In a Wolf's Eyes

by A. Katie Rose

  The daemonic fury possessing him increased at my words, as though angered by them. Hellish pressure returned full force, cutting off all possibility of breathing. I distinctly heard my ribs creak. Any more and they would snap like twigs. Pain filled my world and a reddish haze covered my eyes. Oh, well, I thought, sensing the approaching darkness, I tried. Today was as good as any to die.

  Blackness crawled over my sight and my mind, swamping me, carrying me downward when his insane fury finally spent itself. Suddenly, without warning, the pressure lifted, reversed, disappeared. My mind cleared as I clawed precious air into my lungs past a throat raw and agonized. At the same time, the magic pinning me to the wall also vanished. I slid into an undignified heap on the floor, holding my arms to my aching chest while the fog cleared from my head. I shut my eyes, taking immense pleasure in the simple things in life. Like breathing.

  Not even the hot, searing pain of my cracked ribs detracted one whit from the pleasure I took in drawing one breath after another. I cradled my sweating face on my left arm, the right wrapped ineffectually against my busted ribcage. Hearing a choked sob, I felt Rygel sit near my head, his back to the stone wall of the room. As it hurt too much to move just then, I did not. I merely lay still, filling my lungs, fascinated with the act of taking one breath after another.

  At length he spoke, his voice hoarse. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  Only too well. I refrained from speaking it aloud, however, finally having learned my lesson. Not bad for a tree stump.

  In trying for words, only a raw cough issued from my mouth. I cleared my throat, and managed a voice that sounded ridiculously weak from my point of view. “We need to travel, across country, fast. How far would we have gotten? Once your supply ran out?”

  He answered with a long indrawn breath, another soft sob.

  “Were we to drag Tia along to sate your lusts?” I asked.

  Again, silence.

  I went on, finding my voice slowly returning to normal with practice. “You might have found me attractive enough.”

  I pitched my voice low and thoughtful. “Then I’d have to kill you. I’d be flattered, however, for I’m about as attractive as the ass end of an ox. I would regret it, you know, since you’re my only friend. But I’d still kill you.”

  At last a half sob, half-choking laugh burst from him. Opening my eyes, I struggled to sit up. Pain, nausea and exhaustion swirled through my guts. Still holding my fiery cracked ribs, I leaned against the wall next to Rygel. Blinking gritty sweat from my eyes, I rolled my head enough to see him.

  Sitting with his back tight to the wall and his knees drawn up to his chest, Rygel rested his head on his folded arms. His tangled yellow hair concealed his face. He hid himself quite well, that one. I wanted to reach out and touch his shoulder. My ribs needed the support more than he, I thought, and did not.

  His voice muffled, he asked, “Wasn’t there another way?”

  I fetched a sigh, and immediately regretted it. Pain lanced through my ribs. “Would you have listened? Fully supplied, you would have scoffed at me.”

  Rygel did not answer. I shifted to relieve some of the pain, which did not help matters much.

  “This way, you had to listen.”

  “I was going to kill you. I tried to kill you.”

  “Many have tried,” I answered, finding some flippancy. “Many have failed.”

  He ignored that attempt at humor. Ah, well. I rolled my head away from him and shut my eyes. I’m so tired. So bloody tired. Can I sleep now? Maybe he needed a strong dose of reality instead of flippant humor. “Then you would have killed your chances of surviving the withdrawal.”

  “I’m dead anyway,” he shouted, lifting his head finally. His eyes, now more red than amber, peered at me. The cheekbone I hit swelled furiously, his left eye closing already. His lip curled with scorn. “No one can survive the tros withdrawal. You have killed me.”

  I grimaced. “It’s not the tros or the withdrawal itself that kills them. Men die because they kill themselves. They suicide from the pain and madness that follows.”

  “So?” Rygel snorted. “What’s the flaming difference? Either way I’m still dead.”

  “Now who is as thick as an oak stump?” I looked at him, meeting his hot angry stare. “You think all these muscles are for showing off to the ladies? I can protect you from yourself, prevent you from suicide. Keep you safe until the drug and the madness dissipate.”

