The Watching of Wolves and Dragons

CHAPTER ONE

With the thinning of the veil between the world of the living and the realm of the dead, Darius sensed his mother’s fear, travelling on All Hallows’ Eve, this most forbidding of nights. Gossamer sheer, like the silky wings of a moth, one could almost see the menace of the wraiths of the netherworld of Hades if one squeezed one’s eyes tightly shut and clenched one’s fists and screamed.

Darius knew his mother was given to superstitious beliefs, but he agreed with her nonetheless. There was something in the air this night. With the pointed bite of a predator, he could feel it in the chilling arrival of the rising easterly wind. It was in the dry-bone rattle of the wagon’s shutters, in the way those icy fingers probed the slats and goose-bumped his exposed neck – he wrapped his cloak more tightly around himself. Something indefinable, almost tangible, a hint of things soon to come. Just… something.

He watched his mother’s attention flit around the draughty cart: a loose thread on her tunic; an adjustment to Detelena’s blanket; a twist of the head to the night-sounds without, ill at ease, despite the shielding cocoon of husband and soldiers and carriage. Nightfall circled and sniffed the ground before sinking warily to the watchful land, and as if to justify Lady Amaee’s fears, there came a distant and mournful cry, the most forlorn of the animal kingdom. His mother’s expression hardly flickered though, barely at all. They were escorted by a rough dozen men, and despite the weight of travelling on this night of superstitious menace, despite talk of enemy abroad, they would surely be troubled by nothing this evening, she’d earlier assured him – nothing but the threatening storm and the buffeting winds. Entirely at ease.

The wagon jolted again. Detelena gave a sleeping whimper. It felt as though they were travelling faster than normal, perhaps because of the danger from the Ottomans.

He smiled at his mother. “Don’t worry Ma’ma, I’ll look after the both of you.”

“You’re always so very protective of us, my chivalrous young knight.” Her laugh, though, was brittle and splintery in the cold of night.

Darius thought back to the first time he could remember hearing a wolf, after a funeral, he thought, as his parents had been clothed heel to hat in mourning. The funeral of King Sigismund, perhaps, as Darius could remember others similarly clad, a lot of whom had seemed far more important, even, than his father, Lord Marco Amaee. They’d been journeying this very stretch of the Via Egnatia, and one of the men had been killed.

“Savaged by wolves,” he’d heard said, the guarded whisperings of father’s soldiers as they shuffled and shifted like condemned men. But there was something in their tone, he could recall even now, something rigid about the way they said wolves.

“Death at a funeral,” his father had grunted, a grim cast to his hard-set features. “A bad omen indeed.”

The Via Egnatia now stretched before them. It was constructed in early days of the Roman Empire to further their conquest of the known world. Aqueducts and artisans, politics and portraiture, their awareness of the world was confined to the light, and there was a lot more besides.

Darkness and lies.

The howl sounded again, otherworldly in its anguish. Keeping his voice light, Darius asked, “Do wolves often attack people along this stretch of the road?”

“What a serious thing to say.” Lady Amaee glanced at him, counting the question naïve, although sometimes, out of the mouths of babes…

In answer, and in honeyed tones, she started to sing a haunting tune about trolls and wolves and creatures in the night - oh yes there are - and a brave huntsman who’s not afraid and goes out to fight - yes he does, oh yes he does.

The Via Egnatia was a staggering feat of the ambition of distant leaders bent on immortality, and the sweat of slaves bent double in the summertime scorch of midday. Over a millennium it had transported caravans of camels to and from the Orient, bearing silk and spice just as much as disease and death. In recent days and years it had assisted the Muslim hordes of the Ottoman, lightly armoured and swiftly riding, in campaigns against the squabbling nations of the Christian West. It had seen human blood before now, had existed many years and more, and would continue longer than all the inhabitants of the world: mostly.

This night the cart’s wheels followed the ruts formed by its many predecessors. The cart was old but sturdy, draughty but Darius preferred it to braving the elements on horseback. Lady Amaee peered through the slats into a darkness that held fast this time of year. Darius looked too, but saw nothing. The last sign of other people had been an hour gone, in the flicker of a distant lightning storm.

They’d passed an abandoned chapel and cemetery on the outskirts of an abandoned village. Darius had a sudden shudder, felt as though someone was standing at his shoulder, was murmuring quiet blasphemies in his ear, was tracing nails down the back of his neck.

“It’s been lonely years since folk lived and prayed there,” his mother said. The fence around the graveyard was gone, the land reclaiming its own, pulling tombstones and memories down beneath the shrubs and dirt with knotted, thorny fingers.

