Requiem for the Wolf

by Tara Saunders

  "Safe trails, strangers, what do you want here?" The man who shouted from behind the gate was old but still strong, to judge from his voice.

  "No stranger, Ceann, but a Marbh done with his duty."

  Sionna held herself straight despite the dizziness that threatened to fold her into a shivering mess. She was the Marbh's duty done; hard to forget that with the blade's power strong in her. Breag's straight back offered no reassurance.

  "The Faith Eaters said you would come before first snow. And with two for return to the fold? You honour the Lady and your family, boy."

  The creak of the gate's slow drop should have drowned the old man's words. Instead it underlined them, confirmed his power.

  Finally the gate thudded to the ground, spanning a drop steep enough to break a man's neck if he fell just right. Just wrong. In the wound that gaped in its place the old man stood.

  Tall, or had been once. Now his back bent and his shoulders stooped. Eyes dark like Breag's but shuttered; unreadable. Bearded, but what she could see of his mouth was pinched and bitter. Cold.

  Please let this not be his grandfather.

  "Pity you couldn't have done your duty while your mother lived; she would have given anything to see you one last time." The Ceann stood unmoving in the gateway, watching as they crossed the gate-bridge with wary steps. Behind him Sionna could see closed faces and bobbing heads. None pressed close enough to crowd into the old man's space.

  "She's dead?" Breag’s shoulders hunched, then straightened again. Cú, plastered against his legs, whined in sympathy or in protest.

  "Last winter finished it, although she held only loosely to life this many a year. Your going took what little hope she had."

  Does this old man use his spite for a purpose or is he too cold to see the hurt he’s causing?

  "Leave the horses here. They don’t belong in our town." Where The Ceann's eyes touched they chilled.

  "Tether them, Laoighre." Breag's tone matched the old man's for coldness, but his body trembled slightly.

  Sionna grabbed a calloused palm in hers, and it tightened around her with the strength of desperation. She moved a step closer until they stood shoulder to shoulder, meeting the old man's quick-furrowed brow with an assurance two sizes too small.

  "You have much to report, I see."

  "We have many things to discuss." Legs planted solidly in the earth, Breag was a figure to match the certainty of his voice.

  Only now did The Ceann step out of the gateway and wave them through. Sionna walked with her head high and her hand tight-clasped in Breag's, although she no longer knew if she gave comfort or took it. Cú squeezed close enough to tangle their legs.

  "I'm surprised you thought to bring such a thing here." The Ceann's lip wrinkled his distaste. No mistaking that he meant Cú, although his look scalded their linked hands more than the gadhar. Against her thigh she could feel Cú's rumbled response.

  "Cú's a loyal friend. There are many things you don't understand."

  The murmur this drew from the watching people fixed Sionna's attention on them. So many faces; no welcome in any of them. Even the little ones hugged their mothers' skirts and said nothing. No pressing forward to welcome a loved one long from home. No friendly words, just cattle herded together to face the wolf.

  There's no part of me in these people.

  But if not these, and not Anú, then who?

  One woman stood forward from the rest, her arm around a dark-haired boy she held at her hip. Small and fine-built, her hair a curling mass of gold, her face a rigid mask of white.

  Sionna felt the knife’s claws rise in her again. The burning rose from hand to shoulder and into her chest, this time flaying where they scorched.

  The agony climbed into her throat and onwards, into her head. Pain, spreading to swallow the world. She would have screamed if the blade had allowed it.

  Dimly she felt Breag’s arms around her shoulders. She crumpled at the feet of the white-faced woman and the little boy with brown eyes exactly like Breag’s.

  25

  "She lives, for now." The yellow-haired Eolach straightened. He adjusted his tunic sleeves with a flash of the blue and yellow wrist cuff that marked his calling.

  Sionna lay corpse-still, her hair sweat-plastered to her forehead. She looked very small.

  The knot in Breag's chest eased a miniscule amount. "Thank the Lady, I thought we were too late."

  "The blade eats more of her with every moment. We must hold the ceremony soon if the collaring is to take. Lost Ones as weak as this are sometimes too fragile for the crossing."

  "No!"

