broke through the clouds for just a moment, but it was enough to set Tarbhal's mind wandering to thoughts of Sionna.

  As though thinking would change anything.

  As though there was anything he'd change if he could.

  Breag would look after her. Of course he would, even after the wormwood of that last argument. Thoughts of what had been said that day planted roots of regret deep in Tarbhal's gut, but done was done and no going back. Pity there was no kinder reason to it than an old man tired of the game he played.

  Tarbhal turned his back on the thickness of cloud where he could no longer see the moon. He smothered a hiss of pain; a reminder that his ancient body held the whip hand.

  How is it that a man's mind never feels its age?

  The humiliation of the journey from Ullach to Shand cut too deep to be forgotten. How soon had he realised that he no longer had the strength for walking? Before Ushna caught up, certain. The guard had been a welcome sight back then. And now?

  Despair had rooted deep into his bones as he sat on that Ullish rock and stared at the endless road. His right knee sent dull orange fire through his leg and into his hip even though he chewed the old healer’s herbs from waking to sunset. His plan to hold tight, to drive his body through the hurting had failed, and everything else failed with it.

  It was then, when the agony of his hip and knee shrieked too loud for even the slowest pace, that Tarbhal felt the sweet chill of an old man’s death breathing down his neck. To the music of Ushna haggling for a handcart to draw an old man along a path he couldn’t walk for himself, Tarbhal had known that he wouldn't see spring.

  What use a cripple who couldn't work his keep?

  He had nobody left to caoin at his bedside, or to bargain with the gods for one more day. All that he loved were gone ahead.

  "So what next?"

  Tarbhal jerked, and a shock of raw agony arrowed through from his knee deep into his hip. This time not even a clenched jaw could hold back his whine of pain.

  "Are you hurting? Do you need more of the herb?" Ushna clucked over him like a bantam hen over her solitary chick. He poked the fire to blazing and turned holding a warmed blanket for Tarbhal's legs.

  "Never mind that." Tarbhal's brow knotted in irritation. Dying maybe, but not so old yet. "Just stick to what's important, lad, and you'll have no problem with me."

  "Tell me what's important, then. It's madness to go any further without letting me know what we were about." Ushna made no attempt to smother his exasperation, his tight copper plait slapping his shoulders as he shook his head.

  No reason not to tell, with Shand no more than a handful of days distant. Ushna was many things, none of them stupid. Too late, now, for him to send a well-meaning message to the council even if he wanted to.

  "The plan's a simple one. Get into the Citadel. Kill the Athair. Bring down the Glór-hunters." Simple, and anything but easy.

  Ushna choked on a mouthful of porridge. Tarbhal had never seen the man out of face before, and he felt an unholy amount of satisfaction in it. Old men took their pleasure where they could find it.

  "That's it?" Ushna spoke when he could. "Or will there be time when we're done to wrestle each brother single-handed and destroy their Lone Man in a burst of smoke and flame? Have you sent word above, to let them know what you’re about?"

  "There's time enough to tweak the details in the doing, lad. The bones of the thing are there. And I have no need of permission. I told you, I’m done with all of that."

  "Well-picked bones they are.” Ushna ignored the second part of what Tarbhal said. “Have you even figured out how to get through the gates? These are Glór-hunters, man, not fiddle-players."

  Ushna had always been like that, even as a boy. When other fellows traded insults and spiders Ushna helped his Da take in the potatoes or slop the pigs. He had no talent for play, his Ma had always said.

  "I'm not asking you to come with me, lad. This is a single man's job if any is."

  Ushna winced, and Tarbhal cursed himself for the stupidity of his words' second meaning.

  "But I am a single man now, remember?" For once the right side of his mouth turned up to match the left.

  "Ushna lad, don't take it like that. I didn't mean to knock the scab off old hurts."

  "There are some things a man can't get past." Ushna lowered his head again to the porridge.

