Night of the wolf, p.12
Night of the Wolf, page 12
The merchant tried to explain the concept of a ferry to him and succeeded fairly well. Maeniel had seen boats. “You mean, it’s a boat that doesn’t go anywhere but from one side of the river to the other?” he asked the merchant.
“Yes, but that’s enough places.”
Maeniel nodded and the five set out together, Maeniel leading the brigand’s horse, the merchant mounted on his own horse and pulling the mule’s headrope. The mule had gotten over his bad temper and accepted the situation philosophically.
The merchant’s name was Decius. A human might have been irritated by his unending flow of chatter, but as far as the wolf was concerned, he was a font of useful information. The merchant talked and, except for an occasional prodding question to direct the flow, Maeniel listened.
It transpired that Decius had not simply been set upon by the pair of thieves, he’d hired them at his last stopping place to protect him.
“Sometimes it works,” he told Maeniel in a shamefaced way. “You hire a few of the wolves to keep off the rest of the pack.”
“I suppose,” Maeniel replied noncommittally.
“And speaking of wolves, there are supposed to be real wolves around here.”
Maeniel was tempted to reply, “Only one,” but he decided he’d better keep his mouth shut.
Decius craned his neck and anxiously looked up and down the road. “Do you suppose there are?”
“No” was all Maeniel felt he could trust himself to say.
“No wolves? You’re sure? How do you know?”
Maeniel decided to give his companion something else to think about. “No wolves here, only bears.”
Decius started so violently that his horse shied. “Bears!” he squeaked.
“Yes! Big ones.”
“Where?”
“In the forest.”
“Well, even I know that,” Decius said condescendingly. “Where in the forest?”
“Right around the next bend in the road.”
Decius began laughing. “How could you possibly know?” They were, at the moment, rounding the bend.
Above, clouds were piling up. The wind was rising. It whipped at the nearly naked tree branches around them, sending a flurry of brown leaves across the road.
Maeniel paused, his nostrils distended. He took a deep breath. A whole complex of sensations from the wolf flooded his brain. The air had a sharp, wet smell: rain or possibly snow before morning. An old smell of burning; fresh bear—he’d been nearby only a short time ago. Why? The wolf didn’t fear the big animal and doubted Decius had anything to fear either. If the bear was stalking them, he’d be after the horses—the bony gelding Maeniel was leading or the heavier-fleshed mare ridden by Decius.
Around the bend, the road swung close to the river.
Decius laughed nervously. “Well, friend, where is that bear you were talking about, and how do we know he’s here?”
Maeniel pointed to a muddy spot near one of the deep ruts. “There!” he said.
The paw prints were fresh. The mud that had gushed up between the bear’s toes was still wet.
A fair-sized beech stood near the tracks. The claw marks on the bark were a good three feet taller than any man.
Decius startled, frightening his horse again. The mule brayed loudly in the sudden silence. “Does he know we’re here?” Decius squeaked.
“Keep moving, and yes, he knows; you stink of it.”
“Of what?” Decius seemed to be on the verge of panic.
“Fear!”
Decius obeyed. They passed the tree; the horses ambled on.
The sky was gray now. The wind shifted. Decius’ horse caught the bear smell. She began dancing along sideways, throwing her head up—in other words, showing incipient symptoms of equine panic. Every one of Maeniel’s senses, human and wolf, was at full stretch. What was a bear doing here at this time of year? They were usually fat, lazy, sleepy, and ready to den up. Then he heard the hum of bees. “Of course. Keep going,” he urged Decius, but the frightened horse was no longer making forward progress.
Some of the bees arrived and began buzzing around them. One shot into the distended nostrils of Decius’ horse. The confused insect obeyed the million-year-old command: When skin-to-chitin contact with an enemy occurs, commit suicide. He drove his stinger in to the hilt, maybe or maybe not screaming, “Die, horse!”
Decius’ horse bucked. Decius took to the air, showing a lot of space between his rear end and the saddle, but he came down with a yell and a loud slap of flesh on leather just before the horse bolted.
