Requiem for the Wolf

by Tara Saunders

  Breag listened to him crash off into the distance. The Boulder made no attempt to mute the sound of his passage.

  “I wonder who he was expecting to meet.” The words were for himself, but Breag was startled by a pair of bright brown eyes picking him over before Sionna retreated back behind her hair.

  “Time to go.” Breag ignored his own earlier words and led the way, allowing Tarbhal and the girl to fall in behind him. Or not.

  “Whatever you say, lad.” The guard’s tone combined humour with a subtle reprimand.

  Breag tightened his shoulders and walked on. The silence was broken only by his breathing and by the soft thump of leather soles on a well-beaten path. The familiarity soothed him.

  Too much happening. Too much change in so short a time. His head jangled with unwelcome thoughts, and ideas too long unexamined. The girl and the guard at his back irritated at the edge of his awareness, sharp and unwelcome as a stone in his boot.

  He had spent too long on his own to remember how to take responsibility for others. The guard might be useful on the road and wouldn’t get a thought when they came to part. The girl, though. The girl.

  The girl he could leave behind as soon as he was out from under Tarbhal’s eye.

  An unworthy thought. The past days had brought him to many unworthy places. But he would atone for them later. From Tearmann, when he finally made it home. Until then he would do what was necessary to finish this.

  But what sort of man would he be when he arrived home? Who would look his mother in the eye when he stepped through her door? Would she be proud of that man?

  Would Eithne?

  She was a burden to him, this Sionna. But in the years of his manhood – and the ones before – he had faced many circumstances not of his choosing. Before this he had always managed to hang on to the tattered shreds of his decency. Why would he toss that away through his own will, to join all that had been taken from him by force?

  He would try harder with the girl. He would be a person his mother could look at and be proud.

  Breag slowed and turned, allowing Tarbhal and Sionna to catch up. His reward was a look of gratitude from both.

  More than enough.

  * * *

  They progressed at an achingly slow pace. By the time they reached their overnight camp, darkness had already made their footing treacherous. Tarbhal led, locating from memory a flat clearing snuggled into an elbow of tumbled rock a distance from the road.

  Limestone on two sides provided shelter and a degree of security, thanks to the steepness of the incline that made a night assault near impossible. The site was an old one, Breag could see, with the post-stumps of an ancient wattle and daub crannóg rotting quietly around them. Behind, a stunted rowan tree grew skywards from the crevice.

  The girl dragged with exhaustion. Breag couldn’t help but admire the way she planted one foot in front of the other, head down and asking no quarter.

  Few farmgirls had the resilience for a forced march, and Sionna’s hollow eyes and white face said that she was no exception. Still, she kept up.

  Maybe not such a burden.

  He watched her watching Tarbhal kindle the fire. She fought to keep her eyes open, shivering even as the heat grew. Gnawing on a hunk of trailbread ate the last of her strength, and the crumbs were scarce dusted off before she crawled wordlessly towards her blanket.

  “She’s a good girl.” Tarbhal spoke Breag’s thoughts. “”Not many could get through a day like this one without coming apart.”

  “Tomorrow will be harder.”

  The guard nodded. “But she’ll survive it. And the next. She’s strong, and she has the will to live.”

  Breag chewed on a heel of bread as he turned the words over in his mind. To stay in Dealgan would have meant death for her, no doubt there. Glór-hunters intended to wipe the Daoine from the face of the Tiarna and they had no fear of collateral damage. They would have made sure that her passing went slow and ugly.

  The girl had no choice but to tag along behind him, like it or not. The fact took none of the sting out of Tarbhal’s manipulation.

  “Would you have thought to do the right thing before it was too late?”

  The guard’s insight startled Breag to honesty. “No.”

  One more failing to pick over.

  “Then let it go.”

  Breag nodded. He would.

  “There’s a thing I wanted to ask, lad, if you’ve no objection."

  “Ask.”

  “You said that Proinsis came apart because of what he was.”

  “A warg, you mean. Because he held on to Bliss.”

