A Different Kingdom

by Paul Kearney

  Cat was as able as a hunter as any of them, and sat in on their councils, her pale face a sharp contrast to their dark ones and the tangle of Michael's beard. They were a little in awe of her, Michael thought, for she could outrun many of them and had a way with the forest animals which was unique. They considered her to be something of a witch because of how she loved the wood. They said the trees spoke to her. She and Michael were together always. She was his shadow, the flip side of his life.

  Michael's 'fire-stick' remained unused, though it and the sword gained him much respect from the men. The respect survived even his first clumsy attempts at hunting and snaring. He was something of a warlock to them. Perhaps it was because they would glimpse movement up in the trees when he was out with them, or hear laughter far off in the wood. The Wyrim watched over him, they said. And they considered him lucky.

  He would find things in his path in the wood—a posy of heartsease, a pheasant hanging from a branch, a ribbon-bound twig, a pair of magpie feathers—and he would know that Mirkady was keeping his word. The Forest-Folk were out there, overseeing mm and looking after Cat, who was almost one of them, after all.

  And he saw the Horseman once, whilst out hunting in the chill dark before dawn. He was sitting still as stone in a clearing under the fleeing stars with his mount a raven statue beneath him. Werewolves grovelled at his feet and gore crows circled around his hooded head. Michael had lurched away stifffaced and quaking, knowing that he had not gone away. That he would never go away. Some obscure umbilical connecting them had not yet been cut.

  So time passed, unrecorded and unaccounted for. He lost track of the months, but was conscious of a disharmony, a thing half-forgotten at the back of his mind, and as the snows melted and the woods began to flame with buds and birdsong, the feeling grew. He had to be moving on—. He had to journey deeper to the heart of things. He had not lost the conviction that his Aunt Rose was here somewhere; perhaps in the Castle of the Horseman that Mirkady had spoken of. His quest drew him.

  The men of the tribe had a meeting in the biggest of the huts to discuss the spring move. It was crowded inside, rank with the smell of unwashed bodies and woodsmoke, but there was a welcome warmth from the close-packed crowd and the yellow flames which were the only light. Cat was there, pressed against Michael's side. Some of the younger men, no more than boys if truth be told, stood around the walls for want of a seat, stooping because of the low roof. Scraps of bark and mud fell from above constantly; the burrowing mice had woken with the change of the season. That, Ringbone told them, was a lucky sign. It meant a good spring, a fruitful year.

  The men were leaner than ever, the firelight making skulls out of their faces with the eyes ii deep glitter in cavernous sockets, the cheekbones sharp as pebbles. It had not been an especially bad winter, but this close to the heart of nature all living things suffered in the dark half of the year. Once, for Michael, winter had been snowballing and sledging, coming in out of the dark to hot cocoa and a blazing hearth. It was more now. He could feel the season in his bones, in the lines his ribs carved out of his skin. He could see it in the sunken look of Cat's face. It was a thing to survive, a test. At least three of the very old and the very young of the tribe had not passed it. That was the way this world worked.

  The meeting was entirely democratic. The men knew that Ringbone was the man who knew best where the Knights were likely to be and what their intentions would be with the breaking of the snows. Semuin was the best hunter, who knew the widest game trails and had the movements of the deer herds mapped out in his head. And old Irae knew what places to leave alone, those sacred to the Wyrim. He knew what offerings to make to the Forest-Folk to pass through their barriers and territories, though he seemed rather disgruntled because Cat was present and would probably know these things better than he.

  No one ordered anyone else. Everything came in the way of a suggestion, which could be agreed with or discarded. There was a kind of osmotic drift of argument as one by one the tribe's most knowledgeable men gave their opinions. The Knights would be out in force soon, seeking the despoilers of the village; the Fox-People would not be able to trade with any of the nearby settlements this spring, but must move south into the empty forests where the game was most plentiful, even if it meant moving closer to the Wolfweald. The Knights would not follow them there.

