The Wolf & The Witch

The wolves came first, squeezing their hulking frames through the crack in the rock. It was dark, and the fire in the cave guided their way. They crept quietly up, black as the night is black. The wolves and soldiers had no doubt: the thieves were drunk. The cave reeked of vomit and wine and the only sounds coming from the entrance was the weeping of a witch, and the groaning of a wolf.

They ducked a ledge and entered silently. Four soldiers entered behind them. They stood opposite the fire, watching- the witch was on his lap, wearing, what they hoped, was only a flannel shirt, and the wolf had a shirt tied around his head, covering his eyes, pushing his hair up. “You… you… you said I… I was…uuugggllllyyyy,” she bawled, and held her head in her hand, and cried into it.

“Witch, that’s not what- hiccup- I said.”

“What… then?”

“I said you were most beautiful on- hiccup- your knees.”

The soldiers looked at each other, and lowered their swords. The witch sniffled, and nodded, and got down on her knees in front of him, and leaned forward, which pulled her shirt up the back of her thighs- just the tiniest bit, the smallest sliver of the moon on the horizon. “Like… like this?”

“I can’t see you,” Lestat said, and reached for the shirt on his head and the soldiers raised their sword.

Claire reached up and grabbed his hand. “No. No looking. You… you can use your… hands… though.” She was pretending to be drunk, but her voice still carried layers of contempt. She hated this wolf and his goddamn idea and his goddamn wine and his goddamn teeth. She was going to knock his teeth out of his mouth. There’s no way in hell this stupid plan would work. She scooted closer to him, and went up on her knees, which had the effect of tugging her shirt up her bare butt- a half moon, pale white.

The soldiers lowered their swords. The two wolves shifted down into men so they were shorter- for a better view.

Lestat leaned forward and reached his left hand out very slowly and touched her face. He ran his thumb along her jaw, and very gently pulled his fingers down her cheek, past her eye, running along the contours of her face- through her hair and along her ear, tenderly, and softly, memorizing the shape of the witch. Then he ran his fingers down her neck and goosebumps followed, then off her shoulder, down her arm, past her hand, then very slowly he took the hem of her shirt and tugged it slowly up, revealing all of her shapely round ass to the soldiers. So beautiful- he knew what her face looked like, but the feeling of her face at the tip of his finger, her skin soft like the petals of young flowers, her hair like silk- so very beautiful, he thought, and frowned.

Their swords were pointing straight down, and they did not breath, and they did not look away.

The witch had learned all she needed to learn about pretending to be drunk. This motherfucking wolf, this son of a bitch wolf got her drunk and stole her first kiss. Her throat tasted like bile. Her first kiss tasted like bile. And all because of this bastard wolf. She felt sick, and she regretted certain words: you promised you would never hurt me- you promised you would never let me get hurt. God damn him- he saw everything she was trying to shield- her breasts, her fears, her heart. She knew the wolves and men were behind her. She knew they had lowered their hands, and their swords. She wobbled on her knees, into his hand, then reached out for his knee, pretending to need support. This bastard wolf bit her breast- not just snuggling; no- biting, and now he was showing her ass to six random men. Claire loaded her right arm with righteous fury and poured hate into her sinews and retribution into her ligaments. She rolled her head, pretending drunkenness, and glared down at Lestat like the god of war looking down at a field of men awaiting swift and bloody death. She leaned to the side, away from him, wobbled, then turned her body and swung her arm and flattened her hand and smacked the holy shit out of Lestat. Her wrist popped she hit him so hard. He didn’t see it coming- not blindfolded.

“OOOhhh,” the stupid soldiers said, and took a step back.

“Ooohhh,” Claire imitated, and grabbed the chain hanging in the dark and a rotten log came tumbling down, twenty foot long, nearly two foot wide, and landed like a hammer driving nails on their backs. Three men were killed instantly, and another so severely crushed from the hips down that he would die from internal injuries sooner than later.

