When the invaders flooded into the valley, the old wolf came down from his warm den in the high hills to see what all the fuss was about. It didn't take him long to find the alien soldiers, for they tended to call attention to themselves. They wore suits of dark iron and marched in long, clattering ranks. They burned and pillaged wheresoever they went, enslaving those they could easily capture, while putting all others to the sword — those who resisted, to be sure, but also those who were too lame, too old, or too well educated to make able and subservient workers. The wolf took umbrage at these uncouth intruders, not only because they had the temerity to enter his territory uninvited, but also because they murdered wantonly, without craft or subtlety. In addition they killed or spirited away many of those living in the wooded valley that the wolf had marked in his mind to dine on one day, and such a breach of etiquette could not be endured.
In those days the wolf was still largely ruled by his belly, so he decided to sample a few of the invaders. They were easy enough to bring down, because, for all of his monstrous size, the wolf coutd strike with great stealth and cunning. In the deep woods between one isolated village and another, he picked off two stragglers as they marched behind a long column, biting easily through their shells of thick plate, and the ring-mail hauberks underneath, like a child crumbles autumn leaves. Once he'd stripped away the outer wrappings, he discovered misshapen, yellow-tusked gobliny things within. They screamed and pleaded and writhed well enough, as he savaged them, and their bones crunched satisfyingly, but their green and warty flesh was foul. Carrion three weeks rotting in the heart of summer tasted better than this!
That night, silent as a shadow, he crept into the army's sprawling encampment, thinking that their more human-looking captains might prove more suitable to his refined palate. He whispered past the watch-fires, ragged troop tents, and posted sentries — both sleeping and alert — until, quite undetected, he reached the camp's innermost ring, where the silken pavilions of the officers could be found. Choosing the biggest tent as the one most likely to house the sweetest confection, he leapt in, without so much as a breath of sound, and surprised a sleeper in his bed. He crunched the man's head first, like a red ripe apple, stifling any possibility of alarm, and then settled in for a long, leisurely repast. But after only a few bites, even this man's flesh proved unsuitable. It was tan and unblemished, but still carried a disturbing taint of corruption. The audacity of these people! Not only do they rob him of his preferred provender, but in turn they fail to provide anything approaching a suitable substitute?
The wolf's rage grew, and long into the night he pondered what to do about it.
In the days that followed, the wolf made himself a determined enemy of the invaders. He ranged far and wide, striking in this place and that, in the dead of night, or under the bright daytime sun. There seemed no pattern to his predations, which only increased the dread sown amongst his new adversaries. Relentlessly he hunted the soldiers and their masters, wherever he could find them — and he found them in abundance, infesting every land and kingdom, no matter how far afield he wandered from his own familiar territory. He slaughtered most of those he caught without hesitation or mercy, but spared a few long enough for questioning. From these he learned little of value. They were the advance forces of a remote and unnamed power — known only to the troops as their emperor — for he was by all accounts a creature bold with ambition and sorcerous might who'd decided to carve for himself a single, grand empire out of all the disparate kingdoms of fable.
"Why do you contend so against us?" one captive pleaded as he struggled helplessly under the wolf's massive forepaws. "For you are the very sort of monster we are commissioned to recruit into our ranks. You could rise high in the empire, commanding legions, or more!"
"Not interested," the wolf growled in return. "Even the highest office in service to another is too low a station for me." And with that the wolf sank his fangs into the captive's neck. A single, irresistible shake ended the soldier's tremors, instantly transforming living flesh into wet carcass.
Years passed in this fashion. The wolf hunted where he would, and the invaders trembled in their tents. But for all of his rapacious success, the wolf was but a single creature, where the Emperor could field seemingly endless battalions. Lands were methodically conquered and consolidated into the empire, despite his constant harassment. At best he was but an irritant in his unseen adversary's vast game of thrones.
Which isn't to say that his personal campaign went unnoticed in whatever distant country had spawned the invasion. Entire companies of the Emperor's most diabolical soldiers — trolls, giants and worse — were tasked with his capture or destruction. And when he eluded those, fell sorcerers and black-hearted warlocks were dispatched. He led them all a merry chase, and reflected from time to time that his life was good, all things considered.
