In a Wolf's Eyes

by A. Katie Rose

  “We got you now, bitch,” he hissed, his foul breath reeking in my nostrils.

  I conjured saliva into my dry mouth and spit.

  As in my archery, my aim was true. Squarely into his leering right eye, my spit hit. His face contorted into a mask of rage and hate. This time his fist almost made me lose consciousness.

  Darkness filled my sight. Nay. Wait. My eyes, open wide, still contained vision. The darkness filled the forest. Beyond the Tongu’s foul, grinning face, something impossibly huge blocked the sun, casting all into shadow. A deep, resonant sound, never before heard by a living human being, roared into the evil silence. Rage. Hate. Fury. None of those words could describe the daemonic sound that filled the forest. The earth shook under the sheer magnitude of that sound. I jerked my head, tossing my hair from my eyes.

  The Tongu’s evil eyes widened in sudden frantic panic. His leering mouth bowed down in horror. Blood drained from his darkly tanned skin, leaving his flesh paler than pale. He began to turn, slow, too slow, to face this new peril. His hands released mine as he made to boost himself off me, to throw himself off me. To escape.

  A huge eagle’s claw, with talons the length of a man’s hand and sharp enough to gut a dragon reached down. It scooped him up, circled his torso, lifted him from me with all the effort a man might use to lift a mug of ale. So precise did those deadly talons seize him, I felt no touch of those claws on my bare belly at all.

  Devil’s eyes. Daemon’s eyes. Yellow and black. With the dark shadows behind, the devil’s eyes glowed yellow and black. For surely hell herself had vomited up this monster.

  How can a man with no voice scream? Yet scream he did. His black eyes rolled back into his head, revealing the whites. The Tongu struggled, pushing against the immense hand that held him fast in its deadly grip. Yet his struggles were those of a mouse caught within the jaws of the cat. A savage raptor beak the size of a horse’s head bent down—

  —Bar bit deep into the Tongu’s neck.

  As I might have torn off a chunk of meat with my teeth, he ripped the man’s body in half. The Tongu’s heart and brain lived for a moment longer than he did. His hissing, wailing scream as Bar tossed the two pieces of the man’s corpse into the brush died away and was lost.

  Catlike, he spun. His tail whipped the air above me, his lion hind legs digging deep furrows into the loamy forest soil to either side of me. I half sat up in time to see the other two Tongu bolt. One reached the safety of the trees. The other…

  Bar pounced on him. Dirt and dead leaves flew about me in a shower as he lunged after the fleeing assassin. This one had no time to scream. Bar’s eagle front foot caught the Tongu by the shoulder, ripping down, taking off not only the shoulder, but shearing deep into his torso. His raptor’s beak tore the man’s head off. Shaking his foot as a person might shake water off his hand, Bar discarded the corpse that caught on his wicked talons. As hardened as I was by war, battle and violence, my gut lurched at the sight of both men’s ravaged corpses. While Bar accompanied me in battle, protected me from enemies, guarded my back, I had never seen him kill before with such ruthlessness, such a savage viciousness.

  He still wasn’t satisfied. The hound I injured hobbled on three legs, eerily whining and chuffing, followed after his surviving master into the forest. Bar’s single swipe cut the dog in half, red blood fountaining high to splash redly on a nearby tree trunk.

  Never before had I ever been afraid of my griffin. Never in all our years together had I ever felt in any danger from him. Never before had I looked at my friend and all but pissed myself.

  When he wheeled about to face me, streaked with thick dark blood over his eagle’s beak, down his feathered mane, his raised right claw oozing gore, my empty bladder loosened. A raw, primitive terror ran through me. The terror a defenseless human felt when faced with a furious predator, a predator that killed easily and with little effort. The red gore, his lifted razor-sharp talons, failed to frighten me. ’Twas his eyes that caused my gut to lurch in sudden panic, caused my throat to close and shut off all breath. His raptor eyes, those daemon eyes, filled with such a lust for blood, for human blood, brought out the primordial fear in me.

  He blinked. In that instant, Bar returned to sanity. I suddenly saw my friend in those awful black and yellow daemon eyes. Bar’s concern, worry and panic over my safety returned with such a wash of love I began to cry. I flung my arms about his feathered neck, weeping with unashamed relief. My body shook uncontrollably, delayed reactions from the pain, the panic, the trauma of my ordeal bringing out a flurry of the shakes.

