Now, Graylin knew all those stories to be true. It had been foolhardy to trek this far. Though, in truth, it was not foolishness, but despondency, that drove him westward. Deep down, he knew he had crossed to the edge of the world to find his own end, to seek a death that had been denied him.
And now it comes for me.
Only in that moment, faced with the inevitable, did he recognize an even deeper truth about himself: how quickly a longing for death could be dashed by a dagger at one’s throat.
He turned and fled through the heartwood, finally seeing what had been buried under his grief and shame.
A will to live.
But it was a realization that had come too late. The pack howled and screamed their eerie cries, chasing after him. It was impossible to know how far back they were. He simply ran wildly through the wood, stumbling over dark bushes, bouncing off trunks. His heart pounded; his vision narrowed. He aimed for the distant brighter forests, but he knew he would never make it. The pack went ominously silent behind him. He expected the mists to shatter into lunging bodies and snapping teeth at any moment.
Then the dark Daughter, the eternal Huntress, showed him mercy.
From ahead, a plaintive mewling rose out of the lightening mists, a forlorn piping of distress. His path veered toward it. It was not a conscious act, but more as if the crying was a form of inescapable bridle-song that pulled at his bruised heart. He thrashed in that direction—only to fall headlong over a body in the brush.
He sprawled hard and rolled around.
Panting and wild-eyed, he discovered a mound of striped fur draped across the forest floor. Though he had only seen a single pelt, he knew it had to be a vargr, one who had died recently. The mewling rose from its far side. He peered over and discovered two squirming cubs, maybe a moon or two old, struggling for cold nipples. He also saw the clamp of iron jaws on the mother’s hindleg, the limb plainly broken and soaked in blood. The tale was easy to read. The she-vargr must have ventured into the brighter woods to hunt for her young, only to fall prey to the cruelties of a Rimehunter’s trap. Still, the beast had pulled the chain’s stake free and dragged herself back to the heartwood, back to her litter—where she eventually died, but not before offering her cubs one last meal.
He couldn’t explain his next act. Maybe it was to honor her efforts before he died himself, or maybe his action was born out of the guilt for a child he could not save.
No matter, he grabbed for the cubs. They hissed and snapped, savage even at such a young age. One caught the meat of his thumb and nearly took it off. The pair then darted into a nearby den in the hollow of a moldering log.
He considered abandoning them, especially with the hunters surely closing in on him. Instead, he swore under his breath. He reached to the she-vargr and squeezed cold milk across his hands. It was a trick he had learned in the Legionary’s kennels. He crawled to the log, draped his cloak across the mulch, and opened his palms. He used the scent of milk and mother to lure the cubs out of hiding. One crept forward, growling, shadowed by the other. They had to be starving.
Once the cubs were close enough, more sniffing than snarling now, he snatched one in each hand. He quickly bundled them up in his cloak. The pair fought and tore and bawled, trying to rip their way out, and were likely to succeed.
He searched around, then yanked his hunting knife from its sheath and sliced off the she-vargr’s tail. He rubbed it across the weeping teats and tossed its length inside his cloak. He cradled the bundle up in his arms. The thrashing cubs had already begun to settle to a wary rumble. The fur of their mother and the soak of her milk calmed them enough for exhaustion to set in and subdue them.
Lucky to still be alive, he stood up.
But it wasn’t luck.
He found an arc of glinting eyes staring out of the heartwood at him. His heart pounded harder. He cursed his foolishness at stopping, but he also did not regret it. He had once failed another desperate mother.
Let this be a small act of atonement before I die.
But the eyes just continued to shine at him. He held his ground, accepting what was to come, maybe even welcoming it now.
Then one pair of eyes vanished, then another, and another. Soon the forest was dark and silent. He took a shaky step away, waited, then risked another. But those eyes never reappeared. He did not know if the vargr were mystified by his strange act of mercy. Or maybe it was the scent of milk and cubs that masked him, confused them.
For whatever reason, they allowed him to go.
He accepted their gift of his life and fled back to brighter woods.
* * *
FINISHED DRESSING THE elk, Graylin let go of the past and stared appreciatively at the pair of full-grown vargr, his brothers of the hunt. Not only had he survived that fateful brush with death in the heartwood, raising the pair had given him a reason to live.
He straightened from his labors. With still no sign of the knoll-bear’s return, he called them.
“Aamon, Kalder, to me.”
They trotted over, leaping the stream to join him. He bent down and split away two lobes off the elk’s liver and tossed one to each. They savaged into the raw flesh, then returned to patrolling the edges of the forest while he fashioned a crude travois out of roped branches. He piled his meat on top of it and set about for home, dragging the sled and whistling for his brothers to follow.
The path back was thankfully downhill. It took half the time to return to within a quarter league of his cabin. He stopped long enough to strip his clothing and dive naked into an icy blue tarn. He rinsed the blood, sweat, and bile from his body and used the cold to numb the ache in his limbs and joints. With a final quake of frigid limbs, he climbed out and buffed himself dry with an empty roughspun sack.
As he did so, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the slowly settling lake. He read the map of his scars, the veins of gray in his black hair and scruff of beard. But as the waters shimmered, he allowed himself to imagine how he had once looked, before he broke an oath. A hale knight of strong muscle, straight limbs, and with hair as black as oiled soot and eyes of a silvery blue.
On the bank, he ran a palm over the ruff of his chest hair, trying to remember his former self. He still felt strong muscles, but they were leaner and harder now. His fingers traced the gnarled scars, the broken nose, the knot in his jaw. His hip joints ached, and his left forearm had a crook to it.
This is who I am now, disgraced and banished and broken.
With a scowl, he turned his back on the illusion in the water. That shimmering knight was long dead. And to most of the world, so was the man. And in some ways, he had died in that heartwood a decade ago. The hunter who returned with two squalling vargr cubs was not the same one who had entered that dark wood.
He found Aamon and Kalder sitting on their haunches, staring back at him. Aamon gave a sweep of his tail, and Kalder simply narrowed his eyes. He met their uncompromising regard. Their gazes were not so much loving as tolerant. He knew these two were not lapdogs. Despite heeding his command and learning a hundred hand signals, they remained beasts of the field, as likely to turn on him as not, if the winds should shift. He accepted that as part of their pact and would have it no other way.
May you always hold me to a hard account, my brothers.
Still, he found himself grateful for their attention and company. It was difficult to remain morose when he had such stalwart companions.