Part 4

Lannon bunched his cloak tighter around himself, seeking the comfortable warmth of the layers of fur within, yet disliking the sensation of the extra weight and the constriction. The open grasslands here near Heatherfield caught and carried the chill wind down from the sea to the north, passing over the thick forests where the trees protected their own; every time he lifted his head up he felt his whiskers pushed back against his muzzle and blinked his eyes against the breeze, stirring further from what had to be an approaching rain.

He looked back over his shoulder once more, towards the small huddle of buildings that was Fros barely visible in the dimness of dawn – and then the wider, larger silhouette of Heatherfield just beyond, stretching off across the face of the shallow hill, down into the valley, back up the next rise.

Perhaps I should bring my farewells to Feras, he had thought earlier in the morning, when Sulla had shifted in front of him to rise well before the sun. But then: He deals in information as fluently as goods. He gave me knowledge about Mar and the hunters, and now he has the same inventory for myself and my husband. I do not doubt we shall cross paths again.

When he turned forward once more, a deep, lengthy yawn shivered up from within his chest, to be stifled behind a paw clenched around the collar of his cloak. Ahead of him, one of Sulla’s ears perked, flicked back to him, then angled forward again; even in the darkness of the morning Lannon could see the seedpods, burrs, and stray blades of dried grass caught along his pelt, the two hunters having deviated from the main road almost as soon as they had left the town.

Where the wolf had stopped, the lynx continued up and forward, then paused beside him so he could lean in to bump his head against his mate’s shoulder. “You lead us away,” he murmured, words barely more than the whisper of breeze that stirred through the grass at his waist. “I do not enjoy the feeling of being prey.”

“That is why I lead us away.” Sulla looked back the way they came, squinted, then turned his head to focus with his other eye. “Survival is knowing bravery from foolishness. You know this.”

Immediately his whiskers twitched again, and his hackles tingled. Lannon worked to push his annoyance back down. “Beloved, it is not foolish. It is purpose. Here is a problem, a danger, and it is within our grasp to extinguish, and-”

“-and to cut off what is likely the strongest, if not the only, source of income for these helpless people?” The wolf swung an arm back out towards the speckled shadow of Fros over the hill. “With that gone, where will they go?”

“To Heatherfield?” Lannon’s breath began to steam in the chill air. “It’s a city. It’ll be safer there anyhow, and the opportunity-”

“-is drying up, Lannon. It is a city where already the poor and the downtrodden sleep in the alleyways, and are overlooked and ignored by those who have their connections in place. The issues there run much, much deeper than an illicit trade of pelts from one party. There will always be villains in the world. There will always be those who are evil, and those who seek to do harm, and those who cast all aside to inflict suffering. The world is not a safe, happy place.”

Facing each other now, Lannon took another step and a half up the slope to put himself at least somewhat more level with Sulla’s muzzle, looking down at him from above. He set his jaw, ground his teeth, tried to steady his breathing; Sulla’s tension simmered across the bond, a string pulled taut and vibrating back and forth, over and over again.

“Shouldn’t we do our part to make it so? This isn’t some deep-seated economic issue, like-” The lynx motioned back towards the city as well. “-the disparity in Heatherfield. In any city. This is a simple problem with a clear solution. We are hunters, Sulla.”

“Do not underestimate him. He is not an animal.”

“He might as well be! You speak as though you know him. Are you sure he is not the one who-”

“Lannon.” Both paws came down on the lynx’s shoulders, claws digging gently in to his fur through his cloak. “I know him because I know what it is to live through a shattered bond. I know how it tears you apart from the inside so that you feel it is only your skin holding you together, and the desire to shred that skin asunder so that you shall finally cease to be. I know what it is to carry that wound for years, never healing nor scarring – and I would never, never, accept risking the same thing happening to you.” He tilted his muzzle down so that the lynx looked up into both of his eyes, one blue, the other green. “Know this as truth: I would see the forests burn, if only to know that you would be kept safe.”

Lannon felt his jaw drop partially open. He reached up, rested his paws over the much larger ones along his shoulders, and then briefly drifted into his own thoughts; Sulla remained where he stood, right here in front of him, right there at the edge of his consciousness.

“I would… I wouldn’t…”

But then he froze again, something outside his awareness causing his head to jerk back up as though it were at the end of a pulled string. One of his ears swished back, swung, twitched again; he frowned, tilted his head, focused – then looked over his shoulder towards that same direction, paw sliding down Sulla’s arm towards his elbow. From off in the distance, towards the small grove of trees settled into the far corner of the northern valley, that strange, unsettling pressure steadily approached, as it had nearly since the pair had first left Fros.