  Sitting down on his lion haunches, Bar held me close to him, his taloned right foot circling my back, his feathered head bowed over my shoulder. The blood of his victims dripped down over my naked body, but I didn’t care. Sharp chirps and hisses told me of his anxiety and worry. When neither Wolf nor I arrived at the monastery, he had flown in all directions since dawn, searching for me.

  His immense presence, his soft fur-feather mane scenting of blood, musty earth and sweet air, his huge body wrapped about mine, brought with them some measure of quiet to my jangled nerves. My tears wetted his mane, dripping from a white feather to the ground below. I sniffled, my nostrils sucking in stray lion hairs. I sneezed. Choking on tears and snorted laughter, I finally grew some sense and straightened.

  Leaning against his sturdy shoulder, I pulled my hair back from my face and looked into his predatory tawny eyes.

  “What kept you?”

  Bar’s expressive eyes all too often showed his wicked sense of humor. Now his beak parted, his eyes lit up with high amusement, and although he made no sound, I swear he laughed. I laughed too. Laughed with humor, with hysteria, and with the pent-up release of the past hours of fear. We laughed together, two friends parted from one another now sharing a comfortable jest.

  “Where are Kel’Ratan and the others?” I asked, my voice hoarse.

  The jerk of Bar’s head toward the east and a sharp squawk told me they were at or near the monastery.

  “So you were to find me and tell them where I am?”

  Yes.

  “Bar, we cannot wait for them. That Tongu who escaped might come back with reinforcements.”

  His yellow eyes gleamed with a new anger as he took in my nakedness, the blood covering me from hundreds of scrapes and scratches, my injured foot I could not put to the ground. A long evil growl escaped his beak as he inspected me from head to toe.

  A growl? I paused, drawing back to stare at him in astonishment. Though half lion, Bar’s vocal cords were those of an eagle. Yet, the sound that emerged from his throat sounded so much like an angry lion, I doubted my own ears.

  “Bar?”

  He growled again, predatory yellow eyes flat. His tufted ears lay tight against his broad skull. He raised his left foot and flexed his talons, talons already bloodied by two Tongu and one hound. His low, deep resonant rumble promised revenge.

  “Never mind that,” I snapped. “You will have to be my crutch. We have to keep going.”

  Rather than support me, Bar ducked his shoulder. A new hiss, this one of urgency, escaped his beak. Confused, I stopped, my injured left leg crooked at the knee. “What?”

  He hissed again, dropping his shoulder lower. This time, he whipped his head around and butted me in the back.

  “Bar,” I began, as his message grew clearer. He wanted me to mount.

  Another sharper hiss, this time both anger and urgency clear in his message. Another low growl rumbled, vibrating his chest and shoulders.

  “Bar,” I repeated. “You cannot fly with me on your back. That’s too much weight.”

  The next nudge into my back held a certain threat to it. While he might love me beyond life itself, Bar certainly knew who was the bigger and stronger of us. His predatory raptor’s eyes glared at me with such a ferocity I dared not argue. Reluctantly, I used a large stone as a mounting block and half-jumped, half-wiggled onto his broad back. I found a comfortable seat just ahead of h
is furled wings, where feathers met fur.

  “Bar—” I started to protest once more, but a menacing hiss forestalled what I might have said.

  He did not try to fly. Rather, when I sat securely on his heavy shoulders and grasped his mane for balance, he began to run. I bent low over his neck to avoid branches sweeping me off his broad back. The top of my head met the whipping branches and brambles, rather than my face. His wings half-furled for balance, he loped about as fast as a slowly cantering horse. Not fast by any imagination, but quickly enough that anyone following would have trouble keeping up on foot.

  On he ran, carrying me as easily as a horse might. Thickets of pine, balsam, and scrub oak were no match for his charge. All bent, or broke, before him, leaving a trail a blind man could follow. Deer and wolf, rabbit and fox, all forest life fled from his approach. He made strong headway eastward, toward hope, safety and Kel’Ratan. Should any fool dare stop him, well, may their gods have mercy on their poor souls.

