by Zoe Marriott
After a moment he seemed to shake himself, and went on. “By the time Ion was eighteen, he couldn’t be trusted with any living thing. He rode his horses to death, strangled a hunting dog that snapped at him, harassed the servants, male and female. And I knew all that, hated it, but … but with us, with me, he was different. He never hurt me, or teased me. He was patient and kind. He used to lift me up and put me before him on his saddle, sneak me sweets, take me out fishing. At dinner, he would tell us stories, silly stories that made my mother and father laugh until they cried. He was the best big brother in the world. I never feared him. Not for a second. And then…”
I waited while he gathered himself, dreading his next words.
Finally he went on. “My father adopted Arian and brought him into the house. He was like a little wild animal at first, so eager for any scrap of kindness. So hungry for love. We all cared for him so much and wanted to show him that he was worth something – that he could trust us. Ion was away at the time. But the moment he came home I knew. I saw the way Ion looked at Arian. By the next day there were already bruises all over Arian. The hunted look was back in his eyes. I went to my father and told him; I bullied Arian into showing him the marks. Father didn’t want to believe it, but he loved Arian too, and that love forced him to face the truth. He called Ion to him, and told him to stop. Just that. I will never forget the look Ion gave me then. It was rage and betrayal, yes, but hurt too. It had never occurred to him that I would take Arian’s side over his. To Ion, Arian was just another helpless creature to torment for fun. He wasn’t one of us. He didn’t matter. No one had ever dared to confront Ion about what he did before, and that we did it now, over an outsider … I think it broke Ion’s heart. If he had one to break. He screamed and raged at my father and me, smashed things, terrified us all. The next day he was gone. He went to Aroha, to King Abheron’s court.”
“The Mad King?”
Luca nodded. “Ion become one of his favourites almost immediately. Apparently his antics … entertained Abheron.” His voice trailed off. I felt his chest heave against me as he took a deep breath. “Six months later King Abheron sent men, his own men, in the guise of mercenaries, to Mesgao. To kill us all.”
I bit my lip to muffle the gasp that wanted to escape.
“Had Ion complained about the way my father had treated him? Had he let slip a little too much about my father and uncle’s opinions of Abheron’s sanity? I don’t know if he betrayed us, or if Abheron merely acted against us because it amused him.
“My father and uncle were in the midst of constructing a stone fortress in Mesgao, but it was incomplete, and we were living in a wooden structure attached to the back. Abheron’s men set fire to it. That was his favourite method of murder. My cousin – Sorin – wasn’t there. He had ridden out a few days earlier to visit friends. Arian woke in the night and found the house in flames. I was already unconscious. Somehow he found the strength to drag me out. He realized that whoever had set the fire would be waiting for survivors to run out, so he dragged me into the fortress and hid me behind the piles of stone blocks. He tried to go back, to save my parents and the rest, but Abheron’s soldiers caught him on the way. They broke his arm and his nose and cracked most of his ribs, but he never told them where I was hidden. They left him for dead and the house in ashes. My cousin returned a day or two later and found … the remains. He took us away. We were the only survivors.”
Luca’s voice choked suddenly. His muscles, under my hands, had turned to stone. I turned in his arms and wrapped myself around him, rubbing his back the way he always did for me when I was upset or hurt. He drew his legs up on either side of me and rested his head against mine, as if trying to envelop me, or lose himself in me.
“That’s why you made the hill guard,” I whispered.
“When the king proposed it, I leaped at the chance to take charge. It seemed like fate. Knowing that Ion was lurking here in the mountains, free, still preying on people … it was unendurable. I thought if I became captain I could finally make amends for Ion’s actions, bring him to face the king, and justice. I’ve imagined it so many times. What he must look like by now, how he’ll react when he sees me. If he’ll be sorry.” Luca shook his head, hugging me fiercely. “My point is this: I know what evil looks like under the surface. No matter how beautiful the exterior, how good the lies, I don’t fool myself, not any more. You carry a terrible burden that no one – not even me – can really understand. But that doesn’t change who you are, Frost. You’re a good person. And I love you.”
