Darrow bristled but stayed down. He kept his eyes low, and Morrel ate the steaming heart when it came off the fire.
Afterward, Darrow grew sullen and sat far from the fire pit. Sorcia was the only one who would come near him.
"How am I supposed to act?" he complained to her. "I do what they say, but they take it away."
"Should a sheep complain of its stolen fleece?"
"I am not a sheep," said Darrow.
"Then act like a wolf," said Sorcia.
Six days later, as four of them were stalking a wounded boar, Karnek cuffed Darrow for making too much noise. Darrow balled a fist and punched Karnek in the face. The lean man laughed and licked the blood from his lip.
Then he proceeded to beat Darrow half to death.
When Darrow could stand again, they resumed the stalk without a word about the fight. That night, after they roasted the boar, Brigid handed Darrow a hunter's portion.
"But I lost," he complained to Sorcia later.
She shrugged. "Yet you fought, little wolf."
Later, she led him out into the woods, running ahead until he chased her. They ran until Darrow's breath came hard and ragged, and she let him catch her. When he grabbed her around the waist, she twisted in his grasp and struck him across the mouth.
He tasted blood and felt a growl rise in his chest. He released her and raised a hand to strike back, but Sorcia swept his legs out from under him, and he fell to the ground. Before she could dart away, he grabbed her ankle and pulled her down beside him.
She rolled atop him and grabbed his hair with both hands, holding his head against the forest floor. Her naked thighs were hot against his chest. He gripped her legs and would not let her go. She opened his mouth with her tongue, and their kiss exploded in his brain. Pleasure arched his back and filled his body with liquid fire.
Her body was incandescent in the moonlight, her beauty almost painfully unreal. Darrow closed his eyes and imagined her with Maelin's dark hair and heart-shaped face. The image galvanized his body, contracting every muscle.
Darrow imagined they lay on the straw floor of a dark cell, the door open beside them. He felt her fingers run over his perspiring skin, scratching lightly over his stomach before peeling away his breeches.
He kept his eyes closed as she tossed aside her own clothes before settling back atop him. Their bodies joined slowly, and she guided him with practiced hands. Breathless, he followed her lead without question.
Afterward, they lay a while upon the ground, watching the sky grow lighter through the trees. When Darrow opened his mouth to speak, she stopped it with a savage kiss. They gathered their clothes and walked back to the lodge, where Sorcia walked away to take her place among the sleeping bodies. There was no question of his joining her. He curled up alone by the wall. He didn't mind it. In his dreams, he was not sleeping alone.
When the High Hunt was less crowded at Midsummer, Darrow thought little of it. It bothered those closest to Rusk the most. Ronan, Karnek, and Brigid wore dour faces for days afterward. They were the closest Rusk had to disciples, and their moods often reflected his.
More worrisome than the lightly attended feast were the rumors that arose in the tendays that followed. Hunters returned from their ranging with stories of an unseen watcher in the woods. Even as they stalked their prey, the People felt the presence of something stalking them. Those who doubled back or laid ambushes found their efforts futile. Morrel joked that it was a ghost from a hunting party the pack had destroyed last winter. The other People repeated the joke until Rusk cuffed one of them for it. Why it offended him, no one understood.
Darrow began spending more time away from the lodge, ranging with two or three other hunters. When they found signs of human intrusion in their territory, they tracked the source. Those they recognized or who showed a symbol of the Beastlord were friends, and the hunters asked if they wanted for meat. If so, the hunters tarried long enough to bring down a stag or a wild boar.
Those who did not revere the Beastlord were given an hour's lead before the hunters followed. Darrow was present for three such intrusions, and none of them escaped the pack.
Any qualms Darrow felt about killing human prey were outweighed by his joy to be alive. Better still, he was a member of the pack, no longer a lackey to the monstrous Stannis Malveen. Best of all, his muscles were becoming lean and hard from ranging the woods. His senses grew keener still, and he could hear every sound in the forest if he remained still. The other hunters taught him what all the new smells meant. Now he could tell when prey was sick or with child, and he left them for more suitable quarry.
Even so, for nights after helping pull down a human trespasser, Darrow dreamed of fleeing down dark corridors. Shadows flew after him, curling around the torches until there was only darkness. Maelin's voice cried out for help, but long before he could reach her, a hideous wheezing sound came up behind him. He fumbled with the key, almost losing it in the darkness. If he could only release her from her horrid captors, his own guilt would be absolved. Before he could put the key in the lock, he felt clammy hands upon his shoulders before falling through the veil of sleep to wake panting and cold with sweat.
He felt the same way after the nights of the moon, when the beast emerged to take command of his body, reshaping Darrow to its own carnal desires. In the mornings, Darrow could barely remember running with the pack, though faint smells and dim images clouded his memory.
"How do you change when you will?" he asked Sorcia.
Some of the nightwalkers could change only during the full moon, or when Rusk evoked their transformation through the power of Malar. Darrow was among the latter, and he envied the others.
"Some were born with the gift," said Sorcia. "They are true nightwalkers. For them, it is as natural as speaking their mother tongue. They learned it so long ago that they can't remember not having it."
"But you can learn a language," said Darrow.
"Just so," she agreed. "And you can learn to change shape when you will."
"Teach me," he said.
And so she did. The lessons began with words but soon left them behind.
The beast was always inside a nightwalker, no matter whether proud Selune rode the sky or veiled her face. Lured out with rage or desire, it would come to the right call. When Sorcia slapped him, Darrow felt the beast snarl. When they ran naked through the forest, he heard it panting in the back of his mind. And when they lay together, even when he closed his eyes to see Maelin's face, Darrow heard the distant howling of his other self deep inside.
By the end of the month of Flamerule, Darrow no longer forgot the nights of four-legged hunting. When autumn came, he could change whenever Selune showed more than half her face. By the Feast of the Moon, he hoped, he would stand as a wolf before Rusk used his infernal spells to impel the change in the weak.
Even fewer people made the pilgrimage to the lodge at Harvestide. All the worshipers from the northern woods arrived, but there were only two from the south. A scowling Rusk emerged from the lodge after receiving them in private.
To lift the mood, Rusk spoke to the People and their worshipers after his opening prayers.
"My journey to the city was not in vain," he said from the altar, "nor was my sacrifice for naught. The Black Wolf Scrolls contain the words of Malar, the Great Hunter. In them I have found the truths the moon worshipers tried to conceal from us. In them, I have found the path to our destiny.
"Our birthright is not limited to the wild. We are the children of the natural world, including the cities shaped by the misguided followers of the weakling gods. The day of our retribution draws near, when the Black Wolf will lead us on the hunt that reclaims our rightful territory from the herd.