The Ice Storm
Chapter Twelve
The great stone walls that ringed the Hooded City did not quite drown out the teeming mass of humanity enclosed within them, thought Wolf. It was a low rumbling roar to his ears, starting quite some miles before the city came into view, and now as he drew nearer it threatened to drown out all other senses. He didn't like it, even though he'd stood before these walls before. But then he hadn't had to actually go inside like he was about to today. Few wolf's ever had, save those captured and sent to trial for whatever crime the humans had imagined for them. Under the rabble of noise he listened for the sound of his own folk. A pitching whine or growl, too low for human ears, perhaps even a lilting howl, but there was nothing. But he could smell them. As the great iron gates swung open to admit the royal carriage, he scented them. Mingled and almost drowned by the stink of men, but they were there nonetheless. He wondered what sort of living they managed to eke out amongst the people here. Were they newcomers from the winter storms perhaps, taking up Scarlett's nascent offer of shelter to all?
He clung to the back of the coach as it rumbled under the heavy archway, eyes downcast and tail well concealed behind his longcoat. The crowd that had lined the streetway seemed a lot more subdued than they had been a few months ago when Scarlett had ridden, triumphant and glowing from her 'adventures' on Coven Lake. Wolf risked glances at the people from under the brim of his hat. Their great town had not been able to withstand the ravages of the Eigth Kingdom's touch, it seemed. They looked dispirited and cold, mean hearted and hungry. Wolf hoped that they would not have to stay here longer than needed. He hoped Scarlett still wielded enough power here to garner them the supplies they needed. Still, it would be nice to get out of the snow for a while. Though he had suffered not as greatly as the humans with the harshness, he had still suffered. His winter coat thankfully had grown itself in record time and he had let his beard cover his face, but the exposed skin was still chafed and wind blown. And it had only grown colder the further north they had come.
"The Queen! The Queen returns to save us! Help us, Lady Riding Hood!" several voices raised as they went past. Others just stared, or mumbled together on huddled doorsteps things that Wolf's ears could not catch. Wolf wondered what Scarlett was thinking as she rode back into her Kingdom's greatest town. Was she looking sideways, out at the people, or was she craning her neck ahead, trying to catch a glimpse of the Castle, her home? Despite what Scarlett believed, Wolf did not know everything the Queen was thinking. Oh, he certainly could read her easily from her body's own language, but so often she sat so still and quiet that he wondered if there were any thoughts in her head at all. Beneath him in the carriage, he knew her heart thudded uncomfortably and sweat prickled her skin. Her anxiety did not suprise him. He knew she'd had second thoughts about the whole expedition from the first day they'd woken, far from Castle White, adrift in a world of freezing hostility. But she hadn't gone back on her word, and for that he'd come to admire her somewhat.
The Castle Keep of the Riding Hood family came into view finally. Perched initially on a small rise, it had grown over the years, spilling down the nearby streets in an untidy jumble of halls, barracks and stables. It had none of the romantic grandeur of Castle White, or Cinderella's Glass Palace, but it dominated the city nonetheless. Guards in the unmistakeable ruby red livery stood aside as the porticullis was raised, flourishing their lances deferentially as the coach swept through into a large courtyard. Serving folk were hard at work sweeping the new snow into drifts against the wall, where others scooped it painstakingly into buckets to be tossed over the ramparts. The driver pulled the weary horses to a halt before huge wooden doors set into stone. The door was intricately carved with an oversized man skewering a wolf. The wolf lay pinned to the earth through it's ribcage, and in the background was a small girl rejoicing with her grandmother. As Wolf gazed on the gruesome scene, the doors opened from within, neatly bisecting the carving so that one one side stood the girl and the hunter, on the other, the wolf and the grandmother. Wolf very nearly laughed at the irony. Perhaps whoever had carved the door had known more than they were supposed to?
He jumped down from the footmans perch, glad to feel solid, unmoving earth under his boots again. A young man, barely more than a youth had come forward. His rich red cloak betrayed his status as a member of the immediate family, and Wolf guessed him to be Scarlett's younger brother. He had a regal stance to his pose, and Wolf immediately suspected that this youngster had enjoyed ruling in his sister's stead a little more than he ought. Wolf busied himself with unloading as he listened with wry amusement at Scarlett putting such grandiose visions in their place. She berated him a full two minutes on the state of everything, from roads to housing, to food and fuel allocation, to the state of the courtyard. It was a very chastened young prince who finally escaped his sister's notice when she moved to question her castellan, but Wolf did not miss the angry retorts than clouded the youth's face before he could control his expression. Looks that were mirrored in more than a few of the courtiers and advisors who now crowded through the doors.
Finally Scarlett seemed to tire of her scathing commentry, and she turned unexpectedly to beckon Wolf forward with a wave of her hand. All eyes were on him as he came to her side. They knew him for a stranger, certainly, but did they truly even guess at what he was? Wolf could not help but to quickly assess his surroundings. It was his wolfen mind, always thinking ahead, planning an escape route should the situation turn ugly. All of a sudden, he had doubts over Scarlett. Maybe she had been more upset than he'd known when he'd blooded her a few days ago. Perhaps she'd only been waiting until reaching the safety of her castle before turning her men on him. Was even now, somewhere in the city, a carpenter shapening his tools, waiting to carve yet another gruesome scene into some doorway?
But Scarlett's eye's, when she turned to him, were grave. Wary, yes, unsure, certainly, but not hostile. Wolf hoped his sigh of relief was not as audible to them as it had been to him. But the Queen had heard it, and a corner of her mouth quirked upwards slightly in response.