“I wish…” My voice cracked. “I wish I could believe in that.”
Luca brushed the dishevelled strands of hair away from my face again and looked into my eyes. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll keep saying it until you do.”
Sometimes as I run, I wonder why I don’t give up. Why I don’t do as the wolves urge me. Lie down in the snow. Let them finish me off. The chase would be over, and at long last I could rest.
But I can’t. My aching arms and legs, my frantically beating heart, my gasping lungs, won’t let me. Somewhere deep inside, I know there are worse things than death. If the wolves catch me they will take more than flesh and bones.
They will take my soul.
Twenty
My eyes snapped open in the dark. I lay on Luca’s bed, on top of the covers, where I had fallen asleep after Luca and I had finally finished talking, sometime after midnight. His face was a pale smudge beside me in the shadows. His eyes were closed, and his breathing peaceful. I knew the sound well. I had been listening to it every night for the past six weeks. Tonight it was just another reminder of how vulnerable Luca was, without ever knowing it. Panic, stirred by the dream, clutched at my heart.
What if I can’t protect him, Father? What if I can’t keep him safe from me?
The enclosed space of the tent – the quiet and the shadows – was suffocating. Even Luca’s hand, curved protectively around my ribs, felt like a weight too heavy to bear. I couldn’t stand it. It took all my self control to ease from under Luca’s hand instead of flinging myself violently away from him. Even so, the bed creaked, and Luca grumbled quietly.
I stood over him for a moment, almost panting, trying to make sense of my tangled feelings. Caution stirred in the back of my mind, warning me that something was wrong, but I couldn’t heed it. I couldn’t breathe. I needed to get out. I had to get away. Now.
Outside the wind had risen, making tent walls billow, stirring the trees into hissing, secret conversations. My shirt flapped around my waist, and my unbound hair fluttered and blew into my face. The sky was filled with great drifts of swiftly moving silver clouds. They formed strange shapes as they rippled and reformed across the stars. The great fire had died out. The singing and revelry was finished, and the camp seemed deserted.
I hesitated again, vaguely disturbed. But something drew me on, away from Luca’s tent, towards the deep shadows of the forest. Tossing boughs closed overhead. Leaves danced in the air and flittered past my face. Trees and undergrowth parted before me to form a narrow, whispering tunnel.
After a while, light began to gleam through the gaps between the trees. I felt soft, cold touches against my cheeks and hands. They left tear-trails on my skin. It was no longer leaves drifting around me, but snowflakes. My panicked breath clouded up before my face. Yet I could not stop or turn back. Whatever force had tugged me from Luca’s bed had control of me now and my legs would not stop moving.
The last of the trees fell behind me. I stared out over a great plain of snow, lit by a cloudless sky of brilliant stars. At the edge of the plain, so far away that I could barely make them out, sheer cliffs thrust up out of the snow, and beyond them, the jagged shapes of mountains.
A deep growl split the night. Against my will, I turned.
Silver eyes glowed like twin stars in the black wolf’s immense skull. His fangs gleamed, tongue lolling redly between them. Steam rose from his mouth and nostrils and from where his great paws were plant
ed in the snow.
I forced words out from between numb lips. “Why have you brought me here?”
I did not. I followed you. I have always been following you.
The creature’s voice was the eager, joyous howling of a hunting pack, the sound that had haunted my dreams for half my life. It was the desolate cry of the lone wolf. It was ice cracking, carrion crows squawking, and the final whispers of dying men. And it was my father’s voice, the voice that I had always known was his, even though he had died before I was born. The sound of it smote my ears. I cringed, crying out. “What do want?”
You know already. You have spent all your years fighting me, but soon that must stop, Saram. Soon a storm will come. You will need me then.
“I won’t. Please. All I want is to be normal.”
If you were normal, you would already be dead.
