[Belin]

Wolf was prepared to leap into the fray that he had expected the Hillmen to start, causing as much confusion as possible by rushing in where nobody expected him and helping to rescue as many as he could before he (and most of the others, no doubt) was cut down. All the work he'd done in the past had been focused on the art of surviving, of escaping the death that was always hovering around them, but suddenly the death that was offered to him now seemed almost appealing. To give some of his people, few as they may have been, an opportunity to continue the village by arriving as thunderstorms arrived, sudden and life-giving and unexpected, preventing a greater death. Truly, this was a death for a wolf.

But he did not realize he was thinking such thoughts until they had died. Kestrel had killed them, and Cleft, and whoever it was among the murmurers that was so loudly praising the priest's gifts as an orator.

Wolf thought he had been numb before, but he could no longer feel even his own heartbeat. They were lost to him. Their words were those of enemies. They had abandoned themselves, their village. They had abandoned him. Wolf could hear murmurs of agreement and indecision, much more so, it seemed to his jealous ears, than of dissent. Were these truly his people?

They were lost to him, they could not be rescued, they had refused rescue. They had chosen to be prisoners. Wolf was too late. He had always been too late.

And so he went stumbling backwards for several steps before he turned, running from the settlement with his vision strangely blurred. He did not know where he was going, but the settlement was no longer any place in which he could consent to die. There was no victory to be found there.

He was outside of it now, still stumbling gracelessly over rocks and tufts of grass, and then over something that made him stop and stare. Bear. Wolf's brother lay dead on the ground, arranged in a straight line and appearing far more composed than he ever had in life. Wolf stared at him in blank incomprehension. Here was a real death, after all these others. After the first moment of shock, Wolf knew exactly what had happened. His brother had not known of the change in the villagers... or else he had fought it.

"Fool," thought Wolf, automatically, but suddenly he checked himself. Perhaps it was indeed foolish to attack hopelessly, only for the sake of people who could not be saved. But at least Bear had understood that there was no wise or prudent response to these events. For Wolf the strategist, such a realization was actually painful, and had not brought such an obvious answer. Could he not have prevented this weakness of his people? Had he somehow failed them, just as they had failed him? He stared around blankly, but the hills could not answer such questions. The hills were all that was left to him now, those hills whose own freedom would probably be short-lived.

Cleft had explained to him long ago why bits of hair, lost fingers, even severed limbs in the rare event that any existed were often carried quickly to the grove across the hills. For reasons Wolf could not remember, the grove was a special place, and blood left there nourished the gods, makng them stronger, making everyone stronger. It was to these woods that Wolf fled now, and it was one of those trees, a large, spreading oak whose shade he had always admired, against which he rested his back to stare at the quiet trees around him. His failure to derive much pleasure from this did not surprise him, but it did strengthen his resolve. He raised his spear and drove it through his body until he heard it hit the wood behind him. As his blood seeped into the tree, he was incongrously glad that the spear kept him from falling to the ground.

Through the pain and the impending darkness, Wolf saw, quite clearly, a vision of a bird of prey flashing golden against the sky, and he was filled with a certain vague wonder, though he did not remember why. Not enough time to understand. But what does it mean? he thought quietly, the moment before he died.