Wolf's Path (Monstrous Hearts: The Short Stories)

Preserved Memories

Author's Note:  I wanted to expand on an idea I had for Wolf's Kin, and this short story is the result.

The black wolf didn't dream like a man. It was another thing lost to the grave, another reminder of the very strangeness of his existence. For him, sleep brought only the quiet of an unconscious mind... or memories.

Not every single thing from his past. Not nearly all that. He had lived too long for each moment to crystallize into something permanent, for each death to leave its mark. Yet certain incidents remained vivid throughout the years, throbbing like deep scars, and on this night he sank into one from an age that had been lost to time, its civilizations now nothing more than dust and rusted artifacts...

He could smell the fear long before he reached the village. Could smell the filth and desperation, too. The sky looked grey from the ash of distant fires. Pyres for kings who had chosen to fight the invasion rather than surrender. They had died as free men, the black wolf could say that much about them. Yet now their villages burned, and the lingering smoke carried by the strong winds left the living nervous.

There were signs that pleas to the gods were growing desperate. The black wolf passed by several places of sacrifice, his nose twitching at the smell of dried blood mixed with sap, soured milk, and other holy items. In the distance, squat houses hunched like frogs in the soft ground.

He hadn't bothered thinking up a name for himself. This village was small and backwards compared to many of the ones that now bristled with the steel of invading soldiers, but the leaders would understand what he was as soon as they saw him.

Children spotted him first, dropping their sticks with mouths agape at seeing a stranger appear in their world of weedy heather and oozing water. The black wolf took them in with a glance as they ran off to the huts, and kept his pace steady even when the first adults appeared with wood cudgels. All he cared about was finding the village priest. In his experience, they were always dressed the finest, sometimes even with animal fat oiling their hair and skin.

This one was modest, with only the dusty smell of herbs about him and a few ribbons of blue in his woven tunic. Grey streaked his hair and his cheeks looked sunken from hunger. When fear flickered in the man's eyes, the black wolf knew he'd been recognized for what he truly was. When desperation remained etched in that gaunt face, he also knew it wouldn't matter.

They spoke in a hut stitched with bones, years of sweat and fear clinging to the walls like grime as the priest shivered and offered a pouch of gold. The black wolf took it and left, wet soil sucking at his boots as he headed further into the moor, following the reek of a peat bog.

He was still miles away when he picked out the skeleton of a tree rising from veins of black water. It was a massive thing, tall as a tower and white as an altar, and even from that distance he could see the bloodstains on its lower branches.

A figure crouched on one of the gnarled roots, boots inches from the dark muck of the bog, and as soon as the wind blew its scent over, the black wolf paused. One of his kind, a fellow creature cursed to slip between the forms of man and wolf, a fellow fiend back from the grave and no longer mortal. A fellow vargr.

This one was young but remained calm as the black wolf resumed his approach, looking over only once before staring out at the water surrounding the tree. It was only when they were within speaking distance that the other vargr stirred and said, "I smell gold on you. Is that what the villagers offered in return for killing me?"

The black wolf never spoke when an answer was obvious.

At the lack of response, the other vargr rubbed the back of his neck, some of the flatness leaving his eyes. "You're old. The oldest of our kind that I've yet met. You must know we can't die, so why are you here?"