One day, in the shadow of a range of tall white mountains that looked like the fangs of the Earth, bared to rend the heavens above, the wolf encountered a small force of the Emperor's soldiers escorting a much larger group of captives. They were led in heavy rattling chains, down out of the mountains' girdling foothills, where many tried to escape in recent years. From a concealed spot above the winding trail, the wolf watched them as they passed. The prisoners were wretched and dirty things, dressed in old rags for the most part, and new scars, no doubt received during the rough business of their capture. They stumbled along with bent backs and blank faces, sure signs that they knew, and finally surrendered to, the fate that awaited them — days of torture, to wring from them any information about other fugitives, followed by public execution. It seems the Emperor didn't believe in redemption. Those who resisted the all-too-generous initial welcome into his new regime were never offered a second chance. The guards for their part merely looked bored. They could hardly even be bothered to whip the slowpokes and those who stumbled on the trail's sharp stones. This had become routine duty to them, for many fugitives from many countries converged on this land, believing whispered rumors of a magic avenue of escape hidden somewhere in these rugged and forbidding hills. They arrived in droves and the soldiers captured them — most of them, anyway — with ease.
From his hiding place the wolf patiently watched and waited as he sniffed the cold pre-winter air for signs of a larger, hidden force. This wouldn't be the first time the enemy had tried to lure him into a trap with such inviting bait as this. He'd grown quite wary over the years. Eventually though, with no sign of other threats in the air, he padded down to the trail and followed the slow procession, silently closing the distance between them.
Nearly midway in the prisoner train, two sisters were chained to the line, one in front of the other. They were both lovely young women — though it was hard to be sure under the dirty clothes and half-dried mud that covered them from head to toe — and resembled each other, except that one had hair as dark as night while the other's was as red as the morning sun. In one other way they differed as well. The dark-haired sister wore a gown of rich velvet and white linen, bespeaking nobility, while the red-haired sister wore a simple peasant dress of rough homespun. Of course, the great leveler of extended hardship and adversity had so reduced each garment to egalitarian rags and tatters that only close and careful examination could determine their disparate origins.
Like the other captives, the sisters marched silently — except for the rattling chains manacled to each wrist and ankle — alone in their thoughts, until a sudden clamor of dying men startled them out of their private reveries. The commotion came from the back of the prisoner train, which abruptly compressed in the centre, as those in front stopped to see what occurred in the rear, while those in the rear rushed forward to escape whatever it was back there that was killing the guards and filling the air with such feral, bestial sounds as to chill anyone's soul to the core.
Within the tangled press of panicking captives the dark-haired sister couldn't make out any details of what was happening behind them, other than the occasional glimpse of armoured guards rushing from the head of the line towards the screams and clamor at its rear. For the moment she concentrated on holding onto her sister, as they worked together to keep upright, so as not to be trampled underfoot. Then the worst of the sounds died away, leaving only the whimpers of the chained prisoners, and while she was still being jerked and tugged, first one way and then the next, by the chains that attached her to everyone else, the mass of shuddering bodies opened up enough to finally reveal their new danger. A wolf had come amongst them, and such a wolf it was! On all fours it stood as tall as a yearling colt. Its fur was black, shading to brownish-gray on its flanks and belly, but at the moment most of its front end was painted red with the blood of the dozen guardsmen who'd so ruthlessly ruled their lives for many days past — right up until a moment ago. To a man they were all dead — savagely dismembered — their parts scattered up and down the trail, and the beast that destroyed them now stood no more than a pace or two from the center of the line, and the two sisters caught there. The women were held in place, stretched out to the limits of their shackles, as their chained companions on each end of the line tried to rush away from the middle, in an attempt to escape the terrible thing that stood amongst them. Some tried to run or crawl away, in both directions on the trail, while others tried to claw their way up the steep embankment on its hillward side. Still others simply surrendered to their certain doom and dropped where they were, trying to curl up or cover themselves as best they could. But the sisters didn't attempt to run or crawl or in any other way try to escape. Perhaps they knew that such attempts would be futile, or they found reserves of courage, or perhaps they simply knew something of what the cornered deer knows after the long chase, when it has finally resigned itself to becoming food for the lion. Whatever the reason, they stood where they were and stared into the yellow eyes that seemed to impale them in place. Entranced, they watched the steaming vapor of recent murder rise from each side of its red-wet muzzle. They listened to each ragged breath that issued from the bellows of its massive chest.
