A. Hartley - Will Power

She turned and walked away, leaving the three of us in silence by the fire. I shrugged.

“That was way out of line, Will,” said Orgos, his voice cold, his eyes boring into mine. “You’re lucky she didn’t put a dagger through your lungs.”

There was another long and awkward pause as he refused to let me out of his gaze.

“I would have,” said Mithos. His eyes never rose from the fire and his tone was soft, almost thoughtful. But he meant it. Hit with a wave of fear-fear of Renthrette, of Mithos’s words and, even more, fear of the hint of agreement in Orgos’s dark eyes-I struggled to my feet and blundered out into the night air.

It had been a stupid and mean-spirited thing to do and I was far from clear what I had been trying to achieve: trying to make her look slightly stupid for ridiculing me, I suppose. And I was trying to make myself look shrewd at having put together the half-clues I had been given over the past few months. Maybe I had hoped she would take it all with a half smile and a wink, impressed, even touched that I might give her background so much consideration. Or maybe I was just trying to claim a little insight because this place made me feel so stupid and lost. I had no idea how close to the mark I had been, but the fact that they all knew what I had been shooting at suggested I hadn’t been far off. Suddenly the cleverness of my story fell away and I glimpsed something of its awful truth. If she had been through something like the picture I painted, Mithos was right: it was a wonder she hadn’t killed me on the spot. To bring it all up to score a cheap point at her expense. . Standing out in the cold, windy darkness and the silence of the mountain, my motives looked pretty shoddy.

I had convinced myself that I was no longer really interested in Renthrette. Even when I had been, it had been pure, unmitigated lust, as she had been quick to point out. Hadn’t it? There were times I had begun to wonder, but they had passed quickly enough. I had felt quite sure that given the choice between a lifetime of friendship and one night with her under the sheets followed by no relationship of any sort, I would have taken the latter without hesitation. The patent spitefulness of what I had done made me wonder, with something of a start, what my feelings for her actually were. It was an unnerving thought.

Me and Renthrette? You must be joking. There might be-in fact, I know there are-some men who jump at the chance to be spurned by a woman, their feelings trampled and their poetry mocked, but not me. Not Will Anything-for-a-quiet-life Hawthorne. The Bill Hawthorne who had patronized the Eagle in Cresdon and who lived for beer and cards, the dashing apprentice actor and minor playwright, had a formula for love which ran as follows: flirtation, seduction, consummation, satisfaction, evasion. Afterward, when one is gathered with one’s mates over a few pints of Old Seymore’s chestnut ale, the cycle is concluded with a little recollection and narration. All that hearts and flowers stuff was merely part of steps one or two, and anyone who thought otherwise was doomed to a life of quite unnecessary pain. That was strictly for the birds.

And as if on cue, one appeared. It perched on the slab of rock across the cave mouth only ten feet or so from where I stood and looked at me in silence. A moment passed and I realized that it was doing none of that shifting, twitching, head tilting stuff that birds do. It was quite still, its eyes fixed on me.

The moon was riding high and three quarters full, casting a pale glow on the rocky landscape, which flared softly and then faded as clouds passed overhead. Suddenly, the sky cleared and the night shapes grew harder edges as the moon brushed the track and the crags around it with a watery silver light. The bird’s distinctive blackish green plumage sparkled metallically and I recognized it: It was a starling.

While this thought was registering in my head, I caught movement elsewhere, out among the strewn boulders and rocky outcrops beyond the road. I turned to face them, and, as my eyes adjusted a little, I saw a flicker of shapes-no more than shadows-moving quickly. Then one by one I saw pairs of clear green eyes pricking out of the darkness like fireflies.

I turned awkwardly, scraping against the stone in my haste, and dipped into the little corridor with its curtain of gray wool. “Wolves!” I shouted. “There’s a pack of wolves outside. Or something.”

“What does ‘or something’ mean?” said Orgos, casually and without getting up.

“I didn’t get real close!” I shouted back in panic and anger. “They looked like wolves. All right?”

“Renthrette is trying to sleep,” said Mithos, his eyes on a piece of wood he was whittling with his knife.

“Are you people deaf or just stupid?” I yelled again. “I said there are. .”

“Wolves,” said Orgos. “Yes.”

“Well?”

“Well, what?” said Orgos.

“Well, what are you going to do?” I demanded, body and voice beginning to tremble with exasperation.

“Nothing,” said Mithos. “Stay here. They’ll be gone by dawn.”

“Are you out of your tiny minds?” I retorted. “There’s a pack of ravenous, bloodthirsty beasts out there. Wolves, for God’s sake! Listen!”

They had started to howl, great falling bays that rolled through the night air and trailed into plaintive whines like the music that drifts from a madhouse. A paralyzing chill seeped into my bloodstream and spread throughout my body. I went pale, fumbled for a weapon I didn’t have, and then turned to find Orgos gazing off as in a trance. His black face, glowing softly in the firelight, was transfigured with a strange contentment, an almost spiritual delight in the wolf voices.

“Is there something wrong with you?” I bawled at him. “Do you find the idea of wolf muzzles poking into your ribcage for the juicy bits somehow amusing? Or is this more of that harmony-with-nature bollocks? They’ll tear your throat out as soon as look at you.”

“No they won’t,” said Orgos, with a sigh which suggested we’d had this conversation a hundred times. “They almost never attack people unless the winter is unusually hard and nothing else has survived. Not the case here, evidently. Nor would they seek us out in a cave like this, especially when there’s a fire. No wolf that wasn’t desperate for food would consider coming through that curtain. Just relax and enjoy the music.”

And, as if on cue, a black muzzle sprouting with pale grayish bristle pushed through the woolen hanging at the cave’s mouth. Slowly, guarded and low to the ground, its teeth bared and a low growl emanating from its throat, a great wolf entered.

It’s a funny thing, but sometimes-not often, you understand, but from time to time-it’s nicer to be wrong than right. This was one of those times. The fact that Mithos froze, reversing the grip on his knife carefully, and Orgos scrambled awkwardly to his feet, eyes flashing to the sword that lay a dozen feet away, really didn’t help at all. We were in a very small space with a wolf whose teeth, at this none-too-comfortable distance, looked like kitchen knives. Moreover, as the shifting of the curtain testified, there were more behind it, and they were coming in.

The horse went berserk. It had been standing over in the corner, as far from the fire as it could get in relative comfort, but the scent of the wolf induced sudden and total terror and it began to rear and paw the air. It ran to the back of the cavern and then paced to and fro, neighing and shaking its mane, its dark eyes bulging.

The wolf came on, right into the cave, undaunted by the fire, and there were at least three following it. I glanced around wildly, but there was nothing even resembling a weapon to hand and none of us had bows. We would have to fight at close quarters, with those great jaws snapping at us from all sides. In true Hawthorne fashion, I backed off slowly, my eyes fixed on the foremost wolf.