Daughter of the Wolf

by Victoria Whitworth

  The bear-leader took his time, sucking his teeth, eyeing the dogs with their bearded, wedge-shaped heads and shaggy coats, storm-cloud-grey, and creamy-red, and ashy-black. ‘Fine hounds.’ He turned his head and spat in the dust. ‘Had them long?’

  Ingeld shrugged. ‘A matter of weeks.’ He brightened. ‘But I’ve had them out against deer, and you’re right. They are fine hounds.’

  ‘And the silver is for my bear fighting? I get that anyway, whether I win or I lose?’

  Ingeld nodded.

  ‘Then, master, what’s in it for you?’

  Ingeld’s lips curved in that smile which was never very far away. He gave a shrug. ‘Pleasure. We’ve seen your bear’s power, how it sent the strongest man in Donmouth home to lick his wounds. It would please me greatly if my hounds can beat the bear.’

  ‘I see your bulging purse.’ The bear-leader closed his eyes and cupped a hand behind his ear. ‘I can hear the silver inside it calling to me.’ He snorted a deep breath in through his nose. ‘Aye, I can smell it, even. But the thing is’ – he opened his eyes and suddenly all the jesting, all the whining, had vanished from his voice and face – ‘the thing is, my bear can mince your hounds. And now that I’ve seen what valuable creatures they are, and how you love them, I’m thinking that if I leave one or more of them wounded – dead, even – I don’t value the chances of me and my people leaving Donmouth hale and well.’ He made a little bow. ‘With all respect, master.’

  Ingeld shrugged, a little, careless movement. ‘That’s a risk you’ll have to take.’

  In all the excitement Elfrun had completely forgotten about the dancing-boy, and the man with the drum, and the pretty girl in her kale-green pinafore strung with amber beads who had passed the bowl around, begging for contributions. Now that she thought to look, she saw them standing in a little huddle behind her and to her right. And the bear-leader probably had the truth of it. He and his were there to amuse. If things turned sour, the travelling entertainers would be overwhelmed, and she didn’t know whether she had the authority to quell an angry mob in the way Radmer undoubtedly would have.

  But it came to her of a sudden that she could command them now.

  No one but Hirel was angry, not yet. She could keep these strangers safe on her land, if she wanted to. A sudden tug on her sleeve and she looked down to find the dog-boy at her side. When he opened his mouth nothing but a shapeless moan emerged, but she knew exactly what he meant. He was pointing at the bear with his free hand, and shaking his head from side to side with a jerk. Elfrun looked at the dogs. They were excited; she guessed they were disturbed by the alien, smoky smell, and they were straining towards it. One of them, Braith with the red and cream mixed in the brindle of his fur, was whining softly.

  ‘They’re not my dogs,’ she said to him in a low voice. ‘I can’t tell my uncle what to do.’ She swallowed. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t stop the fight, but I can try and keep the people safe.’ He stared at her, the sun bringing out the green lights in his eyes. Elfrun wondered if he had understood a single word.

  She stepped forward, bracing her shoulders and lifting her chin, to be met by a rustle of whispers then a hush. She faced the bear-leader squarely. He was standing by his bear, which was still curled into a ball, paws over its nose. She wondered distractedly whether it had gone to sleep. ‘It is your decision,’ she said, and she was surprised by how her voice carried. ‘But if you choose to pit your bear against my uncle’s hounds, I speak for the people of Donmouth when I promise that no matter the outcome all of you will be allowed to leave in peace.’ She set her face hard, and stared right and left, not allowing her eye to meet anyone else’s, defying contradiction. ‘No one is to touch the bear, or his master, or the dancing-boy, or the girl with the flute. Any of them. They are all under my hand.’ Not so much as a whisper now. Her jaws were aching, she had been gritting her teeth so hard. The mist was drifting back again, sucking the warmth from the day and turning the sun into a little disc of pewter. She could hear the hisses and mutters, but no one had defied her, and she had to hope that no one would. She let the silence hold for a long moment, then gave a little nod, and turned.

  And there, next to the rope-walking boy and the girl in green, was Finn the pedlar, standing easily, his wicker pack down in the dust by his feet. Gazing straight into her eyes, he lifted an eyebrow, half-greeting, half-enquiry, and his face broke into a smile.

