The wolf growled, as if in answer, or to tell her to shut up. Susan obeyed, and tried to work out where they were. Blinded by the motorway lights and the onrush of air, it was hard for her to see the road signs, but every now and then she got a good glimpse. She was still on the M1, still speeding northwards.
After a while Susan shut her eyes, because the rush of wind was making them water and the overhead lights were too bright and too annoying. Soon, she fell into something that was not quite sleep, a kind of daze that was probably also shock.
Susan snapped into full consciousness when the wolf stumbled and almost fell, and its mouth closed on her, hard, its teeth suddenly feeling much more present and firm. She cried out and struggled for a moment, before the wolf’s jaws eased open and the teeth became fuzzy and less solid again, enough to let her draw breath.
It was still night, but dawn was drawing near. There was more traffic, but mostly going the other way. The wolf was passing what little there was on their side, heading up a long hill. Susan spotted a road sign, but as all this said was “Junction 22, 3 Miles” this didn’t help her, as she had never taken the M1 and had no idea where the major junctions were located.
But reading the sign had been easier than before, because the wolf was slower on the incline. Soon it became clear to Susan that it was having difficulties. For the first time, she realized it wasn’t breathing, that it didn’t breathe at all. There should have been a rush of air backwards and forwards over her; any wolf or dog would be panting under the current exertion. But there was no movement of breath at all.
Nor was there any saliva, Susan thought a moment later, which was a relief. But it was also disturbing. Her captor had the shape of a giant wolf, but what was it really?
The creature slowed more, and growled, this time in exasperation. It turned its head from side to side, looking back along itself. Susan craned her neck to try and see, and when it turned again, she saw what was troubling it.
Merlin’s sword, the old sword, was sticking out of the wolf’s left haunch, and there was a long trail of thick golden blood running from it all the way down the wolf’s leg, as slow and viscous as honey.
That must have been the cause of the meaty sound she’d heard, and the wolf’s yelp, thought Susan. Though it hadn’t had any effect at first, it was obviously hurting the wolf now, and slowing it down. Things immediately looked rather less desperate, though Susan knew everything would depend on the timing. A rescue would need to happen before the wolf got wherever it was going and delivered her to whoever had ordered this kidnapping.
If the wolf got where it was going . . .
It started off again, but it was limping badly now, dragging that left rear leg. It didn’t continue up the hill along the hard shoulder of the motorway, but left it altogether, stepping over a low fence to head across a field of early harvested clover, the bales of hay dotted about the stubble. From the field, the wolf took a narrow lane, moving quite slowly and cautiously now, still wary of a head-on collision. Once it had to jump aside to avoid a Land Rover, and after that, while it still followed the lane basically westward, the wolf tried to move in the fields on either side.
There were no more big road signs for Susan to see, and it was still too dark to read the old white signposts with the local road names even at the slower pace. Besides, she doubted they would mean anything to her anyway. She was puzzled by the wolf’s sudden change of direction, because it had been so fixed on heading north. The departure from the M1 appeared to be sudden and unplanned.
In fact, the wolf seemed as lost as Susan, or at least was finding its way. It stopped at every small crossroads and nosed the air and the ground, an uncomfortable process for Susan, who was jostled around every time.
After a while, she became aware the sky was getting lighter; the sun was coming up. The light offered small comfort. She ached all over, and her bonds felt no looser, despite all her efforts.
The wolf left the road again, this time taking a bridle path into a wood, some sort of ancient forest, though Susan hadn’t caught the actual name on the sign at the beginning of the path. Though the wolf was so large it had to squeeze itself between trees, bending branches back and shaking leaves like anything, curiously none of the branches actually broke and no leaves fell, so there was little sign of its passing.
It was still limping, but moved with greater surety, as if it had finally found what it was looking for.
The bridle path turned to leave the edge of the forest to climb up to the crest of a small, bare hill, but the wolf left the path to descend deeper into the ancient wood. The trees grew thicker here, so close Susan could have sworn there was no way for the wolf to pass, but it made it through, squeezing between oak and beech and birch. It was careful not to knock Susan against the trees, though it didn’t seem to matter for itself.
Eventually, the forest thinned out again, the slope becoming less and less steep until they reached a flat area and the wolf emerged into a dell, a natural clearing at the heart of the wood. There was a small pool in the middle, about twenty feet in diameter, entirely ringed by low, mossy stones. A well, of sorts. Bluebells grew around it in profusion, and on some other day, arriving by
