*

I can’t be sure how long I was running through the wilderness, but it couldn’t have been more than an hour, given how weak I was from my confinement among the Ikkësa, not to mention my injured foot. I collapsed at last, overcome by exhaustion and pain, and with my last reserve of strength I rolled myself into a hollow depression between a tree and a hill. There I lay, and I believe I slept for a portion of that time, until the dawn was just beginning to break.

I was at a loss for what I should do next. I had escaped the Ikkësa for the time being, but would they bother sending men to search for me? Certainly I couldn’t return to Tīuame, which meant that my most likely course of action was to wander around until I starved to death. With this encouraging thought in mind, I pulled myself to my feet (assisted by the tree) and staggered onward.

It was then that I began to hear the howls, and it became apparent that I had overlooked an alternative future in which I would be torn apart by a pack of wolves. I wondered what the wolves would make of my Bird, if it was the sort of thing that could be eaten or if its nature was something entirely different. The idea occurred to me that perhaps I could use the Bird’s grotesque appearance to my advantage if it repelled wolves, leopards, bears and such animals (assuming there were leopards and bears in this part of the world, of course).

The howls, to my dismay, were growing louder, and it seemed to me that very soon I would have an opportunity to put my thoughts to the test. But since I am no woodsman (and the wet forests of this part of the world were especially strange to me) I didn’t notice that something was following me until it was mere yards away from me, and I heard the snapping of twigs behind me. I turned around, expecting to see the ravenous animal I had been imagining, but was startled and horrified by the appearance of an open-jawed wolf standing on two legs and facing me.

For a moment I was frozen in that nightmare, before I saw the human face within the wolf’s jaws, and I realized that it was a man wearing the skin of a wolf draped over his head and shoulders, a young man who stared at me with fierce eyes.

That is, I assume his eyes were fierce because of the tone in which he addressed me. It was hard for me to see his face clearly in the shadow of the wolf’s jaws. “You. Who are you?”

“Well,” I said. “You wouldn’t recognize my name, so I won’t bother giving it. You wouldn’t recognize the name of my home either. Who are you?” I was hesitant, my readers will understand, to say too much without cognizance of this wolf man’s allegiances. Here my Bird, convenient as it generally was, proved to be a hindrance, since thanks to it I had no idea whether we were speaking in the Uste or Ikkësa language, or indeed in some other language altogether.

He laughed, pressing his hands against his knees in the intensity of his mirth. “You can’t be one of us if you don’t know who I am. But you look peculiar enough that I don’t think I’ll kill you yet.”

“I appreciate that,” I said.

“Why don’t you come along with me and I’ll introduce you to my friends.” The casualness of his words was belied by the way he was walking towards me, and I took several steps away from him before my left foot entangled itself with my right and I tripped backwards. Immediately the man was on top of me, the wolf’s teeth before my eyes, and drawing a knife from somewhere he pressed it against my throat. “But I could change my mind about killing you! Don’t think I couldn’t! I can smell the blood in your veins and I’m hungry to taste it!”

“Please don’t,” I said in what I intended as a cool-headed remark, but which emerged from my mouth sounding more like a terrified plea. He laughed, stood up, and offered me a hand, which reluctantly I took.

I wondered, as he led me deeper into the forest, who he and his friends were and how it was that they were so close to both the Ikkësa camp and Tīuame without my hearing about them. It seemed most likely that they were bandits, but this man, wolf pelt aside, was very different from the bandits I’d first encountered in these Uste lands: younger and yet harder somehow. I was just as terrified now as I was when I had been turned over to the Ikkësa, but I didn’t dare run.

Another man jumped down from a tree nearby, and just like the first he was young and dressed in a wolf’s skin. The pelt hung over his shoulders and engulfed his narrow arms. He was a smaller man than the first, but there was no less aggression in the way he moved and spoke. “What’s this? What’s this? What game did you bring, Telkuelos?” This sounded to me like an Uste name, though of course it was impossible to say for sure.

