The Wolves Of War

by Greg Curtis

  Had mercy truly been shown to Barachalla? Briagh didn't know. He had no idea what had happened to the technologist. By the time his parents had left, things had largely seemed to be over. The sky had by then turned blue, and those on the terrace had been eating and tending to their injuries. He'd also had no idea what had happened to anyone else. He simply hadn't paid any attention to anything else for those few precious minutes he'd spent reunited with his family. But oddly enough, if mercy had been shown to Barachalla he found himself comfortable with that. From what he remembered, the man had been truly mad. Driven out of his mind by his separation from the one he loved. Briagh knew that pain only too well. Grief and heartbreak could destroy a man.

  “Next were the wildred. Also shown to be guilty, but apart from Callum, only of the crimes of a lust for power and arrogance. And of disrespecting the Goddess. They sought to steal a fraction of the Goddess' power and use it for themselves. She taught them a lesson of shame for that. Humility. But she also granted them a measure of mercy, allowing them to more easily live with their prideful mistakes. It will be a long time before any wizard is foolish enough to try and use her grace against her will again. Only Callum of course, whose crimes went further, was required to face further judgement at the hands of those he harmed. And he has accepted that verdict.”

  But how could he be so calm about that? That was what Briagh didn't get. And yet he now seemed almost happy. At peace with the world. But he was heading to a trial and the likelihood of death at the end of a rope. He should have at the least have tried to escape. And yet he didn’t appear to be interested in doing so.

  “Last of course were the royal family, and with them the people of Abylon. The family's crimes were great and their guilt proven beyond doubt. But the suffering they had endured already was also great. The fact that they agreed to abandon all claims to the throne and live in exile were considered sufficient additional atonement by the Goddess.”

  Abandoning all claims to the throne of Abylon and exile? Briagh hadn't heard that. No one had told him that they'd agreed to that. Though truthfully it didn't matter if they had or hadn't. With hundreds of thousands of witnesses knowing everything that they'd done, they could never have reclaimed the throne. And it wasn't surprising that no one had told him anything about it either. No one was really speaking to him. Conversation was in short supply lately. The royals had been keeping to themselves on the journey back. As had the wizards. Endorian had left and Father Argen had been surprisingly taciturn, scarcely even bothering to answer questions let alone hold a conversation. So he'd had little chance to speak to anyone for a week.

  Somehow Briagh doubted that the family would even return to Abylon. The queen had after all become the wolf mother. A monster who had terrorised and killed the people of Abysynth for over a decade. And while people might be willing to understand that she had been completely under the spell of the globe and close to mindless, forgetting what she had done might not be so easy. If she returned to Abylon, Briagh suspected that some would try to kill her. And then her two sons had howled at the sky for a decade. That wasn't easily forgotten either. For either of them to try and reclaim the throne would have been a struggle even if the rest hadn't happened.

  And in the end they had all agreed to the mad bard's experiment with the globe. Even the princes who would have been children at the time. How much they had known about what the bard's experiment would do to Endorian, he didn't know. Or if they'd known that this divine right of kings was in fact some ancient form of slavery. He was still unclear on many of the details. But it didn't change the fact that they had all chosen power at a price to be paid by others. And every man, woman and child who had been bitten by a wolf knew it. There was no hiding the crime.

  But one thing it did mean he realised was that the Princess was no longer a princess at all. No more special treatment for her! Was it too soon he wondered, to rub that in her face?! Of course she still might stab him with that sword of hers if he did, he thought. Perhaps he wouldn’t say anything just yet. Not while she was calm.

  And perhaps it wouldn't be right given she had finally apologised to him. Even though the apology had been anything other than welcome for either of them. It had been what it was. A difficult, awkward and painful thing, that was as uncertain as it was embarrassing. But it had still been a genuine apology. And he had accepted it.

  He supposed he felt sorry for her. Betrayed and shamed by her own family. That was a heavy burden to bear and it weighed on her. He could see that. She'd been quiet on the way back and tried not to look into the eyes of anyone. Clearly she was buried deep in her thoughts. But one thing he had seen was that she'd lost not just her anger for him, but a lot of her arrogance too. Abel he suspected, would be truly grateful for that.

  “But the Abylonian people have also been judged by the Goddess Morphia and found wanting,” Father Argen continued, apparently not having noticed Briagh's distraction. “They have learned that her children and her followers are not to be harmed in any way. They have been shown through you and Endorian that the suffering is too great and have been told that enough is enough. They have been warned. And not through her priests, but through hundreds of thousands of witnesses. That is something that has not happened with any god or goddess in centuries.”

  “Life should be much easier for you and your people from now on. It will be a very long time before another morph is hunted in Abylon or another shrine to Morphia is burnt.”

