Story: "Werewolf" (Part 4 of 4)

This is Part 4 (the final part) of the story.
If you haven't read Part 1 or Part 2 or Part 3 yet, please start there.  

Bice is dead.

And our party is now down to thirty men, three women.

Twenty fighters left last night, joined the other cowards.

There is no way, no way now, that we can take the City.

“The cause is lost.”

You have never seen Rollo this way. He is pale, his face drawn, and his eyes, they have lost the luster, the twinkle that was there, even when the odds were impossible, the devil-may-care, gone, the mouth has lost its determined line, the chin is down, the shoulders slumped.

“She would want you to go on,” you say. “Bice would want you to go on.”

“She would,” Rollo agrees. “But she would not want us to run into the mouth of the cannon with no hope, to sacrifice our lives for what? For nothing. Nothing!”

“We can regroup,” you say.

“Regroup?” Rollo laughs, but it is a cold, tired laugh, with no humor. “With what, with thirty tired fighters? No, my dearest dear, the cause is lost.”

He stands up, pulls me up by the elbows, holds me at straight arms, tears running down his face, then kisses me on both cheeks, embraces me.

“It was not to be,” he says, voice low in my ear. “It was not to be. We did what we could. We did what we could.”

He releases you, turns around, walks away.

It breaks your heart.

***

Suddenly you see what needs to be done.

The werewolf needs another victim.

You will be that victim.

You will be the snare that will catch this wolf.

And so you speak with each and every member of the small band, a short enough task now that are numbers are diminished. And to each you say essentially the same thing with a few variations:

‘We are very close. We will soon have the evidence and we will know who did this. The woman, the one who was killed first, the stranger, she is the key. You see, we found this piece of parchment in her hand, and at first we did not know what it was. But then I had this idea. No, no, it is not right to speak about it. I could be wrong, and I do not want to falsely accuse anyone. But tonight I will know. She was from the South, you see, from the Capital, and I have asked one of our friends from the Capital to investigate. He will come to our camp this evening. From him, I will get the information. I will learn the identity of the dead woman, and with any luck, this will make it clear who it is among us who knew her. The one who has a connection to her is the killer, the wolf. But please, I have said to much, let this be between us. I do not want to get our hopes up until we know for certain. So just between us, okay? In a few hours, after dark, then we will know.’

Again and again you say this, the same to everyone, baiting the trap.

***

The moonlight is behind him, and the werewolf is standing high on the hill, so that he is outlined in sharp relief against the large, white circle of the moon. You see the long arm with the sharp claws, held high against the white of the moon. You see the wolf-ears pricked up above the mane of hair. You see the werewolf throw his head back, hear him letting out a long howl. The outline looks so familiar. And it strikes you that this long mane of hair, if not the black shadow in the outline agains the moon, would be golden in color.

Rollo.

Yes, it must be Rollo. This would explain so many things.

But it cannot be Rollo.

Everything you have fought for, every reason you have for being part of this cause, this war, this company of fighters, this band of friends, are all tied up in this one man, in Rollo. He cannot be the werewolf. He cannot be the killer. Rollo was not even among those you told the lie, the bait for the trap, and still, the long hair, the outline of the figure, it looks like …

No!

But you hear yourself say it:

“Rollo!” You yell it out, actually, surprised at the volume of your own voice, the vehemence, the anger.

The figure turns and you see both ears quivering, and you think you see glowing red eyes in the middle of that black shadow, and the long arm with the sharp claws comes down, and the shoulders hunch, and you know he is getting ready to leap.

“Rollo,” you say again. “It’s time.”

“Yes.” Rollo’s voice, carries on the wind, deeper than normal, ferocious, a growl, as he repeats: “It’s time.”

Then you see it, a quick blur of a shadow across the moon, coming down fast from one of the pine trees, the shape throwing itself out into mid-air with wild abandon, and … … impacts with the werewolf.

A mighty struggle ensues, and you run towards the two of them, against Rollo, the werewolf, the hero who can not be, must not be, the killer, and his unknown assailant.

You leap like a mountain goat, your feet magically finding the next stone, and the next, leaping, leaping, and then you are there, and a cloud passes over the moon, just as you get here, and all you can see is deep darkness, but you hear them struggling, the sounds of the struggle, both of them mute now, but you can hear their struggle.

