Prince Wolf

by A. Katie Rose

  “The horses will still see past your disguise. They will see and scent a wolf.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I snapped. “I’m going to try it.”

  Swiftly changing into my human form, I walked confidently forward, keeping to the shadows outside the firelight. I kept both night guards within my sight, bending low to present no shape against either the stars or the glowing embers. The boundaries between the two camps I crept between lay about a dozen rods apart. The rows of picketed mounts stood on the farthest sides of the mounds of sleepers, wagons of goods standing high between the horses and me.

  This will work, I thought, my triumphant at hand.

  Shrill equine neighs pierced the night. Horses reared against their tethers, fighting to free themselves and flee. Guards and merchants rolled out of bed, seizing arms, yelling, cursing, flinging wood onto the fires, building the flames high.

  Again.

  “You were saying?”

  “Shut up.”

  Retreating into my more faster and more agile wolf body, I lunged out of the firelight and galloped east, leaving the chaos far behind. On I loped, furious, frustrated, casting my five senses far and wide, searching for a way through this madness. Why in the bloody hell do they have to pitch their camps so bloody close to one another?

  “Protection, obviously. If one is threatened, they will all stand and fight.”

  “Just who will want to prey on them? Obviously, not wolves.”

  “You know the answer to that question, son. Humans are more predatory than wolves.”

  I had nothing to say in reply. I shut my teeth and galloped on, knowing full well Darius was right. Murdering thieves, highwaymen, any desperate man willing to kill to survive wouldn’t hesitate to slay a merchant, take his loads and his animals. Like flocks of sheep, or herds of deer, these folk found protection within the group.

  I slowed my headlong pace, seeing what may be a god-sent opportunity.

  “Not mine.”

  “There are other gods than you, you know.”

  “No way.”

  “Way.”

  I chanced upon a space between two camps twice as large as any I’d yet passed. Like the others, their fires had burned down to basic coals, the night watchmen all but asleep on their feet. I sniffed the air. Oxen, not horses or mules. Oxen weren’t as easily startled, and weren’t as smart as horses. They’d probably watch me pass all but under their noses and not react. Nor did I scent any flighty flocks anywhere nearby.

  Ah, perhaps my opportunity has knocked.

  Dropping low to the ground, I crept forward, paw by slow paw. As I suspected, the night watch paid no heed to my presence, the coming dawn lulling their instincts, their exhaustion from the previous day’s toil and a night without sleep dropped them into sound slumber as they leaned against the wagons.

  “Better hurry.”

  I broke into a trot.

  Dogs woke, barking, baying, rushing toward me out of nowhere. A stinking pack, probably five or six large, brindled mastiffs from both camps charged the black invader, er, me. Like the horses before them, the fuss they created woke the humans, who fetched arms to repel the thieves, the highwaymen, the murderers in the night.

  I don’t bloody believe it, I snarled silently, retreating once more.

  An arrow, lit with flames, pierced the night sky. Baffled, I stood in dumb shock as it struck a nearby thicket of dry scrub oak and swooshed into life. There I stood, gaping like an idiot, revealed in all my glory as a huge beast, black against the dancing firelight.

  “Gor! It’s a wolf!”

  “Look at the size of that sucker!”

  “C’mon, lads!”

  “I saw ‘im first, I get ‘is hide.”

  “Hide, Jasper? I want ‘is effing teeth.”

  “Just a thought, mind you, but you may consider, um, high-tailing it out of here.”

  I heeded Darius’s suggestion and bolted. The erst-while hunters egged their eager mastiffs onto my trail, whooping and screaming, their merchant masters yelling at them to come back here, dammit. I didn’t exactly flip my tail over my back, but I did put on more speed. The large, slower dogs fell far behind, their barking and baying receding into the dim distance.

  Two or three miles later, I slowed to a walk, sniffing the wind. Dawn tinged the east with pale pink, a faint blush against the night-black earth. I walked east, toward the rosy horizon, searching for something edible and quick. Those damn goats really heightened my hunger.

