Beginnings

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It is difficult to hide a boat, even a small one on a big river. That day they did not see anyone but Manueline had the uneasy feeling they were being watched. There were people in the landscape. The wolf could feel them as well; he watched the shore all day never taking his eyes off it, though there was nothing that any of them could see.

They stopped and made a fire early in the evening to prepare the evening meal. Once it was dark, Manueline had them all back in the boat and they rowed down river a little way to an island some distance away from the riverbank. They had a chilly night sleeping under some trees on the island. Manueline's one consolation was the presence of the wolf. She was aware of him sitting off to one side watching the night. She was quite sure he did not sleep at all that night.

The next day was much the same and the river kept heading north into the dry country they had seen from above the falls. Manueline worried that they might find themselves lost in a desert, in a world where they would never find a home. Wals wanted to stop in the middle of the day. He worried about the wolf so Manueline said, "let him run. The river goes slow enough here." They got to the bank, let him out and then went out again, encouraging him to run. The wolf seemed to understand. He ran along the bank easily keeping pace with them, disappearing every now and then as something caught his interest.

They journeyed on till late in the afternoon, catching occasional glimpses of the wolf as he kept pace with them on the bank. They stopped, finding a sandy beach, sheltered from the river and the surrounding countryside. Manueline was to realize later that just as it hid them from the river, it also hid the river from them.

They were just preparing the evening meal when a boat with four men in it came from the direction of the river and, almost simultaneously, four other men came over the bank and stood looking down on them. Two of the men on the bank and two of the men in the boat were armed with bows.

Manueline and Wals immediately reached for theirs and barely had time to string them before the men were upon them. One of the men in the boat called out, "Put your bows down, we want to talk." Manueline was at least relieved that they could understand the men, who used a variant of her own language, spoken with a heavy accent but easy enough to follow for all that.

She was looking out over the water Wals was behind her looking up at the bank. She called back, "We can talk and hold a bow at the same time. What do you want?" By this time, the men in the boat were approaching the beach. Manueline called to them to stop, reinforcing her point by putting an arrow in the wood of the bow of the boat. She saw the man in the bow flinch as the arrow thudded into the wood a few inches from his hand. He turned and spoke to the two men rowing and they backed off a little.

He shouted angrily at Manueline about arrows being deadly things and not exactly friendly. Manueline replied that eight armed men surrounding two strangers wasn't exactly friendly either. "I ask you again what do you want?"

She could see the leer on his face even at that distance as he pointed at her and answered, "We want you. He can go. It seems he doesn't have a voice anyway. You stay."

Manueline laughed. The man's intent was so ludicrous compared to what she and Wals had been through; there was so much they did not know and did not understand. One of the men up the bank laughed nervously and said something to one of the others accompanied by a crude gesture. The others of his companions hardly reacted. He was a big man. Manueline turned to them, ignoring the others for a moment. "You want me as well, big man." She drawled the last two words making a mockery of them. "If you want me, fight him first." She pointed to Wals who was still standing watching the men up the bank with hardly a flicker of an expression on his face. The big man hesitated and Manueline caught the moment for she added, "Only I warn you, it is death to touch him. Tell me big man," and again she drawled out the words, "are you brave enough, are you man enough to face him?"

Wals was smaller than the man up on the bank and looked smaller still seen from above, there was something about him, something of the wolf that the other men sensed and there was the beginnings of a fear of him, just the beginning. The big man on the bank snorted in a show of disgust and came part way down the bank, not wanting to give up the advantage of position. "Come then death, come and see if you can find me."

Wals took the tension off the arrow he had notched in the bow, put the bow down and took a step towards the other man. There was an odd eagerness in his body, a light came to his face, his eyes seemed to open, and become darker.

Manueline reached out, taking him by the arm. "Wait," she looked back at the man in the boat, "Tell me, what will you do when he's dead?" She pointed back behind her at the man standing on the bank.

"I will fight him and kill him myself. That man is my brother, there will be blood to pay." Manueline nodded her head and smiled and let go of Wals. She saw the men up the hill freeze as Wals started walking towards them. Through some combination of water, wind and the action of the men at the oars, the boat backed away.

She saw fear come into the eyes of the big man standing on the bank. He saw her vision of it and, seeking to hide it from himself, suddenly charged at Wals. Wals had spent all winter playing with the wolves. He was as quick as a wolf himself. He stepped aside, tripping the other up. The big man sprawled on his face in the sand at the bottom of the bank.

Before he could turn over, Wals was on his back, his hands either side of the jaw. There was a sudden eruption of shouts and cries from the men in the boat and up the bank, shouting encouragement and calling on the big man to throw Wals off. He got to his knees, Wals still on his back; he stayed on his knees, his head down, as though looking for something in the sand.

They could see Wals' lips moving and realized he was singing, a strange high-pitched sound that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. It had no recognizable tune to it though there was something of a melody in it that they couldn't quite catch. They all fell silent and watched, listening to the sound, trying to understand what was happening.

Wals was now standing astride the other man, holding him, just his head and upper body a little off the sand. He gently shook the big man, who was quite limp and dropped him like a sack of rocks on the ground. He walked unhurriedly back to Manueline, picked up the bow and arrow again, notched the arrow and bent the bow and stood just as he had been before.

The silence seemed to last an age and was broken by an anguished cry from the boat. Manueline moved herself and Wals away a little so they were no longer exactly between the two groups of men. She interrupted the voice from the boat. "Why don't you come and see, see for yourself. Perhaps he is just asleep?" She paused and added, "If more than one of you steps out of that boat I will put an arrow in him."

