Raptor (45 page)

So I took the weapons, and Velox and I went on without him. We had not gone very far before I heard—with amazement, as Wyrd had said I would—the cry of the auths-hana. At least, that is what I assumed it must be. Just as the bird, in its playful sliding, behaved like no other bird in my experience, neither did it sound like any other I had ever heard. As well as I can describe the noise, it was a startingly loud hoot, clatter and screech all combined—and prolonged. I could well understand how the local peasants would have come to believe in the presence of mountain demons.

I got down from Velox and tethered him to a shrub, and nocked an arrow to the bow. I was just starting off in the direction of the bird’s call, trying not too loudly to crunch the old snow’s crust as I walked, when I was even more startled by another noise. This time it was unmistakably the long-drawn howl of a wolf, coming from behind me and down the hill, approximately where Wyrd would have been by now. I stopped where I was, puzzling, because it was most uncommon for a wolf to be baying at midday. Then the auths-hana gave its shattering cry once more and, as if in reply, the wolf howled again. I glanced indecisively from one direction to the other, but the wolf had sounded as if it was either in dire pain or in a ravening rage. Perhaps it was another sick one, I thought—and Wyrd was down there with no defense but his short-handled battle-ax. So I left Velox tethered and left the auths-hana unpursued and, bow in hand, I went running and bounding down the mountain to make sure that Wyrd was safe.

Some way below the snow line, I found his horse wandering about, idly browsing on what few edible greens grew at these heights. I wondered why he had not fled or did not even manifest any nervousness at knowing that a wolf was somewhere near. I looped the horse’s reins over my free arm and looked all about me, but saw nothing beyond the underbrush. Not until I heard another howl, much closer now, was I able to plunge through the shrubbery toward the sound, my bow and arrow at the ready.

Thus it was that I came upon Wyrd—and I felt my back hair prickle when I realized that it was
he
doing the howling, exactly as a wolf does, his mouth impossibly wide agape and baying skyward, his extended tongue waggling and making the sound pulsate. Worse yet, Wyrd was lying on his back on the ground, but not
entirely
on it. His whole body was bent in a rigid arc, like the C shape of a bent bow, so that only his heels and the back of his head rested on the earth, while his clenched fists furiously drummed on it.

However, as I pushed through the last bushes to reach him, the rigor seemed suddenly to leave him, for his body collapsed flat onto the ground. He ceased that awful howling and the pounding of his fists, and simply lay flaccid, except that his chest heaved as he panted for breath. I quickly tangled his horse’s reins in a sturdy shrub, laid down my weapon and went to kneel beside him. Wyrd was blinking rapidly, and his mouth was still open, but no longer so gruesomely wide. He was not sweating from his exertions, as I would have expected, but his face was as gray as his hair and beard, and, when I touched it, cold and clammy.

At my touch, he flicked his bloodshot eyes to look at me and asked, hoarsely but quite rationally, “What are you doing here, urchin?”

“What am I doing here? I came at a breakneck run. It sounded as if you were being attacked by an entire wolf pack.”

“Akh, was I so loud?” he said apologetically. “I am sorry if I interrupted your hunt. I was… I was merely clearing my throat.”

“You were
what?
You must have cleared this whole range of the Alpes. Every goatherd, every woodcutter, every—”

“I mean to say… I was striving mightily to eruct the phlegm or whatever it is that has for so long congested my throat and my windpipe.”

“Iésus, fráuja,” I said, though a trifle relieved to hear that he had intentionally been behaving so. “You were practically standing on your head. There must be an easier way to flush your throat. Where is your flask? Here, have a drink from mine.”

He instantly twisted away from me, and made a gargling sound like the start of another howl—
“Argh-rgh-rgh!”
—and seemed about to contort again into that bent-bow rigidity. But, with an obvious effort, he regained control of himself, and panted:

“Please… ne, urchin… do not torment me…”

“I am only trying to help you, fráuja,” I said, holding my flask close to his lips. “A sip of water may—”

“Argh-rgh-rgh!”
he roared again, and again strained to keep his body from stiffening, but managed with one hand to slap mine aside. When he could speak, he growled fiercely, “Whatever you do… keep away… from my mouth… my, teeth…”

I sat back on my heels and regarded him with concern, and said, “What is this? Andraías told me you have not eaten for some days, and all yesterday and today you have taken neither food nor drink. Now you refuse even good fresh wa—”

“Do not speak the word!” he pleaded, flinching as if I had struck at him. “In mercy, urchin… hand me my fur and lay a fire. It is so early getting dark… and I am cold…”

Wonderingly, I looked about at the brightly sunlit mountain. Then, worried but obedient, I got his sleeping fur from behind his saddle, helped him roll himself into it, and gathered dry moss, twigs and windfall branches, and set them alight near where he lay. By the time the fire was burning well, Wyrd was asleep and snoring. I hoped that was a good sign, so I took care to steal away silently and not wake him.