  "What's done can't be changed. Hard as it is, we learn to live with it or we sink under it." The words tasted as false and empty on Tarbhal's tongue as they had when other stupid old men had poured them into his own ears.

  Ushna's bowl clattered into the flames. "Is it such a terrible thing to sink? To lie awake through a winter night and know that if you don't find something to fill the hole then you'll find your answers at the end of a rope."

  They had worried, all of them, when Ushna barred the door of his empty house. Three nights and two days they had worried. Tarbhal was one of the voices calling to kick the door in when they finally heard the scrape of the latch. The Ushna who came out was empty, with no room in him for anything but the guard.

  "Now, lad, you know I didn't mean it that way." Tarbhal tried a conciliatory pat but was knocked away.

  "Or is it different for you because your family are safe in the ground? I've lost Órga and my little lady just as sure as you lost yours, but at least you know they were yours right to the end."

  "Losing his family rips the heart from a man no matter how it comes to him. One way or the other, you're left with nothing."

  "Glór-hunters took my family just as sure as they took yours. The difference is that they made me watch, and try to fight it, and find out that they never really belonged to me." Ushna's fingers drifted to his face and down again.

  Tarbhal watched, and wished he had it in him to feel something.

  "And to leave me for a cheese-maker. I could have swallowed the whispers and the sniggers if they'd kept close. But Dun? I'll never see Grianna again, I know that. She'll grow up thinking he's her Da." The smooth honey of Ushna's voice was suited more to love than to loss.

  "There's no sniggers, or whispers either. You're well thought of; you know that, or you should. I'm sorry, lad. It hurts. It'll never stop hurting. They say time will ease it, but it won't. The only thing time can do is make it easier to bear. Give yourself a chance to get there."

  Ushna said nothing. Tarbhal remembered how it had been, the old men with all feeling dried out of them who had tried to tell him it would get better. They hadn't understood him then. Ushna didn't understand him now.

  It shamed him that he felt nothing but weariness and a wish to be on his own. Ushna deserved more than rote words spoken by a man with no heart left for living.

  Tarbhal had nothing left for Ushna or for himself. He sat with his back to his knapsack and waited.

  "It wasn't my face, you know." Ushna traced the curving scar on his left cheek from ear to mouth, then on to temple. "I asked her. She said that my face had always been too fine, and now it matches what I am on the inside."

  A hard woman, Órga. Ushna had never allowed a word said against her, but there had been whispers. Many envied Ushna the soft looks of every girl from Tuath Cross to Ard Aigle, but he never seemed to notice them. He only ever wanted Órga.

  The girls still looked, the better ones. He'd never see them now.

  "It isn't fair, lad, but you've been a man too long to expect fair." Tarbhal could see nothing of Ushna except his fire-bronzed profile. It felt like speaking to himself.

  "It doesn't matter." Ushna spread the blankets with short, jerky movements. "It's late. We can talk in the morning."

  Morning would mean one more day wasted, one more chance for the gods to upset his plans.

  A blessing, at least, that the patrol had stopped them, though it hadn’t seemed so at the time. A patrol of four hands, marching with the precision they saw more frequently as they drew close to Shand. Strange t
hat Ullach should stew so much in paranoia when it was Shand that lay so close to the mouth of the Slate Pass, where the Lupes were.

  Or maybe not so strange.

  The soldiers passed, with no interest in a farmhand and his granda pulled off the road to allow their betters to pass.

  Trouble came with the outrider trotting behind, his high-tailed chestnut scattering men, carts and oxen out of his path.

  “You!” He had passed before he pulled his mount to a halt. “I know you.”

  Any man who had seen Ushna even once would know him again. Tarbhal tasted the problem of a man with so distinctive a face. How to sneak into the Citadel quick and quiet when every pair of eyes they passed would know them again? Lucky they didn’t travel from the North, but luck grew thin this close to the Corcra Mountains.

  Ushna squared his shoulders and straightened, saying nothing.

  “From Ciarraig, aren’t you? I remember you from when I patrolled there three seasons back.”

