Fairytale - Wolf Given - Part I
Sep. 14th, 2008 01:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maderrI'm not really certain this whole set qualifies as 'fairytale' anymore, but too damn bad. That's what it started as, so that's where it's getting filed.
Much love to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nikerymis for beta'ing.
In two parts.
Ulrich's nose twitched.
Something wasn't right about the forest, but he could not place his nose upon whatever was off. There were no strange smells; everything was what he would expect of a forest. Trees, water, animals, there were some sweet berry patches not too far off. A deer had died and was rotting several yards away. Smoke, ever so faintly.
Ah. That was it. He could smell smoke, but no humans. Or any other species, for that matter, but usually where there was smoke, it was humans. Why could he not smell them?
His nose twitched again as he tried to pick out any sign of them past the smoke, absently stroking the black leather collar around his throat, hardly aware he was doing it.
The wind picked up, disheveling his neatly trimmed black hair, playing with his dark gray cape. Autumn leaves rustled beneath his boots as he finally walked on, falling around him as the breeze knocked the few remaining leaves from their branches.
There was a distinct chill in the air, but he liked the bite. He was from a mountain pack, where heavy snow and bitter cold was a way of life. These lowlands only thought they knew what the words snow and cold meant; they would not last a day in his homelands.
He felt a twist in his gut, thinking of home. Everyone had told him the homesickness would ease, but it hadn't. Four and a half years in the lowlands and all he wanted was to return home. Unconsciously, he reached up to touch his collar again.
When he realized what he was doing, he dropped his hand with a sigh and made himself focus on his work.
A member of the King's Special Guard had died here, and it was his duty to figure out why and how. It was mostly a formality, really. He had been told to try, but not too hard, for the dead soldier in question was no great loss. That he was dead was more of a relief, really. His family was pitching a fit though, and it never paid to ignore the fits of the wealthy and powerful.
Money and a desire to repay troublesome debts had put the man in the Special Guard, and those very same reasons had seen him sent off to solve the mystery.
Though his instinct had been to refuse and foist the assignment on one of the men under his command, Ulrich had not been able to let go of his own curiosity. They had known of the bastard's death only because someone had returned his wolf skin and collar to the man's family.
He had never known anyone in the lowlands to hold to such an old-fashioned tradition as returning the skin of a dead wolf to its pack. These days, most just returned the collar. It was far easier, and less barbaric, according to the soft and lazy folk of the lowlands.
His nose twitched as he caught a hint of…something for the span of a heartbeat. So quickly gone again, he half-figured he'd imagined it. Six weeks of hard travel and exhausting investigation had led him this far, to the dark, black woods where folks had last seen 'the unpleasant black wolf' headed.
Ulrich sighed, and wondered irritably why the bastard could not have simply gotten himself killed by a bear or some such. No, he had to get himself killed by someone who seemed to have honor, which meant he'd probably died in a fight or doing something he damn well knew he shouldn't be doing.
Realizing he was stroking his collar again, Ulrich snatched his hand away and glowered at his surroundings. He could smell the faintest hints of the bastard, so he had definitely been here…but he still could not smell humans, for all the scent of smoke was getting stronger.
Sighing, he continued walking, enjoying the cold and the forest itself even if he resented his reasons for being here. Four and a half more months, he reminded himself, and he could return home. Then he could claim a house of his very own, resume his studies, maybe finally start looking into the matter of a mate. He'd slogged through four and a half years of duty to his King, he could make it a few more months.
Walking on, he kept alert for any sign that he was not simply wasting his time here—or the slightest indication that he had tried hard enough, could call it a wash and return to the city. So far, he could see no sign of either. Damn it.
Then the sound of childish laughter caught his ears. He froze, wondering if it was simply wishful thinking, but then it came again.
Following the sound as best he could in the forest, he abruptly found himself on a well-worn footpath. Taking it, he continued to follow the sound of laughter, and as he drew ever closer to it, he began to hear voices as well. There were three in total—the laughing child, an old woman, and a man of modest years.
A few minutes later, the path dipped down a sharp hill, which in turn spilled into a small valley. At the center of it was a tidy little cottage. He could smell the smoke coming from the chimney, the wildflowers sprinkled through the lush grass, the brook running near the house…but not the people.
They saw him, and the laughter stopped.
Ulrich drew to a halt as the old woman and little girl suddenly fled into the house. The man, who seemed to be right around his own twenty-five, retrieved a bow and arrow he'd left near the front of the cottage. He nocked an arrow and stood waiting.
Horribly confused, for he was no threat and had not thought he was giving an impression of threat, Ulrich slowed his steps and drew cautiously forward. "I am sorry if I have caused some offense," he said as he drew close enough to speak without shouting. "I did not intend such; I am merely searching for something. Please, there is no reason to be alarmed. I am of the King's—"
"Yes, I know," the man replied, not lowering his bow. "You wear the same damn uniform."
Ulrich would have responded to that, but he was too jarred for a moment even to think. The man's accent was pure highland. Thick and rolling, a hint of husky melody. Beautiful. He'd not heard another speak in the sounds of his home for months, not since the others had either gone home or elsewhere to serve out the remainder of their duty. Few highlanders bestirred themselves to do their duty to the King so deep into the lowlands, and he was the only one who had elected to serve it at the castle proper.
The man was not a wolf, however. He did not wear a collar, and he did not smell li…
He realized with a jolt he still could not smell any of the humans at all.
In the next moment, he finally saw why—around the man's neck was a silver chain, from which hung a talisman. He would know that sort of talisman anywhere, for they often were used to prey upon his kind. It was why, despite their usefulness for many things, the talisman was called a Wolfsbane Charm. No one and nothing, not even the great wolves, could smell any person or thing to which the talisman was attached.
Only a very talented mage could make them, however.
Like falling dominos, another realization fell in his mind. "You're a wild mage."
The man tensed, but did not quite let fly the arrow he still held nocked.
Eagerness caused Ulrich to move forward despite the danger. "You are from the highlands," he said, breaking into a smile, feeling the strangeness of an expression he had not felt like using in a long time.
"Back off, soldier of the King," the man snarled. "Being from the mountains won't keep me from killing you."
Reality returned like a slap to the face, and his momentary joy went out like a snuffed candle. He backed up again. "My apologies," he said, frowning again. "Might I ask why you're being so hostile? I promise you, I intend no harm. I'm of the King's Special Guard. My honor is my life."
The man let out a sharp bark of laughter. "Just like the other one? I know enough about men in uniforms to know not a one of you has honor – even a highlander. Or maybe especially a highlander. Has the Pack Schwarzenberg gotten so soft and pathetic they would dance to the King's tune?
Ulrich snarled in immediate rage, that his pack would be so unjustly maligned. He lunged forward to meet the insult as he should—and howled in pain as he met with a barrier he had neither smelled nor sensed.
He sat up slowly, gasping in pain, vision blurry for a few moments. "Damn it," he said. "That was uncalled for. What have I done to give the indication I would hurt you?"
"Didn't you just try to hurt me?" The man asked coolly.
"You insulted my pack," Ulrich snarled. "I have done nothing to you, save draw close to ask for assistance. You accuse me of lacking honor, but clearly you possess none yourself. I am sorry that I attempted to ask for assistance, and will trouble you no further."
Turning away, he slowly limped his way back up the hill. He stumbled twice, not certain he would regain his feet the second time. He did, however, and stubbornly did not look back to see what the three humans were up to below.
Let them shoot him in the back if they were so inclined; maybe that was what had become of the poor bastard whose skin had been returned to the castle.
Ignoring the hurt that had come from being so callously treated by someone who should have called him brother—the man had even known his pack by his collar—he focused on overcoming the physical pain of meeting a magic ward at full force, slowly dragging himself to where he felt safe enough to camp for the night.
Then he finally allowed himself to pass out.
He woke sometime later with a groan, his entire body a great, throbbing ache. His head especially hurt something fierce, and he wondered who or what had convinced him to drink like a pup. And just what had he drunk to wind up in a forest…
Oh, right.
There hadn't been any drinking and mores the pity. He was in the Great Forest. It extended from the south half of the lowlands, stretching nearly all the way across it, then spilled down into the neighboring kingdom, where the natives called it something weird. The Giggling Forest, or something.
Ugh, if not for the fact he knew he'd taken a nasty hit from a barrier, he would have thought his wandering thoughts indicative of a concussion. Moving slowly, pausing several times to let the pain recede a bit, he finally regained his feet.
He looked up to take in the sunlight through the trees. Far too bright to be remotely close to when he had collapsed. It was a fair bet to say he had been unconscious for a day or so—not too bad, considering he'd been hit with barriers nasty enough to put him out for the better part of three days.
What should he do now? Whoever the hell those people had been, they did not like royal guards. Especially that highland wild mage…
Ulrich frowned, turning over the encounter in his mind. Though it was not expected that one highlander would immediately regard another as friend, it was typical to give a brother the benefit of the doubt. He reached up to touch his collar, remembering the way the man had immediately known he was of the Pack Schwarzenberg.
The collar was warm and supple beneath his fingers, the embossed marks comfortingly familiar. Marks for his pack, for his family, even his own name for those who knew how to read them. A wolf's pride and joy was his collar, and though the royal guard he served tried time and again to make the wolves remove them while in uniform, no wolf ever listened. Wolves removed their collars for one reason, and one reason only.
He whipped around as the back of his neck prickled, pain inconsequential as he sensed danger—
Then a figure came through the trees, drawing him up short, and Ulrich positively hated that he could not smell the man.
"What have you done with her?" the man snarled, and let fly an arrow.
Ulrich barely dodged it, and anger drove him to shift and throw himself at the infuriating human, knocking them both the ground to struggle and fight, snarl and rage. The man tried to throw him off, but he was having none of that.
He shifted again as they scrambled, resuming a human shape at just the right moment, pinning the bastard to the ground. "What are you talking about?" he snarled, still trembling with rage. "I try to ask for help and you threaten me. I lay here unconscious from your damn magic spells and you attempt to shoot me, accusing me of—what? Damn it, human, what is the matter with you? I have done nothing, I have hurt no one. You are the one attempting to shoot an innocent man."
"No King's man is innocent," the man hissed. "Where is the girl? The child?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Ulrich snapped. "I have only recently woken from the affects of your nasty little barrier. If you do not cease with this nonsense, human, I will tear your throat out."
The man snarled back just as angrily. "Who else would hurt the child but another lowland wolf?"
Ulrich saw red, but managed just barely to hold on to what was left of his temper. He bent his head until they were close enough to kiss. "Human, I am a highland wolf, and will be until the day I die. I do my duty here, nothing more. Very soon I will be home again and good riddance to the weak and pathetic lowlands." He drew back slightly. "What of you? You are highland, your accent marks you plain as anything, and here you skulk in the lowlands, defending lowland children."
