Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 33
33
"Faster, you lazy slugs!" Dorin shouted. "Hezzi would have circled the village three times by now and you've barely finished the first! Move move move!"
The small pack of Wolves groaned their displeasure and continued on their way, dragging their feet behind them.
The training area of the village had proven much too small for the sudden influx of new warriors (hundreds of them, all practically salivating at the thought of an honest to Cora war), so Dorin had moved everyone to train outside the walls. Setting everything up (clearing the underbrush, tying archery targets to trees, penning off an area for sparring) had been a good waste of a day, but now everyone was in full swing and, quite frankly, it was a sight to behold. There were at least five hundred Wolves here, varying in ages from a dozen summers to seven dozen summers, grunting and gasping as they readied their bodies for the coming conflict, rolling in the dirt and the snow, pulling back on bowstrings until the sweat poured down their faces, counting steps to get just the right run-up for the perfect spear throw, smashing clubs against dummies stuffed with wood shavings.
Dorin sighed and looked up at the mountain, its tallest peak just barely touching the morning sun. The day was beautiful, but awful, and he had a strong suspicion they'd stay that way till the day he finally died, which might not be that far off. He held his arm up to the sunlight and peeled away the tip of Shekka's damn itchy leaf bandage. It didn't look good.
Through the sticky layer of animal grease he could make out the four deep gashes Hezzi's teeth had left in his wrist. The ones on the bottom were even worse, all torn up because of the way the pup had shaken his head from side to side. It would take weeks to heal properly, but he didn't have weeks.
He had two days.
Dorin pressed the leaf flat and flexed his fingers, grinding his teeth in pain and frustration. The way things were going, he would have to challenge Wardo's rule one-handed, and he didn't know if he'd be able to pull it off. Who knows how many emergency lackeys he might have stored in the wings, all eager to get on his good side?
Just focus on the task at hand. There are hundreds of eyes watching you right now, so you'd better play the part. Keep thinking, but don't let them know you're thinking. There has to be a solution somewhere.
Dorin walked from group to group, going out of his way to correct at least one Wolf every time.
"You're holding that spear wrong. Move your hand up or it'll angle back in flight."
"Yes, Sai."
"And you, what the hell are you trying to do with that axe? Stop dancing with it and swing the damn thing!"
"Yes, Sai!"
"Your footwork's all wrong! You have to -"
A high-pitched scream suddenly broke through the relative peace and quiet of the morning. There was a throng of Wolves gathered around the sparring ring, and all of them were pealing laughter at whatever was making that miserable squealing.
Oh what fresh hell is this?
"Get out of the way!" Dorin yelled as he pushed his way to the front. "What are you all laughing at? If another youngblood chopped off a finger I swear to the Cora..."
It wasn't a youngblood. It was Thoka, and the screaming was coming from the skinny Wolf above his head, fruitlessly punching and kicking and flailing his limbs.
"Put me down, you fatass!" he cried. "By the Cora put me down right now or I will murder you, you fat sack of -"
Thoka complied with his wishes by slamming him face-first into the frozen dirt, where he immediately curled up into a tight little ball, squirming and covering his bleeding nose, mewling like an injured bunny rabbit.
"Get up!" Thoka screamed. "Get up, you waste of space! You said you gonna murder me, so come on and try it! I dare you! Come on! Get up!"
Wolves sniggered and whooped. Some called for the whelp to get up and others urged him to crawl on back to his mama. Life as usual, really.
Until it suddenly got serious.
Thoka bent down, pulled the unfortunate Wolf up by the neck (Dorin didn't even know the fellow's name) and punched him right in the face. A crimson line of blood suddenly appeared on the ground as if by magic, and everyone cheered as Thoka drew his fist back for a second hit.
I do not have the time for all these juvenile measuring contests... Dorin thought with a sigh. "Hey! Thoka! That's enough. Let him go."
Thoka looked up, his deep-set eyes twinkling like a pair of shiny beetles, and punched the lad again, right in the jaw, making it crack through the early morning breeze like a splintering bough.