  “Does that mean that every one of you who take the wolf’s shape will turn mad?”

  “Many do.” Breag’s thoughts flickered over some of the lives his Fiacal knife had drunk. “Not all, but many.”

  “I saw a lot of your people during the Purging, a lot who changed their shape. Were they all bound for madness?”

  Breag leaned forward, braced on a straightened arm. “It’s not the change that scalds our minds, it’s holding Bliss.”

  A shake of the guard’s head said that he didn’t understand.

  “When we want to change from man to wolf – or go the other direction – the first thing we need to do is reach for Bliss. It’s hard to explain . . . we find a place inside ourselves where we’re both man and wolf. That’s where we find Bliss.”

  “But doesn’t that mean that every Lupe – Daoine – who changes has to hold Bliss?”

  “No. Not hold it, reach for it. To change we reach for Bliss, then we draw the wolf shape close.” Breag shook his head in frustration. “I’m not explaining this properly.”

  “You’re doing fine, lad.”

  “What Proinsis did was to hold on to Bliss. He found that place where we’re both wolf and man both, and he stayed there. He didn’t change shape. It was a drug for him and for the ones like him, and he spent longer and longer there. His mind could only carry the weight for so long before it started to break down. We’re wolf and man, the gift the Lady gave us, but not both at the same time.”

  Breag heard his own words as though they came from somebody else’s throat. If the Eolaí could hear him now, they’d see he had no place in the Daoine; certainly not as their Marbh. To paint their curse as a gift instead of a test was blasphemy.

  Blasphemy with the uncomfortable ring of truth.

  A rumble from the older man’s gut reminded Breag that this fire wasn’t his alone. He pushed difficult thoughts from him and settled into the present.

  The fire’s warmth seeped into his bones and he stretched for another slab of bread. He would welcome sleep when it came, but for now the pleasure of company was too great. “Do you reckon the soldier was following us?”

  “Aod? No he seemed to be as surprised as we were. The rock’s used by many as a handy point to meet.”

  “He was meeting somebody, then.”

  Tarbhal scratched his head. “He was about some business he didn’t want to share, true enough. But then Aod’s always been a sleekit one.”

  “I saw him and some others facing down a guard.”

  Tarbhal had been there too; no option for him to play ignorant. “Feelings are running high between the guard and the military right now.” A world left unsaid. “And Aod likes to stir the pot.”

  “Does Aod have influence in the military then?” It didn’t seem likely, a man so young and unpolished.

  “What Aod has is bitterness and the will to make trouble. He wanted to join the guard, same as his Da and brother, but he was never suited and all knew it but himself.”

  “The guard I saw at market, was that his brother?”

  Tarbhal’s head shook even before the question was fully asked. “No. His brother’s dead, last spring, and that’s part of his problem. Aod has guilt and grief and a hunger for glory all folded up into a ball of bad feeling. The army’s the place for that, always has been.”

  “But the guard and the military
work together at times.” Though, from what he’d seen, not so much in Dealgan.

  “Ha! It seems that way, maybe, but guard and army have very different ideas about what’s right. And what’s justified. There’s no denying some very good men serve with them, men I’d be proud to have at my back. Mostly we work at cross-purposes, like when we need one of theirs busy out of town to keep stories about Lupe attacks being whispered where they shouldn’t be. Although yesterday’s market put paid to any idea of keeping the thing out of Glór-Hunter ears.”

  Tarbhal seemed to wake to the frankness of his conversation. He held his hands up to the flames. “That heat’s good for these old bones.”

  “You’re not so old.” Breag followed the change in topic gracefully, digesting the guard’s words. A lot said and even more implied, lurking underneath like rocks in shallow water.

  “Rubbish. I’m older than your Da, I’m betting.”

  “My father’s dead, killed before I was born.” Breag was surprised by the raw hurt in the words. He had thought all his bitterness had been dried by distance and time.

  “I’m sorry, lad; I meant no offence. That’s a hard thing.”

  “He was taken by Glór-hunters that winter. They sent parts of him back the following spring, but Ma didn’t find any great comfort in that.”