“He’s coming,” Lannon said, fingers digging into his mate’s arm. “This whole time. I didn’t even notice – I noticed but I didn’t think anything of it. I…”

The wolf’s ears remained straight up, twitching back and forth in small movements to try to track where Lannon’s senses point him. “Your bow?”

“I – have to string it.”

“Do it.” He turned to ascend the remainder of the hill. “Quickly. We’re too far from the town to make it back. Maybe we could get to the road, but – most of the traffic goes south from Heatherfield, not east…”

“What are you worried about? It’s – two of us, and…” The lynx paused in his strain, ears flicking again. With a snap he settled the other end of the taut cord over the bow’s limb, then ran his fingerpads across the smooth wood to ensure it had not folded or splintered. “...You don’t think he would’ve brought his whole party, would you?”

“You’re the one who – foolishly – faced and spoke with him. You would know better than me.” Sulla shaded his eyes with a paw and leaned to one side. Lannon looked that way as well, though his angle was obscured by the next hill. He moved to join the wolf.

“I think… that he thinks – that he regards them as tools to be used. I think – that – this is personal.” Yet again his ear flicked, amber and bone clacking. The question hung right there at the tip of his tongue, wanting to come out even though he held it back, and he knew that Sulla could feel it: What was it like, being unbonded? You were not yourself. Do you remember? Or are you subconsciously aware of it, like something learned in a dream?

Beside him the grass shuffled, and his mate approached from behind. Another large paw settled on his shoulder, pressing him more snugly into his cloak. When he spoke his voice was a low rumble: “Unless the others are hiding in the grass, it looks to be just him. I can’t smell anyone else, but he is – he is there.”

“If it’s just him,” Lannon replied, “then I am not worried. I am never worried when I am at your side. One of him, and two of us? We can win.”

“I’m not worried about winning, beautiful. I am worried about living.”

The lynx lifted his paw to briefly entwine with Sulla’s. “Beloved, I will speak to him. You-”

“I will hunt.”

“You will hunt.” He turned to look up at him, smiled, then stood on his tiptoes for a nuzzle and lick to the side of Sulla’s snout; the wolf huffed softly, then turned Lannon’s muzzle so he could meet him for a kiss as well. “Stay safe. Be one with the wind.”

And with that the presence beside him slipped away and down the other side of the slope, Lannon’s other ear briefly following the wolf’s progress through the grass and then shifting forward again once he lost track of him. Still he knew where he walked, though, through that small, slight itch in the corner of his mind; as he stood atop the crest of the hill Lannon reached around to his hip, flipped open the flap for his quiver – much smaller now than it had been those few years ago – and readied an arrow along the string, yet did not pull it taut.

So little did he use the bow these days, but still his muscles recalled the movements, the sensations, as familiar as breathing. He rolled his fingers across the weathered grip, rested his thumb along the oiled string – still he maintained each and every piece – then closed his eyes, took in a breath, steadied himself…

...watched the flickering spark within, and fed it just enough fuel for it to begin to pulse out from inside. When he opened his eyes again the grasses cresting the opposite hill folded back around the silhouette of the other wolf, the one who felt as though he was only half alive. It almost seemed as though the early dawn’s light bent around him to keep him obscured in thin shadow.

Lannon’s heart thumped again. Holding the arrow to the shaft of his bow with one paw, he raised the other in a greeting wave. Across the way Mar’s ears perked, flicked; he tilted his head, eyes unreadable at this distance, then returned the greeting. Perhaps all is well, he thought, hope beginning to swell around the flame. In the same movement Mar pointed sideways down the slope, towards where each of the hunters’ hills intersected; Lannon looked down that way, also returned the motion, and each began moving towards that point. Perhaps we just had a misunderstanding. Maybe he recognizes what Sulla and I share as unique and beautiful, and realizes that to try to extinguish that for his own profit would be a great disservice to the world.

Maybe, he…

The lynx stopped halfway down the slope, while Mar continued down to the bottom. The wolf looked up at him, misshapen eyes half-squinting against the slowly rising sun behind Lannon’s shoulders; he used the opportunity to raise his bow, but still held back on drawing the string. Mar, too, had come equipped; upon seeing the hunter opposite him, though, he slung his bow back over his shoulder and reached around his side for his knife instead.

Lannon’s ears twitched with the sound of it being drawn, imperceptible to him yet still detected by his senses. Mar held it in his good paw, straight out along the line of the rest of his arm; the backside of the blade caught the beams of thin sunlight as they poured down the hill, and glittered in carefully maintained balance. The wolf lifted his head, tilted it to the side, sniffed at the air; he paused, seemed to think, then fixed his gaze upon lynx once more.

“Your bond is here,” he called up the slope, Old Tongue flowing like a sleepy river. “But I do not see him. Another wolf…” He trailed off again, blade dancing slowly in the air. “Or… mm, no, a wolf. You blend together.”