This time the horse’s forward motion was completely unimpeded. She thundered down the road at an astonishing pace. Decius dropped the mule’s lead rope. He needed both hands to cling to the pommel of the saddle.
“Yi, yi, yi, yi, yi, yeee!” This last as the horse left the road and vanished into the scrubby forest bordering the river.
Maeniel stood quietly as both hoofbeats and Decius’ cries died away. He examined the alternatives and decided there was little he could do in good conscience except take hold of the mule’s lead rope, follow Decius, and hope for the best.
The trace was overgrown. Weeds, furze, and thistles filled the deeply rutted track. Maeniel got the impression that the road had once been heavily traveled. Now, for some inexplicable reason, it had been abandoned.
The hooves of Decius’ galloping horse had torn raw, brown wounds in the grassy, weed-grown surface. Overhead, tree branches almost blotted out the sky. The knotted trace twisted and turned, drawing Maeniel deeper and deeper into the forest.
He looked up and noted that the sky was growing darker. The storms at the heights were extending their reach down into the valleys.
The road grew worse. Here a large rock blocked the way. There a cluster of thick-trunked oaks sheltering a dark pool caused a detour. Beyond the oaks, a lightning-blasted fallen beech completely blocked his path.
The mule snorted and backed, trying to plant his feet and refuse further progress. Maeniel wouldn’t allow this. He dropped the lead rope and, taking the mule by its bridle, forced him past the shattered branches of the fallen tree. His own horse followed him in a docile way, as if used to the mad caprices of his human master.
He found Decius on the other side of the tree, lying sprawled on his back under a low branch. He was unconscious, a livid purple bruise across his forehead. Five yards farther down the road, his horse stood grazing on the scrubby growth.
Maeniel knelt next to Decius. Yes, the man was breathing, but deeply unconscious. What now?
The sky was very dark.
If he turned wolf, he could be gone. Leave this fool here. Powerful as they were in a group, individually humans were weak. Left at the mercy of the oncoming storm, Decius would probably die.
But Maeniel was warm and sympathetic by nature. Many wolves in the pack, seeing the penalties and problems of leadership, ignored their opportunities to take command. Only those like him willingly accepted its burdens.
He sighed and lifted Decius in his arms. As he did, he saw a small snowflake land on his wrist. To his surprise, the horses and the mule followed him, trusting in human protection.
More snowflakes swirled through the air as the wind rose. It swept some of the scrub trees near the road aside, and beyond Maeniel saw open fields, arousing his hopes that human dwellings might be ahead. He could leave Decius there to be cared for while he pressed on. But when he passed the last bend, he realized the road led only to a burned-out villa.
It wasn’t nearly as elaborate as the one in his valley, just a large house surrounded by a scattering of outbuildings, protected by a palisade fence.
The house was a pile of blackened rubble. The other outbuildings were visible only as charred timbers nearly lost in the long grass. Only one structure of any size still stood. The raiders had set it on fire when they left, but only one side had been consumed. The roof had collapsed, turning it into a lean-to. That might shelter the injured Decius and the livestock against the winter night. The wolf had no survival problems. He was armed with all the necessities of life. Once they were safely inside, he need only leave, turn skin, and abandon them.
Maeniel shivered. He was barefoot and the wind cut through the thin linen tunic, freezing his skin. The snowflakes were falling more and more thickly.
He hurried on. The half-collapsed building had once been a stable. The stalls were gone, but there was a manger against one wall and a thick coating of straw covered the stone floor. He laid Decius in the straw and unsaddled the two horses and the mule.
Decius was breathing, but showed no sign of regaining consciousness. So Maeniel pillowed his head on one of the saddles and covered him with a blanket he found in the pack. In the fields, patchy stands of wheat had resown themselves. It took only a few minutes to harvest enough to give the stock a good meal. Then he lit a fire. No problem about fuel; deadfalls lay among the trees, and fallen timbers from the house and shed were scattered among the ruins. The only problem was keeping the rising flames from setting fire to the sloping roof.
