The Wolf's Hour

by Robert R. McCammon

  Mikhail touched the rail and felt the distant train’s power vibrating in it. Drops of rain began to fall, pocking up little puffs of dust from along the tracks. Nikita stood up and moved into the shelter of some trees next to the tunnel opening. Mikhail went with him, and they crouched down like sprinters ready for bursts of speed. The rain was falling harder. In another moment it was coming down in sheets, and the rails were drenched. Also, the ground was rapidly turning to mud. Mikhail didn’t like this; their footing would be unstable. He pushed his wet hair out of his eyes. Now they could hear the thunder of the train, fast approaching. Mikhail said, “I don’t think we should go tonight.”

  “Why not? Because of a little rain?” Nikita shook his head, his body tensed for the race. “I’ve run in rain worse than this!”

  “The ground… there’s too much mud.”

  “I’m not afraid!” Nikita snapped. “Oh, I’ve had dreams about that red lamp on the last car! Winking at me like Satan’s eye! I’m going to beat the train tonight! I feel it, Mikhail! I can do it if I run just a little faster! Just a little bit—”

  The train’s headlamp exploded from the tunnel, the long black engine and the boxcars following. The new engineer had no fear of wet tracks. Rain and wind gusted into Mikhail’s face, and he yelled, “No!” and reached for Nikita but Nikita was already gone, a white blur running alongside the rails. Mikhail sprinted after him, trying to stop him; the rain and wind were too strong, the train going too fast. His feet slid in the mud, and he almost fell against the speeding train. He could hear the rain hissing off the hot engine like a chorus of snakes. He kept going, trying to run Nikita down, and he saw that Nikita’s footprints in the mud were changing to the paws of a wolf.

  Nikita was contorted forward, almost running on all fours. His body was no longer white. Rain whirled around him—and then Mikhail lost his balance, falling forward and sliding in the mud. Rain crashed down on his shoulders and mud blinded him. He tried to scramble up, fell again, and lay there as the train roared along its track and into the eastern tunnel. It vanished, leaving a scrawl of red light on the tunnel’s rock; then that, too, was gone.

  Mikhail sat up in the downpour, rain streaming over his face. “Nikita!” he shouted. Neither human nor wolf replied. Mikhail stood up and began walking through the mud toward the eastern tunnel. “Nikita! Where are you?”

  He couldn’t see Nikita. The rain was still slamming down. Whirling cinders hissed out long before they touched the ground. The air smelled of scorched iron and wet heat.

  “Nikita?” There was no sign of him on this side of the tracks. He made it! Mikhail thought, and felt a burst of joy. He made it! He made—

  Something lay over on the other side of the tracks. A shapeless, trembling form.

  Steam rose from the rails. On the tunnel’s floor, cinders still glowed. And about eight feet from its entrance, lying sprawled in the weeds, was Nikita.

  The wolf had leaped in front of the train, but the train had won. Its cowcatcher had torn Nikita’s hindquarters away. His back legs were gone, and what remained of Nikita made Mikhail gasp and fall to his knees. He couldn’t help it; he Was sick, and that mingled with the blood washing along the railroad tracks.

  Nikita made a noise: a soft, terrible moan.

  Mikhail lifted his face to the sky, and let the rain beat it. He heard Nikita’s moan again, ending in a whimper. He forced himself to look at his friend, and saw Nikita’s eyes staring back at him, the noble head twisted like a frail flower on a dark stalk. The mouth opened, and emitted that awful noise again. The eyes were dimmed, but they fixed on Mikhail and held him, and he read their message.

  Kill me.

  Nikita’s body trembled in agony. The front legs tried to pull the rest of the ruined body away from the tracks, but there was no power left in them. The head thrashed, then fell back into the mud. With a mighty effort, Nikita lifted his head and stared once more, imploringly, at the boy who sat on his knees in the downpour.

  Nikita was dying, of course. But not fast enough. Not nearly fast enough.

  Mikhail lowered his face and stared into the mud. Pieces of Nikita’s body, stippled with wolf hair and human flesh, lay around him like tattered pieces of a magnificent puzzle. Mikhail heard Nikita groan and closed his eyes; in his mind he saw a dying deer beside the tracks, and Nikita’s hands gripping the animal’s skull. He remembered the sharp twist Nikita had given the deer’s neck, followed by a noise of cracking bones. It had been an act of mercy, pure and simple. And it was no less than what Nikita now asked for.

