by Kyle Tolle
The smell of pinesap filled Hantle’s nostrils. Behind the structure, many trees were trampled down, others shattered to splinters. As he pictured the wolf chasing a person from the house into the trees, a trickling of water caught his ear. He followed the sound to a springhouse, which had remained undisturbed by the wolf. The horse was immediately drawn to the creek, and Hantle tied him off at its edge. Inside the low building were stores of carrots, turnips, and corned beef. Alongside the food was, to his great relief, an empty waterskin, which he filled from the spring, twice draining and refilling it before screwing closed its lid. It was a welcomed addition to his gear. Turning next to the food, he ate some of everything. He could not shake, however, a deep weariness. If he lost a battle with his body to exhaustion and his mind to fog, there was no chance against his foe. His family’s revenge ended with him. He could not let them down by dying in the attempt. Forced to recognize his limits, Hantle lay down next to the springhouse. An hour or two of sleep would be a start.
A raven flew overhead and croaked, which woke Hantle. He stood, stretched, and looked toward the sky. Not more than a couple hours had passed. It was a small miracle he had not slept the entire day by accident. He collected the horse, which looked well rested, and left the homestead behind. Riding along, he glimpsed a wider view of his situation. He had heretofore considered himself a storybook hero. In surviving the attack on Founsel, he was chosen for a task. Through the sacrifice of sleep and food, he would reach Harsenth, rally the soldiers, and kill the wolf. Except he had blundered and let victory slip through his grasp. His goal was not appointed. Neither was his success guaranteed. Going forward, he would take short breaks. It felt paradoxical, stopping so he might get there sooner, but to be effective, he needed more than rage to drive him.
Mind clearer now, he recognized that when he set out from Founsel, it was with the sole intent of killing the wolf. This was not, however, the only way to avenge his family. Alerting Bansuth to the danger was a goal in and of itself. Warning was a privilege Founsel never had, but it helped spare a fair number of lives in Harsenth. If, through his push to Bansuth, Hantle—he being the only one capable of and willing to bring the message—could give thousands the opportunity to act in whatever way they chose, then they might escape complete annihilation. That was a worthy ambition.
Dusk spread its ink across the east and Hantle, coming to a tall rock wall, stopped his horse. The road led into the wall through a fissure. His heart sank at the sight of fresh mud, stones, and uprooted vegetation fanning out from the canyon’s entrance. A thread of water trickled through the detritus. It looked to have been washed out by the storm earlier in the day. Hantle dismounted and looked for an indication of another way around or through the wall, but it rose a hundred-odd feet and ran otherwise unbroken as far to the north and the south as he could see in the fading light. The canyon it was.
He bent in half and stretched, feeling the stiffness in his back give way. He had decided to respect his limits by taking breaks, but what might the approach of night do to his resolution? Seeing the washout unnerved him, and he hoped that the canyon did not go on for too many miles. It was a shame, though, to have no idea of how far off Bansuth lay. If he knew it to be close, he could sprint there; if he knew it to be far off, he could pace himself accordingly. The worst possibility was to sprint now, exhausting the horse and himself such that one or the other collapsed along the road.
Had the wolf come this way? Hantle straightened up and looked for some sign of the wolf’s passage: paw prints, strands of fur, or claw marks. The mud sucked at his horse’s hooves as it stamped, but there was nothing obvious of a creature any larger.
A snapping to his side drew his gaze and he noticed a horse grazing in a thicket. He huffed with relief. A fresh mount. What fortune! Hantle approached the animal, which looked glad to meet another living being. A small camp hidden behind the thicket was abandoned. It was only after Hantle lit his torch that he noticed the blood spattering the ground, tents, and equipment. So it had been here. While there was no hope for the wolf to have fit into the canyon, what was not apparent was whether it chose to go over or around the wall. He hoped for the latter, as it would give him better odds of reaching Bansuth before it did.
Hantle stripped the saddle and musket from the horse that had carried him here. “You may rest,” he told it, “even though I cannot. There should be plenty of food for you here.” After he had saddled the new horse, Hantle mounted and steered it to the wall. With the lit torch, he confirmed this canyon was unlike any he had seen before. The gash at its top was just a few feet wide but the bottom widened a bit more. Farther in, the road’s grade increased but it remained relatively clear of debris, thanks, he guessed, to floods that regularly washed through.
He cued the horse and they set off into the slot. The torch was invaluable in the deepening gloom. Overhead, the remaining sliver of sky held stars, until trees growing on the wall’s top crowded together and blocked out the view completely. He had never before felt the fear of a confined space but did now. The path was so narrow that three horses would not have been able to walk abreast. If any water flooded down the slot, he would be swept away and battered to death against the walls. He was glad for the fresh horse, because it gave him no need to make any stop before they exited the canyon. True, he could not press the horse on the incline, but it would carry him steadily upward.