“A runaway from his masters, I think. We’ll see what story he has to tell.”

A little farther on was a clearing in the woods where ten or so more of these lupine men were gathered around a fire. Telkuelos put his hand to his mouth and gave a whooping call as we entered the clearing. “Look what I’ve brought you all!”

In response first one, and then another of the young men in the clearing began to howl, and I shuddered as in that instant all my nightmares returned to me.

“Where are you from, friend?” Telkuelos asked, gesturing for me to sit down beside the fire. I appreciated the opportunity to rest and the warmth of the flames, but I didn’t appreciate the way the young men surrounded me as I progressed through the clearing. “What brings you to these wonderful forests?”

“I am from a distant land,” I said, doubting now that it would be wise to evade the question. “I’ve come here by misadventure and am, as you can see, only a poor traveler. For a time I was a slave among the Ikkësa, but they let me go free at the word of their gods or counsel of their shamans or something like that.”

“The Ikkësa?” asked Telkuelos. “Who are they?”

I looked at him in perplexity and waved my hand in the general direction of the Ikkësa camp. “Surely you know about the Ikkësa! They’re encamped a distance of, oh, not far from here. You couldn’t forget them: they’re giants, after all.”

“That’s very interesting,” said Telkuelos. The other young men began laughing. “But do tell us, if you don’t mind, how it is that you come to be wearing a woman’s dress?” At this the laughter became uproarious. One of the men offered a suggestion that could only have come from a particularly depraved mind.

“Well,” I said, “that’s easy enough to explain.”

“Go right ahead!”

It occurred to me that it would be best for Itakelis if I did not, in fact, tell these men that she was wandering around, which put me in a difficult position concerning what I should say instead. It was, I had to admit, an unusual circumstance. Fortunately, I can think on my feet when it becomes necessary, and even on those occasions when I can’t walk on them.

“I needed a disguise to escape,” I said.

“You just said these giants let you go free.”

“I did say that, didn’t I? But there was some debate among the Ikkësa about it and I thought it would be better to take the matter into my own hands before my enemies prevailed.”

“If they’re giants,” called one of the men, “couldn’t you hide between their toes?”

I saw the potential for confusion. “I use the term broadly,” I explained. “The Ikkësa are perhaps seven or eight feet tall.”

“And what do the old men of Tīuame have to say about an army of giants right next to their city? Are they running around in circles with their beards waving behind them?”

I didn’t remember the elders having long beards, or indeed any beards at all, but that didn’t seem like an important point at the moment. “Since they’re currently under siege from the Ikkësa, I believe they’re fairly concerned.”

Throughout this conversation, there had been a steady, if subdued, noise from the other men, who would interject the occasional howl or shout as I spoke. But at this they fell quiet. Telkuelos took me by the shoulders and shook me roughly. “They’re attacking Tīuame?”

“What? No, the Uste aren’t attacking Tīuame.”

“The Ikkësa, fool.” He let go of me suddenly so that I fell to the ground at his feet. “Brothers!” he shouted then. “We’ve been wandering long enough! Our homes and our families are in danger! No matter how many or how few moons have passed since we left, the time has come for the return!”

They all began howling again, and as I looked up at them they almost seemed to be wolves again, wolves on two legs. It was growing darker, or so it appeared, perhaps from something as simple as a cloud passing over the sun, or perhaps not. Despite the howls I could hear other, stranger, sounds from the woods around us, sounds that I can only describe as being akin to the wind when it stirs up a pile of leaves. Perhaps it was only the wind stirring up a pile of leaves, or perhaps not. My readers will accuse me of pointless mystification, with some justice, but they must trust that I am doing my best to describe what I experienced, though at times I doubted my own eyes and ears.