"Hey!" Dorin shoved his way into the ring and, upon seeing this, Thoka doubled his efforts, punching the poor fool again and again, trying to get as many strikes in while he still had the chance, pumping his arm forward and back until his knuckles were red and glistening, flicking fine droplets of blood through the air with every impact.
"Get off him, you crazy bastard!" Dorin hooked him by the neck and sweeped his leg in one smooth motion, falling forward with all his weight, dragging all three of them down to the ground in a flailing tangle of limbs. "The hell is wrong with you!?"
"Let me up!" Thoka bellowed, thrashing like a freshly caught trout. "Let me up! I'll kill him! I'll show him! I'll show them all!"
Dazed and confused, the kid with the crushed nose somehow managed to extricate himself from the pile and started to crawl away. The blood dripping from his nostrils marked his slow progress in a wavy red line.
"This training is to help us hone our skills for the coming battle, not for reducing our number of available warriors, you goddamn idiot!" Dorin screamed into his ear, but the big Wolf was going hysterical. Holding him down with just one arm was proving next to impossible. More drastic measures might be called for. "All right, you asked for it!" Dorin slipped his arm beneath Thoka's chin and started to squeeze, partially cutting off the circulation to his head, and Thoka responded by jamming his claws into Dorin's forearm. "Thoka, if you scratch my good arm, I swear to the Cora I will make sure you never wake up again! I'll break your neck, you hear me!?"
Thoka stopped struggling and slowly pulled his claws away, but Dorin thought it wise to keep his hold in place, at least until he stopped grunting and huffing like a bear in heat.
The spectators, meanwhile, were clapping their hands in appreciation of this display of skill. The fact that the kid with the busted face had almost crawled all the way to the edge of the ring, leaving a looping trail of blood in his wake, might have contributed to the good cheer as well.
"Mind telling me what that was all about?" Dorin asked.
Thoka bared his teeth. "I'll show them, Sai. I'll show them."
"Show who?"
"Those traitors!" he suddenly screamed, making the tendons in his neck stand out like coils of thick rope. "I'll show them!"
"Show them what!?"
"That they should have killed me! They should have killed me when they had the chance! They should have acted like real Wolves, Sai! I'll have my revenge and prove to them that sparing me was the biggest mistake of their lives! That's what I'll show them! I'll show them that they were wrong! That everything about them is wrong! It's wrong wrong WRONG!!"
"Thoka, are you...?"
"Let go of me!" He ripped himself free and Dorin pretty much let him. The worst danger was probably over. For now, at least. He got back to his feet and brushed the dirt and snow from his knees while Thoka walked around the edge of the ring with his arms up in the air, yelling and screaming for more challengers.
"Who else wants to fight me!? Come on! I've got all day! I'll take anyone! I dare you! Come on!"
Dorin sighed, shook his head and thought to himself: I do not have the time to deal with this... I do not want to deal with this...
Maybe he'd go help the archers a little bit. He wasn't the best with a bow, but at least they'd be more level-headed than this lot.
Hopefully.
He slowly made his way through clumps of Wolves, occasionally commenting on how they were doing something wrong, constantly trying not to show how much his wrist was bothering him. Damn that Thoka...
He finally made it to the long line of archery targets. There weren't that many practicing here (maybe only forty or so), but the sounds of twanging bowstrings and arrowheads embedding themselves into slabs of wood was a nice little contrast to all the grunting and screaming of the sparring areas.
He was looking around for someone to criticise when his eye fell on a certain Wolf that really, really shouldn't be here. "Denko? What on earth are you doing?"
"Isn't it obvious, Sai?" he replied, nocking an arrow.
"You shouldn't be here with that leg of yours."
"I need to practice." He released the arrow and sent it sailing along his lane. A moment later it struck about one palm beneath the centre of the target, vibrating slightly. "Damn, little higher next time."
He reached over his shoulder to retrieve another arrow, but Dorin stopped him. "You don't need to practice because you won't be fighting."
"There's nothing wrong with my arms."
"You can barely walk with that cane. How are you going to keep up when we march on the mountain?"
"It's an archer's job to stay near the back anyway. It won't be a problem."
