Samantha Brennan lay on the snow-capped hilltop, while around her the eternal trees abided, dark frost-patched evergreen, as numerous and densely packed as the hairs on her head, with irregular pauses for rivers, lakes and oil and logging camps, all the way to the wintry western peaks, their lines delicate, ephemeral, more dreamlike than actual beneath the patchwork grey of a sky of unwashed clouds. It made the forests surrounding her old home in Scotland seem like backyard allotments.
The snow crunched beneath her as she shifted in place to ease her muscles. The crunch resounded in the solemn silence, as loud as the dull distant drumming of a woodpecker, or a snapping twig beneath a bolting sable, and she had no wish to disturb the clearing below - or the wolf pack who commanded it.
There were ten adults, led by the dominant male and female (whom she had nicknamed Thor and Sif), and their cubs. They were magnificent specimens: sharp-eared, sharp-faced, coated in a range of tawny greys and blacks, copper eyes pinpointed with ebony, and animated bushy tails. Samantha had watched that afternoon as the dominant pair led four of the adults out to hunt, leaving the remaining two to mind the cubs; now they'd returned, with jawfuls of elk for the rest. She observed their snaps and cringes, games of dominance and submission - and saw so much of what happened in her own relationship-
"Little Witch?"
It was a cautious whisper which reached her ears, and a welcome one, and she twisted to watch the black-clad man approach, his size undiminished by half-crawling up the hill so as to remain unnoticed by the pack on the other side. As he reached her he practically slithered to her side, arm around her as if it had always belonged there. "They're coming. East by northeast." He smiled. "Time to work your
zagovor
."
She couldn't help but smile herself, despite the urgency of their mission. "No magic, Mikhail. I just... have a way with wolves."
Her companion snorted quietly. She understood his incredulity, recognised the twin edge of her reputation. Ever since she had joined the World Wolf Watch, a group seeking to preserve the remaining wild lupine populations throughout the globe, she had gained a reputation among her colleagues as a sort of 'Wolf Whisperer', able to approach packs as if she belonged to them, enticing them to leave a threatened area or not encroach upon cultivated land and risk being hunted. Samantha herself had always remained circumspect about it - the truth would be too much for them to take.
She glanced at the clearing again. "Wait. He should be here any minute- there!"
Both went silent as another wolf appeared in the clearing, bold as brass, the one she had christened Baldur. He, too, had brought food, but not before Thor and Sif circled him twice, acknowledging his immediate posture of abasement, then padded away.
"Looks like they listened to you," Mikhail noted.
Typical Slavic nonchalance, but Samantha heard his astonishment. Lone wolves like Baldur normally avoided contact with all packs, and they with ones like him. But in the past few days, she had worked to adopt him into the pack, for his own safety. Lone wolves were easy prey in this territory.
Mikhail gave her a squeeze. "Come, Little Witch-"
Samantha looked up at him. There was something about Mikhail Lavrov that seemed too massive for chairs, or even rooms, something beyond his muscular frame, beyond the worldly lines in his face and the strands of white in his neatly-trimmed beard. "I know, I know. And stop calling me Little Witch, or I'll work a spell to shrivel up your putz."
Then she rose, straightened up, and emptied her mind. Some of the pack looked up in her direction; none of them moved to run off, even as she carefully made her way down the hill, towards them, though some circled nearer to the cubs. She watched her breath whiten from her mouth as she let her thoughts become as blank as the snow around her. She could almost hear the started breathing of her companion, who could not help but be concerned for her safety despite all he had seen her do since their partnership started a fortnight ago.
When she was level with the pack, she dropped to her knees, sinking into the thin blanket of snow, and spoke with more than her own voice, feeling a greater power coursing through and beneath her. "
Brothers, sisters, men are coming, coming quickly from the sky. You must leave now, together, head towards the setting sun, and do not stop until the stars are strong and bright.
"
All lupine heads had turned to her, and she knew that it had worked again; so long as she kept it simple and not try to project complex human concepts, she got the message across. But even her knowledge could not suppress the surprise she felt as Sif padded closer, closer, ears flat against its head in a defensive posture, the blood and scent of the elk around her mouth as she licked Samantha's cheek once, before turning and joining the others, lifting up cubs and food and moving as one towards the denser parts of the forest. Mikhail and she would continue to follow them in the coming days, guiding them towards the safer territory of the reserves.
She could still feel the female's rough tongue against her face, and allowed herself a grin of satisfaction. Thank you, Master...
A Slavic curse behind her, and she rose and turned to see Mikhail quickly descend the hill to join her, his Kalashnikov rifle in hand; it was as necessary a tool in the wilds of Belarus as their radio or compass, though less for the animals than the bandits or smugglers they might accidentally encounter. Her heart skipped a beat at the thought that he might have set aside his conservationist instincts and threatened any of the pack, even out of a sense of protecting Samantha. Then she followed his gaze upwards towards the rapidly approaching sound of whirling blades.
Seconds later, the helicopter came into view over the clearing, the vehicle barely missing the tops of the birches as it circled overhead, kicking up swirls of snow from the shuddering, surrounding trees. The sides of the ex-military vehicle were open, and winter-clad figures half-hung from it, secured to the fuselage and aiming weapons in Samantha and Mikhail's direction. The pair stood still, letting the red beams from the weapon's laser sights dance around.