  The trees suddenly opened up, the forest first thinning, then ending altogether. The sun shone brightly in my eyes, nearly blinding me. Bar’s lion feet and eagle talons now gripped rock and stone and moss, not dirt and undergrowth. Squawking birds flew upward, out of his path, and I saw a stag bolt from us in panic, antlers high. I sat up straighter, thinking the ride over. The escarpment lay just ahead, the stone falling away in a sheer drop of more than a thousand feet. I expected Bar to stop, let me climb down, and navigate the escarpment carefully downward.

  He did not stop.

  Too late, I saw his intent.

  “Bar, nay!” I screamed.

  If anything, his pace quickened. I saw the edge of the escarpment, the slight slope upward and the blue sky that lay beyond. Nothing but air and sun and a horrid emptiness lay between us and the ground nearly a thousand feet below. Birds winged far, far down, tiny with distance.

  The escarpment vanished. I screamed again as Bar launched himself out and down.

  The earth fell away with dizzying speed. I could not help but to scream yet again, new raw panic flooding my mouth and my heart. I am about to die, my mind gibbered. The treetops looked so small and wee from this distance; the sun felt hot and bright on my bare skin. Nothingness filled the space beneath my feet, the empty air whirling past and whipping tears into my eyes. I gripped his lion mane in horror as we plunged earthward like stones dropped into a deep lake. In a quick flash of vision, I saw us crashing, helpless on the rocks and boulders below.

  Bar unfurled his wings, catching the warm updraft, his front legs coiled beneath him. Those fragile yet immensely powerful wings snapped back, and beat up and down in rhythmic strokes, forcing the air into servitude. The roaring wind in my ears retreated to a whisper, my tears dried on my cheeks. Bar’s flight leveled out, the drop no longer steep and terrifying. A low squawk ordered me to cease strangling him with my legs. I flat refused to relax the death grip I had in his mane.

  Bar and I soared over the gray-green forest far below, his wings now beating strongly to keep us airborne. I felt the immense muscles in his shoulders beneath my butt, flexing and surging, fighting gravity, seeking height and safety. My hair streamed out behind me, whipped by the wind like a banner. My fear altered, collapsed on itself, now changed to a fierce and sudden joy. I was flying!

  Ever since I was small and watched Bar soar above me, his wings enslaving the wind, I had wanted to fly. Birds fascinated me, thrilled me, and I studied birds and their flight endlessly. I begged to ride on Bar’s shoulders when he flew, but my father forbade it. Bar was my guardian, not my mount. He could not fly with a passenger; a human on his back would hinder him far too much. Thus, over the years, I envied him his freedom in sulky silence.

  My dream had come true at last. I found courage enough to look around us, seeing the forest far below, its appearance not tree-like at all, but a rather indistinct fuzz covering the earth as far as I could see. Clouds drifted, tantalizingly near. I saw an eagle beat past, out of our way, his own predatory eyes filled with raw panic at the intrusion of a winged predator far greater than he. Bar’s great wings beat the air with strong steady strokes, the warm wind in our faces giving us lift and life.

  Bar!” I screamed, not with fear this time but with joy and wonderment and delight. I screamed for the sheer delight of screaming, knowing I could never, ever, feel the surge of savage glory of flying as I did at this moment. One with Bar, one with my Goddess, one with the universe. If Bar felt this way about flying, how could he ever return to the ground? I surely did not want to return. Had I the power, we would have flown from one end of the earth to the other, together.

  Steadily, and with an alarming speed, the trees below loomed closer and closer. We were still dropping. I was right, I thought with trepidation, Bar could not fly with my weight on his back. No matter how he tried, he could not gain altitude.

  His wingbeats took on a frantic note, and I heard his breath gasping in sharp hisses as he sought altitude, the life-giving altitude, and the freedom of the skies. I held my breath, panic once more nibbling the edges of my mind. Behind my eyes, I saw us crashing into the trees in a tangle of broken limbs and wings, snarled helplessly in the sharp, deadly tree branches.

  Too soon, far too soon, we reached the dangerous trees. We skimmed the top of the forest, its ragged branches whipping my bare feet. I dared not move, lift them upward and away from this new torment, for any slight movement might cause Bar to fail and both of us to crash to our deaths in the trees. I sat quite still, to not disturb him and his concentration.

