Wulmaer

Wulmaer tore his eyes from the wretched, winged form tucked amidst the rocks, his guilt overwhelming him. The innkeeper had been right. There were hoof-prints everywhere…and they led right back to the dead tszieni that he and Macsen had left in the forest.

“That the thing you’re looking for?” the fisherman drawled around his chew. He spat, the stream of saliva landing on ragged black feathers. He glanced at the steep bank. “We could toss it in the lake and it wouldn’t never bother no one again.” He jabbed a finger at the waves, lapping upon the water-worn circles of shale far below. “That water’s deep enough to drown a drake.”

It was all Wulmaer could do not to kill the man. “Leave.”

The fisherman frowned. “But you promised ten sparks to anyone—”

“Now!” Wulmaer roared, rounding on him. When the man stubbornly refused to move, he grabbed the fisherman by the front of his shirt and yanked him close. Into his face, he said, “Before I have you hanged for defiling an Auldhund’s corpse.”

Understanding dawned in the fisherman’s eyes and he quickly backed away when Wulmaer released him. “I didn’t know, sire. Truly. I didn’t—”

“Leave,” Wulmaer whispered, turning back to Cassia’s body. Behind him, he heard the fisherman turn and bolt down the beach.

“I’m sorry, lass,” Wulmaer said, dropping to his knees beside her lifeless form. His vision began to blur when he reached out and touched the truncated end of her right arm. “So sorry.”

Big feet trotted up. With a raspy laugh, Macsen said, “That poor fool’s running like his tail’s on fire. What’d you say to hi—” Macsen’s words ended in a gasp.

Wulmaer could not look up at him. Cassia had been Macsen’s rounds-mate. His companion for ten years. His sister. And Wulmaer had given the order that had gotten her killed.

He felt Macsen’s eyes trace the lines of Cassia’s ragged corpse, take in the ripped and broken feathers, the sideways tilt where one of her mandibles had been ripped beyond its capacity, the twisted neck, and the place where her right hand should have been.

A deep, gut-wrenching growl filled Macsen’s chest. Wulmaer looked up.

The grounded Auldhund was looking at him with enraged green eyes, his batlike ears flattened against his skull.

And then, before Wulmaer had a chance to get to his feet, the Auldhund leapt, driving him to the ground. Wulmaer felt a bone in his wing shatter as the heavier, grounded Auldhund began savaging his arms, trying to get at his throat.

The talons that had once been safely encased in flesh were now ripping at his sides and wings, shredding his skin, leaving tattered flesh in their path. Somehow, Wulmaer got his feet under Macsen and dug his claws into the Auldhund’s underbelly. He could have ripped his innards open to the air, but instead, he bunched his legs and pushed with all his might toward the lake.

Trapped under the weight of two Auldhunds, another of his wing-bones snapped. Then Macsen, just then beginning to realize his trajectory, made a frantic scrabble at the steep, pebbly bank, trying to redirect his path. Failing.

He hit the water hard, like a gigantic stone.

He sank just as fast.

The water’s surface rippled, then calmed where the Auldhund had disappeared, the water deep due to the sheer slant of the surrounding mountains.

Groaning, Wulmaer got to his feet and stumbled down to the water’s edge. Bubbles trailing to the blue surface of the lake were the only indication that an Auldhund was trapped below, drowning.

Macsen, with his barrel chest and heavy muscle, could not surface.

Muttering, Wulmaer eased himself down the bank and into the water, searching for his companion with one foot while he steadied himself with his arm on a driftwood log. If he fell, he would likely share Macsen’s fate, since the steep bank would him no place for purchase, and he, like Macsen, was much too heavy to swim.

The bubbles had stopped, now. Wulmaer pushed himself further into the water, until it crested his chest, touching his chin. He shifted his grip to the branch of the wet and rotted driftwood log, perched precariously on the sheer shale banks of the lake’s edge.

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Below, he brushed something warm with his foot.

Wulmaer sank his talons into the boy and began to pull them both back up the bank.

The crumbling driftwood broke suddenly, leaving Wulmaer scrabbling in a life-or-death struggle of his own. He sank much too fast, his head falling under the surface as Macsen’s dead weight drew him deeper into the abyss—a lake so deep that it was rumored by many to drain into the bowels of the earth itself. Wulmaer’s claws raked the driftwood as he slid, then caught just as he thought he had run out of log.

Holding his breath, feeling the icy chill of the lake all around him, Wulmaer stretched the ripped and aching muscles of his arms, forcing his talons deeper into the log. Carefully, he pulled. He managed to get his head above water and took a deep breath.

Then the rotten tip of the log snapped under the great weight, and Wulmaer’s face sank beneath the water again. Just as he thought about preparing to meet his ancestors in the afterlife, he realized that tendrils of the log remained attached to the base. He gave a gentle tug, dragging him and Macsen back toward the surface again.