  “As long as everyone knows a marauder is around,” I commented. “I’ll maraud.”

  “I certainly hope you can outrun an arrow.”

  Another sleeping camp emerged from out of the dark, this one rousing from its night of rest. Unpacking food for the mercenary guards, who uncurled themselves from their blankets with yawns and stretches, a servant knelt by the sluggish fire. His hand smothering a huge yawn, he added wood and stirred up the flames. At his side, on the rocks ringing the campfire, sat a large cold roast. Bread, cheese, fruit and ripe olives in a crock also sat ready to feed the hungry mercs. The merchant still snored from his warm pallet under the nearest wagon.

  “I don’t mind roast for breakfast,” I said to Darius.

  “I strongly advise against this.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Then kindly put a cork in it.”

  “Now see here –“

  I didn’t wait for the rest of Darius’s protest. Like black lightning, I leaped forward, as noiseless as my bulk managed. The darkness shrouded me like a cloak, and with my fur black, I might appear to any chance observers a mere shadow. The servant didn’t see me until my jaws closed over the roast.

  He shrieked.

  I spun about, the ten pound roast safely in my teeth, and galloped fast into the darkness.

  The babble of voices raised in question broke the new dawn’s pristine silence. The servant’s shrill screams, the barking of dogs, the whinnying of nervous horses all created a cacophony of panicked noise that brought yet more hysteria, more shouted questions.

  “A wolf! It was a wolf!”

  I chuckled inwardly as the servant described me as big as a horse, with blood red eyes and fangs as big as his hand, dripping saliva. I would have killed him, he said, but the monster was diverted by the roast instead. He owed his life to cold meat. His audience listened to his story, some scoffing, others remarking on the tracks I made in the soil.

  “They’ll hunt you now.”

  I loped back up into the hills with my prize, pausing to listen as the tale grew and spread.

  “They were hunting me anyway,” I said, lying down to set my fangs into the roast. I gulped down a huge chunk and bit off more. “There’s no help for it.”

  “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  I paused, unease roiling in my empty belly. I swallowed the now tasteless roast and licked my whiskers. “What kind of bad feeling?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you have divine foresight?”

  “I have some divine foresight. I have not all my powers, and am extremely limited.”

  “But something bad is about to happen?”

  “I think so.”

  I gulped, my throat dry. “From my stealing a piece of meat?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “This just bites.”

  I finished the roast although it no longer tasted as good as it once did.

  “I hardly think these morons are much of a danger to you. They will be packing their things and moving on shortly.”

  The sun breaking over the horizon proved Darius right. While mercenaries galloped their horses up and down the highway, searching for some trace of the monstrous wolf that raided every camp for miles, the flocks, the wagons, the herds and the watchful dogs began their trek both east and west. Royal cavalry troops cantered in, listened to the tales, and ordered caravans to move on or be fined. Tales of killer wolves on the prowl shouldn’t interf
ere with the important task of Khalidian commerce.

  The mercs gave up on their prize, and loped their mounts in the wake of their masters. They still needed the pay, I guessed. The royal highway once more groaned under the hooves and wheels, dust cascading upward in clouds.

  “Nothing I can do until night comes,” I said. “Time to catch some sleep.”

  Uncomfortable with the idea of sleeping so close to human activity, I loped southward a few miles. Every short distance, I seized a pine limb in my jaws and brushed out my footprints. Whenever possible I scrambled and leaped from rock to rock, hoping to conceal my whereabouts. I couldn’t do much about my scent, though, and hoped their dogs were fighters not trackers.

  Finding a strong thicket of pine and scrub oak, I crawled inside the shelter, safe from the sun and prying eyes. I curled into a ball, my tail over my face, hoping I would dream again of Ly’Tana.

  I didn’t.

  The howling of wolves woke me.

  I lay still, buried within the thicket, listening with not just my ears but every nerve ending. Only the distant breeze over the hilltops and rustling through the trees tickled my hearing. Very high up, a falcon called to another: chirk-chirk-chirk. My ears swiveled behind me at the sound of a rodent rustling in the thicket next door. Without moving my head, I sniffed the air gusting lightly into my face. Only the odors of dead leaves, dry desert, and the heady scents of fresh pine and dogwood assaulted my nose.