  A few of the younger men, clearly full of themselves, said that they should not run from the Knights; they could beat them in a fight any time they liked, especially with the Farsider's fire-stick.

  There was a silence after this, the older men unspeaking. Utwychtan, the Farsider, was what they called Michael, as they called Cat Teowynn, the TreeMaiden. It was a name that pleased her immensely.

  It was not good to bring the Farsider into a quarrel that was belonging to the people alone, Ringbone said. The Farsider might want to go his own way some time, and to do that he would not need a troop of Knights on his tail. He no longer looked like the boy who had slain the Knights in the autumn, and so they would not touch him. Better to leave it that way.

  Ringbone met Michael's eyes across the fire, and Michael knew then that the fox man did not expect him to remain with the tribe another winter. He was giving him free rein.

  'I will go south with the tribe,' he said. He thought his path lay that way in any case, and he was reluctant to begin journeying with only Cat for company. He felt like a child in this land and knew that he had vast things yet to learn.

  He could feel her eyes on his face in the dimness. She gripped his arm through the heavy robe.

  'Are you glad to be going south?'

  He could not answer her.

  'No one goes in or out of the Wolfweald but those who are taken by the Horseman,' she said, as though reading his mind. 'Not even the Wyrim go there. And his castle may be only a tale, a legend. None knows.'

  'It's there. I know.'

  'How?'

  He smiled. 'Because in fairy tales there's always a haunted castle.'

  'You fool.' But her grip on his arm remained. She laid her lovely head on his shoulder.

  SO THEY MOVED south, through the melting drifts and the sound of running water. Sixty souls labouring through the birthing forest with their belongings, their very homes, lashed to their backs or perching on the backs of the two horses—thin, their coats long and tangled and the bones long ridges under their hides, a relief map of hunger.

  The men ranged far ahead and behind, and off on the flanks to ware against any sudden enemy. They looked like strangely upright apes when glimpsed through the trees, wrapped in furs and hide, the fox headdresses barbaric on their heads. When they hunkered down to spy they disappeared against the black tree trunks, and when they warbled softly through the wood the whole straggling column of women and children and old people would freeze where they stood and wait patiently. And Cat would talk in a low whisper to Fancy and the grey so that they would be still, the white breath pluming from their nostrils.

  Days passed in this manner, and slowly but perceptibly the wood changed. It grew thicker, darker, with more yew and spruce, holly and Scots pine, birch on the higher hills. But they were able to take off their verminous furs as the weather slowly warmed and Cat scrubbed herself in a pool they found, though it made her pant with cold. The tribe camped for the night on its bank and chewed smoked venison around the fires whilst a patrol of the young men circled the area, wary of the beasts.

  But the forest seemed deserted. Even birds were few and far between. And there were mutterings about the wisdom of moving to a part of the wood that was so scarce in game.

  It was in the depths of night that Michael awoke to find himself staring up at stars and the black limbs of the over-hanging trees. Cat was curled against him and the nearby fire was a low, red glimmer. Other shapes lay crumpled around other glows. It was piercingly cold, and his mind was as clear and sharp as a flake of flint.

  What had woken him?

  He eased himself out from under the bearskin, Ca
t murmuring to herself at the loss of warmth. He kissed her ear and stood up carefully, feeling for his dagger in the darkness.

  Something there? But the sentries would have noticed. He picked his way out of the camp's perimeter, nodding at one of the warriors who was squatting at the base of a tree, a dark, amorphous lump.

  'Taim mat, Utwychtan. Aelmid na sytan.' And the sentry's spear waved him on.

  He placed his feet carefully in the frost-cracking needles of the wood floor and drew his dagger, wishing he had brought the Ulfberht. Iron might be better than bronze here.

  Nothing. He was two hundred yards from the fires and the wood was as black as pitch, the stars glittering silently overhead and his breath a barely visible wraith of paleness around his face.

  A fool's errand. Why had he left Cat's warmth? The cold leeched into his bladder and he pissed against the trunk of a nearby tree, the steam rising and the liquid pattering loud in the stillness.

