The Drunk Wolf novel · Chapter 10 of 32

Chapter 10: White Wolf, Grey Wolf

I shifted on the courtyard cobbles with my shirt still half over my head.

It doesn't hurt, if you don't fight it.

The world went sharp and loud and full of smells, and I was standing on four white feet in the wreck of my clothes.

I went over the wall where he'd gone over.

The hill was silver under the moon.

His trail was easy. Peat smoke and whisky and wet wool, and under it something new, a cold clean smell.

Behind me, down at the castle, the bell was still ringing.

I could hear men on the road. Horses. Somebody with a horn.

I ran.

I found him on the shoulder of the hill, high above the loch, where the heather gives way to bare rock.

He was standing on a boulder with his head up, looking at the Stone.

When he heard me, he turned and showed me his teeth.

I stopped.

I lay down in the heather, flat, the way you'd lie down for a frightened dog.

He watched me for a long time.

Then he turned and ran again, along the ridge, away from the castle and away from me.

I followed him.

All night I followed him.

Over the burn, and up the corrie, and down through the birches at the back of the hill.

Every time the riders came close I went the other way and let them hear me, a white wolf crashing through the bracken, and every time they turned after me.

Every time I lost them, I went back for him.

Near three, he stopped running.

He stood in a hollow of rock under the Turning Stone with his flanks heaving, and let me come close.

I shifted back.

The cold hit my bare skin.

I knelt in the heather in front of him with my arms around myself and my teeth going.

"Hello," I said.

His ears went back.

"I know you're in there. You threw Murdo in a fire for me. You don't get to hide from me now."

The wolf whined.

"You're frightened of it," I said. "The voice. I know. But you didn't hurt anyone tonight. You held six men down and you didn't break a single bone. You chose that."

He lowered his head.

"Come back," I said. "I'll be here. I've been sitting outside your doors for a week."

Nothing.

I was too cold to keep talking.

So I shifted again, and lifted my head, and howled.

I'd never howled for anyone before.

It went out over the loch, long and high, and came back off the far side of the glen.

The grey wolf lifted his head.

He answered.

It was deep and rough and nothing like the cracked human howl in the great hall. It went into me and through me, and our two voices went up together over the hill until I couldn't tell which one was mine.

When it ended, he lay down beside me in the heather and put his head across my back.

We lay until the sky went grey.

He changed back in my arms at dawn.

I felt it happen, the fur going thin under my cheek, the weight shifting, and then I was a woman again, lying in the frost with a naked man.

He was shaking.

So was I.

He put his face in my hair.

"You ran all night," he said.

"You ran all night."

"You led them off me. I heard you."

"They're terrible trackers. My uncle only hires them for their coats."

He laughed, and it broke in the middle.

My cord was still on his left wrist, soaked and filthy. His splint was gone. The burn across his palm was still raw.

He held me anyway, with that hand, flat against my back.

"I love you," he said. "I've never said it. I've loved you since you called me a coward in my own stillhouse the first winter."

"I didn't call you a coward that winter."

"You did. For not asking you to stay."

There was a shepherd's bothy just down the slope, under the Stone. Four stone walls, a slate roof, a hearth, and a tin box of old army blankets the stalkers keep for bad nights.

He carried me there because my feet had gone numb, and he wouldn't hear otherwise.

He got the fire going with dry peat from the stack by the door.

Then he sat back on his heels in the firelight, naked, with a blanket round his shoulders, and looked at me.

"Seven days," he said. "I haven't had a drop in seven days."

"I know."

"You told me to ask you again when I was sober."

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