Beneath Ceaseless Skies #18

by Stern, Renee; Miller, Kamila Zeman

  Issue #18 - Jun. 4, 2009

  “Wolf’s Clothing,” by Renee Stern

  “Thistles and Barley,” by Kamila Zeman Miller

  For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  WOLF’S CLOTHING

  by Renee Stern

  I lost my grip on my cousin Terrel’s trail on the last night of the round moon. The beacon of his being winked out, and I mourned alone that night and every night until I finally confirmed his death.

  He’d had a good lead on me. After a month of painstaking searching I hiked into Dyerstown and asked about him at the only tavern. Answers poured out faster than the first keg of the year’s new brew. Naked dead men don’t turn up every day.

  With a practiced twist, the tapster topped off a mug and handed it across the smooth-sanded plank between us. “A fellow with gray in his red beard and plenty of scars?” She pushed back the frizzes of sandy hair that had escaped her braid. “Nydor found him dead up in the grazing, bare as a babe. We heard he was tangled in some trouble over in Samis’ holding.”

  “What sort of trouble? Where was this?” The description matched my scapegrace cousin, right down to the trouble. “My name’s Garold. I’m a Finder.”

  The title served me. True Finders cast spells; some element in kinfolk’s blood tugged me, an itch inside my head, like calling to like. The clan worked my rare talent hard. Mostly we stuck together, but we always had roamers. Strays kept me on the road more than at home.

  Dyerstown showed the usual respect for Finders. The tavern’s midday hum faded and the tapster ignored my coin. “Samis holds land from the king, east across the Milk River,” she said. “We heard they suspected a stranger of theft and held him for judging, but then he went mad. Gave him a calming dose, but he shrugged it off and ran right over everyone.” Her appraising look turned wary. “Was he really a thief?”

  “Cousin. Our family sent me to track him down.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t him.”

  I drained the beer in two long swallows, needing both the time and the strong drink. Terrel and I had grown up together, as close as brothers, the only two births to the clan in a nine-year stretch.

  “Was it a wound that killed him?” I asked at last.

  A weathered man in a sheepskin jacket stood up with a scrape of his bench. “All the marks on his body were old and healed. I helped Nydor prepare him for burning, but we found no sign of how he died. The cold, maybe, or sickness.”

  Exposure was a natural conclusion, considering they’d found him naked at the tail end of winter, and one I was happy to leave intact. But Terrel would have taken a lot of killing. We all would.

  Poison was more likely. I could guess what Samis had dosed my cousin with, but his murderer, inadvertent or not, would have to wait.

  “You burned the body?” I asked. “Where?”

  “Where we found it,” the shepherd said. “It’s our way. We said a blessing for him too.”

  The tapster rested a cool hand on my wrist, and I flinched. It was a bad day for this sort of news and dealing with strangers; my control was shaky. I smiled an apology.

  “You still don’t know he was your cousin,” she said. “Would the scars identify him?”

  Terrel’s ashes had danced over the grass a month ago. I knew that with the certainty of the round moon rising tonight. But he’d surprised me before, so I asked the shepherd to describe the body.

  “Nicks and slashes, nothing distinctive,” he said. “Bites from what must have been a pack of dogs. An old puncture in his gut he was lucky didn’t kill him.”

  I pointed to a spot just below my ribs, left of center. Nightmares of pit traps had taken two years to fade. “Here?”

  “I’m sorry then.” His eyes gleamed with honesty. “At least you know the truth.”

  Part of the truth—perhaps. Tavern rumors weren’t enough. Beyond the bond I’d shared with Terrel, my post in the clan demanded thoroughness. I had to investigate further before going to Samis.

  The shepherd gave me clear directions to the draw where they’d found Terrel, as well as where this Nydor grazed his flock, and I hiked north into a clean breeze. Dyerstown stank, of men and women who sweated at their work for days without bathing, of wool washed with lye, of bitter dyes and pungent mordants. The wind blew the lingering stench from my nostrils and replaced it with the fresh, wet scent of early spring.

