Yours reflect your father’s concerns more than your own, but it’s true, the hounds are fine and spirited and ready for the chase. Fearless, too, even in the face of deadly quarry, capable of staring down boar as though they might take the kill themselves.
The memory recalls Bisclavret to your mind, and you feel again the ache of missing him. You want him herenow, riding out with you, unflinching in the teeth of danger. The count’s son beside you does little to ease the absence: all you can think about is the fact that he isn’t the man you wish him to be.
Grief disarrays your mind again, scattering your attention, and you would sooner be at home than here in the woods. But a cry goes up – tracks found, prey sighted – and you spur your horse forward to join them, disguising your sudden melancholy as a surge of enthusiasm. The count’s son follows, ignorant of his failure to be somebody else.
‘A wolf,’ comes the word. ‘There’s a wolf in the forest. The wolf is here.’
A wolf.
The wolf.
The wolf who took Bisclavret.
The wolf who escaped you once before.
Suddenly your enthusiasm is real, spurred by rage. He should be here to make the kill, but in his absence, you must do it for him, offer up vengeance for a life taken too early and with suchindignity. You forget your peace and the softer tones of your grief in favour of the red fury of facing your enemy, ignoring the cautions of your nobles and the count’s son to ride out to the front, weapons ready.
When you don’t look back at them, Bisclavret might be beside you.
‘Sire,’ calls your knight in green, and it’s almost a reprimand.
You can’t pretend that’s his voice. He’d not have spoken with that echo of reproach or hint of impatience; the same word from his lips would have been a softer utterance. Where the others would have heard deference, you’d have heard secrets in the aching familiarity of the syllable. The rustling leaves of these sepulchral woods are falling ash, smothering you, and for a moment your breath catches on the airlessness of absence.
No matter the distance you put between yourself and death, the shadow of grief never stops haunting you.
All you can hope to do is outrun it. You spur your horse and ride ahead, forcing them to follow you. You will find the wolf and make it pay for its sins against the both of you. Nobody will take that victory from you, or claim its pelt when it’s yours to skin.
You’ve caught the trail yourself, now, despair-clouded eyes sharpened once again by hatred. The wolf was here, and recently. It will not escape you this time.
It’s not running. Perhaps it hasn’t caught the scent of you yet, or perhaps it means to rip you from your horse and fight to the end.
‘Sire,’ says your knight again, more urgently. To be a king is to have no name, only this title, this reminder that you’re supposed to lead, not wander astray.
Not chase a ghost through the forest.
‘It’s here,’ you tell them, voice desperate, deranged. ‘The wolfis here. This time I will catch it.’ This time it will not evade you, flitting away between the trees before it can be made to pay. This time you’ll see its blood steam red on the ground, its skin ragged like the scraps of Bisclavret’s torn clothing.
Your knight in green tries one last time to warn you: the woods are too dark, too deep, and already you’ve strayed too far from the usual paths. The hunt must circle round and find another track or risk losing its way.
You turn to look at him for the first time. At all of them.
You say, ‘Please.’
You are a king. You should beg for nothing. But you’d crawl on your knees if it would reclaim him from whatever shadow has swallowed him, and damn the mud on your crown. If you cannot unbury him, then you’ll offer blood sacrifices on the grave he never had, feed his shade with the entrails of his murderer.
They let you go. They could never have stopped you.
You ride on until you find yourself crashing through the undergrowth and then out into a clearing and—
Your horse rears so suddenly there’s no time to calm her. You’re thrown from her back, a tumult of falling and fear and impact, softened by mud but hard enough to bruise and bewilder.
You hear somebody call out, and then they falter into silence, and as your vision clears you see what they’ve seen.
The wolf.
It’s the same beast you saw before, that awful day when you learned of Bisclavret’s death – you’d swear it, solid as an oath. Huge, implacable, utterly unafraid of you. Something in its face that isn’t wolflike, something knowing.
Your horse has abandoned you. Your men can come no closer or their own beasts will panic. Some of the huntsmen are archers, and you hear the creak of their bows as they prepare their arrows, but they hesitate to loose them.