  Mikhail stood up, staggered and almost went down again. He felt dreamlike, floating; in this sea of rain there were no edges. Nikita shivered and stared at him and waited. At last Mikhail moved. The mud caught his feet, but he pulled free and he knelt down beside his friend.

  Nikita lifted his head, offering his neck.

  Mikhail grasped the sides of the wolf’s skull. Nikita’s eyes closed, and the low moan continued in his throat.

  We could fix him, Mikhail thought. I don’t have to kill him. We could fix him. Wiktor would know how. We fixed Franco, didn’t we?

  But in his heart he knew this was far worse than Franco’s mangled leg. Nikita was near death, and he was only asking for deliverance from pain. It had all happened so quickly: the downpour, the train, the steaming tracks… so quickly, so quickly.

  Mikhail’s hands gripped tighter. He was shaking as hard as Nikita. He would have to do this right the first time. A dark haze was falling over his vision, and his eyes were filling up with rain. It would have to be done mercifully. Mikhail braced himself. One of Nikita’s forelegs lifted up, and the paw rested against Mikhail’s arm.

  “I’m sorry,” Mikhail whispered. He took a breath, and twisted as sharply as he could. He heard the cracking noise, and Nikita’s body twitched. Then Mikhail crawled frantically away through the rain and mud. He burrowed into the weeds and high grass, and curled up there as the torrent continued to beat down on him. When he dared to look at Nikita again, he saw the motionless, cleaved torso of a wolf with one human arm and hand. Mikhail sat on his haunches, his knees pulled up to his chin, and rocked himself. He stared at the carcass with its white-fleshed arm. It would have to be moved off the tracks, before the vultures found it in the morning. It would have to be buried deep.

  Nikita was gone. To where? Mikhail wondered. And Wiktor’s question came to him: what is the lycanthrope, in the eye of God?

  He felt something fall away from him. Perhaps it was youth’s last flower. What lay beneath it felt hard-edged and raw, like a seething wound. To get through this life, he thought, a man needed a heart that was plated with metal and pumped cinders. He would have to grow one, if he was going to survive.

  He stayed beside Nikita’s body until the rain ceased. The wind had gone, and the woods were peaceful. Then Mikhail ran home, through the dripping dark, to take Wiktor the news.

  3

  Petyr was crying. It was the dead of winter, the wind howled outside the white palace, and Wiktor crouched over the child, now seven months old, as Petyr lay on a bed of dried grass. A small fire flickered nearby; the child was swaddled in deerskin and a blanket Renati had made from the travelers’ clothes. Petyr’s crying was a shrill quaver, but cold was not the child’s complaint. Wiktor, whose beard had started to show streaks of white amid the gray, touched Petyr’s forehead. The child’s skin was burning. Wiktor looked up at the others. “It’s begun,” he said, his voice grim.

  Alekza, too, started to cry. Wiktor snapped, “Hush that!” and Alekza crawled away to be by herself.

  “What can we do?” Mikhail asked, but he already knew the answer: nothing. Petyr was about to go through the trial of agony, and no one could help the child through that passage. Mikhail leaned over Petyr, his fingers busy at the blanket, folding it closer simply because his fingers wanted something to do. Petyr’s face was flushed, the ice-blue eyes rimmed with red. A small amount of dark hair was scattered over the child’s scalp
. Alekza’s eyes, Mikhail thought. My hair. And within that frail body, the first battle of a long war was beginning.

  “He’s strong,” Franco said. “He’ll make it.” But his voice had no conviction. How could an infant survive such pain? Franco stood up, on his single leg, and used his pinewood staff to guide himself to his sleeping pallet.

  Wiktor, Renati, and Mikhail slept in a circle around the child. Alekza came back, and slept touching Mikhail. Petyr’s crying swelled and ebbed, became hoarse and still continued. So did the wail of the wind, beyond the walls.