  The soldier didn’t associate Ushna with guard’s greys, then. Maybe all wasn’t lost.

  “I’ve come to my mother’s people.” Ushna spoke hard and surly. “There was a problem with a girl.”

  The soldier laughed. “Didn’t take kindly to you, did she not? No surprise there, boy. It wasn’t the first time, I’ll wager.”

  Ushna’s face darkened further. He didn’t answer.

  “Could be you’ll find a girl around here that isn’t too particular and might give you a turn.” The guard’s malice seemed entirely unstudied. “With Tánaiste Fodhla about to step into the Athair’s boots any day now, there’ll be a lot of celebrating done, if you catch my meaning.”

  With a wink and a flick of his reins the soldier was gone, leaving behind a more than usually silent Ushna and plenty for Tarbhal to chew on. Time was shorter than he thought.

  "I'm sorry, lad." Tarbhal didn't know whether he sympathised or apologised. Words made no difference, now or ever.

  It was what a man did that mattered. Come morning, this old man would head out towards Shand. He would find a way into the Citadel and would put an end to the Athair.

  I'm sorry, Blannad love. I should have done this forty years ago. You deserved better.

  His mind's eye could see her clear as the day the rains came on their wedding vows, the way she laughed and danced through the puddles.

  Not the bab, though. Fat arms waving and the smell of warm milk. Easier to walk a thousand miles on broken legs than to make the boy's face come.

  For that he would take down the Brotherhood. For his boy he would see the Athair dead and claim justice long overdue.

  With luck, he wouldn't make it out of the Citadel afterwards. This old man had lived long enough.

  24

  The soul-devouring tiredness never eased. No matter how much it sucked from her, the knife's hunger never sated.

  Naming it brought the beast closer. Sionna gasped under the knife's burn. Scorching talons shredded her chest and shoulder, claiming where they passed. Her lungs emptied and refused to fill again. She struggled until her vision blacked, both of her hands wrenching at her throat. Only when she felt hope and consciousness slide through relaxing fingers did the knife relent.

  Sionna's body was only barely hers now, and what small part the blade didn't hold, it coveted. Bliss was no more to her than summer dreaming on a frozen winter night.

  She didn't have long left. The knife would win. She had nothing more to throw in its path.

  The Eolaí would have an answer, Breag said. And yet the Eolaí had forced the knife into his unwilling hand and sent him from his home to hunt the likes of her.

  But without them she didn’t even have hope.

  Behind her, Heliod dropped from the sky to a dead branch by the trail’s edge. The whirr of his feathers reminded Sionna that buzzards crowded her from more than one direction, hungry to destroy her with their greed. The Eolaí weren't the only ones to try force.

  Hard to know what Anú thought to wring from this, with so much time and distance stretched between them. Something, or the bird would have flown back to its familiar long since, instead of keeping constant sentry from a sky dark and luminous with the promise of snow.

  "Pick your feet up, girlie. Your turn to feed us tonight, remember?"

  Laoighre's chirrup reminded Sionna that six anxious eyes counted every breath for her now--seven, if she included Heliod. The smile she plastered on was long in the finding.

  Breag watched from the roan's back, unmoving. The distance was too far for Sionna to see his expression; it was unlikely to tell her much in any case. The closer they came to Tearmann, the tighter he pulled inside himself.

  "That's a comfy seat you've found, but it isn't getting my dinner made." When Laoighre found a tuneful song he hammered it hard enough to set his audience groaning.

  "Hold your tongue. I'm an old lady compared to you, remember?" A slight exaggeration.

  Breag humphed, a sound suspiciously close to laughter. "And what does that make me? Ten years planted in the ground?"

  "Needing a hand down, Granpa? I'll save you a seat closest to the fire and you can bore us with stories about how the wildwraiths and the bean gruaige were bigger and more ferocious in your day." Laoighre offered his arm with a flourish.

  Breag's face slipped back to impassive. "I'll ride on around a corner or two while you two set up; check against surprises."

