Chapter 6: The Will of The Gods

All the energy and fire left Brynn as she winced in pain at her already swelling wrist. Somehow, with her latest fall, the whole ordeal ended and a new one began. A line was drawn in time that would forever mark the before and after the trapping of the wolf.

The group had been forever changed. Brynn was forever changed. She felt in her bones that they were now on a path very unlike the one they had envisioned.

She was suddenly very tired, and she felt foolish and weak as she cradled her injury. They had come so very close to being ripped to pieces. The wolf lay trapped and bloodied with its leg savaged, and here she sat on the cold ground shaking and holding her arm as if a damaged wrist were the worst possible outcome.

She tried desperately not to cry, and while she succeeded at gritting her teeth and swallowing the sobs before they burst from her throat, the tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. Maeve and Vesta were suddenly at her side, helping her up by her elbows.

“Hopefully just a sprain,” Vesta said, nodding at her wrist.

“Yeah,” Brynn choked, and she dropped her arm to her side, wishing she could hide it altogether. She didn’t want the others to see her like that, weeping over a wrist, when moments ago Garan had tried to sacrifice himself to save her. “It’s nothing.”

Garan was on his feet now, but his left leg was clearly in bad shape. The leg of his trouser was slashed open, and blood seeped out around a gash in his calf. He struggled to bend down, wincing, and grunting as he did so and grabbed the bow now laying on the ground where Trevor had tackled him. Then, with great effort, he hobbled across the clearing, leaving a trail of blood from the leg he dragged behind him.

Later, Brynn would hate herself for not helping him. She didn’t know what goal he had in mind at the time, but she would sometimes wonder if things would have been different if she had shown him the small kindness of giving him her body to lean on then. At the time, though, she only marveled at how quickly he crossed that space, even with that terrible limp, when only minutes ago it had seemed like such a vast arena for their drama to play out across.

When he reached the spot where Vesta had once stood, he again bent down with great effort and grasped the arrow that had been buried so deeply in the earth. Brynn swiveled and saw that the missed arrow nearer to them had been snapped in the uproar, the wood of it split and splintered.

Garan let loose a guttural, determined noise as he pulled the arrow from the ground. Blood began to pool around him, and in the now dawning morning light, Brynn could see that the color was draining from his face.

With the arrow finally freed, Garan stumbled slightly before regaining his balance. He hobbled closer to the wolf, still in its barbed confines but with eyes rolling wildly, before shakily nocking the arrow in Vesta’s bow.

“Garan, stop,” Trevor said, holding a hand up as if sheer force of will could make Garan lower the bow. “It’s trapped. It can’t hurt us. We can still take it back to Ingram.” As he spoke, Trevor lifted his left hand to his necklace, nervously stroking the metal with his thumb.

Garan’s hands trembled so badly that the arrow slipped. He shook his head and hobbled several steps closer. He took a breath and attempted to nock the arrow again.

“Garan!” Trevor yelled this time, taking a step closer. The look in Garan’s eyes was terrible and menacing. Vengeful. Even after all the danger they’d just faced, Trevor couldn’t make himself step in front of that arrow. His voice quieted into soft, pleading breathiness, “Please. We can still bring it back. We can still do right by the Gods.”

Garan wasn’t listening. There was death in his eyes. If only his body were cooperating better, the deed would already be done. Maeve and Vesta stood stupidly by, doing nothing, as if the matter didn’t concern them at all. Brynn stepped forward, though a tightening in her chest made it impossible for her to speak. She raised a hand to mimic Trevor’s, willing Garan to stop despite her lack of words.

Finally, she managed one toneless whisper. “Please,” she said, and it was this that forced Garan to pause. He looked at her and some of the venom in his face melted into desperation. His nostrils flared as he tried to keep his chin from trembling. He had looked her in the eyes many times before but never had his gaze been so penetrating.

“It almost killed you,” he said huskily.

“Aye, it did,” Cormac said behind them. “Because of her reckless actions, it almost killed you both. Maybe all of you.”

Brynn realized suddenly that Cormac had been absent for the whole ordeal. Where had he been? Had he slept through the whole thing? Or had he just been lurking out of sight, watching it all unfold? Brynn wasn’t sure which would be worse.

He strode further into the clearing, and Brynn thought he had never looked older. His whole body reminded her of a tired sigh, slumping and dispirited.

“Put the bow down, Garan,” Cormac continued, eyes on the trapped wolf, taking in its bloody, constrained form. He walked around the wolf, keeping his distance but taking in the beast from all angles. “We set out to trap it, and trapped it is. We will bring it back to Ingram as planned.”

