Black Wolf

Chapter 11

Summer, 1371 DR

Darrow did not escape the People of the Black Blood. He had run less than five miles from the lodge before the wolves dragged him to the ground. In the panic that seized him upon first seeing his pursuers, he dropped his useless sword and begged for his life. His screams for mercy did nothing to save him from the ripping claws of the werewolves. Nor did his blubbering pleas stop the hungry mouths from feasting on his body. Only as his lifeblood seeped into the soft ground of the Arch Wood did salvation arrive.

It came in the form of a silver wolf. The three-legged beast chased the other predators from the kill, then sat beside Darrow's dying body and looked down into his face. As Barrow looked up at the big wolf, it shifted back into the form of Rusk, the Huntmaster.

"The Hunt is over," he declared. Then with a chant to Malar, he pressed his burning hands on Barrow's gaping wounds and sealed them. He cast spell after spell, until at last Darrow could breathe.

"Why?" Darrow whispered "Why did you save me?" Rusk chuckled deep in his chest. "Because I have use for you."

During his first month among the People of the Black Blood, Darrow was everyone's servant. He fetched wood and water, cleared the fanged circle, and scraped the hides of deer and boars for crude tanning. If someone told him to do a task, he made himself useful.

At night he huddled in a corner of the lodge while most of the pack roamed their territory. A simple smoke hole served as a chimney for the fire pit, which was flanked by two rows of rough-hewn timbers supporting the sod roof. Various pack members had carved their names or marks in the wood over the years. Others with some talent had engraved scenes of humans and wolves hunting together. One depicted a passionate embrace between a dire wolf and a woman. Darrow found the image at once revolting and compelling.

The Huntmaster's inner sanctum was divided from the rest by an old tapestry depicting scenes of wolves and humans hunting and living together as an antlered god held his cloak to form the night sky above them. Even when Rusk was away, Darrow did not dare part the fabric to peer inside.

When the werewolves returned to sleep away the daylight, Darrow went outside to perform his chores alone. He hated the smell of the lodge when the pack was there. The smoke stung his eyes, and the odor of so many dirty bodies reminded him of his father's pigsty. Even as a boy he knew he wanted nothing to do with farm life, and this was far worse. He was living among monsters.

Soon he learned that he had become one of them.

After his first transformation, Darrow was sick for days. He remembered little of what occurred those three nights, but the days were full of exhausted cramps and bloody retching. No one tended to him in his misery, not even Rusk, who had saved his life. He was too afraid to ask questions, and no one offered any answers.

"At least I'm still alive," he told himself. But he did not know why or for how long.

A few days after his change, Rusk answered one of those questions. He led Darrow a short distance from the lodge, where they sat on a grassy knoll.

"Tell me about the Malveens," he said.

Darrow nodded, eager to be useful. "What would you like to know?"

"Everything," said Rusk. "Start with what they want with Talbot Uskevren."

Despite Rusk's interest in Darrow, the other werewolves did not accept him as one of their own. Even as the days grew long and the nights warm, the pack spoke to him when necessary, but never in anything approaching the rough camaraderie they enjoyed among themselves. They were a community unto themselves, albeit a savage one. Among the men and women were a few children. They frightened Darrow more than any others, for they had never known a life apart from the Hunt. How much more monstrous than their parents would they become?

"What do you and Rusk talk about?" asked Sorcia one day.

Rusk had not forbidden him to tell, but Darrow sensed it was best not to reveal too much. "The city," he said.

Sorcia must have detected his reluctance, for she let the subject drop. "Rusk usually leads us throughout the forest this time of year," she said, "but now all he does is talk with you and pore over those scrolls. What's in them, I wonder?"

"I wouldn't know," said Darrow.

That was the truth. Rusk had never shown them to him, and he had never asked about them. Unless Rusk was secretly illiterate, Darrow could not imagine what was taking him so long to finish them. Perhaps they contained spells the Huntmaster could not comprehend, or maybe he did not like what he read in the scrolls.