  Sionna watched him out of sight before she eased from the saddle. His seat was even worse than hers, and his aches more numerous, to judge by the groans he gave when he thought nobody could hear. Any other day his choice to lengthen his time on the roan would have scared Sionna witless.

  But today she watched, the promise knot tight in a clenched fist. For good or ill, only half a day's riding separated them from Tearmann.

  "It isn't too late." Laoighre's eyes were pinched in his fox-face, his breathing quick and shallow. "We could turn and leave the whole mess in our dust. Snows are due soon. He'd never catch us now we're mounted."

  Sionna's eyes stung with tears that came far too easily these days. She should never have allowed Laoighre to be pulled into her trouble. Not many would leave everything to ride North for the sake of a Lupe. She hoped he wouldn't suffer for the friendship he offered with no thought of a return.

  Cú whined and planted himself in the trail, watching the place where Breag would first be seen. Hard to know how much he knew, this animal who was more than an animal. Just as she was less than human, or more, or maybe just different.

  "I can't." She could offer Laoighre only honesty. "I don't have strength enough to hold out against the knife. Without Tearmann's answers I'm dead already."

  Laoighre turned his head, the tiny club of his tied-back braid a pathetic symbol of the heart of him. So much more to a man than the growth of his hair. "Remember that I'm here. When the time comes I'll do what I can."

  "I'll remember."

  Sionna turned her back on the mountains and worked to turn the last of their dried wood into a fire, while Laoighre managed the horses. If this was her last night as a free woman then the blaze of her passing would be bright enough to catch even the Lady's eye.

  * * *

  "I'm frightened." The words tore from Sionna against her will. She had promised herself she would be strong.

  Breag turned in his saddle, solid and reassuring. Laoighre trailed far behind, his reluctance loud in his horse's shortened stride.

  "I'm going to put this right, Sionna. Trust me." Breag’s face set pale and tight, but truth spoke from his brown eyes. And something more.

  "I trust you." And she did. Trusted him enough to ride into this wolf-trap, against experience and against the screaming of her instincts. She had her eyes open and her arms spread wide.

  "I won't let you down this time." No matter what it cost him; that part unsaid.

  "I know."

  She would have understood more without the knife's weight smothering her senses. So hard to smell sw
eaty horse and linseed when she knew there should be warm granite wrapped in bramble. So hard to be robbed as well as murdered.

  Murdered like the soldiers on the mountain, a crime lifetimes darker than the one Breag had forced on her. There was balance here, if she could allow herself to see it.

  "Let me fix this first. Then there are things I would say to you."

  Sionna struggled with silence, the knot in her stomach battling with the staccato of her heartbeat to be first to steal her breath. Breag's dark eyes pinned her a moment longer before he turned and clicked his roan back to walking. Something moved in the space between them now; something sleek-furred and sinuous and impossible to take back.

  A promise. One that Sionna would wrestle nathair to see him keep.

  * * *

  Tearmann didn't look like home. It glowered in the false winter sun, visible only in bright-walled buildings huddled together against a grey-black sky.

  "Doesn’t look like they started the welcome party without us." Laoighre's fists clenched tight around his chestnut’s reins.

  No sign of Heliod. The raven had fled with the night. Returned to his mistress, no doubt, with word that her snare was robbed by other, darker hunters.

  Sionna leaned back in the saddle, breath held against a trail so steep that the horses struggled to keep their footing.

  “It’s safer than you think.” Breag must have seen the look on her face. He’d never travelled the pass on horseback, so Sionna didn’t give too much weight to his words.

  “The bottom of the trail is blocked and guarded, and they’ll have eyes watching the pass." Breag's voice betrayed his own strain. "We'll not get through unless they know what we're about."

  Would he be recognised, this man who had left as a boy? How much of what it had killed him to leave behind waited silent behind those blank-faced walls?

  A mother and a grandfather he had left. And a girl; important to him, to judge by the few, weighted words he spoke of her. Was she still waiting, this girl?