  Carefully expressionless, Elfrun walked steadily back to her place at her uncle’s side. The blood was roaring in her ears, and her mouth had gone suddenly dry. In the long half-year and more since she had last seen him she had forgotten the lines and planes of his face, his easy stance, the way his smile seemed to have been created expressly for her delight. Where on earth had he appeared from? Was he with the bear and the dancing-boy and the flute-girl? Chapmen did often take up with other wanderers of the road. Could she have been so fascinated by the bear that she had failed to notice Finn this last hour and more?

  ‘A’ right,’ the bear-leader said. ‘Someone drive a stake in for me.’

  Ingeld was fondling each of the dogs in turn, scratching their heads and tugging gently on their ears. ‘Gethyn, Bleddyn, good boys. Braith, come here.’ He was slipping the leads from the collars. ‘Don’t do that,’ he said to the bear-leader.

  ‘Should I not stake the bear, master?’

  ‘Where’s the fun in that? Give the poor beast a chance.’ The boy’s hands were full, gripping the collars of two of the dogs. Ingeld beckoned. ‘Elfrun, hold Gethyn for me?’

  Her head still buzzing, she slipped her hand through the stiff leather band. She could feel the dog’s warmth through the wiry coat, and his strength. Gethyn wasn’t pulling to get free, but she could sense how strong he was. Were he to spot a hare or some other small creature, she would have to let go, or be dragged willy-nilly in his wake.

  Gethyn twisted his head sideways and licked her wrist and she smiled. He grinned back at her, panting, the long pink tongue flopping between the terrible serrated teeth, and she wondered suddenly about the true state of the bear-leader’s confidence. These hounds were no mean opponents.

  Ingeld was unfastening the straps where the purse looped over his belt. He threw it up in the air and caught it again, one-handed. The purse itself was a fine thing, with its soft red leather and its silver fittings. Elfrun saw the naked longing on the bear-leader’s face, and felt sick. Ingeld raised those arched eyebrows that gave his face such a guileless look.

  ‘Here – catch!’

  He lobbed it at the bear-leader, who made a wild grab, but it fell short and the man had to go down on his knees in the dirt. A roar of laughter.

  Athulf was grinning, inviting her to share in his evident pleasure at the bear-leader’s discomfiture, but Elfrun couldn’t meet his eye.

  ‘Sorry,’ Ingeld said. ‘I was off balance.’ He was still smiling, and Elfrun found herself wondering against her will whether he could possibly have thrown short on purpose.

  The bear-leader shrugged. He was occupied with stuffing the purse down the neck of his tunic, but when he looked up he said, ‘Oh, you’d marvel at what silver has made me do in my time, master. Back when I was young and pretty.’ He paused, and looked at Ingeld sideways for a long moment, a knowing stare that made Elfrun hot and itchy. ‘Then again, maybe you wouldn’t, master. Maybe you wouldn’t be surprised at all.’ Without waiting for a reply he turned and extended his arms. ‘All right, one and all. Let’s make us some room.’ He walked forward, and the crowd shuffled away. When he had made a full circuit, gesturing all the while as he went, a wide space of dry, rutted earth some fifty paces across was left empty. He made his little clucking noise and the bear rose to its feet and shambled over. The bear-leader jerked his head. ‘Bring them on.’

  The dog-boy released the collars and pushed the dogs forward. Elfrun just stared, until an angry hiss from her uncle brought her to her senses, and she pulled her reluctant fingers away from Gethyn’s neck.

>   The dogs were a confident and coordinated pack. They hurtled forward and began circling the bear at a distance, yapping in strange, high-pitched tones. The bear shuffled round and round on the spot, trying and failing to keep track of all three at once. Two of them – with a lump in her throat Elfrun recognized Gethyn as one – stopped together and barked sharply, and as the bear lunged towards them the hound with red and cream lights to its coat darted in and nipped sharply at the bear’s heels.

  ‘Braith!’ Ingeld was shouting and whooping. ‘That’s my true Braith!’

  The bear spun in response to the repeated snapping, and now it was dark-coated Gethyn’s turn to dart in and away. The dogs bounded back and forth, and the bear lolloped sideways, trying to escape and to attack at the same time. It snarled suddenly and lunged, and the people nearest in the crowd hurled themselves backwards, with gasps and screams of excitement.

