by N. M. Browne
Then here, where we feast, I catch the pungent female odour of the two-legged female and I remember: I am not whole as the she-wolf but a broken unnatural thing. It hurts to know this, but I can’t ignore it. It is like a thorn in the soft pad of my foot. I am a two-legged creature as well as a four-legged one and my pack is both the she-wolf and the two-legged female. I owe loyalty to the hunter and to the fire-maker. I can taste the two-leg’s smoky, spicy scent in the wind. I should run after her. My she-wolf does not want this. She nips me and growls, but follows anyway, as I knew she would. It is up to me to keep my pack together. I know that finding the two-legged female is important and worth the anger of the she-wolf. She needs me.
She is not hard to find. She travels noisily. She is with a male whose scent I remember from earlier in the day. He smells of the smoke of campfires, of the loamy earth of many places, of the taint of metal, of blood and of ash.
We are not far away when my two-leg, the fire-maker, Trista, screams. The fur on my neck rises and I run as if I flee from fire. My she-wolf is not more than a pace behind. We are fleet of foot and fierce in fighting. The male will not do her harm. He has the sharp tooth that will bite her. No. He has a dagger that might cut her. She is already fighting him, struggling to get at her sword. Kicking out and screaming at him.
‘Cassie’s wrong. You’re not on her side. You’re the midden-born pox-ridden Parisi scum I knew you were!’ Her scent is overlaid with fury. She might beat him on her own, but it isn’t certain.
I growl. I want to tear out his throat and gnaw at his innards. I could snap his neck with my jaws, shred him with my teeth. I want to taste his warm blood. I will not let him get to Trista. He turns to me and I smell his fear. He runs. I start after him but the she-wolf is cautious. We’ve eaten well and she has no interest in a chase without a kill. She doesn’t kill what she can’t eat. She doesn’t think men are ever worth the chase. I can see that in the way she hangs her tail and tilts her ears. We will let him go. For now.
‘Morcant!’ Trista smells of crude perfumes, of oil and the hot tang of the bathhouse. She does not smell of blood. She’s not hurt. I taste the skin of her arm with my tongue. She is salty and sweet at once.
‘I’d like to weave a basket with his guts,’ Trista says. She is rubbing her wrist, where he must have twisted it to wrench her weapon from her hands. I know that she is irritated that he bested her. ‘I didn’t think you’d come back. Thank you.’
Her voice trembles and water comes from her eyes. I remember that this means she is distressed. She is not the only one: my she-wolf retreats.
I am torn between the two of them because they both want me. I hesitate. Trista surprises me by burying her face in the fur of my back. I feel the whole weight of her pressing down on me. She does not usually behave this way. It is as if she is sick or injured and I can’t leave her.
‘It’s all gone wrong, Morcant. I don’t know what I’m doing.’ It’s hard to hear what she is saying as she is mumbling into my back.
I can’t do anything to help her. I have no arms to hold her so I twist my head and manage to lick the bare flesh on her neck to let her know that I am here and listening. It is odd that her skin is so smooth and bald; it tastes of perfume there, sickly and sweet. I do not react.
The man who got away will bring more men. I know this and she must know it too. She needs to keep moving so that they can’t catch her. I make a noise that the wolves know means ‘Danger, keep running.’ She pats my neck as if it were a cry for attention. I nudge her but she sinks to the ground.
‘I can’t go on. I need to sleep.’ She would never make these pitiful sounds of weakness if I looked like a man and the more I am with her the more like a man I feel. My she-wolf has loped away in disgust. Can her keen nose detect from my scent that I am becoming more like the two-legged hunters she despises?
The mule thrashes around in his harness. There is some good eating on him. His frightened noises rouse Trista from her hopeless state. She stands up again and wipes her face on her shawl so that all the paint she is wearing smears across her face. It changes her look but not her smell. She mutters soothingly to the mule and I find myself oddly relaxed by the gentle calm of her tone. Perhaps this too is her gift. She sees what is not there, she lights fires and she gentles restless beasts. She releases the mule from the hard burden of the cart. I don’t like this cart. It is cluttered with the objects of the pedlar’s trade. I can smell old blood on the clothing and the lingering trace of fear that has worked its way into the very weave of the cloth. I wonder where the pedlar acquired these wares. He has spent time in places best avoided. His things leave a bad taste in my mouth.