For a moment, it almost looked as though the man were in pain, but it was gone so quickly, Ulrich wasn't certain that was what he'd seen.
"You did not take the child?"
"I have no use for children," Ulrich snapped. "You could have more faith in a brother, human."
"You could let me go, wolf."
Ulrich did no such thing. "Are you going to try and shoot me again?" he demanded.
"No," the man snapped. "Not unless I discover you have lied to me."
Deciding it was the best he was going to get, Ulrich let him go and rolled away, regaining his feet and shaking himself—and promptly dropped to his knees as the pain returned full force with the abating of danger.
The world spun beneath him, and his stomach gave an unpleasant lurch. Damn it, he really hated magic. He pressed the back of one gloved hand to his mouth, willing away the urge to heave up his empty stomach and wishing the bloody pain would ease. It had been a long time since he'd stupidly run straight into a barrier; long enough he'd forgotten just how agonizing it could be.
A hand settled on his shoulder, making him tense, because if the damnable man wanted to kill him now then he likely could – Ulrich had used the last of his strength to fight him only moments ago.
"Drink this," the man said, voice gone oddly gentle.
Ulrich jerked his head up, though the move cost him, and looked mistrustfully into eyes that were the color of autumn—not quite brown, gold, or red, but a combination of all three.
Realizing he was staring, he tore his gaze away and looked instead at the small, dark glass bottle the man held out. He frowned. "What is that?"
"A tonic," the man said quietly. "It should take away the pain, and restore at least some of your strength."
Ulrich's lip curled and he looked up again to glare. "Right. You drove me away yesterday, without even bothering to listen to me, then you come today to shoot first and ask questions later—now you are trying to help me? Do I look like a pup still suckling at his mother's teat?"
"It's nothing personal," the man said patiently. "Wolves aren't well-regarded around these parts. You'd understand why if you knew all they'd done. Especially the last one in a uniform like yours. Just drink the damn thing, Schwarzenberg wolf. I have to find that girl, and the sooner you're dealt with, the sooner I can get back to doing that."
Shuddering as the pain racked his body anew, Ulrich decided he really didn't care if the bastard was attempting to poison him. Accepting the bottle, he pulled the stopper and downed the contents.
Cold flooded him, then a rush of warmth. The tonic tasted faintly of blueberries and honey. He licked his lips as the strange warmth slowly faded—leaving him with nothing more than a negligible headache. In fact, he felt well-rested and ready for most anything.
He grunted and stood as the man did the same. "Thank you," he said stiffly.
The man shrugged, tucked the empty bottle away in the pack he wore, and turned away.
"What did you mean, the girl is gone? That little girl I saw briefly yesterday? Where would she go? These woods are dangerous enough for grown men, surely."
"Yes," the man said, shoulders tight with tension. He turned back to Ulrich, eyes blazing with fury though he otherwise seemed calm. "She knows better than to wander off or talk to anyone, especially since a wolf in the garb of a King's Special Guard tried to steal her away—to eat."
Ulrich drew a sharp breath, dismay crashing through him. "He went feral? Why? How?"
"You think I know?" the man demanded. "I barely came across her in time to save her. Now she is gone again! Damn it, every time I meet a wolf, there is nothing but trouble!" He turned away and stalked off, barely making a sound despite the dead, dry leaves littering the forest floor.
"Wait!" Ulrich said, and chased after him. "Let me help."
The minute he said the words, he wondered what the hell he was thinking. His part was done—obviously this man had killed the wolf, because that wolf had gone feral. Mystery solved, and no one would even think to blame a man for killing a feral wolf.
"Help me?" the man asked contemptuously. "I've had enough wolves to last me a lifetime—I'm not putting up with another longer than necessary. If you want to help me, you can do it by leaving."
Ulrich rolled his eyes. "Not all wolves are bad. You're from the highlands, why are you acting like a dense lowlander?"
The man's eyes flashed. "I'm not in the mood to trade insults, wolf. Go away."
He really wanted to throttle the man. Or maybe just shake him, like a pup with a toy. Where that image had come from, he didn't know, but it pleased. "I'm a wolf, as you have obviously noticed—I can track the child far better than anyone."
"Even if she's wearing a Wolfsbane charm?" the man asked with an amused smirk.
Ulrich frowned, then made a face. "All right, fine. I can still help, and would like to help. One bad wolf in uniform does not mean we're all bad. You’re one of the most obnoxious humans I've ever met, but that doesn't mean I'm going to hate all humans."
The man let out a sharp bark of laughter. "One bad wolf? Try three. I'm not eager to see if number four is the exception to the rule. Go away, wolf, or I'll nock an arrow you won't soon forget."
"I have done nothing to warrant this behavior!" Ulrich bellowed, stalking close and grabbing the man up, shaking him hard. "I am a good wolf. I serve my Pack, I serve my King, and had you told me that you killed that wolf for turning feral, I would have commended you and gone on my merry way. Instead you threaten me, shoot at me, then promise to do it again when all I have done is attempt to ask for help, and then offer to find a child. You would rather reject me for being a wolf than accept my offer of help? She could be dead or dying, and you don't want my help?"
They glared at each other in silence after that, but Ulrich found it hard to hold on to his anger looking into those strange, autumn-colored eyes. He really hated that he could not smell the man. Sound and sight were not nearly as useful as smell and taste.
Finally the man dropped his eyes. Ulrich took it as a victory, but still waited.
"All right," the man finally said, an unhappy edge to his husky voice. "Let’s find her, and then you can get the hell out of my sight."
"Fine," Ulrich snapped, and let him go, wishing he could bite the bastard just because. "My name is Ulrich Schwarz, of Pack Schwarzenberg."
The man nodded stiffly at him, and slowly held out a hand in greeting. "I am Grosvenor Allaway."
"You're a wild mage of the highlands," Ulrich said, and stripped off his glove to shake Grosvenor's hand, liking the strength in it the calluses and scars that said this was no idler. No soft lowlander afraid to get his hands dirty.
"I was a wild mage of the highlands," Grosvenor said. "Now, I am just a huntsman." He said nothing more, but pulled his hand away and continued walking.
A huntsman? That was rather an unworthy position for a wild mage. That was like setting a well trained knight to chopping wood. He'd be good at it, but there were better things for him to do.
Grosvenor continued, "Unfortunately, I am not quite certain where she may have gone. The trail ended abruptly, and I could find no trace of anyone or anything. Given the size of this forest, and its reputation for strange goings on…"
"She could be anywhere," Ulrich finished grimly, "or nowhere. Best to go where the trail ends and take it from there, now that we have established I did not take her."
"Have we?" Grosvenor asked.
Ulrich growled.
Grosvenor smirked, clearly amused. "You've a remarkably short temper for a wolf."
"Only when my honor is questioned," Ulrich replied. "You're remarkably dense for a highlander."
"Yes," Grosvenor replied, his brief levity vanishing like the sun behind a bank of storm clouds. "So I was often told."
Ulrich rolled his eyes. "I meant no offense. We need not be at odds, huntsman. If you would just be pleasant for a few minutes, I would not even hold a grudge for the arrow this morning." He wrinkled his nose. "Though I do wish you would remove that damn talisman. It's damned awkward talking to someone half my senses say does not exist."
"No," Grosvenor said flatly.
"If the girl was not wearing one," Ulrich snapped, "I could already sniff her out. What if something were to happen to you, in the course of our search? We are partners, you and I, until the girl is found." Damn it, was the man really so thick and stupid? "Why are you set against anyone getting your scent?"
Grosvenor shrugged irritably. "None of your business, wolf."
Ulrich rolled his eyes again. Honestly, if not for the grouchiness, Grosvenor would not be a bad person. He was handsome enough, certainly. Obviously he lived in the woods—he had an edge to him, a rough look despite the surprising cleanliness of his appearance, that only came from living in the wilderness. His hair was the sort of blonde that turned to gold when it soaked up sunlight. He had the sort of broad, well-muscled build that Ulrich loved in a man.
His own build was much more slender, something that more than one lowland idiot had taken to mean he was weak.
If only the man wasn’t so damnably grouchy, Ulrich might have grown to like him. They were both highlanders, after all. Brothers stuck in the detestable lowlands. "Are you ever in a good mood?" he asked.
"When wolves aren't around," Grosvenor retorted.
Ulrich sighed and gave up talking. He wondered why he had even volunteered to do this—the way Grosvenor moved and behaved, he was as comfortable in the woods as most men only were in their own homes. Ulrich probably was not needed.
Well, too bad. He was going to prove he wasn't a bad wolf no matter what. If he had no clue why it mattered, well, that little detail was negligible.
His stomach abruptly growled, and he was abruptly reminded he had not eaten since midday yesterday.
Grosvenor stopped, and turned back to look at him, pretty mouth curved in another of those damnably annoying smirks.
Pretty mouth?
Ulrich scowled at himself, and then at Grosvenor. "Are we almost where the trail grows cold?"
"Yes," Grosvenor replied, but swung his pack down and dug something out, tossing Ulrich a small packet. "Jerky. That should keep you, wolf. What's one of your marvelous and wonderful kind doing in the woods without food?"
Oh, yes, at some point he was going to shake the annoying man until his teeth fell out. Still, he unwrapped the jerky and ate voraciously. "I figured if I was here long enough to need food, I could hunt it. Easier to travel light." He swallowed a bite of jerky. "Thanks, especially since I know you'd rather let me starve."
"If I get sick of you, there are better ways to kill you than starvation," Grosvenor replied.
Ulrich only shook his head and bit off another bit of jerky to chew. It was venison, and remarkably good for jerky. The army issued stuff had always tasted more like dried wood than meat, on the rare occasions he had to eat it.
He shoved a last bite into his mouth as they reached the clearing where the cottage lay – but rather than head toward it, they circled around it, and eventually headed back into the forest, where the brook vanished into the trees again.
"Here," Grosvenor said. "I followed her trail from where they draw water, to here. Then nothing."
Ulrich nodded, listening absently, for his attention was already on the anomaly his nose had picked out. He could barely smell it…something…sticky and sweet… With a thought, he shifted and put his nose to the ground, absorbing too many smells to count, each one a fascinating story all its own…but that sticky sweet smell, that was no forest scent. That was man.
He barked as he found it, and shifted back, shoving his fingers into the grass along the bank until he at last pulled free something no bigger than a tiny pebble. A bit of cookie—gingerbread, into which was pressed a small bit of bright pink hard candy. It looked like it had fallen off of a larger cookie, maybe while being eaten.
He heard and sensed Grosvenor come up behind him, annoyed all over again that he could not attach so much as a single scent to the man. "Looks like she was eating a cookie," he said with a shrug. "Not very helpful…"
Grosvenor's face had gone pale.
