Epigraph
Time will be when the broadest river dries
And the great cities wane and last descend
Into the dust, for all things have an end.
Geoffrey Chaucer
And the end came before the beginning.
T. S. Eliot
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Epigraph
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Epilogue
Glossary
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
It was a portent. A terrible omen.
Bert shivered as he looked up at the strange, teardrop-shaped object in the sky. It was almost as bright as a quarter moon now. He pulled his jacket tighter around his body, although it wasn’t the ever-ravaging wind that was bothering him. A strange, unsettling worry was gnawing deep inside him. His grandfather had warned him long ago about these huge fiery stars and the awful prospects they heralded.
He had a perfect view of the sky up here on the hills. He’d first noticed this thing about a week ago and had been marking its progress against the stars of Orion. It had moved since last night; that was certain.
Was this it? The sign he’d hoped he’d never see?
He stared at it, willing it to give up its meaning. Dread seized hold of him. He was too old. He couldn’t do it; not now. All the long years he’d watched over these fells, waiting for it, he’d never really expected it would happen. But now, in his twilight years, the nightmare was returning. And he—an old man—was supposed to stop it.
His grandfather had told him the story, must be fifty years ago now. A story that had been handed down for countless generations. Fifty years, and he remembered it as clear as day. The day would eventually come. They’d all been certain of that.
But why now? Why him? He should be left to hand over the secret, and the onus, and live out his life in peace.
He took a deep, shuddering breath, concentrating on the frigid air burning into his throat and lungs, and looked out into the empty darkness. He knew these fells so well that even by the faint glimmer of starlight he could visualize every rock and stream. The familiar emptiness tonight seemed sinister and threatening. The cold prickled at the back of his neck. Was it out there already? Watching, waiting?
He shook his head. He couldn’t be lingering on these fancies. He may yet be wrong. He offered heartfelt prayers every night that he was.
Far down the hillside he heard a whinny, probably a restless horse outside one of the town’s inns. Allendale was nearly a mile away but sound always traveled well at night. He could just make out the faint glow of a lantern, maybe outside the inn itself. Nothing else betrayed the presence of the sleeping town. Most folks would be abed by now.
He heard a slight scuffle of feet and a warm furry body pressed against his shin, sitting down almost on top of his feet. Bert reached down and rubbed the top of the dog’s head.
“Good boy, Shep,” he murmured.
He began to walk along the stone wall running down the hillside, running his fingers along the contours of the rough-hewn blocks. Shep jumped up to follow. The sheep were all on the other side, settled for the night. He could hear the grinding of many sets of teeth on the cud and he leaned on the wall, the familiar rhythm soothing him. There were a few whispers as some of them stirred, but they all recognized him and not one stood up. There was no other sound disturbing the night; just the eternal song of silence.
Bert sighed and looked up again at the strange light in the sky. How long was it going to last?
Even if this wasn’t the time, things were changing. The world was fast becoming a whole new place. He remembered when they built the railway into Catton. They were still talking about bringing it into Allendale. He could see the train from here sometimes—a hellish, ugly, belching monster. He turned his head and spat on the ground. Noise, people, machinery. A dirty, poisonous haze. Newcomers from the towns. Progress, they called it. It was awful.
Thomas had loved it. He’d looked on with shining eyes, his mouth wide when he saw the thing screech into Catton station for the first time.
“I want to drive one of those one day! Can I, Grandpa? Can I?” He tugged at his sleeve in excitement.
“You’ll tend the sheep on the fells. We Allenstons have always done that, far longer than any other family.” Bert smiled at the boy with quiet pride.
Thomas’s face fell. “I don’t want to do that. I don’t like sheep; I want to drive a steam engine.”
That had hurt, so much. But the boy was too young to understand.
Once, back when Bert was young, he’d traveled to Newcastle. Full of smoke, noise, dirt, and soot, it had been unbearable. Was his beloved home to go the same way?
He heard a quiet chortle behind the wall and a soft nose nudged his hand. Bert absently scratched behind Molly’s ears. He’d never known a sheep so friendly. Even as a ewe lamb she’d never been at all nervous around him.
Shep sat on his haunches, his nose just an inch from his master’s hand. His two companions, his friends, they had no cause for worry. They knew nothing about the coming changes. For them life would go on, as it always had and always would.
Comforted by this thought, he pushed himself away from the wall and went back up to his bothy. As he reached the door a deep, nasal honking came from far up overhead. He looked up, but of course he could see nothing. Shep was also trying to source the sound. The geese were late this year. Normally they would have arrived weeks ago.
Bert stood for a while as the sound rapidly moved south and then faded into the distance. Carried by the wind, they’d soon be miles away. Where had they come from? Where were they going? How did they always seem to know the way? He wished he knew.