  For the first time, Rygel looked hopeful. Hope for a future that included freedom from his addiction. His yellow eyes gleamed. Then the old resignation took over and he shook his wheaten mane. His face turned away, his thin aristocratic mouth turned down. I wanted to smack him upside the head. I might have done had I the energy.

  “It will never work,” he muttered.

  I couldn’t help it. I flung his own words back into his teeth. “Grow a spine and live for a change,” I snapped.

  A grin surfaced briefly, but faded as he shook his head. “Nice thought, but I don’t know what I’d do. I might kill you in that madness as well as myself.”

  “Worth the risk.”

  His face whipped back toward me fast. “You’d do that?” he asked. “For me?”

  “To be free of slavery, even that kind of slavery…” I trailed off. “Aye, it’s worth any risk.”

  “To be free,” he muttered. “I never imagined—”

  He bent his head, lifting his hands to examine them closely. He turned them this way and that, studying his palms. “Perhaps one day, then, these hands might heal again. For me to heal the hurt, the sick once more, to ease pain rather than inflict it… I crave the freedom to never hurt anyone ever again.” His voice dropped. “Perhaps, if the gods are merciful, I may even find redemption for the sins I’ve committed. That’s in itself is worth any risk.” His voice lowered to a slow murmur. “I’ll do it, or die trying.”

  “We’ll have to leave Soudan,” I said gruffly. “We’ll go out in the hills, away from people who might be attracted by your noise.”

  To his credit, Rygel blushed. “Right.”

  “Nor do you want anyone hurt if you—” I finished by waggling the fingers of my right hand at him. My left still supported my ribcage.

  He nodded, looking away, and stood up. “You’ve been thinking about this.”

  I shrugged. “Even someone as thick as me can come up with an idea or three.”

  His short laugh ended in a sniff. “Then we better get started. Leoda can get us supplies for a few days.”

  Grasping my hand to help me up, Rygel pulled on my arm. Fiery pain and nausea struck at once as I tried to stand. My head swam, and the black dots returned to dance in my eyes again. If I stood, I would black out. I pulled my hand from his and sank back down.

  “Uh, I think I’d rather sit here for a while.”

  “Gods, Raine.” Rygel squatted on his heels in front of me. “I’m so sorry. I hurt you. Gods, can I ever stop hurting people? Damn it!” He sighed. “I reckon my new resolve will have to start here.”

  “’Tis naught. I’m all right.” I aimed for a bright tone, one that would put him off. “I just need to rest a bit.”

  He peered into my eyes in a way I did not much like. I tried to look away but could not. Compelled somehow to stare deep into those yellow and red depths, I felt my pain slowly seep away. My ragged breathing smoothed out. He’s putting me in a trance, I thought, my will to fight him draining with my pain. At last, he slowly shook his head.

  “No, you aren’t. I’ll heal you though.”

  I tried to pull away, but he succeeded in seizing my head in both hands and holding it fast.

  “Don’t fight me,” he snapped. “Hold still, damn it.”

  A sudden heat surged through me and I gasped. My pain flared to an unbelievable agony, a white-hot screaming deluge of hurt. The previous pain was naught compared to this. I fought him, tried to pull away but my back was against the wall. Lashing out with my legs, I sought to k
ick him away—

  I must have blacked out, for I suddenly found myself slumped against the wall, Rygel warily watching me from a few paces away. Woozily, I straightened up and tried to stand. Oddly, my legs refused to work properly. Damn it, I thought, just unfold your bloody legs and stand. I managed a kneeling position, my head spinning, sweat trickling down my cheek. No pain, though, and that in itself was a bloody miracle. Yet, it left exhaustion in its wake. I frowned. Now let us try the leg thing again.

  Ignoring my feeble attempt to fend him off, Rygel pulled my arm over his shoulder and heaved. He was stronger than he looked, for he boosted me to my feet with only a single grunt.

  “You need sleep,” he said. “Get some rest while I make arrangements with Leoda.”

  “My bed isn’t made,” I muttered, looking at the busted mess I had been sleeping on.

  He shoved me hard from behind, sending me reeling toward the other bed, his own. I staggered and fell on it, barely missed hitting the oak headboard with my face. I managed to conceal a grin as he stalked toward me.

  He stabbed his finger toward me as though wishing it was a sword. “Shut up, lie there, and don’t move until I get back,” he snarled. “Or I will turn you into something small, hairy and what squeaks.”