"First Thoka, and now you? Are you really that eager to see more blood? You want your revenge that badly?"
"No, Sai." He nocked another arrow and took aim. "I will fight, not because I want to fight, but because I won't be able to forgive myself if anything happened to my comrades in my absence." The bowstring twanged and the arrow stuck fast, half a palm above his previous shot. "Tch..."
"That's... not what I was expecting to hear," Dorin admitted.
"And it's not what I ever expected to say. But things are different now. You feel it, too, don't you, Sai?"
Dorin checked for shifty eyes and pricked ears, but everyone was far too absorbed in their own personal training regime. "Yeah. I do."
"Then you also know that this war is a giant mistake."
"Keep your voice down."
"But it is. I saw the way you practically begged the Chieftain for more time. You're planning something, aren't you?"
"I'm... not sure. I may have something, yes." Dorin massaged his wrist. "But so far it's only a last resort."
"Well whatever you do, I urge you to be careful. You're not just going up against Wardo, you're going up against every single Wolf in this tribe."
"But not you."
"Heh, that's right." Denko shot a third arrow, and this one's tip just barely touched the outside edge of the centre dot. "Dammit! Next one for sure..." He reached for a fourth, his fingers sliding along the hawk feather fletching, making it bend and bounce back like tall grass in the wind. "Oh, and Sai?"
"Yes?"
"There might be a problem you'll need to look into. Concerning one of your men."
Dorin rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes, I know. Thoka is... kind of losing it. That lazy bastard could barely get out of bed in the mornings and now he's running around picking fights like some berserk toddler. I think he's trying to prove something, but there really isn't much I can do about that."
"Oh no, I'm not talking about Thoka, Sai. He's the least of your worries right now."
"Then who?" Dorin's mind quickly flipped through Seffer, Yanek, and Vekka. But, oddly enough, none of them had shown up to train. Not yesterday or today. They had simply faded away after their failure of a mission, which was more than fine by him. In fact, it was probably the smartest thing they could do, all things considered. That only left... "Oh, no. Denko, please don't tell me it's him. Anybody but him. I can't deal with all this tripe right now."
Denko pulled an arrow from his quiver, nocked it square, and pulled back the string, making the bow creak and moan. He took a single breath, and as he let it out, he opened his fingers. The arrow flew straight and true, burying itself deep in the center dot. He nodded once, satisfied, and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "There. And good luck. I think you'll need it."
Dorin almost didn't want to look, but what other choice did he have? He had gone from a warrior who wanted to die, to some kind of 'father-figure' for Wolves almost as damaged as he was. He supposed it might be funny to some, but to him it was just tiring.
He turned around, and the sight that met his eyes made him sigh and groan all at once. "Ooohrgh..."
Sitting on an old tree stump, looking pitiful, was Ivio. His shoulders were all hunched up and his knee was bouncing up and down at an insane speed, making him look like he was trying to signal an underground warren like a jackrabbit. He was gnawing on his lips and he kept looking around in random directions, sometimes even straight up into the air, as if he expected some kind of ambush to fall on their heads at any moment.
As Dorin came closer, he realised it was even worse than he thought. There were strange bald patches on his arms, starting on the backs of his hands (which still bore the wounds from that awful night) and going all the way up to his elbows. There were more on his neck and face, too, some so severe the pinkish flesh could actually be seen through his mangy fur. It made him look rather sickly.
Dorin wondered if the crazy bastard might have caught something contagious, but that was one worry he didn't have to dwell on for long, because that was the very same moment Ivio reached up and plucked a tuft of fur from his neck.
Dorin watched, slightly disgusted, as it floated down to his feet (there were a few bald patches there, as well) and joined a small drift of hairs that had accumulated against the stump, all wet and clumped together with snow.
This was the moment Dorin ordinarily would have prayed for strength, but he had a sneaking suspicion the Cora didn't much care for him anymore, so he sat down instead.
"Hey, Ivio."
Ivio moved his head up and down. It might have been a nod, or maybe just more of his random head jerks. He was a bit like a bird that way.
"You all right?"