Shep watched him climb into bed from the rug in the corner of the room. He never settled himself until he’d supervised his master safely into bed. It was like his two-legged ward was as much responsibility as the four-legged ones.
Bert looked over at him and noticed gray hairs around his muzzle. He must be nine years old now.
“You’re getting old, boy. We’re all getting old.”
Shep wagged his tail. As Bert lay down and pulled the blanket over his head, his last sleepy thoughts ran through his mind.
It may not come to be.
2
They were angry. It didn’t take a Druid to see that.
Bran sighed as the group struggled up the hill toward his lodge. He could see Coll was in the lead, as always. The red hair of the smith was unmistakable in the light of the blazing torches. The others he couldn’t yet identify.
What was the problem now? More sheep gone? A bullock maybe—that would be a huge blow this late in the year. One napping herdsman, and the blame was brought to him.
Ever since he’d returned, after
nigh on ten years away, now the fully cloaked Pennaeth of the Pridani tribe, Coll had been stirring up discord. Angry and jealous, since the troubles had started he’d been claiming Bran was inept. And some were starting to listen.
Bran planted his rowan staff in front of his feet and gripped it with both hands. The raven’s feathers of his cloak flowed sinuously around his body to brush the icy ground. He would look imposing, terrifying even, especially to the younger ones. Under normal circumstances, anyone seeing him standing at his lodge entrance in his raven guise would back away, uncomfortably aware of the spirit world lingering around him.
But not so this time. He saw not a hint of hesitation in the group’s approach as he looked down on them. Coll had completed some training in the Druid ways, after all. His was a very simple trick, and the smith would not be fooled. The others would take his lead.
The shadowy figures became more distinct as they struggled toward him, and as Bran studied them his earlier impatience faded. He could see that the group was huddled protectively around someone in their midst, and that those at the back were constantly glancing over their shoulders. Those who couldn’t maintain the punishing pace fell back, only to push forward again almost immediately. He could now hear a desperate sob, more a high-pitched wheeze as a woman struggled for breath.
The group were snatching nervous glances at him as they neared, and Coll stared rigidly at the entrance to the stone wall. Bran fought the urge to run down to meet them.
The smith halted in front of him and the others paused a few paces behind. The crunching footsteps were replaced by the quiet fizz and spit of the torches.
Bran’s eyes raked over the group, none of whom would meet his eyes, until they came to rest on Coll. The smith glared at him, betraying the merest hint of desperation and fear, and licked his lips.
“Bran, please help me.”
The rasping of his voice betrayed how hard the words had been. He gestured toward the gasping woman, who was clutching something under her cloak. Her hair hung over her face and shrouded the bundle. As she regained her breath her keening became more desperate.
Bran motioned the two of them to follow, went through the outer wall, and ducked into his lodge. He mentally checked his stocks of bandages, herbs, and poultices. Yarrow for bleeding; valerian as a sedative; woundwort; self-heal. It was futile, he knew. The child clutched in his mother’s arms made not a whimper.
The hides fell back against the doorway and the outside world was cut off. The pungent aroma of burning peat mingling with the rich scents of many herbs and plants made the newcomers pause, unused to the heady atmosphere. Despite the man’s acute distress, Bran could see Coll’s eyes flicker around the lodge.
“Place him on the bench so I can examine him.”
The woman hesitated, glancing at Coll.
“He wandered from his bed!” she burst out. “I was only gone a moment! The village gate was open. When we found him—” Her words were cut short by a sob.
“It’s all right, Beth,” said Bran gently.
Beth began to unwrap her cloak. Coll eased the boy from her arms, looking down at the pale face that lolled backward against his massive forearm. Beth’s hand pressed to her mouth. Her palm and fingers were stained red.
“Coll, put him on the bench. Quickly.”
A flash of resentment crossed Coll’s face before he dropped his gaze and nodded. He laid the crudely swaddled body on a fleece and stroked a finger down the ashen face.
“I tried, Bran. I tried.” He choked on his words and turned aside. Bran laid a hand on his shoulder for a second before turning to the child. Healing had never come naturally to Coll. He’d be hating himself for that now.
He took a slow breath as his fears were confirmed. It was obvious the child was near the spirit world. Nearly two years old, Raith had been turning into a real handful. Beth was no match for his boundless energy now her next babe was so close. Bran studied the motionless form for a heartbeat, the chest barely flickering up and down, the already weak life force rapidly fading, and began to remove Coll’s rough bandages.
Blood pulsed weakly from the gaping hole in his chest. Puncture marks showed on his arms and legs and a glimmer of white showed from his rib bones. It looked just like he’d been attacked by a wolf.
But it was no mortal wolf that had done this.
Bran noted that Raith’s skin was clammy and ice-cold. In fifteen years he’d never seen a child injured so badly. There was nothing at all he could do.