I climbed the mountain to where I had left Velox, and, just as I was about to undo his tether, I heard again that raucous, shrill, rattling cry of the auths-hana. It seemed that every animal in the neighborhood, except myself, had recognized that Wyrd’s howling had come from no real wolf, and had not fled in fright. So I again nocked an arrow to the war bow and set off in the direction of the bird’s call. Following Wyrd’s instructions, I waited until the auths-hana was bellowing, and dodged from one concealment to another—a tree, a boulder—and hid behind it for as long as the bird was silent. Eventually I came in sight of it, perched on a low bough of a distant pine tree.

Once more I waited until the bird—stretching its head high and unfolding a great crescent of tail feathers—gave its self-deafening cry, and I scuttled quickly to a nearer point of vantage. I wanted to make sure not to miss felling it, because, if Wyrd was right about the bird’s being very good eating, a meal of it might tempt him to eat. My arrow did strike it, so clean and true that the auths-hana died in the middle of its next yell, and dropped with a thud at the foot of the tree.

It was such a distinctive creature, even in death, that I stood and admired it for a moment. It was as big of body as a goose, but had a fantail like that of a blackcock, only much larger. Its taloned feet could have been those of a juika-bloth, and its head resembled that of the Scythian monster called the gryps, for it had a cruel, raptorial, yellow beak and fierce red eyebrows. Its plumage was mostly black, though with bronze and white dapplings, and all of it was of such a metallic sheen that it flashed other colors in the sunlight: purple, blue, green.

I did not waste too much time admiring it, though. I plucked it clean of that remarkable plumage before the rigor of death should clamp the feathers tight. I chopped off the head and feet, and gutted the bird and scrubbed it in a snowbank, then carried it back to where Velox waited. When I got to the campfire, Wyrd was still asleep, so I merely singed the pinfeathers off the bird’s skin, then waited until sundown to spit it and start it cooking over the fire.

I sat and occasionally laid new fuel on the flames, and gave the spit an occasional quarter turn, and listened to Wyrd’s snoring, while the dark gradually, really did come down. I must have dozed, myself, out of worry and boredom and helplessness, because I suddenly came alert at the cessation of the snoring. The spitted fowl was sizzling and crackling merrily and, beyond it, on the other side of the fire—an alarming sight—two wolfish yellow eyes shone at me from the darkness. Before I could shout or scramble to my feet, though, Wyrd spoke, and I realized that he was sitting upright, that the eyes were his.

“The auths-hana even smells delicious, does it not? Eat it, urchin, before it chars.”

I had never seen Wyrd’s eyes glow in the darkness like that. But I said nothing except “There is enough here to feed four people. Let me help you to some, fráuja.”

“Ne, ne, I could not swallow it. Perhaps I
could,
however, now try a gulp of water. At this moment, for some reason, I am not repelled by the very thought of it.”

I handed my flask across the fire to him, then tore a leg and thigh off the bird and began hungrily to eat. In fact, I ate less mannerly than I usually did, deliberately making loud, juicy smacks and gobblings, hoping that my evident enjoyment would arouse Wyrd’s appetite. But all he did was tilt my flask to his mouth, and he did that gingerly, almost warily.

“You were right about the auths-hana, fráuja,” I said with enthusiasm. “The most savory bird I have ever eaten. And its own diet of bilberries has given just the right tartness to the sweet flesh. Do have some. Here. A slice of the tender breast.”

“Ne, ne,” he said again. “But I did manage to get a trickle of water down my gullet. It did not make me gag or recoil. And hark! I can even speak the word ‘water’ without strangling on it. I must be on the mend.” He regarded the flask as appreciatively as if it had contained rare wine, and said the word several times. “Water. Water. See?
Water.
No ill effects. Have you ever read the
Georgics
of Vergil, urchin?”