“I–I know that. But … the bargain was not of my making. My mother was the one who called you, and she is dead now. Why won’t you leave me alone?”
You are my daughter, and I love you. How can a father abandon his own child?
I put my hands over my ears and ran. The voice seemed to deepen with sorrow as it called after me.
Soon, my daughter. Soon you will summon me, as your mother did. And I will come.
The ice cracked and crunched underfoot as I fled, hands still clapped over my ears, tears streaming down my face. I didn’t know when the trees sprang up around me again, but somehow I was running through them, and the wind was back, buffeting and swirling. I stumbled out of the forest…
And opened my eyes in the still darkness of Luca’s tent, curled warm and safe in his arms.
The hill guards rose before dawn the following day. Bleary-eyed and grumbling after the excesses of the night before, they picked reluctantly at breakfast while Luca and Arian gave a short tactical briefing. I sat in the corner of the mess tent with Livia, staring unenthusiastically at my own tray of food. My excuse was not too much ale, but too much thinking. Last night’s dream sat in my belly like a rock.
“All right, everyone.” Luca – a dozen vellum and parchment maps pinned to the canvas wall behind him – held up a hand for silence. “Those of you who’ve just joined us, or anyone who’s been on scouting or messenger duty for a while, should pay special attention. This is what we know. Our enemy’s permanent base is at the ruins of the House of God. They may have been there since they first arrived in the mountains, since apparently they’ve refortified the broken section of the outer wall and have effective defences in place. That is bad news. The more firmly they’ve established themselves, the harder a time we’re going to have digging them back out of there.
“Now, we believe that the splinter group led by Birkin” – he flicked me a smiling glance – “was the last one loose in the hills, which is one piece of good news. But it’s likely that once Constantin realizes his roving warrior bands have all been disposed of, he will send out more, and while each time we pick off one of these groups it weakens him, we can no longer spend our whole attention on them. The primary mission was always to find and capture the rebel ringleaders and bring them to justice, especially Constantin. That’s what I intend for us to do now.”
There was a muted cheer. Luca let everyone get it out of their systems before he waved the noise down again. “We have several obstacles to overcome. We still have no true idea of the enemy’s numbers or level of weaponry. The bandits we’ve taken had nothing but battlefield lootings, but that isn’t to say that Constantin doesn’t have – or hasn’t forged – much better equipment in his permanent base. It’s vital to gather more information. We need to break camp here and move into enemy territory. We must learn every cave, crevice and hiding place they may be utilizing. By now they will know that location like the back of their hands, so we need to as well. After that we’ll formulate a detailed plan which will cut off their supplies and resources, force them out of the House of God, and channel them to a battleground of our choosing. Remember, the enemy has the high ground and a secure location. Any attempt at a frontal assault on their own terms would be suicide. We need to play to our strengths, be faster, cleverer and more ruthless than them, or there will be no chance of success.”
Luca took a long, slow look around the room, seeming to weigh up his troops. His eyes were warm, glowing with belief. “I know that I can rely on you all.”
I could feel the response in the air, the sense of pride and determination his look had brought to life. After a moment he stepped aside, waving his arm at the maps. “Arian has been gathering together all the scout reports into a cohesive whole and is going to share more detail on the enemy’s circumstances.”
My attention wandered as Arian stood and began pointing out features and locations on the maps. I had already read these reports over Luca’s shoulder and studied the maps for myself.
I was supposed to be a hill guard now. A real warrior. I was going to war under Luca’s command. The outcome of this conflict meant something to everyone here, and everything to Luca. He was willing to put me in the middle of it all because he believed in me.
I was deathly afraid that he was wrong.
Please, Father. Let me be the soldier, the warrior that he needs me to be.
Please keep the Wolf prisoner.
Last night’s kisses and confessions seemed like a dream: less real than the horrific vision that had followed them. But whenever Luca’s eyes rested on me I realized anew – with a shock of mixed terror and joy – that I was loved. Truly loved, for perhaps the first time in my life. I didn’t feel worthy of Luca or his feelings. Yet deep inside, where before there had only ever been ice, there was now a flickering warmth that even the fear could not touch.