Sometimes Rusk spent hours watching the night sky through the clearing above the fanged temple. He rose before dusk to observe the long shadows that fell from the teeth, comparing their patterns to drawings in the Black Wolf Scrolls. Whatever he saw there often sent him into a quiet rage. The other People could smell his displeasure and avoided him at those times, and Darrow soon learned to discern the almost imperceptible sourness. Before his transformation, Darrow would never have detected such a faint odor. Now it was almost overpowering, a warning to stay clear of the Huntmaster.

It was increasingly clear that Darrow's submissive behavior had planted him firmly at the bottom of the pack hierarchy. Ronan's bullying the night he was transformed was only a harbinger of the abuses that followed. They pushed past him at the lodge entrance and stared him down around the fire when he dared to speak.

Sometimes Darrow looked up to see Rusk watching him after another member of the pack had cowed him, and he felt ashamed. Other times, Sorcia shook her head as Darrow stepped aside for Ronan or one of the other big night-walkers.

Despite the hazing, Darrow tried to feel like one of the pack. His routine shifted gradually from day to night, when he would sit around the fire working leather and fur, cutting tough strips for laces, and sewing his own rough clothes. The lodge held communal tools for cutting firewood and repairing the building itself, but the People had few personal belongings.

The exceptions were weapons and mates. Most of the females chose a single male companion, though a few remained independent or concealed their affairs. At first, Darrow assumed that Sorcia was Rusk's mate, but she never entered his sanctum, and he never saw them go off alone.

If they had been partners, it would have soon become obvious, for there was no modesty among the People. As many as four or five pairs would copulate among the sleeping pack some mornings. Darrow turned his back when it happened, but the lovers' moans made him restless and keenly uncomfortable. When at last he fell asleep, he dreamed of stealing into House Malveen, taking the key, and opening the gate to Maelin's cell. When they escaped together, she could prove her gratitude without the coercion of a cell.

He knew it was unrealistic to dream about rescuing Maelin. He realized Radu would have slain her the day he returned from disposing of him among Rusk's pack. Still, he held her image and the thought of her rescue as a sort of talisman against despair. If he could dream about a selfless act, then surely he had not become like the monsters that surrounded him.

After another month of learning to stalk his prey and throw a spear, Darrow brought down his first stag. When Morrel slung the carcass over his own shoulders, Darrow thought it was a friendly gesture, but the werewolf carried it back to the lodge and claimed it as his own. When Darrow protested, Morrel sent him spinning to the ground with a powerful backhanded blow.

Darrow bristled but stayed down. He kept his eyes low, and Morrel ate the steaming heart when it came off the fire.

Afterward, Darrow grew sullen and sat far from the fire pit. Sorcia was the only one who would come near him.

"How am I supposed to act?" he complained to her. "I do what they say, but they take it away."

"Should a sheep complain of its stolen fleece?"

"I am not a sheep," said Darrow.

"Then act like a wolf," said Sorcia.

Six days later, as four of them were stalking a wounded boar, Karnek cuffed Darrow for making too much noise. Darrow balled a fist and punched Karnek in the face. The lean man laughed and licked the blood from his lip.

Then he proceeded to beat Darrow half to death.

When Darrow could stand again, they resumed the stalk without a word about the fight. That night, after they roasted the boar, Brigid handed Darrow a hunter's portion.

"But I lost," he complained to Sorcia later.

She shrugged. "Yet you fought, little wolf."

Later, she led him out into the woods, running ahead until he chased her. They ran until Darrow's breath came hard and ragged, and she let him catch her. When he grabbed her around the waist, she twisted in his grasp and struck him across the mouth.

He tasted blood and felt a growl rise in his chest. He released her and raised a hand to strike back, but Sorcia swept his legs out from under him, and he fell to the ground. Before she could dart away, he grabbed her ankle and pulled her down beside him.

She rolled atop him and grabbed his hair with both hands, holding his head against the forest floor. Her naked thighs were hot against his chest. He gripped her legs and would not let her go. She opened his mouth with her tongue, and their kiss exploded in his brain. Pleasure arched his back and filled his body with liquid fire.

Her body was incandescent in the moonlight, her beauty almost painfully unreal. Darrow closed his eyes and imagined her with Maelin's dark hair and heart-shaped face. The image galvanized his body, contracting every muscle.