They beached the boat and the man who had spoken first leapt out, took a few steps but then stood a moment, staring in disbelief at what was left of his brother. One of the other men watched him a moment and then leapt out after him. Manueline didn't hesitate. She loosed an arrow aiming for the upper thigh, intending to hit the bone. They all heard the sickening thud and crack as the arrow hit his leg and almost simultaneously hit the bone. He cried out and collapsed on the ground. Manueline shouted, "I said no one else was to get out of the boat."

She turned to the other man on the beach, "Do you mean to stand there all day or are you going to fight for your brother?" The man was clearly out of his mind; he pulled a knife out of his belt and came towards them, apparently ignoring the two drawn bows facing him. The other men only heard Manueline's words, the challenge to the fight, and saw the man on the beach responding to it. They allowed Manueline to define the situation for them; it was a challenge between Wals and the man on the beach and for the moment, they could see no other way.

They stood mute witnesses to the encounter with Wals. He put his bow down and approached the other man. Wals was crouching a little, looking relaxed. The man with the knife was tense, so much so he was shaking. Wals began to sing again; the high-pitched strange music that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. His lips moved but there was no obvious correlation between the sounds he made and the movement of his lips. He had his hands spread wide either side of his body and he began to flutter his right hand in an odd sort of counterpoint to the melody.

The man with the knife looked at the fluttering hand; looking from the hand to Wals and back again. He lunged at the hand, striking at it with the knife hand and then striking with a sweeping gesture, back slashing across Wals' face but missing. Wals hardly seemed to move in response to the strike. As the hand holding the knife swept across his face he followed it, grasping it and pushing it up as he went under it, twisting the hand as he did so forcing the other to drop the knife.

The man let out a cry of pain as the joints and ligaments of his wrist and elbow tore apart. The cry was quickly stifled. Before the knife even touched the ground, Wals had his hands round the point of the man's jaw, he found the life there and put a stop to it. For a moment, the man twisted and turned in his hands not even aware of what was stopping him from turning around. His movements slowed and became more clumsy, then they stopped altogether and he just hung from Wals' hands till he went limp. Wals shook him a little and then let him drop in the sand.

There were three archers left, two up the bank and one in the boat. Manueline was about to shoot one of the men on the bank when the wolf came. Like a wolf, he came without sound. He took one of the men up on the bank, one of the archers; knocking him clean over the bank, tearing his throat out before he even hit the ground.

For a moment, the other archer on the bank was paralyzed with fright; then he loosed off an arrow wildly in the wolf's direction, missing him completely. He never loosed another, as an arrow from Wals found his throat before he could move again. The remaining archer in the boat took better aim and loosed off an arrow, again uselessly aimed at the wolf.

The wolf had his bearings by then. He understood the arrows and saw the movement in the man's hands and body as he pulled and tensed for the shot. The wolf dodged the arrow and tore down the beach launching himself across the gap between the boat and the water. The archer was kneeling with a horrified expression on his face in the bow of the boat, desperately trying to draw and notch an arrow. He didn't have a chance. The ravening wolf took him full in the face, knocking him back into the boat, dealing with him as he dealt with the other.

The man at the oars leapt out of the boat, swimming for the shore. The wolf worried at the corpse in the bottom of the boat for a moment and then leapt into the water after the rower. They reached the shore at almost the same time, just as Wals rushed up the bank to catch the remaining man who was still paralyzed by what he saw below him.

Manueline had had enough. She called out to the wolf, "Here, wolf, come here, lie down. Watch him." She ran to the bank and shouted at Wals, just as he reached the other man, telling him not to kill him but to bring him down to the beach. Their fire was still burning; the light was fading fast. Manueline gathered them all round the fire and threw more wood on it wondering what best to do. She had Wals go and fetch the boat with the dead man in it. He did it without question, leaving her alone with the three men, one of them wounded. There was no possibility of them causing any trouble, they were terrified of the wolf and if anything, even more frightened of Manueline and Wals.

She stood on the edge of the firelight watching the three men wondering what to do. If she let them go, there was a chance they would just come back with more men. She was not sure she could just kill them or have Wals kill them in cold blood. They surely could not keep them as prisoners. She stood a while considering what to do but then decided the only alternative was to tell them the truth, maybe that would frighten them enough to persuade them to keep away.

She spoke quietly out of the dark. She told them Wals' story, or as much of it as she knew. How she first met him; their initial time together when she taught him the language; the coming of the older women and the death hut in the fields. How they put him in the hut for nine days believing on the eighth day he would die, on the ninth day he would walk out of the hut a dead man and they would bury him in the fields. How, before they could come and bury him, she took him out of the hut and carried him off, over the river to live with her in the forest. She told them how the four men who came the first time died. How the party of ten men came later and how they all died. She even told them a little about the coming of the wolf and how he understood them and had consented to live with them for a time.

"When I said 'to touch him is death', I meant it literally. If you touch him, you will die. Who can explain death? How can I tell you of the reality of death? You must see it to believe it. Now go back to your people and tell them. Tell them what you have seen. Tell them of the reality of the death you have seen here and perhaps you may spare them an encounter with him, an encounter with death. Believe me he will convince you in the end. In the end, you will all know death. Only here, now, you can come and see it, face to face and experience it now. If that is what you think that they want, go and tell your people to come and they will all die." One of the men turned to her in the dark and timidly asked, "What of you, don't you die when he touches you?" Manueline looked at him and spoke bitterly from the heart, "He does not touch me."

To follow this thread in the story go to: Touch Him

The next section to read is: A Mystery

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