  The dogs regrouped, panting, and began their harrying again. The bear seemed much angrier, snapping and growling continuously at these little pests – and they did look small, against its bulk. Surely, one blow with a lethal paw...

  Suddenly, as though of one united mind, all three dogs hurled themselves towards the bear, yipping hysterically. The bear tumbled sideways with the impact and they became a ferocious blur of dark and brindled fur, the bear rolling over and over as though repeating the tricks with which its master had started their show. One of the dogs – Bleddyn, Elfrun thought – had fastened its jaws around the bear’s nose, and Braith was underneath, snapping wildly at the creature’s throat. She had her hands to her face, fingers pressed to her cheekbones ready to shield her eyes, unable to bear it and yet powerless to tear her gaze away.

  ‘Those are some fine hounds you have there,’ a voice said in her ear.

  She jumped and turned to find Finn the pedlar standing next to her. Somewhere, she registered that Finn’s lilting accent was much the same as the bear-leader’s. Perhaps they were kin or countrymen at least, travelling together. It would make sense. A lone pedlar was so vulnerable, but any thief would think twice about attacking a party which had that shaggy monster, even bridled and toothless, as escort. She tried to keep her mind on these practical questions, but Finn was so close, she could feel the hairs rising on her arms, the palms of her hands tingling, her breath tight; much the same effect the bear had had on her: and yet she was not afraid.

  A whoop went up from the crowd. In the brief moment during which she had withdrawn her attention, the bear had collapsed. Bleddyn was still hanging on to its nose, and the great beast seemed maddened with pain. It swung its head, and Bleddyn was torn free and flung across the arena. He scrambled back to his feet, but it was clear that he was limping. The bear’s muzzle was torn and bloody. Once more the dogs fell back.

  ‘One round to you. Is one round enough?’ The bear-leader was grimacing deep in his beard.

  ‘Too quick.’ Ingeld shook his head. ‘Where’s the fun in that? You’ve not earned your silver yet, my friend.’

  ‘Best of three, then.’

  Ingeld nodded tersely. Braith and Bleddyn had already started their nipping at the heels again, and grey Gethyn was watching for his moment.

  Elfrun wrapped her arms around herself under her cloak, longing for the fight to end. A sudden scuffle, and the bear had Bleddyn in a headlock, gripping the dog’s neck between its front paws and swinging the helpless animal backwards and forwards in a grotesquely human way. Then it rolled forward, still holding the dog, and Gethyn and Braith rushed in. The bear backed off a little, but it had its jaws clamped round Bleddyn’s throat. Elfrun gasped, winded and nauseated as though someone had just slammed her in the belly. The bear-leader raised his staff, and the bear lowered his head, letting the dog drop to the ground. To Elfrun’s disbelief, Bleddyn twisted himself round and scrambled back to his feet, earning whoops and cheers from the crowd. Widia and the dog-boy ran in and hauled the dogs back by their hind legs, out of reach.

  ‘And one round to me.’ The bear-leader was unsmiling. ‘The third decides it.’

  The dog-boy was feeling Bleddyn’s neck and legs, his mouth pulled down at the corners. He had his back to the bear and was well within the reach of those giant paws, but he was oblivious to any threat. Elfrun looked beyond him to the crowd. The early brightness had utterly gone, swallowed up in heavy folds of mist. Damp prickled her face. She wondered what would happen if she stopped the fight. A glance at Athulf, his face ablaze with excitement, told her everything she needed to know. People would be angry, as drinking men were when you ordered the mead barrel stopped up. Perhaps if she asked – no, if she ordered – the dancing-boy to do some more of his rope-walking... Perhaps Finn could distract them with the exotic treasures from his pack. She sent her glance sideways, just to see if he had his basket by him, and found that he was looking at her. He raised his eyebrows again, a little smile curving his lips, and she turned her hot face away.

  The dog-boy shrugged and turned his hands outwards. His face was glum, but Widia seemingly took his gesture to mean that everything was fine, because he released the hounds once more into the arena.

  Again they circled.

  When it happened, it was so fast that Elfrun could barely be sure, thinking back, that she had seen what she had seen.

  The bear rose up on its back paws and gave a stifled snarl. The three dogs came running in together, teeth bared, aiming for the exposed belly. The bear tumbled forwards and swung head and paws together this way and that, and all three of the dogs were tossed high in the air. They landed, hard, with audible thumps.

