"I'm glad you brought up Dealgan, and the council." Ushna's intention shone clear in his face.
Tarbhal cut it off unbirthed. "No. The council’s full of old men who think they know best; they have no need of one more. And your face marks you too clearly. In the Citadel you'd hinder more than help, and that's plain truth."
Ushna hid his shame behind hardened eyes, but Tarbhal saw it, and closed himself against it. Too late for pretty feelings and soft words. He stretched his hands wide and touched his thumb to each finger in turn, the ache of an old man’s bones nagging him as he did so.
"So be it. I'll not ask again." A coincidence that Ushna turned his scarred left cheek towards Tarbhal as he scanned the road ahead. The Citadel crowned the hill they huddled under, its towers held proudly high against the grovelling of lesser men.
Not that Ushna could see as much in the dark.
They came barely in time. News on the road spoke of a ceremony, of one Tánaiste home in glory from Dun and the other summoned back to watch him win the crown. This Fodhla had the tourney won, so it was said.
Not so cold tonight; another sign the snows were close. The fire swelled under Ushna's skilled fingers, its cheer as welcome as its warmth. The road's last fire. Tarbhal's bones ached for a different sort of burning.
"Tomorrow I go on alone."
Ushna's hissed intake of breath showed the words were unexpected. They shouldn't have been.
"I'm sorry if what I said hurt you, lad, but I meant it for the best. You can't come with me where I'm going."
"I know." Ushna didn't turn his head.
"Truth is that I've broken faith with the council by doing this." Give the lad a spoonful of truth; easier that way to swallow the bitter herbs.
"What do you mean?"
"What I'm doing, taking an old man's life, is more their sort of game than ours, do you see? It's not a thing that's fitting for one of us."
Now Ushna turned, his face strained and white. "So we should thumb the rule-book and watch while they take everything we have? I don't think so. You were the one who taught us to fight. How can you deny us now?"
"Why did you join the guard instead of the militia, tell me?" Tarbhal slapped a hand against his thigh and gave Ushna no time to answer. "To do good, I'm betting, and raise your voice against the bullies."
The spreading flush that stained upwards from Ushna's throat said that the words hit home.
"And if we do this to strengthen our hand, how can we call our sons and brothers to join us? How are we different from them?"
"And without it how can we win? Should we bow the head every time they piss on us, and apologise for every drop that splashes back?"
"The council needs you. They need strong arms for rebuilding and clear eyes to see the way ahead. My time has passed for both." More truth, and this time Tarbhal's was the gut that soured at the bitter taste.
The crack of a knot from the fire made both men jump. Strange, to sit under the Citadel's invisible shadow and play knucklebones with the merits of pulling it apart.
"There's what's right, lad, and what needs to be done. And here's where the two part company. I thank you for your company on the road, but the rest is for me alone."
"You won't be forgotten, Tarbhal." Ushna's face was clear now, and his voice throbbed with strong feeling. "A harder thing to join the wolves than to stand with the herd and offer your throat. I’ll make sure they know what you did, and why."
Tarbhal answered with a grunt. He wormed into fire-warmed blankets and closed his eyes against further talk. Let Ushna remember it like this, with glorious speeches and daring feats of martyrdom.
A pretty tale, and parts of it even true. Ushna had always drawn fine words and high motives; men looked into the earnestness in his eyes and were compelled to meet it with their own. Some even believed it when they stood in front of him and saw their own reflections.
No way to tell the lad that Tarbhal's way skirted both right and truth, and always had. That he fought because the poison in his heart allowed him no rest. Right and truth were tools for other, better men.
He lay still, watching the blackness where the stars should be, until slow, even breaths told him that Ushna had found sleep. Quietly, with the deception of decades, he collected what belonged to him and let his feet find the road.
Better that the morning brought Ushna no choice but return to Dealgan. From here, Tarbhal would walk his own path.
