James Silke - Prisoner of the Horned helmet

The moon was high in the night sky when Gath emerged from his hiding place. Making no sound, he moved through shadowed boulders, then across to squat beside the sleeping girl.

She was cradled between the thorn tree’s roots. Her fire glowed with red hot embers at her feet. Greasy stains marked the circle of rocks surrounding the fire. Bits of fat and bones from the hen clung to them. Her leather fire pot, walking stick, belt and pouches, and waterskin rested on the ground beside her. Her knife had fallen half out of her sleeping hand. The fire’s orange glow stroked her sleeping form, and cast deep shadows which hid her face.

Gath inspected her walking stick and knife. He opened her pouches. One carried several tiny corked vials of stone and clay, and smaller pouches holding pungent herbs. Another held an apple, raisins and the remains of the roasted hen wrapped in a cloth. The third held coins, and a small, wooden spinning whorl painted gold. This he knew. It was the sacred sign of the Cytherian maidens who wove cloth in the temple at Weaver. Gath set her belt and its pouches back beside the girl and started to rise.

The girl shifted restlessly, and her small red mouth with its plump lower lip emerged from the concealing shadow. She yawned slightly, and the vermilion flesh of her lips glistened wetly in the fire’s glow. Then she sighed in musical surrender, the prisoner of a sleep fashioned by dreams.

Gath’s eyes warmed within the deep shadows of his brow. The brutal glint was gone. The pupils were large and brilliant reflecting the fire. The eyes of a hard, savage man, but one who refused to forget his childhood, a time which had held a dream distant and supreme, like those clung to only by boys raised in cages.

The girl’s lips massaged themselves, then a pink tongue emerged and tickled a corner until it glistened wetly. The lips closed and, to the accompaniment of another soft sigh, danced back into the darkness and were gone.

Gath unconsciously lifted his spear and scratched his knee with the haft. He took a breath, waited. When the two red dancers failed to reappear, he reached with the spear tip, caught the blanket with it and lifted it away from Robin Lakehair’s face so the orange glow of the dying fire could stroke it with moving color.

As her beauty knifed into him, he did not turn away or move. Then he lowered the blanket and took a step backward out of the firelight.

He glanced about furtively, suddenly aware again of the night and its sounds: the crickets’ song, the hoot of an owl, the scattering feet of nocturnal lizards. He looked back at the sleeping girl.

The soft rise and fall of her shadowed form had a subtle, compelling strength, a power which stretched time, proportion, size. It was as if her lips were a perch where a soldier could stand guard, her red-gold hair ropes to climb, the upper slope of her breasts rising and falling above her square-cut collar a place to lie down and sleep. As if she were an inviting landscape where gods rode on white chargers, and goddesses wearing chains and luxurious virtue were held captive in the towers of shadowy castles.

Gath forced himself to turn away, then retreated across the clearing and through the boulders and shrubs to his hidden recess. There he picked up his axe and waterskin, and slung them on his back. He started down the crevice, but paused hearing a slight, vague sound. He edged back to see.

The girl was sitting up, stretching languidly in the warm firelight. She stood and put twigs and branches on the fire so it glowed brightly. She watched it for a moment, then glanced around at the shadows and sighed with defeat.

Gath uncorked his waterskin, drank.

The girl settled back, pulled her covers over her and sank into the shadows.

He corked his waterskin and strode off into the shadows. A long moment passed during which the black night gave up no sound and betrayed no movement. Then he reappeared wearing a scowl no natural force could have removed. He moved down through the boulders to a shadow under a shelf of rock. There he sat, folded his arms across his knees and waited.

The intruder did not arrive until the moon had gone and The Shades was roofed by a black star-spattered sky. It was the grey she-wolf tortured by the chiefs. The animal had limped from behind a boulder at the north edge of the clearing and stood just within the glow of the fire sniffing the air. The smoke, riding a low breeze, swirled around the tree and across the clearing to her dilated nostrils.

Head low, the she-wolf dragged forward with a halting limp. Her left foreleg, broken and gashed, was drawn up under her.

Sharn, who had joined Gath earlier and now lay beside him, lifted slightly as curiosity glowed in his yellow eyes.

The she-wolf halted short of the tree and again sniffed the air, her ears moving from side to side. Her last meal appeared to be a long way down her back trail. Her coat was filthy, and clots of fur were gone from her bloody neck. A three-pronged, scabbed trail ran across her back.

The animal started around the tree, saw the sleeping figure, and circled away, then approached the flames from the side opposite the girl’s feet. Settling low, she inched forward, flicking her foamy tongue at a greasy hot stone. The tip sizzled, snapped back inside her mouth. She tried this again with the same result, then a third time and came away with a hot fatty scrap of meat. She savaged the morsel hungrily as thick white foam showed on her gums, and pushed her muzzle forward for a second bite. Suddenly the sleeping girl shifted.

The she-wolf rose abruptly on three legs, snarled. Her mane bristled.

The girl’s eyes popped open, and she rolled up on all fours, her hands grasping for her stick. She jerked it up with its pointed end aimed at the beast, and planted the butt end against the heel of her right foot. The whites of her eyes were large enough to cover a bed.

Gath watched, chin on folded arms. Sharn waited.

Snarling, the she-wolf backed away from the fire. Her efforts made the blood drip from her left foreleg, and a bright red puddle formed on the ground below it.

The girl winced. “Oh nooo!” Her eyes moved from the blood to the she-wolf’s eyes, then over the battered, panting body. A maternal warmth showed in the girl’s eyes. Her voice held the same warmth.

“You poor thing. Let me feed you… please.” She squatted and a smile moved into her rose-tinted cheeks. “You might as well, you haven’t the strength to hurt me, you know.”

The animal drew back her lips, snarled.

The girl gently lowered her eyelids, drew the corners of her mouth into her cheeks. The she-wolf’s snarl slackened, and she lowered the stick.

In the nearby shadows, Gath’s head lifted off his arms.

Moving with a slow fluid motion, murmuring softly and rhythmically, almost chanting, the girl sat down and crossed her legs. From one of her pouches, she removed the breast of the roasted hen, tore off a chunk and held it up for the she-wolf to smell. Then, with maternal sternness, she said, “I’m only going to give you a little bite to start with. So you won’t make yourself sick. Do you understand?”

The wolfs head dipped lower. Her ears laid back, but she did not move.

The girl leaned forward extending the meat, cooing, “Don’t be afraid. It’s all right now. We’re getting to know each other.” She gently wagged the meat at the animal.

The wounded animal snarled, edged back, and blood spouted from her foreleg.

The girl, keeping her arm extended, lowered her shoulder to the ground, rolled over on her back and let the meat drop. She withdrew her arm, then waited, lying perfectly still.

A long time passed. Eventually the animal glanced around and advanced slightly.