He had bent over to clutch his knees and sob for air as someone in a blue uniform asked him what the fuck he was playing at.
That had been three days ago.
A product of a fevered imagination? A nervous system strained near to breaking? Or simply the alcohol that was increasingly pickling his brain.
What was happening to him? Was it starting up again? The merest scratch from a werewolf kills, infecting the victim with the disease. Michael had come a quarter of an inch from death the night the tribe had been attacked. Only the thickness of Mirkady's tunic had saved him, though it had been ripped from his back.
That was how close he had been all the time, running along that knife edge with Cat for company. In the Other Place death had never been farther away than spitting distance and the distance itself had been life, a packed, raw life possessing one less skin than he owned now. A running life, vivid with fear and so riddled with violence that it had become second nature. A man broken open looks much the same as a beast.
But it was behind him now—and that was his mantra these days. Those muscles, growing up for the second time, had grown differently. He was a different man; even the beard was gone. These things had no right to come crowding back into his life. Werewolves, for Christ's sake! No right. Even Cat. Though a chance resemblance brought his heart into his throat sometimes, he did not want to clamber back on board that merry-go-round. Even with her it had not all been milk and honey. There had been times when he had seen the inhuman, the Wyrim side of her.
He prayed that it was not coming for him again.
FOURTEEN
AFTER BURNING THEIR dead they continued to move south, following the sparse game trails through the thicknesses of the forest. They were even warier now, scouring the land for wolfsbane to increase the effectiveness of their weapons. For Michael there was the unaccountable feeling that he had been called the night the manwolf had attacked, and he could not forget how its claw had touched his face, almost tentatively, before the fox men had attacked it.
Spring was in full force. Snowdrops beneath the trees were giving way to daffodils, bluebells as thick as carpet, bright primroses. The wood was brightening, coming to life before their eyes, and the nights were getting shorter. After the initial shock of their encounter had worn off, the tribe seemed to become cheerful. When two weeks had passed they traversed a wide game trail and some of the men left to try their luck at the hunt, for smoked meat was beginning to stick in their throats. Michael stayed behind. An inchoate dread had begun to steal up on him with every mile southwards they walked. He and Cat left the tribe's camp and wandered on to a wooded rise that overlooked a long, westwardwinding valley. A sea of trees stretched out like a vast, long bowl to every horizon, stark under the sun but with the greenness just beginning to be picked out in the unfolding buds, and the darker patches where the tall evergreens stood unchanging.
'No people, no houses, no roads—nothing.'
'This is the Wilderness, Michael. What were you expecting?' He looked at her. Cat got on well enough with the Fox—People, but had made no friends. They were a little afraid of her yet, he thought; they could see the Wyrim part of her perhaps more clearly than he could. To him she seemed as lovely as ever, slim as a willow wand, seasoned as a steel blade. It made his heart skip to see her lips quirk into a smile, those green eyes flash. She was wearing a doeskin shift, supple as silk, her skin pale as cream where the garment fell forward below the collarbone. The stone knife was tucked into her belt.
'None of the villagers come this far south,' she went on. 'The wood is too wild here, with too many beasts and the Horseman riding the glades in the nights. Even the tribes seldom follow the hunt so far. We are scant leagues from the first eaves of the Wolfweald.'
'What about your people? Do they live here, or are they too frightened as well?'
She grinned at him without humour. 'They are all my people, the wolves along with the fairies. We are all the same.'
'That's not true, Cat.'
'Isn't it? Ask any of the Brothers, or the merchants who wander the great roads with their escorts. Ask the Knights. We are all the same.' She rubbed her eyes as if tired. 'Trolls there are here, the dark kind that cannot abide the sun. And ... goblins, I think you would call them. They have strongholds in some of the valleys. They are a strange folk. Mirkady tells me they eat anything that lives and smelt their weapons from bone and marrow, but he may have been jesting. Sometimes they and the wolves hunt together.'
'Does Ringbone know this?' Suddenly the wood seemed secretive, furtive. He watched a kestrel circle and circle over the sunlit tops of the trees whilst his imagination ran momentarily riot conjuring up shadows beneath them.