Time mellowed words and faces, but not the hate that curled from his gut to his throat, strong enough to stop his breath. He burned to kill them all, from the old man rotting in his bed to the youngest child in the schoolroom. He would tear their bellies, make garlands of their innards, bathe their blood. And still it would not be enough.
The Athair would die through no act of martyrdom. He would die for Blannad, the skin peeled from her body within sight of her own home.
Most of all, he would die for the babe. For the chance that, once the killing was done, Tarbhal would be able to see his son's face again.
I'm coming, Blannad. Hold my boy safe until I get there.
* * *
The boy trailed behind the other children, winter-wrapped in hood and scarf and gloves. He would have preferred to romp and tumble in his own coat of tawny gold fur, but Ma would skin him alive if he even thought about changing in front of other people.
She’d know, too. Ma knew everything.
Jumping in snow-drifts was fun, but Gerud’s legs were shorter than the others’. A morning of sledding and snowball fighting had left him worn out and ready to be grumpy at the slightest incitement. Time to go home for spiced cider and griddlecakes hot with melted butter. Gerud’s pace picked up a little.
The feeling of Bliss stopped his feet dead in the snow. Somebody holding, a stranger somewhere close.
Ma had talked to him about that at the beginning of Harvest, when Somebody Bad was using their wolf-shape to hurt people. Stay away from strangers, she had warned, her hands tight on his shoulders, face close to his. Stay away from anybody holding Bliss, whether you know them or not. But especially if you don’t.
Gerud shivered, though he wasn’t cold any more. The line of children drifting home had moved on, stranding him alone near the first press of woodland.
The pull of Bliss came again. Gerud felt the tickle of watching eyes, and this time between the trees he could see a pair of amber eyes fixed on him.
Run? He knew better than to run from a wolf. Stand? The other children moved further and further away, not even Dara looking over her shoulder to check whether he followed. Gerud backed away slowly, his gut a drumhead of fear.
“Gerud!”
Uncle Ardal. Gerud’s breath flowed in a long hiss of relief. He was saved; nothing bad could happen while Uncle Ardal was with him.
Uncle closed at what was practically a run, his usually spotless uniform crumpled, his hair straggling from its braid. He must have felt the stranger’s Bliss too.
“Get home, boy. Tell your Ma I’ll come to see her when I’m done here.” He rested a big hand briefly on Gerud’s head, then gave him a little push towards home and pushed past him into the woods.
Gerud took a step or three then paused, torn. Now that he was no longer alone, the smothering fright in his stomach had twisted itself in to a knot of excitement. Was it fair to leave Uncle to deal with the stranger alone? He might need somebody to help.
Gerud slipped between the outlying trees, the snow helping him to keep silent. Ahead he could hear murmurs of speech, too muffled to make out. He crept closer.
He heard Uncle first. “We’re wary of strangers these days. Tell me who you are, and what your business is in Dealgan, else turn your tail and be gone.”
And a woman’s voice, high and cold. “I come from the council. There are to be changes here.”
More talk, none of it interesting to Gerud, who had hoped that Uncle would at least take his wolf’s shape. He listened for a moment more, then turned and hopped throu
gh the snow towards the siren call of cider and griddlecakes.
Uncle could deal with whatever came next.
29
"Well? Do you plan to stare at me all night, or are we going to do something?"
Breag realised he was goggling. With effort he pulled his eyes away from the filthy old dwarf's coarse-haired nakedness. He tried to find something sensible to say, but his mind was empty.
"What are you?" Odran filled the moment; not inspired, but better than Breag had managed.
"Do we have time for this?" Heliod hissed in frustration. "I'm Fiach, that's what. They said you’d forgotten, but I didn't believe your people could be so stupid."
"I didn't know you were real. Nobody talks about you like you're real."
Heliod snorted and presented his back to Odran.
Fiach. Companions in the Dawntime. Breag had thought them the invention of old women, brought in to leaven dry history.
What else was true, then? The possibilities dizzied him.
"So Sionna's left to burn because you can't keep your eyes in your head? I thought you better than that."
“What?” This time Breag heard the old man's words. "Where is she? Who has her?"