The tip of the log held, and Wulmaer was able to climb it, sinking his talons into the wave-rotted wood and pulling himself up the bank until he reached the base. He got just far enough that his feet were out of the water, but ran out of log with which to pull them further. Below, limp in his grasp, Macsen’s head dangled under the surface of the lake.

“Damn you!” Wulmaer said, jerking harder with his feet. “Get your damn head up, fool!”

Macsen didn’t hear him. Couldn’t.

Reluctantly, Wulmaer released his hold on the log with one hand and stretched down to sink his talons into the boy’s back. He heaved backwards, praying the boy’s six hundred pounds didn’t dislodge the log from its precarious position.

Macsen’s head rose above the surface just enough for Wulmaer to see lake water pouring out of his mouth.

“Gods damn you, boy,” Wulmaer whispered. He released Macsen with his foot and dug it as deeply into the lakebed as he could. Then, tentatively, he released his hold on the log and grabbed Macsen’s hind leg with his other hand.

“Breathe!” Wulmaer cried, hefting him up. His feet dug deeper into the treacherous bank, threatening to dislodge them both.

More water trickled out of the youngling’s mouth, more water than Wulmaer thought possible. Still keeping his precarious hold on the beach with his feet, Wulmaer pounded Macsen’s back. “Breathe,” he said. “Breathe, dammit!”

Macsen twitched, then thrashed suddenly as he vomited a gush of water at Wulmaer’s feet.

Wulmaer, unprepared for the movement, lost purchase on the lakebed and had to release his grip on Macsen’s leg in order to stop them from sliding back into the water. His claws dug deep furrows into the dried out wood as he arrested their downward slide. Dangling from his other arm, Macsen began to struggle in earnest.

“Stop it, boy!” Wulmaer cried. “You keep thrashing like that and we’re going to die here!”

Macsen’s head was dipping beneath the water again, though this time he managed to lift it above the surface and breathe, his big nostrils flaring. In doing so, he caught sight of Wulmaer, losing his struggle to keep them both on the shore.

Macsen, seeing and assessing their situation, gingerly set his feet into the crumbling bank and pushed up, alleviating the strain in Wulmaer’s ruined arm. Wulmaer gasped, feeling his claws slipping further down the wood. His hands, already weak from the mauling Macsen had given them, were beginning to lose their strength to hold them.

“Climb up,” he told Macsen. “Use the log.”

With the last of his strength, he dragged Macsen over to where his unsheathed claws could get purchase on the driftwood. With painful, deliberate slowness, Macsen pulled himself from the water, scaling the long-dead tree with all the caution of a man knowing that at any minute, he could fall to his death. The log twisted and bounced under the Auldhund’s great weight, sending little dribbles of shale to spatter into the water below. Wulmaer knew that, given the slightest opportunity, it would slide, taking both of them with it to their graves.

Eventually Macsen passed him on the log, and Wulmaer let go of his shoulder with a relieved sigh.

Macsen made a little leap from the log, onto a nearby ledge of sand created by the frothing waves. At the motion, the log shook loose of the bank and began to slide. Wulmaer dug his heels in and yanked his talons from the wood, knowing that the wet, waterlogged wood would only carry him to the bottom. The dead tree hit the water and disappeared below, sliding further into the lake’s cold depths. Wulmaer glanced up.

Macsen was safe on his ledge, watching him.

His eyes were filled with hatred.

Chuckling desperately to himself, Wulmaer looked back at the lake below. Pinned by the water at his feet and the treacherous shale at his back, his great weight giving him no purchase on the too-steep banks, Wulmaer pondered his demise. It only now occurred to him that he was terrified of drowning.

Had been all his life.

What the hell had he been thinking?

Wulmaer’s foot lost purchase and dipped into the icy water. He gasped, terror wrapping around his brain like the cold flesh of a coiled snake. Gods, please don’t let me die like this.

Wulmaer would have preferred being eaten by the tszieni than the bitter coldness filling his lungs, the dark, watery grave, the eternity alone at the bottom of a bottomless pit, unable to see his own hands in front of him.

Wulmaer closed his eyes, trying desperately to push himself back up the bank. His footholds disintegrated beneath him as water softened the shale, pulling him down further. His breath caught as his feet sank deeper, the cold lake swallowing his calves, reaching for his knees.

“Give me your hand,” Macsen said above him.

Wulmaer glanced up. His feet slid deeper into the water, now silty with dislodged sand and stones.

“Now!” Macsen barked.

Wulmaer extended his arm.

Macsen bit down with almost sadistic eagerness. Then, as Wulmaer cried out, the heavier Auldhund backed up, dragging Wulmaer back up the bank, past the ledge, into the rocks and tree roots that lined the lake’s edge.

Next to Cassia’s body.

Wulmaer groaned and rolled onto his stomach to ease the pressure on his broken wings. He peered up at the grounded Auldhund. Macsen’s eyes were feral, locked on Cassia’s body. Without a word, he turned and padded away.

“Macs,” Wulmaer called after him.

Macsen never slowed.