“He is safe,” Lannon called back. He set his stance where he stood, now drawing slow, measured breaths in through his nose, then letting them back out through the corners of his mouth. Where did all my confidence go? Where is my aggression? Suddenly – gone? “Did you come alone?”

Mar spread his arms out. “Look around you and see. I thought you, too, were a hunter, wolf pup.”

Bait, Lannon thought, and kept his gaze steady. He has no honor. He will do whatever he can to turn things to his own advantage. “What do you want?”

Mar answered without another thought: “Your pelt. And your bond’s.” He inspected the blade of his knife. “I can have you cleaned and prepared by this time, two days from now. Imagine: I could sell you to the very peddler who pointed you my way…”

Another quiver to his heart. Lannon tugged the string of his bow, just a bit, just enough to feel the tension begin to build up. “What did you do to Feras?”

“To Feras? Nothing.” Mar swung a leg out to begin scaling the slope. Lannon kept pace with him, moving the opposite way. “Your little exchange with him has led me to what will be my most profitable venture in… oh, four turns of the moons, about? And I didn’t have to pay a thing.”

“What did…”

Lannon’s footpaw caught along a rock, shifted, and briefly knocked him off balance. He scrambled to regain it, caught another breath, then focused his aim once more: a shot to the chest, right between the ribs… or perhaps further down to the stomach… He blinked, swallowed, wet his lips, felt his ears splay to the sides, forced them to fix in along the wolf before him again – but still the lingering worry remained, but what if he really didn’t come alone? What if there’s more of his group around, sneaking up, surrounding me?

“What are – you-”

There was the bear, and then… then one or two others? A jaguar, a… another wolf? He swallowed again. His throat was dry. Where is Sulla…?

“Why can’t we just leave?” was what he finally settled on. The tension in the string had begun to claw at the muscle of his arm; Lannon relaxed again, but kept his paw tight on the arrow. “I gave you my information. I – I thought we could collaborate.”

“I did not. You are not my kind of hunter.” Mar waggled the fingers of his other paw, the two remaining and one thumb, and adjusted his grip on his knife as he continued to approach. “But you are my kind of prey. You laid and set your own trap, wolf pup, and then stumbled into it for me. And here I come, to set you free and claim my reward.”

He’s so confident. How can he be so confident? Is there- A flash of movement out of the corner of his vision yanked Lannon’s aim to the side – but the tall grass just swept and swayed again in a chill morning breeze. What am I missing? I’m in the superior position here. All I need to do… is…

The string drew back further. Lannon took another breath, attempting to stoke the flame inside, yet found it instead to sputter and spit back at him. The jangling and clicking of his jewelry distracted him; he aimed down at Mar’s chest, then had to recenter towards that same spot again and again as his arm trembled, and his paw wavered.

Then, suddenly, another flash of movement just beyond the crest of the hill, and a press of sensation from along the bond. Lannon pushed his breath out, steadied himself, drew in another, and looked down the slope at his pursuer.

“Do you even know what you’re dealing with?”

Mar paused in his approach. He tilted his head. “A hunter and his companion. The same thing with which I have dealt for decades past. I know neither you, nor your bond, but I do not need to.”

“Keep him talking.”

Lannon tried not to look over Mar’s shoulder, and instead focused on that spot on his chest. “But why? Why go through all of this, why do all of this, when – you know yourself what it feels like?”

“Ah. Yesterday you said that was not important. Why the sudden interest? Because, Talla,” and Lannon’s ears flicked at the already forgotten alias, “what this is – what I am – should not be. And I see that now. I feel it; I live it. I am dead, yet my body still moves, my heart still beats.” He clutched at his chest, right at the spot where Lannon aimed. The lynx shifted a little bit. “I do this for my people, wolf pup. I do this for my lost bond, and for all who hold such a tenuous existence. You wouldn’t understand.”

Again Lannon’s footpaw caught. He wobbled, glanced behind himself, saw that he had moved to the peak of the hill again, and that Mar had come halfway up to meet him. Still the lynx kept his gaze on the lupine’s muzzle, ignoring the swell in the grass behind him.

“I understand more than you think, dog,” he called down to him. “Far, far more.”

Mar straightened up. One of his ears flicked; Lannon’s heart skipped a beat. “I shall ensure it,” he snarled back, and once more fixed his grasp on his knife. “I shall find your bond, and remove him from you. And then you will understand who I am, and why I do what I do. Only then will we work together.”

“You shall not. He is – far from here.” He swallowed yet again, digging deep into Sulla’s steady presence, pulling from the bonded wolf to support himself. The flame began to grow once more. “I shall kill you myself, here and now, and put an end to this. And I shall leave you here so that nature will reclaim you and everything you have done. And then I shall forget about you.”