Ivio didn't answer, but his knee kept bouncing up and down, up and down, faster and faster. It was a bit annoying, really.
"I'll be honest, you don't look like you're doing all right. In fact, you look like you're doing all wrong."
Like a tentwife plucking a pheasant for dinner, Ivio plucked some more hairs from the back of his hand, getting three or four at a time.
"Doesn't that hurt?"
Another head jerk.
"Then why do you do it?"
Ivio froze in place. His knee stopped bouncing and his head stopped jerking around.
"Sai..." he said, speaking slowly. "It's... hard..."
"What is?"
He suddenly curled his fingers into a tight fist and punched himself right in the temple, again and again, moving so fast his arm was little more than a blur. Dorin was so shocked that, by the time he finally managed to grab hold of Ivio's wrist, the lunatic had already bashed himself in the head at least half a dozen times.
"Whoa, stop it!" Dorin hissed, amazed by how strong this scrawny little fellow actually was. He could barely hold him down. "I said stop it, you crazy bastard! What the hell is wrong with you!?"
Ivio finally calmed down, or at least, he stopped trying to cave his own skull in. There was a spot of blood on his temple and some more on his knuckles. Nothing major, but it was still unsettling, watching it trickle down the side of his blank, staring face.
"Ivio?"
"It hurts, Sai," he said miserably.
"Well of course it hurts, you blithering idiot! You just whaled yourself in the head!"
He slowly shook his head. "No... not there. I can't reach it from the outside."
"What are you talking about?" Dorin asked angrily. How was his wrist ever going to heal when he constantly had to deal with crap like this?
Ivio took both hands and placed them on either side of his head. "It's in here, Sai. But I can't get to it. I can't wake up... I can't... wake... up!"
Oh crap, he's finally losing it...
Dorin gave him a stiff little pat on the back and said, "Ivio? I don't know how to break this to you, but you're already awake."
"I know!" he screamed, sounding absolutely despondent. "That makes it even worse! The dreams end, Sai! They're terrible and I hate them and they've been getting worse and worse, but at least they end! At least they let me wake up after they kill me! They let me wake! Up!" He plucked a tuft of fur from his chin and went back for more, ripping out whole clumps by the root.
Was he trying to make himself 'wake up' from real life? Was that what was going on here?
"What are these 'dreams' you're talking about?" Dorin asked. He didn't really care to hear the answer, but he had to ask something, and Ivio wasn't really giving him much to work with.
The crazy bastard shook his head in short little bursts. "No no no. No no no. No no no. Nonononononono! Not dreams, Sai. Nightmares. Always had them. Had them since forever. Every night. Every every night. But they changed now. They changed a lot. It's the other way around now, but that's not good. I thought it was, at first, because it meant things were different, and I wouldn't get hurt anymore, but it's not true! Everything changed but nothing changed! Everything is different but nothing is really different! Everything is ander but it's not Ander! It's only the eyes I was inside of that was different! But even that was not really! It's all the same, but worse! So much worse, Sai! It's both sides now! Both sides!"
"Slow down, you're not making any sense!" Dorin felt like he was trying to calm down a hysterical kid who had wet the bedroll in the middle of the night.
Ivio looked at him. Steam plumed form his open mouth in quick, short bursts. There was a look in his eye that made Dorin feel incredibly uncomfortable. It was a pleading kind of look, a look that seemed to beg: Understand me, Sai. Please, please understand. I can't explain it well enough, but please, I need you to understand what I'm trying to say! Please!
But Dorin couldn't. Even if Ivio had been born as a perfectly normal Wolf, even if his speech was clear and succinct, even if he didn't go around ripping the fur out of his skin in a desperate attempt to wake up from whatever was going on inside his head, Dorin wouldn't have been able to understand.
And Ivio knew it.
That pleading, yet slightly hopeful look drained out of his eyes and he went back to staring at his knees, twitching at random.
What the hell am I supposed to tell this kid? Dorin wondered, feeling useless.
An awkward silence stretched out between them like ropes of pine tar, and Ivio started to pick at the wounds in his hands, carefully excavating the scabs around the edges.