  As the days went on, Petyr’s pain increased. They could tell, by the way he shivered and writhed, by the way he clenched his fists and seemed to be striking the air. They huddled around him; Petyr was hotter than the fire. Sometimes he screamed with silence, his mouth open and his eyes squeezed tightly shut. Other times his voice filled the chamber, and it was a sound that ripped Mikhail’s heart and made Alekza weep. In periods when the worst of the pain seemed to ebb, Alekza tried to feed Petyr bloody meat she’d already chewed into a soft paste; he accepted most of it, but he was getting weaker, shriveling up like an old man before their eyes. Still, Petyr clung to life. When the child’s crying would become so terrible that Mikhail thought God must surely end this suffering, the pain would break for perhaps three or four hours. Then it would come back, and the screaming would start again. Mikhail knew Alekza was nearing a crisis as well; her eyes looked like hollowed-out holes, and her hands trembled so much she could hardly guide food into her own mouth. She, too, was becoming older by the day.

  After a long and exhausting hunt, Mikhail was awakened one night by a hideous gasping sound. He sat up, started to move toward Petyr, but Wiktor pushed him aside in his haste to get to the baby. Renati said, “What is it? What’s wrong?” and Franco hobbled on his stick into the light. Alekza just stared, her eyes blank pools of shock. Wiktor knelt beside the child, and his face was ashen. The baby was silent. “He’s swallowed his tongue,” Wiktor said. “Mikhail, hold him from thrashing!”

  Mikhail gripped Petyr’s body; it was like touching a hot coal. “Hold him steady!” Wiktor shouted as he forced open the mouth and tried to hook the tongue with his finger. He couldn’t get it out. Petyr’s face had taken on a tinge of blue, and the lungs were heaving. The little hands clutched at the air. Wiktor’s finger explored the child’s mouth, found the tongue, and then he got a second finger clamped around it. He pulled; the tongue was caught in Petyr’s throat. “Get it out!” Renati yelled. “Wiktor, get it out!”

  Wiktor pulled again, harder. There was a popping noise as the tongue unjammed, but Petyr’s face was still turning blue. The lungs hitched, couldn’t draw in air. Sweat sparkled on Wiktor’s face, though his breath came out in a gray plume. He lifted Petyr up, held the baby by the heels, and whacked him on the back with the flat of his hand. Mikhail winced at the sound of the blow. Petyr still made no noise. Again Wiktor struck him on the back, harder. And a third time. There was a whoosh of rushing air, and a plume of it exploded from the child’s mouth. It was followed by a wail of pain and fury that made the storm’s voice sound feeble. Alekza held her arms out to take the baby. Wiktor gave him to her. She rocked the child, grateful tears creeping down her cheeks, and she lifted one of his little hands and pressed it against her lips.

  She pulled her head back, her eyes wide.

  Dark hairs had risen from the white infant flesh. The body in her arms was already contorting, and Petyr opened his mouth to make a mewling noise. Alekza looked up at Mikhail, then at Wiktor; he sat on his haunches, his chin resting on his clasped hands, and his amber eyes glinted in the firelight as he watched.

  Petyr’s face was changing, the muzzle beginning to form, the eyes sinking back into the dark-haired skull. Mikhail heard Renati gasp beside him, a sound of wonder. Petyr’s ears lengthened, edged with soft white hairs. The fingers of both hands and the toes of both feet were retracting, becoming claws with small hooked nails. Little popping noises chimed the shifting of bones and joints, and Petyr made grunting noises, but his crying seemed to be done. The change took perhaps a minute. Wiktor said quietly, “Put him down.”

  Alekza obeyed. The blue-eyed wolf pup, its sinewy body covered with fine black hairs, struggled to stand on all fours. Petyr made it up, fell, struggled to stand, and then fell again. Mikhail started to help him, but Wiktor said, “No. Let him do it on his own.”

  Petyr found his legs and was able to stand, the little body shivering, the blue eyes blinking with amazement. The stub of a tall wriggled, and the wolfen ears twitched. He took one step, then a second; his hind legs tangled and he went down once more. Petyr gave a short whuff of frustration, steam curling from his nostrils. Wiktor leaned forward, held out a finger, and ticked it back and forth in front of Petyr’s muzzle. The blue eyes followed it—and then Petyr’s head lunged out, the jaws opened, and clamped down on Wiktor’s finger.

  Wiktor worked his finger out of the pup’s jaws and held it up. A little drop of blood had appeared. “Congratulations,” he said to Mikhail and Alekza. “Your son has a new tooth.”