“I admire you greatly, Talla.” Slowly, bit by bit, Mar shifted his stance, resting his weight onto his leg nearest Lannon, adjusting his grip on his arm-length knife. His ear flicked again. “Watching you move, feeling the way you sense the world around you… knowing what it is that makes you you? You would have a place in my hunting party over anyone else. But you will not fit, as you are now. And as such, wolf pup, I must make it so.”

Lannon could not help it. He averted his gaze just a little, just for a fraction of a second, towards the patch of grass behind the other hunter where Sulla crept, slow and steady, silent. He had drawn his knife as well, and centered all his focus on his prey while Mar still spoke.

The lynx moved his aim again. “And how do you plan to do that? I could put an end to this right here. You’re not exactly giving me a difficult target.”

Then Mar’s muzzle split into a wide, predatory grin, and once more the hungry void pulled at the fringes of Lannon’s senses. He’s insane, he thought; Sulla has told me so many times before, but actually seeing it in him, feeling it from him…

“Easy, hunter,” the other wolf replied. “I shall simply find your bond, and-”

He spun on that one footpaw, swung to the side, and brought his knife around in an arc that slid it close to his own body. Sulla’s ears perked a fraction of a second too late and he reared back, yet had put himself within Mar’s reach; Lannon watched, arrow accidentally released, as the grasses between the two splayed out and pressed down. His mouth fell open; his arm fell to the side; through the shared bond he felt a twinge of sharp pain at his shoulder, then swelling into a deeper, imposing sting.

Sulla cried out, and Mar snarled. And Lannon’s legs moved of their own accord, his bow tossed aside, so that he could pitch himself down the slope. He reached down around his side for his own knife, felt it slide free from the sheath, let his cloak drift down from his shoulders-

-and someone was speaking to him. He blinked, swallowed, and tasted blood along his tongue. The sun seared its way across his face; he raised a paw to shield his eyes, squinted between his spread fingers, and watched as the thick dribble of crimson rolled further down, coating his fur as it went. His heart pounded in his chest, thumped so hard it felt like it would burst free, and yet at the same time it felt as though it were the body of someone else, and that he were simply watching from a short distance away.

The voice continued, short, intermittent… gentle. He looked the other way, head turning a second after he tried to move it. There was blood in his mouth, too; Lannon grimaced, swallowed again, stifled a heave, then swirled his tongue around his fangs. So much of it, too – so, so much, and yet he could tell it was not his own. There was a twinge in his shoulder, and one of his legs ached, and he had a few gashes up his other arm, but…

Large, gentle paws came down on his shoulders, soft and slow in their approach, but still they made him jump. His ears flattened back and his hackles raised, and he felt his lip curl back in a reflexive snarl mixed with a hiss; a great, wide shadow loomed over him from above, dark fur wreathed with scars, mismatched eyes glittering in the morning sunlight. This was the source of those sounds, those impressions that might have been words, and – and it was saying his name, or at least making the sounds that represented his name. But Lannon did not feel as though he was the one being spoken to.

Is the world spinning…? He looked down to his paws again, turning them this way and that, flexing his fingers, relaxing them, watching the way the blood dripped down. Gingerly the lynx sniffed at it, then recoiled away again. Is that… is that me? I… feel…

I… feel? Do I…?

“...need you to look at me,” Sulla was saying, each word slow, careful, enunciated. A few seconds after they left his lips, Lannon recognized what they meant. He swung his head again, slowly. “Lannon. Beautiful. I need you to look at me. Okay?”

“I…” His own voice – is that me? – came around him, rather than from him. His ears flicked again. “The…”

“You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re alright. I need you to breathe. Can you do that for me?”

Slowly he turned his head again, now looking out across the flowing fields of grass, up and down the surrounding hills. Where am I…? Am I still…? The sun had risen somewhat further, though still the gentle chill of night remained. Where is-

“Where…” Lannon licked his lips again. “Cloak. My cloak…?”

“Your…” Sulla frowned. “Are you cold?”

“I’m…” The lynx wrapped his arms around himself, sticky wet warmth – still warm? – smearing across his shoulders. “I…”

“Can you walk?”

Walk? He looked down at himself. His jerkin had been torn open across his chest, bringing back into view the pale pinpoint scar on one side; a few freshly gouged claw marks raked across down to the other side, but these already had started to scab over. Gingerly he poked at one of them, and felt the resulting sting like an echo through a dream.

“Yes,” he answered finally, and shifted to attempt it. Those strong arms moved to support him, coming underneath his own, helping him up… catching him when he stumbled, and when his numbed legs went out from underneath him, and when he had to choke back another insistent, lurching gag. The sensation of the grass tickling his waist, the warmth of Sulla’s body against his own, all felt dulled and muted, as though he had wrapped himself in a casing that reduced everything to a ghost of what he knew it should have been.