  With those kind words, he slammed his way out the door.

  * * *

  I watched Rygel sweat.

  He lay on his side a few paces from me, naked, dirty, tied hand and foot with sturdy rope. He muttered incessantly, eyes rolled back into his head, his lips and chin coated with foam and spittle. Trampled and broken thickets surrounded the small clearing we camped in, the fire in the firepit naught but cold ashes. Fire had become too dangerous.

  Sickened by what I had seen and done over the last two days, I could barely eat. I had long since given up on trying to feed Rygel. In his madness, he would eat naught. He grew thin and gaunt, skeletal. As though the tros burned him up inside, eating him alive from the inside out. In two days, he lost thirty pounds, at least.

  I did, however, force water down his throat every hour. Most times, he kept it down. Too often, he vomited it back up while I held him until the retching ended. Food he could do without for a time. Water he must have. Patiently, I opened his jaw and dripped water onto his tongue. He had to either swallow or gag. He swallowed.

  Battered, bruised, cut and bleeding from fighting him, I pondered the madness that slowly took Rygel over.

  He began with sweaty restlessness, cramping in his muscles, irritation soon after our arrival in camp, about six leagues from Soudan on the bank of the river Soare. If I thought him rude earlier, he now grew positively mean. I ignored his insults, the acid comments meant to hurt me and force me to relent. I placidly ignored his strong suggestions I do what, to me, sounded anatomically impossible. I suppose one might accomplish the feat, however, if one were, say, a talented acrobat. Despite my efforts to the contrary, his constant references to my conception began to irritate me.

  “Give me some, you shit-eating bastard,” he yelled in one of his kinder moments, grabbing my tunic with both hands.

  I knocked him sprawling on his butt with a flick of my arm. He curled onto his side and wept, his tears designed to create guilt within me and move me to pity. That I had no tros to give him, had I felt pity, never entered his mind.

  “You just hate me,” he sniffed, scratching at his arm until his skin ran with blood.

  His self-pity shifted me not one inch, but tore me up inside. I wanted naught more than to give him what he wanted if it would bring back the old laughing, acerbic Rygel. That Rygel disappeared under the self-hating, despicable, foul-mouthed, scrawny shell of the man I had come to love as the brother I never had. My soul cried out against the torture I forced upon him. If I had any tros with me, I might have succumbed to his demands and given it to him, just to ease his torment. I knew, deep down, that another Rygel, one wise and intelligent and one who loved to laugh and live and heal people, lurked beneath the hard-bitten, tormented man before me. That Rygel needed his freedom.

  Gradually, his rage, anger and acid comments drew into screaming fits while I watched the crazy light in his eyes grow and consume him. I drew back from him as he dropped to his knees in front of me, smelling of vomit and sweat and piss. His thick wheaten mane lay plastered wetly against his skull and face, and hung limp with oily sweat to his shoulders. His amber eyes held more red than yellow, his pupils strangely dilated in the bright summer sunlight. He held his hands out to me in supplication. With his lost weight, his cheekbones bulged under the dirty, tear-stained skin of his face, reminding me sharply of a slave starved to death as punishment for stealing bread. After his death, the slave’s face looked very much like Rygel’s did now.

  “Gods, Raine,” he sobbed, holding his throat out to be cut. “Kill me, I can’t stand it kill me please kill me oh gods please kill meeeee.”

  Horrified, I turned my back on him to walk away. With a bone-chilling scream, he attacked, pounced like a rabid fox. Weaponless, but with a ferocity that alarmed me, he fought to slay me where I stood. His fingers clawed at my throat, digging deep furrows. I may have had the strength of an ox, and outweighed him by a hundred pounds or more, but it took every pound of muscle I had to wrestle him to earth and hold him until the fit passed.

  His attacks increased in frequency and severity. He seized the dagger from his belt and lunged at me. Startled by his swift, silent attack, I almost failed to respond. So accustomed to his verbal abuses, I could only gape as he came at me, eyes wild, foaming spittle covering thin lips stretched wide in an evil grimace. I dodged in time, seizing his wrist in the same movement. With a trick learned long ago as an apprentice gladiator, I flipped him onto his stomach, his arm twisted behind him. He screamed in real agony and dropped the knife. I kept his arm twisted behind his shoulder and knelt on the small of his back until that particular fit passed.

