by Hannah West
If she was right then she was only four days walk from the next village on her father’s lands.
No, she thought grimly, on her heathen husband’s lands.
A howl sounded in the distance and she stilled for a moment. After a second another one sounded closer.
Darcee picked up her speed and ran in the direction of a cave she remembered from the last time she had come here with her brother. It took her almost an hour to reach it but when she watched under the cave overhang she sank to the ground gratefully.
Her feet ached and were covered in blisters, her body shivered with the chill night air and her lung burned with the force of each icy breath of air. Her stomach growled sharply and emptiness gnawed at her insides.
“I am hungry,” she said dully.
Darcee knew she would have to start a fire soon and eat from her meager store of food, but she didn’t feel like doing anything just yet.
She had hoped with each step away from Blackmoor and Alrek that she would feel free, but instead she felt sufficed more with each step.
Numbly she got to her tired feet and hissed out a breath of pain at putting pressure back on them. She wondered out of the cave mouth in the darkening forest and collected dry wood and tinder to start a fire. When her arms were full she slowly made her way back to where she had been.
Setting a fire took her longer then she liked but as she sank down to the dry ground next to the fire she settled in and brought her cloak closer. As the fire grew she held out small hands, palms out to catch its warmth.
The fire danced different colors as she watched; wondering what would happen next to her.
Shaking herself from her daze she reached for the pack at her side and pulled some bread and cheese out to nib on.
As the night darkened to inky black and her fire grew long she fed the fire a few small logs and wrapped her cloak around her as she used her pack to cushion her head. Her eyes felt as if they were weighted down with lead, her breath growing shallow as her vision of the fire dimmed.
Finally sweet sleep claimed her.
…
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN MY WIFE IS MISSING?” roared an angry Alrek as his squire Jacob mumbled the words once more.
Alrek grabbed the boy forcefully by the back of the neck and brought him close.
“Where is my wife?” he growled low, menacing.
“I-I don’t know, my lord,” Jacob squeaked. “She was not in her rooms when I took her the evening meal. I c-checked everywhere and could not find her!” he finished on a wail.
The lad’s eyes teared up.
Nay! NOT THE TEARS!
Taking a deep breath he let the boy go. “Go and find Lord Adrian. We need to find her before she hurts herself.” He turned to the occupants of his hall. “Stop everything you are doing. We need to find my lady wife. Everyone is to help search the castle and report back to me!”
He turned on heel and stormed up the steps to her rooms. Without knocking he burst the door open and came up short when he saw his friend’s wife sitting on the edge of Darcee’s bed. She was lightly tracing circles on the coverlet.
Without turning to see who it was she addressed him coolly. “She is not here.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Alrek snapped at Sarina. “Sarina this is not a game! She could be hurt or worse.”
She turned her brilliant green eyes on him and he read cold anger from her. She stood slowly crossing her arms.
“I have always been on your side, Alrek. I told her that it was a misunderstanding between the two of you. That was until I heard you talking to my husband last night in your cups.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “You never intended to give her a chance. She was only the means to your life here. The man I knew was caring even if rough, but you are nothing but cold. Hearing the way you spoke of her gave me chills.”
Alrek already angered was growing furious. “You have no right!”
Her eyes shone with pity. “And that is why you failed her. She tired with you, but you knew best of course. To make this work your king wanted you to learn the lesson of unity between people. But you always have to be a step above or below someone for it to work with you.”
She shook her head sadly. “It was because of you she tried to kill herself. When you took her last chance of freedom from her, the last choice she could make on her own, you broke her. Now anything is better than this hell you made for her.”
“You know nothing of which you speak!” he barked back.
“She told me, Alrek. I know,” she said icily. “You make her feel as if she were the mud beneath your boots. I hope for her seek your seed did not take. She doesn’t need that kind of link to you.” With those final words she swept past her to the door where her husband stood in stony silence.
She turned for one brief moment before she left. “You are nothing, Alrek, without the trust of the ones you should love.”
Alrek was left standing, his anger doused cold. He looked numbly to the man he had called commander, friend and brother.
And his brother looked on at him with…pity, in his dark gaze.
Adrian looked away and followed his wife without a word.
Alrek sank down on his wife’s bed in her chilled chamber reaching for the tunic that had been tossed over the bed. He clutched it tightly in his hands until his knuckles turned white and for the first in a long time, his eyes stung with tears.
Tears of his shame and guilt.
Chapter Ten
Darcee would like to think it was the tender fingers of the early rising sun that woke her, but in truth it was a wolf’s howl that was chilling close to her cave. She quickly got to her and she pressed her back against the damp stone wall. Slowly she looked out around the edge of the cave and saw nothing as another howl snuck through the trees towards her.
As she calmed down she realized the sound was coming from out in the forest to her left. This time however there was only one howl and it sounded…hurt.