The shadows at the edge of the clearing were growing longer and longer, stretching out to touch the feet of the wolves who stood there, and the branches above us shook in the wind. It seemed that Telkuelos was saying something, but for once my Bird failed me. Yet the tone of his voice conveyed meaning to me even if his words did not. He was filled with a fury that was too great to be contained within a single man, that overflowed him and went in waves through the clearing. It fell, then rose again in a great crest that swept out into the thicker parts of the forest, towards the Ikkësa camp. And the howling men were wolves, running on four legs, and I staggered after them, following in their wake. I knew, in that moment, that the wolf of my nightmares was beside me.

In the full light of day it would not seem likely that this small band of men, some of them hardly more than boys, could do much against the Ikkësa horde. Even early in the morning it strains credulity. I cannot account for all the things I saw, but I know that I saw them. I saw the wolves leap the ditches and tear out the throats of the guards. I heard the giants call on their gods and saw them scatter in panic when their gods failed to help them. I felt the presence of the great wolf and I knew that it held the camp in its jaws and savored the blood that its teeth spilled.

The Ikkësa were terrified beyond reason (surely they could have saved themselves if they had stood firm), but so were the Uste captives, who prostrated themselves on the ground and cried out, “Mercy! Mercy on us, great one! Mercy!” Only I stood in their midst, and that was because I was too confused at first to do anything else. On every side the wolves coursed and the giants fled, but I wandered through the ruin of the camp, until one of the captives, a motherly woman named Buakelis, grabbed my hand and pulled me down to the ground beside her.

“Don’t be a fool,” she whispered to me. “If he sets his eye on you, he’ll swallow you as quickly as he swallows them.”

“Swallows whom? The Ikkësa?” I asked.

“No! The young men!”

By now the Ikkësa had abandoned their camp and mounted their horses to flee, all but those who were dead or grievously wounded, and the latter were finished off by the wolves. These wolves (for so they still seemed to me) were leaping around the empty tents, howling and singing with the words that my Bird wouldn’t translate for me.

My eye caught a party of men from Tīuame who were approaching the spot where Buakelis and I lay. I recognized Iargwomos at their head and I stood up, but said nothing until he was a few feet away from me. After all, despite the irrational relief I felt at seeing his solemn face, he had betrayed me and handed me over to my suffering among the Ikkësa. I believed that a certain reserve was called for at our meeting.

“Hello,” I said to him. I had in mind a number of remarks designed to pierce, cut, and flay him to the metaphorical bone, but then I saw the paleness of his face. He was, much like Buakelis and the other captives, overwhelmed by fear.

“You did this!” he said in what was half a whisper, half a shout. “You brought them, brought this, down upon us! Why?”

“Well,” I said, “they drove off the Ikkësa, didn’t they? Weren’t you going on about the true old spirit of the Uste or something? Isn’t this it?”

Iargwomos shuddered and when he finally replied to me, he spoke hurriedly. “I’ll arrange for you to travel south to Edazzo with a merchant caravan. I just want you gone as soon as possible!”

This was a fine way to show his gratitude for saving Tīuame, I thought, but now didn’t seem to be quite the proper time to argue with him. The wolves were still howling after all, though as I cast my gaze back to them, they did seem more and more human.

I heard later on, after I arrived in Edazzo, that the Ikkësa had retreated back into their own lands in the east after this rout. No doubt they were crushed by the spirit of the wolf that I had played my small part in rousing, though the man who told me about the retreat had his own explanation, which I don’t remember in full. It involved various internal conflicts among the Ikkësa, between and within their tribes. There were arguments over certain totemic items, and the stones I carried for Ordolan may have been a part of it, but that is all I recall. Myself, I prefer to think that my role was a critical one.

That is how I spent my time in the lands of the Uste. Rosédan will want to know more about how I first came to this part of the world, about my home and about the fair folk, but that is a story I shall write some other time, if indeed I ever do. There is a cloud over my memories on occasion, though it is a cloud of light rather than darkness. But now I hear someone knocking on my door, and no doubt it is Rosédan. I set my pen down here.