Darrow imagined they lay on the straw floor of a dark cell, the door open beside them. He felt her fingers run over his perspiring skin, scratching lightly over his stomach before peeling away his breeches.

He kept his eyes closed as she tossed aside her own clothes before settling back atop him. Their bodies joined slowly, and she guided him with practiced hands. Breathless, he followed her lead without question.

Afterward, they lay a while upon the ground, watching the sky grow lighter through the trees. When Darrow opened his mouth to speak, she stopped it with a savage kiss. They gathered their clothes and walked back to the lodge, where Sorcia walked away to take her place among the sleeping bodies. There was no question of his joining her. He curled up alone by the wall. He didn't mind it. In his dreams, he was not sleeping alone.

When the High Hunt was less crowded at Midsummer, Darrow thought little of it. It bothered those closest to Rusk the most. Ronan, Karnek, and Brigid wore dour faces for days afterward. They were the closest Rusk had to disciples, and their moods often reflected his.

More worrisome than the lightly attended feast were the rumors that arose in the tendays that followed. Hunters returned from their ranging with stories of an unseen watcher in the woods. Even as they stalked their prey, the People felt the presence of something stalking them. Those who doubled back or laid ambushes found their efforts futile. Morrel joked that it was a ghost from a hunting party the pack had destroyed last winter. The other People repeated the joke until Rusk cuffed one of them for it. Why it offended him, no one understood.

Darrow began spending more time away from the lodge, ranging with two or three other hunters. When they found signs of human intrusion in their territory, they tracked the source. Those they recognized or who showed a symbol of the Beastlord were friends, and the hunters asked if they wanted for meat. If so, the hunters tarried long enough to bring down a stag or a wild boar.

Those who did not revere the Beastlord were given an hour's lead before the hunters followed. Darrow was present for three such intrusions, and none of them escaped the pack.

Any qualms Darrow felt about killing human prey were outweighed by his joy to be alive. Better still, he was a member of the pack, no longer a lackey to the monstrous Stannis Malveen. Best of all, his muscles were becoming lean and hard from ranging the woods. His senses grew keener still, and he could hear every sound in the forest if he remained still. The other hunters taught him what all the new smells meant. Now he could tell when prey was sick or with child, and he left them for more suitable quarry.

Even so, for nights after helping pull down a human trespasser, Darrow dreamed of fleeing down dark corridors. Shadows flew after him, curling around the torches until there was only darkness. Maelin's voice cried out for help, but long before he could reach her, a hideous wheezing sound came up behind him. He fumbled with the key, almost losing it in the darkness. If he could only release her from her horrid captors, his own guilt would be absolved. Before he could put the key in the lock, he felt clammy hands upon his shoulders before falling through the veil of sleep to wake panting and cold with sweat.

He felt the same way after the nights of the moon, when the beast emerged to take command of his body, reshaping Darrow to its own carnal desires. In the mornings, Darrow could barely remember running with the pack, though faint smells and dim images clouded his memory.

"How do you change when you will?" he asked Sorcia.

Some of the nightwalkers could change only during the full moon, or when Rusk evoked their transformation through the power of Malar. Darrow was among the latter, and he envied the others.

"Some were born with the gift," said Sorcia. "They are true nightwalkers. For them, it is as natural as speaking their mother tongue. They learned it so long ago that they can't remember not having it."

"But you can learn a language," said Darrow.

"Just so," she agreed. "And you can learn to change shape when you will."

"Teach me," he said.

And so she did. The lessons began with words but soon left them behind.

The beast was always inside a nightwalker, no matter whether proud Selune rode the sky or veiled her face. Lured out with rage or desire, it would come to the right call. When Sorcia slapped him, Darrow felt the beast snarl. When they ran naked through the forest, he heard it panting in the back of his mind. And when they lay together, even when he closed his eyes to see Maelin's face, Darrow heard the distant howling of his other self deep inside.