And then the cloud passes from the moon, and the pale moonlight shines down on the scene, and you see. Rollo, his blond mane flowing. He is on top, dominant, winning, and you do not know who it is that is struggling with him, but you know that Rollo is winning, werewolf-Rollo is winning.

And, though you love him, you know what is right. You know what you must do.

A fallen limb is on the ground. You stoop down and pick it up, and you approach them, and you stand over the struggling pair, and you swing the tree-limb in a long arc behind your head and you ready it to come crashing down on Rollo’s blond head.

Then, just then, the unknown assailant manages to gain the advantage, in a mighty throw, besting Rollo with a brutal kick to the groin and a heave of his body, and suddenly Rollo is on the ground, pinned.

And you see the assailant. You do not see who it is, but you see … the ears, sticking out of ragged fur, and you see the long arm, coming up, the claws, ready to strike at Rollo’s throat, and you realize, this, this is the werewolf, not Rollo, not Rollo.

Rollo was the one who leaped from the pine tree.

Rollo is struggling with the werewolf, and the werewolf is about to kill him with a strike of claws across throat.

Without another thought, you bring the tree-limb back around in a perfect arc, impacting with a loud crack to the back of the werewolf’s head.

The werewolf collapses on the ground, face down, long arm outstretched.

Rollo gets up. You see that his hands are shaking. You look away, ashamed of what you thought, that you believed he could be the one, the werewolf, the killer.

“Thank you.” His breathing is ragged, his chest heaving. “Thank you. If you had not been there. I would have been … he would have …”

“Let us turn him over,” you hear yourself say. “I need to see his face.”

“You know who it is, then?” Rollo says.

You do not.

“Do you?”

Without a word, Rollo leans down, grabs the werewolf by one shoulder, begins pulling him over.

Another cloud passes over the moon.

Then, as the cloud passes, the moonlight illuminates the shape, and you see:

“Primero!”

***

Primero sits, head slumped over, chin resting on his chest. He is tied to a pine tree with a long rope that Rollo brought with him up into his pine-tree hideout.

You and Rollo have moved the cold, dead weight of the unconscious Primero, removed the long extension from his arm, the claws he wore strapped to his right arm, a contraption made out of a long piece of wood with leather strings wrapped tight around his upper and lower arm, with sharp, curved knife-tips attached to the piece of wood, shaped into a paw with extended claws.

On his head, he wore a long, ragged pelt of wolf-fur complete with wolf ears attached. You have removed the pelt, and Primero’s head is now bare.

Rollo shakes Primero gently by the shoulder.

You reflect that if this was you, you would be far more brutal. You would shake him, yes, but much harder. You would, in fact, slap him, punch him, kick him. This, after all, is the man who has killed a dozen, no, more, of your friends, and who has put the cause in great danger. Single-handed. You would want him to feel your hatred.

And maybe, you admit to yourself, there would be some fear inside the hatred. Fear of how close you had come, your band of friends, to breaking apart because of this one, lone man. Fear of how brittle the company is at this point in time, how close you are to extinction, that this one, lone man, this man who is, after all more than sixty years old, how close he came to bringing it all to an end. And this fear fuels your hatred. And you want to take up his strange contraption, and you want to swipe down hard, slashing the curved-knife-claws across Primero’s neck, and you want to put an end to him in this way, and in this way you want to put an end to your fears.

But you know you cannot.

And you see, in the moonlight, that Rollo’s way is better.

Rollo shakes Primero gently by the shoulder, and he speaks softly to the old man:

“Primero,” he says. “Wake up, Primero. Wake up.”

And Primero begins to come awake, his chin rising from his chest, his eyelids fluttering, opening, only the whites of his eyes visible as his head rolls backward on the rack and pinion of his thin neck.

The back of his skull smacks into the trunk of the pine tree with a sickening thunk, and his eyes open wide, and he focuses.

His mouth opens and closes, once, twice.

He shakes his head slowly, side to side.

Then he realizes his position. He pulls at his ropes, to feel the strength of them, and realizing that he is bound firmly, his shoulders slump and he sighs, and he looks up at you, at Rollo, and he sighs again, and he says:

“So, you caught me.”

