Ander - Part 4: Subchapter 6
6
Valery... her name was Valery... Why did he think she had said Vallah? The names were similar, but...
Banno pushed the thought away and stuffed the last piece of meat into his mouth. He reached for the pot of water by his side, almost knocked it over, grabbed it by the neck. He drained half of it in a single go, his throat muscles working up and down, gulping down the wonderfully cool liquid at a frantic pace. It felt weird, drinking with a hole in the roof of his mouth. He could feel his tongue brush against it with every swallow, and sometimes it would make this awful squelchy sucking noise, but hopefully it would close before too long.
Banno finished with a sigh and put the pot on the tray. All that was left of his demolished meal were those two white lumpy things (mushrooms?), lightly nibbled. He didn't care for those, but the meat he found inside was delicious. They carried the girl's scent, and he imagined it was her flesh in his mouth... licking... softly biting... his teeth slowly sinking away... his tongue absorbing her flavour... chewing... taking her into himself...
But now wasn't the time for such fantasies. Now that he had some food in his belly, it was time to think, and think hard. He put the tray aside and looked up at the ceiling, a strange collection of wooden planks and supports, held in place by methods he had no knowledge of, and he breathed. Long, drawn out breaths to clear his head. The burning in his throat was a bit better now, but he still felt hot and sweaty, and his stump still itched something fierce. He looked down, but he didn't like what he saw.
His legs made two dunes underneath the blanket. The left one ended in a small mountain, the right one just... ended. Banno moved the toes of his left foot, and the mountain's peak shifted back and forth. He tried to do the same thing with his right, but nothing happened. Because there was nothing there. His foot was probably still lying at the bottom of the river somewhere, nothing but fish food for hungry trout.
Banno swept the blanket away and confronted this absence for the first time since he woke up, confronted it like an enemy. Surely, everything that was not himself was an enemy, and what could be more 'not himself' than a piece of himself gone missing?
His right pants leg had been cut off at the knee, and his lower calf was completely wrapped up in white strips, probably of the same material around his head. He was surprised to see that his legs were not simply resting on the foot of the bed, but on top a table that had been covered in a layer of soft blankets. He supposed it made sense, if this thing was originally built for Foxes. Unfortunately, this detail could only hold Banno's attention for a second before it got dragged back to his mutilated leg. The bottom part was the brownish colour of dried blood, and it smelled vaguely like the offal pit back home, dug deep in the woods, away from the village, where they would toss all the meat that had become too spoiled even for Wolf consumption. That place was always crawling with flies, even when it was empty.
Banno wanted to attack that nothingness at the end of his leg, that absence of himself, that gap where he was supposed to be. But how do you hurt empty space? It infuriated him, it struck the very core of his soul in ways he's never been struck before. This was a permanent injury, one he'd never be able to recover from, and it was all Ander's doing. Him and his Fox girl.
Banno slammed his head back against the pillow, making the bed creak and moan under his weight. Every muscle ached. Every second that dragged by was a test of his senses. His body felt absolutely miserable. And now that he was aware of it, every breath carried the sickly scent of his infectious stump. His infectious, itchy stump!
Banno knew better than to scratch at a wound, but that damn itch was so much worse than pain. Pain he could ignore quite easily, but that itch... that constant itch...
Banno angrily covered his legs with the blanket, hoping that not seeing it would help him not feel it.
No such luck. He could still feel that itch boring into his stump like a swarm of termites, crawling all over with their tiny little claw feet, chewing on his flesh with their ugly little teeth.
And whose fault was that? Ander. Yes, let's think about our dear little brother for a while.
The bastard stuck an arrow in his eye and left him to drown, but what happened after that? Did he go back home? Did he tell everyone what a sick, twisted, murderous Wolf their mightiest hero truly was? Did he tell everyone he had killed Vallah? Maybe... but even if he did, he wouldn't be able to escape punishment for his own crimes, namely freeing the vixen and killing his older brother. According to Wolven law, those two crimes put together made him an even worse sinner than Banno. However, if Ander managed to convince everyone that he'd only been trying to defend himself, then his status as the Chieftain's dosa might get him off with nothing more severe than a hard lashing and a broken bone or two, but this seemed too unlikely. Banno knew his own people better than anyone, and they were far more likely to rip Ander open and spill his guts to the ground if he even so much as uttered the words 'I killed Banno'. There's been more than one occasion where he came dangerously close to losing his head just for talking strange.