Uneasy about what she was going to do she headed out in the direction the howl had come from. She ducked around thickly intertwined trees and prickly dying underbrush.
She jumped when the next one sounded close to her and she veered off to the left ducking under a half fallen tree. What she saw then stopped her in her tracks.
The wolf was bigger than any she had ever seen before. It looked to be the size of a small cow. It would stand nearly as tall as her shoulder, nearly five feet tall. Its pitch black fur streaked with white and icy blues eyes that spat distrust and pain. It rear hind leg was tripped in a snare tied high up in a tree. The rope around its leg looked as if it had been braided with shards of metal, cutting into the soft flesh of the leg.
Upon spotting her the wolf’s ear flattened to its skull and it let out a long low growl.
“I cannot believe what I am about to do for you,” she muttered under her breath as she skirted the edge around the wolf and began climbing the tree with a knife tucked into her belt.
Those uncanny blue eyes followed her as she shuffled higher up the tree. When she reached the rope on the branch she saw it was tangled, giving it a few tugs it came loose and the wolf howled to sky with a chuff of pain.
Darcee reached for her knife, cutting away the thick hemp rope. With each pull back the wolf growled a little in pain, gazing at her like she was a fresh slab of dinner meat.
Just before the rope snapped the wolf lunged to the side and Darcee slipped from the unstable limb. She desperately tried to cling to any part of the tree and managed to slow herself enough so when she landed on her backside in the dirt that only the air was knocked from her.
Darcee tried to suck air into her burning lungs, hoping the dizzy spell wouldn’t last long. As soon as air rushed into her lungs she gave a sharp cough and tried to sit up. But when her mind realized where she was her head slowly turned to where the wolf had been and where it was now.
It stood tall over her now three feet away with sharp white fangs gleaming.
D
arcee closed her eyes tightly and tried to scoot away from the beast.
“Please, please, do not eat me,” she begged under her breath as dirt scraped under her nails.
When she backed up into something hard she let out a groan of despair. Deciding this wasn’t how she wanted to die she opened her eyes and looked squarely into those cold blue ones.
“I saved you,” she started off with a slight waver in her voice. “All I want to do is go on my way. I just got free myself!”
The wolf took one halting step then slowly lowered those sharp teeth near her face. With a cautious sniff the wolf limped around so the rope caught around the leg was within Darcee’s reach.
“Oh,” she breathed in relief and awe.
She reached for the rope with her knife and slowly cut through it. Like she thought it has been braided with sharp thin strips of metal.
Someone had been pooching on her lands.
When the wolf was free it snarled at her and limped off until she couldn’t see it anymore.
“What just happened?” she wondered aloud and thought back to those blues eyes.
So like the eyes of the Viking, so icy when confronted, pooling dark as emotions stormed.
No, she wouldn’t think about him! This was his entire fault. He and this beautiful wolf had nothing in common.
Other than being wild, most likely feral and on edge anyway. Oh and not grateful for anything.
“You are welcome!” Darcee called after the wolf.
No answer.
“Not surprising,” she muttered as she collected her things and head back on the forest path to the next village. The faster she traveled the faster she would have some sort of roof over her head.
Her stomach growled for food, but if her store was going to last she would only be able to eat once a day unless she took time to hunt. For now she did not have the time to hunt, she needed at least two days ahead of her to be safe. But she doubted anyone would be coming after her.
She hoped that they thought she was still locking herself away in her chamber.
Suddenly the world tilted and she felt her self falling, weightless. As she looked around she noticed she had stepped off the edge of a small cliff without knowing.
There was a sharp pain to her left temple and then blissful numbness.
Chapter Eleven
It had been two days and there was naught to be found of his wife!
“Damn her,” he muttered harshly.
He was on edge, exhausted from not sleeping for the last two days as he searched every place possible she could have been. She wasn’t at the keep. She had left.
She had left him.
“Get a party ready,” he called to his men. “We go into the forest and look for her there!”
His men stared after him grimly. Since the lady had gone missing their lord had gone quite mad. He had done nothing but look for her himself these pass few night and they knew he wouldn’t stop.
And that they couldn’t stop him, all they could do was help and keep him safe.
For now they must prepare to go into the Bone Forest and hope she was still alive.
…
Darcee came to with a pounding head but a numb body. As she stared almost sightlessly at the darkening sky she knew that she had been here too long. She was losing time.
Her body felt heavy and she could barely move it and she was burning. She tried to push off her cloak with a weak nudge and her cloak growled at her.
Growled?!
She looked down at her chest and noticed the wolf had come back and was lying over her body.
The first thought that crossed her mind was that it was going to eat her!
But she realized as blue eyes gazed into her that she was safe, that this wolf was returning the favor.
