Guy Kay - Ysabel

No one moved.

“Nice throw,” Edward Marriner said.

“They need not die here,” Dave Martyniuk said quietly, turning to the druid again. “Send them back. Go with them. It is past the day. You have nothing to gain.”

Brys stared at him. An equally blue gaze. Ned had a sense of suspended time, a long hovering. He felt the breeze, saw it in the rippling leaves.

“Measurement again? Calculation? It is not only about gain,” the druid said. “The world goes deeper than that.”

Then he spoke to the wolves in that other tongue and the battle began.

Ned Marriner learned some truths in the next few moments. The world might be deep, for one thing, but sometimes it was fast, too.

The second truth was that a Swiss Army knife was just about useless against a wolf. He had his blade ready in time—he’d had it open in his pocket not long after the druid appeared—but unless you were good enough to stab a hurtling animal in the eye your knife was a distraction, nothing more.

He wasn’t good enough to stab it in the eye.

He feinted, realized he didn’t have a hope, and rolled urgently away from the animal that came for him. He heard footsteps, a shout, then another thick, dull sound. When he rolled to his knees—ready to twist away again—he saw that his father had clubbed this one, too.

That was the third new thing he learned: that Edward Marriner, celebrated photographer, absent-minded father with chronically misplaced reading glasses and trademark brown moustache, was lethal with a branch when his only son was in danger.

Greg was already engaging another wolf. And the fourth truth was that Greg was actually strong enough to do the punch-it-in-the-throat thing he’d whispered—but not quick enough to do it without being hurt.

From his knees, Ned saw it happen: slash of claws, heavy fist short-stroked to animal neck, the wolf flopping backwards, blood bright at Greg’s raked-open sleeve.

The sudden redness was shocking.

His dad was over there immediately.

Necessary, but with implications: principally, that Ned was now alone without a weapon with three wolves circling him. He scrabbled in the gravel again and threw a handful of pebbles at the eyes of the nearest one. Clever. Meaningless. The animal ignored it.

Then the animal died.

Afterwards, Ned would try to recapture what he’d felt when he saw his uncle hammer that wolf—that was the word that came to him—and then immediately send another one twisting frantically back and away from a second swift, swinging blow.

As the third wolf also retreated, Ned saw the druid lying on the gravel behind it. Brys’s arms were outflung, one leg was bent awkwardly under his body.

He looked at his uncle again. A thought came, inescapably: He’s done this before.

There was a difference between his father’s determined defence of Ned and Greg, Gregory’s own bravery, Ned’s scrambling attempt to do something useful…and Dave Martyniuk’s laying low of chosen targets.

You might possibly be born knowing how to do this, but more likely you learned in the doing. When and where, Ned didn’t know, but he was pretty sure it had to do with the time his aunt’s hair turned white.

The three remaining wolves had backed away from Ned’s uncle, tails low. They didn’t run. Not yet. They were watching.

Martyniuk went over to the druid.

“I didn’t want to kill him,” he said. “I hope I didn’t.”

He knelt on the path. Put fingers to the man’s throat. The two of them were in the shade there, a plane tree in leaf between them and the sun. Ned saw his uncle shake his head.

“Damn it,” he heard him say.

“He was here to kill Ned,” said Edward Marriner quietly, walking over, entering into that shadow as well. “And the rest of us, if he had to.”

Martyniuk didn’t look up. “I know. We…your son got himself into a story.”

Ned wasn’t sure why he felt so much sadness, looking at the small figure of the druid who had summoned Ysabel. Leaves rustled; splinters of sunlight came through as they moved.

There was a world here once. It was torn from us. It is not just about the three of them.

He cleared his throat. “Uncle Dave, if he’s…gone, does that mean Ysabel can’t be summoned again? After this time?”

His uncle looked up. “Is that her name?”

Ned nodded.

Dave Martyniuk stood, wincing a little. He brushed dust from his knees. “I don’t think that’s an issue.” He gestured at the wolves. “These are spirits too. I suspect there are other druids among the ones who come back on Beltaine night. This one…was stronger maybe. Kept his place in the story.”

“He was trying to change the story,” Ned said. “Or that’s what I…” He trailed off.

“No, you’re right. I think so too.” His uncle looked at Gregory.

“Whoever taught you to punch wolves?”

Greg was holding his left arm. Blood was bright through his fingers, but he managed a crooked smile. “It was an option in undergrad. I could have done economics, did wolf boxing instead.”

“Extremely funny. Let’s go,” Edward Marriner said. “We’ll find the hospital here.”

Greg shook his head. “No. Dr. Ford can bandage this at the villa. I’m all right. This looks worse than it is.”

“You’ll need a rabies sequence, Greg.”

“No, he won’t,” Ned said, surprising himself. “These are spirits in a wolf shape, remember? They won’t be rabid.”

Uncle Dave nodded. “He’s almost surely right, Edward. They’d insist on the rabies course and he might be kept there. And we’d have a bit of explaining to do.” He pointed to the druid. “This body…I don’t think he’ll just vanish right away.”

“What do we do?” Ned’s father asked. “With him?”

“Will he disappear later? I mean, go back to being disembodied, or whatever?” Ned asked.

“Maybe. Not sure. I never took that course in undergrad.” Martyniuk smiled ruefully.

“Could we shift that?” Ned’s father pointed to a stone sarcophagus beside the shaded alley. The lid was slightly askew.

Dave Martyniuk looked over. “Maybe,” he said.

Ned watched his father and uncle walk over together. They each grasped an end of the heavy stone top. He felt a weird sensation, a kind of pride, watching them count off three then strain together, grunting, and slide the stone halfway off.

“That’s enough I think,” Greg said, holding his arm. “He’s not that big.”

He wasn’t that big. The wolves watched, oddly passive now, as the two men came back and—quite gently—lifted the druid and carried him to the empty coffin. They laid him inside and, straining again, dragged the stone lid all the way back.

They looked down on it a moment, then Dave Martyniuk walked towards the wolves.

There were four left; the one Greg had punched had recovered and gone over beside the others. They didn’t retreat this time.

Martyniuk said something in that ancient language—Welsh or Gaelic, whichever it was. The animals looked at him. And then, after a moment, they turned and loped away together towards the oldest graves and the church beyond. The four men watched them go past the sunken area, around the church, out of sight.

“What did you say?” Edward Marriner asked quietly.

He was stretching out his back. That stone lid would have been heavy, Ned thought. His father was not a man inclined to lifting and pulling. Or to swinging blows with a branch. He was doing things Ned couldn’t even have imagined a week ago.

“I told them nightfall would likely see them home. I wished them peace on the journey back.”

“That’s it?”

Martyniuk nodded.

He picked up the nearest of the three slain animals and, limping, carried it out of sight behind the trees. He came back for a second one. Edward Marriner picked up the third. He looked surprised when he lifted it, Ned saw, as if it was too easy. He saw his father raise his eyebrows, and follow Uncle Dave among the trees.