Requiem for the Wolf

by Tara Saunders

  For the first time Breag opened himself unreservedly to the wolf. Bliss effervesced through him, rising like water in an over-filled beaker until it was more than he could hold. The Lady's blessing ran through him, out of him in scald-chilling rivulets. Every drop of blood, every blade of hair rioted with its passing. The breath roared from his lungs with pleasure and the rightness of this.

  Man and wolf, both and neither, Breag gloried in it.

  Finally whole. Finally Thorn.

  Strong and hungry he barrelled through the door and into the squint of the setting sun, bowling through the knot of Eolaí who pressed from its other side.

  Poor Odran. This time it's you that loses.

  Following Heliod's guttural croaks of encouragement Breag stretched his body and bounded towards the pass. If the Daoine of Tearmann watched him leave, he didn't notice them.

  I'm coming, Sionna.

  * * *

  Not hard to find the camp, even in darkness. Breag's nose led him first along the narrowness of the trail they had descended the day before--a lifetime ago--and then south, into scrub.

  Good lad, Laoighre.

  Here the snail-silvers of careful Glór-Hunters bisected their path. Here circled the stench of blood and hate, its snare tightening until it clenched on the once-living camp.

  Here was Cú.

  The gadhar lay on his side, flanks rising and falling slowly. Blood leaked from his shoulder and smeared the grass behind him further than Breag would have thought it possible to crawl with such a wound.

  "Easy, friend." Breag touched muzzles with Cú, honouring his struggle.

  "Thorn." Gladness pitched Cú's whine to shrillness. "I didn't think to find your shoulder tonight, cousin."

  "What happened?" Stupid question; one a wolf would find no need to ask.

  "They came at dawn. I scented them too late." Cú struggled to all four feet, favouring his right shoulder.

  "Can you hold here? I have no time to wait."

  "Go. They need you more than I do."

  Breag took his word and left him, following the scent of his pack into the west. So strange a pack: boy, raven, gadhar. And Sionna.

  So many different ways to think that I should never have brought her here.

  But where else for them? Caislean with Anú? The old one would use them like garden shears and discard them once their blades blunted. Where, then?

  No answers yet. First to find Sionna and Laoighre, to bring them out safe and well. Answers later.

  No stars to help him find the way. No moon shining the Lady's approval over his path. Just a foul old raven and a Daoine who didn't know how to be a wolf.

  Something tickled his ear and was gone. And another, fleetingly cold on the tip of his nose. Fat flakes, few at first and then ribbon-twisting everywhere. Breag loped through them, encapsulated, invigorated. The world was changed just for tonight, just while the first snow fell.

  It would be enough.

  * * *

  The Brotherhood encampment crouched small and tight to the south and east of the pass mouth. Not many of them; maybe twenty, moving from fire to tents with quick, purposeful steps. Two men stood watch; pointless when snow fell so thick that each could scarce see his own tent from the fire in full daylight. At night, laughable.

  No sign of Sionna, although the scent of her was strong.

  Laoighre sprawled behind the southernmost tent, close to the latrines. Inelegant in death, a half-hidden shape in the drifting snow, his limbs crooked uncomfortably from his body. Breag itched to go to him and straighten him to peacefulness.

  The grief that clenched his heart in fisted digits surprised him. Breag-wolf again and again fought the urge to lift his nose to where he knew the Lady hid, and sing his sorrow and his honour for the fallen.

  Laoighre was just a boy, and not a brave one. What had they done to Sionna, while Breag waited and did nothing?

  He lay on his belly, the cold ground seeping through his fur to lodge between his ribs. His breath huffed steam, marking his place in the dark, each exhalation turning inaction to action. Half-buried, he claimed the snow's message for himself. A sign for him; a sign he would succeed. Heliod perched somewhere behind him, silent.

  An hour, more, of watching and still no idea of what to do. Night and blizzard helped those whose senses didn’t go to sleep with the sun, but there were still too many. Distraction wouldn't work this time; too many of them, too carefully trained. He could try stealth; sneaking in and spiriting her away.

  What state was Sionna in? Could she walk?