"You're never going to heal if you keep that up."
"I don't care. They're my hands, I can do with them what I want."
"Fine, go ahead and rip yourself apart. I won't try to stop you a second time."
More silence. Well, not completely. Every time Ivio picked at the bloody slits in his hands, his claws made a sickening noise against his hardened flesh like a beetle rubbing its wings together. Dorin wondered how many times Shekka had bothered to bandage those hands and feet before she finally gave up and just left him to his own devices.
"You don't have to go to war, you know. If that's what your dreams are about. Nobody's going to force you, especially not with your hands and feet all messed up like that."
Ivio said nothing.
"How are they, by the way?"
Ivio shrugged. "It doesn't hurt."
"Liar." Dorin remembered all too well how he had screamed in that clearing, writhing in agony, reaching for the moon with his hands and feet pierced all the way through, the glinting arrow heads dripping blood onto his horrified face.
"It doesn't," Ivio insisted. "And even if it does, it's still not nearly as bad as what we did to Dan. Or to Ander. Or what we were going to do to Nilia and the others."
This revelation shocked Dorin almost as badly as when he inexplicably decided to use his own head as a punching bag. "Ivio, are you saying you feel bad about... what we did?"
Maybe he could understand after all.
Ivio looked down at his hand and scratched at the wound. The tip of his claw was slowly turning red. "This is what my head feels like," he whispered. "Like there's a hole in it. People tell me to leave it alone and it'll get better, but I know it won't. So I pick at it, because I think that maybe, if I can get rid of enough of it, it won't hurt so much, but that only makes the hole bigger, so I scratch at it, because maybe, if I scratch enough, it'll stop itching so bad. But it's always there now. Always..." He raised his head and fixed Dorin with a stare that was both terrifying and heart breaking - terrifying because of the pain shining through, so raw and exposed, and heart breaking because it showed a glimpse of who he might have been if he was born with a normal mind, if all the works were hooked up properly and didn't misfire at any given moment, if all the thoughts and feelings were stored in their proper places instead of rolling around, untethered. In a voice that trembled almost as badly as his knees, Ivio whispered: "I was awake, Sai..."
"When?" Dorin asked, not liking this sudden change. It made him feel like he was being watched by something other than the crazy, but mostly harmless psycho he had come to know and tolerate over the past few years, something that knew and understood far more than it had any right to.
"When they had us all tied up in the woods," he said, "I pretended to be asleep. Sometimes, when I wanted to see what was going on, I'd make like I was almost awake, but then I'd close my eyes and drop my head again. I pretended to be completely out of it, Sai, but I was awake the whole time. I listened to everything. I saw everything. I knew everything. And I felt everything. I kept wondering who they would kill first. Probably you, because you were in charge, and then Thoka, because he was being Thoka... Denko after that, probably..."
Dorin felt a chill run up his spine. Had Ivio ever spoken this much to him, or anyone for that matter? He was usually just a big ball of energy with nowhere to go, always picking fights with bigger Wolves and tagging along whenever there was trouble to be had, running around with that mad, twitchy grin on his face, yapping about the inventive ways he would slaughter anyone foolish enough to get between him and his prey, about how he would 'stick 'em'. But now... he was just sitting there with that blank, haunted look in his wide eyes, his hands clasped together over his bouncing knees, shuddering and twitching like a scared little animal trapped in a cage.
What was happening to him? What was happening to all of them?
