The Sianian Wolf

by Y. K. Willemse

  “You won’t take me anywhere, you princeling! Do your men know who you really are? Do they?”

  Rafen gritted his teeth. In the distance, wild whinnying

  punctuated Wynne’s screams. Somewhere to the south of the marketplace, Sherwin must have procured that team and wagon Rafen had spotted in a Tarhian’s possession. The wagon was for Erasmus. But where was Sherwin now? Rafen rose a little behind the post, murmuring Phoenix Tongue to Francisco’s stallion. To Rafen’s far left, a buttress obscured a portion of the eastern wall from Rafen’s sight. Perhaps Sherwin was there.

  “Let go of me now!” Wynne demanded.

  “Release her,” Francisco said coolly from within.

  “Release her where, Your Grace?”

  “Let go of her,” Francisco said deliberately.

  Someone slithered to the floor, before leaping up again and clattering out of the doorway.

  “Wynne,” Rafen whispered.

  She stood before him, unable to believe what had just happened. Her yellow hair was a knotted mess falling around her shoulders, and her green eyes were glazed because of the bright sun. She started, as if realizing for the first time that there appeared to be two Rafens. Before she could speak, Rafen clapped a hand to her mouth and pulled her closer.

  “You must keep quiet,” he whispered rapidly. “Francisco is my brother, and we’re both helping you. I’m going to take you and your father, and we’re going to get out of here.” Taking a deep breath, he removed his hand. “Don’t get us into trouble.”

  Wynne sucked in her breath sharply; she was quivering. Keeping watch for any Tarhian guards, Rafen moved slightly to the left, motioning to Wynne to do the same. Within the room, Francisco was fabricating a fantastic lie to his guards about why they had let Wynne go. He and his men would all emerge any moment. Wynne lunged in the opposite direction of Rafen, and Rafen was forced to whirl around and seize her again.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he mouthed.

  Wynne screamed and tried to wrench herself away. To his horror, her skin, covered thinly with rags, was bruised and cut.

  “Shh,” Rafen said frantically. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you want to see your father again? I’m going to take you to him.”

  Faint understanding dawned in Wynne’s terrified eyes.

  “I am the Fledgling and the Wolf,” Rafen said. “Trust me. Ride me.”

  Turning his back to her, he fell to the ground on nimble paws. Her weight – so much lighter than he had expected – dipped into the curve of his back. And then they flew along the eastern wall and the edges of the crowd, flashing in and out of stalls. Rafen tried to stay out of visibility as he made for the scaffold.

  A shot rang out from behind. Rafen leapt to the right, dodging it. The wind of the bullet stirred the fur near his ribs. His sudden maneuver left him completely exposed before a stall where a merchant sold rose-painted teacups.

  “It’s the Wolf!” a lone voice said.

  A murmur passed through the crowd, rising to a chant.

  “Wolf, Wolf, Wolf, Wolf -”

  Trying to avoid people’s eyes, Rafen fled on swift paws along the outskirts of the marketplace. Yet the cry had been passed along. A multitude was calling “Wolf, Wolf, Wolf”, new hope coloring their voices.

  Chapter Thirty

  Talmon’s Fury

  Sherwin’s scrabbling fingers finally found the reins. He wrenched them sideways, and the horses writhed in the air and plunged left. Tugging the reins again, Sherwin brought the wagon around in a hundred and eighty degree turn, facing the crowd and the temple at the far end of it. Sherwin forced the horses to slow down so he could control them. Unfortunately, by now they had already upset an old woman’s pummelo stall. The pummelos flew through the air like green balls of flame.

  He plowed through the crowd shamelessly, abandoning all hopes of secrecy. His near collision with the eastern wall had already interested some farmers, and his neat evasion of it had captured the admiration of still more. The raucous shouts of what Sherwin called “primitive commercialists” had ceased momentarily while everyone watched the wild wagon driver make for the temple.

  Far behind, someone wailed in terrible Vernacular, “Stop, stop, my father’s wagon!”

  The crowd was too engrossed to care. Those behind Sherwin watched his next moves with anticipation. Those before him were engaged in getting out of his way. It was all very amusing, Sherwin decided. Frantic chickens exploded on the air in puffs of feathers; geese honked and flapped, vainly trying to rise from the ground; children screamed and then laughed helplessly; and a hundred women screeched scoldings at him.

