Extinction

Something crackled in the forest. Startled, the woman looked up, just as a small black wolf burst from the underbrush. Teeth bared, snarling, it leaped for her chest. When it struck, the woman exploded into a million motes of starlight. The wolf continued its leap as if she had never been there. Watching it disappear into the forest once more, Ryld confirmed his earlier thought. It was all just an hallucination. The woman, the wolf. . neither were truly there.

Something warm and moist nuzzled his ear. It was a nose. Then a warm, furry body lay down next to him. A tongue licked his cheek, and dark eyes stared into his.

Ryld didn't move and didn't speak. Instead he continued to concentrate on his breathing, forcing the last of the belladonna's poison from his body with each slow breath.

Eventually, he fell into Reverie.

When he became aware of his surroundings once more, it was daylight. He heard a crackling noise and smelled roasting meat, and rolled over to see Yarno squatting beside a small fire. The boy was holding a stick on which had been impaled the body of a small, four-legged animal. It had been gutted and neatly skewered, but Ryld could identify it by the tail. It was a rat. Yarno lifted the stick from the flames.

"You'll need strength," he said. "Eat."

Ryld sat up, shaking away the last of his lethargy. Rising to his feet, he moved his shoulders, his arms, his fingers. All were in working order; the poison was gone from his body. He squatted and accepted the rat.

"Thank you," he said. "I haven't eaten rat since I was a child."

Yarno studied him through narrowed eyes. Ryld realized the boy was trying to decide if he was being mocked. Ryld smiled and bit into the fire-seared meat, chewing it with gusto.

Yarno flicked back the lock of black hair that hung across his forehead and smiled.

"It's good, isn't it?" asked the boy.

"It is indeed," Ryld answered, wiping grease from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.

Yarno stood and scuffed soil over the fire with a dirty foot, turning his back to the fire and scraping the ground like a dog.

"Grandfather is feeling better now," he told Ryld.

"My masters taught me well," Ryld answered. "That?and I've had lots of practice binding wounds." He eyed the smudges of dirt that covered Yarno's pale, naked body, then added, "The first thing you need to do with a wound is clean it with hot water, as I did for your grandfather. Then bind it in a clean, boiled cloth. Remember that?it could save your life someday."

"I'll remember," the boy said.

Ryld wrinkled his nose, doubting it. Yarno seemed to attract dirt like a gutter attracted night soil. And he had fleas?as Ryld found out to his disgust a moment later when he felt the needle-sharp twinge of one of the vermin biting his chest. His memory of the werewolf sleeping beside him must have been accurate. How much else of the past night had also been real?and how much hallucination?

Ryld rose to his feet and glanced around at the forest floor. Aside from the paw prints of a small wolf and the footprints of a barefoot boy, he could see no other tracks.

"Yarno," he asked, "when you found me last night, was there a woman standing next to me?"

Yarno shrugged.

"What did you leap at?"

Yarno stared at the ground.

"I don't remember," he answered finally, shrugging again. "I never do."

Ryld nodded, understanding. Driven into a frenzy by the light of the full moon, the boy hadn't been in control of his actions?or his mind. Strange, then, that he had sought Ryld out and protected him?his bloodlust should have caused him to tear Ryld's throat out, instead. Perhaps the stench of belladonna had driven him back?but why then did Ryld remember the boy lying beside him, keeping him warm throughout the night?

He drew his short sword from the ground, cleaned the mud from its tip, then re-sheathed it.

"Which way is the temple?" Ryld asked.

Yarno pointed, then met Ryld's eye in what the weapons master would have taken as a challenge, had the boy been a trained swordsman.

"What will you do when you reach it?" Yarno asked.

"Rescue Halisstra," Ryld said. His eyes narrowed, and he added, "If she's still alive."

"And if she isn't?" Yarno asked. "Will you kill the priestesses to avenge her death?"

Ryld considered that for a moment, then smiled grimly.

"As many as I can, before I'm slain myself," he said.

"Good," Yarno said.

The boy's head lifted as if he'd heard something. He stared in the direction in which he'd just pointed.

Ryld, too, could hear it; the blare of a dozen or more hunting horns, muffled by distance, coming from the direction of the temple.

"I'd better get back," Yarno said, eyes wide with fear. "Grandfather needs me."

The boy shifted into wolf form and fled into the forest.

Ryld turned, and hurried the other way?toward the sound. As he wove his way between the trees, roughly shouldering branches aside in his haste, a single thought echoed in his mind.