"So I would have been fourth," he said, holding up four of his fingers. His index was bloody, and the scant, patchy layer of fur around his claw was standing up in small, sticky spikes. "That's what I kept thinking the whole time. One-two-three-four, dead. One-two-three-four, dead. When I wasn't thinking about that, I tried to think about how I might escape, and when I wasn't thinking about that, I was thinking about how I'd... I'd beg for them to let me go, but I couldn't think of any words that could... that could save me." His words were coming faster and faster. "Everything I came up with I'd imagine them throwing right back at me, because if I was going to torture them, if I was going to kill them, if I was going to smile while doing it, then how could I ask them not to do it to me? How did any of that make sense? And then it'd start all over again. One- two-three-four, dead. One-two-three-four, dead. And I was scared, Sai. I was so scared. I didn't want to die. I wanted to kill, yes, but I didn't want to die. I didn't want to feel like that, the way I was feeling, sitting in the snow with my hands tied up, just waiting to be killed. I wanted to live. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be where it wasn't so cold and I didn't feel the way I was feeling right then, anything other than that feeling like I was about to die. I'd even take the nightmares again, just as long as I could wake up and know that I was still alive, that I wasn't about to have my throat cut open. I didn't want to find out what that would really feel like. I could already imagine it, Sai. How cold it would be, going in. Just sort of... sliding across, you know?" He mimed an invisible blade being drawn across his neck. "And then how hot it'd be, all the blood coming out. I thought about it so hard I could even see what the steam would look like, rising up from the... from the cut, and I wondered what would happen first, if I would bleed out, or if I would choke to death, or if the pain itself would just end up killing me. I wondered what would happen after, if it would go all black, or if I would see the Path that Shekka sometimes screams about, or if I'd stay in my body like in the dreams, being dead but still feeling it, somehow? Still feeling... I was scared, Sai. I was so, so scared, but it wasn't the... it wasn't the most of what I felt." He was speaking so fast now, making his words come out all jumbled, nonsensical and stuttery, that it was getting harder and harder to understand him. "The most feeling was feeling bad, like... like I didn't like myself anymore, because all the stuff I was feeling, the feeling so scared and keep thinking about how it would feel like to die. It must've have been the same thing we made Dan feel. The things I was feeling, I made Dan feel it, and I liked making him feel it, because making someone else_feel like that, when you don't know what it feels like, makes it feel good. But when you _do know what it feels like, that makes it feel bad, like you're not you, or you wish you weren't you. I'm not good at talking, so... I don't know if what I'm saying is actually the way it is, or in a way that lets you see what I try to say. It's... I don't know!" He wiped his hand across his face, leaving a dark smear of blood across his brow. "I want to say! But the things I want to say aren't the right words for it! Or I'm too stupid to find them! I just -"
Dorin gave his shoulder a brief squeeze. "I understand what you're trying to say."
Ivio jerked his head up. With the blood on his face and hands he looked just as beaten up as those practicing in the sparring ring. Maybe more so. "You do?"
"Yeah. Don't tell anyone, but I feel the same way."
Ivio bit down on his lip, and for one terrible moment Dorin thought he was going to break down and cry (and how the hell was he going to explain that to the men?), but he managed to keep hold of himself for the time being, and went back to staring down at his knees, bouncing up and down, up and down. "Sometimes I wonder what it would feel like if things didn't happen the way they happened. If everything had happened like they were supposed to happen, like I wanted it to happen. What if I stabbed Ander? What if I killed him? What if I took that broken stick and stuck it into Dan's face? I thought about it. If you weren't in the way, cutting out his claws, I probably might've. What if we caught all the traitors and we took them back to the village, and we killed 'em? What if I_killed 'em? Would it have made me feel happy for once? I think maybe yes, in a way. _That Ivio, the one of before, the one who wanted to stick 'em all, he wouldn't have known what it felt like, to be on the other side. He'd only know the one side. But I also think maybe no. I think maybe... maybe that other side, the killing side, is just as bad as the dying side, just in a different way. I think I would have known it... you know, after. After it was done. I would have felt it."
So much blood in the snow, pouring out of a broken heart, but not nearly as much as the crimson sin coating his hands. A knife, sticking out of her chest, twitching to and fro as if counting down the first seconds of the rest of his life. A final breath, carrying her dying curse.
Animal.
"You would have felt it," Dorin agreed. "Every moment of it, and every moment after. You would have felt all of it."
They sat in silence for a while, Dorin looking up at the branches above their heads, laden with snow, and Ivio, nervously chewing on his lip. Then...
"Do you remember, Sai? When Ander killed Garten? The way he screamed?"
Dorin sighed. "I remember."
"And after, when he talked to Nilia, and she asked him why he was like that, why he didn't want to kill, why he was hurting so much, did you hear what he said, Sai?"
