The Hallowed Hunt

its jaws. It snarled thickly in its bonds.

The young wolf, barely more than a pup, scrabbled away from its larger comrade in evident fear, claws scratching on the floorboards. The huntsman took it for cowardly, but later Ingrey would come to believe it had known of the contagion. Otherwise, it was startlingly docile, attentive as a well-trained dog. Its fur was dark and wonderfully dense, its silver-gilt eyes clear, and it responded at once to Ingrey’s arrival, straining toward him and sniffing, staring up in evident adoration. Ingrey loved it instantly, his hands aching to run through the pewter-black pelt.

The sorcerer directed Ingrey and his father to strip to the waist and kneel on the cold floor a few paces apart, facing each other. He intoned some phrases in the old tongue of the Weald, pronouncing them carefully with many a side glance at a piece of wrinkled paper plucked from his belt. The language seemed to hover maddeningly just on the edge of Ingrey’s understanding.

At Cumril’s sign, the huntsman dragged the old wolf to Lord Ingalef’s arms. He let go of the young wolf’s leash to do so, and the animal scampered to Ingrey’s lap. Ingrey held its soft warmth close, and it wriggled around to eagerly lick his face. His hands buried themselves in its fur, petting and stroking; the creature emitted small, happy whines and tried to wash Ingrey’s ear. The rough tongue tickled, and Ingrey had to choke down a reflexive, unfitting laugh.

Muttering briefly over the blade, the sorcerer delivered the sacred knife to Lord Ingalef’s waiting hand, then stepped back hastily as the disturbed wolf snapped at him. The beast began to struggle as Lord Ingalef’s grip tightened. The struggle redoubled as he grasped it by the muzzle and tried to tilt its head back. He lost his hold, the jaw straps slipped loose, and the animal sank its teeth in his left forearm, shaking its head and snarling, worrying the flesh. Muffling a curse, he regained a partial purchase with knees and the weight of his strong body. The blade flashed, sank into fur and flesh. Red blood spurted. The snarls died, the jaws loosed, and the furry bundle subsided limply; then, a moment later, into a more profound stillness.

Lord Ingalef sat up and back, releasing knife and carcass. The knife clattered on the stones.

'Oh,' he said, eyes wide and strange. 'It worked. How very... odd that feels... '

Cumril cast him a worried look; the huntsman hastened to bind his savaged arm.

'My lord, should you not... ?' Cumril began.

Lord Ingalef shook his head sharply and raised his sound hand in a unsteady Continue! gesture. 'It worked! Go on!'

The sorcerer picked up the second blade, gleaming new-forged, from the cushion on which it rested, and trod forward mumbling again. He pressed the knife into Ingrey’s hand and stepped back once more.

Ingrey’s hand closed unhappily on the hilt, and he looked into the bright eyes of his wolf. I don’t want to kill you. You are too beautiful. I want to keep you. The clean jaws opened, showing fine white teeth, and Cumril’s breath drew in, but the young wolf only lolled out its pink tongue and licked Ingrey’s hand. The cool black nose nudged his knife-clutching fist, and Ingrey blinked back tears. The wolf sat up between Ingrey’s knees, raised its head, and twisted around to gaze into its killer’s face with perfect trust.

He must not botch this, must not inflict unnecessary torment with repeated strikes. His hands felt the neck, traced the firm muscles and the soft ripple of artery and vein. The room was a silvered blur. The young wolf leaned into him as Ingrey laid the blade close. He drew back, struck, yanked with all his strength. Felt the flesh part, the hot blood spurt over his hands, wetting the fur. Felt the body relax in his arms.

The dark flow struck his mind like a torrent of blood. Wolf lives, life upon life, huts and fires, castles and battles, stables and steeds, iron and fire, hunts; hunt upon hunt, kill upon kill, but always with men, never with a wolf pack; back still farther beyond even the memory of fire, into endless forests crusted with snow in the moonlight. There was too much, too much, too many years... his eyes rolled back.