  Tarbhal sat silently, listening.

  “We lived with my Granda. A hard man, with no time for kind words or small boys. He lost a wife and two children in the Purging. All he had left was Ma.”

  Breag didn’t know why the words tripped over each other to spill out, but he let them come. Maybe repayment for the guard’s frankness; maybe he had been alone too long.

  “They say my Ma was different before, that she laughed all the time and she loved to dance. No surprise she gave all that up when she lost so much.” All but her son. How could she forget that?

  “It’s hard to go on when you’ve lost everything.” Tarbhal fell silent a moment, staring into the fire’s heart. “I had a wife once, and a son.”

  “They’re dead?”

  “Aye, dead. Killed by Glór-hunters for giving a scrap of bread to a mother with young’uns. How was my Blannad to know she was a Lupe?”

  Breag saw sorrow in the older man’s face. More than that, though, he saw hatred old and well-tended. It burned tight and hot, and Breag had no wish to be in its path when it was allowed to kindle to a flame.

  “Seems she was supposed to know, and to care if she did know. That’s how they see it.”

  They sat a moment lost in thoughts of the past.

  Breag straightened first, throwing another knot of wood into the fire. So many painful stories came from the Purging. Every home its own secret sorrow. Nothing to be done but face it and move on.

  * * *

  Breag’s eyes flicked open, the only movement in a body inelegantly shaped by sleep. A part of him noted that his companions still breathed the heavy, even patterns of night. He strained to catch the noise that had pulled him to wakefulness. A low covering of cloud hid the moon and made the darkness almost total, but Breag’s ears were sharp and his night vision well developed.

  In the southeast the straggling, irregular stand of ash that had proved a trial for tired feet as darkness closed now held a different threat. Breag slid upright, registering from the change in Tarbhal’s breathing that the guard was now awake. The older man’s hand reached for his bow, and Breag thanked the Lady that he slept always with the Fiacal knife in his fist.

  Not much use against a bow, though.

  The sound came again from the southeast, and Breag’s brow crinkled. Whoever approached made very little effort to be silent.

  A lone figure pushed from the treeline. Too tall and slender to be Aod but otherwise impossible to recognise through the dark. He carried a bundle in both hands.

  After half a dozen paces Breag recognised him as Raghlan. The incongruity of having the huntsman approach them here, at night, where nobody should know they would stop, held him from sheathing his blade.

  It took a dozen more steps before Tarbhal lowered his bow. “Well, Raghlan. I don’t know how you ever came to be a hunter, I thought a herd of bullocks was loose, the noise you made. What do you do, frighten the deer to death?”

  At Tarbhal’s words the hump of Sionna’s blanket jerked. Her eyes cracked open a slit.

  “Well, Tarbhal. I’d need to have rocks in my head to come at your camp on tiptoe in the dead of the night.” Raghlan grinned and tapped his temple. “And I don’t think I’ve moved on much from gravel.” He eased his pack to the ground and stood, still grinning. “And here you are, camped by a rowan tree where I’d know to find you.”

  “Most would have waited for morning to find us.” The scent of gadhar around the man made Breag twitchy. He had no interest in old-time superstitions.

  “I had to come at night.” Raghlan sobered. “I’m watched; so’s most of the guard.”

  Tarbhal nodded, his face tight.

  “I left Cealg so they’d think I was hunting close by. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t go far without her.”

  “What made you come?” Tarbhal spoke Breag’s question.

  “With a warning, mostly. A bird got out, there’s no doubt the Brotherhood’s coming. When they start asking questions they’ll hear things that won’t be good for us.”

  “That’s trouble, but it’s not news.”

  “We had word from Treal. Glór-hunters rode in this morning and there’s been three crucifixions already. A lot more than that’s been put to the question.”

  “So, seems you don’t think I’m a Glór-hunter now.” Breag had heard enough to know that Raghlan likely never had. The conversation in the inn had been a careful series of prompts, like goads to the rump of a bull.