“I will compress the wounds with yarrow to stop more blood leaking,” he said. “And then they can be sewn closed.”
But even as he spoke, the boy shuddered and the feeble breath stopped.
3
No one had yet seen it, except for a faint flickering shadow, skulking in the remotest corners of the fells. But it was out there, somewhere.
Bran looked down on the village below his lodge, where the first cold rays of sunlight were alighting on reed thatch and plumes of smoke, and then turned his gaze beyond to the interminably stretching landscape of rising and falling hills. There were three dozen settlements under the ward of the Pridani, the most distant nearly four days’ journey away, and it was no surprise that the beast had so far targeted only this one. It had always been the Pennaeth’s village, the symbolic heart of his tribe.
He looked along the hill line toward the northwest, to where he could just make out the gleaming walls of another settlement, four thousand paces distant. Seven were in direct sight of his lodge; any problem and the smoke of the signal beacons, or the flames at night, would immediately inform him. The beacons of the more distant places could be seen from at least one of these seven, so a message could be easily relayed. It was an intricately connected web of life, all centering on this spot, the lodge of the Pennaeth.
The air was still, the calm of dawn. The faintest touch of wind stroked his face with a chill finger. He listened to the silence, the song of the earth, and the silence began to speak. He heard a silent buzz in the air, the chatter of finches as they bathed in the shallows of the faraway river. Even more distant, the whistling cry of a buzzard. A laughing child, called home for breakfast. The swish of the quern on grain. The blarting of sheep released from their fold as they searched for the first bite of grass. The song of silence, the song of life.
He closed his eyes and felt down to the heartbeat of the land beneath his feet. Pulsating currents ran through its veins, harmonizing the villages, the hills, the stone monuments of the ancients. This was the beating heart of the Pridani, in so many ways.
The energy rose up though his feet. As he breathed in the chill air, yet to be warmed by the still-weak sun, he pulled the current higher. It flooded through his veins and his nerves, filling his entire body until it streamed out from his fingertips to continue its eternal journey.
He felt the entirety of existence coursing through him, filling him, being him. He became the heartbeat of the fells, the heather and gorse, the birds, deer, wolves, and hare; the constant cycling of the sun, wind, and rain; the men, women, and children who depended on them. He became the whole.
At last, he opened his eyes. The spell was broken. He returned to himself. A man, whose people depended on his skill and wisdom.
He skirted the wall surrounding his lodge until he could see toward the south. There lay another threat. One very different to the beast, but potentially much more devastating. Were the two linked? He was sure of it.
A harsh screech made him look up. A kite was soaring above his lodge, and he retraced his steps to keep it in view. The bird glided down across the valley, its wings and peculiar forked tail fanned outward for balance. It dropped out of view and Bran squinted to catch it again as it swooped up the slope opposite. It drew back its wings and dropped down to settle on the Clenched Fist.
Legend told that the Goddess had formed a human fist and turned it into stone. Stone was the symbol of death. Bran, along with every Druid, had studied the animal bones and seashell
s that had turned to stone after life. The Goddess placed the fist on the fell high above the village, where no one would fail to see it, an eternal reminder of the transience of life. A gentle warning that all things—man and beast, plant and rock, however permanent they may seem—would eventually reach an end.
Bran studied the distant bird that was now preening on the knuckle of the forefinger, recalling the first time he’d heard that story and, years later, the first time he’d fully understood it.
He picked up a flicker of movement on the distant hillside left of the Clenched Fist, narrowed his eyes, and concentrated. A red deer stag: he could just make out the massive antlers.
As he watched the animal pick its way through the heather, he could feel its strain and exhaustion, could imagine the tremble in its legs as it struggled onward, head hanging low. A King Stag, driven from his herd by the greater stamina and strength of a younger rival, now outcast until death.
A chill finger ran down Bran’s spine. The kite, and then the stag. It was a sign, a forewarning of what was to come. The wheel of life would ever turn, and there would always be some who were crushed beneath its weight.
He looked down at the village again, watching tiny figures moving about their daily life. A scene of today, of yesterday, but of tomorrow as well?
Let it not be them, he prayed. Let them continue as they are.
If you let them, the wind whispered in his mind.
The stag had vanished. As hard as he looked, he could see nothing now but silent rocks among the heather.
What was he to do? He was Pennaeth of the Pridani. Their life, future, and well-being lay under his guidance. Just as the stag had to fight to keep his herd, he knew that one day he would face great challenge.
And his trial was to be like no other.
He sat down on the grass, still icy and stiff on the northern side of the wall, crossed his legs, and arranged his raven cloak around his knees. The damp chill seeped through to his skin as he leaned his head against the uneven wall. He’d thought he could do it. He’d thought with his knowledge it would be easy. Raith’s torn body appeared in his mind again as he stared into the distance.
The Wolf of Allendale Page 1