Night of the Wolf (5 page)

“Oh, you’re a pair of beauties, you are.” She drank from the cup of wine she held in her hand, then walked over and picked up the chair and tossed it back at the table. It landed accurately on its legs where it had been before. She slammed her heel into the wall. Mud rained down from the wicker-work structure. “Wattle and daub,” she said.

She walked over to the fireplace, picked up a pan and a flesh fork, and made a circuit of the room, pounding the pan loudly with the fork. She exited the hut and walked around it, pounding loudly, then returned, closing the door behind her.

Both men looked completely stunned and bewildered.

“Listen!” she ordered. “You tell me this creature can walk on two legs like a man. And there is a good chance he can understand what we’re saying to each other. So you sit in this dilapidated dwelling and talk of our plans in loud voices. How do you know the creature is not, in fact, lying in the weeds not far from here? Listening to
every . . .
word . . .
you . . .
say.”

Dryas was tired. She’d come a long way and all she’d seen on the journey were death, destruction, and pain. The Romans had broken the people’s will to resist, and worse, the chieftains who should have been the backbone of that resistance were all too often murdered, enslaved, or bought by Roman power, helpless to change the fate of their people.

Enclaves like this were all that remained of a once-proud and brilliant nation. The scarred, broken, despairing girl eked out existence where once a family, intelligent, valiant, and handsome, ruled. No, not ruled: led a society that tried to live together in justice and peace.

In her journey across Gaul, Dryas had seen something she had not even known existed . . . die. The sorrow that ruled her heart was so deep it seemed to blot out the sun, even on a bright day. Something was perishing here. Something more important than any mere human who shared it. A thing greater than the sum of its human parts.

She was frightened not only by its destruction, but also by her inability to comprehend what her deepest instincts told her was happening. She was not an intellectual, but a warrior, a person of action. So the feelings of grief threatening to drown her soul in a tidal wave of pain caused her to lash out in fury at these two old fools—the few surviving remnants of a class of thinkers and teachers who had shaped the only world she knew since the beginning of time.

She drew a deep, shuddering breath and covered her eyes with her hand. Then she felt on her other hand the dry touch of Mir’s fingers. He patted it softly, gently, as he might comfort a child.

Tears leaked out from her eyelids and, when she opened her eyes to look at his face, she saw an understanding, a weary comprehension deeper than any she thought possible.

Her fury and sorrow faded together, leaving her drained and feeling slightly foolish for having taken so much wine on an empty stomach.

“Are you then refusing to help us?” Blaze’s question carried the full freight of outraged authority.

Dryas turned toward him, anger beginning to flush her face again.

Mir clasped her hand. “Wait! Wait! I pray you both. Consider, Blaze: you have little of your former power. We are more than ever dependent on each other’s goodwill. And you, girl, think. With most of the strongest warriors gone, I must, as the shepherd of an almost defenseless flock, preserve them from a scourge that can destroy them as surely as the Romans.”

Dryas subsided. She snatched up the cup and swallowed more of the vintage there.

“All right,” Blaze snarled. “You’ve made your point. I should say you’ve both made your respective points.”

Dryas leaned forward and spoke in a very low voice and in another language, the tongue of her own people. “Yes, I’ll help you.” But her gaze shot to the door and walls. “
He
doesn’t need to know that. Do you understand me?”

Mir simply nodded, but Blaze replied in the same language. “God! It’s been years. My command of the language is . . . flawed and I’m cursed slow, but yes, I do understand simple sentences.”

She nodded. “Tomorrow. In the sun . . . in the open.”

Both men nodded, and she finished the wine in one pull. Then she kicked back her chair, walked over to the corner, shouldered her pack, and turned toward the door.

“Wait!” Blaze cried, “he—”

Dryas stepped toward him and spoke again in Caledonian. “Don’t help me. Shut up! I know what I’m doing.” Then she turned and vanished into the night.

She was a lush, forbidden fruit to the wolf A mature woman, redolent of an almost incenselike confusion of fragrances. Soft, yet tight openings and velvet surfaces.

As he took her, she communicated an exquisite and unknown sensation to his mind and body as he invaded hers. He could tell, as she fell first to her knees before him and then as he pushed her backward to sprawl on the pine needles, that she both feared and desired him. And that she felt both sensations deeply.

“Don’t hurt me,” she pleaded.

He didn’t.

It was growing dark when he released her, allowing her to scramble to where her clothing lay. He slipped into the shadows and realized she was trembling as she donned her few simple garments and began her run to the village.

Wolflike, he was puzzled by her reaction to him. He knew he’d given her pleasure, ecstatic pleasure. And more than one time. He understood that her fear lent a sharper edge to both of their desires. But what he couldn’t understand was the reason for that fear. Did she think he would attack, harm her during an act that brought so much mutual delight, an act of joy?