  Breag pushed that thought away. He would think of something. He would be in time.

  The rustle of Heliod shaking snow from his feathers reminded Breag that he didn't do this alone. But no Laoighre to make extravagant plans with. No Sionna to demand her share of the danger. He crouched alone in the spreading cold.

  A shape slipped out of the whiteness, on top of him before he could properly make it out. Cú! Limping badly from his right shoulder but covering the ground. Breag leaped to meet him.

  And more shapes ghosting into being around him. Silent, slipping between flakes, pressing against his flanks in greeting. Dark ones and light, long-legged and compact, old ones and young.

  Namhaid no more, outside no longer. They made their own pack. At its head the female, a shade darker than the snow, leaping lightly through the feathered downpour.

  "You're not easily found in the snow. Without this one we never would have caught your scent."

  "Why are you here?" Take nothing on faith.

  "We owe you a huge debt. You risked everything to set us free; we’ll see that it doesn't count against you."

  Breag was saved. Sionna was saved.

  * * *

  Breag led them as they slipped through darkness and falling snow, a shout on every lips. Cú followed, and Heliod, and the Namhaid--all human. All naked.

  From the north they came, ranged one after the other like a flock of geese tasting winter's first chill. Too few of them to circle the camp. This way left a wide avenue for the Glór-hunters to run away.

  Breag's feet quickly numbed to irrelevance. No matter. Fat flakes landed on his body, melting and then drifting as the surface of his skin lost its warmth. He shouted old swear-words and new-minted nonsense. The snow swallowed them and continued falling.

  "Sionna! I'm here." The most important shout, bellowed when Breag hoped they were near enough for her to hear. To know that he kept faith.

  The violence of their roaring cracked the blizzard-silence. Breag could see each tent vomit out its men in a confusion of blue-dyed linen and long underwear.

  A blond man, heart of the storm, calm in the scrambling. Leader, surely, calling quiet orders. Blue eyes met Breag's and held them. Behind him a bow--bad news. But no time to nock an arrow.

  Now!

  He grabbed hold of Bliss. On every side he felt his pack do the same. Heat prickled through them, soldered them to him and he to them. Louder they roared, and faster the Brotherhood scuttled.

  The female led the change, launching herself into the wolf's shape between one leap and the next. They followed, one by one and all together, the fire of it arching between them and melding them into a single unit. Pack.

  Only Heliod thundered into the camp on two legs. Naked and hairy, he growled deeper than any. Small wonder the Brotherhood ran from him.

  And then Breag was among them. He reared on two paws and tore out the bowman's throat, then whirled and ripped another. The blond leader, lips pulled back from his teeth, plunged his sword towards Breag's ribs. Breag skittered sideways, his hocks bowling another blue-linen Glór-hunter off his feet. Everywhere screaming, snarling, cursing. The rich brown scent of blood dizzied him.

  Blond Leader hacked with the sword again, two-handed. Unexpected this time, a glancing slice along Breag’s neck and into the ruff of his shoulder. The blood-scent his own now. And Cú, long white teeth meeting through the sword-arm's bicep. Screaming. Blond Leader dropped th
e sword and staggered, alive only because of Cú's injury.

  A scent known, from Dealgan. Boulder? How? But no matter. He would pay with all the others that dared lay hands on Sionna.

  Every human fallen now, or fleeing. A handful scrambling for the pass with Blond Leader bleeding at their head. Let them go. Let them spread the word.

  The blond man turned and shouted something. Impossible to hear. A raised fist and the survivors were gone, entombed in snow.

  It was over.

  No sound but deep breathing and low moans. A Namhaid writhed, bright blood bubbling from his nose and the gash between his ribs. The female stood over him, helpless. A race between death and healing. No way to guess the winner.

  Sionna.

  Five tents pitched downwind of the fires; four smaller ranged outside a larger one.

  The scent of her ebbed thicker than the heavy miasma of blood. Breag followed his nose to the centred canvas.

  The entrance was laced tight enough that not even the limber shape of wolf could find its way through. Tight enough that it needed fingers to unpick it.