"I'll speak slowly. I can see you've lost what little sense you had. Glór-Hunters have taken Sionna. They know she's Daoine. They’ll burn her at dawn."
No. They would not.
Three strides brought Breag to the door. He ignored the cries from the penned Namhaid. The thought of Sionna in Glór-Hunter hands left room for nothing else.
"Breag, have sense." Odran caught his elbow, defying efforts to shake him loose. "When the Naomh finds you gone he'll use the collar against you. If he doesn't kill you, you'll wish he had."
Breag ran both palms around the circlet of engraved metal, cold and alien against his skin. Unbroken, its symbols unreadable and repellent. No part of him.
And he wanted no part of the other Namhaid Ones, huddled in pens, torn between watching and hiding. Old and young, tall and short, but all shrivelled. Other. Animals now, even if they hadn't always been. Better a clean death than a place in their pens.
"Collared?" Heliod grated his outrage. "I didn't know your people still played those games. We have no time for this."
"I can't help that. I've given years enough to the Naomh. He'll have no more of me, collar or not." Sionna was more important. Stupid to stand discussing maybes when Glór-Hunters held her for a fact.
"But I can help it." Heliod stepped closer, single eye darkened, his rank stench affronting even Breag's collar-stunted nostrils. He placed one spider-veined paw on each side of Breag's neck and closed his eye.
The old man's breathing deepened and slowed, and with it the room's light ebbed and died. Darkness puddled in every corner and stretched long, fluid fingers from every sheltered place. Even the high windows shuttered out the dying sun.
Breag felt the beat of darkness within him, beating like the wings of a bird, stroking with feathered fingers into places that had only ever known the wolf. Empty places now, more lonely because of the Bliss that should have filled them.
And when darkened fingers tickled, trickled away, somehow the wolf was there. He was complete. The bright scald of Bliss claimed him from the flat of his head to the tip of his longest toe, crashing through every restraint, driving out the dark.
The clank of metal on metal drowned under the shriek of Namhaid; every single one of them, to judge by the volume. The tingling return of vigour opened Breag's eyes. The Namhaid Collar glinted at him from the hard-packed ground, broken into three pieces.
Namhaid muttering sheered into shrillness. Breag could feel their weight behind him, huddled against the partition that fenced them into their pens, drinking in the fact of his freedom. They were less than Daoine. Just as he had always been.
"Thank you." Wolf-sense drank the rankness of the old man, accepting it, rejoicing in it.
Heliod waved away the gratitude, his discomfort plain. "Now can we get on?"
"I'm sorry, but I can't allow that."
Breag had forgotten about Odran. The husband of his one great love stood in front of the doorway, looking vaguely silly. Tall and slight, built for committees instead of the hunt, and knowing it. And yet he stood. Breag respected him for it, and begrudged the respect.
"Don't be daft, man. Your wife would push me through her washboard if I harmed any of the few hairs you have left." Eithne would, and both knew it.
"My duty's to hold you. And hold you I will." Set jaw under a saggy cheek.
"I want no part of your duty or this place; it's Sionna that's important. Stand there and I'll hurt you to get past."
A split-second hesitation and Odran stepped out of the doorway, blue eyes dropping from Breag's. "It's the truth I'm moving for, not the threat." The words confirmed in lowered lashes.
You chose well, Eithne. The thought hurt less than it should have.
"Please." A voice pitted with disuse.
Breag turned to face the female Namhaid who spoke from the nearest pen; grey, bent, scabrous. Shame battled pleading in her face, but she begged anyway.
"Whatever he did for you, let him do the same for us." Her voice strengthened with every word. "Please."
"I'm sorry." Namhaid the Lady knew how many years; they could wait a few hours more. "There's no time for us to stop. We'll come back for you."
"You can't leave us, knowing what this is. We're dead here. Please."
"We'll come back when we can. I promise it." Another promise wrung from him. Another he would bleed to keep. When would it be his time?