When he was sure she could no longer see him, he shifted to his wolf shape and shadowed her up through the pines, back to the rath, the rude Celtic farmstead where she lived.

He stood at the edge of the forest when she pushed aside the skin curtain that covered the opening to her dwelling.

“Imona!” someone cried. “We were about to go down to the lake. Look, our torches are kindled. What happened? Where have you been?”

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was low, almost a stammer. “I drifted off to sleep after my bath. I had no idea I’d sleep so long. The sun was already behind the mountains when I awakened . . . I came back as quickly—”

The other she’s voice broke in on her. “You should be more careful. I swear I believe you do these things to bring misery on your unhappy kin.”

“Kat, I’m so sorry. I never meant to worry you.”

Kat, eh, and Imona,
the wolf thought.
Screech Kat.
Maeniel had met a few small, furred, clawed beasts. Loud voices, they had. They hung about and scavenged near human dwellings. They were quick and could run straight up trees. Imona’s voice was low and lovely. This Kat sounded like a shrew.

The night wind was rising as the mountains let go their heat and the roar of the forest drowned out further conversation in the ringfort.

Imona,
the wolf thought.
They have names. She has a name. Wolves don’t. Only me—the name She gave me when She made me more—or less—than wolf Maeniel.
High above, small clouds scudded past the glowing half moon.
The gray ones are like those clouds. Each one different, but somehow all the same. We come, we pass through life, we drift over the mountains as those clouds drift past the moon, then descend into darkness and are forgotten. They give each other names that they can remember. Remember at least for a time when they once loved. Do they try to reach beyond death?
The wolf was baffled. He thought of the mother of the pack, now surely only bones cradled in the overhang’s moist earth.

And suddenly, he knew his difference from the rest of the pack. To them, if they thought of her at all, she was but a dim memory. He voiced a soft whine and shook himself.

Far away, a wolf howled. Then, smoothly and swiftly as water tumbles over a streambed in the teeming rain, others joined the chorus. The new pack mother gave the first cry, then the young males, and last of all the fleet virgin shes. Each voice was known to him, each conjured up an image and an emotional association in his mind. He raised his head, but then, with very unwolflike calculation, realized how close he was to human dwellings. It was unwise to provoke them or their powerful mastiff watchdogs.

He knew his pack would gather at the pool before the hunt, so he turned and entered the forest.

II

Outside of Mir’s hut, Dryas wrapped herself tightly in a woolen mantle. The first chill of winter gripped the mountain meadow. She paused a moment to allow her eyes to grow used to the darkness.
I didn’t have to wait when I was younger,
she thought ruefully. Then, the transition had been instantaneous. She was still young, but age was beginning its slow work, blunting the warrior skills of her youth.

As for the wolf, if Mir could be believed, this creature had another use for women than it did for men. In fact, if it partook of anything of the dog’s nature, it might be harmless to her. The woman scent couldn’t always be relied upon, but she’d often seen vicious mastiffs reduced to fawning submission at a brush of a woman’s skirts.

Gradually, her eyes began to pick out the tree trunks and other structures surrounding Mir’s hut. She moved slowly within the shadows.

Mir’s little wife had described a well-worn path that led to a clearing and a standing stone that overlooked the whole valley. So she moved slowly over the treacherous rocky ground until her boots found the well-tramped footway. It was deeply cut.
Old,
Dryas thought,
very ancient and sacred.
Around her the giant firs and pines blotted out even the stars above. There was no moon.

Just as well the path was so deeply beaten; she could see nothing under the trees.

At first the slope was gentle, but it swiftly grew steeper, climbing with a minimum of switchbacks toward the tree line. She wasn’t sure when the forest began to thin out, but gradually, as she climbed higher and higher, the sensation of walking in a cavern diminished as the trees became increasingly sparse and short, giving way, at last, to brush and then scattered wind-twisted dwarves. As she drew closer to the open, the wind began to bite alarmingly.

Frost,
she thought.
There will be frost on the grass before dawn.
All at once she became aware she was walking across level ground. She stood in a tiny mountain meadow overlooking a deep gorge where the river ran. The grass was long and silken, gleaming like raw flax in the starlight.

She remembered the girl’s words. No tame beast grazes there, only the deer, the mountain goat, and the chamois. Everyone has forgotten why. All they will say when they speak of it is “It’s bad luck” or “There’s not enough grass there to be worth the trouble and the trail is too steep. A fine cow or sheep might break a leg.”

On one end of the meadow, a lump of dark granite crouched like a giant fist. Water bubbled from a brush-covered cleft in the stone near the top, fell from one ledge to another until it created a basin at the foot, then overflowed into the little creek that bubbled past Mir’s door.