Taken aback, and indeed surprised to learn that
he
had, I said, “Ja. His poems were approved reading at St. Damian’s.”

“Well, unless your monastery owned the two disparate renditions, you probably do not know this. In his original poem, somewhere in the second book, Vergil put in the name of the town of Nola. But a while later he happened to pass through that town, and he asked someone for a drink of water. See? I can say it with ease.
Water.
Anyway, that townsman churlishly refused him the drink. So Vergil rewrote his poem and expunged the name of Nola. He put in ‘ora’ instead—‘region,’ simply to preserve the poem’s scansion. And I would wager that the mean and grudging little town of Nola has never again seen itself mentioned in literature by
any
writer.”

I said, “No doubt the town now regrets its treatment of him.”

Without another word, not even wishing me a good night, Wyrd lay down on his side, tugged his fur closer about him and fell asleep. He snored, so I knew he was not dead, and again I hoped that sleeping was the best treatment for his illness. I wrapped the remainder of the auths-hana for eating on the morrow, and banked the coals of the fire with turfs, and rolled myself into my own fur and likewise fell asleep.

For how long I slept I do not know, but it was still dark night when I was yanked bolt upright and wide awake by another blood-chilling wolf howl. I wished it
had
been that of a wolf, because it was Wyrd again, and his body was again arched into that bent-bow contortion, so strained beyond human endurance that I could hear his bones and sinews creaking, and his repeated howls were of unmistakable agony. For some while I could only watch and listen in helpless horror, and wait for the paroxysm to abate. But when it did not—when Wyrd continued to lie propped on his head and heels, beating his fists on the ground, roaring with pain—I bethought myself of something. I sprang up to rummage in my pack of belongings for the crystal phial I had carried for so long.

I had tried to make my dying juika-bloth taste just the merest smear of the precious drop of milk. Now I bent over Wyrd and, when he had to draw breath between howls, I let fall the remainder of that drop into his mouth. Whether the milk did it, or just Wyrd’s realization of my being near, the rigor once more relaxed its cruel grip and let him collapse supine on the ground. But, in the same instant, he gave a savage sweep of his arm that sent me sprawling.

“Perdition!” he rasped. “Told you… keep
away!”

So I remained where I was, and when Wyrd had got some air back into his lungs, he said hoarsely but calmly:

“Forgive my violence, urchin. I repel you for your own good. What was that you fed me?”

“My best hope of helping you. A drop of milk from the breast of the Virgin Mary.”

He turned his haggard face to give me a look of disbelief, and said, “I thought it was I who had the madness. Did that auths-hana peck out your brains?”

“Verily, fráuja, the milk of the Virgin. I stole it from an abbess who did not deserve to possess it.” I held out the phial for him to see. “But there was only a single drop. I have no more to give you.”

Wyrd tried to laugh, but could not breathe deep enough to do that. Instead, he growled the most blasphemous oath I had ever heard him utter:

“By the discarded and never resurrected little foreskin of the circumcised little svans of the little infant Iésus! You tried
magic
on me?”

“Magic? Ni allis. The milk was a genuine
relic.
And such a sacred treasure has the power to—”

“A relic,” he said sourly, “has exactly as much power as a Sending done by a haliuruns or an incantation recited by a magus. Any cheap and trifling magic may work prodigies among those fools who believe in it. But none will work against the hundswoths, urchin. I fear you have wasted your treasure.”

“The hundswoths? I feared as much. But you said—”

“That I had escaped the infection. I thought I had, when the bite wound healed, but I was mistaken. I should have remembered—I once knew a case in which it took a full twelvemonth for the dog-madness to manifest itself in a human victim.”

“But… but… what are we to do? If even the Virgin’s milk is powerless…”

“There is nothing
to
do but let the affliction run its course. What
you
are to do is stay well away from me. Go and sleep at a safe distance. Should I start raving and slavering, the merest flying fleck of my spittle could put you at hazard. And I
will
rave, and talk nonsense, and at intervals endure bone-bending convulsions, and at other intervals fall comatose. Unless one of those convulsions cracks my neck or spine, we can only hope that they will become less frequent and longer apart and eventually cease altogether. Until then…” He shrugged.