“Like a wolf in a snare,” Rollo agrees. He sits down in front of Primero, cross-legged, and he motions me to do the same, which you do, so you both sit there, cross-legged, facing Primero, bound, arms pulled behind his back, a backwards embrace of the wide pine-tree trunk.

“Yes,” Primero says. “Like a wolf … in a snare.”

“Why the wolf,” Rollo says after a long silence.

Primero looks up, narrows his eyes. “What are you asking?”

“Well,” Rollo says. “I see the way the werewolf would drive fear into the company. I see that. But I feel there is something more. Tell me.”

Primero smiles, and there is, you think, something terrible about this smile. It is not quite human. And yet, very human. There is a sadness in this smile, deeper than you have ever seen, and there is also a cleverness, pride. This part of the smile is demonic, you realize. The other part of the smile, the sad part, is human. The demonic is full of pride. The human is full of pain.

“You know,” Primero says, “wolves mate for life.”

Rollo nods. “I know,” he says. “This is all about Maria, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes,” Primero says. “Maria. There is nothing else. Nothing else, no-one else, that could have made me do what I did.”

“So, you regret what you did.”

“I do not.”

“No?”

“No. I would do it again. A hundred fold. A thousand fold. What do I care for any life, a hundred lives, a thousand lives, when I hold it up against her, against my angel, my Maria.”

“Not even Segundo?”

Primero looks away. He shakes his head violently. I feel the sting of it, the wetness on my cheek, and I touch my finger to it, and I touch my tongue to the finger, taste the salt of it, the tear Primero just flung from his eye.

“I do regret Segundo,” he says, finally. His voice is thick with the most powerful feelings, caught in his chest, pushing their way up his throat. “Yes, Segundo, if there is anything I regret, it is him. I regret the death of Segundo.”

“Why did Segundo have to die?” Rollo’s voice is calm. He sits here, cross-legged, and he speaks with an air of someone who is just honestly curious, open to understand. He is not at all accusatory, not interrogating.

Primero looks at Rollo. “I am so sorry,” he says. The defiance is gone. “And not just about Segundo. I am sorry about all of them, sorry about betraying the cause, the company, sorry about betraying you, Rollo. Most of all I am sorry about that. Maybe even more than about killing Segundo. Yes, that is worse, betraying you, who saved us. You did not deserve it. But Maria …”

“What about Maria?” Rollo leans closer. “Is that what the woman, the stranger, was all about? Maria?”

Primero nods, closes his eyes. “Yes,” he says. “Yes. He sent her, the pig-man did. He tracked us down, tracked me down, and he sent her to give me the message.”

“Who was she?”

“Her name was Luz. She was from our village. I did not recognize her at first, she was a teenager when I left, but then I did see it in her face. She was an innocent, a sweet girl, perhaps a little vain, but who is not, what beautiful, young girl is not.” He smiles ruefully. “But now she was very different. Arrogant, haughty, sure of herself, cold. She was one of them now, one of the Presidente’s, one of the pig-man’s most trusted. She was still young, but her eyes were old, her heart was turned to stone.”

“What was her message,” Rollo asks. “About Maria?”

"I say she was cold, but that is not right. She was … " he searches for the right words “… she was … evil. This is such an empty word. Evil. It has lost its true meaning, the way we use it, the way we say the word so casually. This is evil. That is evil. He is evil. She is evil. It means nothing. Until you see it. Until you see true evil. She was true evil. She enjoyed telling me all about Maria, about the depravities she had suffered over ten long years, and was still suffering, and would continue to suffer, and more so, because she was older now, past the age of fifty, half-a-century old, and the pig-man no longer felt for her in the same way, and had younger mistresses, but he still enjoyed seeing her ‘perform’, was how she put it, only now it was no longer a private performance, not the pig-man himself, but many men, and Luz took great delight in describing one of these performances, in detail, and she could assure me they would go on and on and on, only more frequently and with increasing depravity, because the pig-man prided himself on his creativity in such matters, and all this was the way it was going to be unless … unless I was to do what he asked, the pig-man.”

“And what did he ask?”

“For me to betray you, Rollo, to betray the company, the cause.”

“Which is what you did.”

“Which is what I did.”

“So,” Rollo says, “she offered you a deal.”

“She offered me Maria.”