"What?" he asked. "Is there something dangerous about a cookie?"
"I hope not," Grosvenor said, and took the bit from him, holding it to his own nose. "But Gretel—the old woman—hates gingerbread. She would never make it. She's scared of gingerbread."
Ulrich frowned. "What in the world is there to be scared about in gingerbread?"
Grosvenor looked at the bit of cookie. "She told me the story only a couple of years ago," he said quietly. "As a child, she and her brother were abandoned in the forest by their father and stepmother. Poor, unable to feed them…it was not an uncommon practice back then, here in the lowlands, or so I was told."
"That is disgusting," Urlich said, though he had heard much the same himself. In many of the smaller, more remote villages, they still did it. In the leaner, poorer times, children were always the first to go. After all, the explanation went, more could be made when times got better.
"Yes," Grosvenor agreed, "but that's what was done to Gretel. She and her brother were abandoned in the woods. They tried to find their way home, but only wound up lost. Then the stumbled across a house made of gingerbread. Gretel said it was like something from a dream – gingerbread with candy for the shutters, the shingles, the door…" He shook his head. "A kind old woman invited them inside, fed them and cared for them…"
He fell silent, and Ulrich suddenly had a terrible feeling in his gut, and wished had not eaten the jerky.
"She was kind and sweet, far nicer than their parents had ever been. Good food, sweets, and she lived in that magical house…"
"Come to the end of the tale," Ulrich said harshly, unable to bear the waiting.
"She was going to eat them," Grosvenor replied. "The food she fed them was drugged, to keep them meek and compliant while she plumped them up. The house was made with magic, and the woman was a powerful witch. Gretel said she discovered the truth only by mistake, when she was taking the slop out one day and stumbled across an animal playing with some bones it had dug up—human bones, but tiny. Children's bones. She said, taken with other things, and the constant dreamy state in which she existed, it was not hard to figure it out. She ran inside and shoved the old woman into the oven she had been in the process of heating. She and Hansel fled, and eventually came to a village. That is as far as she told the tale to me."
Ulrich glanced at the bit of gingerbread cookie. "Surely you do not think…"
"I don't know," Grosvenor replied, "but I do know that no one besides Gretel, Annie, and I live here. I do not bake and Gretel would never make gingerbread. Where, then, did it come from?" He crushed the cookie in his fist, then threw the crumbs into the brook. "We must find her, and hope that I am wrong, or that we are not too late."
At least he was saying 'we' Ulrich thought. "Now I've a scent to follow," he said, "I'll see what I can do." Shifting back to his wolf form, he put his nose to the ground and hunted for the smell of gingerbread.
He found one more bit of it, some hours later when afternoon had given over to evening. They would have to stop soon, and he could see Grosvenor knew it—and did not like it.
He examined the bit of sweet he held, a bright green hard candy. All their hours of searching, and it was the only thing they had found. Disgusted, he dropped it to the ground again and stretched his tired limbs. "I do not get it. Where in the hell could they be? Surely you have some idea, huntsman. Is this not your wood?"
Grosvenor grunted. "I see you do not know much about the Great Forest."
"I know nothing about it," Ulrich confessed with a shrug. "I know people mutter superstitiously about it; I could not even get anyone to guide me through it. They call it something else across the border, I do not recall what."
"The Laughing Forest," Grosvenor said. "They say that portions of the Great Forest are haunted by laughing ghosts. Others say the forest itself is laughing at unwary travelers. Out this way…well, there is no laughing, but sometimes the silence is too deep. Like now."
Ulrich had already noted that, but he'd been trying to ignore it. If he were in wolf form, his hackles would be up. "So maybe we're getting close, despite the lack of a trail to follow?"
"Maybe," Grosvenor replied. "If one considers being caught in a web getting close to the spider."
"Lovely," Ulrich said, grimacing. "Why would an old woman who preys upon children live so deep in the woods?"
"He who seeks the path never finds it, he who waits for the path is never found, he who follows the path travels with ease."
Ulrich grunted. "Try too hard, or too little, and you get nothing. It's children she tempts, so they have no trouble finding her." He shuddered. "Why would anyone want to eat the flesh of her own kind? Why children?"
"Innocence," Grosvenor said, as he swung his pack off his back and began to make camp. "Mages all require power of some sort to work their spells. Certain…aspects of people…are power in their own right and can be contorted to a mage's purpose. Innocence is one of them, and most often found in the young, especially children. Even Annie, despite being almost eaten alive by a feral shifter, still possessed some innocence."
"I am sorry a fellow Guard would do such a terrible thing," Ulrich replied. "You showed him more honor than he deserved in returning his skin and collar to the castle."
Grosvenor shrugged. "It's ingrained," he said. "So you came out here to find the reason for his death?"
"Yes," Ulrich replied, wondering when the grouchiness would return, and why it had momentarily subsided. Maybe he was simply too tired to keep it up, for it had been an extremely long day so far. "Once we find the girl, I will return to the castle and never trouble you again. What other bad experiences have you had with wolves?"
"Another one came through this area a couple years ago, killed two men and nearly the third – brothers, all of them. Masons, by profession. The villages around these parts still mourn their loss, especially since the third brother just couldn't stay after his two younger ones were killed. Then that man-eater came around…"
Ulrich nodded. "That is two of three—what of the last?"
"None of your business," Grosvenor snapped, sour temper returning abruptly. He all but threw food in Ulrich's direction.
Rolling his eyes, Ulrich accepted the food and made short work of more jerky, cheese, and a sort of sweet flatbread. "Shouldn't we make a fire for you?" he asked.
"I'll be fine," Grosvenor replied. "We have the same accent, as you have pointed out."
Ulrich grinned. "You've been down in these weak lowlands longer than me, huntsman. You could have gotten soft."
Grosvenor gave him a withering look and said nothing, merely finished eating his own food as around them the forest grew increasingly dark. When dark finally took over completely, even Ulrich’s sharp vision could not pick out much detail in the figure sitting only a couple of arm lengths away.
Damn it, he wished the man would remove that infuriating talisman. He could understand it if they thought there were feral wolves to fear, or something along those lines, but they were hunting a witch. Witches didn't need scent to find people. Being a wild mage, Grosvenor would know that. So why keep the talisman now that he knew he had nothing to fear from Ulrich?
Trust, of course. Ulrich could not blame him, though he would have thought the bonds of the highlands enough to give him the benefit of the doubt. It could be fear as much as trust, though he didn't see what Grosvenor had to fear from anyone. A huntsman born and raised as a highlands wild mage. Back home, that was no idle thing. Hell, as often as not, they were marked for marriage to one pack or clan or another the day they were born—in the oldest clans, before they were born.
Which made him wonder, what in the hell a lone highlands wild mage was doing in a spooky forest in the lowlands? Had he been banished for something? Was he hiding from something? Perhaps his grouchy wild mage was far more than he appeared…
He wondered how much snarling would result if he dared to ask.
"Don’t you ever sleep, wolf?" came the sharp voice, as if summoned by his thoughts.
Ulrich smiled in the dark. "Occasionally. My thoughts keep me occupied. Are they disturbing you as well?"
"Wolves disturb me," Grosvenor snapped, "especially wolves who will not sleep when by all rights they should be dead to the world."
At that, Ulrich did yawn, but still he could feel his thoughts jittering about in his head. "What is a wild mage doing all the way down here?" he asked. "I am astonished your family let you leave; surely there must have been bids on your hand."
"It's none of your business," Grosvenor snarled.
If Ulrich were able to smell him, he did not doubt Grosvenor would smell like pure, violent fury at that moment. "My apologies," he said. "It is not my place to pry, you are correct. I miss my homeland, is all, and meeting you stirred thoughts of it." He sighed in the dark, staring up at the shadows of the trees, the hints of starlight beyond the thick canopy. "Being the youngest of seven, even in the Alpha family, I was never going to contract a notable mate. I volunteered to serve the King before they could make me."
No, so low in rank, he would be lucky if he was not married off to tidy up some minor deal or another, and sent to join another Pack. It's what the extra sons and daughters were for, after all. Still, so long as he had a home of his own, and a nice mate, he would call himself content.
If sometimes he wished he were as important as his eldest brothers, well, that was his own dumb fault. He was a seventh son—useful for the pesky little things. Such was highland life.
"There are worse things to be than the seventh son of the Schwarzenberg Alpha," Grosvenor said, breaking into his wandering thoughts.
"I know," Ulrich replied. "I have no complaints. I only meant that being in a low position, with no chance at prestige, I had to wonder why someone who obviously would have qualified as a prestigious marriage would choose instead to live in the lowlands. But, as you said, it's none of my business."
On impulse, he shifted and then curled up on the forest floor to at last finally try and sleep, though it was still some time before his thoughts settled enough he was able.
He woke a few hours later to a niggling sense of wrongness mingled with a strange feeling of rightness.
Placing either feeling proved impossible for a moment. Then he realized the wrongness came from the air itself. There was…something…in it that didn't belong there. He couldn't smell it, which definitely set his senses off. Magic?
The rightness was far more disconcerting. Sometime in the night, he had moved to sleep right up against Grosvenor.
Some time after that, it would seem, Grosvenor had shifted onto his side to twine around Ulrich, and thrown an arm over him. While Ulrich was in wolf form.
That set off bells that even managed to drowned out the sense of wrong in the air.
Even in the highlands, where wolves were a common sight, most humans were never completely comfortable with the wolf packs. Oh, they were comfortable enough, but he could count on one hand the number of humans he knew who were comfortable enough with wolves they would curl up with one, while shifted, in sleep.
That took being raised with wolves at a level few humans ever merited.
Whatever his current feelings on wolves, at some point in his life Grosvenor had been perfectly at home with them. Being a wild mage as well, that stirred up all sorts of fascinating questions.
Unfortunately, getting answers would have to wait, as that feeling of wrongness was growing worse.
Growling softly, he shifted to human form—right as Grosvenor's eyes opened.
Autumn eyes stared at him uncomprehendingly for a moment. Then they filled with fury as Grosvenor's face turned red, and Ulrich rolled away before he wound up with a knife in his gullet. "There's something wrong."
"Yes," Grosvenor replied. "You're still breathing."
"Not what I meant. We'll discuss that—"
"Shut up!" Grosvenor cut in, and Ulrich realized he finally sensed it. He looked around, turning in a slow, careful circle, then said in a flat tone, "The forest has changed. We've been moved, or the forest moved around us."