  Naked man inside or gore-spattered wolf whining at the gate? He had dared too much to be turned by such a thing as taut-pulled leather.

  "Let me help you, my friend."

  Amusement buried in the meat of Heliod's offer? The ugly little man unpicked the knot with fingers thickened neither by the cold nor by awareness of the manhood that bobbed soft against his leg.

  As a wolf Breag stepped through the parted canvas. As a wolf he scented Sionna, curled in the westernmost corner, hemp-tied at ankle, knee and wrist, with linen wadded in her mouth. As a wolf he watched her watch him approaching; as a wolf he tasted what lay unspoken in the space between them.

  But as a man he reached for her, held her close, fumbled with the knots that bound her. As a man he wrapped his arms around her and claimed her as his.

  30

  Dawn came late and slow, and brought with it no respite from the blizzard. Carad plodded forward at the head of his command; two blooded survivors. The cold deadened the pain in his savaged left arm, a single mercy in all that had gone astray. Flesh wound. Lost blood to echo his lost hope.

  How could this have happened? From everything to nothing in the space of a single night.

  The Athair had been right. Lupes should be cleansed from the face of the Tiarna. Filth. The memory of it would haunt Carad's nightmares; naked men and women running through the snow. Changing, between one step and the next. How to describe the way hair sprouted from smooth flesh? Bones melted into new configurations? Faces twisted from man to beast?

  Unnatural. Unclean.

  A shape lurched from between the flakes and Carad reached instinctively towards his empty sheath. Agony screamed through the arm. Behind him a Disciple shrieked. No telling which one. It didn't matter.

  The shape resolved itself into Garbhan. Gone ahead to scout the pass, Carad remembered now. That didn't matter either.

  I’ll miss Conn. He deserved better than Lupe teeth in his throat.

  "I've found a place to rest." Garbhan stood square in the path until Carad had no choice but stop. "Not much more than a dimple in the rock, but this snow'll blow itself out before long."

  Ha! Carad rocked back on his heels, his eyes narrowed on Garbhan's. The snow would never end; they were safe nowhere. A man who said otherwise was a liar.

  A spurt of anger warmed him, and he reached again absently for his sword.

  Garbhan lead the way north-west, uphill, to a depression that sheltered behind a lozenge-shaped freestanding rock. Not much, but freed from the pressure of driving snow Carad felt his control trickle slowly back.

  Should I feel angry now?

  Space for only one in the dimple. Carad forced the worst-injured of them into its shelter over the man's muttered protests. Maitiu. A penitent undistinguished except that he had survived an Unclean attack on the camp. And, in the process, had lost his left arm at the elbow.

  Carad led a shivering army of three now. Garbhan; solid, irreplaceable. Maitiu; one-armed and failing fast. And Aod. The Dealgan man.

  So hard not to blame that one for the night, and for the loss. Tainted by association. Outspoken, brash, staggering, whey-faced, silenced.

  What was it Brother Luca always said? "A leader stands or falls with his command".

  Carad hadn't thought much of it as a boy either.

  Not a leader, not a winner. Fodhla had won. Carad would remain weak Tánaiste to strong Athair.

  If he allows me to stay. I wouldn't, if the boots were switched.

  "What now, Tánaiste?" Aod pushed back the fur of his borrowed hood.

  Without Garbhan they would have frozen even before they bled to death. Who else would have made a cache? Who else could have found it in time?

  Now? No choices. Stay and die or go back and be buried. Hardly worth the deciding.

  "Leave the Tánaiste be, Aod. He has much to think about." Garbhan spoke to fill an awkward silence.

  If Carad had been an ordinary man he might call Garbhan friend. Baker, cooper, candle-maker; what path might he have followed if Brother Ultan had never plucked him from the streets of Dun?

  Dead, most likely.

  But he was no longer a starveling boy stupid enough to pick a Glór-Hunter's purse. This Carad would not bend his neck for the axe.

  "Are they coming? Will they come for us?" Panic in Aod's voice.

  "Not likely, now we're moving away. Calm yourself, we're safe as we can be here." Carad almost believed the words himself.