When the bandage on Hantle’s arm had come loose several times over the day, as it did again, he had retied it without much difficulty. Holding the torch however, made that prospect more difficult, and he pried the cloth back to inspect the wounds. The scabs were thick and the surrounding skin still tender, but he felt comfortable enough with the state of the healing to leave it exposed instead of attempting to retie the bandage only to burn himself with the torch in the process. He removed the cloth and tossed it in his pack, in case he reopened one of the wounds later. Seeing as he had the pack opened already, he rummaged around for the sachet of jursant. Placing a pinch under his tongue immediately countered his mounting desire to sleep.
He plodded along for a few minutes, focusing on the horse’s rhythmic gait, until his attention was drawn upward by a flash that briefly illuminated the stone walls that rose beyond the light of his torch. The canyon’s tree cover had failed and revealed once more a tear of sky. He was not sure of the cause of the light until, some number of flashes later, he realized a meteor shower played out in the empyrean. For observers outside of the slot canyon, it must have been quite the sight. His breath ceased. Dread lashed through his mind, raising the hairs on the nape of his neck. Liova was right! This was the celestial event that she had predicted would accompany the wolf.
The story of Founsel might be told and passed on until memory of the village’s name itself faded and all that remained was the vague hint of a lost land on the wooded coasts of the Balon-wrenth. All notion that real people lived lives and struggled and succeeded, individually as well as in a group, would be forgotten. Although, if the wolf beat Hantle to Bansuth and destroyed it as well, then the disappearance of the larger city would overshadow that of the smaller. The lost land rumored about would be Bansuth, not Founsel. Had the other creatures in Liova’s stories started out feeding on and destroying camps, settlements, or villages, which, due to remote location and small size were never discovered to have been lost? It was as if these beasts could eradicate entire portions of the world’s history. Hantle shuddered. At best, these animals replaced the tale of a people and their lives with idle speculation about their mysterious end. At worst, it was as if a people had never been at all. Hantle brought his horse to a trot; damn the idea of keeping a pace. The penalty for failure was worse than just having failed his family. His failure meant he, and they, had never existed.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE WALLS of the slot canyon shrank over the course of many miles and soon melted away completely. Hantle reentered the expansive night and towering forest. Meteors overhead drove thro
ugh the sky and winked out. He had no sense of the time, and that worried him. Anxiety took the place of fatigue. He shook the reins and kicked his heels into the horse’s side, and in an instant they were at a gallop.
As the horse bore him along, a fog filled the road and forest from the roots upward. It swirled behind his mount as they pushed through the final distance to Bansuth. Several miles in, the horse showed signs of weariness. Hantle slapped its flank to keep it at a gallop. The land here was fairly level and there could not be much farther to go. The mountains seemed right before him.
He broached a small crest in the road and detected a faint glow in the fog. Bansuth neared, but the mist was too thick to know anything more. A wind, cold and heavy, descended the mountains. It tore back the fog in strips and the glow of the city grew brighter. The wind resisted Hantle’s approach and he squinted his watering eyes.
It had taken him more than a full day of riding to get here and his body felt every mile. His back ached and his legs were raw. Yet the wolf would not care. Had the beast come yet, or would Hantle arrive with a moment to spare?
Forest gave way to field. Above, the sky tinged purple and the outlines of mountains sharpened. The last shreds of fog dispersed and the city’s walls were silhouetted by light behind. Hantle cocked an ear for sounds, but the wind dominated any other noise.
For a long moment, his mount seemed to inch closer. Then time jerked him forward in a frantic second. A gust of wind dissipated smoke from a structure just outside the open gate, but the flames coughed soot and grew taller. He discerned fire behind the city walls. A few yards before the gate, Hantle dismounted and left the horse behind as it gasped for air. He held his torch high and ran to the gate’s stone archway, passing between enormous stone braziers. He stopped. His stomach dropped as he saw Bansuth for the first time. No, no, no. Rubble filled the streets and countless flames licked the sky. Panic flooded him and he sucked in ragged breaths. It had beaten him here. He was too late. No building appeared untouched. A silent desolation spread vast before him.
The main road was filled with timbers and stones and housewares and blood. How many of the thousands had any time to react? Hantle imagined them being taken in their sleep and the buildings falling aside as if made of nothing more than ash. Soon ashes would be the only remains. Until a gust scattered them and Bansuth was forgotten, Founsel erased.
A knot formed in his throat as he moved farther in. The city was nearly leveled and he staggered at its size. The network of streets was clumped with wreckage and he picked his way through as best he could. He felt the need to surround himself with the ruin and ash and smoke. To enmesh himself in destruction once more. The scale and completeness was surreal. The uncontested wolf had taken the entire city, leaving him like a tardy scribe to take stock of the losses.
He stepped over a timber and broken glass ground under his boot. Another sound then surprised him and he jerked his head in its direction. The dim shape of a woman moved between sources of flame. She called out a second time. For a moment, Hantle could do nothing, so taken aback was he that someone shouted to him. A lone soul in the waste stretching for miles. She started to run toward Hantle, across vague heaps of former city blocks. The mood that had settled over Hantle shifted and fell away. Finally, his legs moved and he rushed to her.
With half the distance between them left, she folded and retched. As Hantle closed in, her strength failed completely and she slumped to the ground. He knelt, set his torch aside, and raised her to a seated position. Her skin was so pale and the light so dim that she looked like a phantom. A cloud of smoke washed over them, she coughed, and the illusion was broken. She was flesh and blood, just as he.