  Then nobody was looking anymore. Even the horses halted.

  “Come on, come on,” Sherwin growled, flapping the reins. But the horses were frozen, their heads up, their pointed ears quivering as a rhythmic chant rose from the crowd: “Wolf-Wolf-Wolf.”

  Sherwin looked over his shoulder. A streamer of gray bearing a young woman shot across the outskirts of the crowd, around the dilapidated buildings, and past the point where Sherwin’s wagon had stopped. It made for the temple and the swaying figure hanging from the scaffold.

  “I suppose yer abandoned secrecy too then,” Sherwin muttered.

  *

  Rafen transformed in a dark alley near the vast, triangular-roofed temple. Its ivory pillars were cracked in places, the portico partly blackened from a fire. The side steps were crumbling.

  The people still chanted, and Rafen expected they thought he would reappear if they kept going. He realized Asiel must have presented Wynne as a captive before the people, to demoralize them. This meant that Rafen’s freeing of Wynne, the appearance of Talmon’s Wolf’s daughter riding the very much alive Wolf, was the perfect spark for an uprising. While the chanting brought him a rush of fiery adrenaline, Rafen knew more than three hundred people shouting with such abandon was bound to bring trouble. As he clutched Wynne in the shadows, he observed guards already moving away from the gates to consult together. Tarhian soldiers streamed out of doors in the eastern wall and gathered at the edges of the crowd. Their presence did nothing to quiet the people.

  “When Sherwin brings the wagon to the scaffold,” Rafen whispered to Wynne, “then I will take your father. I can’t carry him.”

  “Asiel tied him with kesmal,” Wynne said bitterly. “You cannot do it.”

  “I’m going to try,” Rafen said, raising his hand to his phoenix feather. Erasmus had said that with Zion they could give even the Lashki a beating. His words were about to be tested.

  In the alley, Rafen and Wynne were opposite the muddy dais on which the scaffold stood, in front of the temple portico. The enamored chanting (Wolf-Wolf-Wolf) rung in the air like mockery as Rafen stared at the corpse of the man who had died in his stead. All he had heard was true: Erasmus was frozen in his dying moments. His weathered, tanned face was set in fierce, unnatural lines of concentration, his lips firmly pressed together in a thin line. But his eyes, in the moment that two Tarhian soldiers had tugged on the opposite ends of the rope, had betrayed what the rest

  of his face didn’t: shock. They were popping, the opaque whites showing. No one had had the decency to shut them. Erasmus’ body was rigid as a board, the arms pinned to his sides by an invisible force. Asiel’s unseen kesmal plastered even Erasmus’ graying hair to his head. Alive and breathing in his lifetime, Erasmus’ skin was now covered with an oily glaze. It looked like he was imprisoned in a cage of saliva. In the stirring air, his limbs did not swing individually. Rather, the body swayed like a stiff pendulum.

  Soon, Rafen would have to flash from the alley as a wolf and scamper up the crumbling side steps to the temple portico, from which he would cross the dais and come at the scaffold from behind. Then he would be forced to transform, knowing the T-shaped scaffold and the dead man would never hide him. Everyone would know the Wolf was a boy, and Rafen would have to draw his sword and somehow perform the kesmal that would release Erasmus. Rafen lea
ned against the shadowed wall of a building at the front of the alleyway, breathing deeply, swallowing hard. His eyes stung, but he didn’t feel grief – he felt anger. It burned in his blood, leaving an acrid taste in his mouth.

  Glimpsing a wagon approaching the scaffold, he let go of Wynne and prepared to transform.

  Someone appeared on the temple steps and flew up to the dais before the portico, reaching the scaffold. Talmon’s eyes bulged as he surveyed the maddened people. His mounted soldiers emerged from the alleyway the false Roger had fled into. They, along with almost eighty soldiers from the eastern wall, swept in among the people with drawn swords. Talmon clutched a lit torch he had likely stolen from a blacksmith in the slums. It flamed in his hand as he looked back at the scaffold.

  An image of Talmon in the Tarhian mines flashed through Rafen’s mind. The king was releasing a fiery piece of Rafen’s torn shirt, and it floated down to the participants of a rebellion. Their screaming resounded in Rafen’s head…

  “NO!” Rafen shouted. The bellowing crowd was too loud. He transformed in a second, his body charged with animal desperation.