"What?" Ulrich looked at him, then took a closer look at their surroundings. It was still fairly dark, but growing lighter, and he could just barely see that Grosvenor was right. Though it still smelled much the same, the changes so minute he had not noticed them, their surroundings were not what they had been before. "How is this possible? Even with magic…"
"I told you, the forest is a strange one," Grosvenor replied. "Some say it is a sentient being all its own, having absorbed so much magic through the centuries. Or maybe all the magic came from the forest, once upon a time. Who can say? But we are in trouble, because now I have no idea where we are, and if it continues to change on us each time we rest—we may never find our way back to the safer parts of it." He shook his head. "I have seen strange things in the forest, but never this."
Ulrich looked at him. "You really do not need to sound so impressed, under the circumstances. What do you mean you're lost? You're a huntsman."
"You're a highland wolf," Grosvenor shot back. "It's impossible for your lot to get lost."
Remembering one particularly delightful occasion upon which his brothers had gotten him drunk and then quite neatly lost him in the woods where he'd grown up, Ulrich found this statement amusing at best. Especially when he knew they had done it to each other, in a longstanding family tradition of affectionate humiliation. He snorted. "I never made that claim, I assure you. Depending on what I've had to drink, and how much I was permitted to have, I could get lost in my own home."
Grosvenor turned sharply away, but Ulrich thought he caught a bit of a smile.
So his wild mage could smile. He wondered if he could get Grosvenor to laugh, as well.
His levity died as he heard and smelled something in the trees. Then silence. Not taking any chances, he shifted to his wolf form and growled low. Nearby, he heard Grosvenor draw and ready his bow.
Mud, he thought. He could smell mud. Not unusual in a forest, but something about the sudden rise in the smell bothered him, and now he could smell it mixed with other things—
Bones. Blood.
Then as quickly as that they were being attacked, but by what he couldn't say. Mud, in the crude shape of small humans.
He didn't waste time asking questions, but snarled and bit and fought as three of the strange things descended upon him from the trees as the world around them turned to gray morning. The mud tasted thick and bitter in his mouth, leaving an aftertaste of blood. Spitting out a clump which had once been part of an arm, he threw himself at one of the strange things and went for the throat, tearing it out.
The muddy head fell, and rolled away to lie still on the forest floor. In front of him, the mud-doll thing collapsed into a shapeless pile. He turned and went for another as hands with surprising strength grabbed him, tore at him.
When at last the chaos stopped, he was filthy and bloody and caked in drying mud. Turning, he growled at Grosvenor, who looked no better—in fact, he looked much worse. The nasty little things had managed to tear through his layers of clothing, and a shallow but still nasty looking wound ran the length of his stomach.
Ulrich growled again, fear curling in his gut that Grosvenor had come so close to dying. Any deeper, and that cut would be a gut wound from which no one could have saved him.
"Sprites," Grosvenor said. "Nasty little monsters, those. Made from mud and blood and the bones of children." He stepped forward, then grimaced in pain and held a hand to his wound—then remembered his hands were covered in mud, and with a sigh let it drop. "I don't suppose you could sniff out water? I'm a little too exhausted to find it myself, wolf."
Chuffing, Ulrich wiped his face in the grass to get rid of the worst of the mud, then cast his nose to the wind. At least the danger had faded, for the moment. Catching a whiff of what he needed, he barked at Grosvenor, then led the way from the mud-spattered clearing, very carefully not thinking about all the little bones he could see scattered amongst them.
An hour's hard, exhausting travel brought them to a good-sized stream. Pausing only long enough to ensure there were no traps or sprites lying in wait, Ulrich half ran, half slid down the bank and landed with a satisfying splash in the frigid water.
He stayed in just long enough to get clean, then clambered out and shook himself vigorously dry. Only then, feeling they were safe for a time, did he shift back and begin to work on a fire. Nearby, he could hear Grosvenor stripping down. He turned to ask, "Do you have spare—" and stopped short.
Grosvenor's clothing had kept pretty much all but his face covered. Even his throat had been well-covered by high-necked clothing. Bare of that, he could see two things that Grosvenor obviously had not wanted him to see, but the dressing of his wounds and the excess of mud had ruined any chance of his continued ignorance.
One, Grosvenor wore a collar. It was pale gold in color, to mark him as not properly wolf, but rather what was often called 'wolf brother'—a human close enough to a Pack that they counted him amongst them and would defend him the same as they would their own. Except many of the marks he should have by now were missing, and it looked as though most of them—all but his personal name—had been marked out.
The second thing he noticed was the deep, faded scar in the space where shoulder met throat, on Grosvenor's right side. A wolf bite, and one given when Grosvenor was extremely young. Probably when he was about twelve, the age when a boy was considered strong enough to be able to endure such a thing.
"Wolf given," Ulrich breathed. "You're wolf given."
Grosvenor snarled and threw his clothes into the water, then followed them in. Ulrich listened to him swear, but could not tell if he was swearing at Ulrich or the water.
The grouchy bastard was wolf given—but living alone in the lowlands. What in the hell was going on here?
Wolf given meant that he'd been promised since birth, and quite possibly in this case even before conception, to an alpha family of a particular pack. Such betrothals were not made lightly; they took decades of work. As he got older, they would have narrowed down whom in the alpha family he would marry. The bite would have been given by the alpha on the day the decision was made. To be wolf given, or wolf promised, was a high honor amongst the clans. Rare was the human accepted fully into a pack.
So what in the hell was he doing here?
Ulrich wished he could read the marks upon the collar, but they were illegible. It was obvious he'd be better off throwing the collar away, so perhaps it was sentiment or some such that kept the collar around Grosvenor's throat.
What could have been so disastrous that someone would break such an important betrothal with a wild mage? Wolves by their nature possessed no magic beyond their shifting; to obtain a wild mage for the pack was a matter of great importance. Nothing short of murder usually halted such a marriage, especially since if broken, no one else would take a wolf given; the old belief was that if the wolves did not want the betrothed, there must be something seriously wrong.
At least that explained why Grosvenor had not wanted to remove his Wolfsbane Charm. Ulrich would have smelled in an instant that he'd been wolf given, the small hint of wolf sunk into him by way of the alpha's bite. That also explained why he was so comfortable with wolves that he slept with one without really noticing he was doing it—and made it all the more upsetting that he now claimed to hate wolves.
Shaking his head, conceding that it was still none of his business except he would love to know which pack had gotten so stupid it let a wolf given wild mage slip through its fingers, he resumed building a fire. By the time Grosvenor climbed from the water, shivering something awful but clean and wound dressed, the fire was roaring nicely.
"If you ask me any questions, you will be lucky if all I do is ignore you," Grosvenor snapped as he hung up his wet clothes to dry. He was dressed in clean clothes, but was still shivering as he sat close to the fire.
Ulrich put a few more branches on the fire, and said nothing, merely looked at him inquisitively.
Grosvenor ignored him, instead retrieving his pack and pulling out food for breakfast. "We had best find Annie quickly," he said tersely, "or we will have to stop to hunt for food, and I cannot think that will go well for us, given recent events."
"Right," Ulrich agreed, and ate his food quickly. "Are you warming up?"
"Yes," Grosvenor replied, then reluctantly, "thank you for the fire."
Ulrich shrugged. "So how do we find this witch before she finds us, and why did she attack us?"
"I could not say," Grosvenor said. "Perhaps she does not like another mage taking such an interest. If anyone is a threat to her, it is me."
"Do you think…" Ulrich stewed over it for a moment, then decided the worst he'd get was derision, and he was used to that. "Do you think she might be the reason the dead wolf went feral? It is a hard thing to do, to turn a wolf feral."
Grosvenor frowned. "I…it's possible, though I don't see what her purpose…no, that's not true. He was trying to eat Annie, and Gretel. Perhaps the witch was trying to use him to bring her food? But that seems a stretch. It hardly matters, anyway. The point is to find Annie, and we are wasting precious time."
"We also do not know where to go," Ulrich pointed out. "Better off to remain here, recover our strength, and figure out what to do, rather than run about a changing forest in hopes of finding what we need."
Making a face, Grosvenor conceded the point and subsided into silence to eat and warm himself.
Ulrich wondered at their chances of finding the girl alive. If the witch knew they were hunting her, would she keep the girl alive and fight them off, or devour the child right away and use what magic she gained from it?
Thinking about it curdled his stomach, but ignoring the reality of the situation would do more harm than good. "Is the child still alive, do you think?"
"Yes," Grosvenor said slowly, blinking as he clearly set aside his own thoughts. "My impression from Gretel was that the witch cannot simply eat—she must prepare the child first. Since Gretel and her brother were taken, people have been more cautious. I would imagine the witch has more trouble finding what she needs these days, so I do not think she would waste her prize by…" He grimaced, and finished, "getting ahead of herself."
Ulrich nodded. "Still, as you say, we should not waste time." He stroked his collar absently as he thought—but stopped as he felt eyes upon him. Looking up, he just caught Grosvenor looking away. The silence between them shifted into something tense and thick. "You are wolf given," Ulrich said quietly, "so why are you not wolf mated?"
"It's none of your business," Grosvenor snarled.
"Packs have fought over less than the mistreatment of a wild mage," Ulrich replied. "My own pack has but two to its name, both of them elderly now. They would do and give a great deal to lay claim to you, as would many packs, yet you rot here in the lowlands?"
Grosvenor laughed bitterly, but Ulrich did not miss the sadness in it. "My own clan kicked me out; my former family and my ex betrothed alike prefer to pretend I do not exist, wolf. The mark upon me is nothing more than a bad memory, and if I could be rid of it, I would." He threw his remaining food back into his pack, then went to pack up his still wet clothes. "If we return to that clearing, we can try to backtrack the sprites. I doubt they were aware enough not to leave a path, and hopefully the witch did not think of it."
As plans went, it was a thin one, but there was also a distinct lack of alternatives. Nodding, silently vowing to learn more of Grosvenor's story once the child was safe, Ulrich took care of the fire. Once that was done, he shifted back to wolf and led the way back to the clearing, for they had been in too great a hurry to erase their own path.
He had not expected the remains of the sprites still to be there, but he smelled them long before they came into sight.
The field was just as unpleasant of appearance as it had been of smell. Mud was everywhere, so dark it was almost black, smeared across trees and shrubbery, covering most of the ground. He could see small bones scattered throughout, and his stomach knotted with disgust.
Children. What manner of magic was so important, so grand, that it merited devouring children?
Growling low, he sniffed around the clearing until he had the scent well and truly in his nostrils—then onward he went, moving through the forest as quickly as was possible while following a trail. Everything else faded from his attention; nothing mattered but finding the source of the sprites.
He was aware of another presence keeping fairly decent pace with him—Grosvenor. Impressive. He really was wolf given, and properly raised to it.
Then his attention was torn away by the sudden, abrupt scent of a human. The girl child, it had to be. Throwing his head back, Ulrich howled, then rushed forward faster than ever, determined to reach her now he had her scent—
"Ulrich, no—"
Grosvenor's warning came too late, and realization later still, and just as he realized he had been summoned straight into a trap, Ulrich's world exploded into pain.