Shouts of alarm: his father’s voice, 'Something’s gone wrong! Curse you, Cumril, catch him!'

'He’s gone all shaking—he’s bitten his tongue, my lord—'

A shift of time and space, and his wolf was bound—no, he was bound—red-silk cords whispered and muttered around him, writhing, rooting in him like vines. His wolf snapped at them, white teeth closing, tearing, but the cords regrew with frightening speed. They wrapped his head, tightening painfully.

Unfamiliar voices invaded his delirium then, irritatingly. His wolf fled. The memory of his evil dream spattered and ran away like water.

'He can’t be asleep; his eyes are half-open, see them gleam?'

'No, don’t wake him up! I know what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to lead them back to bed quietly, or, I don’t know, they go all wild, or something.'

'Then I’m not touching him with that sword in his hand!'

'Well, how else?'

'Get more light, woman. Oh, five gods be thanked, here’s his own man.'

A hesitation; then, 'Lord Ingrey? Lord Ingrey!'

Candlelight doubled, doubled again. Ingrey blinked, gasped, surged to wakefulness. His head ached abominably. He was standing up. Shock brought him fully alert.

He was standing once more in the temple infirmary, if the room in back of the apothecary’s could be so designated. He wore the divine’s nightshirt half-tucked into his trousers, but his feet were bare on the board floor. His right hand gripped his naked sword.

He was surrounded by the steward, one of Ijada’s woman attendants, and the guardsman that Gesca had designated for the night watch. Well, not surrounded, exactly; the first two were plastered against the walls, staring at him with wide and terrified eyes, and the third-named hovered in the back doorway of the shop.

'I’m'—he had to stop, swallow, moisten his lips—'I’m awake.' What am I doing here? How did I get over here?

He’d been sleepwalking, presumably. He had heard of such things. He’d never done it before. And it had been more than just blundering about in the dark. He’d partly dressed, found his weapon, somehow made his way in unobserved silence down a stairway, through a door—which surely must have been locked, so he must have turned the key—across the cobbled square, and into this other building.

Where Lady Ijada lies asleep. Five gods, let her go on sleeping. The door to the bedchamber was closed—now. In sudden horror, he glanced at his blade, but it was still gleaming and dry. No dripping gore stained it. Yet.

His guardsman, with a wary glance at his sword, came to him and took him by his left arm. 'Are you all right, my lord?'

'Hurt my head today,' Ingrey mumbled. 'The dedicat’s medicines gave me strange dreams. Dizzy. Sorry... '

'Should I... um... take you back to bed, my lord?'

'Yes,' said Ingrey gratefully. 'Yes'—the seldom-used phrase forced itself from his cold lips—'please you.' He was shivering now. It wasn’t wholly from the chill.

He suffered the guardsman to guide him out the door, around the shop, back across the silent, dark square. Back into the divine’s house. A servant who had slept through Ingrey’s exit was awakened by their return and came out into the hall in sleepy alarm. Ingrey mumbled more excuses about the dedicat’s potions, which served well enough given the porter’s own muzzy state. Ingrey let his guardsman guide him all the way to his bed and even pull his covers up, sergeantly maternal. The man retreated in a clanking, board-creaking sort of tiptoe, pulling the door shut behind him.

Ingrey waited until the footsteps had faded away in the square before he crawled out from his quilts, groped for his tinderbox, and lit a candle, flint and striker uncooperative in his shaking hands. He sat on the edge of the bed recovering for a few minutes, then arose and made a survey of his room. He could only lock the door from the inside, which meant he could unlock it as easily, unless he then threw the key out the window or shoved it under the door, which would create awkward delays and explanations in the morning. He briefly regretted not having had his guardsman lock it as he’d left, although that, too, would have entailed awkward explanations. Or clever lies, and Ingrey was feeling singularly stupid just now. At length, he set his sword and belt knife in a chest that held spare linens, and balanced several potentially noisy objects, capped with the tin basin from his washstand, atop the lid in a deliberately precarious tower.