Wulfric wondered how he would go about telling her the truth.
She had asked about the chain, so perhaps that would be a good place to start. Or better to start at the beginning, with the story of who he once was and how he had become this monstrous, tortured shadow of himself? However the story was to be told, it would require great care if he were to enlist her help.
But more than anything, he hoped. He knew it was dangerous to do so. There were so many ways in which his plan might fail. To raise his hopes after having given up on them so long ago . . . But
he could not stop thinking of it. The long scar on his belly seemed to burn as his pulse quickened with excitement:
If the beast can bleed, then it can die. And so can I
.
Together they shared the labors of lunch, Indra skinning and cleaning the rabbit that Venator dropped at her feet after a short hunt, and Wulfric roasting it over the fire he had made. They ate in silence, Indra waiting patiently for Wulfric to tell her about the chain. But as the meal went on, he appeared no closer to doing so. He seemed to be lost in thought, much as he had been the night before, and he gazed absently into the fire as he ate. Indra was hesitant to press him; she had seen enough to deduce that the chain held a special, private significance for him. But she would not leave his fireside again without an answer to this riddle.
“It just occurred to me,” she said casually as she licked warm grease from her fingers, “you never told me your name.”
Wulfric glanced up from the fire to see Indra looking at him expectantly. It was an innocuous-enough question, after all. Still, he found himself unable to summon the word to his lips. It had been fifteen years since last he had uttered it, in part because he no longer thought of himself as that person. He was something else now, something not worthy of the name his mother and father had given him. To even think it now reminded him of all that he had lost, all that the beast within him had destroyed. Would saying it aloud make him feel the pain of those memories all the more keenly?
Perhaps, but then, what choice did he have? Eventually he would have to tell the girl more, much more, than just his name. He would have to tell her the whole truth if his plan were to succeed. He had been wondering where in all of it to start as he ate the rabbit that the girl’s hawk had caught, and he saw now that perhaps this would be the simplest place, with the name of the man he had once been.
“Wulfric,” he said finally. He took a breath and tossed a bone onto the fire. It felt strange to hear himself say it, though not as painful as he had feared. The girl appeared to react as though the name sounded somehow odd to her, but made little else of it.
“How did you come to live this way?” Indra asked. She hoped to learn not just the story of the great chain the man carried, but of the man himself. Everything about him was an enigma. He was more erudite and mannered than any vagrant she had ever encountered. Were it not for his appearance, she might have taken him for a nobleman. Perhaps one who had somehow fallen from grace, she surmised, though even now, in his wretched state, there was more grace about him than most true nobles she had known, including her own father.
Wulfric sighed, tossed away the last of the rabbit carcass he had been picking at, and finally looked her squarely in the eye. Indra had always read people well, and what she saw now, to her satisfaction, was a man who had resigned himself, albeit reluctantly, to tell her his story. At last. Eagerly, she leaned forward.
“Once, long ago, I was a soldier,” he began. “In the service of King Alfred. I . . .” He faltered, unsure how to continue. Or perhaps loath to; it was difficult for Indra to tell. He looked back to the fire, turning inward again, some deep and long-nursed conflict roiling within him. Suddenly he sprang to his feet, so swiftly it startled her, then paced back and forth, his head bowed in tortured contemplation. Eventually he turned to face her. “I am sorry,” he said with a look of genuine remorse. “This is more difficult than I had
imagined.” And Indra saw now that there was more than just contrition in his eyes. There was shame.
She rose to her feet. “Whatever you may have done,” she said, “I will not judge you for it.”
Wulfric grunted and made a face that might have been a dark half smile, beneath the grime and tangled beard. “An easy promise to make prior to hearing the confession,” he said.
“Then let me hear it.” She stepped closer to him and placed a hand compassionately on his arm. Then she winced at the dull but powerful ache blossoming in her injured shoulder.
“Your shoulder still pains you,” said Wulfric, seizing on the opportunity to talk of something, anything, else.
Indra placed her other hand on her shoulder. “It’s nothing,” she said, but she could not disguise the discomfort.
Wulfric took her by the arm. “Here, let me show you.”