Much love to
nikerymis for beta'ing.In two parts.
Wolf Given
Ulrich's nose twitched.
Something wasn't right about the forest, but he could not place his nose upon whatever was off. There were no strange smells; everything was what he would expect of a forest. Trees, water, animals, there were some sweet berry patches not too far off. A deer had died and was rotting several yards away. Smoke, ever so faintly.
Ah. That was it. He could smell smoke, but no humans. Or any other species, for that matter, but usually where there was smoke, it was humans. Why could he not smell them?
His nose twitched again as he tried to pick out any sign of them past the smoke, absently stroking the black leather collar around his throat, hardly aware he was doing it.
The wind picked up, disheveling his neatly trimmed black hair, playing with his dark gray cape. Autumn leaves rustled beneath his boots as he finally walked on, falling around him as the breeze knocked the few remaining leaves from their branches.
There was a distinct chill in the air, but he liked the bite. He was from a mountain pack, where heavy snow and bitter cold was a way of life. These lowlands only thought they knew what the words snow and cold meant; they would not last a day in his homelands.
He felt a twist in his gut, thinking of home. Everyone had told him the homesickness would ease, but it hadn't. Four and a half years in the lowlands and all he wanted was to return home. Unconsciously, he reached up to touch his collar again.
When he realized what he was doing, he dropped his hand with a sigh and made himself focus on his work.
A member of the King's Special Guard had died here, and it was his duty to figure out why and how. It was mostly a formality, really. He had been told to try, but not too hard, for the dead soldier in question was no great loss. That he was dead was more of a relief, really. His family was pitching a fit though, and it never paid to ignore the fits of the wealthy and powerful.
Money and a desire to repay troublesome debts had put the man in the Special Guard, and those very same reasons had seen him sent off to solve the mystery.
Though his instinct had been to refuse and foist the assignment on one of the men under his command, Ulrich had not been able to let go of his own curiosity. They had known of the bastard's death only because someone had returned his wolf skin and collar to the man's family.
He had never known anyone in the lowlands to hold to such an old-fashioned tradition as returning the skin of a dead wolf to its pack. These days, most just returned the collar. It was far easier, and less barbaric, according to the soft and lazy folk of the lowlands.
His nose twitched as he caught a hint of…something for the span of a heartbeat. So quickly gone again, he half-figured he'd imagined it. Six weeks of hard travel and exhausting investigation had led him this far, to the dark, black woods where folks had last seen 'the unpleasant black wolf' headed.
Ulrich sighed, and wondered irritably why the bastard could not have simply gotten himself killed by a bear or some such. No, he had to get himself killed by someone who seemed to have honor, which meant he'd probably died in a fight or doing something he damn well knew he shouldn't be doing.
Realizing he was stroking his collar again, Ulrich snatched his hand away and glowered at his surroundings. He could smell the faintest hints of the bastard, so he had definitely been here…but he still could not smell humans, for all the scent of smoke was getting stronger.
Sighing, he continued walking, enjoying the cold and the forest itself even if he resented his reasons for being here. Four and a half more months, he reminded himself, and he could return home. Then he could claim a house of his very own, resume his studies, maybe finally start looking into the matter of a mate. He'd slogged through four and a half years of duty to his King, he could make it a few more months.
Walking on, he kept alert for any sign that he was not simply wasting his time here—or the slightest indication that he had tried hard enough, could call it a wash and return to the city. So far, he could see no sign of either. Damn it.
Then the sound of childish laughter caught his ears. He froze, wondering if it was simply wishful thinking, but then it came again.
Following the sound as best he could in the forest, he abruptly found himself on a well-worn footpath. Taking it, he continued to follow the sound of laughter, and as he drew ever closer to it, he began to hear voices as well. There were three in total—the laughing child, an old woman, and a man of modest years.
A few minutes later, the path dipped down a sharp hill, which in turn spilled into a small valley. At the center of it was a tidy little cottage. He could smell the smoke coming from the chimney, the wildflowers sprinkled through the lush grass, the brook running near the house…but not the people.
They saw him, and the laughter stopped.
Ulrich drew to a halt as the old woman and little girl suddenly fled into the house. The man, who seemed to be right around his own twenty-five, retrieved a bow and arrow he'd left near the front of the cottage. He nocked an arrow and stood waiting.
Horribly confused, for he was no threat and had not thought he was giving an impression of threat, Ulrich slowed his steps and drew cautiously forward. "I am sorry if I have caused some offense," he said as he drew close enough to speak without shouting. "I did not intend such; I am merely searching for something. Please, there is no reason to be alarmed. I am of the King's—"
"Yes, I know," the man replied, not lowering his bow. "You wear the same damn uniform."
Ulrich would have responded to that, but he was too jarred for a moment even to think. The man's accent was pure highland. Thick and rolling, a hint of husky melody. Beautiful. He'd not heard another speak in the sounds of his home for months, not since the others had either gone home or elsewhere to serve out the remainder of their duty. Few highlanders bestirred themselves to do their duty to the King so deep into the lowlands, and he was the only one who had elected to serve it at the castle proper.
The man was not a wolf, however. He did not wear a collar, and he did not smell li…
He realized with a jolt he still could not smell any of the humans at all.
In the next moment, he finally saw why—around the man's neck was a silver chain, from which hung a talisman. He would know that sort of talisman anywhere, for they often were used to prey upon his kind. It was why, despite their usefulness for many things, the talisman was called a Wolfsbane Charm. No one and nothing, not even the great wolves, could smell any person or thing to which the talisman was attached.
Only a very talented mage could make them, however.
Like falling dominos, another realization fell in his mind. "You're a wild mage."
The man tensed, but did not quite let fly the arrow he still held nocked.
Eagerness caused Ulrich to move forward despite the danger. "You are from the highlands," he said, breaking into a smile, feeling the strangeness of an expression he had not felt like using in a long time.
"Back off, soldier of the King," the man snarled. "Being from the mountains won't keep me from killing you."
Reality returned like a slap to the face, and his momentary joy went out like a snuffed candle. He backed up again. "My apologies," he said, frowning again. "Might I ask why you're being so hostile? I promise you, I intend no harm. I'm of the King's Special Guard. My honor is my life."
The man let out a sharp bark of laughter. "Just like the other one? I know enough about men in uniforms to know not a one of you has honor – even a highlander. Or maybe especially a highlander. Has the Pack Schwarzenberg gotten so soft and pathetic they would dance to the King's tune?
Ulrich snarled in immediate rage, that his pack would be so unjustly maligned. He lunged forward to meet the insult as he should—and howled in pain as he met with a barrier he had neither smelled nor sensed.
He sat up slowly, gasping in pain, vision blurry for a few moments. "Damn it," he said. "That was uncalled for. What have I done to give the indication I would hurt you?"
"Didn't you just try to hurt me?" The man asked coolly.
"You insulted my pack," Ulrich snarled. "I have done nothing to you, save draw close to ask for assistance. You accuse me of lacking honor, but clearly you possess none yourself. I am sorry that I attempted to ask for assistance, and will trouble you no further."
Turning away, he slowly limped his way back up the hill. He stumbled twice, not certain he would regain his feet the second time. He did, however, and stubbornly did not look back to see what the three humans were up to below.
Let them shoot him in the back if they were so inclined; maybe that was what had become of the poor bastard whose skin had been returned to the castle.
Ignoring the hurt that had come from being so callously treated by someone who should have called him brother—the man had even known his pack by his collar—he focused on overcoming the physical pain of meeting a magic ward at full force, slowly dragging himself to where he felt safe enough to camp for the night.
Then he finally allowed himself to pass out.
He woke sometime later with a groan, his entire body a great, throbbing ache. His head especially hurt something fierce, and he wondered who or what had convinced him to drink like a pup. And just what had he drunk to wind up in a forest…
Oh, right.
There hadn't been any drinking and mores the pity. He was in the Great Forest. It extended from the south half of the lowlands, stretching nearly all the way across it, then spilled down into the neighboring kingdom, where the natives called it something weird. The Giggling Forest, or something.
Ugh, if not for the fact he knew he'd taken a nasty hit from a barrier, he would have thought his wandering thoughts indicative of a concussion. Moving slowly, pausing several times to let the pain recede a bit, he finally regained his feet.
He looked up to take in the sunlight through the trees. Far too bright to be remotely close to when he had collapsed. It was a fair bet to say he had been unconscious for a day or so—not too bad, considering he'd been hit with barriers nasty enough to put him out for the better part of three days.
What should he do now? Whoever the hell those people had been, they did not like royal guards. Especially that highland wild mage…
Ulrich frowned, turning over the encounter in his mind. Though it was not expected that one highlander would immediately regard another as friend, it was typical to give a brother the benefit of the doubt. He reached up to touch his collar, remembering the way the man had immediately known he was of the Pack Schwarzenberg.
The collar was warm and supple beneath his fingers, the embossed marks comfortingly familiar. Marks for his pack, for his family, even his own name for those who knew how to read them. A wolf's pride and joy was his collar, and though the royal guard he served tried time and again to make the wolves remove them while in uniform, no wolf ever listened. Wolves removed their collars for one reason, and one reason only.
He whipped around as the back of his neck prickled, pain inconsequential as he sensed danger—
Then a figure came through the trees, drawing him up short, and Ulrich positively hated that he could not smell the man.
"What have you done with her?" the man snarled, and let fly an arrow.
Ulrich barely dodged it, and anger drove him to shift and throw himself at the infuriating human, knocking them both the ground to struggle and fight, snarl and rage. The man tried to throw him off, but he was having none of that.
He shifted again as they scrambled, resuming a human shape at just the right moment, pinning the bastard to the ground. "What are you talking about?" he snarled, still trembling with rage. "I try to ask for help and you threaten me. I lay here unconscious from your damn magic spells and you attempt to shoot me, accusing me of—what? Damn it, human, what is the matter with you? I have done nothing, I have hurt no one. You are the one attempting to shoot an innocent man."
"No King's man is innocent," the man hissed. "Where is the girl? The child?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Ulrich snapped. "I have only recently woken from the affects of your nasty little barrier. If you do not cease with this nonsense, human, I will tear your throat out."
The man snarled back just as angrily. "Who else would hurt the child but another lowland wolf?"
Ulrich saw red, but managed just barely to hold on to what was left of his temper. He bent his head until they were close enough to kiss. "Human, I am a highland wolf, and will be until the day I die. I do my duty here, nothing more. Very soon I will be home again and good riddance to the weak and pathetic lowlands." He drew back slightly. "What of you? You are highland, your accent marks you plain as anything, and here you skulk in the lowlands, defending lowland children."