Then a sudden loss of tension in the chains seemed to break the dark one out of her spell — if only for a moment — but that was long enough for her to reach down by her feet where one of the guard's swords had landed during the carnage. She deftly snatched up the curved blade, slippery with its former owner's blood.
"Stay back, dire beast!" the dark sister cried. "My husband taught me well how to use this!" She held it in both hands, boldly brandishing it towards the wolf.
"I don't believe you," the wolf replied, and was that a tone of humour that coloured its deep voice? It didn't attack her, but neither did it back away, or in any way seem concerned about the threatening blade held in a young woman's trembling hands.
"You will if you come closer and I chop you down."
"You misunderstand," the wolf replied, the grin of his long muzzle revealing rows of sharp fangs — the largest longer than a grown man's fingers. "I don't believe you've a husband. Though you're clearly no maiden, I can tell with a whiff and a sniff that it's been long years since you've visited anyone's marriage bed."
"My former husband!" the woman said. Under the caked grime, twin apples of ripening anger colored her alabaster cheeks.
"Put down your sword, woman. I doubt you could hurt me with it. But if you'll hold out your arms, I'll bite those shackles off you. Quit trembling so! I'm not going to eat you, or these other mewling creatures. It amuses me much more these days to frustrate the Emperor and his legions by spiriting his desired conquests safely out from his clutches. You two aren't from this land — your accents mark you as distant strangers — and yet here you are. I'll bet you've come hoping to find a certain witch's cave of legend. One with many twisting passages that lead to many distant worlds — at least one of which is far beyond the Emperor's reach and possibly even his knowledge."
"I'm amazed that you would know of such a place." This time it was the red-haired woman who spoke. Imitating her sister she had taken advantage of the moment to look for weapons within reach, but no other such device had fallen close enough.
The wolf ignored their efforts at self-defense, but suddenly dashed to nip at those on either end, still stretching out the chains in their efforts to escape. Eventually he herded them back into a loose and fearful cluster that for the most part left the long central chain hanging limp between each captive. Finally, when this was done, he returned to his former place, sat where he had been standing, and answered the red-haired sister.
"I not only know of it, I'm the only one who can still find it, for the witch that made it is long gone, having passed through it to safety many years ago. And because she wanted none of the Emperor's minions following after, she left it cloaked in myriad spells and glamours that cause anyone seeking it to become misdirected and turned around so thoroughly as to be completely frustrated. But I can go there, straight and true, because I secretly followed the old hag that long lost day and marked the trail as only a wolf can."
"Then you are the one that we heard of — the great and terrible guardian of the way," the dark sister said. She hadn't lowered the point of her borrowed blade.
"You look like you expected someone else."
"We'd heard that you were a giant."
"I'm hardly tiny."
"And that you had at least three heads," the red-haired one said, "and by merely looking at you directly, we would be turned to stone."
"Stories do grow in the telling."
"And is the legend also false that you charge a dear price from those you allow to pass on to safety — to the unreachable world?" the dark one said.
"Not entirely, but it's not a matter of payment so much as precaution. The Emperor and his sorcerers have many devious ways to disguise his agents. He's often tried to slip one by me, and there's only one sure way to tell if you're genuine refugees, or more of his creatures in sheep's clothing."
"And what would that be?"
"I'll need a taste — just a little nip from each of you. No matter what shape they began in, or what form in which they present themselves, all of his minions have an unmistakable taint to their flesh. Since you two are so fair, under the accumulated dirt and grime of your recent trials, you'll want to pick a spot where the scar won't show."
"How are we to know that we can trust you, dread wolf?"
"I have no idea, but you'd better decide soon, or any number of bad things could happen. More soldiers could arrive, too numerous for me to overcome, I could grow bored and decide to leave all of you here, to your own devices — or I could grow hungry again and decide to stay."
For the first time since picking it up, the dark woman let the point of her blade drop, perhaps just an inch or two, as her look of fear and determination slowly, reluctantly gave way to something else.
Two long centuries later the wolf was prowling the deep dark woods of his new home, in a wild land called Carpathia, when a quiet rustling of underbrush alerted him to the approach of two people. Even from downwind their scents reached him long before they did, identifying one as a stranger and one who seemed distantly familiar.