Trista pulls the cart off the track and under a tree. Her strength surprises me. She is not weak. She tips the cart to make a barrier against the wind and makes a camp for herself a little off the track. She takes little time to gather damp sticks. No sooner than she lays them on the ground, she kindles a flame. I am not afraid of this fire because it is hers. She made it and she can control it. Though the scent of the burning wood makes my eyes water and fills my nose with the heat and a pungent odour of scorching, I am drawn to lie by her side.
She runs her hands through my fur, and I don’t even snarl. She is Trista and she can do whatever she likes.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Trista’s Story
I touch the thick fur around Morcant’s neck and, when he does not snarl, I grow bolder and stroke the luxurious coat on his back and flanks. I can feel the pump of his heart beating through his skin as if he has been running. I want to bury my head in his pelt but I resist. His fur smells of the hounds of home, of my father’s hearth and of childhood. His breath smells of blood and I don’t mind. I’ve grown used to that smell.
‘Morcant.’ I surprise myself by whispering his name again. The fire’s orange embers flare into yellow flame and I feel his powerful muscles tense under my hands, ready for flight. His eyes are silver mirrors of light. I do not mean to say it but I do. ‘Don’t go.’
He nuzzles his heavy head against my chest as if he truly were one of my father’s dogs, almost knocking me over. Cautiously, I brush the fine, soft hair above his eyes with my fingers and he closes his eyes. Encouraged, I scratch the tufted fur behind his ears. He settles down beside me. I groom him as well as I can, using my nails and freeing the small twigs and dried pine needles that have caught there. I pat his strong back and he acknowledges me with a flick of his tail. I sleep, breathing in the stale scent of his breath, matching my own breath to his rhythm, and I sleep well.
It is some time after dawn when I finally awake to find myself staring into the clear grey eyes of Morcant the man. His hair is plastered damply to his head. He is filthy and naked and the skin of his neck and bare shoulders is tinged with blue. He is shivering. Has he been waiting for me to wake up?
Grudgingly, I unwrap my cloak from my own shoulders and throw it at him. It is raining again, a relentless chill drizzle that soaks through even the thickest wool.
‘You were right,’ he says through chattering teeth, ‘it’s just like you said. I’m a shape-changer.’ I nod and bank up the fire to warm him. Without the cloak I am shivering too. Cassie’s garments were not designed for warmth.
Morcant looks at my coloured silks and scowls. ‘Why are you wearing that thing?’
‘I met someone I once knew. She helped me escape.’
I don’t want to explain. Now in the dawn light I can’t believe I let her force me into this stupid mission. I don’t care about Caratacus. Every time I close my eyes, I see things that are not there. Morcant bleeding, fire blazing, the Parisi pedlar burning from the inside. I move as if I’m balanced at the edge of a precipice, as if at any moment I could fall into a pit of endless visions. I feel as if my very soul is shaking.
I stretch out my hands in front of me – they tremble like an old woman’s. It is perhaps as well I have no spear for I’m not confident that I could throw it straight.
There
are some things in the bottom of the cart – a sack of spare clothes, an end of cheese, as well as the Parisi’s wares.
I hand the sack of clothes to Morcant who wrinkles his nose. ‘It smells of the Parisi.’
‘It’s that or freeze,’ I say. I want my cloak back. He makes the sensible choice and dresses while I rummage through the pedlar’s assortment of metal goods. They are so poorly made that almost all of them have rough, unfinished edges – anyone wearing one of his torques would have nicked the skin of their neck in no time. It is a wonder that he did any business. I can’t find anything else that belonged to my people, the family and friends slaughtered in battle at Ragan’s Field. He was there all right. He told me that much when I had a knife in his guts, but there is nothing in all these trinkets worth keeping.
Morcant looks different in the Parisi’s spare clothes. There’s one thing for sure: no one would believe him to be a Roman any more. I half expect to see tribal tattoos snaking up his arms, but his arms are bare, almost hairless, with only the small wolf mark to show his loyalties. He sees me looking at it and laughs. ‘It couldn’t fit me better, could it?’