  Petyr, at least for the time being, had given up the battle with gravity. He squirmed across the floor, sniffing at the stones. A roach burst from a crack under Petyr’s nose and ran for its life, and Petyr gave a high yip of surprise, then continued his explorations.

  “He’ll turn back, won’t he?” Alekza asked Wiktor. “Won’t he?”

  “We’ll see,” Wiktor told her, and that was all he could offer.

  About halfway across the chamber Petyr stubbed his nose on a stone’s edge. He began yelping with pain, and as he rolled on the floor his body started changing back to human form again. The fine dark hair retreated into the flesh, the muzzle flattened into a nose—one of the nostrils bloody—and the paws became hands and feet. The yelping was now a steady, full-throated cry, and Alekza rushed to the baby and picked him up. She rocked him and cooed to him, and finally Petyr hiccuped a few times and ceased crying. He remained a human infant.

  “Well,” Wiktor said after a pause, “if our new addition survives the winter, he should be very interesting to watch.”

  “He’ll survive,” Alekza promised. The glint of life had returned to her eyes. “I’ll make him survive.”

  Wiktor admired his bitten finger. “My dear, I doubt if you’ll ever be able to make him do anything.” He glanced at Mikhail, and smiled slightly. “You’ve done well, son,” he said, and motioned Alekza and the baby back into the fire’s warmth.

  Son, Mikhail realized he’d said. Son. No man had ever called him son before, and something about that sounded like music. He would sleep that night, listening to Alekza crooning to Petyr, and he would dream of a tall, lean man in a military uniform who stood with a woman Mikhail had all but forgotten, and that man would have Wiktor’s face.

  4

  At winter’s end Petyr was still alive. He accepted whatever food Alekza gave him, and though he had the habit of changing to a wolf pup without warning and driving the rest of the pack crazy with his constant yapping, he stayed mostly within human bounds. By summer he had all his teeth, and Wiktor kept his fingers away from the baby’s mouth.

  Some nights, Mikhail sat on the ravine’s edge and watched the train go past. He began counting the seconds off as it roared from the western tunnel into the eastern. Last year, he’d run the race halfheartedly with Nikita. It had never really mattered to him how fast he could change. He knew he was fairly quick about it, but he’d always lagged behind Nikita. Now, though, Nikita’s bones lay in the Garden, and the train—an invincible thing—breathed its black breath and shone its gleaming eye through the night. Mikhail had often wondered what the crew had thought when they’d found blood and bits of black-haired flesh on the cowcatcher. We hit an animal, they’d probably thought if they considered it at all. An animal. Something that shouldn’t have been in our way.

  Toward the middle of summer, Mikhail began to lope along with the train as it burst from the tunnel. H
e wasn’t racing it, just stretching his legs. The engine always left him in a whirl of sour black smoke, and cinders scorched his skin. And on those nights, after the train had disappeared into the tunnel, Mikhail crossed the tracks to where Nikita had died, and he sat in the weeds and thought, I could do it, if I wanted to. I could.

  Maybe.

  He would have to get a fast start. The tricky part was staying on your feet as your arms and legs changed. The way the backbone bowed your body over ruined your balance. And all the time your nerves and joints were shrieking, and if you tripped over your own paws, you could go into the side of the train, and a hundred other terrible things could happen. No, it wasn’t worth the risk.

  Mikhail always left telling himself he wouldn’t come back. But he knew it was a lie. The idea of speed, of testing himself against the beast that had killed Nikita, lured him. He began to run faster, alongside the train; but still not racing it, not yet. His balance still wasn’t good enough, and he fell every time he tried to change from human to wolf while running. It was a problem of timing, of keeping your footing until the front legs could come down and match the speed of the hind legs. Mikhail kept trying, and kept falling.

  Renati returned from a hunt one afternoon with startling news: to the northwest, less than five miles from the white palace, men had started cutting down trees. They’d already made a clearing, and were building shacks out of raw timbers. A road was being plowed through the brush. The men had many wagons, saws, and axes. Renati said she’d crept in close, in her wolf form, to watch them working; one of the men had seen her, she said, and pointed her out to the others before she could get back into the woods. What did it mean? she asked Wiktor.