“In exchange for …”

“In exchange for giving you up. She wanted me to — well, he wanted me to, she was only the messenger — he wanted me to become your Judas. She had a paper with a spot for his signature, the Presidente’s signature, a full pardon, for all my crimes against the people and the government. And I would get my Maria back again. And Maria, she would be released from her bondage, her suffering, her humiliation.”

“Tempting,” Rollo says.

Primero smiles, a slow, sad smile. “And all I had to do,” he says, “is give up my friends.”

“Such a small price.” Rollo matches his slow, sad smile. “And, so, Segundo killed her.”

Primero is startled. “Yes,” he says. “Yes. How did you know?”

“Certainly you would not have,” Rollo reasons. “You needed her alive to bring the message back to the pig-man that you were going to go through with the deal, to get the Presidente’s signature on that paper, to free Maria. So, it was Segundo.”

“Segundo ripped that paper from her hand, and he tore it into small pieces, and he yelled into her face that this would never, never be, and she laughed at him, saying that it was up to me, that the paper meant nothing and ink is cheap, and the pig-man was ready to honor the deal.”

“Then he killed her.”

“He drew his knife, Segundo did, and he stabbed her in the neck, and he stabbed and stabbed and ripped her throat open, and she was dead, bled out. One moment she was there, eyes twinkling with that evil she had, all strong and haughty, and then in the next moment, she was empty, no soul.” Primero crosses himself, twice. “Her soul gone to the devil,” he says.

“Why did he do it?”

“Segundo turned to me,” Primero says, "and he said ‘There, brother, I have removed the temptation.’ And, so help me, God, I wanted to kill him right there, right on the spot. He, who had already lost and mourned and grieved and moved on, and I knew of the other women he had, many, many other women. He, what right did he have to hurt Maria in this way? To hurt me in this way? To take her away from me all over again?

“But I made my heart cold in my chest, and I grasped his hand in mine, his hand red with her blood, and I thanked him. And the plan sprang fully formed to my mind.”

“You would do what the pig-man had asked.”

“Yes. And, when I had betrayed you, when I had destroyed the company from within, then I would claim the pig-man’s promise.”

“From a man without honor?” Rollo leans forward, looks deep into Primero’s eyes. “Did you really believe this man without honor would keep this promise?”

“Oh, yes,” Primero says. “Not because he has honor, but because I would have someone he wanted more than my Maria.”

“Who?”

Primero smiles, another sad smile. “I think you know.”

“Say it.”

“You, Rollo, you. He has long since had his fill of Maria now, I am sure of it. She is, like me, old, worn out. What does he want with her? But you, you he would want.”

“So, part of this plan, the one that sprung whole into your mind, was to make me your hostage.”

“Yes. First, to break up the company, to make it come undone from the inside.”

“With the killings.”

“With the fear. The irrational. The superstitious. The emotions. So much stronger, and you know this, Rollo, than reason, so much stronger, even, than loyalty and honor.”

“And then, after the company is decimated, diminished …”

“Then, I take you. I take you to the pig-man, and I make my trade.”

“You are an old man, Primero. How could you take me?”

“Old, but strong,” Primero says proudly. “Strong and desperate. Have you, yourself, not said that there is power in the desperate hope? This is what makes our cause so powerful, in spite of our weakness, in our desperate hope we have power, we are strong.”

Rollo smiles.

“So, you made your deal with the devil,” he says.

“I made my deal with the devil and all his demons and with the pig-man, and with the corpse of Luz, his woman agent. And I told Segundo what we must do.”

“Ah, so that morning,” Rollo says. “When we heard the shot, the scream.”

“Yes,” Primero smiles, and his face, for a moment, lights up in genuine pride. “That was me. The shot, the scream.”

And you think back to that moment when you woke from your dream, and now you know what bothered you, afterwards, about this scene. There were five men around the fire, five backs and stretched necks when you woke after the shot rang out, after the high pitched scream, and then, moments later, as you ran down that steep slope from the plateau, looking around you, reflecting on the pure joy of the hunting party, then there were six.

You close your eyes, picturing them around the fire, and you see, in your minds eye: Rollo, Raphael, Aureliano, Jose, and … Segundo. Or Primero. It was always impossible to tell them apart. But just one of them. Then, moments later, running down the slope, the twins were definitely both there.

“You joined us,” you say, “in the chase.”