  The Eolach stopped in surprise, and around Breag the hum of busy people silenced. He felt his face redden, but a bud of anger unfolded inside him and forced him to speak on.

  "She's not for collaring. That's not why we came here."

  "It’s not for you to say, boy. The Eolaí will decide what's done with her. Your responsibility here is done." Yellow-Hair's face settled into a mask of authority.

  "There’s nothing for you here, holy man." Easier to smash his head against the same rock over and over than to stop and remember why he started. "I won't see Sionna collared; you can tell the Naomh himself that I say so."

  It felt good to stand, and fight; to make choices. So this is what it is to be a man. There had been enough of hearing from other people what he would do. Time now for Breag's voice to be heard.

  "Well spoken, Wolf-man." Laoighre pitched his words lower than the mutter-hum of the restless crowd, for Breag's ears alone. "Now watch your back."

  The Ceann's features set to grieving stone, a martyr that had sacrificed all for his unworthy people. Breag could see other faces harden, faces he had known from his crib. Aonghus, Marbh once and first to return, had once curled his stubby child-fingers around the bow and taught him to see the subtle tones of shading that meant deer in the bushes. Conor, cousin to his mother, who had made a place for a fatherless boy at his own table whenever The Ceann would allow it. All hard-faced now; all pressing closer.

  And Eithne. Sun-haired, laughing-eyed Eithne, her sunshine and laughter faded now. The lightness of her transformed to a mother's curves, the safety of her arms spent on the dark-haired child by her side.

  She saw Breag's look and wouldn't meet it, fixing her eyes instead on Sionna where she lay between Breag's boots and the Eolach's sandals. On the something that glittered at Sionna's throat. The promise knot.

  Disoriented, Breag swayed, his past and present come together in the moment. None of this was how he had pictured it in a thousand hopeless dreams of home.

  Sionna stirred, mumbled something indistinct, and Eithne was gone. The crowd eddied to fill the place where she and the child had stood, and the rheumy blue eyes that met Breag's belonged instead to Tadhg, who had taught prayer-song and rapped knuckles for as long as Tearmann had existed.

  Cú thumped the rock of his head into Breag's kneecap, whistling his anxiety to be gone. The flare of agony was instant and welcome. Through pain-gritted eyes, Breag saw Tearmann fresh. Familiar, and terrifyingly other.

  Wide, clean-swept streets and pristine white buildings planted with flowers shouted pride and care, and a rigid sense of what was proper. No alleyways here. No ale spilt in the gutter or children underfoot. A sanctuary, where each Daoine had a place and none stepped out of it.

  Here Sionna lay, couched on bare earth, her face pale as whey, moving from side to side as she blinked huge, hazel eyes. Too trusting, she was. With Tarbhal, and Laoighre, and with him.

  Look at how she found him with those dark-pupilled eyes and smiled, the tension seeping out of her. She should know better; nobody deserved such faith. That she could show such belief in him--after the knife, after everything--made Breag's heart ache with shame.

  Don't force me to live up to it, girl. I don't have the strength to be who you think I am.

  Sionna struggled to sit up but sagged, her body too weak to support itself. Around them, Breag's people pre
ssed closer. Laoighre crab-shuffled until he stood back to back with Breag. Alongside, Cú's growl dropped so deep that it became feeling instead of sound.

  The Ceann was there, and only now Breag noticed that he had been gone. The people of Tearmann drew back out of the arms-reach of their leader.

  "Come with me. Time is short." The old man curled long, knotted fingers around Breag's forearm.

  "Where? I need to see the Naomh." The hope of Tearmann was dead; Sionna dying. No more reacting; time to act.

  "The Eolaí are assembled in the Plas Teanga. Bring the girl. You have a duty here, and I'll see that you remember it." No expression in the old man's face, but the fingers clenched tighter.

  "Breag--" If Laoighre had owned a tail it would have been plastered between his legs. The boy stood over Sionna, lips parted to bare his teeth.

  "Laoighre, I need you to stay with the horses. They need water, and you should walk them to cool them down."

  The flare of surprise that brightened Laoighre's face was gone in a heartbeat, but it was enough for Breag to know that his message had been understood.