Lestat was bleeding from his nose again- that goddamn witch. That slap was not part of the plan, and he was getting damn tired of being slapped. He ripped the blindfold off, sword drawn, and sprung at the nearest wolf; Lestat was not left-handed, but he knew how to fight: right-handed, left-handed, or no-handed. He pushed the witch back, side-stepped a thrust, and drove his sword through the thigh of the nearest soldier. Then he stepped into the oncoming attack, dropped his left shoulder and brought the sword hilt up from the cave floor and broke the soldier’s jaw. He fell like a bag of marbles.

Lestat jerked the witch with him, knelt as he moved, traded the sword for a heavy rock as he knelt, dodged a sword coming straight at his face, and drove the rock into the soldier’s temple. The soldier was dead, and slumped to the ground. Lestat tossed the rock and retrieved his sword.

Claire was breathing heavy- she didn’t know he was that fast. That entire exchange had taken three seconds, and he moved like fluid. Like a ribbon hanging in the air. She looked around. Were they done? Did that stupid plan actually work? The witch looked at the wolf, happy and surprised, but the wolf did not look happy. He glared at her.

“Get over it,” Claire said. “You deserved every bit of that slap.”

Lestat knelt down and started stripping the dead- boots, socks, pants, cloaks, leather vests, wool shirts, flannel shirts. Then he heard a sound outside and paused, listening. The squeak of a saddle, but no footsteps. The soft breathing of a horse, different from the others.

“Are we taking everything?” she asked.

He didn’t answer, or look at her, or acknowledge she even spoke, but tilted his head. He was positive only six had followed them.

She tugged the cuff. “Not speaking to-”

Lestat saw movement out of the corner of his eye and pulled her back just in time- a knife flashed through the air and sliced through the flannel shirt and missed the white skin of Claire’s stomach by the width of his fingernail. The knife missed her, but just grazed him, clanged off the cave wall, and broke in two. Lestat stood, brought his right foot up, looked into the dark eyes of a dying soldier, and stomped his heel down on his head, smashing his face into the stone floor of the cave. He was dead after the first stomp, but Lestat added a few more for good measure. He looked back at Claire in the dark, and she looked at him, then his hand. He was bleeding.

“Are you ok?” Her heart was racing.

He didn’t answer but looked at his hand- a minor cut. He’d had much worse, lately, some from the damn witch. They started loading the horses when Lestat immediately noticed- there were only four horses. Where were the other two? He looked around and saw footprints leading off into the fields, back towards the camp, back towards the dead city of dust, and then horse tracks leading south. All the soldiers would’ve ridden here, so who’s footprints were these? Lestat shifted, and strained his hearing, and in the distance heard two horses out in the field, running south. Oh well- another problem for another day. He loaded the three horses with everything he could and left the dead soldiers in the cave. Lestat changed into leather pants, and a wool shirt, and a cloak, though he couldn’t completely wear the shirt or the cloak because he couldn’t get his right arm through the holes- not and be cuffed to the witch. So he cut the right arm off both, and put a slit down the side, and kept them closed with rope.

And while he did this the witch used a piece of rope to hold pants up on her hips- they were baggy, and sagged down, but they were better than going naked. She slid boots up her feet, and strapped a sword to her side. Still the same green flannel shirt, tied together in the front, now with a dirty cut through part of it, loose and open on her left arm, because of the cuff. She pulled a saddle blanket around her shoulders. “Are we ready?”

He didn’t answer, but tethered all the horses together, and hopped up on the first, and waited. She hopped up behind him, and they rode off in the darkness, finally armed, finally clothed, with food, and water, and horses. They had everything they needed to leave the wasteland.

The knife that knicked Lestat’s hand, the one he saved Claire from, lay broken on the cave floor- the old walnut handle near the embers, and the old, rusted blade chipped apart, in pieces. The soldiers here, including the wolves, were fairly weak. Maybe the effect of dust, and the cold. But they were still soldiers. They still were trained to walk in formation, hunt, track, and kill. And there is an old military saying in the land of dust, among the soldiers- a new, sharp sword for battle, and an old, rusted one for revenge.