soon. Maybe.
And maybe not. Una’s faithful silence on the subject of Roulant’s
Night-walk extended to Roulant himself, for she didn’t know how to ask
the question that would sound like an accusation: WHAT DO YOU KNOW
ABOUT THE NIGHT OF THE WOLF THAT EVEN OUR MAGE DOESN’T?
And so the secret cast a shadow between them. Day by
day, a little at a time, the shadow was changing them, as if
by a malicious magic, into uneasy strangers.
As darkness gathered beneath the forest’s thin eaves,
old dead leaves ran scrabbling before the wind. In the
luminous sky, one early, eager star shone out. A dark
shape stood atop the hill, a young man with a great
breadth of shoulder and a long, loping stride. Roulant
stopped at the crest and stood silhouetted against the sky,
the last light shining on his brown-gold hair. Still as stone,
he hung there, between the village and the wildwood –
stood a long time before he at last vanished into the
twilight beneath the trees.
The wind moaned round the rocks, and Una shivered
as she checked the draw of the dagger at her belt. She was
afraid: of the Night, and of what she might discover, and
of what she might lose. But she hugged her courage close.
She would follow Roulant tonight, and she wouldn’t turn
back. She had to know what part he played in this yearly
night of dread.
*****
Soft on the cold air, Roulant heard a whisper, the dry
rattling of brush behind him. He turned quickly, saw a
flash of red in the tangled thickets on the slope below:
some padding fox or vixen on the trail of prey. Roulant
went on climbing. He must reach the ruin before
moonrise.
The tumbled stone walls atop the bald hill in the
forest had been his destination each Night for the past
two, as it had been his father’s every year since Roulant
could remember. When he was a boy, after his mother’s
death, Roulant used to think he knew why his father went
out into the forest on the Night of the Wolf. He believed
that Tam was a brave champion upon a secret quest to
help save the people of Dimmin. Roulant’d never told
anyone what he believed, nor did he mention it to his
father. A secret is a secret, and Tam need not carry the
burden of knowing his had been discovered.
The year the wolf had killed the farmer’s child was
the last Tam went up to the ruin. The summer after, he
died. Roulant was seventeen then, and that was when he
learned that Thorne was the wolf.
It was a hard thing to learn. Roulant had known
Thorne since childhood, had felt for him the magical awe
and affection that is hero-worship. Even knowing that the
mage became the wolf, once every annum, could not
break their bond. From that year to this, enmeshed in the
web of an old curse, Roulant had been drawn out into the
forest on the Night to stand with Guarinn Hammerfell and
promise Thorne they would kill the wolf, swear they
would free their friend from the curse.
This, on the face of it, was a difficult promise to keep,
for wolves are hard to hunt and kill. But Roulant, in
youthful zeal, had never truly thought it would be
impossible. He was a good hunter. His father had taught
him to be a faultless shot with bow and arrow. Guarinn
had taught him to track, and made the lessons easy,
companionable rambles in the forest. As he’d stood
faithfully with Tam, Guarinn was always with Roulant.
Yet, just as Tam had failed his own promise, Roulant had,
too – so far.
There were reasons for that, the kind Roulant dared
not think about here and alone in the dark forest.
Wind soughed low, herding fallen leaves. All around,
the night drew in close, dark and sighing. Roulant stopped
for breath before he began to climb the last stony path, the
barely seen trace that would lead him to the ruin.
Watching his breath plume in the frosty air, he thought
that the pale mist was just like the promises he’d made to