  Breag didn't want the Ceann's cold, bony hands to touch Sionna. She shuddered as he helped her to stand, relaxing as she allowed him to take her weight. Her eyes were huge and dark, and it frightened Breag to look into them and see emptiness.

  The people of Breag's past lined the path from his duty to his destiny. More wrinkles; less hair, but the same faces that had forced him into their mould, had cast and fired him until he made an adequate vessel.

  No, that isn't fair. From inside they don't recognise the box.

  Once The Ceann led them from the outer streets and onto the broad approach to the Plas Teanga, the crowd’s numbers dwindled. Somebody had planted climbing roses along the route, and although no flowers bloomed this late in the season, the vigorous green of the climbing stalks lifted Breag's heart.

  Sionna's eyes were still empty of herself. Breag's arm around her waist pressed her hip into his mid-thigh, goading the blade to brutal frothing. Prickles ran along Breag's arms to his shoulders, and of their own will the fingers on his left hand clenched into and out of a fist. This problem needed to be fixed, and not just for Sionna's sake.

  The Naomh would have to understand. If somebody should be punished it must be Breag, who had known the Lady's word from his earliest memories. Not a stranger who had learned it at the end of a Fiacal Knife. Who had already forgiven him for taking by force what she would have given freely.

  Eight years brought many changes--he would not think about his mother--and it was likely that the Naomh of Breag's memory was either safely planted underground or a mumbling twice-child after so long. And likely memory had twisted this man's character like it had so much else.

  A stray thought for his choosing; for Odran, Naomh’s nephew, at Eithne’s door. But no time for that with Sionna heavy in his arms.

  The narrow door-slit, dark against a whitewashed wall, was the only point of entry into the Plas Teanga. Half a man’s width and two thirds his height, the Eolaí made sure that none would find it easy to reach their holiest place. The Ceann slipped through first, then stretched an arm back to Sionna. Breag gulped a breath and pushed through as he had just one time before.

  Inside was eternal twilight, lit only by a low-banked fire. Breag didn't see Sionna at first, and his nose, dampened by sweet-burning herbs, was just as blind. As his eyes adjusted he found her in the hall's darkest corner. She sagged between two huge-bicepped Eolaí who seemed to have been chosen more for size than for their holiness.

  "Welcome, Marbh, dead man brought again to life by the will of the Lady. Sit. The Faith Eaters warned us to expect you." The voice vibrated through the room's heavy silence, the hush thickening where it passed.

  The Naomh stood under a massive, beaten copper representation of the new moon, the only decoration visible in the low-roofed, claustrophobic hall. The years had treated him well, as far as Breag could tell in the darkness. His back was still straight and his hands had no trace of a shake or quiver.

  This man had no place in my dreams of home.

  "The Lady blessed me when she led me home." Each Marbh was taught the ritual responses before he found the road. Likely Breag wasn't the only one who had rehearsed them every night before sleeping.

  "Where is the Lost One whose return to Grace satisfies our Lady’s instruction?"

  Here Breag abandoned words learned by rote for knowledge longer and harder in the learning. "It didn't work like that for me, I'm afraid."

  The chill that shivered out from the Naomh burned too deeply for words.

  Breag snatched a glance at Sionna to fortify himself. "The girl did nothing wrong. The fault here is mine. I offered her to the blade for shallow reasons."

  "I care nothing for your reasons, Marbh." The Naomh spoke sharply over his people’s growing murmur. Breag could see tiny fires reflected in his eyes as he glared the room to silence.

  "That may be so." Every bead of blood in Breag's body clamoured its protest, but he spoke even so. "But this girl is not the Lost One who will allow me to come home. Free her from the knife and I’ll search the Tiarna for another."

  Any story the old man needed to see Sionna free What happened once they passed the gates would be something that need not concern these holy men.

  "That cannot happen." An Eolach, younger than most, raised his voice above the growing mutter.

  "I'll not allow it!" The Ceann shouted at the same moment, burst to his feet from his place by the door.

  "No." The Naomh's voice was whispered sibilants. Breag had no trouble hearing it.

  "This is not a favour begged on bended knee. Sionna is here through my wrong-doing. She must be freed, and I will face the consequences."

