Chapter 4

Then, a loud, deep howl came out of her throat. It was unlike the sort of lousy imitation any other man or woman could make. It sounded genuine, as if coming from a throat that knew no language. The forest itself seemed to shudder at its sound, almost like it wanted to brace itself before a storm hit. The pack ceased all movement, several dozen yellow eyes trained on the armoured human figure standing at the edge of the clearing. The woman said nothing more, and instead turned around and began marching in the direction of the mountains. Everyone followed.

Alix made sure to walk by the woman's side. At first, silence reigned between them. For the youngest whose curiosity had been picked the moment she had been promised a tale, it was a long, uncomfortable one. However around them the beasts chattered to each other in yelps and howls, and this quickly became a source of amusement and distraction for her. Alix put words to the conversations, imagining what sort of things a wolf would say to another, like in the fables she'd heard spoken by the eldest in her village.

So caught up she was in her own mind, she was startled when the older woman spoke. Her body trembled and she felt embarrassed she had been caught day-dreaming.

"Yew-child, your village was raided by Lord Plantagenet's soldiers," the wolf-mother said. "Lord Plantagenet has been long part of a running feud with Count Angevin, one that goes before even my time. Some time ago, there was a city that went by the name Angieus..."

It was a bustling city, with a castle in the centre of it. That was then the seat of the Plantagenets, who at that time had not seen as many days of fortune as they do now, and were struggling to defend their lands from their enemies, the Angevins.

In those days, Count Ingelger, one of Plantagenet's retainers, had met the Angevin army in battle and lost, scattering many soldiers in the countryside. The Count himself was killed, some say, by the spear of the Angevin heir. After having removed his head from the body, they made sure to prop his cadaver back onto his horse, making sure his heraldry was visibly seen. And they had a page ride along him, keeping him in place as if the beheaded man was riding himself, and both led the invading armies to the outer gates of Angieus.

Inside the city, there wasn't a single Plantagenet; they had all fled, having heard the news, and left Countess Ingelger to face the Angevin army. From the outside, the invaders requested the lady yield the city to them, submitting herself to them. Countess Ingelger, however, was a woman known for her stubbornness and pride, and was of the opinion that death was always preferable to the dishonour of surrendering to her lord's murderers. She prepared for a siege: she ordered that the castle be defended at all costs, and that no one should enter or leave the city walls.

However the Plantagenets had been struggling to keep up with their enemies in more than just the military front; their finances had been a mess for years, and as such they hadn't conducted the necessary repairs a castle and its walls needed to sustain a siege. Countess Ingelger knew about this very well, she knew that it wouldn't take more than a single rooster's cry for the Angevins to take the city. Her hatred and her shame at seeing the desecrated body of her husband being paraded around by their enemies blinded her, and out of pride she decided to take the castle from under their noses in the way only women know how.

Locked inside her room, with only a priest by her side, she accepted the embrace of death with a brief touch of poison to her lips. Her confessor was not there just to give her the last rites, but also to conduct what they would've liked to think was a killing of mercy. All the inhabitants of their castle, they believed, were better off in the lands of the netherworld than at the hands of the beastly Angevins. The priest went around the castle, dropping the deadly poison into the all the water wells and all the beer kegs from which the servants and the peasants were drinking.

If mercy was intended, it wasn't one that came upon the peoples quickly. The poison, if consumed pure as the Countess had done, was enough to quickly take the breath away from a man's lips, but diluted in the water or beer it acted more sluggishly, building up inside the victim's body until it was enough to cause their death. This would come as a sweet release after days of intense agony, as the body struggled with itself to fight the damning intruder. This was the fate of those that resided in the castle, both servants and peasants, lady and priests, all but for one laundress' daughter.

The daughter of this laundress, a young woman who had not yet had her first bleed, had recently taken ill and was still in the process of recovering. Her mother had been advised by a cunning woman to give her nothing but "running water, appropriately burnt before serving" for drinking, as the stale waters from the well were known to accumulate those impish spirits of air for which all manners of illnesses are responsible for. This was, unbeknownst to them, the only pure water available in the castle, and it was the reason for her survival.