  Behind Erasmus, Talmon raised his voice. His Vernacular was strangely resonant – insane, but final: “THERE IS NO WOLF!”

  As Rafen reached the temple side steps, Talmon swung the torch into Erasmus’ torso. The entire corpse and scaffold burst into gray flames shot with shocking green, an effect caused by the combination of fire and kesmal. They wreathed the scaffold, sending foul-smelling plumes of smoke into the air. Behind the flare, the corpse was disintegrating, falling into shreds and particles that were caught up and spiraled in the unnatural inferno.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Roger’s Duel

  Rafen swept up the white stone steps on rapid paws. Two Tarhians stepped out of the shadows to intercept him, and Wynne outstripped him, rushing from the portico and over the dais to the scaffold.

  “NO!” she shrieked, dangerously close to the flaming maelstrom. “MY FATHER, PLEASE!”

  She kneeled before the fire, her raised hands working furiously as if to conjure up Zion out of nowhere. The men blocking Rafen whipped their pistols out. Rafen feinted to the side, making to bite a blue-clad leg. A bullet exploded before him, whizzing over his snout when he flashed back to his former position. He shot through the Tarhians’ legs, and two more bullets flurried in the air behind him while he dodged feverishly.

  “So the Sianian hussy has come,” Talmon snarled at Wynne. “You love your father, do you not, Wynne? Embrace him then.”

  He rounded the scaffold and seized a screaming Wynne by the shoulders. Rafen was nearing the scaffold, but he was going to be too late.

  “Father, don’t!” Francisco screamed from near the front of the crowd.

  A wave of heat overwhelmed Rafen’s senses the moment he shot between the scaffold and Wynne. Her weight descended on his back as she tore free from Talmon, and her rough peasant hands closed on the fur of his neck. Rafen’s paws skittered forward of their own accord. He felt himself hover in the air for a fleeting instant, and realized too late that he had reached the left end of the dais and missed the side steps there. He fell the four feet to the ground. Simultaneously, a crack resounded as Talmon’s bullet whistled through the air above.

  Rafen hit the ground with a thud. Wynne’s full weight, combined with the impact, made his back feel as if it would snap. Rafen ducked into the cellar-like space beneath the portico behind the dais. Supported by the same pillars that stretched upward to bear the front of the temple roof, the floor of the portico formed his and Wynne’s ceiling.

  Footsteps echoed above.

  “Talmon,” a harsh voice said.

  Roger was on the portico behind the Tarhian king. His tone was taut with pain. He did not realize the bullet hadn’t hit Rafen.

  “Why don’t you drop the gun now, Talmon?” he said.

  “Surely, Roger,” Talmon said coolly, “but you will die in whatever manner you choose.”

  Above, Talmon scraped his pistol into its holster, and tore his sword from its sheath. Rafen threw Wynne off and lunged toward to the edge of his hiding place, his heart thundering. If he went to help Roger, they could probably finish Talmon together. As the two blades clashed against each other, a rushing filled the air, accompanied by an eerie, cracked screeching – the audible expiring of Asiel’s months-old kesmal. Rafen froze. Then a roar drowned everything out. The ground was vibrating, and Rafen was reminded of his days in the mine again. Wynne threw herself onto his aching back once more, and he surged out from beneath the portico and into the crowd, which parted before him, fleeing from the temple steps and the dais where the scaffold stood. Sherwin was nowhere to be seen. Rafen must have spotted the wrong wagon.

  I’ll get Wynne to safety and go back for Roger, he told himself

  feverishly.

  The Tarhian soldiers moved back mechanically, their eyes on the people. The vibrating concluded with a big and surprisingly silent bursting, like the explosion of a great bubble. A wave of hot smoke rolled across the marketplace, tossing splintered wood, disintegrated stone, and ash. Rafen narrowed his eyes to slits against the debris, panic building in him. Where was his infernal father?

  When the air cleared, a great crater remained in the temple’s portico and dais. The scaffold and corpse were gone. Talmon picked himself up, brushing dirt off his knee-length navy coat as if he had been gardening.

  To Talmon’s right, Roger struggled to his feet. With a sideways glance, Talmon snatched his sword from the dust and lunged toward Roger. The metal gleamed as it slid between Roger’s ribs.