“That’s right,” Primero says, eyes full of pride again, a small sneer on his lips. “And you never knew. I fired the shot, I screamed the scream. She never did. She never even had a pistol. She had nothing, just the piece of paper, the pardon from the Presidente. And she never even screamed. Segundo’s knife hit too fast. She never had the time to scream. All this was for your benefit.”

“And to establish the alibi,” Rollo says.

“Yes, and this is what I told Segundo. This is what I told him. ‘We need alibis,’ I said. ‘Let us make it look like a wild animal killed her.’ And all the while, the plan was there, like a crystal castle, fully formed in my mind. The full moon, the way her throat was ripped out, I saw what I needed to do.”

“The werewolf.”

“Yes.”

“And Segundo?”

“He had to die.”

“He deserved to die?”

Primero closes his eyes, moves his head from side to side, not a shake, not a nod, just a slow movement from side to side. He opens his eyes again:

“Yes,” he says. “Segundo had no right to take Maria away from me again. He had no right to condemn Maria to the further indignities the pig-man promised he had in store for her. He had no right. And ... he had to ... die, so that he could not prevent me from doing what I needed to do.”

“Your own brother.” Rollo shakes his head.

“Are you judging me, Rollo Frank?”

“Yes,” Rollo says, his back straightening as he sits cross legged, his eyes steel. “I am judging you. I am judging you for the killing of your brother, the oldest crime in the world, Cain’s murder of Abel, Primero’s murder of Segundo, it all plays out again. Yes, yes, I am judging you. I am judging you for the murder of Aureliano, of Jose, of all the other men and women. I am judging you for your betrayal of the honor and the loyalty and the love expected of you, after I and my men saved you and your brother, sacrificing lives to save you. I am judging you for putting your own selfish interest above the interest of the people. I condemn you. I believe that God condemns you.” Rollo stands up. “And I believe that Maria condemns you.”

Primero looks up, slack-jawed. Then:

“I will accept your condemnation, and even that of God. Yes, I believe God condemns me. But not Maria,” he says, “not Maria. Wolves mate for life, Rollo. You, who know wolves, who jest, or perhaps it is not a jest, that you were raised by wolves, you, of all people, should know this is true. Wolves mate for life, and Maria and I are wolves. What matters the world, what matters honor, loyalty, if I lose my Maria, my wolf?”

Rollo steps closer to Primero.

“So, you are a wolf,” he says. “A wolf who has betrayed the pack, who has threatened the leader of the pack. What happens to such a wolf?”

Primero does not answer, just looks up at Rollo. There is no defiance in his eyes. What you see there is … acceptance.

“Nothing wrong when a song ends in a minor key. You understand?”

“Yes.”

“You accept?”

Without a word, Primero raises his chin, looking straight into Rollo’s eyes, raises his chin higher, and you realize what he really is doing.

Baring his throat.

“For love!” These are his last words.

Rollo’s arm comes around in a powerful swing, his long arm, his arm tipped with shiny, sharp claws, and you realize, in the split second before the impact, that Rollo has picked up the contraption, the wooden extension with the sharp, curved knives attached, and he, Rollo, who has uttered the judgment is now carrying out the sentence.

The blades rip across Primero’s throat, blood gushing forth in a red stream, a fountain of life-blood, then pumping, the thick, red spilling out, and Primero lowers his head slowly, closes his eyes, and …

… he is gone.

***

On the morning we liberate the City, the sun stands high in a bright, blue sky.

We wear white shirts, red bandanas around our necks. We have skin tanned from living out of doors for years, eyes bright with pride and hope and resolve as we ride up towards the City, and see them coming out to greet us.

We recognize many, those who had been part of our company up on the mountain side, who had left, slunk away like a pack of punished dogs, fearful tails between their shaking legs.

Of course this is where they had gone, most of them. By ones and twos and threes, they had slunk away from our camp, and where could they go? Into the City. There they joined the infiltrators, the true believers, who were there, with a story perhaps, most of them, about this being part of the great stratagem, the genius of Rollo Frank, to send them into the City in small parties.

And this, you know, is the way it will be remembered, the way it will be recorded for posterity, because you are the one that will record it that way, and they will all breathe freely now, that their cowardice will never be revealed.