He rubs his stubbled chin with a grubby finger. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t believe you – before. I don’t know, but this . . . thing only happened to me when I was a child and I thought it was a dream. It’s never happened like this.’
Perhaps that’s true. I know he thinks I have something to do with his change. I can see the thought written plainly on his face, but he doesn’t say anything. The wolf is sleeping and this is Morcant’s gentle time. He helps me right the cart.
‘Trista. I can’t be like this.’
‘What do you mean?’ I say carefully.
‘I can’t be the beast. I can’t feel what he feels, live the wolf’s life. It’s all wrong . . .’ His voice is so quiet I have to lean towards him just to hear. He looks haunted, desperate.
I put my hand out as if to touch him and then pull it back.
‘But the things you can know as a wolf – the smells, the sounds. Isn’t that worth it all?’ I can’t forget the moment I touched Morcant and experienced the world through the nose and ears of the wolf. I don’t have the words to describe the sensations. Such insights would give a warrior such an advantage.
Morcant doesn’t feel the same way. He shakes his head.
‘You don’t know what it’s like! I’ve got no control. One moment I’m me, the next I am lost. I find myself in places and I can’t remember getting there or worse, I’m the beast and I think and feel and . . .’ he pauses, lowering his voice so that I strain to hear him, ‘and I act like a beast . . .’
This time it is he who reaches out to touch my hand. I know exactly what it’s like to have no control, to be lost. I’ve lived my whole life that way. Would I give up my seeress’s gifts if I could?
‘Morcant, you’re new to it. You get used to it.’
‘No, no.’ He shakes his head fiercely. ‘The druids know about such things, don’t they? They can cure me of this affliction, can’t they?’
‘I don’t know. Your ability is a gift of the gods. Even the druids do not set themselves against their will.’
‘Help me, Trista. Take me to the druids.’
He squeezes my hand and looks at me earnestly: something hard in me softens. No one has looked at me like this before.
‘You could go to the Sacred Isle, to Mona, but the druids there may choose not to help you.’ Who knows what druids will do? They are as hard to predict as the weather and as powerful.
Morcant is smiling at me as if I’ve promised to cure him myself, and I haven’t. I can’t go to Mona.
‘You’ll come with me?’
There is a look of almost puppyish enthusiasm on his face. I adjust my sword belt.
‘I can’t go to Mona.’
‘Why not? Maybe the druids could help you too?’
‘No, Morcant, they won’t. If you go, you’ll go alone.’ I don’t want to tell him about the blood debt or my promise. I don’t want to tell him that my father ran from Mona and still had nightmares about it years later. It is the centre of our religion and the only place I know where people might understand his plight. He lets go of my hand.
‘Where will you go?’
I don’t want to answer. I shrug and wipe my face. My hand comes away stained with colour. I had forgotten the paint that Cassie made me wear. I dampen the corner of my cloak in a puddle of rainwater and scrub away at my face with it.
‘You’ve missed a bit.’ Morcant uses his fingers to wipe the pigment from my face. ‘It makes your eyes look huge,’ he says, and I don’t know if that is a good thing or not.
I find it hard to pull my gaze away from his. He has an injured look, like a whipped hound, and I feel myself beginning to flush. He turns his attention to his fingers. I’ve never noticed how strange fingers are! They are so dextrous, so flexible, so sensitive. He touches my cheek with the tip of his forefinger. He brushes my skin so lightly I shiver. I don’t dislike the feeling.
‘I’d hoped you’d stay with me – the beauty and the beast!’ He laughs a little wildly as if some part of the beast remains with him even when the wolf is asleep. He doesn’t need to make fun of me.
‘We should go,’ I say. ‘We need food. Maybe there’s a village somewhere near? Unless you can hunt?’
He looks aghast at the suggestion. Perhaps it is because I was raised as a warrior and grew up with hounds that I admire what a wolf can do.
I kick mud over the fire and cover our tracks with a tree branch. I put on my mail and helmet to save the bother of carrying it. I know it looks ridiculous with my draped tunic and thin-soled lady’s sandals but the kit is easier to wear than it is to carry. Morcant looks at it enviously.
