Sephtis

46. Snapped.

I am barely aware of the grey dawn breaking across the sky, for I am exhausted. Sweat drips into my eyes, and my dress hinders me, for it is stiff with my blood. I stumble, fall, and then force myself onward again. Pain has engulfed me, body and soul; I go through it, past it, driving my broken body on and on. My heart, soul, and blood pour out across the dawn, pour out with Kavah's blood across the earth, leap with his spirit into the wind and growing light.

At last I am at Droug's village, on the forest side of the moat. Torches still blaze on the shore, and the morning is shattered with men's shouting and laughter. On the ground, covered in blood and dust, and charred with fire, are the bodies of the wolves. Many wolves there are They are stretched out in a row, along the curve of the moats shore. I walk past them, looking at them in silence, and the dawn is still. Only the flaming torches move in the wind, and I see a wolf that I had met as it had crossed Kavah's kingdom. There are five wolves I do not know. Then their is Orbah, her lovely fur matted with dirt and blood. She has been run through with an arrow, and slit from her throat to her tail. Akar is next to her, his head half crushed. Then a wolf that is a stranger to me, burned alive, and still panting. And Zahar, my beautiful, beautiful Zahar, her eyes sliced across with a blade and her head half severed and her white throat black with blood. She is dead, dead. And then Kavah-

"Oh, Kavah! Kavah my wolf-father!" I cry. Kneeling beside him and putting my arms about his great neck. I lift his huge head and hold it against my breaking heart. I gaze into his eyes, still wide, but dull like overshadowed moons; and I howl and cry. I feel his blood seep into my clothes, mixing with my own, and I touch my fingertips to it, and lick them, so that a part of him may become a part of me, may become a part of what I am. I kiss his ears, his nose, and his beautiful eyes and lay him down on the earth once more. Standing up I examine the rest of the wolves. Ten more there are, but I know none of them.

Glancing up, I see the men of Droug's village on the other side of the moat, standing about the outside of the fallen kings house. Their faces are proud, gloating; they look at me as if I am mad, and they have punished me for it, and now they shall be rid of me. Taaroko stands there beside Merikh, swinging his incense and useless charms, chanting a prayer of protection against me, and my evil wolf spirits. Something inside me snaps, the last thread tying me to people; broken.

"Pray well, mighty priest!" I cry. "Pray with all your spirit, for you grieve the gods, and the earth, and you destroy the great and prefect plan they had for it. You are mad! All of you! You warriors who parade with bloodied hands, your faces smiling and satisfied, as if you have done some great and noble deed! And what is it you have done? Slain beasts that never brought you harm! Gone out with sword and arrow to slay what you do not understand, to slay those that only wish to dwell in harmony. Oh, great and mighty warriors you are! You slice a babe in two with a sword, and call yourselves brave! You fall upon a sleeping village in the sun, slaughter everyone, and think it proves what fine and noble beings you are! How the gods must weep and lament over you! I swear, there is more virtue and wisdom in the wolves, than there is in you! Yet they have died, all because of your stupidity, your terribly, futile, arrogant stupidity!" I pause, catching my breath before continuing, "And you, priest - you who claim to know the gods best of all! You are the most ignorant of all! Do you never listen to your own teachings? You say the earth was made for us, made for us to tend and nurture and protect. Yet you approve of this destruction! Are your brains dead? and your hearts with them? Kavah understood the plan, understood that we are meant to nurture, and sustain, he understood the the greatness of taking and giving, the harmony! But not you!"

"You are possessed!" Cries Merikh, furious and shaking his finger at me as the priest continues chanting. "Go now, or you will suffer the same fate as your wolves. I warn you cursed-one."

"Oh I shall leave! Never again shall I walk with your kind, nor enter your dwellings. I renounce everything I ever had that binds me to you!"

I turn and run away from them.

The forest is ringing with the first bird songs. I go back to the castle ruins, to Kavah's den, for it is the only home I know. Men's footprints are outside, and deep furrows in the dirt where something has been dragged, and claw marks and blood. Blood everywhere. Burning torches have been flung inside the den, and the smell of smoke still hangs in the air. But, new upon the dust, clear upon the signs of strife, are fresh wolf prints, not dragged, but made by steady paws. I stare at them, not understanding, and for a glorious moment I think that I have made a mistake, that Kavah still lives. I sense a presence in the crumbled stone beyond the great stone slab, but see only shadows drifting in the morning breeze.

I rub my hands up and down my bloodstained arms, my back throbbing, and I stare at the ravaged earth in front of the den, and despair floods over me.