Her light-green eyes parted and her mouth moved but no sound came. Hantle managed to sputter, “You. You survived. How?”
With an arm, she pushed herself up a little more and speech returned to her throat. “What do you mean, I survived? What happened here? To the city?”
“I only just arrived,” Hantle said. “But I will help you as I can. What is your name?”
“Dalence.”
“Okay, Dalence. I am Hantle. Can you tell me what you saw?”
She brushed black hair, matted and clumped, out of her face. “I was visiting with my parents. For the last two days I’ve been sick and they were taking care of me. I had sweats and was in their cellar to keep cool. I fell in and out of sleep. But, when awake, I had hallucinations.”
“What do you remember of these hallucinations?”
“I finished vomiting and heard drums in the distance. My mother and father left to see what the commotion was. They walked up the stairs and I was alone in the cellar. Then I heard them scream.” She became more animated now. “Our house was ripped from its foundations. In the sky above, an enormous paw swiped at other houses nearby. Then the face of a wolf breathed fire as it moved through my view. A moment later, it came back into sight. It moved quickly and bit at the ground. Oh, what good does it do to share my nightmares?”
“Please, do share everything you remember. It is all important.” He scooted closer.
“Well, when it sat on its haunches, it let up a howl that shook the ground. I felt my chest reverberate with the sound and the mountains seemed to shake too. The night sky buzzed and fizzed and popped behind its glowing face. Axe marks spread across the sky, like someone was chopping at the firmament.
“Bricks and bones fell into the basement around me. I could hear so many people screaming, but I couldn’t see any of them. There were muskets firing from somewhere. The wolf stalked through the frantic city until the tears in the sky caught his attention. He gave one last look at the city, and I thought he locked eyes on me for a second. I was terrified he would come for me next. Then he jumped into the sizzling sky and rushed after the axe marks. Some of them faded and others appeared. The wolf bit at the marks before it rushed off into the distance. The sky was still rippling before my view went hazy and finally snapped black.
“I had passed out. Who knows how much later I came to, feeling a bit better. I finally had strength. But something had happened. Or the hallucination wasn’t over, still isn’t. I was covered in dirt and ash. I found the energy to claw my way out of the cellar. The house was gone, as was the entire neighborhood. I walked a little and that’s when I saw you. Have I been unconscious for days? What could have really happened?”
Hantle took in her information and thought for a moment. “Not all of what you saw was hallucination. That wolf is real. I have been chasing it for days. It destroyed my village first, and then Harsenth, and now it’s moved through Bansuth.”
Dalence shook her head and tried to stand. “I may still be sick, but I’m no fool.” Her legs gave out and she fell against the rubble.
“No, you’re not. If anything, I am the fool for chasing the damn thing. Some parts you did imagine though. It doesn’t breathe fire, and there were no axe marks in the sky. It was a meteor shower. But the creature is huge. It grows each night after eating the town it attacks. Then it moves on to the next, larger settlement.” He told her of Founsel, how he lost his family, and his ride from Harsenth. Pulling back his sleeve, he revealed the bite wounds, which were scabbed over and showed much less inflammation than before.
Confusion crossed Dalence’s face. “You escaped your death, only to chase after it. Why?”
Hantle pulled the ring from his shirt pocket and turned it over between his fingers. “If I can kill the wolf, I won’t have failed my family completely. There’s nothing left for me but to kill it. I have to kill it.”
A bit of strength returned to Dalence and she motioned for Hantle to help her up. “So I haven’t gone mad, but the world has.”
Hantle placed his arm around her shoulders for support. She was nearly as tall as he. He indicated their surroundings and asked, “Did you see anyone else as you walked?”
“No. Only you.”
“You were with your parents, but where is your home? In Bansuth?”
T
ogether they took a few steps forward, to test Dalence’s balance.
“I was visiting for my mother’s birthday,” she said, “since I had not seen them in some time. I live in Suu-manth, on the other side of the Knuckles.”
“The trees we felled in Founsel were shipped to Suu-manth. I have not been there, but I know of it.” He looked to the mountains that blotted out a large portion of the orange sunrise. “What other towns are nearby?”
He drew his arm away from Dalence’s shoulder and she took a few, soft steps on her own. A grimace passed over her face and she put a hand to her stomach. “Guess this illness still has me a little. Suu-manth is the next closest city. A few homesteads between here and there, but they’re far flung.”
“Where would you like to go?” Hantle tilted his head to the direction he had come. “I can gather my horse for you.”
“No, I am fine for now.” She waved an arm to dismiss the idea. “I want to return to my parents’ house.”
“Okay. Just let me know if you need my arm.”
She walked slowly, easing her way around and over the rubble strewn about. “What’s next for you? Where will the wolf go from here?”
“I want to see you safely back to Suu-manth. And the wolf will be there next, seeing as it’s the nearest city. Do you have a family there?”
“I live with my brother.” She paused with a faraway look in her eyes. “He is now the only family I have.”