"He said a lot of things, Ivio."
"He said life is a gift!" Ivio almost shouted, straining forward as if something was trying to hold him back. Dorin could see the struggle in those twitching eyes, the way he was so desperately trying to organize his words so that they would make sense when they left his mouth. "I don't normally remember stuff like that, but that I remember! And when I remember it, I can't help but think... I think that, maybe..." Ivio turned his head away in shame and plucked another tuft of fur from the back of his hand. "I think that maybe I'm glad Dan tripped me. I know a real Wolf shouldn't think stuff like that, but... I do. I can't not think about that stuff anymore. Everything's too different now."
Dorin wondered what his role was in all of this. Was he just a wall for Ivio to bounce his thoughts off of? Was he expected to say something meaningful? Was he supposed to pat him on the back and tell him everything would work out just fine? He was no good at crap like this.
The group of Wolves he had ordered to sprint around the village was finally coming around the bend on the northern side. They were all haggard and worn down, plodding along with their tongues hanging out of their mouths, but there was also a good deal of joking and shoving and grinning. All of them were excited, and all of them were happy.
Grunts and screams were coming from the sparring ring. Those, too, were having the time of their lives, each of them counting down the hours until they could taste real battle, real war, real bloodshed.
Real death.
"Don't you want revenge, Ivio?" he asked. "Don't you want to 'stick them' for making you feel this way?"
Ivio shook his head vigorously, making his ears flop from side to side. "No. No no no. I don't want that. I don't want any of that. I don't want to go near that line again. I've been on both sides now and both sides stink! At least this way I know about it, and knowing about it is better than not knowing, I guess, even if it does make the nightmares worse, even if it does make me feel like there's a hole in my head." He paused, perhaps to gather his thoughts. "They could have put a real hole in my head, Sai. And not just once. Nilia could have killed me a lot. She was right on top of me. She had a knife under my throat. She could have killed me easy. So easy. She could have killed me again when she was firing all those arrows at us. I couldn't move. I didn't even half-know what was going on. I just lied there and screamed. Maybe she missed by chance, but I don't think so. Dan could have killed me when I was all tied up. He wanted to. I could tell. There was the same thing in him as me. That same thing that chases me every night. But he was like Nilia. He didn't kill me, even though he could. And maybe there's even more to it than that. Maybe I've been close to that line for ages. Maybe Ander would have killed me if I hadn't fallen on my face, if Dan wasn't there to stop me. I don't know..." He chuckled weakly. "That's four times. Just the times I know about. Isn't that funny, Sai? One-two-three-four, _not_dead. It took me four times, four times on the wrong side of the line before I started to understand. I know I'm slow, but even for me..."
Dorin was speechless. Ivio, of all the Wolves, was talking about the same kinds of things that had been floating around inside his own head for weeks, albeit in a rather disjointed fashion. Listening to him was strangely fascinating, but he felt there might be more here, something hidden just beneath the jitters and jerks, some kind of twisted insight his own, more rational mind could never conceive of by itself. Maybe he should dig a little deeper. Just to make sure...
"Ivio, can I ask you something?"
Ivio didn't answer because he was too busy chewing on his finger. Not the claw, but the finger, gnawing on it like a piece of gristle. Still, he seemed to be aware and listening, so Dorin plunged ahead.
"If one side of the line is 'killing' and the other side is 'being killed', then what about your comrades? Your friends? Don't you care about which side they fall on? If killing one life saves another, does that not balance things out? If you had killed Dan that night, if you had reached him and plunged your knife into his face like you kept telling us you would, maybe Hyker would still be alive today."
Ivio shook his head and plucked another tuft of fur from his neck. "No. Dan wasn't the one who killed Hyker, he wasn't. It was Wardo. Or Shekka. Or maybe both. They're the ones who did it."
Dorin's breath caught in his throat. He stared at this quivering lump of a Wolf, completely awestruck. He had suspected Wardo of being Hyker's murderer ever since the hasty pyre, but to hear it spoken out loud was something else, especially if the one doing the speaking was the one Wolf who could barely pay attention to anything if there was so much as a whiff of a single squirrel on the winds. He swallowed the lump in his throat and asked: "What makes you think that, Ivio?"