Lannon watched himself slough across the grass and halfway up the hill, then fall to his knees so that the blades of grass brushed across his muzzle. Slowly, deliberately, he reached for his cloak, unfolded all of the wrinkles, and moved to settle it over his shoulders; then he remained there on his knees, staring out yet seeing nothing, and felt his own breathing, the beat of his heart, the vague, distant aches and pains through his body.

After another moment Sulla lowered himself down beside him again. He wrapped his arm around the lynx and pulled him in; Lannon did not resist the movement.

“Are you okay?”

The words swirled around him, dancing like wind, passing across his awareness and his consciousness and moving right along. The clinging slime of blood in his throat had thinned out somewhat, but still Lannon could taste it with each swallow. He looked down to his paws again, grimaced, and tried to wipe them off on his cloak; caught beneath the claws of his thumbs, smeared across his pads, was some kind of chunky, soft mush, yellowish-white.

“Lannon. Can you let me know that you’re alright?”

His ears perked. The lynx blinked, turned to look at the wolf beside him, and finally felt the strain within their bond, the intense tension that pulled it taut. Awareness flooded back in, so sharp, so sudden, so much like waking up from a dream; Lannon turned away and looked out across the hills, and finally saw them. He felt the wind through his fur, tasted the blood on his tongue, smelled Sulla’s concern, his worry, his stress… then something sharper, foul, disgusting – his own shock.

“I’m here,” he replied, and this time knew that it was he, himself, who had given the answer. He pulled his cloak tighter around himself. “I’m here. I’m back. I’m okay now.”

“Are you sure? For a few minutes there, I thought…” Sulla’s ears flicked back. The wolf leaned in, dug his nose up underneath Lannon’s chin, and briefly buried himself there. Hot, humid breath puffed down across his chest, tingling at his fresh wounds.

“I’m okay. I’ll… I’ll be alright, beloved.” Lannon rested his muzzle atop Sulla’s head, breathing in his scent, relishing the way that that strain slowly melted away. “Where’s Mar?”

Underneath him the wolf tightened. Muzzle still buried, voice muffled: “...Dead. Returned to nature.”

“You killed him?”

Nothing for a moment. Sulla’s arm tightened on Lannon’s shoulder; he drew back, looked at the lynx, then turned to stare down the hill into the next valley.

Lannon followed his gaze. “...I killed him.” Briefly, vaguely, he recalled the sight, the sensations, the act and action. The world swayed around him again. “I thought… that was a dream…”

“Lannon-”

“Where?” With some effort, legs still wobbly, he pulled himself up and glanced around. “Over there? Where did I-?”

Sulla scrambled after him. “Beautiful, you don’t – want to-”

A section of the grass along the opposite slope remained flattened down, long blades angled away from a roughly wolf-sized and wolf-shaped weight in the middle. Breathing heavily, Lannon worked his way over, clutching his cloak halfway against his body; the closer he came, the more he could identify the shapes of the body that once was Mar, the hunter, the unbonded, and yet his belief still remained out of his grasp – and then he stopped, and his cloak fell the rest of the way away, and everything shocked into tight, turbulent tension once more.

Mar caught him mid-leap and threw him to the ground, all of the air puffing out from Lannon’s lungs so that he coughed and spluttered and hacked-

-and he rolled away from the descending knife-

-and then watched as the blade slashed through dark fur and coils of muscle across Sulla’s arm-

-and then Mar was on the ground too, and Lannon on top of him-

-and he lost his own knife but just kept on beating-

-there was froth dribbling from his snarling jaws, and shreds of skin and fur caught between his claws-

-and the wolf was yelling, shouting, pleading, and he kept on beating, pounding the breath out of his belly, his chest, his throat, digging with his claws until the flesh split, and it was so easy to yank Mar’s head up and away and force him down into the dirt, and drag up across his face towards those ugly, misshapen eyes, and press in with his pads and claws, and dig, and scoop, and feel the resistance, the building pressure, the sudden jerk and burst, and he tasted the hot spray where it arced out across his own muzzle-

-and he-

This time there was no resisting it. Lannon’s entire body lurched, and threw itself forward, and then he was on his paws and knees emptying his stomach into the grass. It pushed up at him from inside, every muscle in his body tensing, awakening all of those healing sores and pains; he tasted the blood again, and saw the dulled crimson pour out between the grass, smelled the sharp, acidic stench that just jabbed into the back of his nose and throat and sent him over the edge again.

