Catch a Wolf

by A. Katie Rose

  “You’re both daft.”

  Ly’Tana stepped away, annoyed suddenly, and reluctantly returned her arrow to her quiver. She slung her bow across her shoulder and put several paces between us. I felt her personal shield rise, a female barrier against a male’s unwanted courtesy. I let her go, returning my attention to the strange scene of girl-meets-wolves, my feelings of awe rebounding.

  Arianne swiveled her body in a graceful move, and knelt in the grass and dirt beside the pack leader, her skirts flowing about her like a blue and gold pool. “Forgive my sister,” she said quietly. “She does not understand.”

  How could he possibly comprehend the human tongue? He understood quite well, I reckoned.

  At her words, the wolf grinned, laughing, his jaws parted and his pink tongue lolled. With a quick, sharp twist of his head, he swiped her cheek with a sloppy kiss. His mate sighed and wagged her tail. She nuzzled Arianne’s ear under her hair and turned her back on us humans to return to her children. They wiggled a bit, yet accepted her presence as second-rate to the drama unfolding between their sire and me.

  Arianne giggled, and rose to her feet. Her hands caressed the she-wolf’s long body as that girl walked away, then dropped to her sides. Like an ambassador counseling two alien nations, she straightened her back. She did not try to pet the big leader at her side, like she might a docile dog. Though I half-expected she would, considering her proclivities toward wolves.

  Instead, she stepped away, to the side, as though introducing two strangers to one another. She glanced from me to the wolf and back again, expectant.

  When his gaze returned to me, his amber-brown eyes almost seemed to glow. His tail picked up speed. He woofed, once, a low, soft bark that might have meant nothing but a growling bark to everyone else.

  I heard words.

  “Chosen One.”

  The sudden urge to flee on Tor’s heels hit me, and, before I could stop myself, I took a step backward. No, no, not that crap again…no. It was fun while it lasted but now the wolves need to move on and leave me to my own devices. They have me mistaken for someone else, obviously, this Chosen One of theirs must be a real wolf, not a human named Wolf.

  The big leader spoke again.

  “Chosen One.”

  Once more, the image of the massive black wolf filled my mind, running at the head of the great pack. So big, the wolf dwarfed even the largest wolf in the horde. A black wolf with grey eyes, he was easily the largest wolf that ever walked the earth.

  Damn and blast, I thought. I cast the vision out quickly, my mind gibbering in near panic. Feeling the sudden urge to run, to hide, I grit my teeth, and clenched my fists. I will not, I thought, I will not, run from a pack of furry vermin. I am, I will be, better than that.

  I halted my own panic with strict gladiator discipline, and waited. I rehearsed mantras from my training that soothed my fears and numbed my fright. Don’t move, I told myself. Fear is your weapon, not theirs. Standing straight and tall, Corwyn himself might have held a whip at my back to instill such self-control from me. You will not fear them. They will fear you. Treacherous sweat still dripped between my shoulder blades, however. Fear is your weapon, your ally.

  Somehow, I didn’t think that idea applied to wolves.

  Tails flitting between their legs, the wolves’ children wagged their joy, their heads lowered in submission. Their soft eyes never left me. One of the half-grown pups lay down and turned belly up, exposing his vulnerable throat and soft underbelly, his tail flicking over his genitals. He recognized his leader of the pack and that leader wasn’t his father.

  Whoa, time out, back up, what? Me?

  The pack leader’s mate grinned, the ranking female, and licked her lips. Her head parallel to the earth, her hindquarters hugged the ground, and her tail flitted back and forth in sharp, quick wags.

  While not well versed in any language save my own, I recognized the wolf language of submission to a creature more dominant than themselves. I saw lesser wolves submitting to one more powerful than the pack. Obviously, they held more intelligence than your average, garden-variety human, but why would they lower themselves to a slave?

  My own smarts finally rose to the surface and slapped me across the face. These intelligent creatures abased themselves to their chosen leader.

  To me.

  Like the rest of his pack, the big grey lowered his head, licking his lips. His ears flattened, his tail slowing to sharp flicks between his legs. He spoke. I heard him. I know I heard him, but how the hell I heard him escaped me.