  “Who’s there?”

  No answer.

  “Come where I can see you.”

  Like the ghost of an echo, the wolf song shivered not in my ears, but deep within my soul.

  Unease swamped my gut when I realized what the wolves’ howling in my head meant: a dire warning.

  I emerged cautiously from my shelter, sniffing the breeze, listening hard. I found nothing more alarming than a pair of squirrels informing the entire neighborhood I prowled from hiding. Since only squirrels listened to other squirrels, I discarded the potential threat. A hawk shrieked from on high and I looked up. It circled a few rods overhead, perhaps hoping I might flush out the irritating squirrel and provide it with a decent meal.

  The setting sun illuminated the mountain peaks in purple, orange and yellow flames, streaks of the brightest red shooting up from the pink snow-clad shoulders. High above them, a fiery-tailed comet, the firedrake, coursed across the darkening sky. If that was an omen, was it for good or for ill?

  “What could be wrong?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I thought those previous warnings came from you.”

  “I cannot see the future, son. I am severely limited and sending out warnings of any kind is quite beyond me.”

  “Where do they come from?”

  “Your sight perhaps, but that’s at best a guess.”

  Despite not hearing any more wolfish voices, the worry gnawing my gut didn’t relent in the slightest. Something black lurked in my immediate future, I’d no doubt. My sight obviously knew more than Darius and waved the red flag of danger like a beacon.

  I’ll find a way across that blasted plain tonight, I vowed. Perhaps I might thus avoid trouble. Despite my internal conviction, I didn’t quite believe myself.

  Not bothering to annoy Darius with my stretching routine, I allowed one quick rump-in-the-air, tongue-dropped-to-the-ground-in-another-huge-yawn dance before swinging into my mile-eating lope. Somehow I had to find a way across that vast expanse of merchandising stream of humanity tonight. I just had to. I’d not the time to run eastward and find a way around it before heading north again.

  Deepening dusk fell, glittering stars rampant across the heavens. The moon peeped up on the distant eastern horizon, glowing a dull angry red. Similar to my mood, I thought. I once more crouched low under the covering brush atop my hill and peered downhill at the crawling mess.

  “Gods above and below,” I muttered, cross.

  The scene below had changed not one jot. If I’d gone backward in time and stared down at the same merchants I stared at the night before, I wouldn’t have been surprised. Once more, campfires dotted the landscape as merchants and mercenaries settled into camps, lit fires, and flocked and picketed animals according to their nature. Dinner eaten, wine drunk and the night watches posted – the evening ritual completed. I’d no more chance of crossing that expanse than I had in flying to the moon.

  “What now?”

  “I was hoping you’d have an idea,” I replied glumly, lying down, my forelegs tucked.

  “Such as?”

  “You’re a god. Pick me up and divine me a few leagues north.”

  “After you free me, I will divine you anywhere you want to go.”

  “You’re about as useless as –“

  A scent tickled my nostrils.

  Silenced, I lifted my head, searching the early dusk breeze and closed my eyes, listening with all the keen hearing of a wolf. Did I just hear that? A load, like heavy iron, dropped into my heart.

  “You did.”

  “A –“

  “Yes.”

  The distant scream wafted on the early evening air. I sniffed again, the odor of wolf and blood and terror tickling my sensitive nostrils. The hackles on my neck and shoulders rose. I growled, low in my chest.

  “Gods –“

  “Don’t speak. Run.”

  I obeyed Darius’s terse command instantly.

  I leaped out and down, finding solid rock and soil beneath my flying paws. Downhill I galloped, uncaring who might see, scent, or hear me. I leaped thickets and rocks, loose dirt kicked out from behind me in a high shower. I heard again the scream on the cooling air, a high voice of utter agony and despair. On I ran, my tongue whipping past my jaws, my heart outracing my feet.