"You might as well finish coming forward," the wolf grumbled. "You've no chance of outrunning me now, should I decide to eat you, no matter what your starting distance."
The underbrush parted enough to admit two people into the small glade in which the wolf paused, under the spreading canopy of a great oak — a giant of lost ages that painted everything below in deep shadow. The first of the wolf's visitors was an achingly beautiful woman, with skin of whitest porcelain and silken hair darker than a raven's secret heart. She wore an expensive gown of charcoal gray, embroidered in dancing loops and swirls of burgundy thread. It was bowed out by any number of petticoats beneath — a ridiculous contrivance, the wolf thought, in which to go tramping through the woods. Over the dress she wore a long traveling cape, lined in white silk.
Her companion was dressed in similar opulence. He was a tall, slender, aristocratic fellow in matching breeches and waistcoat of powder blue, decorated with enough golden buttons, at the breast, waist and cuffs, to sate the avarice of ancient Midas himself. His vest was also of gold cloth and sported twin rows of even more gold buttons. He wore a broad-brimmed cap, set just so at a jaunty angle. It was of midnight blue, trimmed in more gold, and there was a long feather stuck through its band. He carried a long clay pipe and smoked it furiously, puffing an endless fog of white smoke into the air, almost obscuring his too-handsome features.
"Once long ago you promised not to eat me, Gaffer Wolf," the woman said, through a shy and tentative smile. In that instant the wolf recognized her.
"Only because sparing you then served a higher purpose," the wolf said. "But I no longer spend my days confounding the wishes of that hidden adversary in his far-off empire. I've returned to my former ways, and you're no longer guaranteed safe passage."
Leaving his pipe firmly clamped between his white and perfect teeth, the gentleman's hands drifted down to hover around two bulges distorting his waistcoat that the wolf hadn't noticed at first glance.
"Do you imagine you can retrieve whatever weapons you've concealed there before I can close my jaws around your throat?" the wolf said.
"I doubt you'll find my neck to your taste," the gentleman replied, showing not a hint of fear, "but try it if you must. It won't do me any permanent harm, and you'll be too close to avoid the twin shots of lead I've prepared for you."
"Stop such talk this instant," the woman said. "We didn't travel all this way for anyone to end up shot or eaten."
"Nature will win out," the wolf growled.
"Perhaps so, unless one has a way to change your nature," the woman said. "In any case I'm glad you finally decided to come over to this world."
"I had to. The Emperor's pet warlocks refined their methods of locating me over the years, until it finally became too dangerous even for me to remain there, prowling the numberless lands that had fallen under his heel. And since by that time there were rumors that other passageways to this world had been discovered, I decided my duty was done and it was time to see what sort of place I'd been sending folks to."
"And yet you chose to remain alone, in such a remote land as this?" the woman said. "We had the devil's own time finding you."
The wolf noted that the man moved each time he did, always shifting so as to keep positioned close enough to quickly interpose himself between wolf and woman. The fellow was a puzzle. For the first time in his memory he couldn't decipher a potential opponent's mood and intentions by the scent he gave off. There was a gentleman's cologne of course, but that couldn't mask his natural telltale musks — or at least it couldn't in any past encounter with such men. But beneath this man's sickly sweet perfume the wolf detected nothing — no fear at all, which was surprising enough, but nothing else either. He turned to the woman again, whom he could still read easily.
"I purposely chose a home far away from those I'd sent here," he said, "so as not to let my hunger undo all of the work I'd done to save them. Here I'm free to hunt the mundane people of this land. They're a superstitious folk that blame everything I do on some fanciful local count who's rumored to be some fell spirit returned from the dead. It means I'm left alone for the most part, and he actually enjoys the notoriety. We visit from time to time. He's not a bad fellow and a good conversationalist, for when I want news of the wider world."
He faced the woman, but all of his attention was focused on her strange companion. He'd seen what these new things — these guns could do. He had no doubt they could do him great harm. If violence was required, he decided he'd first spring at the fellow's waist, rather than his neck. If he could crunch the pistols first, then he'd likely have the two of them in his power — no matter what his strange nature.