  Then he saw it: an outline against a lighter patch of branches. The ears were high and sharp as horns in the dark and the two lights that were its eyes blinked once.

  It stepped forward silently, and in the faint starlight he could see the long muzzle, the maw slick with teeth, the heavy bone over the eyes and the close fur that covered the enormous head. A dewlap of loose hide hung from its throat, down to the deep chest. He had an impression of lean massiveness, a towering blackness in the trees. And then those baleful eyes fixed on him, narrowed and brightened to two brilliant pinpoints.

  Involuntarily he stepped backwards, mind numb with terror. There was such malice in the eyes, such focused hatred and hunger, that he felt their glare almost as a physical jab.

  As the beast leapt forward, he screamed with all the breath in his lungs and then turned and ran.

  The starlit wood careered past him. Briars snatched at his legs and low branches tore his face. He felt as though he were afloat, adrift from the ground and being propelled by. some weird gale. The air burst out of his mouth and then was sucked and dragged back in again, chill as meltwater. He heard an awful snarling howl at his shoulder at the same time as he saw the red fires of the camp ahead. The sentry was standing in his path, shouting.

  'Wyrwulf!' Michael shrieked, and then a shattering blow raked down his back, something catching in the tunic Mirkady had given him and ripping it like wet paper, pulling him off his feet.

  The air whooshed out of his lungs as he hit the ground, and as he lay there he was aware only of the stink around him, as sickening and sweet as a blown corpse—that and the vast shadow rearing above him.

  More shouting, too far away to matter. The thing was bending over him, one arm reaching down. Michael felt a cold-clawed paw brush his face with horrible gentleness, and the reeking foetidness of its breath dammed the working of his lungs so that his heart was yammering and struggling and he was gaping like a landed fish, his stomach heaving and the white panic pumping adrenaline through him. He met the eyes from eight inches and saw that the cornea was luminous, yellow broken by tiny scarlet lines as fine as the veins on a blossom. And in the centre were black pupils, slitted like a cat's. They seemed enormous, big as tennis balls, and all their malicious power was bent on Michael's face like the rays of some diseased sun. The jaws opened.

  Swift as thought, the beast straightened and with a sweep of an arm batted away a flung spear. There was shouting and the uncertain light of torches. It paused, the black lips pulling back from its fangs. Another spear went wide. A man came up close with a short stabbing assegai, and the wyrwulf moved.

  It poured forward and knocked the stab of the man's weapon to one side, jarring it out of his grasp. He stumbled backwards, hand going to his hip for a knife, but the beast caught him by one arm, whipped him to its chest and then bit.

  The crunch and pop was loud in the night. The man was dropped, his neck bitten almost in half. A shout of grief and fury went up from the other fox men. They darted in and ringed the beast, jabbing with long flint-tipped spears. The wyrwulf snapped at one and champed off the blade. It grabbed at another, pulling its owner forward and severing his spine with another crushing bite. The body was thrown at his comrades, knocking one off his feet. The circle was broken. The beast thrust forward, tearing the face off a third man with one swift rake of its claws, and then it was running free. More spears were flung at its back but in the dark it was impossible to tell if they went home. It crashed into the trees and was gone.

  HE SAT UP in bed, shuddering and slick with sweat. The face—dear God!—that face inches from his own, the awful reeking breath in his lungs.

  The room was quiet, the luminous digits of the clock telling him it was three-thirty. Even the traffic had calmed. The city was sleeping. He reached for his cigarettes, fumbling them off the night table, and then flicked on the lamp so there was a corner of brightness in the room, an oasis in the night.

  Smooth smoke eased the catch of his lungs, slowed his battering heart. Werewolves. Bloody hell.

  He was afraid, more afraid than he had been since travelling a wolf-haunted wood long ago. Because that wood, that world, was reaching out here for him. He was sure of it. Too many things—the growl of the unknown animal in the alleyway that night, these dreams, reliving all kinds of things he had forgotten—were reminding him of what it had been like, almost as though he were being prepared.

  For what? Going back? God forbid!