I leave the cart and the pedlar’s ill-made trinkets but I take the mule, holding his halter. He keeps well away from Morcant. As we walk, I tell Morcant an edited version of my rescue by Cassie, but I’m on edge. If I were a Roman, I wouldn’t let us escape.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I think we’re being followed. It’s a pity the wolf is asleep – we could use his sharp senses.’ Given the way he feels about the wolf, I probably shouldn’t have said that. He tenses.
‘I don’t need the wolf!’
‘Shhh!’ I hiss at him. I can hear something – a snapped branch a way back, behind us. I’m sure of it. There it is again: the sound of someone moving. I glance back at Morcant to find him glaring angrily at me. His eyes are tinged with yellow. The wolf is back.
Morcant stops walking to listen. His shadow wolf cocks his ears, tilting his head, testing the air. Morcant the man does much the same. I am right. There is something there. I feel a familiar weakness and I pray to the god that cursed me with the gift of prophecy – keep my vision clear for a time at least.
The tree coverage is not dense here. The ground is uneven but essentially flat.
Morcant’s face looks grim. ‘They’re Roman. Any bright ideas?’ he murmurs. With the wolf awake his tone is sharper.
We are poorly armed and he hasn’t even a spear.‘We fight?’ I say.
‘There are eight, maybe ten, men?’
‘Then we die.’
‘And what’s the point of that?’
‘Warriors fight. It’s what we do.’
His yellow eyes are quizzical. ‘Wolves don’t fight battles they can’t win. They submit and bide their time.’
‘I’ll not surrender.’
‘Then we hide.’ He does not expect me to argue and I don’t, but I can’t say I like the idea. My blood is already pumping, ready for the fight. Morcant guides me into the thickest undergrowth which is still sparse. He ducks down into a half crouch, moving with an easy, loping grace. I feel awkward. I’m not good at stealth. I take off my helmet, pull my cloak over my mail and Morcant signals for me to cover my hair. He pulls me down on to the damp ground and I lie flattened in the grass. There are still patches of snow lingering. I don’t see how we can be missed.
I strain to hear the sound of approaching footsteps. They are closer and I can hear the chink of metal against metal, the low whisper of voices. We wait.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Morcant’s Story
The men are no more that a couple of long strides away. I can see their clean-shaven cheeks, scent the residual oil from the baths on their skin, the old-wine stink of their breath and the rotten smell of their long-ago breakfasts. They are a scouting party, probably sent to track and pursue us, but I can tell by the way they are moving that they think their task pointless – another stupid army drill. We did a lot of them in the Ninth. Their talk is of women and home. They are not paying too much attention to their surroundings.
I think we’ll get away with it. I think they’ll pass us by. Then Trista’s stupid mule wanders into view – still wearing his halter. Mules do not stray into forests on their own and the men are instantly alert. It is not one of the many army animals; it does not bear the brand of the wolf. I watch the Decanus check carefully. It’s the Parisi pedlar’s beast and not only are the bridle and halter of native design, but they are bright with ribbons and jangle with all the Keltic charms attached to the harness for good luck. Mithras’ balls! Why didn’t we tie up the mule? The Decanus issues a terse command, but it’s barely necessary. The men shut up, straighten up and become soldiers. I can see them scanning the land with practised eyes, instantly ready for action. They remove their shields and arrange themselves into a better defensive formation. Stupid, pissing mule.
The men unsheathe their swords and start to fan out warily to look for the mule’s owners. Our hiding place will not bear careful scrutiny. They’ll find us and Trista will fight and then she’ll die because, in spite of her time as a slave, she doesn’t know how to submit. The stink of Rome is so strong I almost sneeze. I start to crawl backwards away from the men. I hear Trista gasp and whisper something, yanking at my cloak, but I’m not listening and the cloak comes away in her hand. She stifles a cry as I lose all that encumbers me. I try to do it silently. The sweaty wool of my tunic flops to the ground with barely a sound. I step out of it, keeping my body low. I slink forwards so that my belly almost scrapes the ground. I have to leave Trista behind.