For a moment, it almost looked as though the man were in pain, but it was gone so quickly, Ulrich wasn't certain that was what he'd seen.
"You did not take the child?"
"I have no use for children," Ulrich snapped. "You could have more faith in a brother, human."
"You could let me go, wolf."
Ulrich did no such thing. "Are you going to try and shoot me again?" he demanded.
"No," the man snapped. "Not unless I discover you have lied to me."
Deciding it was the best he was going to get, Ulrich let him go and rolled away, regaining his feet and shaking himself—and promptly dropped to his knees as the pain returned full force with the abating of danger.
The world spun beneath him, and his stomach gave an unpleasant lurch. Damn it, he really hated magic. He pressed the back of one gloved hand to his mouth, willing away the urge to heave up his empty stomach and wishing the bloody pain would ease. It had been a long time since he'd stupidly run straight into a barrier; long enough he'd forgotten just how agonizing it could be.
A hand settled on his shoulder, making him tense, because if the damnable man wanted to kill him now then he likely could – Ulrich had used the last of his strength to fight him only moments ago.
"Drink this," the man said, voice gone oddly gentle.
Ulrich jerked his head up, though the move cost him, and looked mistrustfully into eyes that were the color of autumn—not quite brown, gold, or red, but a combination of all three.
Realizing he was staring, he tore his gaze away and looked instead at the small, dark glass bottle the man held out. He frowned. "What is that?"
"A tonic," the man said quietly. "It should take away the pain, and restore at least some of your strength."
Ulrich's lip curled and he looked up again to glare. "Right. You drove me away yesterday, without even bothering to listen to me, then you come today to shoot first and ask questions later—now you are trying to help me? Do I look like a pup still suckling at his mother's teat?"
"It's nothing personal," the man said patiently. "Wolves aren't well-regarded around these parts. You'd understand why if you knew all they'd done. Especially the last one in a uniform like yours. Just drink the damn thing, Schwarzenberg wolf. I have to find that girl, and the sooner you're dealt with, the sooner I can get back to doing that."
Shuddering as the pain racked his body anew, Ulrich decided he really didn't care if the bastard was attempting to poison him. Accepting the bottle, he pulled the stopper and downed the contents.
Cold flooded him, then a rush of warmth. The tonic tasted faintly of blueberries and honey. He licked his lips as the strange warmth slowly faded—leaving him with nothing more than a negligible headache. In fact, he felt well-rested and ready for most anything.
He grunted and stood as the man did the same. "Thank you," he said stiffly.
The man shrugged, tucked the empty bottle away in the pack he wore, and turned away.
"What did you mean, the girl is gone? That little girl I saw briefly yesterday? Where would she go? These woods are dangerous enough for grown men, surely."
"Yes," the man said, shoulders tight with tension. He turned back to Ulrich, eyes blazing with fury though he otherwise seemed calm. "She knows better than to wander off or talk to anyone, especially since a wolf in the garb of a King's Special Guard tried to steal her away—to eat."
Ulrich drew a sharp breath, dismay crashing through him. "He went feral? Why? How?"
"You think I know?" the man demanded. "I barely came across her in time to save her. Now she is gone again! Damn it, every time I meet a wolf, there is nothing but trouble!" He turned away and stalked off, barely making a sound despite the dead, dry leaves littering the forest floor.
"Wait!" Ulrich said, and chased after him. "Let me help."
The minute he said the words, he wondered what the hell he was thinking. His part was done—obviously this man had killed the wolf, because that wolf had gone feral. Mystery solved, and no one would even think to blame a man for killing a feral wolf.
"Help me?" the man asked contemptuously. "I've had enough wolves to last me a lifetime—I'm not putting up with another longer than necessary. If you want to help me, you can do it by leaving."
Ulrich rolled his eyes. "Not all wolves are bad. You're from the highlands, why are you acting like a dense lowlander?"
The man's eyes flashed. "I'm not in the mood to trade insults, wolf. Go away."
He really wanted to throttle the man. Or maybe just shake him, like a pup with a toy. Where that image had come from, he didn't know, but it pleased. "I'm a wolf, as you have obviously noticed—I can track the child far better than anyone."
"Even if she's wearing a Wolfsbane charm?" the man asked with an amused smirk.
Ulrich frowned, then made a face. "All right, fine. I can still help, and would like to help. One bad wolf in uniform does not mean we're all bad. You’re one of the most obnoxious humans I've ever met, but that doesn't mean I'm going to hate all humans."
The man let out a sharp bark of laughter. "One bad wolf? Try three. I'm not eager to see if number four is the exception to the rule. Go away, wolf, or I'll nock an arrow you won't soon forget."
"I have done nothing to warrant this behavior!" Ulrich bellowed, stalking close and grabbing the man up, shaking him hard. "I am a good wolf. I serve my Pack, I serve my King, and had you told me that you killed that wolf for turning feral, I would have commended you and gone on my merry way. Instead you threaten me, shoot at me, then promise to do it again when all I have done is attempt to ask for help, and then offer to find a child. You would rather reject me for being a wolf than accept my offer of help? She could be dead or dying, and you don't want my help?"
They glared at each other in silence after that, but Ulrich found it hard to hold on to his anger looking into those strange, autumn-colored eyes. He really hated that he could not smell the man. Sound and sight were not nearly as useful as smell and taste.
Finally the man dropped his eyes. Ulrich took it as a victory, but still waited.
"All right," the man finally said, an unhappy edge to his husky voice. "Let’s find her, and then you can get the hell out of my sight."
"Fine," Ulrich snapped, and let him go, wishing he could bite the bastard just because. "My name is Ulrich Schwarz, of Pack Schwarzenberg."
The man nodded stiffly at him, and slowly held out a hand in greeting. "I am Grosvenor Allaway."
"You're a wild mage of the highlands," Ulrich said, and stripped off his glove to shake Grosvenor's hand, liking the strength in it the calluses and scars that said this was no idler. No soft lowlander afraid to get his hands dirty.
"I was a wild mage of the highlands," Grosvenor said. "Now, I am just a huntsman." He said nothing more, but pulled his hand away and continued walking.
A huntsman? That was rather an unworthy position for a wild mage. That was like setting a well trained knight to chopping wood. He'd be good at it, but there were better things for him to do.
Grosvenor continued, "Unfortunately, I am not quite certain where she may have gone. The trail ended abruptly, and I could find no trace of anyone or anything. Given the size of this forest, and its reputation for strange goings on…"
"She could be anywhere," Ulrich finished grimly, "or nowhere. Best to go where the trail ends and take it from there, now that we have established I did not take her."
"Have we?" Grosvenor asked.
Ulrich growled.
Grosvenor smirked, clearly amused. "You've a remarkably short temper for a wolf."
"Only when my honor is questioned," Ulrich replied. "You're remarkably dense for a highlander."
"Yes," Grosvenor replied, his brief levity vanishing like the sun behind a bank of storm clouds. "So I was often told."
Ulrich rolled his eyes. "I meant no offense. We need not be at odds, huntsman. If you would just be pleasant for a few minutes, I would not even hold a grudge for the arrow this morning." He wrinkled his nose. "Though I do wish you would remove that damn talisman. It's damned awkward talking to someone half my senses say does not exist."
"No," Grosvenor said flatly.
"If the girl was not wearing one," Ulrich snapped, "I could already sniff her out. What if something were to happen to you, in the course of our search? We are partners, you and I, until the girl is found." Damn it, was the man really so thick and stupid? "Why are you set against anyone getting your scent?"
Grosvenor shrugged irritably. "None of your business, wolf."
Ulrich rolled his eyes again. Honestly, if not for the grouchiness, Grosvenor would not be a bad person. He was handsome enough, certainly. Obviously he lived in the woods—he had an edge to him, a rough look despite the surprising cleanliness of his appearance, that only came from living in the wilderness. His hair was the sort of blonde that turned to gold when it soaked up sunlight. He had the sort of broad, well-muscled build that Ulrich loved in a man.
His own build was much more slender, something that more than one lowland idiot had taken to mean he was weak.
If only the man wasn’t so damnably grouchy, Ulrich might have grown to like him. They were both highlanders, after all. Brothers stuck in the detestable lowlands. "Are you ever in a good mood?" he asked.
"When wolves aren't around," Grosvenor retorted.
Ulrich sighed and gave up talking. He wondered why he had even volunteered to do this—the way Grosvenor moved and behaved, he was as comfortable in the woods as most men only were in their own homes. Ulrich probably was not needed.
Well, too bad. He was going to prove he wasn't a bad wolf no matter what. If he had no clue why it mattered, well, that little detail was negligible.
His stomach abruptly growled, and he was abruptly reminded he had not eaten since midday yesterday.
Grosvenor stopped, and turned back to look at him, pretty mouth curved in another of those damnably annoying smirks.
Pretty mouth?
Ulrich scowled at himself, and then at Grosvenor. "Are we almost where the trail grows cold?"
"Yes," Grosvenor replied, but swung his pack down and dug something out, tossing Ulrich a small packet. "Jerky. That should keep you, wolf. What's one of your marvelous and wonderful kind doing in the woods without food?"
Oh, yes, at some point he was going to shake the annoying man until his teeth fell out. Still, he unwrapped the jerky and ate voraciously. "I figured if I was here long enough to need food, I could hunt it. Easier to travel light." He swallowed a bite of jerky. "Thanks, especially since I know you'd rather let me starve."
"If I get sick of you, there are better ways to kill you than starvation," Grosvenor replied.
Ulrich only shook his head and bit off another bit of jerky to chew. It was venison, and remarkably good for jerky. The army issued stuff had always tasted more like dried wood than meat, on the rare occasions he had to eat it.
He shoved a last bite into his mouth as they reached the clearing where the cottage lay – but rather than head toward it, they circled around it, and eventually headed back into the forest, where the brook vanished into the trees again.
"Here," Grosvenor said. "I followed her trail from where they draw water, to here. Then nothing."
Ulrich nodded, listening absently, for his attention was already on the anomaly his nose had picked out. He could barely smell it…something…sticky and sweet… With a thought, he shifted and put his nose to the ground, absorbing too many smells to count, each one a fascinating story all its own…but that sticky sweet smell, that was no forest scent. That was man.
He barked as he found it, and shifted back, shoving his fingers into the grass along the bank until he at last pulled free something no bigger than a tiny pebble. A bit of cookie—gingerbread, into which was pressed a small bit of bright pink hard candy. It looked like it had fallen off of a larger cookie, maybe while being eaten.
He heard and sensed Grosvenor come up behind him, annoyed all over again that he could not attach so much as a single scent to the man. "Looks like she was eating a cookie," he said with a shrug. "Not very helpful…"
Grosvenor's face had gone pale.
"What?" he asked. "Is there something dangerous about a cookie?"