But James said he got a message from some 'Jon' about a big Wolf named Ander, which meant the freak was still alive and well somewhere on this side of the Cora. That could only mean one of two things: either he got banished, or he never went home at all. But that begs the question: if Banno knew that Ander was alive, could that mean that Ander also knew that Banno was alive?
He mulled it over, turning the problem this way and that, but his headache wasn't making it easy. In the end, he simply didn't have enough information to make a good guess. He checked the hole in the wall again, but all he could see from this angle was a piece of the Cora, farther away than it's ever been, and a big pine tree with a messy birds' nest halfway up, empty save for a few downy clumps of feathers stuck in the weave. It could be a single tree growing all by itself, or it could be one of thousands. He simply didn't know, and until he could get up from this comfy prison, there was no way for him to find out. There could be anything out there. James lived far enough away from his brother so that they had to communicate by messenger, but that didn't mean they weren't surrounded by dozens, or even hundreds of structures just like this one, each home to a family of yappermouth Foxes. Normally Banno would love the idea of being surrounded by prey, but if word got back to Ander, then that would be very bad, especially since he had Kiana to back up any accusations he might make.
Even if he assumed they were a thousand miles away from the nearest living creature, it's been a full day since he was found, and it only takes a few seconds to paint the symbols for 'big black wolf' (or whatever writing the Foxes use), and send it off to absolutely anyone, and that was yet another thing he had absolutely no control over.
Banno's mind suddenly snagged on an unpleasant possibility. He hasn't seen a mate around, but James must have one, since he has three kids and mentioned that she used to be friends with some other Fox. Maybe the reason he hasn't seen her yet is because she's on her way to deliver a message right this moment? A message all about a big black Wolf?
"Think, think, think..." Banno muttered, pounding his fist against his forehead. James didn't seem like the type to send his mate on a potentially dangerous errand through the woods, all alone, but he couldn't rule it out. He sniffed the air, long and hard, his nostrils flaring, but he could only detect four distinct scents (although the boys' were tricky to tell apart). Even if the mother went out for long stretches at a time, there should still be a lingering trace of her scent floating around, but there was nothing.
Hmm... Maybe she left James for some other Fox somewhere along the line? Such a thing was frowned upon in Wolf society, but he wouldn't blame her in the least. Or maybe she died? No way to know for sure without asking, and that ended this particular path of thought at yet another dead end. Banno frowned. How was he supposed to come up with a plan of action if there was so much he didn't know!? How was he supposed to get through all this stuff he didn't understand!? How was he supposed to get his revenge if he didn't even know where Ander was!? How was -
His claws suddenly tore through the blanket with a loud ripping noise, jerking him out of his thoughts. He hadn't realized he was squeezing down on it, but now there were two gashes in it, with little strings poking out of the edges like limp ribs.
Banno sighed, rubbed his tired, scratchy eye, and thought some more, since thinking was the only thing he could do right now.
He needed to find out as much as he could about what was going on around him, and what had happened over the past week. He needed to get better. He needed to get out of this bed and he needed to find Ander. He needed to finish the job.
That freak has taken so much from him. His foot, his eye, and if he's told the Wolves about the things he's done, his home, too. If they believed him, he'd never be able to set foot back there ever again.
Banno didn't really feel any kind of attachment to his fellow Wolves, or even to his own family. To him, his mother, his father, and his brother were just like any other living creatures: things to kill. However, if Ander has entrenched himself inside a tribe of Foxes, he might have need of them to accomplish his goals; his pure, elegantly simple goals...
Eventually, he would kill everything and nothing would be left. He would be the only living thing in this world, and everything that used to be alive would be within him, not completely dead, but fulfilled, their purpose met. It was only a matter of time. Soon, very soon, Vallah wouldn't be alone anymore. She would have so much company... she'd be even happier in her death...
Banno didn't even realize he was drifting off to sleep until it was much too late, and by that time he was too tired to care. The last thing he saw before he closed his eye was the big square of light rising higher and higher against the wall, shining through that peculiar hole that wasn't really a hole at all. It was catching the light somehow, glowing white, like a big sheet of unmelting ice. But how was that possible? How... was that... possible...
How...
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