She paused to get her bearings and then walked forward carefully. The meadow ended on her right in a steep slope, rocky at first, then clothed in thick spruce and fir, and, finally, virgin pine forest near the river in the valley below. On her left stood a sheer cliff. Up and up it rose—steep, unclimbable—until it gave way to a series of rocky terraces leading to a snow-capped peak.

Go to the spring, the girl had instructed her. Near the spring you will find the stair.

As she approached the granite lump, she saw the hand- and footholds chipped out of the rock. Had the girl not called it a stairway, Dryas would have believed the small notches were simply natural features hollowed out over uncounted centuries by wind and rain.

Dropping her pack on the ground, Dryas reached out and slid her hand into the first. She found it much deeper than it had appeared. She began to climb and became aware, to her chagrin, that there was something the child had not told her. The rude ladder led her around the giant granite boulder and out over the valley below.

When the first handhold became a foothold, she found herself hanging over a sheer drop to the river at the bottom of the gorge. She pressed her breasts and stomach against the fissured stone. Her belly muscles quivered.

Pride awakened. She was Dryas of the royal line. Guardian to queens and queen herself.
Yes, Dryas,
her common sense informed her,
but the girl is mad as a bull in rut and these hollows may not lead anywhere.
Yet, even as she thought that, she found herself impatiently fumbling for another handhold. When she placed her foot where her hand had been only a few moments before, she realized her left hand was sliding over a rock ledge. A moment later, she was over the top and resting on the flat of a tiny dell looking eastward.

The dell was only thirty feet wide and qualified more as a large ledge, but it also supported the same thick growth of grass as the meadow below. Up so high, the wind seemed to blow without end. Sometimes a roaring blast, at others, a gentle breeze, but it never quite ceased, and in a few moments, her cheeks and fingers began to grow numb. The warmth of her exertion drained away and the cold crept in. Well, the girl said they were here. Where were they?

The moon began to rise over a distant peak. By its light, as the builders intended, she saw the ellipse of white stones among the grass and the pale, flat slab in the middle, glowing in the icy moonlight. Dryas nodded. She could even read this one. Part of her training had been learning what such structures meant. This one spoke as clearly as the wedge of a sundial.
There are,
she thought,
much easier ways now, but the creatures of this moon calendar probably invented them. Yes, it is important for us to know.

The shadow appeared near the stone in the center of the circle, something darker than the rising moonglow and the misty, distant starblaze. It didn’t coalesce out of the night. One moment it was not there; the next it was.

Dryas shivered. Yes, the girl had been right. She stood, backed up to the edge, then began to make her way down the same way she’d come up. Only this time her entire concentration was on the openings that served as the ladder. She didn’t look up. She wanted to, but she found she couldn’t. She had encountered a phenomenon more frightening than a journey down a sheer cliff, hand over hand. She was afraid if she looked up she would see something, only God knows what . . . looking over the edge . . . down at her.

Flowers, any flowers, made him remember her. While he loved her, the world had basked in summer, and the high alpine valley and lowland meadows were ablaze with their fire.

Beyond the mountains, other fires burned. They were not so beautiful, left only ashes and created dark smudges across a fair blue sky. Caesar was on the march. He would climb to the top of a pile of corpses and, at last, achieve primacy in the world.

But the wolf knew nothing of this and would not have cared if he did. What were the doings of men to him? He and his kind had settled their affairs with the universe millennia ago. They lived according to a fixed code, one that evolved with his species out of the darkness of mammalian beginnings. He and his kind were guided by it, though they never tried to understand it. He gave it no thought at all while he stalked Imona and her companions as they hurried downhill through the dawn mist to bathe in the lake.

She hung back a bit from the others, trailing along last, as if she sensed his presence and was waiting for him.

His arms closed around her from behind. He swung her off the path and behind a tree.

She gasped, but didn’t cry out.

He gave her every opportunity to scream, but she didn’t. In fact, when she turned and saw who he was, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

He’d never been kissed before, but he was a quick study. He decided he liked this form of human contact and wanted to learn more about it. Time enough for that. He swept her up, carrying her uphill to a secluded spot only a wolf would know.

One bitter winter long ago an avalanche had cut a swath of violence through the tree line. When, at length, the summer came and melted the remaining ice and snow, it left a jumble of boulders, broken trees, and thick brush piles that extended down into the pine forest.

It wasn’t a popular spot with humans, though the wolves and wild cats liked it well enough. The area around the vast piles of broken stone was haunted by vipers and pitfalls. You might think you were climbing along solid ground when the rotten timber and broken branches gave way, sending a foot or leg into a hole, twisting muscles or shattering bones. Whitened trees killed in the mountain’s convulsive rock falls were always ready to slip, drop, and drive splintered limbs into a careless explorer. All in all, not a salubrious place to wander.

She kissed him on the neck as he carried her along. “Sweet merciful mother,” she whispered. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

He laughed.

“Aren’t you afraid . . . The men of my tribe would kill you if they caught you.”