But what’s to stop wolves and beasts from spoiling those graves?

Darius had heard stories of what happened to defiled burial grounds. Dark tales told by father’s soldiers when Ma’ma or Arianna weren’t around. The soldiers laughed as they spoke of such evil rising, and he knew they were only trying to scare him. But he understood the glint of fear behind their smirks. He thought of those forced smiles and prepared one of his own.

Detelena gave another whimper. There were voices outside, deep and fast, raised and excited. The wagon lurched, slew to the side, off the path and into a small clearing, surrounded by trees.

“Wait here.” His mother carefully laid Detelena on the seat.

Darius watched her exit with a quick look back. He waited.

The voices sounded once more, a shout from somewhere further afield, the neigh of horses nearby. All journey she’d tried not to let her apprehension show, the doubts of travelling on this of all nights, but Darius had caught on anyway: ever-perceptive, ever-protective.

He crossed himself, as his mother had.

Long moments passed before she returned. “Come.”

Some of the soldiers were grouped just off the road, subdued and staring. Darius heard a muttering, something about the Ottomans. His father was amongst them.

“Rest here with Peter and Cyrus. Stay out of sight. We shan’t be overlong.” A hint of a smile graced his face. He momentarily squeezed his wife’s hand before his attention returned to the soldiers.

“Godspeed you,” Lady Amaee breathed, and Darius followed her into the trees.

The scent of eucalyptus on the chillsome breeze iced the back of his head if he sniffed too deeply. They stood watching, quiet, as soldiers mounted horses. Darius’s father looked back, just the once, then put heels to his great war horse with a cry, and his men followed him into the deepening night. Darius noticed they drew swords as they rode.

Lady Amaee stared after them a wing’s beat, lip clamped between teeth, then flashed a look of reassurance at Darius. Peter sidled over, one of Lord Marco Amaee’s most trusted and experienced soldiers. A small smile, he chatted briefly, lowered eyes, bobbing head, but it was clear none were in the mood, and silence returned as he withdrew.

The two soldiers stood apart. Hands on hilts, they shuffled their worn leather sandals, stomping the early frosted ground, then paced back and forth a time. They wore light leather armour, studded jerkins, greaves and vambraces over plain cloth doublets. They weren’t expecting trouble, but had strapped shields to their arms anyway: wood bound in iron and painted white, a double-headed eagle on the back of a lion, carved and painted gold.

A crisp autumnal moon peeped through skittering cloud-fingers. The brief half-light filled just enough of the gloom to charge the shadows with menace. After a while the horses became unnerved by a blustery squall. With breath hot and sharply staccato, they pawed the earth, pulling at their reins. One nickered as nearby trees, clustered like an anxious audience, bowed their nodding agreement.

Peter cleared his throat, turned to Lady Amaee. Darius had known him all his life. A family man, he was decent with kind eyes that often twinkled, and a daughter vaguely of an age with Detelena. He had an impressive scar across his forehead and was short a finger or two – prices paid without complaint in the campaigns of Darius’s father. Prices for which he’d been recompensed with a month’s coin, no doubt. Darius knew his father was unusual amongst lords in that he rewarded such loyalty.

“They can tell a storm’s comin’, that be all m’lady.” Peter gave a reassuring nod.

A large gap between his front teeth had always fascinated Darius. When he was younger he’d wondered if the soldier could whistle through it. Thinking on it, he now tooted a cheery note into the night, with a nod in reply.

“It be your stench that minds them.” Cyrus winked at his fellow. “I’d suggest you stand away.”

“It’s the wind, is all.”

“I been pleasured by your wind afore now, and like I says, stand away, my sake much as theirs.”

“I’ll be a-pleasurin’ you with the hairy side o’ my hand if you don’t put a bung in yer flapper.”

Cyrus was much the younger. With his defiant jug-ears and impertinent rash of pimples, he looked scruffy and misplaced to Darius. He always seemed awkward and fidgeting when father’s more experienced soldiers were silent and serious.

Darius’s mother turned from the men. She glanced at the carriage as a sprightly gust rocked it, as she moved to check on Detelena. “Stay here.”

Darius could sense her tension. He wished he knew where Pa’pa had gone. He kicked at the ground which stepped him closer to the soldiers.

