The Steele Wolf

Roughly, I was grabbed and a canteen was pressed against my swollen jaw and teeth, but the pain was too much and I started to sputter and choke as liquid poured down my throat. I tried to turn my head away. I wasn't really surprised that it was Bvork who was holding the canteen. I tried to spit out the liquid.

“Swallow it!” Bvork ordered and pressed a rough hand on my windpipe.

I had no choice; it was either swallow or die. The liquid had a bitter aftertaste and a familiar sense of heaviness overcame me.

“Good thing I still had plenty left over from that night months ago.” He gave me a similar disgusted look that I had seen earlier on his father.  “I saw what you did to my father. And I'm not taking any chances.” He glanced over his shoulder at the still form.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I realized it wasn't my father lying in the back of the wagon, but Rayneld. In my fuzzy, drug-induced state I didn't look at the length of the beard and the eyes were closed.

“And I'm gonna make sure you pay.” He glared at me and gave me a swift kick in the stomach before nimbly jumping down from the wagon bed.

“Ah didna nean to,” I answered as best as my swollen jaw would allow. He must have hit the tree and fallen forward onto his own knife. I closed my eyes in disappointment at what I had accidentally done.

“It will all work out,” he chuckled from the side of the wagon. “Siobhan will stay behind and has agreed to say that you ran away again, only this time in shame and that my father and I have gone after you to convince you to stay. But something awful happened and Rayneld tried to save you but you both died.”

I was left to wonder in silence what that something awful could possibly be. He was right about me not having access to any kind of power as long as he kept me drugged. I tried to reach for it and I couldn't touch anything, it was gone, or I was numb to it. Whatever this drug was it also kept me from speaking to Faraway and wolf. It humanized me. Bvork must have gotten the drug from the Septori. I tried to organize my thoughts over the last few hours but the fuzziness in my mind kept distracting me.

My cousin or uncle must have set Aldo's house on fire to be a distraction for the clan as they once again tried to arrange my death and disappearance. I applauded their tenacity in trying to keep the clan bloodlines pure. After all, it wasn't very long ago that I was just as cold hearted and strict. My father was right; we had cast out anyone with any hint of Denai gifts into the mountains.

The sun was directly overhead and I tried to turn my head and shield my eyes from the glare, but that left me staring at the dead form of my uncle. So I settled for closing my eyes against the brightness on my lids as the drug made me sleep.  We stopped two more times as Bvork made me take more sips of the drugged canteen. Soon the sun was starting to set and the wagon started to climb uphill. Racking my brain, I tried to imagine what was up this way and I couldn't form any coherent thought. It wasn't until the sound of rushing water did I realize where he had taken me. It was Kirakura Falls.

Kirakura actually meant silent death in our old language. No one ever came up this way except for trappers. And they would forge the river farther upstream with their wagons. If you crossed at the wrong time of day or season, you could easily be swept downstream in the swiftly running currents and over Kirakura Falls, the steepest waterfall in the Shadow Mountains, with wicked looking rocks on the bottom. I remembered looking over it as a kid and seeing various wagon wheels and small boat pieces littering the embankments of either side of the falls.

My mouth went dry in fear. My mother was drowned in the river and he planned to send me over the falls, where the rushing river or rocks would very possibly crush me to death if I survived the fall. I tried to rock myself back and forward in desperation to free my hands that were tied behind my back but only succeeded in twitching my fingers. My body was still numbingly paralyzed.

Bvork unhitched two horses that I didn't even notice that were tied to the back of the wagon. “A horse for my father and one for me,” he explained as he caught my surprised look. “We had to come after you on horseback or we would have never caught up to you. I’m not dumb; I won’t underestimate you like my father.” Leading the horses away, he tied them to a tree and then proceeded to step into the wagon. He pulled off the tarp that covered his father and wrapped it around his arm. He placed next to me a bag of food and my cloak.

Reaching down with his knife, I blanched, expecting to feel the sting of the blade cut me but instead I felt a small jerk as my hands were cut free. Throwing the rope to the side, he again poured more drugs down my throat. Jumping out, he went to the horse and began to lead the horse and wagon down to the water’s edge.

Leading the horse in a full circle, he made the wagon enter first and was making the horse back into the rushing current. I could tell from the roaring sound of the waterfall that we were really close to the drop off and if the rushing water caught the weighted wagon, it would pull it into the river.  All of us would be swept away over the falls. I cringed that he was going to unnecessarily kill the horse.

Bvork was having trouble getting the horse to back into the current.  The horse was fighting him. I felt the splash of water as the wheels dropped off the small embankment and hit the water. But it wasn't far enough in. The horse was refusing to enter the river and was desperately trying to turn to the side.

I grunted out in frustration as I tried to move my body, but I was a prisoner in my own mind. I felt my hands twitch in response again and I focused all of my attention on moving my feet. The curling of my big toe gave me hope as I prayed that the horse was stubborn enough to delay getting any deeper in the water.

“Darn it horse,” I heard Bvork yell out, as an angry snap of a whip accompanied his curses. The horse whinnied in protest and snorted and stamped against the oncoming lashes. My life was being spared by the stubbornness of a horse. I heard another whinny, this time in pain, and the horse stumbled backwards into the wagon, which made the wheels sink into the riverbed and start to slip on the rocks, farther, and farther into the river. This is it, I thought as more water splashed into the bed and began to pool around my feet.

Another tug and the wagon stopped. Furiously the horse fought and pulled against the current and strained towards the shore.

“Bvork! Stop!” a feminine voice yelled out, riding to the river’s edge.

“Siobhan! What in the world are you doing here?”  The sound of the whip stopped as I assumed Bvork turned to deal with his sister.

The cold water made my limbs tingle and burn with feeling. Come on, come on, I silently urged as my legs started to spasm and twitch. Almost. PLEASE! I prayed. I didn't want to die.

“I can't let you do this!” she begged.

“You have no right to be here,” he yelled back. “You should be back in the village telling them that she ran away. It will look suspicious if our whole family has disappeared.”

“I won't do it,” she snapped back firmly. “I won't live under your rules anymore. You can't make me.”

Yay, cousin, I thought in amusement. I could really get to like her, if I lived past today. The grunting of the horse as he continued to try and pull the weight up the embankment stopped as he slipped and fell into the water.

More water filled the wagon bed and weighed it down. The horse gave up on the embankment because it was too steep and tried to turn upstream to find another way out. The wagon lurched and water sloshed into my mouth and face. I spit it out as the wagon bed evened out. We were in trouble; there was five inches of water in the bed and it was covering and stinging my whole body. But at least it was taking the numbness away as pins and needles of coldness encompassed me.