  “Hail, Chosen One. We greet you well.”

  I jolted back, astounded. As though he spoke a verbal dialect, different from my own, I knew immediately what he said. That low voice might have sounded like a canine growl to Ly’Tana, or Kel’Ratan, or Corwyn. I heard words mixed in with that wolf rumble, recognized an intelligence that my instincts lunged toward.

  He spoke the language of my soul.

  How in the name of all the gods did I understand a damn wolf?

  Had I the voice, I might have answered him. I might have answered them, all of them, with a few questions of my own. Are you all nuts? Have you gone completely insane? You’re furry vermin with delusions of a grandeur far from my own.

  “We need you, Chosen One. We love you. Accept yourself.”

  My throat dried to dust. Gods and below, what was this Chosen One crap?

  I planted my feet firmly on the earth, knew where I came from and where I was going. I’m a man, once upon a time a prince, now an outlaw and an escaped gladiator. I’m the chosen one only of the die-hard sports fans, the Arena’s darling, the champion of champions. Men died to grant me that title, the only one I’ll ever know in this life. I may die bereft of its glory, but by all the gods I’ll die free from its chains.

  Wolves never entered the picture—until I remembered their howling in my sleep.

  My lungs failed to draw breath as I choked on my own memory.

  Darkness grew around us. I looked up, fear seizing my heart. The storm, reaching the sun, blocked the sickly green light. Within an instant, bright day turned to near darkness, the color of deep dusk.

  Before I could stop, or perhaps reevaluate what I was about to do, my thoughts turned back toward the big grey wolf and his family.

  “Run, brother,” I thought, sending my mental words toward him, without truly knowing why or how. “Go, and be safe. We will meet again, one day”

  Where the thoughts came from, I had no idea. It seemed right, somehow. I understood not just the wolves body language, but the grey leader’s thoughts, his mate’s and his children’s as well. They loved me, they would die for me, as they might die for their king or their god. With them, I felt a rightness, a communion of two beings, a language understood yet not.

  Without rhyme or reason, somehow, my inner words reached their goal.

  The huge grey wolf cast one more fearful glance over his shoulder toward the approaching menace. The storm licked their heels, ready to pounce on them as a housecat may slay a mouse. It had grown within the moments as we conversed, if that was what we had done, its deadly strength bearing down on us like a runaway team of six and an overloaded wagon.

  The pony-sized wolf raised his head. His lips skinned back from keenly sharp white fangs in a silent snarl of primal fear. I shut my teeth when they wanted to part at the same time the leader threw back his head and howled.

  Tossing back her dainty head, his mate howled beside him. The half-grown offspring gathered in a loose knot around their parents, hackles ridged along spines. Rising from their submissive postures, the youngsters tensed, ears forward, and their eyes bright. Several pink tongues lapped whiskers as they sought danger and promises both. Stilling tails that yet wanted to wag, they prepared to run, escape this ominous threat with their lives. They may be young, yet their wisdom included nature’s fury in their limited education. Come on, Mama, Papa. Let’s go, time’s a wasting. Crouching, they cast fearful glances toward the storm, worryi
ng, wanting to flee. Yet, they’d die before fleeing without their kin.

  The grey leader paused a moment, his head up, his moist black nose scented the air. As it twitched, his lips pulled back briefly from pale gums, and his hackles rose on his back. Like a brush, his tail stood stiff behind him. Fear, not of me or my folk, or the approaching storm, etched his white-washed features.

  He worried over me.

  His intelligent eyes found mine once more. “Beware, Chosen One,” he growled. “I scent enemies.”

  With one last graceful bow toward me, the grey leader led his pack into the woods. On they ran, fleeing toward safety and survival. Leaving me behind, their Chosen One, they loped ahead of the devastation. They fled the wrath of one they didn’t understand. At his own request, they left behind one they held most dear. They fled, and escaped the horrible storm, into freedom and safety.

  Once they disappeared into the forest, I felt a strange melancholy draw over my soul. Not even the close proximity of Ly’Tana, of Arianne, of Kel’Ratan, could quell that inarticulate longing, half-felt, and not understood.

  I stood among those I loved, and felt absolutely alone.