"I hope not," Grosvenor said, and took the bit from him, holding it to his own nose. "But Gretel—the old woman—hates gingerbread. She would never make it. She's scared of gingerbread."
Ulrich frowned. "What in the world is there to be scared about in gingerbread?"
Grosvenor looked at the bit of cookie. "She told me the story only a couple of years ago," he said quietly. "As a child, she and her brother were abandoned in the forest by their father and stepmother. Poor, unable to feed them…it was not an uncommon practice back then, here in the lowlands, or so I was told."
"That is disgusting," Urlich said, though he had heard much the same himself. In many of the smaller, more remote villages, they still did it. In the leaner, poorer times, children were always the first to go. After all, the explanation went, more could be made when times got better.
"Yes," Grosvenor agreed, "but that's what was done to Gretel. She and her brother were abandoned in the woods. They tried to find their way home, but only wound up lost. Then the stumbled across a house made of gingerbread. Gretel said it was like something from a dream – gingerbread with candy for the shutters, the shingles, the door…" He shook his head. "A kind old woman invited them inside, fed them and cared for them…"
He fell silent, and Ulrich suddenly had a terrible feeling in his gut, and wished had not eaten the jerky.
"She was kind and sweet, far nicer than their parents had ever been. Good food, sweets, and she lived in that magical house…"
"Come to the end of the tale," Ulrich said harshly, unable to bear the waiting.
"She was going to eat them," Grosvenor replied. "The food she fed them was drugged, to keep them meek and compliant while she plumped them up. The house was made with magic, and the woman was a powerful witch. Gretel said she discovered the truth only by mistake, when she was taking the slop out one day and stumbled across an animal playing with some bones it had dug up—human bones, but tiny. Children's bones. She said, taken with other things, and the constant dreamy state in which she existed, it was not hard to figure it out. She ran inside and shoved the old woman into the oven she had been in the process of heating. She and Hansel fled, and eventually came to a village. That is as far as she told the tale to me."
Ulrich glanced at the bit of gingerbread cookie. "Surely you do not think…"
"I don't know," Grosvenor replied, "but I do know that no one besides Gretel, Annie, and I live here. I do not bake and Gretel would never make gingerbread. Where, then, did it come from?" He crushed the cookie in his fist, then threw the crumbs into the brook. "We must find her, and hope that I am wrong, or that we are not too late."
At least he was saying 'we' Ulrich thought. "Now I've a scent to follow," he said, "I'll see what I can do." Shifting back to his wolf form, he put his nose to the ground and hunted for the smell of gingerbread.
He found one more bit of it, some hours later when afternoon had given over to evening. They would have to stop soon, and he could see Grosvenor knew it—and did not like it.
He examined the bit of sweet he held, a bright green hard candy. All their hours of searching, and it was the only thing they had found. Disgusted, he dropped it to the ground again and stretched his tired limbs. "I do not get it. Where in the hell could they be? Surely you have some idea, huntsman. Is this not your wood?"
Grosvenor grunted. "I see you do not know much about the Great Forest."
"I know nothing about it," Ulrich confessed with a shrug. "I know people mutter superstitiously about it; I could not even get anyone to guide me through it. They call it something else across the border, I do not recall what."
"The Laughing Forest," Grosvenor said. "They say that portions of the Great Forest are haunted by laughing ghosts. Others say the forest itself is laughing at unwary travelers. Out this way…well, there is no laughing, but sometimes the silence is too deep. Like now."
Ulrich had already noted that, but he'd been trying to ignore it. If he were in wolf form, his hackles would be up. "So maybe we're getting close, despite the lack of a trail to follow?"
"Maybe," Grosvenor replied. "If one considers being caught in a web getting close to the spider."
"Lovely," Ulrich said, grimacing. "Why would an old woman who preys upon children live so deep in the woods?"
"He who seeks the path never finds it, he who waits for the path is never found, he who follows the path travels with ease."
Ulrich grunted. "Try too hard, or too little, and you get nothing. It's children she tempts, so they have no trouble finding her." He shuddered. "Why would anyone want to eat the flesh of her own kind? Why children?"
"Innocence," Grosvenor said, as he swung his pack off his back and began to make camp. "Mages all require power of some sort to work their spells. Certain…aspects of people…are power in their own right and can be contorted to a mage's purpose. Innocence is one of them, and most often found in the young, especially children. Even Annie, despite being almost eaten alive by a feral shifter, still possessed some innocence."
"I am sorry a fellow Guard would do such a terrible thing," Ulrich replied. "You showed him more honor than he deserved in returning his skin and collar to the castle."
Grosvenor shrugged. "It's ingrained," he said. "So you came out here to find the reason for his death?"
"Yes," Ulrich replied, wondering when the grouchiness would return, and why it had momentarily subsided. Maybe he was simply too tired to keep it up, for it had been an extremely long day so far. "Once we find the girl, I will return to the castle and never trouble you again. What other bad experiences have you had with wolves?"
"Another one came through this area a couple years ago, killed two men and nearly the third – brothers, all of them. Masons, by profession. The villages around these parts still mourn their loss, especially since the third brother just couldn't stay after his two younger ones were killed. Then that man-eater came around…"
Ulrich nodded. "That is two of three—what of the last?"
"None of your business," Grosvenor snapped, sour temper returning abruptly. He all but threw food in Ulrich's direction.
Rolling his eyes, Ulrich accepted the food and made short work of more jerky, cheese, and a sort of sweet flatbread. "Shouldn't we make a fire for you?" he asked.
"I'll be fine," Grosvenor replied. "We have the same accent, as you have pointed out."
Ulrich grinned. "You've been down in these weak lowlands longer than me, huntsman. You could have gotten soft."
Grosvenor gave him a withering look and said nothing, merely finished eating his own food as around them the forest grew increasingly dark. When dark finally took over completely, even Ulrich’s sharp vision could not pick out much detail in the figure sitting only a couple of arm lengths away.
Damn it, he wished the man would remove that infuriating talisman. He could understand it if they thought there were feral wolves to fear, or something along those lines, but they were hunting a witch. Witches didn't need scent to find people. Being a wild mage, Grosvenor would know that. So why keep the talisman now that he knew he had nothing to fear from Ulrich?
Trust, of course. Ulrich could not blame him, though he would have thought the bonds of the highlands enough to give him the benefit of the doubt. It could be fear as much as trust, though he didn't see what Grosvenor had to fear from anyone. A huntsman born and raised as a highlands wild mage. Back home, that was no idle thing. Hell, as often as not, they were marked for marriage to one pack or clan or another the day they were born—in the oldest clans, before they were born.
Which made him wonder, what in the hell a lone highlands wild mage was doing in a spooky forest in the lowlands? Had he been banished for something? Was he hiding from something? Perhaps his grouchy wild mage was far more than he appeared…
He wondered how much snarling would result if he dared to ask.
"Don’t you ever sleep, wolf?" came the sharp voice, as if summoned by his thoughts.
Ulrich smiled in the dark. "Occasionally. My thoughts keep me occupied. Are they disturbing you as well?"
"Wolves disturb me," Grosvenor snapped, "especially wolves who will not sleep when by all rights they should be dead to the world."
At that, Ulrich did yawn, but still he could feel his thoughts jittering about in his head. "What is a wild mage doing all the way down here?" he asked. "I am astonished your family let you leave; surely there must have been bids on your hand."
"It's none of your business," Grosvenor snarled.
If Ulrich were able to smell him, he did not doubt Grosvenor would smell like pure, violent fury at that moment. "My apologies," he said. "It is not my place to pry, you are correct. I miss my homeland, is all, and meeting you stirred thoughts of it." He sighed in the dark, staring up at the shadows of the trees, the hints of starlight beyond the thick canopy. "Being the youngest of seven, even in the Alpha family, I was never going to contract a notable mate. I volunteered to serve the King before they could make me."
No, so low in rank, he would be lucky if he was not married off to tidy up some minor deal or another, and sent to join another Pack. It's what the extra sons and daughters were for, after all. Still, so long as he had a home of his own, and a nice mate, he would call himself content.
If sometimes he wished he were as important as his eldest brothers, well, that was his own dumb fault. He was a seventh son—useful for the pesky little things. Such was highland life.
"There are worse things to be than the seventh son of the Schwarzenberg Alpha," Grosvenor said, breaking into his wandering thoughts.
"I know," Ulrich replied. "I have no complaints. I only meant that being in a low position, with no chance at prestige, I had to wonder why someone who obviously would have qualified as a prestigious marriage would choose instead to live in the lowlands. But, as you said, it's none of my business."
On impulse, he shifted and then curled up on the forest floor to at last finally try and sleep, though it was still some time before his thoughts settled enough he was able.
He woke a few hours later to a niggling sense of wrongness mingled with a strange feeling of rightness.
Placing either feeling proved impossible for a moment. Then he realized the wrongness came from the air itself. There was…something…in it that didn't belong there. He couldn't smell it, which definitely set his senses off. Magic?
The rightness was far more disconcerting. Sometime in the night, he had moved to sleep right up against Grosvenor.
Some time after that, it would seem, Grosvenor had shifted onto his side to twine around Ulrich, and thrown an arm over him. While Ulrich was in wolf form.
That set off bells that even managed to drowned out the sense of wrong in the air.
Even in the highlands, where wolves were a common sight, most humans were never completely comfortable with the wolf packs. Oh, they were comfortable enough, but he could count on one hand the number of humans he knew who were comfortable enough with wolves they would curl up with one, while shifted, in sleep.
That took being raised with wolves at a level few humans ever merited.
Whatever his current feelings on wolves, at some point in his life Grosvenor had been perfectly at home with them. Being a wild mage as well, that stirred up all sorts of fascinating questions.
Unfortunately, getting answers would have to wait, as that feeling of wrongness was growing worse.
Growling softly, he shifted to human form—right as Grosvenor's eyes opened.
Autumn eyes stared at him uncomprehendingly for a moment. Then they filled with fury as Grosvenor's face turned red, and Ulrich rolled away before he wound up with a knife in his gullet. "There's something wrong."
"Yes," Grosvenor replied. "You're still breathing."
"Not what I meant. We'll discuss that—"
"Shut up!" Grosvenor cut in, and Ulrich realized he finally sensed it. He looked around, turning in a slow, careful circle, then said in a flat tone, "The forest has changed. We've been moved, or the forest moved around us."
"What?" Ulrich looked at him, then took a closer look at their surroundings. It was still fairly dark, but growing lighter, and he could just barely see that Grosvenor was right. Though it still smelled much the same, the changes so minute he had not noticed them, their surroundings were not what they had been before. "How is this possible? Even with magic…"
"I told you, the forest is a strange one," Grosvenor replied. "Some say it is a sentient being all its own, having absorbed so much magic through the centuries. Or maybe all the magic came from the forest, once upon a time. Who can say? But we are in trouble, because now I have no idea where we are, and if it continues to change on us each time we rest—we may never find our way back to the safer parts of it." He shook his head. "I have seen strange things in the forest, but never this."