The laundress, ignorant of the plans laid out by the Countess before her death, drank and ate with the rest of the servants. She was taken in by the pains as they all began to experience them. At that time it was not known to them that the lady of the castle had taken her own life, but as she failed to show when they all fell ill a suspicion emerged and it was shared all over the beds of the dying. Inside and out of the castle there was chaos as what was considered a betrayal was exposed: the conspiring priest, soon transpired, had decided to meet his maker soon after his role was done, perhaps expecting his parish to meet him at the gates of Saint Peter so that he could give them their last rites in a more relaxed and picturesque setting.

Death flew over the castle, quieting down the commotion. Outside, the Angevins had received news of what had transpired very early on, and decided to wait out until the castle had been emptied of souls before going in. They only had to wait a week, and it was all over. No one was there to impede their entry, or to protest their presence. They walked across an empty landscape; only through the windows of the modest servant dwellings or the more affluent merchant's houses one could see the grotesque result of Countess Ingelger's defence.

And so, Angieus' castle was forced open with very little effort. The laundress' daughter, alone and fearful of the presence of the enemy forces, hid in the castle for two days and two nights after it was taken over by them. She bid her time until she was able to make her way out, and she slipped out the castle gates in the night, while two guards slept.

By then, attracted by the smells of the decaying bodies, a pack of dogs from the outer walls of the city had gathered. They would roam around the empty houses, breaking into them to steal a meal. The laundress' daughter might have been invisible in the darkness for the careless guards, but her presence was not unknown to the animals, and the dogs began barking and making noise as they saw her pass by. This had the unfortunate effect of alerting some soldiers who were making the rounds around the castle walls, who thought they might have spotted a thief.

They gave chase and she fled; away from the castle and the city, and into the lands of the nearby forest. The ancient woodland is a rare and curious sight when it's beside a city, as man tries to make do as much as he can from the land they own. For better or for worse, it had so happened that Lord Plantagenet's family had a tradition of hunting, and so liked to keep an appropriate poaching ground beside their castles. The woodland had been spared from becoming yet another farming field, and fortunately so, as it became a haven for those who fled the atrocities of the day.

The laundress' child ran into the forest seeking refuge; she was accepted quickly, for as the men were closing in on her a big, hungry wolf jumped out from the darkness. A struggle ensued, but away from the lights of civilization no sword or spear can beat the wild ways of the wolf. The soldiers were killed; their only comfort perhaps was that they had, at least, managed to wound the beast before becoming its prey.

Sharper than any fang, a sword had opened a gash in the side of one of the wolf's legs, which bled profusely. It could've been a mortal wound had the laundress' child not taken pity on her saviour, and using what little knowledge she had of medicine, she dressed and cared for the wound until the wolf was whole again. And after it was done, the trees closed in on her and she decided to never come out of the forest again.

Alix washed her face in the stream as they stopped for a midday break. The water was clear and cool, running down from somewhere in the mountains and into the valley below, where her village was. She took the chance to replenish her water skin, happy that there didn't seem to be any strange colouring or sediment at the bottom of the rocky stream. Nearby, some of the wolves were drinking their fill, dipping their paws in the water as they played around.

She saw Mountain-stream and Magpie approach her; this time, their manners were more careful, almost sheepish as they greeted her with their usual yelps and whines, looking for her face with their muzzles. They settled next to her, and she was reminded of the dogs their neighbour had kept when she was little, who would casually greet her in the same way before promptly sitting down next to her demanding attention.

"You're just here to ask me to pet you," she said, and both wolves agreed by barking at her. She relented, and began scratching them behind their ears. "Well, I'll spoil you two for now."

The truth was that, as strange as it was, she appreciated the company. Domesticated animals they were not, but there seemed to be some sort of understanding between them, some familiarity. It was a pillar she could rely on as she walked through her grief.

Wolf-mother howled, and all prepared to leave. Alix had gained the understanding through that morning tale that the knightly woman had perhaps seen a kindred spirit in her, through their shared plights. She also found comfort in that: knowing that she too had escaped the destruction of her home town, that she too had seen her mother slain as a by product of the games the nobles played. She hadn't asked any questions, as she'd been too ashamed of interrupting the tale, yet her mind was abuzz with all sorts of conjectures and guesses.

She decided to let time answer her thoughts, as she had the suspicion that Wolf-mother would not offer any more questions about her past.