The Wolf Among the Wild Hunt by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor

Author:Merc Fenn Wolfmoor [Wolfmoor, Merc Fenn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781949936285
Publisher: Merc Rustad

Skythulf learned to dance with Callan Attonson, a young man who was a minstrel at Caoimhe Keep. Callan was short and freckled, his chest bound with a modified corset, and he dressed in the bright reds and oranges of a hearth flame. His black hair sprouted in tight curls, slicked with mink fat so it lay close to his skin. He held out one hand, his fingers slim and fine. “You have a beautiful grace about you, my lord.”

“Not a lord,” Skythulf said, and took the young man’s hand uncertainly.

Callan laughed. “Forgive me. When Maurr Farran bid me guide you in some of the finer points of etiquette and decorum, they spoke of you as an equal.”

He blinked, letting Callan walk him through the first steps of a waltz. Brennus had never told him if they were nobility. He knew them only as the Knight-Champion, his savior. Because Brennus wished this of him, and since they trusted Callan, Skythulf allowed himself to be touched and led in the dance.

Callan counted the beats of unplayed music, and in between explained each movement of the foot and turn of the hips, the position of the hands and elbows. He scarce reached Skythulf’s chest at the tip of his coifed hair, but his confidence and his heeled boots gave him an air of height and superiority.

Dance was a slowed, deliberate form of battle. Each partner was both enemy and shield-mate. Skythulf did not find it exhilarating at first, for it was not fast enough to rouse his blood. Yet the splendid grace and poise in every flex and turn of Callan’s body entranced him. A waltz might be as deadly as a duel.

“Brennus tells me you’ve been here awhile, but I can’t remember seeing you before this summer.”

Skythulf tilted his head as he mimicked Callan’s footing. “I was ill.”

In truth, he had kept close-quartered, staying within the outer keep near Brennus’s rooms, or on the edge of the forest in a ranger’s hut, for his nightmares were wont to drive him feral. He had much to learn of speech and manners, of titles and garment, before Brennus would let him risk himself within crowds, or the distant court of Cair Rimeshield, where they served. With slow introduction to civilized life, he had grown more at ease around people. The pit-bred instincts were blunted, if only just. Brennus called him their cousin from Morlaem and said a bad fever had scattered his brains for a winter. And now he was recovering. It was not wholly a lie.

He had asked Brennus one night, when he woke with the itching of his wolf-skin all but bursting from his scalp, why they had spent so much time and coin on him this way. What worth was he?

“I survived as you did, in the mines rather than the pits,” Brennus had said. “We deserve a chance at better future. I want to give you what I have found: dignity and peace and joy.”

“Well, I’m pleased to finally meet you,” Callan said.

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