Her fur had grayed at the temples and around her muzzle-like mouth, and white hairs circled her eyes like a pair of spectacles. Her posture, normally so tall and sturdy, was stooped as though her powerful body had finally collapsed under the weight of her role as the Village Guardian at the edge of the wood.
“Any sign?”
The wolf chuffed and gave one sad howl before leaping over the rubble clogging the door. It leaned against Fenra’s side, nuzzling the wolfwoman’s thigh as she studied the ruins of the overhang. An ear twitched, and she cocked her head before crossing herself and laying a hand on the ice.
“Rest easy, old friend. I am sorry we did not come by sooner.” Fenra swept the heel of her palm under an eye. “It is only, we thought you were already gone.”
They put their backs to the door, walking side by side to the road. The wolf snagged the sleeve of Fenra’s coat and tugged, a tight whimper caught in its throat.
“We will tell him when he rides through,” Fenra answered whatever question the wolf had asked. Theirs had always been a strange bond, but a solid one. “Garek will not be happy to hear it.”
At his name, Tomasz ran from behind the bar, skidding to a halt at the threshold and calling out, “Fenra!”
The wind carried his voice up and away, and Tomasz watched, helpless and trapped, as his last visitor and her wolf vanished into the trees.
“No.” A chair crashed to the floor. “Gods and all, please. No.” And another. The legs of a third scraped over wood before colliding with the wall, and the table followed, tipping over with a mighty boom. The floor shook. Dust fell from the wooden beams into empty cups strewn across the bar. Tomasz gripped the edge and rose on numb legs, stupefied by Garek’s rampage through the tavern. “Take me, curse me, ride me until I’m nothing but dust, but please don’t take him. Not before I can?—”
“What are you doing?”
Garek whirled on his heels and froze. “You’re here.”
“Where else would I be?”
He almost missed it—the flicker in Garek’s eyes. The dimming of silver as they darted to the hunk of ice, wood, and thatch in the door. But he did not, and for the first time in however many nights they’d had, Tomasz gave the rubble at his threshold the attention it deserved.
He had wanted to look, and in the wanting, like so much else in his life, he knew it was safer to ignore the temptation. Better to keep his focus on the tavern and his guests, and never seek the attention he willingly accepted when it was offered. And so, for however many nights since the storm collapsed the overhang and clogged his door, Tomasz had not looked.
But he looked now.
“What is that?” His arm trembled as he pointed.
Garek gently gripped his wrist. “Do not look, Tomasz.”
“How long has that been there?”
“Look away, please. Look away and we can buy some time before I?—”
“Ohgods.” Tomasz ripped his eyes from the rubble and ice crushing the rib cage and spine of a?—
He jerked free and darted away from Garek. His back hit the bar. He stumbled through empty air, tripped over a chair, and fell through the table. His fraught attention bounced between Garek and the remains of a body stretched across the threshold. Bile churned in his belly and surged up his throat.
“What is—who is that?” he cried.
“You know who that is, Tomasz.”
“How long has he—it.” He swallowed bitter spit. “How long has it been there?”
“For as long as I have visited,” Garek answered. “A score of years and more.”
“No.” Tomasz shook his head. Faster and faster until the room blurred and the splintered wood beneath his palms vanished. Until he was nothing but a distant thought. A fading memory.
“Stay with me, Tomasz.” Garek’s large hands clapped down on his shoulders and Tomasz solidified into being. “Stay here. As long as you are within the threshold, we can continue to meet. I will find someone to set a ward. Fenra, or her wolf. The witch in the woods. I will ride through the dawn and deny my curse to find someone who can?—”
“What curse?” Tomasz was numb from his toes to chest. So numb, he doubted he had limbs at all. He studied Garek’s face. Every twitch of muscle and the meaning in the silence filling the air between them. “You have mentioned a curse before. What are you?”
“A traveler.”
“That is not all, is it?” He narrowed his eyes, playing through their nights together, and the odd ways the man phrased things. “It is your curse not to be caught. Isn’t that what you said?”