“It’s evil, Cormac, can’t you feel it?” Garan said. His voice lilted and cracked as though he might dissolve.

“All the more reason,” Cormac insisted. “We will bring it back, and its death will do good for all of Ingram, not just for ourselves.”

At this, Garan snarled in a manner, not unlike his quarry, but before he could say another word, his legs collapsed beneath him. His eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he fell in an unconscious heap, hand finally loosening its grip on Vesta’s bow.

Brynn, Maeve, and Vesta rushed forward to tend to him. Brynn placed her hand on Garan’s pale cheek, noting the soft whisps of steam puffing gently from his mouth. Maeve tore the tattered fabric of his trousers away to reveal the gash beneath. She sucked in a breath, and the sound prompted Brynn to look too.

“Oh, Garan,” Brynn said softly, stroking his cheek. From his confine, the wolf growled soft and low. Brynn did not look at it.

Vesta stood, pulled out her dagger, and quickly sliced a strip of fabric from the bottom of her tunic. She tossed it at Maeve who knew what to do with it. She slipped it under the leg a couple of inches above the gash and pulled it tight. As she did, Garan groaned.

“Help me get this tight,” Maeve said. Brynn and Maeve both pulled on the strip of fabric, and Brynn held it tight while Maeve tied the knot. “We need to get him back to camp. We can stitch this.”

“It’s just a little scratch,” Garan managed weakly, consciousness returned to him. “No need for needles.”

“Shut up,” Maeve ordered. “This is going to hurt.” As they struggled to get Garan to his feet, the other men made no move to help.

“Where were you?” Vesta demanded of Cormac who glared at her in response.

“Forgive me for not rushing to be mauled to death with the rest of you fools. Someone had to live to drag back what was left of your bodies. The fact that you’re all alive is a damn miracle!”

“It’s the will of the Gods,” Trevor said solemnly. Vesta made a disgusted sound and threw up her hands in exasperation. She looked like she might say more but instead turned and went to help Maeve and Brynn with Garan.

Late in the afternoon, Brynn finally emerged from the tent where they tended Garan’s leg. They had stopped the bleeding, cleaned the wound, and stitched the flesh back together. Not having much training in healing, the stitching itself was tedious work. Brynn and Maeve took turns at it, with one stitching and one holding Garan’s hand and stroking his face with a cool cloth. Now, having forced him to close his eyes, the girls left him to rest.

What Brynn saw outside squeezed her heart, and she couldn’t say for certain why. The wolf had been dragged back to camp, and somehow, the men had managed to haul the beast into a rudimentary wooden crate on the back of the small hand cart they had brought with them. It was so large that its fur pressed against the wooden bars, and the whole cart looked like it might topple over with the weight.

“We’ll have to pack most of our supplies on our backs,” Cormac said. Brynn averted her eyes from the wolf, its pain too difficult for her to stomach. She sat heavily on a log by the fire, a pot of pine needle tea already steaming.

“Are we leaving already?” Maeve asked.

“In the morning,” Trevor nodded.

Vesta, tending the fire, ladled some tea in a mug and shoved it at Brynn. Her lips were a thin, white line.

“We’re not bringing back any meat at all, then?” Maeve frowned.

“This is better than meat. This beast,” Trevor spat on the ground as if to show what he thought of the creature, “will solve all of Ingram’s problems. It’s the will of the Gods.”

Brynn finally forced herself to look at the wolf again, to really look. Its eyes, no longer silver in reflection of the moon, but the darkest blue, so deep they might have been black, stared back at her. Tears she didn’t understand welled in her eyes, and bile rose in her throat. Trembling, she took a long sip of her tea and tried to calm the feeling this was all so very wrong.

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*William*

Everything was wrong. And everything was right. William was so far from where he needed to be – so far from his carefully calculated plan – yet he felt in some strange way that this was exactly the path that was meant for him.

Whether he was paying retribution for some unknown sin or simply experiencing some grander obstacle set before him by the Goddess herself, he was ready to surrender himself to it.

It was no accident that he was here. It couldn’t be – not with that scent lingering through the air. Tangled as it was with the repugnant scent of those others, William could always untangle the scent that was hers. The scent he couldn’t turn from, no matter the price.

She was strangely different from the others – part of their group, yet separate. One of them, and not. Warm where they were cold. Eyes open where theirs were shut.

Pain coursed through his body, yet none was so cruel as the pain of watching her suffer. She wept. For a mere wolf, she wept. He watched as she shuddered at the atrocities committed by the hands of those foul men, and he hated them.

His hatred was a vivid, living beast inside him. It thirsted for blood and vengeance. It thirsted for retribution and forgiveness. More than anything, however, it thirsted for her.