  A faint odor of sheep made my mouth water with sudden hunger. I’d hunt later, but not for lamb or mutton. Terrel’s poisoning was trouble enough.

  The wind shifted and carried a whiff of sweet birch with its wintergreen overtones, evoking wild days when I had tried to match Terrel prank for prank. He’d loved birch beer. Drink led us into trouble, usually no more than a scolding. I’d stopped drinking with him after the pit trap. Birch beer no longer tasted sweet; sometimes the smell alone left me queasy.

  Memories roused a month-old ache. I focused on one step after another, a stride that devoured distance over long hours. A rocky stream marked where the uplands began. I scooped up a drink, then jumped across. The wind tasted empty of sheep and shepherds. Dried scat crumbled at my touch. The flocks had moved on about a week ago.

  My nerves stretched tighter as the sun dropped lower. Walking faster bled off anticipation even as my body tracked the moon’s steady climb.

  The draw was somewhere ahead, but I’d never reach it before moonrise. I stopped, shucked my clothes and stashed them with my pack in a cluster of rock and bunchgrass.

  The instant the round moon broke the horizon, the light changed somehow. I’ve never been able to describe it, though I’ve watched all the other moons from dark to nibbled. They belong to the night sky, ordinary sights. The round moon made my skin tingle and my insides itch with the urge to move.

  Shifting was always a shock. Everything zoomed into focus. For some brief time sensation bombarded me. Tonight the sour tang of winter-killed plants almost masked the sweet scent of new grass. My body felt looser, the muscles springier under my dark, gray-speckled fur. Beneath my paws the ground was hard, just on the edge of softening. My ears swiveled at the squeak and scrabble from a nearby nest of ground squirrels; saliva flooded my mouth.

  A few scrapes with my front paws startled the squirrels out their back door. I lunged, dodged back after them, and snapped my jaws around dinner. Immediate business dealt with, I settled back on my haunches and filled my lungs with air to howl out my presence.

  The howl died in my throat. The crisp air cleared away the last of the fuzz in my head that always accompanied the shift, leaving a faint itch behind my eyes. It resembled the signs that helped me track Terrel or any of the clan, but somehow different.

  I loped north, following that unfamiliar tug. A puzzled whine squeezed past my teeth. Was I tracking a wolf from a different clan? Only kin had triggered my Finder’s sense before, but I’d never yet crossed trails with any other clan of shifters. We were territorial folk, whether on four legs or two. Would another pack accept me, or would I have to fight their leaders?

  The last time the round moon had shone over these uplands, Terrel had died. Had this wolf turned on our own kind?

  The thought stabbed me like a silver spike, and my gait faltered. But my skills and my extra weapon surpassed Terrel’s. I poured out the cry that had built during my chase. A warning, a pledge—let the shifter out there hear and prepare for a Finder’s judgment.

  The rusty bite of blood, still fresh and not quite clotted, drifted to me. I slowed into a turn and nosed my way toward it. Death lay ahead. If the wolf—no, now I realized the tugging thread was a many-stranded rope. If a pack had killed h
ere, they hadn’t lingered.

  The air held no musk of wolf, only the related spice of dog and, over that, the wet oil-and-meat scent of sheep. Many of them.

  I padded over to the body, ripped apart as if by a rabid beast. Blood and torn flesh almost completely disguised what had been a good-sized black-and-white bitch. The wounds seemed off somehow, unusual in a way I couldn’t pinpoint. I bent closer, trying not to drown in the smells to the point of unwariness. Still no hint of any creature but this dog and her missing flock.

  I pulled back and circled the body, hunting tracks. Hoofprints lay over everything but my own sign. Sharp sheep hooves came in from the east and fled in a cohesive group north—the same way the itch in my head tugged me.

  Wings whispered overhead: an owl, larger than any I’d ever seen, but no threat. Another hunter, prowling the night on its own business.

  I followed the backtrail, nagged by another flash of vague not-right until at last it hit me. The dog’s prints never showed clearly. The sheep had overrun her tracks, as if they’d chased her.

  Whatever had happened here was unnatural.