  I paid no heed to the shrill cries of panic, of anger, from human, from equine, from canine as I raced past the camps. Flocks and herds scattered before me. I ignored them all, and focused on one single, solitary camp made up not of merchants, mercenaries, beasts of burden or flocks.

  I set my sights on a base camp filled with Khalidian soldiers.

  At the outermost edge of merchants bordering the east, several stone rings of fire leaped high, casting light over a wide area. The bright light dimmed the stars above, made the dark night into the brightest day.

  In the center, both mounted and troops afoot skittered about, laughing, shouting, bellowing orders. I growled low in my throat when I caught the stench of the Shekinah Tongu and their hellish hounds, cavorting with their friends, their new allies. Huge, wiry hounds chuffed through their maimed throats, snarling silently, straining at chains, at rope leashes. Oh, so very well did I remember those slavering hounds that brought down Ly’Tana and me in the forest outside of Soudan at dawn not so very long ago.

  Then, those hounds had been muzzled. These were not, yet were kept back, chained, whipped from their prey. The Tongu hunters, in their plain homespun clothes, soft shoes and serpent tattoos, clapped their hands and in hissing voices egged on the royal Khalidian troops.

  Those evil creatures encouraged the soldiers to commit the unspeakable.

  At the very center of the fires, the helpless victim of their viciousness, lay a wolf.

  Bound with ropes, she lay on her belly, her four legs outstretched to their limit.

  Heavy cords roped around her ruff all but choked off all breath. Those attached to her limbs bound her to the earth, tied to stakes driven in the ground. She could neither move, nor fight, nor flee, as her enemies tortured her without mercy.

  I ceased my headlong gallop, skidding to a dusty halt, stunned, sickened, by what I saw. I snapped my jaws shut and bit my tongue, but I scarcely felt it. My heart howled my silent anguish, for my throat had locked up far too tightly for a breath, much less my voice, to slink past.

  My gut wanted to hurl the stolen roast back up. Gods above and below, how could they do this?

  With hot irons they’d blinded her.

  With sharp swords, they’d cut off her tail. />
  With serrated knives they skinned her of her rich fur, leaving bare, bloody patches dark under the light of the leaping fires.

  Her tender ears, raked and in tatters, lay torn, slashed, to droop without life.

  Black blood pooled about her stump of a tail, dripped down her velvety silver and white coat. Naked muscles and dark blood showed as dark patches against what remained of her light colors and the fires. Wide burns scorched down her grey cheeks, across her belly and sensitive flanks.

  Despite her pain, she hurled her defiance into the teeth of her tormenters. She snarled, screamed without sound, unable to find breath for more. I gaped as she struggled on, wanting nothing but the taste of her enemy’s blood in her mouth before she died.

  They, of course, denied her that pleasure.

  A Tongu with a heavy club raised closed in, ducking around the soldiers. He might have been chopping wood for all the emotion he showed, a man completing a task. No anger, no rage, no hate glittered in his dark eyes. His utter lack of even the slightest humanity frightened me far more than the soldiers’ hate or jeers. Only a man with no soul could look upon such horror without feeling anything at all.

  In a sharp downward swing, he broke her ribs.

  She couldn’t voice this last agony, this savage hurt. Her muzzle parted in a soundless, breathless, scream of excruciating pain. A silent cry of such anguish I cringed to hear it, its echoes resounding in my soul.

  I did this, I thought. She suffers because of me.

  “She is the bait they use to lure you in. They seek to trap you.”

  Finding some breath in her lungs, the young she-wolf cried out again, her voice hoarse, gasping, suffering a torment so horrible I, in my slavery, never experienced. The cruelties Brutal devised for me couldn’t compare to the brutality these men bestowed on her. All she felt was the red-hot, savage agony, tasted the panic that this torture would never end. All she knew right now was pain. What was left of her mind, her life, was consumed by the racking torment she felt along every nerve ending.

  If she prayed to Darius her god, she prayed not for rescue. She prayed for death, her only friend, to bring an end to her suffering.