Soon you will summon me, as your mother did…
Never, I vowed. Never.
As soon as it was light enough we broke camp, folding tents, loading horses and locking up the wooden buildings we would be leaving behind. I bid a sad farewell to the place I had come to feel was my home.
It was a hard trek up the mountain. The higher we climbed the less hospitable the terrain became. Green trees shrank away to stunted grey shrubs, shrubs to blue moss and orange lichen, until there was barely a patch of vegetation to be seen. I had been this way before, but I had been in a daze of hunger and desperation then, and had observed very little. I had not remembered the cold. Although the ruins of the House of God were nowhere near the snow-clad upper slopes, after half a day’s march up the mountain it was already noticeably colder. I huddled into my new leather jerkin, grateful for the extra layers of clothing.
“We’re headed for that ridge?” I asked Luca, peering up at what looked like nothing more than a black, horizontal streak on the mountain’s flank.
“Beneath it,” Luca said, shielding his face from the sun with one hand. He didn’t seem to feel any of my awkwardness or worry, and, as always, his confidence was infectious. “Razia reported an area of level ground suitable for a camp. We might have to clear some rocks, but it will be worth it.”
I nodded, forcing my eyes away from his face. I looked for Arian, and found him at the very back of the slowly moving column of soldiers. He was helping to redistribute the packs on the back of one of the shaggy mountain-bred horses. The animal was jigging restively and tossing its head, while the hill guard in charge of it looked on helplessly. Arian’s square, competent hands soothed the beast into stillness so that the other man could finish moving the packs.
“He always did have a way with animals,” Luca said, a smile in his voice.
I worried at my lip with my teeth. The bond between the adopted brothers was clear to anyone with eyes – but Arian’s past and the events that had turned him into such a complex, difficult man were still opaque. Although Luca had shared his own story with me last night, he had said nothing that had accounted for the history of abuse written on Arian’s back. Despite the time we had spent training together, I felt I knew Arian no better now than I had when I first walked into camp.<
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Would Arian ever be able to accept someone else coming into Luca’s life? Especially someone who would be important to Luca, close to him, in a way that Arian never could? The jealousy and protectiveness Arian displayed made it painfully clear that Luca was all Arian had – all he cared about. For a long time, with Luca’s cousin Sorin keeping both of them hidden away, to protect their lives from the Mad King, Arian had been the only person Luca could trust and rely on as well. But now Luca was making room in his heart for me. Would Arian feel pushed out? Forsaken? If so, what on earth should I do to fix it?
“What are you worrying about?” Luca asked, breaking into my thoughts. “If you frown any harder you’ll turn me to stone.”
“I’m completely lost,” I said, forcing a smile. Now was not the time to burden him with my fears. “Where are we in relation to the House of God?”
“By the time we reach the ridge we’ll be a little more than half an hour’s march away,” Luca said. “Let’s get to the head of the column, and I can show you the trail we’ll need to follow.”
We moved quickly along the line of soldiers, who, burdened as they were with all the rolled-up tents and pieces of furniture that would not fit onto the backs of the sturdy mountain horses, were walking slowly. People waved in a friendly way as we walked by.
The earth beneath my feet was less like earth and more like sand – a fine, silver sand that caught the sunlight and made my eyes smart and water. The path was littered with a tumble of grey and white rocks, from tiny bits of shale that shifted and turned underfoot to massive boulders nearly the size of the house I had lived in as a small child.
On one side of the doggedly trudging hill guards the ground fell away sharply: a sheer cliff, it plunged straight into the River Mesgao, about thirty feet below. We were closer to the heart of the mountains here and the river had taken on a different character. The water no longer ran green and placid in a wide channel but was a sharp, icy blue that crashed and churned along the narrow ravine. On the other side of the hill-guard column, the jagged mountain towered, brown and black against the sky.