Indra’s natural instinct at being grabbed by any man would have been to break the hold, and perhaps the man’s arm with it, and pull away, but for reasons passing her understanding, she did not. She stood still, subdued by the intensity of Wulfric’s gaze. Still, “You promised to tell me,” she began, haltingly.
“There will be time enough for stories after. Move your hand away.”
She hesitated, so Wulfric reached up and pried her hand from her shoulder, then clapped his own firmly over it, though he did not hurt her. “Be still,” he said as he gripped her shoulder, squeezing it in several places, feeling every muscle and sinew. “Mmm,” he murmured with a knowing nod. Then he released her arm and stepped back.
Widening his stance, Wulfric reached over his shoulder with one arm then raised his other up behind his back and held it by the wrist. Indra watched with puzzled amusement as he contorted himself.
“Like so,” he said, and only then did she realize that he meant for her to mimic him. Self-consciously she did so, reaching over
her back as Wulfric nodded his approval. Her shoulder cried out in pain, more than it had since she had reset it, and she might have quit but that Wulfric hurried forward and kept her at it, helping to ease her arm into place.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” she said as she grimaced through the pain. “It hurts worse than before!”
“Which would you prefer,” said Wulfric. “Pain now, or a feeble sword arm later? Trust me.” And though her shoulder burned, she allowed him to guide her arm back far enough for her other hand to reach behind her and grab it by the wrist. When she had done so, Wulfric stepped back.
“Good. Now slowly pull down, as far as you are able, ten times.”
She did so, trying to ignore the pain and the feeling that she must look as absurd as Wulfric had when he demonstrated the position. When she was done, she released her wrist and gasped with relief as she brought her arm back to her side.
“How does it feel now?” asked Wulfric.
Indra tried flexing and rolling her shoulder again and was surprised to discover that the discomfort, while still present, was a faint shadow of what she had felt just moments before the exercise.
“Better,” she said, with amazement. “Much better.”
Wulfric nodded and gave as much of a smile as the man appeared capable. “Repeat that exercise every hour, and by tonight the pain will be gone and your arm will be as strong as it ever was. If you—” He halted, suddenly aware that the look of pleasant surprise on Indra’s face had turned to something that looked more like shock. She was no longer looking directly into his eyes but lower, at the center of his body.
“You did not have that scar yesterday,” she said.
Wulfric looked down and saw that his cloak had fallen open along the split in its side as he had stretched to adjust Indra’s arm. It was still loosely belted at the waist, but his torso was exposed upward of that point. Though his flesh was discolored gray from the ash that clung to it, the dark scar that ran from beneath his
belt and along the center of his stomach to the top of his ribcage was clearly visible. He opened his mouth to speak, unsure what he planned to say, but Indra cut him off.
“Last night as we ate, you adjusted your cloak, and I saw that you had many scars—but not that one. Nor did you sustain it last night in battle.” Her eyes narrowed. “And what . . . is
that
?”
She marched forward, looking closer. The black burn mark in the center of his chest had not been clearly visible the night before, amidst the firelight, but now, in the broad light of day, it could not be more prominent. It was like an emblem seared into his flesh, a human cattle brand in the unmistakable form of—she looked closer to be absolutely sure—a
beetle
.
Her eyes widened in alarm and she bolted backward, almost stumbling, so sudden was her retreat. She reached back and unsheathed one of her swords, holding it toward Wulfric. As she stared at him in horror, he could see the realization dawn.
“The mark of the beast is on you,” she said through gritted teeth. “So is its stink. I thought the sulfur I smelled came only from my blade where I wounded it . . . but it’s coming from you!”
Wulfric pulled his cloak around him and refastened his belt. He felt a sense almost of relief as he stood there, content to let the girl arrive at the truth by her own deduction. This, surely, was better than having to find a way to tell her himself. The challenge now was to keep her calm, to talk some sense into her and keep her from doing something rash, as she seemed heavily inclined to do.
“You should put down the sword,” he said calmly. He took one careful step toward her, palms raised. “I mean you no harm.”
