A child should not have to see this. The end, then, of childhood. And a reason – if any is needed – why he has always hated wolves …
Tarchlang’s young horse wickers unhappily as it sees the blood on the ground, lays its ears back as the too-recent scent of wolves reaches it. He lays a hand on its neck to quieten it before sliding to the ground. Quickly he takes in the tale of the night. The pack, small, has taken a yearling buck. The signs of struggle, the blood, the little scraps of flesh and bone. He always checks a wolf kill. Superstition some might call it. Prudence, he would say. For he knows that there are wolves – and there are wolves.
The small band of men, women and children are taking the body out of Tharbad. The man is raised on a hurriedly made bier, borne up by comrades and friends. It does not matter to the boy that this man is no blood relation. In such a small community – a huddle of ranger-folk – everyone seems like an uncle, and elder brother or a cousin. The dead man looks oddly at peace. The clean but worn clothes he now wears cover the ravaging wound in his belly. He seems asleep, but pale.
In this winter – the fell winter it will be called one day – they must take any chance they can to do what needs to be done. The snows this year began early, keep coming. Drifts higher than the boy are now common. The marshes, even the river, are frozen. The men have returned to the community in half-ruined Tharbad … it seems impossible to move far now, even for such men as these.
So now, in this break in the storms, they are all gathered outside the old city. There is not enough wood to spare to make a pyre, and the earth is locked solid with the bitter cold. The only choice then, is to make a cairn over the man. Stones have been salvaged from the ruins – chipped from the clutches of the ice that rimes and encases everything – and piled to one side. He helped with that, while the few women and girls attended to washing and preparing the dead man. And they are here, women and girls, as well as men, boys and nearly-men. The dead man was one of them, and a watcher of the greenway. He deserves this mourning.
They set the bier down and Tarchlang’s uncle – a real one- begins to speak quietly of the fallen man. It is cold, so there is not much to be said. That should come later, when the children can be closer to the fires. The words are nearly over when the storm comes again. The snow comes quickly, howling down. Like wolves, the boy thinks. Are wolves, think the men.
The wolves come out of the snow, it seems they may have already been there. It is hard for a boy to know. Falling snow, and snow drifts. The wolves resolve out of the whiteness… rise up out of it… are uncovered out of it, like a curtain rising. A paw, a tail, a muzzle … ten wolves, twenty … a pack. They stand, half between curiosity and flight, watching the man-pack. They have become bolder as the winter has gone on. The man pack and the wolf pack eye each other warily. The balance rests on a knife’s edge.
One wolf bares its teeth, another drops belly to the ground. Not for the men, this sudden acquiescence. There are wolves – and there are wolves. Not predators of the weak and the old, chance eaters of carrion and the occasional lamb. But wolves with a malevolent intelligence, given to a purpose. The whining, whimpering of some of the pack announce its presence. It comes, bristle-necked, taller than the height of the boy. Warg.
The beast steps through the pack, its broad paws splayed against the snow. Tarchlang-the-boy stares at the paws - better than the mouth, higher than his head. It comes forward to stand alone, facing the men across the body of their kinsman. Behind, over the pack, other wargs begins to manifest. The knife edge balance shifts. The wolves know and the men know, there are children here. Wolves are adept at bringing down young, will arrow their attention to females with offspring.
The warg lowers its head over the dead man, hunches its powerful shoulders and begins a growl so low that its menace is felt in the body rather than heard. The choice is swiftly made. One man may take a wolf, two or even more wolves - these are grim-handed grey-eyed men after all. But this many, warg-driven, with so few men, and children underfoot?
The warg watches with amber eyes as the men step backwards, women reach out hands to grab children. What the boy sees, what stays, even now, is how the warg did not care. It knew they must retreat, was indifferent to them. There was no fear in it.
A child should not have to see this. But he is half poised between boy and man, so he remains with the men in their measured retreat, as the women huddle away the younger children. So he sees what the men see, what they are powerless to prevent. The warg ensures the men are watching - there is a message to be read here for those wise enough - lowers its head to the corpse and takes the arm of the man into its wide, tongue lolling mouth. It cannot be beautifully done, whatever a harper might sing in a tale - the warg places a heavy paw down hard upon the near-frozen body and -pulls-, using its powerful jaws to shear arm from socket. It is a dreadful sound, the wrongness and the defilement and the claiming of such a man as meat.
The boy cannot read the subtle message brought to the men - that the tide of power has turned this winter, that the wargs run at the command of their awakened master, that for this season the Dunedain are no more than other men to struggle for life or die in the endless bitter cold, wolf - hounded. He cannot say, after - and there were endless questions - what possessed him, to take his sling and stone in his hand. But there is no mistake, he was the one in his boyish outrage to cast the stone at the fell-beast.
He thanks whatever powers listen that no one was killed for his green stupidity. That the stone striking the beast bounced away, its pelt taking any force from it. The warg, pausing for a moment - looking - at him - the boy knows, then dropping its cold-blood stained muzzle back to its dreadful work. Dismissing them all from importance. Another insult.
Over a century since then, and he still checks every kill. Watches a pack if he comes across them, takes action - quietly- if they come to close to habitation. He knows the balance of the world, that wolves have their place. But he knows that the others can return, come down from the mountains and wildernesses that hide them. That they will return, bringing their message and their challenge.
He straightens up, relief obvious at this natural kill. He swings himself up and back into the saddle, his horse side-steps, pleased to be away.
