not set foot out there!'
She frowned, leaned on the wall to look out. All she saw was night and stars and the moons hanging over the clearing. She heard night noise, owls wondering and hares scampering, a stream laughing over stones.
'I know,' Roulant said. 'I see everything that you see, just as you see it. When I'm standing here.' He turned his back on the forest. 'When I set foot outside the ruin — even hold my hand out beyond the wall… It's terrible out there. The Spoiler laid a curse on us too, one we've never found a way past. In here, we're safe. Out there
… they'll kill us.'
Una heard this, but she was staring out at the forest and the night, thinking about what he'd said about things being very different beyond the wall. She looked down and saw her loosely clasped hands just beyond the wall. Unlike the others, she neither saw nor felt any curse in the forest or the night.
Una turned away from the wall and walked past Roulant and Guarinn without a word. She picked up Roulant's bow and quiver on the way. She'd not gotten but a few yards when she heard Roulant shout something, heard Guarinn scrambling to his feet, echoing the warning cry. Una ran, heeding no warning. She vaulted the wall where the wolf had fled.
As she bounded down the hill, Una hoped that whatever kept Roulant and Guarinn helpless in the ruin would not affect her. It was frightening enough to go hunting a wounded wolf in the night, and her only a middling shot with a bow. Still, the beast was wounded, and if she could once get a good aim, she'd be able to kill it.
Roulant jumped the wall, chased heedlessly after Una. And he thought: Idiot girl! Guarinn was a long reach behind. He prayed that Roulant would be able to snatch her back to safety in time, that he wouldn't have to follow.
Una was too fast. She vanished into the shadows at the foot of the hill. Roulant stood where he'd landed.
Guarinn eyed the darkness, and Roulant standing outside the wall, straining like a leashed hound. The night would spring alive at any moment, suddenly boiling with horror. The wall would be on them.
Guarinn nervously fingered the haft of his axe. 'Roulant, what do you think?'
'I'm going to fetch Una back, that's what I think!'
Guarinn heard Roulant's answer only faintly, for the young man was already at the foot of the hill. Alone in the ruin, Guarinn shifted from foot to foot, indecisively. 'This is insane,' he muttered. 'I know what's going to happen to me if I leave here…'
He took a breath, fueling courage and a suddenly rising hope. Maybe nothing would happen.
Roulant can chase after his girl if that's what he wants to do, Guarinn thought. But I still have my axe and good strong arm, and I'm going for the wolf.
Guarinn hopped the wall. But when his feet hit the ground he found himself on the wrong side of the border between reason and nightmare, caught in the trap the Spoiler had laid for any wolfhunter who ventured out of the ruin.
The wall walked. And the dead with him.
They crawled, and shambled, and dragged themselves staggering through a foul and freezing fog, each trying desperately to reach Guarinn as the damned would grasp at one last hope. He could not move, stood rooted like an oak in the ice-toothed mist, helpless as decaying hands plucked at him, clung to him, shoulder and wrist and arm. And this was no silent place, this nightmare-realm. It was filled up with the mad shrieking and frenzied grieving of people he'd known in life, and some he'd never seen until they were dead.
A hunter who'd died to feed the wolf's hunger.
An old peddler night-caught in the forest, hardly recognizable as human when he'd been found.
A child, a little boy screaming now as it had when, three years ago, the wolf had torn him from his bed. Or was that Guarinn's own voice screaming, his own throat torn with the violence of terror as the child's had been by the wolf's fangs?
Then came a howling, a long, aching sound of abandonment. The wolf. Or a friend forsaken. Or an innocent dying.
Guarinn,you've failed me, failed them all! Hands clawed at his face, dug and tore at his throat, leaving bits of their own flesh and grave-mold behind to foul his beard and hair.
Faithless friend! You stink of their blood, Guarinn Hammerfell!
Guarinn cried out in terror, couldn't tell his own voice from theirs, no longer knew who accused — they or him. The ice-mist filled up his lungs, stopped his breath, suffocating him.
Murderer! Guarinn child-killer! Guarinn -
'Guarinn! Breathe! Come on, breathe!'
Roulant shook his friend till his teeth rattled, shook him harder still, but to no effect. Roulant'd heard but one choking gasp of terror, just as he was entering the forest, and he'd known that whatever chance-found charm was keeping him safe and sane outside the ruin wasn't working for Guarinn. The dwarf was trapped, unable to move, even to breathe, while mind and soul were adrift in the cold country of nightmare.
'Guarinn,' Roulant shouted, fearful. Perhaps Una was safe because the Spoiler's trap was meant to harm no one but those who bound by the curse. Perhaps Roulant was safe because he left the ruin to find Una, not to end the curse. But Guarinn must have left the ruin with plans to kill the wolf. That's what sprung the Spoiler's trap, Roulant thought.
'Guarinn!' he cried again, gathering his friend close, holding him. 'We've got to find Una! I need you to help me. Please, Guarinn! Come back and help me…'
A breath, just a small one.
'Guarinn — help me find Una. We must find Una!'
The dwarf drew another breath, no steadier, but deeper. Roulant held him hard, forced him to look nowhere but into his eyes. 'Listen — LISTEN! Don't think about anything else but this: We have to find Una. Don't even think about why. We're here for no reason but to find Una. Do you understand?'
Guarinn swallowed hard.
'Do you understand?'
'Yes,' Guarinn said hoarsely. 'What next?'
Roulant thought as he helped his friend to his feet.
The wolf woke to pain and hunger. He was not frightened by the pain, knowing he could transcend it. He was afraid of hunger. Wolves worship only one god, and the god's name is Hunger.
He'd found shelter quickly after he'd fled his attackers, a soft nest of old leaves beneath a rock outcropping. There, downwind of his enemies so he could smell them if they pursued, he'd licked clean the shallow cuts on his belly and legs, the deeper one on his shoulder. He'd gnawed off the trailing end of the rope, for that frightened him nearly as much as hunger. It had more than once snagged in bushes to choke him as he'd fled. He'd gotten most of it, wearing only the noose now, a foul-smelling collar. Free and safe, he'd curled tight against the cold — sleeping lightly, dreaming of thirst and hunger as a thin veil of clouds came from the east to hide the stars.
Now the shadows had softer edges and the darkness was deeper. The wind told him that water was no great distance away — clean and cold by the smell; by the sound, no more than a streamlet. It would be enough to provide thirst's ease. And there was another scent, not close yet, only faintly woven into night, but the wolf knew it — human-scent, burnt meat and smoke and old skins; sweat and the light, sweet odor of flesh; running beneath that, the warm smell of blood; over it all, the tang of fear, sharp and enticing on the cold night air. He'd seen this young female not long ago, and he had the mark of her steel fang on him. Hers was the least of his wounds, for she'd been distracted by fear and not very strong.
With his lean god for company, the wolf rose stiffly from his warm nest.
Una knelt to examine the dark blot marking the faded earth of the deer trail, and by the thin light of the moons saw that it was no more than shadow. Cold wind blew steadily from the east, carried the smell of a morning snow. Una shivered and got to her feet. She'd not seen a blood-mark or the imprints of the wolf's limping passage for some time now, but the last real sign had been along this game-trail, a path no more than a faint, wandering