Ulrich looked at him. "You really do not need to sound so impressed, under the circumstances. What do you mean you're lost? You're a huntsman."
"You're a highland wolf," Grosvenor shot back. "It's impossible for your lot to get lost."
Remembering one particularly delightful occasion upon which his brothers had gotten him drunk and then quite neatly lost him in the woods where he'd grown up, Ulrich found this statement amusing at best. Especially when he knew they had done it to each other, in a longstanding family tradition of affectionate humiliation. He snorted. "I never made that claim, I assure you. Depending on what I've had to drink, and how much I was permitted to have, I could get lost in my own home."
Grosvenor turned sharply away, but Ulrich thought he caught a bit of a smile.
So his wild mage could smile. He wondered if he could get Grosvenor to laugh, as well.
His levity died as he heard and smelled something in the trees. Then silence. Not taking any chances, he shifted to his wolf form and growled low. Nearby, he heard Grosvenor draw and ready his bow.
Mud, he thought. He could smell mud. Not unusual in a forest, but something about the sudden rise in the smell bothered him, and now he could smell it mixed with other things—
Bones. Blood.
Then as quickly as that they were being attacked, but by what he couldn't say. Mud, in the crude shape of small humans.
He didn't waste time asking questions, but snarled and bit and fought as three of the strange things descended upon him from the trees as the world around them turned to gray morning. The mud tasted thick and bitter in his mouth, leaving an aftertaste of blood. Spitting out a clump which had once been part of an arm, he threw himself at one of the strange things and went for the throat, tearing it out.
The muddy head fell, and rolled away to lie still on the forest floor. In front of him, the mud-doll thing collapsed into a shapeless pile. He turned and went for another as hands with surprising strength grabbed him, tore at him.
When at last the chaos stopped, he was filthy and bloody and caked in drying mud. Turning, he growled at Grosvenor, who looked no better—in fact, he looked much worse. The nasty little things had managed to tear through his layers of clothing, and a shallow but still nasty looking wound ran the length of his stomach.
Ulrich growled again, fear curling in his gut that Grosvenor had come so close to dying. Any deeper, and that cut would be a gut wound from which no one could have saved him.
"Sprites," Grosvenor said. "Nasty little monsters, those. Made from mud and blood and the bones of children." He stepped forward, then grimaced in pain and held a hand to his wound—then remembered his hands were covered in mud, and with a sigh let it drop. "I don't suppose you could sniff out water? I'm a little too exhausted to find it myself, wolf."
Chuffing, Ulrich wiped his face in the grass to get rid of the worst of the mud, then cast his nose to the wind. At least the danger had faded, for the moment. Catching a whiff of what he needed, he barked at Grosvenor, then led the way from the mud-spattered clearing, very carefully not thinking about all the little bones he could see scattered amongst them.
An hour's hard, exhausting travel brought them to a good-sized stream. Pausing only long enough to ensure there were no traps or sprites lying in wait, Ulrich half ran, half slid down the bank and landed with a satisfying splash in the frigid water.
He stayed in just long enough to get clean, then clambered out and shook himself vigorously dry. Only then, feeling they were safe for a time, did he shift back and begin to work on a fire. Nearby, he could hear Grosvenor stripping down. He turned to ask, "Do you have spare—" and stopped short.
Grosvenor's clothing had kept pretty much all but his face covered. Even his throat had been well-covered by high-necked clothing. Bare of that, he could see two things that Grosvenor obviously had not wanted him to see, but the dressing of his wounds and the excess of mud had ruined any chance of his continued ignorance.
One, Grosvenor wore a collar. It was pale gold in color, to mark him as not properly wolf, but rather what was often called 'wolf brother'—a human close enough to a Pack that they counted him amongst them and would defend him the same as they would their own. Except many of the marks he should have by now were missing, and it looked as though most of them—all but his personal name—had been marked out.
The second thing he noticed was the deep, faded scar in the space where shoulder met throat, on Grosvenor's right side. A wolf bite, and one given when Grosvenor was extremely young. Probably when he was about twelve, the age when a boy was considered strong enough to be able to endure such a thing.
"Wolf given," Ulrich breathed. "You're wolf given."
Grosvenor snarled and threw his clothes into the water, then followed them in. Ulrich listened to him swear, but could not tell if he was swearing at Ulrich or the water.
The grouchy bastard was wolf given—but living alone in the lowlands. What in the hell was going on here?
Wolf given meant that he'd been promised since birth, and quite possibly in this case even before conception, to an alpha family of a particular pack. Such betrothals were not made lightly; they took decades of work. As he got older, they would have narrowed down whom in the alpha family he would marry. The bite would have been given by the alpha on the day the decision was made. To be wolf given, or wolf promised, was a high honor amongst the clans. Rare was the human accepted fully into a pack.
So what in the hell was he doing here?
Ulrich wished he could read the marks upon the collar, but they were illegible. It was obvious he'd be better off throwing the collar away, so perhaps it was sentiment or some such that kept the collar around Grosvenor's throat.
What could have been so disastrous that someone would break such an important betrothal with a wild mage? Wolves by their nature possessed no magic beyond their shifting; to obtain a wild mage for the pack was a matter of great importance. Nothing short of murder usually halted such a marriage, especially since if broken, no one else would take a wolf given; the old belief was that if the wolves did not want the betrothed, there must be something seriously wrong.
At least that explained why Grosvenor had not wanted to remove his Wolfsbane Charm. Ulrich would have smelled in an instant that he'd been wolf given, the small hint of wolf sunk into him by way of the alpha's bite. That also explained why he was so comfortable with wolves that he slept with one without really noticing he was doing it—and made it all the more upsetting that he now claimed to hate wolves.
Shaking his head, conceding that it was still none of his business except he would love to know which pack had gotten so stupid it let a wolf given wild mage slip through its fingers, he resumed building a fire. By the time Grosvenor climbed from the water, shivering something awful but clean and wound dressed, the fire was roaring nicely.
"If you ask me any questions, you will be lucky if all I do is ignore you," Grosvenor snapped as he hung up his wet clothes to dry. He was dressed in clean clothes, but was still shivering as he sat close to the fire.
Ulrich put a few more branches on the fire, and said nothing, merely looked at him inquisitively.
Grosvenor ignored him, instead retrieving his pack and pulling out food for breakfast. "We had best find Annie quickly," he said tersely, "or we will have to stop to hunt for food, and I cannot think that will go well for us, given recent events."
"Right," Ulrich agreed, and ate his food quickly. "Are you warming up?"
"Yes," Grosvenor replied, then reluctantly, "thank you for the fire."
Ulrich shrugged. "So how do we find this witch before she finds us, and why did she attack us?"
"I could not say," Grosvenor said. "Perhaps she does not like another mage taking such an interest. If anyone is a threat to her, it is me."
"Do you think…" Ulrich stewed over it for a moment, then decided the worst he'd get was derision, and he was used to that. "Do you think she might be the reason the dead wolf went feral? It is a hard thing to do, to turn a wolf feral."
Grosvenor frowned. "I…it's possible, though I don't see what her purpose…no, that's not true. He was trying to eat Annie, and Gretel. Perhaps the witch was trying to use him to bring her food? But that seems a stretch. It hardly matters, anyway. The point is to find Annie, and we are wasting precious time."
"We also do not know where to go," Ulrich pointed out. "Better off to remain here, recover our strength, and figure out what to do, rather than run about a changing forest in hopes of finding what we need."
Making a face, Grosvenor conceded the point and subsided into silence to eat and warm himself.
Ulrich wondered at their chances of finding the girl alive. If the witch knew they were hunting her, would she keep the girl alive and fight them off, or devour the child right away and use what magic she gained from it?
Thinking about it curdled his stomach, but ignoring the reality of the situation would do more harm than good. "Is the child still alive, do you think?"
"Yes," Grosvenor said slowly, blinking as he clearly set aside his own thoughts. "My impression from Gretel was that the witch cannot simply eat—she must prepare the child first. Since Gretel and her brother were taken, people have been more cautious. I would imagine the witch has more trouble finding what she needs these days, so I do not think she would waste her prize by…" He grimaced, and finished, "getting ahead of herself."
Ulrich nodded. "Still, as you say, we should not waste time." He stroked his collar absently as he thought—but stopped as he felt eyes upon him. Looking up, he just caught Grosvenor looking away. The silence between them shifted into something tense and thick. "You are wolf given," Ulrich said quietly, "so why are you not wolf mated?"
"It's none of your business," Grosvenor snarled.
"Packs have fought over less than the mistreatment of a wild mage," Ulrich replied. "My own pack has but two to its name, both of them elderly now. They would do and give a great deal to lay claim to you, as would many packs, yet you rot here in the lowlands?"
Grosvenor laughed bitterly, but Ulrich did not miss the sadness in it. "My own clan kicked me out; my former family and my ex betrothed alike prefer to pretend I do not exist, wolf. The mark upon me is nothing more than a bad memory, and if I could be rid of it, I would." He threw his remaining food back into his pack, then went to pack up his still wet clothes. "If we return to that clearing, we can try to backtrack the sprites. I doubt they were aware enough not to leave a path, and hopefully the witch did not think of it."
As plans went, it was a thin one, but there was also a distinct lack of alternatives. Nodding, silently vowing to learn more of Grosvenor's story once the child was safe, Ulrich took care of the fire. Once that was done, he shifted back to wolf and led the way back to the clearing, for they had been in too great a hurry to erase their own path.
He had not expected the remains of the sprites still to be there, but he smelled them long before they came into sight.
The field was just as unpleasant of appearance as it had been of smell. Mud was everywhere, so dark it was almost black, smeared across trees and shrubbery, covering most of the ground. He could see small bones scattered throughout, and his stomach knotted with disgust.
Children. What manner of magic was so important, so grand, that it merited devouring children?
Growling low, he sniffed around the clearing until he had the scent well and truly in his nostrils—then onward he went, moving through the forest as quickly as was possible while following a trail. Everything else faded from his attention; nothing mattered but finding the source of the sprites.
He was aware of another presence keeping fairly decent pace with him—Grosvenor. Impressive. He really was wolf given, and properly raised to it.
Then his attention was torn away by the sudden, abrupt scent of a human. The girl child, it had to be. Throwing his head back, Ulrich howled, then rushed forward faster than ever, determined to reach her now he had her scent—
"Ulrich, no—"
Grosvenor's warning came too late, and realization later still, and just as he realized he had been summoned straight into a trap, Ulrich's world exploded into pain.