Now he was at a loss. The horses and mule munched; Decius slumbered. As Maeniel peered through the broken wattle and daub wall of the shed, he shivered. The snow was falling fast now, blurring the outlines of forest and weed-grown fields in the dying light. Wind gusts tossed the trees, taking down the last sere leaves and spreading frost across the branches of evergreens, sealing their dense green.
Far away, a wolf howled, another answered, then a third added a comment. A whole chorus replied. Maeniel chuckled. Apparently the weather was even worse among the high mountains and some of the passes were already choked with snow. He’d crossed just in time.
A few wolves who lived along the river had been in the chorus answering the mountain pack. They were hunted by humans more frequently than the others among the peaks. They were wary—something about the humans on the other side of the river.
But wolf speech is laconic and Maeniel couldn’t gather much more than that from their songs. That and they would not hunt tonight while the storm was at its height, but wait till dawn. Some animals were certain to be trapped by the snow. Pickings would probably be good.
He eased back to the fire. The lean-to was comfortable now. The north wind battered the sloping end of the roof. Ice and snow collected on the walls, sealing in the warmth. The thick layer of straw insulated the ground.
Maeniel had no need to search Decius’ pack. His nose located flour, salt, sausage, and oil. He’d learned quite a few things from Imona, so it wasn’t long before an oily flatbread puffed on a smooth rock in the fire. Maeniel made a meal of the sausage, hard cheese, and bread.
Imona! He stood and pulled off the tunic and sword. An instant later, he was wolf and he vanished into the snowy darkness.
VII
Imona! Her days passed. Sometimes they surprised her with their passing, seeming to flow quickly from dawn to dusk while she was lost in her memories of the past.
Other days stumbled along on leaden feet. Her mind drifted from grief to grief, each sorrow bringing with it floods of scalding tears that did nothing to relieve her pain, but only left her with reddened eyes and headaches.
Women came, servants usually directed by a well-dressed lady who would never, by any means, meet Imona’s eyes. They prepared food, changed her bedding, and even sometimes bathed her when despair overcame her willingness to care for herself. But none ever tried to communicate with her.
Our memories of happiness don’t comfort us when the great darkness yawns, waiting for our souls.
There were things Imona simply refused to remember: her parents, for instance, and her childhood on the Breton coast. But she would allow herself to remember the sea. Emerald water, thundering and raging at the rocks, crashing its way into white foam.
Or the way the light changes at daybreak over the water, a splendid rainbow of subtle beauty making no sunrise or sunset quite like another.
Sometimes she could sit, close her eyes, and smell the salt air. She even fancied she could hear the cry of the wheeling gulls or taste the moisture of the pale fog drifting in from the ocean, stilling all activity along the coast, wrapping the whole world in its somehow sacred silence.
She didn’t care to think of her husband, especially of the first few years of her marriage when they had been happy and she’d borne him two children, before he’d gone, at her family’s behest, to fight the Romans. She didn’t care to think of it because her mind would twist and turn, trying to find ways she could have foreseen his fate and prevented the mutilation that so devastated his body and soul—so emptied him of hope that he committed the act that brought ruin to them all.
When she thought of him, those were the worst days and the ones when she refused to eat or bathe, covered her head with her mantle, and wept without ceasing for him, for herself, for poor, half-mad Kat, her dull-witted but kind Des, and even the old woman. Except for Kat, they were dead in the ashes of what had once been their home.
But some days she could purge guilt and regret from her mind. On those days she would think of the mountains and how she’d first seen them.
As the daughter of a noble house, she’d been sent to her new husband in a skin-covered cart drawn by four white oxen. They were intended to be sacrificed at the wedding ceremony to content the gods of her husband’s household and to feed the guests.
