wolf in all these thirty years?”
“You’d think it would be easy, aye? Take the first shot
as he was changing and end the matter. It isn’t so easy.
Once before, binding him slowed the change, and we tried
that again tonight. But sometimes …” The dwarf
shuddered. “Sometimes he’s changed between one breath
and the next. Sometimes faster than that, and the wolf is
gone before either one of us can pick up a weapon. He
doesn’t just LOOK like a wolf. He IS one! He’ll tear at you,
running, and he’s too canny to stay around fighting losing
battles.
“So,” she said. “You have to go out and hunt the
wolf?”
Neither answered. A glance passed between them and
Roulant got to his feet. He took her hand, his own very
cold as he led her into the shadow of a low broken wall.
“Una,” he said. “We can kill the wolf if we can find it –
”
“That won’t be hard tonight. You could track him by
the blood.”
“We could. Except …” His face shone white in the
moonlight, his eyes dark with dread. “Except that we dare
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.