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“Ralnor,” I said after I’d made my way up to the Uldariel leader. I caught his attention for a split second, but it soon returned to the fire. “Ralnor!”
He turned deliberately, regarded me with those too pale eyes, and then pointed to the dark space between several buildings. Only now I realised the humming song was coming from the albino men.
I didn’t have time to consider that in any depth, since my bladder, now that it had my attention, was not willing to give it up. I stumbled off in the direction he had pointed, trying to ignore the slight smile on his face as I did so. Whatever mead was, it was bloody strong. The world seemed to tilt and shift under each footfall.
I should’ve been worried, walking down the dark alleyway between buildings, but the cool night air and the darkness was kind of soothing after the hot fire and the flush of alcohol. My hands clung to the rough whitewashed walls of the buildings as I walked, then I finally found a small building wreathed in lanterns that looked like an outhouse. I opened the door a crack and saw it was, and s
ighed with relief. I tried very hard not to think about third world plumbing and spiders and god knows what as I did what I needed to, then I head back outside, feeling glad I was still in one piece. Now, where was I going?
“What are you doing, wandering around, little queen?”
My eyes searched the darkness until Sylvan appeared, and the few beams of moonlight that made it down here appeared wholly centred on him, bleaching his skin a stark white, his hair as black as night. My vision jumped a bit as I watched him warily, the human clothes we’d leant him flickering, replaced in momentary glitches with a wolf skull as a helmet, a black wolf pelt, and a familiar-looking spear with a crystalline point.
“Wha…?” The word felt weird in my mouth, as if the muscles struggled to get the sounds out.
“And where are your courtiers? So quick to abandon their mate for a nice show. She’s their priestess, the woman with the white fur. Hides up in the hills for most of the year, except for now. The Longest Night…” His eyes flicked around him, as if to confirm his label of the event. “I forgot how time moves differently between the realms. You’ll need to run, Julie.”
“What?”
He approached, slow and measured in his gait, yet he was on me way too fast.
“This is why the Volken kept me for so long. Seers come and go. If you kill them, they’re quick enough to respawn, hopefully in a more biddable form. Can’t kill me though,” he said, pulling his hair up into a man bun, and then he turned around. Before I could snicker something about hipsters, I saw it—small but perfectly formed, a black wolf stood out on his skin, staring at me with shining red eyes.
“Cool tattoo,” I said with a shrug. “Not enough to make me want to engage in cardio drunk though.”
He hissed in frustration.
“You blunder through this whole thing, preoccupied with your relationships and your groin, with no clue what you’re dealing with. That woman they keep in isolation, they imagine her to be some kind of link between the Great Wolves and the Uldariel, but she’s not.” My view of Sylvan wavered, replaced with the increasingly desperate moves of the woman. Her dance steps included large sweeping kicks, to keep the surging men back, to maintain however briefly the space around her. “She’s just a woman who gets to enjoy being left alone on her hill, only to have to come down each Longest Night and pay the price.”
There were no young people left, no serving girls or wives or girlfriends. Everyone who had one had slipped away to their huts, presumably to lock their doors tight against what was coming. Her face was twisted in a sneer, but the previously defiant set of her shoulders was beginning to sag. The men edged in closer. I searched for mine in the group, seeing some of Aaron’s men, but my view was limited. My heart pounded, my head aching now as the fear shot through me. Just what was the final dish of this ‘feast’?
“She’s no more a conduit for the Great Wolves than that outhouse, but me and you…” Sylvan fought the idea, I could see it in the twist of his neck, the wary way he watched me. “We are.”
I laughed at that, the sound cutting through the still night. Linked to a god-wolf? I might have some weird visions when getting laid, but my life was otherwise fairly prosaic, when alien wildlife wasn’t chasing me around.
“All this time, right under my nose. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be, Julie. You were just a step towards her. I had no reason to hurt you or your pack, I just needed you to get to her, but now…”
He took a step towards me, then another.
“And now?” I said, no idea what I was asking.
The woman had stopped all semblance of dancing now, as the fur headdress fell to the ground, no longer important. Her fists were raised, and she lashed out increasingly erratically, the sneer dropping in favour of open-mouthed fear. All religious pretence was kicked to the curb. This was the beginnings of a gang rape.
“For tonight, you’re Branwen, not that woman, and it’s my job to hunt you down.”
“But that woman…”
“Nothing can be done for her now. This is her role here. You’d have to face down every single male here to stop this.”
Good fucking idea, I thought.
The shift into Tirian form came without thinking. My humanoid form couldn’t do much against that many warriors, but this… I snarled, venom dripping from my teeth at the seer, but that wasn’t what froze him to the spot. I glanced over my shoulder, where his eyes burned, and saw that my fur had changed. I was pure white, just like Finn. Well, cool coat change and all, but it wasn’t going to save that woman.
Sylvan’s face became a mask of anger as I took off, his lips peeling back from the fangs that knew me all too intimately. I streaked down the alleyway, blinking when I arrived in the better-lit square. Hands were on armour and belt buckles, ready to unleash their dicks on the poor woman. I growled as I strode over to the fire, and men jerked out to the way, then clambered to get as far away as possible when they saw me. This only grew more marked when I leapt over the fire to where the woman shrank against one of the houses. She was as much cringing away from me as the men, but that was OK. My body was a buffer the lot of them weren’t likely to cross. Then came the howl.
Ralnor fought his way to the front of the group, his white hair mussed, his eyes burning with an unnatural light.
“Brothers, Lonan hunts Branwen tonight! Mount up, for we join the hunt!”