  The fur on my neck and shoulders bristled. I wished I was elsewhere, that my pack crowded around me. Instead I forced myself back to study the dog once more.

  Although the killers had ripped apart their victim, they hadn’t fed. Nothing was missing. That was what had disturbed me earlier. I faced mad wolves. Even in our strongest blood-hunger we hunted only for food. We fought each other only in formal bouts; outsiders, only in defense. So why had my quarry gone after the sheepdog?

  I focused again on my Finder’s sense and followed the tugs north, in the same direction as the sheep. Easier prey now with their protector dead. Would tradition bind mad wolves, so I might face them in a formal bout? Or would the pack tear me apart? Perhaps I should have waited until morning, to stand before them holding the powerful weapon entrusted to me. Just thinking about touching unshielded silver made me flinch. I’d never had cause to use it until now, but to do my duty and survive, I might need it.

  An overpowering sheep smell dragged me from my thoughts. I’d lost myself in planning, relying on my senses to alert me to the presence of wolves and other dangers. Only sheep—and the worrying tang of blood—filled my nose.

  Five sheep milled before me. I skidded to a stop, growling low in the back of my throat. Why hadn’t they fled?

  One by one they lifted their heads, eyes glowing with a red tinge that woke memories of an old clan tale, the fable of the cub who didn’t finish his kill. One wounded raccoon escaped a clumsy cub and rampaged through the countryside with each round moon after, unstoppable, unleashing a swarming plague of bloodthirsty red-eyed raccoons, ground squirrels, mice, and rabbits.

  The sheep charged toward me in a woolly mass, burlier than normal sheep, like creatures out of my boyhood nightmares. I couldn’t help backing up, only a little, before my pride took over and insisted that I faced nothing more than five miserable sheep—my natural prey, however unnaturally they might act.

  I snapped, growled, and bared my teeth in a display ferocious enough to suck the fight from any mere grass-eater. Still they ran at me, baring their own pointed teeth. Their muzzles were stained dark with something that had splattered their throats, breasts, and forelegs, and they reeked of blood.

  Some of the itches in my head led to these five sheep.

  My thoughts stumbled over a fable come to life, while instinct threw all my effort into defense and victory. One wolf should be more than enough for five sheep, especially one shifter wolf. But one shifter wolf against five feral sheep with wolfish instincts racing through their blood under the round moon’s power? We’d almost died out, according to the fable, hunted down by ordinary men with deadly silver targeting every shifter they found, guilty or innocent.

  A ram caught me down the shoulder with a horn, but somehow I sprang over its back and walled away the pain during a few panting breaths. They worked together, trying to pin me between them to kick and stomp me with their hooves, rip at my body with the canines and incisors they’d gained in shifting.

  I dodged and spun, finding tight gaps to avoid a crush. My teeth tore at vulnerable spots, but the predator infecting their veins toughened them, let them shake off even killing wounds.

  The same advantage kept me alive.

  Then the wind turned and slapped us all with a mingled scent of sweat and smoke. Men. The sheep around me twitched and shook their heads as if fighting themselves. I growled more fiercely, sensing weakness, reminding them that they were grass-eaters against a predator.

  Instinct grabbed them and they fled north again, toward what I now realized was a larger mass of shifters. My wolf-shape wasn’t able to groan. I’d managed to fight five to a draw.

  I couldn’t linger where the men might find me. Bad enough I couldn’t disguise my prints in the signs of the fight here, or around the dead sheepdog behind us. They’d reach the inevitable conclusion, however wrong.

  I loped west as fast as my injuries allowed. In a hollow thick with hawthorns, I licked the worst wounds until they stopped bleeding, then washed my mouth clean with gulps from a spring-fed pool that tasted of cool limestone with hints of rotting wood.

  All my senses stretched tight, seeking signs that the men had followed me. They’d blame me for tonight’s dangers, and they wouldn’t be entirely wrong. Not me specifically, but my kin. Terrel, dead after the last round moon. Dead out here in pastures full of sheep.