  Father Argen did not seem pleased with that. In fact, his expression could at best be called sour. Perhaps that was because it had been Morphia who had shown her might and not the Great Sage. Or maybe Briagh thought – perhaps unworthily – it was because he had not guessed her plan before. He was, after all, a priest of the Great Sage. One of the wisest of men. And it seemed that he had been fooled just as had everyone else. Maybe even used. Briagh decided not to press him on the matter. Besides, if Father Argen was right, then he had been used as well.

  “So what now?” He changed the subject.

  “Now we go back to how things were.” Father Argen answered him simply.

  “No, I meant with that thing.” He pointed at the steam wagon just in front of them. “Does anyone know how to get a steam wagon going?” After all, they had had only one technologist among them and he had been taken away. And Briagh didn't want to walk all the way back to Perna Sil. He had done enough walking for a while.

  “In a hurry to get back to your lady?” The priest gave him a cheeky grin, something that looked completely inappropriate on a man of faith.

  “In a hurry to sit down and not have to walk any further, Father.” And with that Briagh strode the last few paces to the hulking creation, grabbed the handrail and climbed up the ladder to find a seat on the massive platform that once should have held logs. Others quickly joined him. There was plenty of room at least, since the wagon had no load. Meanwhile Callum and Abel busied themselves throwing timber into the boiler box.

  “But Father, if she knew what was going to happen, why didn't she just stop it earlier? It would have been so easy.” Sitting down had apparently let some blood return to his tired brain and reminded him that he still had questions.

  “Because that's not who Morphia is. She's the Goddess of Freedom. Freedom of form. Freedom of will. She doesn't stop people doing things. Not even from making mistakes. She doesn't like laws and rules. If she did what you said she would have been stopping people from making their decisions. That would impact on their freedom. So instead she simply arranged things so that everyone could still make the decisions they wanted to, for good or ill, but at the end they would all come to her to learn the consequences of their decisions. And in the end she protected her family. Those were her desires.”

  “But so many are dead!”

  “Not by her will. And maybe a better world will come from the pain.”

  Could that be? Briagh didn't know. All he knew was that it seemed wrong to him to let people do these terrible thin
gs if you could stop them. After all, someone had done terrible things to his family, and he would dearly have loved it if that person had been stopped. Perhaps in this new future, less people would do terrible things to other children's parents? Perhaps that would somehow balance out the wrong of not stopping it. He didn't know.

  “You're thinking again child?” Father Argen looked on Briagh with a curiously sad expression on his face. Perhaps he had already followed Briagh’s thoughts.

  “That too much pain has been caused, too much blood has been spilled and too many families have been broken. The price of this lesson is too high.”

  “Maybe.” The priest shrugged. “But she is not the Lord of Justice. She is the Goddess of Freedom and the Mother of the Morphs. She did not choose the actions of Barachalla or Callum, the wildred or the royal family, or even the barbarians. She only brought those who had harmed her family together at the end to answer to the outrage of an upset mother. She has been wronged for centuries. Her family have been wronged. She wanted to address that.”

  There was some truth in that, Briagh thought. Still, when he thought of all who had died …

  “In any case I think you should be thinking more about your adoring admirers.” A smile found the priest's face once more as he nodded to one side.

  Briagh looked where he was indicating, and saw half a dozen more shambling former wolves heading their way and there was no sign of the steam wagon's boiler firing up.

  “Dung!”

  Epilogue

  It was late in the afternoon. The sun was getting low on the horizon, but for all that it was warm and pleasant on his face. Briagh sat comfortably on the stoop of his home, leaning back against the wooden column that supported the roof, sipping on his ale. He'd finally found a supplier of ale in this land of sickly sweet wines and meads, and that was a true blessing.

  It was odd how much this farm reminded him of his home in Abysynth. Once he would have sat on the stoop of his back porch, sipping at an ale and staring out across the ocean at the sailing ships and steamers heading out across the water to distant ports. Now he stared at trees and the occasional cockatrice creeping about looking for food to scavenge, and yet it was the same. That was a good feeling.

  But it was the quiet that was the true blessing. He loved the peace of the woods. He loved listening to the chirping of the birds as they settled down for the night. The yapping of the foxes as they did the same. The wind rustling through the leaves of the trees. And above all the complete lack of people talking. Over the previous months, silence had become truly precious to him.

  Here in his home there was no one to come rushing up to him to embrace him. To tell him how greatly they'd appreciated what he'd done and how sorry they were for his pain. There was no one who wanted something from him. An attendance at some sort of function. To meet with some important personage. And perhaps more importantly he supposed, there was no one who wanted to arrest him for his criminal behaviour or kill him for his nature. There was just him, the wind – and the odd cockatrice hunting for food.

  He still did those things that were asked of him. It was his duty he supposed. And while he lived in Wynde Par he was never going to make the mistake of failing to do what a Lord asked of him again. He also managed to wander into the town a couple of times per week. But mostly he enjoyed his own company.