He shrugged. "Wardo wants war because he's angry and bored and he thinks that ordering everyone around, making them kill for him and die for him, will make him less angry and bored. Shekka wants war because she wants to get Hezzi back. And maybe because she's angry that Chieftain Kadai is dead. But I don't see how killing Foxes is supposed to make her feel better about that, unless it's the same kind of way I thought killing Ander and Dan and all the rest would have made me feel better, I guess."
Is this really Ivio? Dorin wondered. Has he always been like this?
Ivio ripped another clump of fur from the back of his hand and dropped it to the ground. "They wanted war. Hyker suddenly died. They got war. They probably killed him. If I was the one who got hurt the worst, they would have killed me. Bad luck for Hyker. Good luck for the rest of us. Then bad luck for everyone again, only they don't know it's bad luck yet. They all think it's good luck because they've never been on both sides of the line. Most of them have never even been _near_the line. They think it'll be fun. And maybe for a lot of them it will be. That's why you'd be stupid to try and use Hyker's death to stop it, Sai."
That gave Dorin a start. "I never said I was going to try and stop it."
"But you are. Our people, they don't need to train. They don't need to wrestle and bite and shoot arrows at targets. You just want to waste time. But, Sai, don't try to tell them it was the Chieftain that killed Hyker. It won't work. They'll just be mad at you for trying to stop the fun."
Dorin had thought about that exact scenario, turning it over and over in his mind while he was lying in his tent last night, tired out of his mind, but unable to get to sleep.
Ivio plucked more hairs from his neck, but his face remained neutral, is if he wasn't aware of what he was doing. "You asked me if I thought it was okay to kill someone to save someone else, if it balances out. I don't know if it does. The Wolf I was... the one I used to be before? He wouldn't understand. He couldn't understand. Not what you were saying or why you were saying it or why you almost felt like crying while you did. But this Wolf, the Wolf I am right now? He can understand a little, because he knows about the line. He- I will tell you that there will be no balance at all if war happens. It's not about killing one to save one. It's about killing one to save thousands."
Something strange happened then, although, from a distance, it was nothing spectacular. Ivio simply stopped his crazy twitching and finger biting and hair plucking for a moment and looked Dorin straight in the eye. That by itself was unnerving enough, but the words that followed were completely different from his usual, frenzied yammerings. These words were calm and focussed, spoken very slowly and very clearly: "I think the scales will be unbalanced either way. But I think I'd prefer it if the scales were unbalanced because one side was just a little bit heavier than the other, rather than having one side be completely empty. Wouldn't you agree, Sai?"
Dorin had worked with Ivio and his crazy, erratic, possibly even psychotic tendencies several times, but this was the first time he's felt genuinely afraid. Just the way he was sitting there, perfectly still, staring back from beneath a slightly furrowed brow, speaking normally, must be taking an immense amount of concentration on his part, all so he could communicate his thoughts without making any mistakes, so he could be understood. Even if it was only for a few moments.
"What are you trying to say, Ivio?" he asked, hoping that his voice would not betray the fear in his heart.
"I'm saying... someone will have to cross the line. Probably you."
Those words cut deep, because Dorin had already gouged that particular wound wide open for himself.
In the end, even though their thoughts had followed diverging paths, they had somehow ended up with the exact same conclusion.
"I know, Ivio. I know I have to..."
A flash of memory, of Wardo's grinning face, of all those teeth that shone from bloody gums, every bit as sharp as the biters gleaming in the pit below, and Dorin's own hand, reaching back, ready to push... but stopping at the last second, unable to carry through.
"I just don't know if I can..."
Surprise, Ander's back! :D
Sorry it took so long. So many wrinkles to iron, so little time... but I should have enough for at least a month now. Part 6 is proving to be very difficult, but sometimes you just have to push on through. And if it feels like you're about to pass out, you just hook a caffeine drip to your arm and keep going. That's what it means to be a writer.
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