By the end of the month of Flamerule, Darrow no longer forgot the nights of four-legged hunting. When autumn came, he could change whenever Selune showed more than half her face. By the Feast of the Moon, he hoped, he would stand as a wolf before Rusk used his infernal spells to impel the change in the weak.

Even fewer people made the pilgrimage to the lodge at Harvestide. All the worshipers from the northern woods arrived, but there were only two from the south. A scowling Rusk emerged from the lodge after receiving them in private.

To lift the mood, Rusk spoke to the People and their worshipers after his opening prayers.

"My journey to the city was not in vain," he said from the altar, "nor was my sacrifice for naught. The Black Wolf Scrolls contain the words of Malar, the Great Hunter. In them I have found the truths the moon worshipers tried to conceal from us. In them, I have found the path to our destiny.

"Our birthright is not limited to the wild. We are the children of the natural world, including the cities shaped by the misguided followers of the weakling gods. The day of our retribution draws near, when the Black Wolf will lead us on the hunt that reclaims our rightful territory from the herd.

"Hear me well, my faithful children, for I speak the words of Malar, and mine is the honor of leading the last wild hunt to break down the pens and fences of the city dwellers. Those who prove strong enough may join us, while the weak we will hunt for our sustenance and our pleasure."

That night, the chosen prey ran fast and far, but in the end he did not join the pack. He cried for Mielikki, Daughter of the Forest. If she heard his plea, it was far too late. Ronan tore out his throat, and the whole pack feasted on his flesh.

Three tendays later, in late Eleasias, Rusk took Darrow and Sorcia ranging to the southwestern reaches of the Arch Wood. They walked in human form, though Darrow had wished for a chance to prove he could transform at will. He had become much better at it recently. It took him less than a minute to enrage the beast and let it come over him.

When they reached the southwestern woods, they found the first signs of human habitation. First they smelled the wood smoke and the unmistakable odor of human kitchens. Soon they spied lone cottages and small clusters of sod houses appeared just within or beyond the tree line.

"Why do they live so far from a town?" asked Darrow. At least in the northern woods, the foresters were within a day's walk of Moonwater.

"No lords to tax them," explained Rusk. "No laws to bind them. Most of them are strong. That is why they make good prey and sometimes good People."

Contrary to Rusk's endorsement, the forest dwellers seemed weak and frightened. They barred their doors at the sight of the strangers and peered at them through the shutters.

"Something turns them against us," grumbled Rusk. "They cannot have forgotten the winters when we fed them."

"You know who it is, Huntmaster," said Sorcia.

Rusk frowned and increased his pace, leaving Darrow and Sorcia 'behind.

"Who is it?" asked Darrow quietly.

"Maleva," said Sorcia. "A cleric of Selune."

"One cleric?" said Darrow. "Why don't we drive her away or kill her?"

"Her home is protected by a forbiddance," said Sorcia. "And Rusk has long decreed that none but he shall take her life."

"A matter of honor?" asked Darrow.

"No," said Sorcia, "a matter of weakness."

They found Maleva's cottage the next night. It stood atop a low hill near the forest's edge. One square window glowed with yellow light, and a thin ribbon of smoke rose into the dark blue sky. Even from fifty yards away, Darrow smelled rabbit stew and wood smoke, as well as the dog lying beside the front door.

"See how close you can get," said Rusk. Sorcia and Darrow looked at him in surprise. "Both of you, from different directions."

"You said she had a forbiddance on the place," said Sorcia.

"That's why he's sending us first," said Darrow, who remembered all too well the way Rusk used him as a trap-springer back at House Malveen. He didn't like it, but he knew Rusk would not tolerate an argument.

Sorcia felt otherwise. "You called Balin a coward for leading from behind," she said.

Darrow blinked and stepped back, expecting Rusk to strike her down. Instead, he merely fixed his eyes on hers and asked, "Which of you will free me from paralysis or heal me if I am struck down?"

Sorcia had no retort for that argument.

"When you wield the power of Malar, perhaps we will discuss my decisions. Until then, you will do well to obey them."

Darrow had already turned away to skirt the hill and approach from the north, where the tree line would prevent him from making a silhouette against the sky. The stars shone in the cloudless sky, and the crescent moon was bright and high.