  Imagination, perhaps. His sense of paranoia playing tricks on him. Everyone had nightmares, and the thing in the alley might have been a dog. He had never even seen it.

  He had taken a taxi home though. He had found it impossible to face the thought of that measly halfmile in the dark. And not true dark, either, with street lamps and cars. More like an urban twilight, a half-world. Mad. Harder to believe in it over here. Easier back in Ireland, with the silent woods and the tiny fields, the empty roads. He had not thought the city had enough soul about it to shake him. And here he was, lighting his third cigarette in a row at nearly four in the morning, his hands trembling ash on the bedclothes and his eyes flitting fearfully to the window.

  Those eyes. He could almost see them now, hovering out of the lamplight's circle. Strange how he had unlearned so much over the years until he could hardly remember Ringbone or Mirkady or Brother Nennian. Cat and Rose he had never forgotten. They had cut too deeply for healing; but everything else had become a haze, a childhood thing of dreams and imaginings and half-remembered stories. Until recently. Waking and sleeping, he was remembering more and more every day. And then there were these sightings... Last week at the station, in the scrum for the tube.

  They had been packed like canned beans in the train, breathing in each other's faces and jutting elbows into other ribs. It had been hot in there, and still some damn fools were struggling to read the Financial Times. It had been fun watching them trying to fold the broadsheets in the midst of cramped, swaying humanity. He had switched off, as he always did, and had been staring out of the grimy window. Black tunnels, dim stations, black tunnels, dim stations, and the tidal ebb and flow of people leaving and entering.

  Then a wedge-shaped face on the other side of the glass, the eyes blazing slits and the mouth grinning redly...

  The blood seeped from his face and his throat tightened unbearably. One of the Wyrim, here in the city.

  Two, three feet away.

  The door. With a snarl he pushed those beside him out of the way, toppled a trio of commuters like briefcase-wielding dominoes, dug his elbows in.

  The doors were closing.

  He rammed himself through them to cries of alarm and anger, levered them apart with the veins pulsing in his thick neck, and fell rather than stepped to the hard concrete of the platform, glaring about like a maniac. People backed away. The train began to pull out. It wasn't here! Where was it?

  And the face had sailed past him, laughing, the white teeth bared. On a tube train, disappearing down the dark of a tunnel. He could hear it hooting and giggling with glee.
>
  He had bent over to clutch his knees and sob for air as someone in a blue uniform asked him what the fuck he was playing at.

  That had been three days ago.

  A product of a fevered imagination? A nervous system strained near to breaking? Or simply the alcohol that was increasingly pickling his brain.

  What was happening to him? Was it starting up again? The merest scratch from a werewolf kills, infecting the victim with the disease. Michael had come a quarter of an inch from death the night the tribe had been attacked. Only the thickness of Mirkady's tunic had saved him, though it had been ripped from his back.

  That was how close he had been all the time, running along that knife edge with Cat for company. In the Other Place death had never been farther away than spitting distance and the distance itself had been life, a packed, raw life possessing one less skin than he owned now. A running life, vivid with fear and so riddled with violence that it had become second nature. A man broken open looks much the same as a beast.

  But it was behind him now—and that was his mantra these days. Those muscles, growing up for the second time, had grown differently. He was a different man; even the beard was gone. These things had no right to come crowding back into his life. Werewolves, for Christ's sake! No right. Even Cat. Though a chance resemblance brought his heart into his throat sometimes, he did not want to clamber back on board that merry-go-round. Even with her it had not all been milk and honey. There had been times when he had seen the inhuman, the Wyrim side of her.

  He prayed that it was not coming for him again.

  FOURTEEN

  AFTER BURNING THEIR dead they continued to move south, following the sparse game trails through the thicknesses of the forest. They were even warier now, scouring the land for wolfsbane to increase the effectiveness of their weapons. For Michael there was the unaccountable feeling that he had been called the night the manwolf had attacked, and he could not forget how its claw had touched his face, almost tentatively, before the fox men had attacked it.