Beside her, Samantha felt Mikhail draw closer, wrap an arm around her. The men above were foreigners like herself, here for the wolves, but beyond that, they parted company. They were hunters, men who paid big money to bag a few pelts with their automatic rifles without actually doing any work. She was here to save as many wolves as she could from that fate, and they could hover up there all they want and try to intimidate her.
Finally the helicopter pivoted and headed westward, following the pack's prints, though Samantha suspected they would lose the trail. At least, for today.
Mikhail and she relaxed their posture - though he still hung onto her. "Filthy
muksuns
..." He grinned. "You have the luck of the Devil, Little Witch, and my land needs such luck. How can I let you return to Britain now?"
Samantha smiled, warmed as much by the man's love for 'his' land, the place where he'd grown up - she could not picture a more devoted conservationist - as by the man himself. "It can get cold here at night; I'll need something to keep me warm."
He leaned closer, and with a slyness added to his grin and his words. "I'm sure something can be arranged."
"I'll bet." A playful kick to his booted shins initiated an impromptu chase back up the hill towards their supplies.
*
The waystation consisted of several log cabins, linked by nocturnal guidelines and wooden planks regularly swept clean of blowing snow, and set in a tiny forest clearing; it sufficed as an emergency shelter for the area's loggers, riggers, even the odd nomad. And for the past two nights now, Samantha and Mikhail.
It was comfortably warm inside the main room, with a stone hearth dominating one wall, its heat and light mocking the feeble efforts from the oil lamps. Mismatched chairs and couches filled the centre, and maps and paintings adorned the walls between the narrow, treble-glazed windows.
Samantha had returned from securing their vehicle for the night to find a hot mug of medivka, a honey- and herb-flavoured beer waiting for her. She accepted it gratefully, relaxing beside Mikhail on the couch. In the fortnight they had spent together, she had become closer to him than to any other man she had known. She enjoyed his company, his strength and spirit.
And she enjoyed his gentle persistence on certain matters. "Don't make me beg again, my little witch, my knees ache." He pointed at her with his own mug of Something Stronger Than Medivka. "They're never afraid of you. They never attack. They just seem to listen, and do what you say. Tell us how you do it."
She watched the flames dance and crackle in the hearth. More than once he had asked about her abilities. And she had always put off the truth. Now, however, she felt she had grown close to Mikhail in the last two weeks, two weeks of risking life and limb - and now she would risk trust. "Do you know the Norse legend of Fenris?"
The Russian frowned in thought. "A monster..."
"A
god
. A wolf god, son of Loki, bound by the other gods to protect themselves, but having broken free of even the strongest chains. He still lives, but as a spirit force representing primal, feral instinct, of passion and hunger. Some modern witches can channel that, and other spirits, in spells to serve or empower, to protect or advise. Witches like me."
"Ah, you said you weren't a witch." He was smiling, but he didn't appear scornful of what she was saying.
"No, I said don't call me one."
"But you did say no magic was involved."
Her face flushed. "It's not something I tell anyone straight off, unless I'm sure they won't start looking at me like I'm going to eat their babies or bow down to Satan. The organisation doesn't need the general public thinking that their members are all New Age lunatics."
She sighed, sipped at her drink, felt the rush to her head as it piggybacked onto her revelations. "Several years ago, I learned how to communicate with Fenris' spirit form. I gained special gifts from this... association. And have since used them in the protection of nature." She looked up, awaiting the inevitable disparagement. It wouldn't be the first time - but she'd grown close enough to him to know how much it would hurt, coming from him.
Instead, Mikhail stared into his mug, firelight reflecting from his animated eyes, voice low and intimate. "This land is filled with gods and spirits and creatures: Zakarij, the Wolf Goddess who laps at the moon and whose howls make the night winds; Kasmira, the Trickster, whose eyes shine like green fire and who lures men and women to passionate deaths; the Vukodlak man-beasts of the forests, spawn of the modern werewolf legends... my paternal grandmother was a village shaman, the first little witch I have ever known. She told me the stories, the practices. I swallowed it all hungrily."
He paused, sipped at his drink and continued. "When I was a boy, a Scout, my troop went camping in the forests of Alianokirk, not far from here in fact. It was there one night that I saw... something... something in the shadows, something deeper... it was a Vukodlak, I was sure of it, snarling and slavering... it came to me, and I... I have told no one else this before."
"Mikhail-"
He swallowed, visibly uncomfortable; she had not seen him looking so vulnerable before, but he gestured at her to let him continue. "My parents had always dismissed such village folklore, and encouraged me to find all the answers I sought in science and knowledge. And as I grew up, I tried doing just that. Tried to rationalise what I had seen, what I'd experienced... optical illusion, youthful imagination..." Now his bright eyes met hers. "But I couldn't. It wouldn't lie down in submission to rationality. And I have since learned to accept that there is an unknowable element to our world, that there are shadows which no light can disperse."
For a while, there was only the crackle of the fire and the distant howling of the winds and the wolves.
*