  "Do you think you are the first, boy, to be seduced by bright curls and a sparkling eye?"

  The sneer in the Naomh's voice scorched away the vapours of Breag’s last lingering regret. He wanted no part of this.

  "Save your morals for the next fool to fall into your web. Release Sionna from the knife and we leave you to ponder your superiority."

  "You truly are a fool." Still the Naomh's eyes burnt orange. "What you're asking cannot be done, and wouldn't if we could. The curse cannot be laid or lifted on a whim. There is no cure for the knife except the collar."

  Understanding walloped into Breag like a boot into the gut. The smugness in the Naomh's face confirmed the words true. He had doomed Sionna. Death or the collar.

  Sionna had heard the Naomh's choice for her. Breag could see little of her struggle, but he could hear her thrashing ribboned through with low keening and the occasional grunt from her Eolaí guards. Sionna would not sell her freedom cheaply.

  So Breag should let her die? Even at the cost of a collar, he didn't think he could.

  No surprise that she fought for herself; she had little reason to trust to his protection. So far he had failed her every time.

  Not this time.

  They would ride, find Anú or one like her. If the Eolaí had no answers then they would pledge themselves to the Dílis. Time to fight, not bend the knee. He would leave his shame-self behind. He would be Thorn.

  "Then we leave." Breag stood, almost laughing as the decision strengthened his blood and his back. "If you have no answers then we’ll find them elsewhere."

  Unspoken, the Dílis hung thick in the room like smoke from a censer. The knowing of it filled Eolaí lungs and darkened Eolaí faces.

  "I can't allow that." The Naomh climbed to his feet slowly, deliberately. "The Lady would not wish to add you to the pages of the Fallen."

  Breag felt rather than saw Eolaí mass in front of the door-slit. Across the room, even darkness couldn't conceal the white hands of the one who forced Sionna to her knees.

  "Why do you pretend to know what the Lady wants?" Breag shouldered his way towards Sionna, hindered by the wall of the Eolaí in his path. "You speak pious, tired words, but none of you understand what it is to be Daoine.
Not one of you knows Her second face."

  The Ceann's thin keening drowned anything that might have come next. The Naomh signalled over Breag's shoulder, his mouth a puckered oval of distaste. Hands grabbed Breag, pinning his arms to his sides. He struggled, in irritation first and then with rising panic. There were too many.

  The yellow-haired Eolach moved towards where Sionna had been forced to kneel. Something gleamed dully in his hands. Breag fought harder; the bodies heavy on his would not allow him to move.

  "You have failed us, become more foul than the ones you were sent to purify." Disgust stained the Naomh's voice, and mutters of agreement rippled throughout the room.

  "And you have failed the Lady." Breag's words were a staccato punctuation to the futility of his struggle. He aimed a boot into the nearest knot of men. A mistake; Eolaí grabbed his leg, overbalancing him. Unforgiving hands forced him to the floor and wrestled his arms behind him. A weight bore down on his back, holding him in position on his belly. Breag fought until black dots floated in front of his eyes. It was no use.

  Yellow-Hair stopped in front of Sionna, blocking Breag's view of her face. The collar he held in both hands reflected the fire dully, sullen in the little light it threw back. Breag had never seen a thing as ugly.

  "Lift his head. Let him see this." The Naomh waved an Eolach towards Breag, and he felt ungentle fingers force his head from the earth-packed floor.

  Yellow-Hair stood before Sionna, his face empty of malice. The collar gaped between his hands, its maw directed at Sionna's stillborn thrashing. Inevitable as death.

  The Plas Teanga hushed until even Breag's hearing could pick up no more than the occasional, shallow breath. He searched to find the one thing he could say that would end this senselessness. There was nothing.

  You should have held tight to your trust, Sionna. Anything you saw in me was a reflection.

  Short, forcing fingers held his head where he could see every step that closed the space between Sionna and the thing that would destroy her. Even when he closed his eyes he could feel it, feel the joyous leap of the blade within her as it released its hold and propelled her towards the greater halter. Feel the helpless, hopeless rage in Sionna as the twin jaws closed around her throat. Felt the wholeness of her, this instant and never again.