At first, traveling in the cart had been an adventure. Besides, the journey was broken often as they stopped to be feasted at the homes of her father’s liege men. But after they left familiar territory, the cart became something of a prison. She lived there, eating and sleeping among her maids, only allowed out briefly at dusk, under heavy guard, to relieve herself and possibly, if they were near a lake or stream, bathe. When she complained, the older women who accompanied her shushed her and told her to be patient.
So on the morning when she heard a stir and increased talk among the men-at-arms near the wagon, she’d boldly crawled past the sleeping women, pushed aside the leather flap, and plunked herself down beside the driver. She looked up, gasped, and heard the gray-bearded man chuckle.
“It’s a sight to behold! The mountains!” he said. “They seem to hold up the very sky.”
And so they did. It was not long after sunrise. The snow-clad peaks were washed in golden light. The long, sinuous spines of the slopes were still wrapped in blue shadow. A wave of green softened the high meadows and mist flowed down between the snow-capped giants like rivers of cloud.
“Am I going there?” she asked.
The driver nodded.
“Then I will love it. I know I will.”
And so she had. The brief, but beautiful summers—long, lazy days tending flocks of cattle and sheep in pastures beyond the tree line. The incredible autumns when fruit of all kinds seemed to vie for the attentions of humans. Peaches, plums, and cherries weighed down the orchards in the high valleys. Apples—green, red, blush, and even white—created such an abundance it could hardly be believed. Hedgerows were dark with raspberries, blackberries, and rose hips. Venison, elk, ibex, and chamois wandered in the high forests. When the snow flew, everyone hunted boar in the thick coverts.
They led the life of heroes: hunting, fighting, playing chess, entertaining visitors with song and story until, at last, full fed with beef, venison, ham, cheeses white and yellow, breads leavened and unleavened, all washed down by Italian wine, honey mead, and barley beer, she rested her head on her husband’s shoulder, and her eyelids began to close before the guests were gone, or the last torches flickered out.
Sometimes she would wake and he would lead her to their chamber. At others, he would pick her up and carry her like a child. A world of delight surrounded her before . . . before the Romans came.
Her mind turned from the suffering that followed. Why torment herself? It simply didn’t matter now.
Her only other visitor was the ruler of these people. Chieftain, magistrate, call it what you would, he came, accompanied by his warriors, as if a company of armed men could stave off the grim darkness that surrounded her and hovered over her days and nights.
She had been at the hearth in the back corner of the room. As the end of the year drew near and the harvest was hurried into the barns, the nights were becoming colder and colder. She had been building up the fire, trying to drive off the chill in her body.
He knocked.
She called, “Come in,” and heard the key turn in the lock.
He stepped in, his men behind and flanking him. A blast of cold air followed them.
Imona stood up. Even though she was clad in a heavy linen dress and a stout woolen mantle, she shivered in the draft
“Shut the damn door,” the chieftain roared. “Where were you bastards reared, in a stable? It’s freezing out there.”
The door slammed loudly.
“Damn it! I didn’t ask you to deafen me, just close that dishonorably born door!”
“The wind—” someone started to explain.
“Oh, shut up! Just shut up! Don’t interrupt me again!”
Complete silence fell.
Imona wiped her hands. She had been mixing flour and flat beer to make her morning meal. To her, the flour was deeply suspect. It was filled with bran, and she often detected acorn and cattail root starch in the mix.
The chieftain harrumphed and cleared his throat, then harrumphed again. “I am Cynewolf, leader of the people here. I came to ask how you are, my lady, and if you need anything.” He had begun strongly, but ended his little speech rather lamely.
Imona was darkly amused. She took no pity on him. “When I was a farm wife living in the mountains, no one remembered that I was the daughter of a king. Now, here, with my fate upon me, I am recognized and honored for my family’s rank. Thank you, Lord Cynewolf, for your compliments and respect. They are one with the cold wind blowing through the door. The wind has more kindness in it. Go away, my lord. Leave me alone.”
Cynewolf looked uncomfortable. His discomfort does him credit, Imona thought. It demonstrated that he didn’t want to do what he was going to do in a few days, but she suspected his discomfiture would not stop him. No, not for one moment.
