Late Winter, 1797~
When they had returned to find the village ransacked and Soibhan gone, Belenos Breanainn had raged and cursed for hours, rallying the men to his side with the intent of finding her. For days, the Breanainn clansmen followed the path of the captors South. And South. And South. A snowstorm out of the North raged for what seemed like a week, stranding them in their quest and obliterating the tracks of the captors. Some of his men claimed to hear the howling of wolves through the blowing winds and a few found enormous tracks in the snow outside the parameters of their camp.
Unendless, the storm blew and the air grew colder even as the snow grew higher. It was with great regret that Belenos made the decision to turn his men for home lest the they die in the storm.
But Maedoc Breanainn refused to give up the search. He argued with his father for hours until eventually, Belenos lifted his hands in defeat at his stubborn son and bid him safe travels. "Bring our little cub home, Maedoc. And keep yerself alive!"
~~~
The storm had eradicated the tracks his prey had left, forcing Maedoc to make a decision. In the end, he decided the men would no doubt continue on their path south, into Sunderland. The Sunderfolk used slaves as easily as they used forks and no doubt, they would try and sell his sister to a pretty noble lady or a whore house.
The thought of his sister forced into such things infuriated him, and that fury drove him on.
When another storm struck, he cursed the elements. The snow felt more like tiny icicles stabbing every inch of exposed skin, and the wind felt likely to bowl him over if he didn't keep a sure footing. He contemplated making camp, but then he heard them.
Through the sound of the snow hissing against dead foliage and the shriek of the wind....he heard the howling of wolves. Though he'd heard the cry of a wolfpack many times back home, something about these calls sent a shiver down his spine. They sounded...wrong. Both deeper and higher pitched than normal wolves, almost as if the pack were laughing maniacally, like the demons his nan used to tell stories of, all around him.
Though not normally a fearful man, Maedoc felt it prudent to shimmy up a nearby oak, an old tree high of branch and bare of leaves. The noise grew all around him until he couldn't tell the difference between shrieking wind and howling wolf. A shiver crawled unbidden down his spine, leaving a chill unrelated to the cold to travel throughout his body.
Sitting firmly in a high knot between two branches, he listened, clinging to the limb much more tightly than he would ever admit to. His ears strained, and at first, he dismissed the odd slithering sounds as his imagination playing tricks on him.
But then, the wind died.
The whispering swirled around him like the snow, filling his ears, his nose, his mouth, with words unknown to him. Lilting words, slithering words, the felt like worms against his skin and crawling around his insides. As if listening themselves, the howls of the wolves had ceased so abruptly, it was as if all of the throats had been cut at once.
Maedoc found his grip on the tree to be more desperate than before, as the whispering grew constrictive around him. He squeezed his eyes shut, tried to block the sound from his ears, but nothing could stop the words from slicing into him.
The snap of a twig broke the spell; the whispering vanished and his eyes snapped open, jagged breathing sounding too loud in the sudden, unnatural silence.
A silence filled by a smiling man, and a dozen enormous, snarling wolves.
Maedoc eyed the stranger warily, swallowing back a hint of fear. The man was cowled, leaving his face in shadow except for his disturbing, white toothed smile. The wolves circled him in such a way that their movements transfixed Maedoc, his eyes going wide. All of them stared at him, their eyes never leaving his frame, high up in the tree that didn't seem high enough anymore.
"Who are you?" he called out, realizing that silence at this stage was pointless. That didn't mean he was leaving the crotch of his tree, however.
The man laughed, the sound slithering around Maedoc like the whispering had earlier. It echoed throughout the eerily silent woods unnaturally, as if more than one man laughed, though Maedoc assumed that what stood below him was more than just a man.
When the laughter drifted away and no answer followed it, Maedoc's eyes narrowed. He grew nervous. The wolves had stopped circling the figure, and each one stared up at him with hunger in their eyes. Every one of them stood far taller than any wolf he had ever seen or heard of, and he realized that these must have been the creators of the tracks that had followed the Breanainn hunting party. The thought of the monster wolves being so close to him and his mean was unnerving, but at the same time, something about all of this intrigued him.
"You'll not be answerin' me?" he questioned, shifting. His dagger would be within easy reach, but his bow sat pinned to his back by the tree. Sword hung from its scabbard on a smaller, jutting branch within arm's grasp, but reaching for it would be all too obvious. "Are ye a man, or a spirit?" He was nothing if not persistent, and though he didn't think the man or non-man would answer his questions, it didn't hurt to ask them and strain for some telltale hint of an answer.
The figure tilted his head to one side, a gesture that screamed inhumanity.
"Spirit than. Why do ya stalk this wood?"
One of the wolves, as suddenly as a gust of wind, lunged for his tree and dug its claws into the bark, running up the tree a good ten feet before it lost momentum and its bulk dropped it back to the ground. It circled the base of the tree, snarling low in its throat, eyes glowing with fire.
Again, the hooded figure remained silent. He spread his hands, and Maedoc felt as if the gesture resonated with a sense of claiming; did this wood belong to the spirits? Where, exactly, had Maedoc ended up in his Southward travels?
The cowled face shifted and Maedoc caught that eerie, toothy smile again. As if called upon by this mysterious figure, the winds shrieked back to life, swirling a fresh, abrupt snowfall about his face. The icy flakes felt like tiny knives against his skin and he covered his face for only an instant. When his arm dropped, the figure, and the wolves, were gone.
FIN