"This is Lord Wolf, consort of the Lady Virginia of the Fourth Kingdom. He has...assisted me on more than one occasion, and I expect him to be treated with the greatest respect" she intoned, her voice soft but allowing no further comment. One by one, the courtiers and noblemen bent their heads, not quite to the level that they would normally use to greet one of their order, but it was there nonetheless. Wolf felt Scarlett's relief as keenly as she had felt his, and it made him realise just how much she had banked on them accepting his prescence. Perhaps she herself had been looking for a back door of escape as well. Wolf hestitated as the royal court moved to follow Scarlett as she entered the castle doors. Finally, when there were none but himself standing there, he went swiftly up the steps and crossed the threshold. On the top step were two serving women, one an old crone with many generations of age stamped on her withered face. As he passed, the crone bent to whisper to her younger companion.
"Well well, never thought I'd see the day!" she cackled merrily. The other maid looked sideways at her, aghast.
"Oh, but tis such a...what's the word...such a travesty! To think, a wolf freely crosses the seal of the great House of Red for the first time ever! What is our world coming to?" she replied with heat. But the old crone just laughed.
"First time ever? Oh my dear, dear girl, how young you are!"
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Virginia sighed with annoyance as she discovered yet another set of shoes that had seen the attentions of her son. She shook the chewed and mauled footwear under his nose. Caelum's cheeks pouted defiantly.
"No, Caelum!" Virginia growled at him "Not the shoes!". The cub's eyes were wide with seeming innocence, and Virginia wished for the hundredth time that she could still speak the wolfen language like she'd begun to learn when she'd carried the werewolf blood. Though she didn't doubt that her son understood her perfectly anyway, no matter his blank expression. He just couldn't seem to leave leather alone recently. Anything unattended was fair game for his developing teeth. Virginia had looked in his mouth on several occasions, happy to see the normal looking human molars peeping through. But the tiny sharp piercings in the leather gave away the prescence of his lupine fangs. Elsie had told her about them before she'd left to go back to the forest some weeks ago. Caelum still squatted on the floor, gazing up at her with his liquid green gaze. A cherub's face when he wanted it to be. Virginia reached to tuck his shirt in around his little belly.
"I'll see if I can raid the kitchen again. Get you something proper to gnaw on, huh?" she said. The cub's eyes brightened at the mention of the word 'kitchen'. "Ah yes, you understood that didn't you?"
She went to the window to look out on the black sky. A carrier bird had arrived that morning with tidings from the Second Kingdom. Wendell had coming rushing into her room at dawn, flourishing the tiny bit of paper from the pigeon's leg.
"They made it! Scarlett and Wolf, I mean. They arrived yesterday. Wolf will probably be heading back to you within days, I'll warrant" Wendell had gabbled out before running off again. Virginia had certainly been more relieved than she'd expected to be, even though she had not missed Wendell's hidden reproach. He thought Wolf would return to her, but not Scarlett to him. He had no clue that neither of them would be returning any time soon. They had a dragon to find, those two. She wondered what sort of journey they'd had, not just with the foul weather, but between themselves. Wolf had guessed far more about Scarlett than she had suspected, she knew that now. But then she would hardly expect any less from him, given his unique perspective on it. Virginia worried that he would overstep his mark and take things too far with the Queen. Scarlett needed time to come into her own, and Wolf was not the most patient of his kind.
Virginia turned back to Caelum, who was yawning as he sat by the wholly artificial heater that gave warmth to the room, powered by one of Tony's many generators that he and the Murrays had lugged from New York City. Keeping the machines fueled and running was becoming a round the clock job, but Virginia knew her father was revelling it in. And he had no doubt saved many lives as the refugees kept pouring in from the countryside. Wendell and his advisors had had many sleepless nights in trying to cater for all the folk, she knew. All this activity was making her feel redundant. Useless and hampered whilst others toiled for the good of all. Surely Coventina must be disappointed in me, she thought unhappily. Her hands felt the smooth edges of the dragon's scale kept safe in her pocket. Was that all I had to do? Rescue the dragon? And I couldn't even do that much, she thought dismally, rubbing at her protruding stomach. But Coventina and Lucine had known about the babe all along. They had not removed the werewolf's taint from the infant, as to have done so would have caused it's death. So they had said.
Virginia felt her stomach grumble and sighed again. To the kitchens indeed! Even though it was perpetually gloomy these days in the corridors, clocks kept the bulging castle population to a regimented routine, lest chaos rule the passages. It was past nine in the evening, and most were bedding down for the night. Scores of villagers, humans mostly but with occasional clusters of fairies, brownies and other folk, lined the floors of nearly every availible space, wrapped up in whatever blankets they could scavenge. Virginia tiptoed past them as daintily as her swelling form allowed her, which wasn't all that easy.
The downstairs kitchens were all but deserted. Rows of bread tins, lined with dough rising for the next mornings baking sat atop the banked down hearths. Having retrieved Caelum numerous times from the pantries, Virginia knew exactly which one to head for. Long hooks held dried meats hung from the ceiling and Virginia took up a nearby knife to slice neatly at what looked like a bacon hock. That would keep her pesky cub busy for a few days at least, she thought.
The draught that blew through the kitchen was common enough these days, and Virginia paid it little mind as she wrapped the bacon and stowed it in her pocket. Just a guard coming in from the freezing night to warm his hands at the stove, most likely.
Upstairs, Caelum whimpered and wriggled his way down from the bed that he shared with his mama. He was hungry and the bed was cold. He pressed his nose under the door. Fresh baked bread, eggs boiling, smelly mousies. But no mama smell. He turned to the window. Outside, the sun tried to peep through the clouds. It was morning now, and there was no mama, anywhere.