  A short distance ahead, the trees ended, thinning away to short thickets and brambles. With a jolt, I recognized the area. I knew the distant mountain peak far away, the high green meadow, the orchards once tended by monks. The derelict monastery where we camped for a few days on our way to meet the High King and my betrothed lay less than a mile ahead.

  Beneath us, I saw leather-clad warriors running, pointing, scrambling to their horses, galloping in our shadow. Mouths opened in shouts I heard not, as our speed was too great. Tendrils of blue smoke trailed upward from outdoor campfires, the monastery and its outbuildings appeared small and doll-like from the air, passing below and from my sight in a blink. Bar’s wings lifted, cupping the wind, grabbing the life-giving updrafts in a huge swash of air. He backwinged mightily, dust from our passage swirling and choking. The long grass flattened and bowed low as the great wash of air preceded his descent. We slowed, our forward momentum gone, dropping to the solid earth as gently as a mother puts her baby in its cradle.

  Kel’Ratan, Witraz, Alun, the twins, Rannon, Yuri and Yuras galloped madly in our direction, their shouts still indistinct. I even recognized Rygel on a black horse racing in their midst toward us. I shook and trembled like one taken with severe chills as I slid slowly down off Bar’s shoulder onto my right leg. Unable to stand for the weakness, I buried my face in Bar’s mane, clutching him tight, feeling his beak nudge my shoulder in affection.

  “Thank you,” I whispered into his feathers. “Thank you for coming for me.”

  A mellow chirp answered me, and I looked up to see the love and humor back in Bar’s predatory yellow eyes. His gaze lifted from me to past my shoulder as the thunder of hooves drew close. I turned, still using Bar’s sturdy shoulder to stand upright as Kel’Ratan reined his bay stallion in to a trampling halt. He dismounted at a run before the beast slid to a stop.

  “Ly’Tana, by the Lady,” he gasped, his face drawn and pale with anxiety.

  My boys reined in their horses in a circle around Bar, arrows nocked, prepared for battle if our pursuers drew close. While they knew not what trouble had befallen me, they stood prepared for anything. My injured, naked body, the blood on Bar’s beak and feathers told them all they needed to know. Left and Right edged their twin black horses as close to me as they could, blocked as they were by Bar’s immense bulk. Yuri and Yuras set themselves between me and the cliff face, expecting trouble to come from that direction. Witraz, Rannon and Alun whee
led their mounts outward, spread apart to face west, north and south.

  Rygel slid out of his saddle nearly as quickly as my cousin, hurrying behind Kel’Ratan’s shoulder. Bar furled his wings across his back, allowing the two space to approach me. I still needed the support of his shoulder to stand, however.

  Without ceremony and in complete disregard of protocol, Kel’Ratan embraced me fiercely, burying my face against his chest. My arms crept of their own accord around his waist, holding him close, near tears again with immense relief. Long I stood on one leg, supported by both my griffin and my cousin, until my shaking gradually began to subside.

  “I don’t have to tell you how worried you had us,” Kel’Ratan rumbled over my head.

  I nodded, my face still buried in his leather vest, breathing in the masculine tanned smell of him. He may be disrespectful and acerbic, irritating and often insufferable. Yet, I knew he loved me beyond all reason, beyond all life.

  Straightening up, but still leaning against him for support, I took a deep breath and looked around. My boys watched the surroundings for trouble, politely keeping their eyes averted from my nakedness. A hot blush of shame crept up my cheeks, my gut knotting with tension. Me naked in front of Bar and squirrels was one thing, quite another in the midst of human males who had sworn oaths of loyalty to me. I glanced up at Rygel, standing nearby with ill-concealed impatience and worry, obviously wanting to speak but holding his tongue.

  I watched him survey my naked body, not with lust or desire, rather with a narrow, fierce expression. His amber eyes gazed not at my breasts, but at the cuts, the blood, lingering a great while on my leg and foot. His long fingers twitched in my direction, collapsing into fists, then twitched once more. I knew he surveyed me with a healer’s trained eye, itching to do something about the bloody scratches and wounds, taking in the horror of my left leg. My respect for him rose another notch as I saw how pale and drawn his face looked, his amber eyes tired with exhaustion and concern. Before anyone could speak, he unpinned his cloak, and with the tenderness of a lover, wrapped my naked body in it.