“Come no closer, I warn you!” she spat back. “Or I will be the one to harm you!”
“What do you propose to do?” said Wulfric dryly. “Cut off my head? As you have already seen, it takes more than that.”
Indra’s face was hot, her chest heaving as she struggled to contain the sense of alarm welling up within her. Alarm that, if not properly managed, could quickly grow into debilitating panic. She
centered herself, pushing it down deep, doing everything she knew to keep herself in the present moment. And, as she often did, she relied upon the one honest emotion from which she could always draw strength when she needed it most: anger. She spat on the ground and looked back at Wulfric fiercely. “I should have known better, known to trust my own senses, my own memory, for never once have they failed me. But you were so very persuasive, weren’t you? An expert liar, just as the legend says!”
Wulfric furrowed his brow, puzzled. “Oh, yes,” Indra went on, “I have heard the stories, from others in the Order, of an abomination unlike any other, one that takes the form of a man by day and shows its true self only by night. One that lies and deceives in order to hide among men, only to slaughter them when they are least suspecting. I always dismissed it as a myth, told to new initiates to frighten them, but now I see it is the truth! Was that your plan? To delay me here long enough that you might kill me after nightfall? Speak the truth, beast, if you can!”
For a moment, Wulfric just looked at Indra in silence, caught in her steely glare. Then, to both their surprise, he began to laugh. It was little more than a chuckle, but it served to inflame Indra’s anger further. She stepped toward him, sword arm outstretched. “Mock me at your peril,” she hissed.
Wulfric saw that his involuntary outburst had only worsened matters and stifled it, turning his attention to the point of Indra’s sword, which was now less than a foot from his nose.
“I did not mean to offend,” he said. “And unless you wish to, I suggest you remove that sword from the vicinity of my face.”
His tone might have caused a lesser man to drop his sword and flee, but did nothing to cow Indra. If anything, her sword arm stiffened. “No wonder you know so much about abominations and the Order. How many of my brothers-in-arms have you killed? How many innocent men, women, and children? Oh, what a prize your head will make! You—”
What happened next was too fast for Indra to fully perceive. There was a sudden blur of movement from Wulfric, and almost instantaneously she felt something hard as a wooden club come down on her sword arm. She cried out and drew it back, clutching her wrist, which now rang with such pain that she feared it was broken.
Instinctively, she sprang backward, away from Wulfric. The sword she had held in her hand not a blink of an eye ago was now in his. She hastily drew her other blade, and held it outward against the one he had taken from her. For a moment, the two stood like that, sword lengths apart, Indra on guard to defend herself against an attack.
“You are good, child, but not that good,” said Wulfric wearily. “If I wanted to kill you, I would not need to take the form of a beast to do it.” He lowered the sword, then tossed it toward her, the blade sticking into the earth at Indra’s feet. She snatched it up, realizing as she did so that the pain in her wrist had already begun to subside. Wulfric now stood before her unarmed, having given up the sword as readily as he had taken it.
“Your arm will hurt for a while, but it is not injured,” he said. “As I said, I have no wish to harm you.”
“Another trick,” she spat back defiantly. “Another lie!”
Wulfric just shook his head. “I swear, I have never encountered a person possessed of such intelligence and yet so disinclined to use it. Think, girl! If I meant to kill you, would I have helped mend your shoulder? Or tried to send you away from my fire? Or fought by your side?”
Indra’s eyes betrayed a flicker of doubt. “Perhaps not as a man, but in the form of the beast, your intention to kill me last night was more than apparent.”
Wulfric nodded. “True, but there was little I could do to prevent that. As I recall, you were the one who picked that particular fight. Marching up to the beast full of piss and vinegar and goading it into battle. Or do I remember wrongly?”
Another flicker of doubt, again quickly quashed. “So you admit it. You and the abomination are one and the same! Shape-shifter!”
“I admit it,” said Wulfric. “But the truth of the tale is not as you have been told. There is more to it than you know. The chain, over there, is part of it. I had begun to tell you this before you leapt to your own half-founded conclusions. I still will tell you the whole truth, if you will agree to listen.”