The Fiach shifted from one foot to the other, grimacing. "Pretty words; pretty promises. Come now, before it's too late."
Darkness lapping from the room's shady places warned that Heliod's change was near. The Namhaid could see it too; they drew back to the depths of their enclosures, near the buckets that collected their waste.
The female stood her ground. Dark haired she was, or had been once. Now she stood crowned with badger-patches of white, rags drawn around her like a mantle. She met Heliod's single eye and refused to drop her own.
This was what his mother should have been.
"Do you see us the way they do? Are we pig-phlegm to you too?" Her tone reasonable, which made the anger in her words more easily heard.
Too many images to fit in Breag's mind in a single instant. Daoine children slaughtered by the Brotherhood to protect the Tiarna. A baker's apprentice tortured and burned because he gave directions to a market. A man charged to choose between his own exile or another's future. A knife forged to destroy those who would not agree. A collar.
"No. We're not like them." He turned to Heliod. "We have no choice. There's no walking away from this."
Heliod spat onto the hay-strewn floor. "There's always a choice." But he didn't look displeased.
The last of the daylight soaked into the walls as the woman chivvied her people out of their pens and into a loose group around Heliod. They made a sorry picture; lame, confused, subservient. With every flinch and grimace Breag's sense of rightness swelled.
Forgive me, Sionna. You would have done the same.
Sunset, the Naomh had said. Not long now.
There were fourteen Namhaid; plenty of time to count as Heliod approached the first of them. The others swayed backwards, some muttering. Here in the rags and the cobwebs his nakedness fit, sacrament rather than sacrilege.
The first was tall even by Tiarna measure; he stood a full head higher than Breag and towered out of the dwarf’s reach. The woman motioned him to his knees. Heliod stood before him with palms on the Namhaid's ears and thumbs laid along his temples. He didn't touch the collar's grime-dulled glitter.
The Fiach closed his eyes and the tall one followed him. The hall held the hush of a hilltop crowned by a juniper tree and the winter's last snow. Breag held his breath. He wasn't alone.
The crrrack of shattered copper startled all to toe-tips and one Namhaid to tears. Too-Tall gripp
ed the largest shard with straining knuckles, his brow furrowed near to anger. Slowly, deliberately he regained his feet.
"It's off me." Too-Tall shook his head.
Breag could see the truth of it dawning slowly. His face settled into the smile of the newly dying.
Sharp and painful as the shock of winter bathing, the man who was no longer Namhaid took hold of Bliss. No subtlety in the change; the Lady's secret roared through him. Claimed him.
The light of the man's change stung Breag's eyes. He wiped away tears to see the wolf; gaunt, rangy but bubbling with the stuff of life.
Wordless, Odran unbarred the door and loosed the long-legged one to freedom. The wolf took one long look at Heliod and was gone.
The Namhaid pushed closer, clamouring. The woman pressed back, smoothing them to patience. One by one their numbers dropped; one by one Odran slid the bar and allowed the exit to gape.
And each one dived into Bliss with the desperation of a drowning man. Each slipped through the door on four legs, not two.
"Some of them have never changed before." Exultation in the female Namhaid's voice.
Breag didn't grudge it, although the weight of every passing minute pressed its pattern into his skin.
"They heard us talk of it and swore they’d have no part in such wrong-doing." Nobody left but her, kneeling before Heliod although she stood not much taller than he.
"To feel the flow of it rush back, that's the true Grace." Her eyes closed gently but her fists were clenched to knotwork.
Smooth as oiled pigskin her collar clicked into two pieces almost before Heliod's hands settled on her head. Sure as Planting follows Dorchadas, she straightened into the shape of the wolf; a grey, pale enough to be taken for white. She pirouetted, encircled by a puff of tail, and was gone.
Here was holiness, if only the Naomh could see it. Here was the Lady's fingerprint made flesh.
"Come now or we lose her." Heliod called on darkness again, using its hem to cloak himself in glossy black feathers. He croaked, impatient, and flapped for the opening.
Requiem for the Wolf Page 29