  I resisted the strong urge to follow after, howling, running not on two legs but four.

  Cold reality washed over me, drenching me from head to toe in ice.

  I jerked myself from those strange thoughts, those very weird feelings. I am a man, not a wolf.

  Where did these strange feelings come from? Why did the wolves stop and seem to know me? Arianne knew. Arianne understood the wolves and the wolves loved her.

  Why?

  Uneasily, I recalled Rygel’s tale in the inn. He spoke of the legend of the gai’tan, the werewolf. I remembered his bizarre tale of the man with the soul of a wolf.

  I also remembered how I scoffed.

  I stared into the forest trees where deer and bear and fox and rabbit still fled. The wolves seemed to know. Yet, they were gone, and they left behind too many questions for which I had no answer.

  “Well, that was interesting.”

  I spun about, my arm shielding Ly’Tana at the same time I reached for my sword. She muttered imprecations, eyeing me sidelong with an expression that said, “My, aren’t we jumpy today?”

  During the wolfish drama, Rygel had taken a seat on the rock wall at our back and watched us with no small amusement. I had no need to translate the expression in his eyes, or his smarmy half-smile.

  “Gai’tan”, his silence said.

  “Gai’tan this”, I replied, making the sign.

  Like the wolf, Rygel read my mind. “Don’t be an ass. Accept yourself. You are what you are.”

  “What am I?”

  “Think on it, braud,” he replied, his tawny eyes glinting with humor.

  All I could feel was gratitude that was all he said.

  After a mock salute and a grin, Rygel whistled an aimless tune and pulled his still-bloody dagger from his belt. All the while watching me with those insufferable cat’s eyes, he deliberately cleaned his nails with the knife’s point.

  “I sooo don’t want to know what the hell just happened,” Ly’Tana muttered, setting her bow across her back.

  “I do,” Kel’Ratan demanded. “What the hell just happened?”

  “They paid homage,” Arianne replied simply, having returned to my side. She nestled under my arm, her own tiny limb stretching as far as she could around the small of my back. “Raine sent them from here, to protect them.”

  I gave a start. “You heard that?”

  Rather than answer, she set her lips in a thin line, a small pucker between her finely arched brows. ’Twas a look I’d see more often than I liked.

  “Homage?” Kel’Ratan asked.

  “You know what homage is.”

  “Of course I know,” he snapped. “How do they know?”

  “They know.”

  Her uncomplicated answer, while correct, merely served to annoy Kel’Ratan further. He opened his mouth to either question or protest, but I scowled and he shut his mouth with a snap. Arianne paid little heed to him, blissfully unaware of his red face as he nearly strangled on the words he dared not utter.

  I lifted some of the jet mane from her face in time to see a quick, self-satisfied smile crease her mouth before she ducked her head and resumed her usual eager-to-please expression. I sighed. It appeared there was more to my little sister than met the eye.

  “Is anyone going to explain this?” Ly’Tana demanded. “Why are a pack of wolves paying you homage? How did you send them from here? What the bloody hell is going on?”

  I took her arm to urge her into the monastery, hustling my sister alongside. “You don’t want to know, trust me. We need to take cover, like, right now.”

  As though growing bored with watching the drama from above, Bar finally landed in the courtyard. He dropped to all four feet, dust and debris from the backwash of his wings sweeping over us. He blew Arianne’s skirts around her legs and her hair once more into her face. I blinked grit from my eyes as Ly’Tana coughed.

  Ly’Tana inhaled a long, deep breath. It didn’t take a mind reader to know it contained a great deal of relief. The tension of the past few minutes quickly dispelled from her with the large variety of expletives that spewed from her mouth.

  “You bloody bugger!”

  She advanced on Bar in a fury, waving her arms, stabbing a finger into his startled face. Big as he was, Bar was no match for his mistress when it came to sheer fury. He backed away, raising his feathered head high to avoid the jabbing finger, his raptor’s eyes wide with alarm.

  Arianne hugged me tighter, brushing her jet mane from her eyes, eyes round with awe. Where did a royal princess learn such language? I half wondered. Yet, still too confused to wonder very long, my thoughts returned to the wolves.