"You saved so many of us over the years — the centuries, in fact," the woman said. "I don't believe anyone who could do so much good can be such a monster as you present yourself to be. You belong among us. Gaffer Wolf, among those you saved and other refugees from the lost lands. That's why we've come here, to invite you to take your rightful place back among your own kind. We've started something in the far colonies — the New Worid. We've formed a community of Fables — two communities, actually — separated by distance, but as one in spirit and purpose. Those of us who can pass as normal humans live together in a remote town called New Amsterdam, far away from the hustle and bustle of this world. Those of us who can't pass as human live in a secret colony deep in the wilderness, in a place so remote that civilization will never overtake it."
"So you long for my company, woman, but plan to send me off to live amongst the animals, far away from you?"
"Not at all," she said and began to blush with embarrassment "There have been dissenting opinions, threatening to destroy our community, before it begins. In point of fact the experiment is about to fall apart over the matter of what to do with you. On one hand you saved so many of us. On the other hand, your predations in the homelands were truly monstrous, and it's for those crimes that the wilderness colony won't have you. Of all the fell creatures who've escaped to this world, they fear you the most. But what we're attempting is predicated on the notions of equality for all, beginning with a universal pardon of all past crimes, debts and grievances. If one of us is singled out as not worthy of amnesty, then we're back where we started: picking and choosing and counting up past crimes. The community is still fragile and will surety crumble because of this division amongst us, perhaps not this year or the next, but inevitably. Since one colony won't have you, the other one must — but you'll have to be able to pass as human."
"And there's the rub," the wolf said.
"It can be done," the woman said. "You can live as a human, if you choose to." From under her cape she withdrew an ancient iron knife. Its blade was pitted and scarred and looked ready to crumble away in the next breeze. The wolf stiffened when he spied it, reflexively gathering himself to spring — either at her or at the man (or away as fast as he could run) he didn't know yet.
"What's the purpose of that?" he said.
"You found it necessary to bite me once long ago," she said, "so now it's my turn to bite back. This blade is tainted with an ancient magic — an enchantment that lets men walk as wolves."
"I've encountered those impostors, once or twice. They didn't impress me."
"The witch who sold this to me — at a very dear price I might add — said the curse... uhm, the enchantment should work as well in the other direction. A wolf can walk as a man."
"Why should I ever want to do that?"
"That's what we're here to discuss," she said. "And we're prepared to stay long enough to resolve it one way or another. Our hired coach is parked on the roadway down below. Can you direct us to nearby lodgings?"
"Perhaps his friend the count will volunteer shelter to a pair of noble cousins from distant lands," the gentleman said. .
The wolf was still getting used to all of the manifest irritations of his new shape when they made the sea crossing. He continuously tugged at and scratched under his woolen frock coat when he'd take his turns on deck. The woman — who turned out to be named after a type of weather in which hunting was typically bad — seldom left her cabin. She didn't like sea travel and claimed the constant pitching and rolling worked ills on her stomach. The wolf discovered he rather enjoyed it. He often encountered the strange gentleman on deck, who seemed not to be bothered by anything, as long as he could keep his ever-present pipe lit. He claimed to have too many names and titles to bother the wolf with and invited him to use Feathertop, which is how he was known amongst most of the Fables. The wolf never felt entirely at ease in the man's company, which Feathertop also noticed and remarked upon one day on the pitching deck.
"I was chosen to accompany the princess on this journey because, of all of the Fables living in this world, I'd be the one most safe from you, if you truly turned out to be monstrous again. I'm not realty made of the sorts of things you like to eat." He wouldn't expand on those cryptic comments.
"But as long as we're trading personal secrets," he went on to say, "why don't you tell me why you really chose to come back with us? Though I fancy myself no mean rhetorician, I don't believe either her ladyship or myself argued you into doing anything you hadn't already set your mind to do. The truth now. Why are you here?"
The wolf didn't answer. Instead he turned his face into the gusting rain of a summer squall that had overtaken them, and he thought again about the tiny wisp of a girl, cloaked in equal parts caked grime and foolish bravado, on that long-ago mountain trail, prepared to fight off a ravening monster with but a thin sliver of borrowed steel. And he wondered why, of all the people he'd encountered in his long life, he couldn't quite get her scent out of his mind, no matter the passing of years. He stayed late on deck that night as the tiny wooden ship rode bravely over the rolling swells towards the New World.