  Roger doubled over. In his mind, Rafen heard him gasp. Talmon wrenched his sword clear and stalked away. Rafen’s father fell face forward while the Tarhian king turned and seized a rearing horse to ride.

  Sherwin and the wagon did not exist. Wynne, the burden on his back, meant nothing to him. He did not notice the ashes on the air – all that was left of Erasmus – as he flew on swift paws to Roger.

  “Leave him alone!” Francisco shouted distantly.

  A blast of gray-green kesmal split the air near him. Rafen kept running until he was at Roger’s side. He wanted to transform and show him that he did, after all, care. Yet he couldn’t bear it, couldn’t show it in the end. A million voices were screaming in his head. Rafen crushed them all. He threw Wynne from his back into the dust and lowered himself to the ground, trying to slide himself beneath Roger’s spine.

  Wynne picked herself up slowly, staring at him with a smile on her face. It never reached her eyes. She was not going to help him.

  Running to Roger’s side, Elizabeth stooped to lift Roger with difficulty. Her thick black hair fell over her face, hiding her expression. Roger’s eyes cracked open; a faint smile touched his face when he saw Rafen. And then his dead weight descended on Rafen’s back.

  *

  Sherwin’s wagon was surrounded by peasants brandishing weapons at the Tarhians who wove through their midst. Farmers held pitchforks; a sweaty blacksmith clutched some tongs with a hot horseshoe within them; children threw apples; an innkeeper appeared with a rickety chair that he kept thrusting into any man who looked foreign. Sherwin flicked the reins desperately, trying to get his team moving. He was almost free of the crowd. From there, he hoped to drive to the crater in the temple’s dais and portico. At least he could put Roger in the wagon.

  Things had gone unbelievably wrong.

  Surrounded by Tarhian soldiers, Talmon had mounted a horse and ridden to the middle of the crowd. He raised his voice in accented Tongue and screamed, “Lay down your weapons! I have called for reinforcements. Your rebellion is futile. Must more blood be shed?”

  He lifted his sword, which still gleamed with Roger Ridding’s gore. The crowd bellowed hoarsely. After Roger had attacked Talmon in defense of the Wolf, he had become a hero.

  “Lay down your weapons!”

  Sherwin wrenched his eyes away, trying to locate Francisco. On a stallion, Francisco was at th
e front of the crowd, close to the northern wall. Talmon had forgotten him in the threat of a rebellion. Sherwin flicked his reins again. His weary team didn’t budge. Even the seething people on all sides failed to alarm them. They lowered their heads to some sparse weeds that grew between the cobblestones.

  “Stupid animals,” Sherwin said through gritted teeth. He made to jump off the wagon.

  A shadow fell across him, and Sherwin glanced up. To his right, the same thin Ashurite from the Woods sat stiffly on a bay horse, holding something like a Burmese sword. His eyes were fixed on the crater in the middle of the dais. He had seen what Talmon hadn’t; the Wolf had appeared, and Elizabeth had placed Roger on his back.

  “Do not worry,” Asiel said to no one in particular, a nasty gleam in his white-blue eyes, “this time I will not miss.”

  He pointed his blade at the Wolf. Sherwin leapt to his feet on his bench and hurled himself at the bay horse, his foot hitting a stirrup. Before he could fall, he threw his arms around Asiel’s torso, head-butting him in the diaphragm just as gray-green kesmal exploded from the sword. The impact of Sherwin’s attack sent the kesmal whirling sideways. It struck the remnants of the portico to Rafen’s right. Out of his peripheral vision, Sherwin saw Elizabeth, Wynne, and Rafen with Roger on his back rush from view. Cursing, Asiel swung his blade around to point at Sherwin’s forehead. A burst of smoke and lurid green filled Sherwin’s vision. A pistol cracked nearby. Smudged plumes filled the world. An explosion in Sherwin’s head created throbbing pain nowhere and everywhere at once.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Francisco’s Courage

  With Roger safely in an alleyway to the right of the temple, Rafen flung himself back out into the marketplace, his sword up. A bullet narrowly missed his head as he came into view. He lunged toward four Tarhians, who were stabbing an old peasant man multiple times. His blood flaming, Rafen plunged his own blade into the back of one of the blue coats. Wrenching it free, he transformed when the second Tarhian spun around, making to cut Rafen’s throat.