From this side, Darrow could see neither the dog nor the window. Darrow crept close, expecting trouble only when he reached the building. Thus, he was unprepared when he triggered the ward when still thirty yards away.

Brilliant silver light suffused his body, and an invisible force thrust him away from the cottage. He fell sprawling on the ground, twitching and breathless. The force that pushed him back felt like fire and lightning combined. He couldn't smell or taste, and all his flesh felt numb and useless.

He rolled to his feet and felt briefly dizzy. His vision blurred, then cleared. He looked for Darrow and Sorcia but saw neither of them.

From around the cottage came the dog, barking furiously. It was a big wolfhound with a mottled gray coat. Darrow heard the sound of the door opening, and a woman's voice called out, "Who's there?"

Darrow turned and ran, the wolfhound close behind.

"Call back your dog, Maleva," boomed Rusk's voice. Darrow veered toward the sound, seeking the protection of numbers, as well as Rusk's magic. His body stung and ached from his expulsion.

After a moment's hesitation, Maleva called out, "Here, Shard! Come here, boy!"

The dog broke off its pursuit just as Darrow reached Rusk. Sorcia was already with him, looking no worse for testing the Selunite's ward. Maybe she had simply waited to see what happened to Darrow, first.

Maleva let Shard inside the cottage then closed the door before approaching the three werewolves. She wore a dark blue cloak with the hood thrown back to reveal white hair bound in a long braid. She stopped inside the ward around her cottage, about twenty yards away.

"I see ydu brought a pair of your own dogs," she said.

"Bitch," muttered Sorcia. Darrow noted she said it quietly.

"Won't you come embrace your old friend, Maleva?" Rusk walked halfway toward her but stopped well beyond the magical boundary.

"Go back to your lodge, Rusk. Hunt the animals, and leave the people alone."

"You could come with us," he said. "You could run with me as we did so long ago. There is still great strength in each of us."

"You are wasting your breath, Rusk. If you want to turn away from Malar, I'll go with you to Moonshadow Hall. Otherwise, I'll stay here until one of your pups tears you down."

"But you won't kill me, will you, Maleva?"

"I will if you don't keep away," she said. "Stay in the woods, Rusk."

"Where is Feena? Why does she not come out to greet me?"

"In Yhaunn," said Maleva. "With Dhauna Myritar, well beyond your reach."

"The Mistress of Moonshadow Hall taking your acolyte under her wing? I think not. She never forgave you for your heresy."

"Think what you will," she replied.

"Perhaps you left her in Selgaunt to look after the boy."

"Think whatever you will. Just stay in your woods."

"You think he is the Black Wolf, don't you?"

"The Black Wolf is a myth," she said. "We are too old to believe in such stories."

"You once believed it enough to run with me," said Rusk.

"We were young then. I was a foolish young girl, and you were a much better man than you are today. Stay in your woods, Rusk."

"Perhaps I'll pay them a visit," he said. "There are so many things I would like to tell them both, Feena and this young wolf. But not too soon, I think. Perhaps next summer would be a good time."

Maleva's eyes flashed bright blue, and she raised her hands in prayer to the moon. White light formed on the medallion around her neck.

Rusk pressed the back of his hand against the talisman on his forehead, chanting his own invocation. When he thrust his open hand toward Maleva, a burst of red light surrounded her. For an instant, Darrow could see the smooth, curving border of the invisible field surrounding her home.

Rusk cursed. Whatever the spell was meant to achieve, it had failed.

Simultaneously, a cone of silver light shot from Maleva's palm and covered all three werewolves. Every muscle in Darrow's body cramped at once, and he was forced low to the ground. Before he realized he was transforming, he was in wolf form.

Nearby, Rusk snarled but seemed otherwise unaffected. Beside him stood the white wolf, her vicious teeth bared.

"Go back to the woods, before you lose one of your pups."

She raised her arms toward the moon and called again on Selune's power. Rusk hesitated, then turned to leave. He walked at first then moved more quickly as he willed his own transformation into wolf form. Soon they entered the dark forest, where neither Maleva nor her spells followed them.