Then Sulla was at his side kneeling in the grass, arms once again draping around Lannon as he choked and coughed and heaved. Every time he closed his eyes he could see it happening, and he remembered doing it; it felt so far away, yet at the same time too close. He remembered leaping down the hill, and grabbing his knife, and feeling his body move and respond within the dance of combat; he remembered making the decision to then cast his blade aside, and close the distance to the wolf, and use his momentum to topple him over, and climb up onto his chest, and…

He pressed a clenched fist to his mouth, still dribbling, and fought back another pulse. Tears welled at the corners of his eyes; Lannon blinked, then did so again, then wrenched his eyes shut, took in a breath, smelled himself on the air… and shook with the deep, resounding sobs. Gently, Sulla lifted him back, moved around to his front, and wrapped his arms the rest of the way around him, enclosing him within his presence.

“He was – a terrible-” He coughed and spluttered in between his words. “He… deserved to die… didn’t he? So why do I – feel so bad?”

Sulla held him tight, one paw on the back of his head keeping him in against his shoulder. “Because you’re not a bad person.”

“I thought it… thought…” Wet heat ran down his cheeks, dripped from his tufts, mixed with the blood smeared there and dripped down Sulla’s fur. “...would be like… hunting…”

“Killing?”

The word sent another shock through him. He could only nod.

“It’s not. Gods, but it’s not.” Sulla’s other arm slid down Lannon’s back, claws gently nudging into his fur. “I hoped that you would never find out.”

Even with him gone, Lannon could still feel that hollow, aching void pulling at him, water flowing down a river. He wanted – his body wanted; he felt as though he had to, as though it were irresistible – to look over at the mutilated corpse again, the mass of torn flesh and glistening meat, protruding bone, shredded organs that looked like some wild beast had gotten to it, and yet at the same time he wanted to get as far away from it as possible.

Sulla felt this through the bond, opened his mouth to say something, choked it back – but Lannon still felt it just the same, the thought running unchained: “Even after he died, you kept on going. I thought I had lost you.”

The tears welled up again from inside, and the sound of his wail vibrated around him where he remained in his mate’s embrace. All the exertion and adrenaline had dripped out of his body, leaving hollow exhaustion behind; he dug his claws into Sulla’s fur, trying to hold on for fear of slipping away, and forced himself into the wolf’s scent, his warmth, his presence. Slowly, eventually, it all slid back again.

Another sob caught in his throat. He held it, swallowed, sighed out. “How do you do it?”

“How do I kill?”

“How do you forget?”

Sulla turned his head. “You don’t. There are… a few things that always stay with you, no matter how much you want or try to forget, or move on. Death is most of them.”

For a while Lannon remained there, body heaving with remnant sobs and nausea, until he could once more lift his head up and look out across the landscape. The sun halfway hid behind a thick bank of clouds, dark bluish-grey with the approaching rain; he sighed out again, closed his eyes, and took in a slow breath, picking the scent of rain out from the stench of death.

His arm twinged. He opened his eyes, blinked, unfurled himself from his mate, then tilted his head – and felt his heart skip another beat.

“You’re injured.”

Sulla flicked an ear, tilted his head the opposite direction, and then lifted his other arm. He had tied a length of fabric around the gash, though still the rich crimson oozed through; his fingers had curled in close to his palm, and his entire paw trembled.

“I’ll be okay,” he rumbled, and lowered it back down. “I’ve had worse. I know how to take care of it.”

“But – Sulla-”

“Beautiful, don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about me.”

“But you – I-” The lynx could feel the heat radiating off the wound when he placed his paws around it, just barely touching the fur on either side of the bandage. Shredded muscle twitched and vibrated, frayed nerves automatically firing; Sulla winced but said nothing. “We have to get back to town. Someone there can help you, I just know it. We – have to-”

And then there were tears in his eyes again, and that familiar, awful pressure in the back of his throat, and his words disintegrated into choking sobs that bent him forward and flattened his ears. Once again Sulla wrapped around him, careful not to squeeze too tight with his injured arm – but right as he did so Lannon pulled himself away, wiped across his face, and stood shakily up.

“Where’s my knife?”

Sulla looked up at him.

“My knife. Where – is-” And then he saw it, there in the grass a short distance away, clumps of grass and fur still stuck to the slickened blade. His stomach gave another roll when he picked it up, and when the scent washed across him, but the lynx just wiped it off on his leg, stepped over to the misshapen mass lying in the grass… forced himself to look at it, felt the world spin again, then dropped down to his knees.

Behind him Sulla followed. “Lannon-”

“Bounty hunter,” he growled. He rolled his fingers over the handle, felt the familiar shape, the stiffness of the material, the almost comforting solidity of the weapon. Lannon dragged his eyes away from the opened belly, the split throat, the burst eyes, and focused on the arm instead, with the missing fingers and the garland of scars. “They want a pelt, I’ll – give them – a gods-damned pelt…”

When he reached out and touched the fur, flesh nothing more than dead meat, the energy sapped out of his own body. His paw shook; though he pressed the point of the blade into the heel of the wrist, he could not push it through to the meat underneath, no matter how hard he seemed to push, and-

-and with another cry he let go of the knife and stumbled back onto his rump, scrambling to put some distance between himself and the corpse. Sulla’s paws grasped his shoulders again; Lannon halfway covered his face with one of his own, fearing that sight, knowing that he was the one responsible, through focused, deliberate choice and action.