  "I can't. I can't think of anything else." Aod turned huge, haunted eyes on Carad.

  "Hard for them to find us in the snow. We're safe. Trust me." Trust me.

  "I used to love the snow as a boy." Aod spoke to his own feet, eyes clenched tight.

  "You're not a farmer's son then. Snow makes too much work." Garbhan grimaced and brushed melt from his coat-front.

  "My father was a smith. He'd bundle us boys up come the first snowfall and take us up into the hills to make our mark in the fresh snow. Ma hated it."

  "My brother would take us little ones to the sea, if it froze enough for that. We'd stomp through the foam-slush until we couldn’t feel our toes."

  Carad had never heard that soft tone in Garbhan's voice before; nor heard him speak of his family. He manoeuvred himself until he stood with a shoulder against the rock, watching the snowfall slow to individual flakes and trying not to recall his own childhood memories of cold.

  "My brother's still there, farming and raising his own sons." Garbhan's tone darkened.

  A better life than this one.

  "Do you see him often?" Aod’s voice was slowly losing its sharp edge of panic.

  "Not encouraged to in the Brotherhood. You'll learn that."

  "I have none to go back to. Father and brother's dead. Ma won't want me after this. Not over-fond of the Brotherhood, my family." Bitterness warmed Aod's voice, edging out the last of the fear.

  I have no past, but I thought I'd have a future.

  Enough. Enough of the past and happy families. Time to think and make plans.

  No more jumping on the whim of an old man. No more tugging the forelock.

  No more Brotherhood.

  A jolt of possibility sparkled through Carad, driving him from the rock's shelter and into the open. The snow had stopped. The world was silent and clean.

  I'm not a starveling child now. Why should I be a Brother if it doesn't serve my interests?

  There was coin. Carad had always salted away a part of everything that passed through his hands. A starveling child remembers. Enough for a new name and a new start.

  I always wanted to be a spice merchant.

  It was true, Carad realised. The dreams he had lost were not the only dreams. If not spice then horses, or wine. His place was waiting somewhere out there.

  Back to Shand. Smile prettily for The Athair and for Fodhla. Collect his coin. Slip quietly into the night's darkness.
/>   The crisp bite of frozen air in his lungs promised that he would not fail. The circling of a bird high in the greyness of the sky omened freedom and a chance to chart his own direction.

  "Let's go. I want to get back to Shand before we catch more snow." Even Carad's voice sparkled.

  Aod caught the undertone of excitement and climbed to his feet. He smiled at Carad, eyes almost clear of their glassiness. "Thank you. I nearly lost myself."

  "All will be well from here, I can feel it." Carad smiled back, meaning it.

  Garbhan was already standing, watching, saying nothing. A soldier's nose for trouble. Carad hoped it would serve him well in his long, dead days with the Brotherhood.

  "Come on, lazy. Let's get you back to the healer." Carad stretched to help Maitiu to his feet.

  The soldier's flesh was clammy; his last breath had come and gone, unmarked.

  A pity, that. Still, they would make better time without the burden of the wounded. Enough of the mountains, and Tearmann, and the Lupes.

  Overhead the bird still wheeled. Whatever its target, no way to find it in the snow. The bird would be wise to save its energy and look to its own nest.

  31

  "You there!"

  Tarbhal froze, his heart a blacksmith's hammer under his pleasant mask of enquiry.

  "You shouldn't be in here. This is The Athair's private area." The soldier rested a threatening hand on his hilt.

  A half-way competent knife man and you'd be dead already, my friend.

  "Then I've found my way right. It's the Athair I'm here to see." Tarbhal shuffled his papers with an air of befuddlement, his brow gently wrinkled.

  The soldier followed each line of the note with a fat finger. "The seal's right at least. Healer, is it? We could do with some of that here."

  "I hope I can bring The Athair some peace." Tarbhal fought hard not to clench his hands into fists.

  For all the soldier’s slowness, his investigation of Tarbhal's healing bag was painfully thorough. He handled each tool, frowned, tested the edge. He paused on one, frown deepening.