“…appreciate the way you speak. Front of a lady an’ all, ‘specially one so gracious an’ fair. After all the kindness she’s done for my fam’ly, yours an’ all, I fancy…” Peter glared at the younger man, a stern-fathered scowl, a meaningful, warning scowl, forgetting Darius was within hearing. Adults often did that, he found, and he enjoyed being privy to their secrets.

“...no, there be some lessoning required when we’re back at barracks,” Peter continued, to which Cyrus shrugged his angular shoulders contemptuously. This only enraged Peter further. “An’ look at you. That armour’s in a state, an’ there be more nicks on your sword than a whore’s headboard. I’ll wager it’s virgin to the touch of a whetstone. Lessoning indeed required.”

Darius felt the premature nip of wintertime come before its due date, as his breath formed in front of his face. He huffed a momentary puff. Pa’pa said the winter would be mild, but he didn’t feel it, not this night.

“You think I like minding you?” Peter continued, lessoning already having started, it would seem. He blew on his hands then clutched possessively at his armpits as though Cyrus had asked leave to borrow them and he was guarding their warmth jealously. “I’d much rather be under the covers an’ spooning me wife’s buttocks, than standing here scolding you.”

Young and headstrong as he was, Cyrus resisted the obvious quip about such spoon-worthy buttocks. It was only when he spat on the ground in Darius’s direction, that they noticed him.

“Oh, sorry, young master,” Peter apologised for the other, but Darius just shrugged and blew on his own hands. Just another soldier trying to keep warm was all.

Cyrus was a few years Darius’s senior, but Darius was already almost on the level with the soldier. A small incident of some little while back came to mind. Darius had been hurrying after his sister as she struggled painfully across the castle bailey. A group of soldiers had passed her by, and although the youngest, Cyrus alone stopped to help her. That simple act, insignificant to others, meant a lot to Darius.

Lady Amaee emerged from the carriage, pulled her gown tightly about her. “Let’s collect firewood my chivalrous young knight.” She smiled quickly at Darius, but the smile didn’t quite reach her striking olive-grey eyes, a colour she’d bequeathed to her children.

Delighted to be needed, relieved to be preoccupied, Darius started into the trees. He knew all about chivalry, having had the ancient code of knights schooled into him since he was old enough to sit classes. Bravery and honour, gallantry and protection of women, the downtrodden, the young and the old, he knew it well and determined to live the code as did his father.

A ground mist had gathered on the edge of the trees like souls escaping their earthly confinement. His steps disturbed it in the eldritch, leaf-filtered light, swirled it about his feet, ghostly hands reaching for his ankles. He hadn’t got far before one of the horses whinnied. The other quickly joined in alarm. As Cyrus stretched for their reins, one reared. The soldier shrieked, fell back a pace, angular shoulders now hunched to his ears. As if to justify their anxiety, the howl rent the night air once more, closer now.

Circling.

“Whoa there, easy girl.”

Darius watched as Peter went to help, and it struck him that neither soldier was now guarding the camp. Both horses were reacting in kind. It was all the men could do to avoid being trampled. The eyes of their mounts had rolled up. They snorted and backed as though privy to some black knowledge beyond the understanding of humans. Even Cyrus had stopped his jesting.

There was the unpleasant smell of fungi and rotting wood, the odour of long decay. Darius glanced around at the darkness surrounding them, a darkness that suddenly seemed entirely more covetous and solid. There was a certain tremor in the waiting air, like the charge between lightning strikes of a violent storm. An irrational feeling borne of the shared fears of mankind made it feel as though it wasn’t just the watching of wolves.

Peering at him from the nearby night, there was the low glint of eyes. He stopped dead. The eyes instantly blinked out, a scurry, a rustle of leaves. Something swooped close by, a bat or suchlike. He flinched, unseen actions and noises all around. Never, had such normal sounds seemed so ominous. He felt the sudden urge to lick his lips but found his tongue dry. The trees started to feel as though they were closing in, a fey touch of trance to the scene. He held his breath, listened intently and forgot his chivalric task.

He saw his mother, caught in indecision. About to follow him into the trees, she was distracted by the soldiers.

He saw the men, busy with the horses. Struggling with the reins, they were still not guarding as they should.

He saw the horses, their alarm rising. They jostled and stomped, and one kicked so violently Detelena must surely have awoken.

And then he saw something that brought him up short, caused him to drop the sticks. An abrupt chill rippled his back. The pit of his stomach plummeted, like when Pa’pa used to throw him up high and catch him at the last moment. But now his father wasn’t there, only two nervous soldiers and himself, and a looming, closing, monster-shaped silhouette cut from the very fabric of nightmare.