Page 25 of A Wolf's Bargain
One of the other boys held up a heather flower a few yards away. “Lady, is this what you need?”
“It wasn’t what I was looking for, but we can certainly use it. That little plant brings down swelling and infections!”
The boy narrowed his eyes at the unassuming flower. “This thing? My mam’s sheep eat this all the time. You’re telling me it’s good for us too?”
Cora nodded, grinning when she spotted the oval leaves of the comfrey plant. “You’d be surprised what common plants and herbs can do. Not all of us can heal so quickly as you mighty men. We need all the help we can get.”
The boy preened for a moment at being called a mighty man before considering the heather in his hand again. Seamus shook his head and helped Cora gather more of the comfrey leaves. “My mam says that all the luchthonn came from a treaty between a man and a wolf long ago. A great evil threatened their homes, so they joined together to save them. Through that treaty, the first wolf-skin wearer was born. Don’t ask me how he was born—I don’t know, and I’d just as soon not think about it. It’s a legend, isn’t it? But he was born and grew into a fierce warrior. He defended his people with the claws and fangs of a wolf and the heart and spirit of a man. When he married, he and his wife formed the luchthonn clan. Over the years, that clan spread intovarious packs, but all come from the same great clan.Clann Abhaileis where most of our people live now. Our elders, and most families with young pups, live there for safety.”
Cora nodded, plucking the comfrey leaves absent-mindedly as she struggled to make sense of it all. With every new explanation, Seamus turned her world upside down. How was it possible that such beings could exist without people knowing?
“I don’t understand,” she said, tucking the leaves into her basket. “Why don’t you all live in this clan home? Why leave at all? If it’s safer there, why have these... these packs at all? The stories people tell about you—about the wildlings—don’t they worry you? What if people find out the truth? Wouldn’t that be dangerous for you?”
Seamus shrugged. “The packs bring in good coin. This life is good for the males of our kind. For those of us who haven’t had the change yet, it’s a way to train and make use of ourselves. The packs keep us out of trouble, and we make a living doing what comes natural. No one’s forced to join up, but most do until they’re ready to take a mate and settle down. And as for the humans, well, look around you, Lady. This land is full of magic. The humans might pretend it’s not, but it is. And their spirits know it even if their heads don’t. Most are happy to ignore what they can’t understand, and it’s not as though we make a habit of changing our skins in the town square. Themadraíwho come to us aren’t told the truth until they’re found to be trustworthy. The lords who might know won’t tell because they’d have to admit they knew when they hired us, and they won’t do that.”
“So you’re counting on the fact that people don’t want to believe you’re real? That’s it?”
Seamus’s smile turned sharp and decidedly wolfish. “You think people want to believe someone like Cillian, or Cathall, isreallya monster? They’re frightening enough as men, don’t you think?”
“I suppose that’s true. People get comfortable in their way of thinking. It’s... it’s difficult to find out that what you’ve always thought to be true... isn’t.”
She thought of Bran and the ‘truth’ he’d told her about Cillian and his men when she’d still been building her brilliant plan. He’d whispered the rumors of men changing to wolves as though frightened that speaking the words too loud would make them real. But he didn’tbelievethem—not really. If he had, he’d have sounded terrified rather than excited when he described the beastly way the wildlings fought or the way they turned into giant, ferocious wolves after eating the still-beating hearts of their enemies. So much truth hidden in the fantasy.
One of the other boys sauntered up and dropped his bounty into Cora’s basket. “You think you’ve seen it all now, Lady? You haven’t seen anything. Just you wait ‘till the elders hear about this agreement Cillian’s made with you. Things are sure to get interesting for everybody then.”
Before Cora could ask what he meant, Seamus drove an elbow into his ribs. “Piss off, Rossa!” he snapped. “Nothing’s going to happen, and you know it.”
Rossa glared at Seamus as he rubbed his rib but chose to run off in search of more comfrey rather than try to take revenge.
“Don’t mind him,” Seamus said, “He lives to cause trouble any way he can. Most of us think his mam dropped him on his head as a pup.”
Rossa’s words hadn’t seemed like something to dismiss, but Cora didn’t press him. She could always ask Cillian... if he ever decided to come home.
Chapter 12
Cora
Days passed in the luchthonn camp as they did anywhere else. Of all the things she’d learned in the past two weeks, that was the most surprising. The tales of her husband and his men were remarkable, but the truth of their day-to-day existence was much less so.
The luchthonn ate and drank like other men; they swore, bathed—sometimes—and bled. In the early days, she’d imagined terrible creatures like the one Cillian became wandering the camp morning and night. She’d been sure the men would be coarse and vile, the epitome of every nightmare she’d had leading up to her wedding. The luchthonn were meant to be cruel and without honor because that’s how the stories described them.
She’d quickly realized that the stories were, as Cillian would say, a load of horseshit.
While the men of the luchthonn were hardly saints, they weren’t so different from the soldiers at the castle or the village farmers she’d known all her life. It was a slow realization, one built on instance after instance where she expected them to act in one way, only to be surprised when they did something different.
For example, the true reason for the absence of other women. At first, Cora had wondered if they did not permit men and women to be together outside of marriage or their clan home. The priest at her wedding had believed in some sort of moon goddess—maybe there were rules of their religion that kept men and women apart?
Seamus had set her straight on one of their forest visits. There were no women in the roaming packs because they were too busy protecting the clan home. Cora had listened, enraptured, as he’d described the fierce warrior women who guarded the gates toClann Abhaile. She remembered how Queen Boudica had been her inspiration on the night she met Cillian and wondered if the legendary queen had been part wolf herself.
It surprised Cora how quickly her new routine, her newlife, became familiar. When she walked through the camp in the mornings, men would call out greetings like she’d known them all her life.
“Good morning to you, Lady! Fine weather for one of your jaunts, eh?”
“Madam Fane! It were yarrow root you’ve been wanting, weren’t it? One of the lads found some near the creek!”
“Happy morning to you, Lady! Thanks for looking at that cut for me—bloody horse clipped me good!”
On and on it went. If she’d expected them to treat her like an outsider, she’d been mistaken. Almost to a man, they seemed happy she’d come to the camp. Eoin was the only notable exception, though from what she could tell, he didn’t care for anyone.