  After that incident, I hid every weapon in camp from him. During his few sojourns into restless sleep, I found hiding places under rocks, in the river Soare and in the boles of trees. Yet, his ferocious, senseless and mad attacks continued. If he wasn’t attacking with handy rocks in his fists, he attacked with his bare hands, his stiffened fingers reaching to claw out my throat, or eyes. As a result, I neither slept nor ate, and gulped down water during quiet moments. The summer’s savage heat beat down on me, searing, draining, debilitating. I sweated out more salt and water than I downed. My head ached; the black spots from the inn followed me and set up camp behind my eyes.

  If he wasn’t sleeping with nightmares or trying to kill me, Rygel lay on the ground, moaning, twitching as though killer ants crawled over him, biting his flesh with sharp mandibles, tearing, gouging. I could but rest briefly, knowing that within an hour, or less, another bout of rage would seize him. And he would attack. Again.

  I laughed to myself. Me, the great champion of the Federation, the High King’s chosen gladiator, the darling of the Great Arena, worn to exhaustion by a slender man half his size. The crowds would have jeered me into oblivion had they seen this. Was this friendship? I could have broken Rygel’s neck with a simple flex of my fingers, and yet I allowed him to harry, harass, drive me to the brink of utter exhaustion. Yet I ever sought to keep him from harm. I bled from a hundred different cuts and scratches, ached from twice as many bruises, hadn’t eaten in two days, and had nearly collapsed from dehydration. Kill him and be done with it, they would have said. Put him out of his misery, and yours, they would have laughed. I looked at the skeletal, filthy, vomit-encrusted, panting, twitching body of the only man ever to claim me as friend.

  Nay, I said to those invisible crowds who jeered and stomped and screamed for Rygel’s blood. You lose. He wins. I would not even tie him up to spare myself some pain. Call me a fool, if you will, I would not do it.

  I held to that vow for a whole four hours.

  Until that moment he turned the violence on himself.

  Without weapons of rocks or steel, he had on
ly his hands with which to harm himself. When another attack on me resulted in again being thrown to the ground, his arm twisted behind his back, he submitted and began to cry. As before, I let him go and stood back. I saw the cunning light in his eyes just before Rygel clawed at his throat and chest, raking deep bloody scratches. Since I felt the pain of his fingernails, I knew he could commit to some severe damage with those slender appendages. Growling, he tried to tear out his own throat, his nails ripping flesh, tearing skin. Dismayed, I saw only a thin line of flesh caught between his nails and his own jugular. His voice rising in a shriek of triumph, Rygel slashed again, his hands bloody. I reached to stop him, trying to seize those hands before he could scrape at that last residual defense of flesh. Screaming insults, calling me every vile name he could think of, he danced away from me. Then he clawed at his eyes.

  All right, that was quite enough of that. Moving low and fast, I caught him around the waist and threw him to the ground. My weight pinned him solidly, my arm twisting his left hand behind his back. His right escaped me, damn it. Like a snake he twisted, his right fist catching me square on the eye. Pain exploded through my head, but I grimly hung on, pinning him down with my greater weight. I finally snagged his rebellious right arm and curled that, too, behind him.

  Snarling, Rygel struggled, the variety of curses, in two languages, entertaining me as I sought a rope, or vine, anything with reach to tie his hands. Where did he learn such a variety of nasty titles? If we both survived, I’d have to have him teach me. Though it went against my training, insults were always useful in a fight.

  Beneath me, Rygel relaxed, his struggles spent. Yet, I sensed a cunning tension underneath the physical submission. He waited, patient, for me to relax my guard, to let him up. I knew if I waited until he ceased moving, as I had before, he would find another way to harm himself.

  With a pain lancing my soul, I used a stick to drag a length of rope toward me. He screeched like a banshee when he saw it, bucking his body to heave me off, his maddened blood hot. Gritting my teeth against the pain my act caused me, I wrenched both his arms behind his back and tied them securely. He howled. I cut the rope with my teeth, and with the short end, I turned around, still sitting on his back, and tied his legs together. He screamed.