“Don’t,” Sulla rumbled. He turned the lynx’s head away from the body, and back into his embrace. “Don’t even look.”

Lannon blinked, eyes wide, for a moment seeing nothing. With effort he lifted his head up, but looked only at Sulla here with him. After a moment he returned the glance.

“Lannon…”

The lynx swallowed, still tasting blood and vomit. “How can they do it?”

“They?”

“The… the bounty hunters.” He swung an arm out towards the body. “How could… I have done this? How can there be such – cruelty in the world? I did this, Sulla. I chose to do it, and I ensured it was done, and I…”

“Panicked, once you realized it. I saw it happen: you suddenly stopped, and looked from what remained of him, to your paws, then down across your body; and then you stood up… you panicked, because that is not who you are.”

“But it was.” Lannon rested his head in along Sulla’s shoulder again. “It could be. I was as much myself then as I am now.

The other hunter remained silent. Though Lannon could no longer see the mess from here, still he was kept aware of the way the grass bent away beneath the weight of the body, and still he could smell the sharp heat of spilled innards, and still he knew that the dark shape partially visible through the blades of grass would no longer shift or stir with breath.

Sulla unwrapped from around him. “We should move on.”

“And leave him here?”

“We don’t know if he brought any of his party with him. I didn’t see or smell anyone of them when I was circling around, but… they are hunters. It’s too dangerous.”

“Can I… at least…”

“Lannon-”

“No.” The lynx took a breath, straightened up, and rolled his shoulders, then moved to slide his cloak off. He looked down at it, then up at the figure in the grass, then over at his mate. “Would you… maybe…?”

Sulla held his gaze, then reached out to take it. Lannon watched as he stood up and stepped over, then draped the cloak across the body. Still, though, he felt as though he could see every foul detail, even sharper when he closed his eyes. By the time Sulla returned to him he had his paw to his mouth again, choking back the disgust and the sobs as they tried to come.

“Do you need me to carry you?”

He shook his head. “No, I’m…” Then the lynx reached out for Sulla’s paw and took it in his own. “I’ll be alright. I just… I just need to move, I think.”

“Where shall we go?”

“Anywhere. Anywhere that’s not here.”

	Epilogue

The lynx took in a slow, steady breath of the cool evening air, let it swell within his lungs, and then sighed it back out, his adorned ears twitching with a slight twist in the wind around him. He reached up to scratch at one of them, felt his claw catch along the naked chain hanging down, and paused in brief thought – then skewed that thought aside. He reached across to his other shoulder and tugged his cloak more tightly around himself, this one thicker, a little coarser, heavier; even as winter had started to progress, and even as the fields of short, dry grass in the mornings had begun to glitter with a thin coating of frost, sometimes he still had to stick an arm out from beneath its embrace to vent some of the immense heat it captured.

From here, just barely, he could see the thin wisps of smoke curling up into the grey-black sky from the village they had just passed through. Snow leopards, bears, white foxes, all species suited to the more frigid climate near the border here; they greeted these two strangers with open arms and bright smiles, and Lannon had come away with more than just this thick cloak so heavily weighing down his shoulders that he bent forward underneath it. Along the road to his camp with Sulla he had gone over the stories the townsfolk had shared with him, again and again to ensure he would be able to share them with others.

The whale of Respulte. The origin of Wendil’s Folly, and the small conclave of alchemists still gathering to explore the properties of similar plants. The great beast at the start of time and the end of everything, whose howl stirred the world into existence… He tilted his head back, cloak shifting down along his neck, to vent out some of the heat from inside. His breath steamed in the cold air; the further the two had traveled, the more vague the distinction between afternoon, evening, and night had become, to the point where now it seemed as though the sun and the twin moons both vied for their space in the sky at the same time.

Why does the sun have no name? he thought, looking out towards the horizon. Surely she was a huntress too. An old god, greater than the ones who strode the valleys in the time before time. Perhaps she still remembers Lira and-

“Lannon.”

The jingling of his own piercings brought him out of his thoughts. He lifted his head, remembered the steaming mug of tea in his paws, and took another sip of the delicious, bitter liquid, so similar to what he had had as a kitten, changed and matured with the years passed since. “Beloved.”

Sulla sat not quite across from him, far enough that he could look him in the mismatched eyes yet close enough that he could still reach out to grasp his paw. So he did – then felt a little too much heat leave his cloak, and after that quick squeeze of the fingers, bundled back up again.