  I half-listened as Ly’Tana cursed her griffin soundly for frightening her so badly, ranted about how long he’d been gone, and included a few choice oaths regarding his ancestors. Kel’Ratan still scowled, mostly at me, and muttered his own curses under his breath.

  I ignored him, and Rygel’s ‘I-told-you-so’ smile, my mind alternating between the fascination the wolves held for me, and shying away from the topic in horror. Gai’tan. Werewolf. Chosen One.

  My mind half-cringed when I considered Arianne’s tale: the wolves told her. She heeded their forewarnings while I ignored them. She listened, she learned, she survived because of them. She understood their language when I failed.

  Or did I? I heard the leader call me Chosen One, while the others heard merely a growling bark. Both Arianne and I heard words within the lupine vocalization. I spoke to him, with my mind. He understood me as easily as I understood those intelligent wolf eyes. Uneasily I recalled his last words: I scent enemies.

  “Acknowledge it, my brother,” Rygel commented. “Or be forced.”

  With another smarmy, I-know-more-than-you-grin, Rygel sheathed his blade, hopped off the wall and disappeared through the doorway.

  Feeling eyes on me, I glanced down. Arianne peeped up at me from beneath the thick fall of midnight hair, her eyes so much like my father’s I choked on the thickening in my throat.

  “You worry too much,” she said primly.

  So she was both seer and mind reader? Gods, that’s all I need.

  Ly’Tana had begun to repeat herself, mostly the strident comments on Bar’s insensitivity, his parentage, and his lack of anything remotely resembling intelligence. She heard Arianne’s words, and jerked about, her hair swirling about her shoulders.

  Her fury unabated, Ly’Tana targeted us for her next round of verbal tirade. With Bar effectively cowed, she zeroed in on the two of us.

  “Worry too much?” she snapped, emerald eyes ablaze. “How can we not worry too much? We have Brutal wanting our heads decorating his wall, stupid griffins who don’t know how to come in out of the rain, this colossal storm offering to hammer us into the ground, and a bloody pack of wolves paying us a social call. What’s not to w
orry, I ask you?”

  Arianne stood her ground, facing the furious Ly’Tana with nothing more than her hair and a calm façade to protect her.

  “The wolves are our friends,” she said firmly.

  “Friends?” Ly’Tana asked acidly. “If they’re such good friends, why didn’t you invite them for dinner?”

  Arianne clapped her hands like a small delighted child. “Oh, could we? I’m sure there’s enough to go around. Raine, would you—”

  Ly’Tana’s eyes bulged alarmingly. I took Arianne by the arm and escorted her to the monastery door. “Never mind.”

  Pushing her inside, I caught another glimpse of that small, self-satisfied smile, and could only shake my head. As cunning and as subtle as my father, with my mother’s sweet promise, I learned that tiny Arianne could never be taken for granted.

  “Go inside and cease teasing Ly’Tana,” I ordered.

  She pouted, her full lower lip protruding. I suddenly remembered this very same pout in her five year old face, a flash of memory I thought long gone. While that expression failed to move our mother, it ever succeeded in sending either me or our father into fits of protective worry.

  She then smiled up at me, her magnificent eyes alight with a steel she disguised most cleverly.

  I rolled my eyes. “Stop that.”

  “Stop what?” she asked, deceptively innocent.

  “That.” I turned away. “Get your tiny butt indoors and don’t aggravate the rest of the Kel’Hallans.”

  “Get inside now,” Ly’Tana snapped at Bar. “Go with Kel’Ratan or I swear I’ll skin you alive with a dull blade.”

  The huge griffin, concerned his diminutive mistress might act on her threat, followed Kel’Ratan at a careful walk, his tail low. He cast a multitude of sharp glances from those predatory eyes over his shoulder, looking so much like a little boy who’d just received a spanking that I choked back a laugh.

  Walking away, Kel’Ratan snarled. “Come on, you big dolt. If your ass gets pounded by the hail, don’t come crying to me.”

  As Corwyn hovered over me, indecisive, I stopped him and gestured to where Arianne still stood in the doorway. Backlit by firelight, her small form was nearly swallowed by the gloom. “Watch her,” I said. “She’s devious.”