Solis Invicti
The wolf lost its hold, blinded and in agony, trying to get away even as the blood streamed from the bite in the shoulder, and two massive hands reached up with thumbs streaked with blood and grabbed hold of the neck. Roaring in pain, his nose flaring, he twisted the neck and felt the satisfying crunch of bone before kicking it away, trying to get to his feet before its packmate managed to bear down on him. Rolling away, he managed to turn the spiked shoulder of his jacket in time for the last wolf’s charge, slamming his shoulder up into the underside of its jaw as he drove himself upward, wrapping his arms around the bulk of the wolf and driving it to the earth. Claws blunted by long running still scored across his belly, ripping black cloth and tearing furrows in flesh. Finally, a bloody hand found the creature’s throat and dug fingers that seemed surprisingly talon-like, his long hair flaring like a mane now, his features strangely blunted and angular, his beard and skin tawny-red… and with a snarl, the wolf’s throat was ripped out, windpipe and arteries and veins thrown across the barn.
The man without a name lay panting atop its twitching corpse for longer than he wanted. Getting to his feet with a quivering set into his limbs, he felt the last remaining vitality of the slain bull’s blood healing his wounded shoulder and rent side, but the wounds still burned with pain, and the mask of the lion god was fading fast. Staggering over, he wrenched the axe from the guts of the wolf and flicked the handle to clear as much of the blood away as he could, features twisted up at the smell. Sighing, he looked up at the chain dangling from the trap door, knowing he could just reach it.
I could just go home. I mean, shit, I’ve more or less done my bit, right? He stopped. He didn’t know if it would satisfy anyone else, but he knew it didn’t satisfy him. He remembered vividly the wailing in his mind the first time he’d crossed the line. No one had come to help him. And he’d always bitterly resented it, and he always would. His slick fingers managed to catch the very end of the chain.
“Listen, whoever’s up there… I’m not one of the wolves, okay? Don’t stab me in the face with a pitchfork or whatever you might have managed to find up there. I’m coming up.” Looping fingers through the links, he pulled the chain down and the trap doors split open, ladders swinging down from each door. Seeing no one, he sighed and forced himself to climb up, half expecting to take a shovel to the back of his head.
In the dark, only barely lit by the band of red that could be just made out through the wooden slots across the window above the large double doors leading out into empty space, his eyes took a moment to make out two bodies huddled together in the corner of the nearly empty hayloft. Seeing them, he waited for a moment, looking at the curves of one form and the angularity of the other. Skinny man, pregnant woman. Great.
The man stared at him for a while, desperate fear warring with desperate fear in the inky blackness covering most of his face. The woman clutched to him, panting, and it didn’t take much in the way of intelligence to realize that she was fully in the process of labor. The man without a name had to resist the urge to cradle his face in a bloodstained hand.
“Please tell me your name isn’t Joseph.”
“Doug. Doug Mefram. What the fuck did those things want? They chased our truck until we broke down here! My wife’s…”
“Yeah, I can see that, Doug. Okay, can she move? How far along is she?” Not that I know squat about childbirth. Sound authoritative, that’s the key here. Sound like you know what you’re doing. “There’s a house not too far from here, maybe she’d be more comfortable there.”
“Miriam? You okay, honey? Can you move?”
“If there’s a fucking bed and some goddamn painkillers at the end of the walk, I’ll damn well move!” He couldn’t see her face, but the nameless man had to admit he liked her attitude. Laying the axe down at the edge of the doorway up, he made his way over to them. Seeing how small the both of them were (Barely out of their teens, he thought with wonder) he heard himself speak before he knew he was going to.
“I can carry you.”