  The apology in the hunter’s face confirmed that Breag had been manipulated again. And Tarbhal had a hand in this one too. He hungered for the opportunity to have some frank words with the guard.

  For now, though, they had a bigger buck in their firepit.

  That the Brotherhood would come had never been in question. Breag had hoped for more time to put the town at his back, but Raghlan’s words put them scarce ten days behind, and on horseback.

  “I appreciate the news.” Tarbhal’s tone was sombre. “Best get yourself back before you’re missed.”

  The guard’s words registered lightly in Breag’s ears. His concentration was focused on the pack at Raghlan’s feet as it moved and jerked, falling completely on its side. The squeak that came from it could mean nothing good.

  “That’s the other thing.” Raghlan bent to untie the thong. He reached inside and pulled out the brindle cub, squirming and fuzzy.

  Breag’s internal roar deafened him.

  “I want you to have him.” Raghlan stretched his filled arms out to Breag, and the cub managed a squeaky growl.

  A Daoine with a gadhar; a Lupe with a baneling. Too ludicrous even to be funny, although the smirk on Tarbhal’s face said otherwise.

  “Raghlan, I know it’s important to you but I can’t.”

  “It’s fitting, especially with you and Cealg fighting together. And taking Sionna, the whole town thanks you for that.” The hunter didn’t seem to notice the blankets by the fireside twitch.

  “We’ll be travelling hard. He’s too small to keep up, and I don’t have time to baby him.” And when he grows big enough to threaten me, I’ll have to hit him on the head with a rock.

  “There’s more to it than that. He’s a brindle. How will it look when the Glór-hunters get here? Who do you think will be first to the question?”

  Impossible to find an argument for that. A man deviant enough to allow his bitch to suckle a brindle was full twisted enough to bed down with a Lupe. Truth made little difference to the Brotherhood. The only crumb of satisfaction lay in seeing the smirk wiped off Tarbhal’s face.

  “Give him here, then.” Churlish maybe, but being forced to accept the cub didn’t mean he had to do it with grace
.

  Raghlan passed the squirming animal into Breag’s arms, where it immediately sank needle-sharp teeth into his wrist. He clenched his teeth and pretended not to notice.

  “I’ll take good care of him.” Breag lied.

  The hunter nodded and swung the empty pack on to his shoulder. “I best start back if I’m to make it by morning. We’ll win you what time we can, but I can’t promise much.”

  “Don’t try anything heroic, you great lump. Lie low, stay safe and let them pass.” Tarbhal squeezed Raghlan’s shoulder and stepped back.

  Raghlan moved towards the treeline. He turned, shouted, “His name’s Cú”, and was gone.

  The name of the brindle that, in folktales, ran with the Black Hunt. Of course its name was Cú.

  Breag walked to where Sionna had lain, silent, throughout the conversation. He lifted her blanket and dropped the cub into the curve of her tensed arms. “This is yours for tonight. Seems his name’s Cú.”

  He turned towards his own blanket without waiting for an answer. His wrist stung and a drop of blood filled each puncture mark.

  “A good man, Raghlan.” Tarbhal settled back on the other side of the dying fire. “Follows the old faith. Not loud about it, but feels strong about doing what’s right.”

  Breag grunted.

  Tarbhal waited a long moment before speaking again. “You know, lad, if I didn’t know that your sight wasn’t much different from mine last night, I’d be feeling like an old man right now.”

  Breag didn’t answer, but a chill settled into his gut that the fire couldn’t ease. His vision was better, now that Tarbhal drew his attention to it. Smell too, and most definitely his hearing. He pulled his new-healed right arm closer and turned his back on the guard.

  He glanced at Sionna before submitting to sleep. She lay curled around the cub, hands massaging the base of its stubby ears. Cú’s tail thumped a heartbeat against her leg.

  * * *

  The wolf cub growled at the shredded rag of leather he shook in his teeth. He tossed it into the air and leapt to snatch it before it hit the ground. Absorbed in his game, he didn’t notice the hush that fell in the forest at the sound of careful human feet. The cub circled and growled, startling only when a dark shadow fell across him.