And so it is that when we, the few, the brave — there being now thirty-three of us — ride up to the City, all the work has already been done for us.

The white walls of the City crack open like an egg, because the chick has been pecking at it from the inside.

And this, of course, was always Rollo’s plan. It was supposed to take longer, many more months, and at most one quarter of the City’s population would have been turned to our side before we entered. As it turns out, more than half of the City is already firmly aligned with our cause because of the infusion of a critical mass, more than seventy of our numbers, who left to hide from the werewolf, to hide from a sixty-year old man, to hide from Primero.

And so it was: Primero did not, in the end, destroy our cause.

He saved it.

By driving the majority of our party into the City on a desperate mission to save their own hides, with shame in their hearts, shame that turned to resolve, resolve that they would restore their personal honor and our joint cause, a cause that now was their personal salvation from the weight of cowardice. And now they come out to greet us.

First among them, first of those that come out to greet us:

She.

Red hair.

Pale skin.

Luminous in the sunshine.

Bice!

Alive.

Bice!

Alive.

She’s alive. She’s alive.

You see Rollo jump down from his horse, run over to her, and they embrace.

You hear her say:

“I was so afraid for you. I so wanted to stay, to be by your side.”

She lowers her head, buries her face in his shoulder, shaking, crying, deep sobs.

Rollo pats her back.

“It had to be this way, Bice. You know this to be true. I would not have been able to do what needed to be done if I had to keep one eye on you, for fear the Wolf would get you.”

You turn away, eyes stinging, watering. So they planned it together. The dead woman without a face, his grief, all an act.

They did not trust you with the truth. He did not trust you. Rollo did not trust you. Bice did not trust you. She could have taken you aside, let you know, spared you the agony of this false grief you’ve carried ever since.

Something cracks deep in your chest, like lake-ice thawed thin, and you know that if you don’t get away right now, you will burst, spilling over in front of everyone, in front of the two of them.

A heavy hand on your shoulder.

Gratia.

A look of concern on his face.

He lifts up your chin, says:

“Now, now, big girls don’t cry.”

“Don’t call me a girl!” You spit out the words.

“Woman, then.”

“Fighter! What does it matter if I’m a woman or a man?” Only that one thing. That, if you were a man, then perhaps you and Bice…

“Okay. Fighters don’t cry.” Gratia grins and, seeing that the tears I never shed have now dried, from the inside, he grabs my arm. “I want to show you first. Come!”

He drags you over to one of the wagons where he pulls out a large, square package wrapped in a putty-colored tarp, unwraps it, and there it is, the painting he has been working on.

You step back, take a good, long look at it.

“We are older,” you say. “Rollo’s hair is gray.”

In the painting, Bice, older, but still beautiful, silver strands threaded through here red hair, stands between grey-maned Rollo and yourself, her arms one around each of your waists, and you, your foot planted on a dead wolf, are looking at the two of them, Rollo and Bice. You seem a family, of a kind, the three of you.

What you see, is pride, the feeling of pride, and also ‘a pride’, two she-lions and a grey-maned male lion, making up your own, personal pride. And what you see is love, shared, each of you loving one another, a trinity of love.

And you know, peering into the future through Gratia’s magic arts, that this will be enough.

The love you would want to share, openly, with Bice, you know that cannot be. Not in this life. Perhaps, you think, if there is such a thing as reincarnation, then in a future time, a future place, this particular wall that constrains love will come down.

Perhaps you will ask Gratia to use his magic to envision that day, show you that image of a future life in a painting.

But in this life, this will be enough, this pride, this closeness, this shared love.

What we do for love.

So much more than what we do for a ‘cause’.

But at the heart of our cause, is there not love? Is there not a genuine love for all the people who are hurt, who need healing, who need justice?

You look, from the painting of Rollo and Bice, to the real Rollo and Bice, and beyond them, to the freedom fighters, to the mass of people who have come to greet us, to join us. And you look now in the direction you know is South, the direction where the Capital awaits.

Let us go!

Let us go, for Martha who died, for Maria who lived, for Jose and Aureliano and the many men and women who were killed in vain, for Segundo, who died at the hand of his brother, for Primero, the wolf who mated for life, for all of them, let us go!

For love!

Let us go!

— THE END —

If you want to know more about how I developed this story,
here is a link to a blog post that describes the writing process.