“I would think that you would want to journal all of this, just like you used to.” Each word puffed out into the air between the wolf’s muzzle and the fire in front of him, the little cloud of breath curling, wafting, dissipating. His tongue flicked briefly out to wet his lips, then slipped back in again. “There is so much for us to learn, and so much we are learning. I wouldn’t want to forget.”

“I won’t.” Lannon tapped his head. “For ages, stories were passed down through oral tradition. If I can’t recite it without needing a written reminder – then, is it truly my story? You remember all of your songs, don’t you?”

“Hmm. Most of them.” Sulla looked up to the sky, where the stars could not be seen through the winter clouds that seemed to never part. “They are still coming back to me. It makes the tail wag, beautiful, for us to pass through taverns in these remote areas, and I hear their songs, and I can tell that they came from our songs…”

“Yes. And you sing for yourself, and perhaps for me.”

“And for my daughter.”

Another puff of breath as Lannon chuckled. “Yes. And for her, too. And it is just the same for myself: all I do, I do for us. Whether the rest of the world remembers or not… it does not matter to me. Because gods know there are some things that I will not be able to forget.”

Sulla scooted a little closer. “Shall we return home? We are… rather far northeast. It has been a while since I have seen a map...”

“For a time, perhaps.” Lannon also moved, and then finally rested his head atop the wolf’s shoulder. “Next I would like to see Taiko.”

“Taiko? The peddler said-”

“I remember. But there is something out there slaying bounty hunters. Be it man, beast, force of nature, or something else…” He reached out with his cloak to partially draw Sulla within its embrace. The sharp, vigorous, intoxicating scent of wolf wafted about him. “I would like to meet it.”

The fire popped and crackled again, charred wood shifting, sparks dancing out into the night. Both hunters watched the display, each one thinking the other’s thoughts. For a while Lannon felt himself drift a bit, all the events of the past weeks muddling together and dancing by – and then he jerked, and gasped, and straightened up, upon again recalling what they – what he – had left in the fields of tall grass, east of Fros.

Sulla nuzzled gently at his ear, amber clacking. “Beautiful…”

The lynx took a moment to steady himself. “Sulla?”

He paused in thought. Lannon felt those flashes of images and impressions just beyond his reach. “Tul’s killer is… dead. And has been for quite a while.”

Lannon nodded slowly. “Yes. I know. Your mother told me, before we left.”

“Then, why…? I thought you thought that – Mar was-”

“I feared…” Lannon tasted the thoughts before he shared them. “I thought you might not support me, if I told you. It sounds foolish to say now, I know; I know that you would, and shall, follow me to the end of the world and beyond, but… just the idea, that I, one… little lynx, shall singlehandedly end bounty hunting and pelt trading throughout Loria…” He shook his head and drew forward, closer to the fire so that its heat radiated within the shared cloak. “I have changed the world once already; is that not enough for me? You and I could settle down. We could live in the forest with your people, or in a village with… with mine, or somewhere in between, and I would like nothing more than that.”

“Lannon…”

“I know it is foolish.” He turned to look at his mate. “Who knows how many other hunters are out there, just like him and his group. And just because he’s dead, doesn’t mean they’ll stop. We – I – have put an end to one suffering soul, but… how many more will emerge because of that? I would like nothing more than to just be with you, and yet there’s this… this flame burning inside of me, this desire to do more, to see more, to know more. At heart I am still a scholar, and there will always, always be more to learn. But…”

“But?”

“I… am…” Again he looked at his paws, cloak slightly shifting across his shoulders. He remembered when he had woken up in the field after slaying Mar, the foggy, distant vagueness of his panic receding just enough for him to see through his own eyes; he recalled the sensation of the thick warmth dripping between his fingers, rolling across his pads, soaking into his fur. “...changing, beloved. I have changed.”

Softly, Sulla scoffed. “I have changed, too. That is what trauma does.”

“I fear what I shall become.”

“I do not.”

Again Lannon’s jewelry clinked and jingled. “Why?”

“Because, even so…” Sulla once again entwined his paw with the lynx’s. “You will still always be my Lannon. You are a scholar, and you are a hunter. We shall continue to learn, and we shall continue to hunt.”

Once more Lannon sighed. He listened to the crackle of the fire, and the beat of Sulla’s heart, and the pace of his breath. “Will you sing for me?”

“What would you like to hear?”

“You mentioned some of the tavern songs reminded you of others. Do you remember?”

“Hmm…” Sulla’s ear flicked. “I think so. Wahuliwa. Let me see…

“Va bal tu’lal, va ro ulal zaa, suma eo ulal il va vasa’rul, lai wa nuo’lal faro ea…”

The wind shall cease; the sun shall sleep; and I shall rage against the world, if only to be with you again...