  I could see so clearly how it happened as I headed south toward my cache. Caught among unknowing men just before the round moon rose, force-fed what could only be monkshood to calm him. Monkshood, aconite, wolfsbane: under any name, a chancy plant for ordinary men and always deadly for shifters. After it made us even stronger and drove us into a frenzied rage.

  Somehow Terrel had escaped without making a single captor into one of us. Or if so, the stories hadn’t yet crossed the river from Samis’ holding. Another reason for me to head there once I dealt with these dangerous sheep.

  Only Terrel could turn a cautionary tale for children into breathing, biting, bloodthirsty life. I had to bring them all down before the moon cycled through its phases again to deadly round. Terrel’s mistake, the kill that survived, had spread through part of a flock, maybe the whole flock, maybe more than one, in a single moon cycle. They’d killed at least one dog, though better a dead bitch than bitten-but-survived.

  I had to stop this plague here. Nowhere would be safe for any of the clan if I didn’t act now. Me, alone against disaster.

  I reached my hidden gear near sunrise. The itch in my head remained, but distant, and became still more tenuous once the sun’s rays washed over me and I shifted back to man-shape.

  Knowing better didn’t stop me from grabbing after that sense of my foes to clutch it tighter. The change affected me more than usual. Though my senses were keener than ordinary humans’ even during the dark moon, they peaked on nights of the round moon. At daybreak, for a few moments, I always felt noseless, deaf and blind, as near sense-dead as I cared to come. This morning, after a fight I hadn’t won and nightmares come to life, losing touch with the world even for a brief time left me shaking.

  But the day promised to be bright and sunny and mild. I treated my wounds, dressed and settled into cover for a few hours’ sleep, building my strength for the coming fight.

  * * *

  I set off first after a small knot of infected sheep to the northeast. They were closest, but also an easier target than the larger flocks I sensed.

  By midafternoon I came near enough to stalk in earnest. The wind blew toward me, whispering of sheep, sweet young grass, and fresh water. They’d found a welcoming haven in this dry reach, where tough, thorny shrubs and sharp-edged rocks broke through short tufts of grass.

  I shrugged off my pack and knelt to tug heavy leather gloves over my hands. After two deep breaths, I could delay no longer and drew out the wood case. I’d never before needed the knife within.


  Gritting my teeth, I freed the catches and closed a cautious fist around the leather-wrapped hilt. The blade was almost as long as my forearm, with an edge that looked as sharp as the day it was forged. The silver worked into the steel vibrated in my grip, even through the glove and handle.

  My gut rolled. I shook open my hand, dropping the knife back into the case, then turned just in time to empty my stomach. How much stronger had my predecessors been to face down rogue shifters, hampered by this reaction? Had their opponents been just as shaken?

  Sipping water from my flask cleared away the taste of sickness. Prepared now, I gripped the knife again and found myself better able to deal with the silver. I wondered if the sheep would sense it, and at what distance.

  Better to learn now, with too few of these abominations to pose a threat if they charged. Last night’s encounter proved they didn’t always react like normal grass-eaters.

  I shouldered the pack once more and tightened my grip on the knife. The wind stayed steady, blowing a constant stream of information toward me. As long as the wind and I held our courses, I’d know exactly when the sheep startled.

  The ground rose as I slunk from shadow to rock to thornbush. I couldn’t yet see the sheep, but their lair’s scent grew stronger.

  The itches leading me tightened suddenly, snapping out slack like a rope. I froze, trying to build the truth while blind, then realized the sheep were moving. Within their lair still, but spooking.

  As soon as the image formed, I charged. Reaching my prey, winning the kill with its hot, heavy blood on my skin, on my teeth, on my claws—instinct overwhelmed me. Instinct warned me to pen the sheep quickly, cut off their escape, just as it shouted the danger of the silver in my hand.

  The knot of sheep resolved into three individual beasts, dashing back and forth within a ravine seeking escape. Two ewes and a lamb kicked up bits of turf, hemmed in on one side by a steep hill that water trickled down. Thornbushes wove a nearly impenetrable wall on the opposite slope.