Don't Call Me Wolfless

Rhea’s POV

The tally man asked whether any of us in the front row could bite. The guard behind him said, "No, not this lot," and the tally man crossed out the next name without looking up.

He spent the morning working down the column with a stub of chalk, calling out the numbers painted on the cart sides. For each group, he asked the same question and got the same answer.

When he reached me, he tilted my chin up with two fingers and looked at the collar, its leather lining, and the skin around it. Then he drew his chalk across my row and put me in the second column, the one with no numbers in it, only marks.

Eleven of us by the end. I counted twice.

Then he told us to wait. The horses carrying goods went up the switchbacks first; people went behind them.

There was nothing to do but stand in the frozen mud until our toes went numb.

The road had thawed and frozen and thawed again until the ruts held water.

An old woman three places down started coughing and could not stop. The tally man told her to go cough behind the horses, and she hobbled over and did it.

The scrap of iron rested against the inside of my wrist, hidden by my sleeve.

I had worked on the rope half the night with it, sawing the same spot in the dark with my thumb over the frayed strand. If the man at the wheel looked over, I wanted him to see a twenty-year-old woman asleep sitting up.

Only one strand remained out of three. At the pace we were keeping, the trading post was still two days away. I could not bear another two days.

Tessa Reed leaned into my shoulder and put a loaf in my hand. Hard enough to knock on.

"She ate already," she said.

I looked at Maisie Reed, twelve years old, who had not spoken since dark. She looked from me to the bread.

"Half of it," I said. I broke the loaf and pushed the smaller piece back at Tessa.

She took it.

The guards put us back in the cart, and the column moved. I stopped watching the rope and started watching the men who had charge of us.

There were nine of them, one goods cart, and our cart, with a frame over it and a lock on the back gate. The captain rode ahead.

The fat one on the left kept his reins too long and would lose a horse if anything spooked it.

The thin one behind the goods cart watched the trees instead of us, as though he expected something to come out of them.

Above the second bend, the ground to our right was bare for thirty paces, with only broken rock sloping away from the road.

The arrow came out of the left, where the trees were.

It struck the goods cart. The second took the near draft horse in the shoulder, and the horse went down in the traces.

After that everything happened in the wrong order.

The captain shouted to cut the traces, and two men went at the leather with knives.

The unhurt goods horses came free and were driven up the road. Another guard cut our team loose and led them after the others.

Our cart had nothing pulling it and a slope under its wheels. It began to roll slowly, then gathered speed.

A guard ran past me with the strongbox against his chest. He looked back at the cart once and kept running.

I snapped the last strand of rope with a wrench that took the skin off my wrist, scrambled over the side, and dropped into the brush below the road.

I lay in the dead leaves with my heart going and listened to the noise above turn from shouting to screaming to the flat wooden crash of a cart going over, and then the smaller sounds underneath it.

Boxes sliding. Rock falling. A shoe scraping.

Forty paces down the hill, a gully ran north and west and came out below the road, out of sight of the bend.

I had found it before the cart stopped rocking. I had been picking my way out of places since I was twelve.

Then Maisie started.

"Tessa," she said. "Tessa. Tessa. Tessa."

It came through the wreck thin and flat, no breath behind it.

Tessa answered, "I'm here. Don't call out," and there was a shake in it.

Maisie said it again. Tessa said it again. It went on.

I counted her calls anyway, my knees still in the dirt. At nine, I looked toward the gully. At eleven, my stomach tightened. At twelve, I turned back uphill, crawling through the frozen mud, cursing Tessa for a fool, cursing the two of them for being on this road at all, cursing myself worst of all.

The cart had gone over against the rock. Its frame had folded and the back gate had burst open. The load held it off the ground, leaving a space of maybe a foot and a half underneath.

Tessa had her shoulder jammed under the shaft, her feet sliding on the wet stone, and one hand under the boards, dragging at Maisie's clothes where the collapsed frame had them pinned flat. She was getting nowhere.

She looked up at me. "You go," she said. "Go on."

I did not answer. I got down and put my back under the shaft.

The first push did nothing. I felt the strain in my teeth and behind my ears, but the cart did not move. Tessa made a small sound.

The second time, I set my heels, braced my shoulder against the wood, and lifted with everything I had. Wood dust fell into my mouth, and pain shot through my lower back.

The third time, I got lower and braced my feet beneath me. The frame came up a finger, then two. Tessa got her hand in and hauled Maisie out on her back.

Then I heard the footsteps.

He came off the road at a walk, a young man with his hair stuck to his forehead and a knife already out.

He was looking at the strongbox lying in the mud ten feet away. It must have fallen down the slope with the wreckage.

"Get back under there," he said. "Don't make me tell you twice."

He came at Tessa first, because she was standing, and I got the iron out of my sleeve and swung it at his hand.

It was a bad blow, flat metal scraping across his knuckles, but his hand sprang open and the knife fell into the leaves.

I went after it. He caught my forearm in both hands and drove his nails into the old scar. The skin parted, and blood ran hot into my sleeve.

The knife was still in the leaves beneath him. I broke free and got hold of it. When he grabbed for me again, I drove it into him. We fell together, and I pulled the blade free.

He was down, and I was on one knee on his chest with the air going in and out of me and a high ringing in my ears louder than the road.

There was blood on my knuckles that was already cooling, and a tear in the shoulder of his coat that had not been there when he came out of the trees.

I kept watching his hands, waiting for him to grab me again. He did not move, and after a while I could no longer see his chest rising.

I could not get up.

Tessa was saying my name and pulling at my shoulder, but I could not get off him. Blood ran from my fingers onto my own shoe, one drop and then another.

Maisie had stopped calling. She stood with her arms around Tessa's waist and her face pressed into her sister's clothes, making no sound at all.

The quiet was worse than the calling, and it went on.

The horses came out of the trees while we were still beside the cart.

Not one. Four at least, and their hooves came down through the birches in an even rhythm, unhurried.

I listened for shouting, but heard only the steady hoofbeats.

I pushed myself up, bracing against the cart until my knees held.

I got the knife in my hand and pushed Tessa back with my shoulder until she and Maisie were behind me and against the cart.

I put my back to the boards, held the blade low by my hip, and bent my knees.

I pressed my forearm against my body so nobody would see it shaking.

The hooves stopped.

I stood there with my own blood drying on my hand and did not put the knife down.