She reached out slowly with a hand the wolf lifted its head to sniff and rubbed gently on the top of its head.
“Thank you,” she whispered as she passed out again.
…
When the men heard a pack of wolves howling they grew restless but marched on, spreading out.
“Darcee,” he bellowed yet again and was answered with nothing.
He was wary and sick with the dread that she may not be alive.
As the thought crossed his mind, tears burned.
She had to be alive, he would do whatever he could to see that through. He would compromise for her, he would do anything she wanted him if she just came back.
It took the last few days for him to clear his mind and find what really mattered. To see not only how much she did for the people but for how much she had changed him.
In their short time he had come to crave to be near her even if they only thing they did was fight. He had come to care for her and he needed her back before he left his mind.
An eerily howl caught his attention and without noticing, he began to follow its direction.
He followed a raised path in the forest, worn over time and had to stop himself before he noticed the path had ended in a drop to the next forest floor below.
“Great gods,” he breathed as he looked over the long drop. A patch of color caught his eye in the grey and brown of the forest and he focused on it. A large black wolf streaked with white was heading to the under hang of the ledge he was on.
As he followed the wolf with his eyes, they widened when he saw what the wolf was heading for someone was laying at the bottom of the drop, someone in a deep green woolen cloak he knew too well.
“Dacree,” he whispered.
Alrek quickly made his way down another long path to her but when the wolf caught his scent it turned on him, with its back to Darcee.
“I will gut you, so help me, if you even touch her, beast,” he growled.
As he neared the wolf did something he didn’t think possible. The wolf stepped over his unconscious wife to protect her.
Lowering his sword he dropped it and slowly came to his wife’s side. The wolf let him near but snapped at him as he tried to reach for her.
“It is fine, my friend, but she needs my help now,” he murmured to the wolf. “Let me help her.”
The wolf looked to him then leaned down and nuzzled her face before backing away slowly.
He noticed it limped.
“Are you helping her, because she helped you?” he asked disbelieving.
The wolf looked him directly in the eye.
Believing it a sign from him gods, he was going to take it.
He checked her over noting no broken bones, but she was badly bruised and feverish. Gently he took her up in his arms and yelled for his men and his horse.
Panic robbed him of breath and all he knew was that he had to get her home. To their home.
“Jacob!” he bellowed. He didn’t notice the wolf followed him, even with its limping leg.
Chapter Twelve
She slept for five days and four nights and each night he prayed for her to come back to him. Her fever leveled out but it couldn’t be broken. Finally when he broke down Adrian took him from her chambers and Lady Sarina took his place.
She sat gently on the bedside and reached for Dacree’s hand. The wolf lying on the other side of the bed let out a whine and waved its tail in greeting.
At first all had been shocked by the wolf’s appearance but soon came to understand that they could not part the two.
“Darcee,” she said softly, “I need you to come back to us. Alrek…cannot go on as he has. He has learned from his trails and now we need to come back. Your pet wolf thinks the same. She will not leave your side. Alrek needs you now. Please!”
Bowing her head over their clasped hands she murmured a few quite words and placed Darcee’s hand back on the bed.
Without a word she left with tears in her eyes.
…
The world was blurry and overly warm, when she stretched her fingers the earth was furry and tough.
A snout came into view before a wet nose nudged her cheek twice. A wolf’s face came into view.
“Oh, hello you,” Dacree breathed and petted her new friend.
One of the most unlikely to ever come her way.
Suddenly she was wrapped up in thick arms and she gasped in pain.
“Thank the gods for bringing you back,” a harsh whisper breathed in her ear.
“Ow,” she gasped again and she was promptly placed back in bed.
“I’m so sorry, lass,” he rasped.
A big smelly, sweaty and hairy Alrek started down at her with adoring eyes.
She blinked up at him confused. “What happen? How did you find me?”
He looked over to the wolf and back. “Your friend showed me where you were.”
Darcee glared at him. “I am very angry with you.”
“I’m okay with that, Darcee.”
Now she was confused. “What did you say? Do my ears fail me?”
He looked pained as he sighed. “I understand now. I can take your anger as long as you never leave me again. I will change your mind about me. About us?”
“Why would I do that?” she snapped suddenly feeling dizzy.
“Because I have seen my way clear. You need rest, we shall talk of this later, rest now.” He kissed her brow and she slipped off to sleep.
Chapter Thirteen
The next few weeks felt odd to Darcee. She had become fast friends with Sarina and she even came to like her stony husband.
But also being around them hurt her heart. They didn’t seem to notice that they needed to be by each whenever they were in the same room and they were touching. It hurt because Dacree wanted that too and even as Alrek tried to make things better between them she was still wary. She held no proof things could be or would be different.
Alrek had changed in the few days she had been gone and he never asked her about why she had left. He had just accepted she was back and alive.