Wolfsangel

42

Panic swept the rock. The resting Noaidis tried to help those still lost to the power of the drums and chanting. Some woke easily, others not at all and had to be left to death as their brothers sought what little protection the bare island provided.

Lieaibolmmai found himself flat on his face concealed in the dark of the cave entrance, digging in his furs for his little knife. There was a squelching noise like a man walking through a swamp, and he saw the monster put its back paws through the chest of the Noaidi in the bird mask.

The gigantic creature was hideous. Its black wolf’s head with eyes of shining emerald sat on a body that was a twisted stand-off between man and wolf, though three times the size of the biggest man Lieaibolmmai had ever seen. The creature loped on all fours, its back limbs and front left those of a wolf, while its front right, which it used to tear and smash the Noaidis, to pull them into its crushing jaws, was the arm of a freakishly big human.

The sorcerers had been taken completely by surprise. Some were slashing at the creature with their knives, some were throwing rocks, a few were shooting arrows from squat bows, but most were scrambling for the boats that would take them off the island.

Lieaibolmmai cleared his mind. Hadn’t he bound the wolf? He had gone to it in its dreams, called it with his drums, commanded it into the cave and done all the magic as the runes had revealed. He had also heard the girl with the wolf and it was certain they were known and important to each other. And hadn’t the wolf appeared in exactly the form he had seen in his visions? So what was this thing?

He felt himself pissing where he lay. He had to control himself, to think clearly.

Then he understood that he had been deceived. Somehow the goddess had tricked him. He had snared a wolf but not the one he was looking for. And yet he had touched its mind, run with it in the wide dark of the mountains, breathed its joy in the kill. He could not understand it.

Lieaibolmmai was an honest man. He had no delight in the dark magics he had been shown and looked for power only to defend himself rather than for its own sake. He knew what he had to do — to give the girl he had uprooted and the wolfman he had enchanted and damned a chance. He went further into the cave and threw down the ropes.

‘The wolf is here,’ he said into the darkness. ‘Stay until it has finished killing. I will do my best to control it. I will-’

He never finished his sentence. A primordial sense told him that something was behind him, something worse than a neck-break fall. He stepped forward into the darkness.

At the bottom of the shaft Feileg and Adisla heard Lieaibolmmai crash to the ground beside them and then his scream. He had torn his arm from its socket and couldn’t stifle his agony.

Then something else dropped softly down the shaft, some sort of creature.

In the blackness there were retching and coughing noises. The creature hacked, growled and snapped again and again. She heard it snuffle forward, its snout testing the darkness. Adisla was close to collapse. She could concentrate on nothing, think of nothing but the awful scraping sounds coming from the creature’s throat, within which she seemed to hear some words.

‘My love,’ it said. ‘I have found you.’