  Elfrun gasped, feeling suddenly sick. The bear-leader was running forward. Those terrible claws had raked Bleddyn across the belly, and there was blood, and now Elfrun could see the hound’s pinkish-grey guts spilling out into the dust. The bear-leader was fumbling the bridle from where he had stuffed it in his belt, fastening the leash through the bear’s snout and hauling his animal out of the way, and the dog-boy was crouching over Bleddyn. His face was calm but there were silent tears pouring down it. He lifted a hand, and Widia came over. Elfrun saw the dog-boy point, and draw a finger across his throat. She turned away to see Braith gazing at her, whimpering and struggling, back legs and tail dragging.

  ‘Spine snapped.’

  She turned. Finn’s golden-brown face was a hard mask, with no trace of those smile lines which had so characterized it earlier. ‘What a waste of fine hounds.’

  Gethyn was crouching, whining softly. Elfrun hunkered down to join him, afraid of what she might find, but he was unhurt as far as she could tell, just terrified. She soothed him and fondled his ears, and he leaned his great bulk against her, shivering.

  She was barely aware of Finn bending beside her. ‘I’ll be on my way, lady,’ he said, his voice barely louder than breath. ‘It seems I bring bad luck on your house. Last time a death, and today this. Now is no day for the peddling of trinkets.’

  ‘Bad luck! No!’ She blinked, still confused and sickened. ‘You can’t go. It’s not your fault. My uncle—’ She swallowed. ‘Besides, the mirror – I owe you for the mirror...’ How could she ever pay him? The mirror was so much more than just the perfect thing Wynn had called it. She felt as though it had woken her up, brought her out of childhood, taught her to perceive the world differently. Not just her own face as others might see it, but the wordless messages her body sent her...

  She had so longed to see him again, and now he was leaving.

  He put a finger to his lips, and shook his head. ‘I’ll not be going so far. Look for me, one of these days. But we need to get away.’

  She glanced around at the crowd. Whether it had anything to do with her earlier orders she could not tell, but the mood was still one of shock, not yet of anger. But anger would come. He was right, though she hated to admit it.

  ‘Yes. Go. Get your people away. Before mine turn so ugly that I can’t hold them.’

  Finn nodded, and he stepped back and away. Gethyn whined again, and thrust his nose int
o her hand, and she crouched down and put her arms around him. She badly needed to hold on to something, and the dog’s warm, solid bulk was a sudden and immediate source of comfort. She held him firmly, and rested her cheek against his fur for a long moment, for once not caring what people might think. There was a rustle nearby, and after a moment she looked up to find Ingeld and Widia looming over them. Athulf was standing by, his face tense and white, and she wondered if he were going to be sick.

  ‘What’s wrong with this one?’

  She shook her head at her uncle. ‘I think he’s fine.’

  Ingeld stared down at her. ‘There’s no place in my kennels for a dog without good heart. I can’t trust him in the hunt, not now.’

  ‘He has plenty of heart!’

  Widia was still holding high the bloodstained knife with which he had despatched Braith and Bleddyn, and Elfrun stared at him, appalled.

  ‘It’s kindest, lady,’ he said.

  Athulf nodded.

  She stood up, and Gethyn, as if knowing the danger, cowered against her skirts, whining and scraping the soil with his paw.

  ‘Look at him, Elfrun,’ Ingeld said. ‘Hopeless. He may have had his nerve once but he’s lost it now.’

  Elfrun rested her hand on the dog’s back, feeling his skin shiver under the coarse curly fur. ‘You can’t.’

  ‘I’m not wasting food on that animal,’ her uncle said.

  Widia was nodding in agreement. ‘It wouldn’t be right to take him on the hunt, not if you can’t trust his courage. Not safe for him or the huntsman. You must see that, lady.’

  They were so much bigger than she, and older, and she had been bred to deference. But then she looked beyond them to see the wan, drawn face of the dog-boy, standing over the corpses of his other two charges, and she felt a surge of power compounded equally of anger, nausea and grief. She held out her hand and beckoned the boy towards her. ‘I will take charge of both,’ she said. ‘They are my business now.’

  Widia was about to object further, but Ingeld raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘Put the knife away, Widia.’ He beckoned her to one side and she went, her fingers still entwined in Gethyn’s coat, still not quite trusting the huntsman. ‘I’m sorry, little niece.’