“I don’t think I’d be that easy to kill.”

Just at that moment, he reached the spot he had been seeking, a tiny clearing shaded by the heavy boughs of a broken pine and surrounded by boulders of granite and huge fragments of shale driven into the ground in enormous shards by the landslip. He placed her on the ground in a circle of broken stone knives.

She paused for a moment, but only to pull off her dress. She was naked under it. She cupped her breasts and offered them to him. He licked at first and then sucked. She writhed and moaned.

“I shouldn’t be doing this,” she sobbed.

He paused for a second, profoundly puzzled.

“No,” she groaned, “don’t stop.”

Her back arched. He could feel her hot, wet sex pressing against his stomach. The perfume of her desire hung in the morning air as thickly as the soft, damp dew that bathed the grass around them.

“You want me?” he asked.

“I could devour you!” Her whisper was frantic. She clawed his shoulder, her nails ripping into his skin.

He felt her orgasmic spasms begin when he entered her. In the brief relaxation between her first and second she gasped, “I have a husband.”

Maeniel withheld comment until she reached her third climax. Then, as she settled back into tranquility, he asked, “What’s a husband?”

He was not satisfied with her reply. Among wolves, none possessed such rights over another. Wolves did not mate for life. Properly speaking, in human sense, they did not mate at all.

The strongest male in a pack achieved the privilege of breeding, as did the strongest female. But they didn’t necessarily choose one another.

Desire depended entirely on the receptivity of the female. If she was not receptive, better not to try. In fact, it could become quite dangerous to try.

Imona lay in his arms. Around them the mist burned away. The sun began to warm the rocks. She dozed. He cradled her. He was used to sleeping with his pack mates piled up in company, safe against the cold. It seemed natural to him that in his human form, they would sleep in each other’s arms. She roused once. “The food! I made a lunch. It’s in a leather bag. I must have dropped it near the trail to the pond.”

Maeniel stood and walked into the sun-struck clearing. Naked, the heat from above dazzled his eyes and warmed his skin almost painfully. He wanted to change, but sensed it wasn’t possible. Then he fled into the cool darkness under the trees.

But the forest here, thinned by the avalanche, didn’t offer much protection, and it wasn’t until he found a sort of grotto created by thick vines growing over the top of a boulder that he was able to drop shuddering into the change and resume his wolf form.

He found the leather sack near where he’d intercepted her. Suddenly voices rang out. He recognized Kat’s voice.

“She’s gone, I tell you! And I saw wolf tracks near her carry bag.”

Maeniel snatched up the bag as a second voice replied, “Wolf, my old fat ass! What are you . . . a fool, girl? That man of hers hasn’t been any good since he marched off to war. The Romans took his hand and his manhood went with it. He doesn’t even make a pretense of lying with her or wanting to anymore. Depend on it, she’s meeting some man.”

“Clarissa!” Kat’s voice held the high whine of an angry wasp. “Leon is my brother and your age doesn’t give you any right—”

The gray wolf melted into the forest just as they reached the spot where the bag had been lying.

Kat broke off. “What!” She looked at the ground where the bag had been a moment before. “It’s gone!”

Screened by a thick stand of fruiting elder and—to humans—an almost impenetrable thicket of blackberry vines, the wolf was invisible to them.

Kat, a scrawny, dark-haired woman, began to search. “It was here,” she insisted frantically. “I know it was! Just a few minutes ago. I saw it.”

Clarissa, a thick-bodied woman with a long mane of graying auburn hair, broke into shrill, cackling laughter. “That’s because they’ve finished having their first tumble and it made them hungry. They came back and got it.” Her remarks sounded a bit incoherent because they were choked out between gales of salacious merriment.

Kat didn’t look amused. “Curse her! Curse the day we let her into the family. A curse on the eyes in her head, the tongue in her mouth, the ears she hears with, the throat she swallows—”

The gray wolf’s whole body jerked as Clarissa brought the tirade to an end. She slapped Kat’s face hard. Crack! The sound of her palm meeting flesh echoed among the trees.

Kat took two steps backward, tripped, and landed on her backside a few steps away from the elder thicket that concealed the gray wolf. She lifted her hand to her cheek, an expression of pure shock on her face.

“Bitch!” Clarissa said. “Do you fancy yourself a witch? Shut your foul mouth and keep your evil ill wishes to yourself. Heaven knows it’s little enough Imona asks of your family. She’s a hard worker, ready to turn her hand to any task, an unpaid servant to you, your man, and that lazy old crone mother of yours. She’s reached her climacteric. She can’t have any more children, so she can’t disgrace your family. And the two girls she bore Leon were an obvious disappointment to the whole bunch of you. Have a little compassion, woman. Life hasn’t been kind to Imona.”

“She’s the daughter of a chieftain,” Kat screeched as she scrambled to her feet.