  It was something, he suspected, most people didn't understand. He didn't completely understand it either. But he had been alone for a long time. Even in the midst of crowds he had been alone. He had grown used to it. And while he had in some ways thought of it as a curse, he'd come to realise that it wasn't. Yes, he may have been forced to live a solitary life by the circumstances of his life, but after the first few thousand or so people had come to shake his hand and thank him for what he'd done, he'd started to realise that that was who he was.

  So when Lord Daelyn had returned his coin to him – Briagh still wasn't completely sure why he'd done that and had assumed that the gold had been long gone anyway – he'd bought an abandoned farm house a couple of leagues from town and moved in. It wasn't a grand house such as he'd dreamed of. The farm itself had gone to seed. It needed repairs. But for him it was home.

  Here he could do whatever he wanted – or nothing at all if he chose. He could shift form and go for a run through the woods. Read a book as he struggled with the Language of the Trees. Spend some time nailing in new weather-boards over the holes. Or just sit on the stoop in front of his home, drinking his ale and watching the sun go down.

  Of course, people knew where he lived and they sometimes came calling. A fact that was impressed on him once more as he heard the sound of horses' hooves pounding the ground nearby. At least a couple of them.

  Briagh sighed quietly and sipped at his ale. He hoped it wasn't more travellers from Abylon, determined to seek him out and shake his hand. Even a year later they still did that. More though would simply remain in town and wait till he arrived and then mob him in their need to show their gratitude. Even more than that though, he hoped it wasn't an official visit and an invitation to another formal event or to meet another dignitary. He'd attended enough of those lately.

  When his visitors emerged from the trees however, he was pleased to see that they weren't any officials. On the other hand, he would never have expected to see these two. But just then Briagh though they were two people he might like to see. Well, one of them anyway.

  “Endorian.” Briagh called out to his fellow morph, surprised to see him. He hadn't seen him since he'd left for Ditford after the trials last year; hadn't even had word about what he was doing. And he was actually pleased to see him. But then there was the other visitor to consider.

  “Princess. Here to try and kill me again?”

  He had heard about her activities. Mostly because, well, everyone had. Her family were the royal family in exile, living in Egoli of all places, and for the most part making a name for themselves as they attended every formal function and met every dignitary who visited Wynde Par. They might no longer be royalty but it seemed to him that they were determined to become lords again in this land. As for Elan, she must have just returned from her latest adventures. At least that was what the bards and criers had reported she’d been doing. What those adventures were, he didn’t exactly know. Maybe she was finally becoming the poet warrior she had first pretended to be?

  “Not today Briagh, you'd make too easy a target. You're getting fat I see.”

  “Not fat,” he protested. “Just not as rake thin as I was.” But privately, he thought that maybe he did need to do some more exercise. All that walking and running across the two realms a year before had meant he had been much thinner.

  But then there was the stranger question. Had they become friends? When? How? He didn't know. And yet it was a lot easier to speak to her. He also realised that they did share a bond. A bond of pain and family. Of being toyed with by a Goddess. And of surviving. She no longer hated him. He had lost his anger for her too, and had accepted that she had had reasons for being as she had been. And it felt right somehow to share a jest with her.

  “Ignore her. Her tongue's become ever more viperous with every league we've travelled.” Having dismounted, Endorian walked over to grab a mug and pour an ale from the small barrel on the porch and then sat down on the stoop beside him.

  “And ignore him too. Age has withered his brain and made him cranky!” Elan followed Endorian’s example.

  “A misspent youth has meant hers never developed!”

  Soon the three of them were sitting on the stoop, sipping ale and staring at the sun. Briagh found himself comfortable with that – and with them. Even with the Princess. And though Briagh was curious about why they had come, he didn't feel the need to ask. Celes' head was slowly heading for the horizon and it seemed more important to simply enjoy the last of the golden warmth.

  “So you've become a hermit I hear.” Endorian finally broke the peaceful silence.

  “It's not quite a cave
and I don't yell at people, but yes. At least a little bit. I couldn’t handle so many people coming up to me day in, day out! It was just too much.”

  “At least they're not naked anymore.” The Princess coloured a little as she said it. “That was beyond a jest.”

  Briagh and Endorian both nodded. That was one thing they could all agree on. Naked people shouldn't hug. They especially shouldn't hug them!

  “So you've not returned to your thieving ways?” The Princess was quick to throw that at Briagh, though there was no real hostility in her words. Maybe there was even a touch of humour.

  “I can't steal here,” Briagh told her sadly. And he was sad about it. A part of his life had been taken away from him.

  “Too many guards who know about your worship of the six fingered god?”

  “No. I could get past them. I would love to try. But Lord Daelyn made a decree. He said I should be given whatever I asked for. How can I steal what's freely given to me? It's an absolutely evil thing to do to a thief!”