Bravely(44)

Fergus didn’t say anything for a bit. The thing about Merida’s father was that if he couldn’t say something loudly, he often didn’t say anything at all. He fidgeted a bit instead. He adjusted Hamish on the saddle in front of him. He scratched his wooden leg before his fingers remembered he’d lost it years ago, and then he scratched the other. He stroked his beard. Finally he said, “I reckon maybe she’s forgotten how good she used to be at it. You get stuck one way, don’t you, sometimes.”

“Is that what’s happened to you, Hame?” Merida asked. “Did you get stuck scared of eagles?”

Hamish just blinked at her from the safe circle of Fergus’s arms. He couldn’t be goaded into bravery, and he was too used to being scared to be ashamed of it. It was simply who he was.

She thought about pressing him further, but then Merida noticed the Midge’s ears were turning this way and that. Not in her usual surly way, but in an urgent, wary way. Glancing behind her, Merida saw that Humor, too, was starting to prance a bit, his tail held high as if he was thinking of bolting. Humor was not a pony who thought of much but a good mouthful of grass, so for him to be considering a jog so soon after his last was remarkable.

In the woods, Merida heard a shudder as some birds took flight, squawking in warning at each other.

Brionn’s wiry hair stood straight all up along his wiry spine. His little bright eyes, so rarely pointed in the same direction, were both pointed toward the woods.

“Dad,” she said.

“I hear it,” he replied.

“What?” Hamish asked nervously.

“I think we should—”

“Yes,” Fergus said. “Let Humor go if you must, he’ll follow!”

He clapped his big legs round Sirist’s deep chestnut sides, and Merida did the same to the Midge. They burst into a gallop.

The wolf pack emerged from the trees.



There’s a misconception that the spare winter times are the worst for wolf attacks. The reasoning goes that there’s not much food to be had, so they turn to humans. But the truth is that it’s far worse to be out on a fine summer’s day when the pack’s had a good year. Because then there are lots of new mouths to feed and the she-wolves are starving from feeding up their growing broods, and they’re all wanting to be educational in any case. What better to teach a young wolf to hunt than some travelers?

That was what happened to the priest and that lad who’d brought that one board game to DunBroch. Wolves. That lady from France, too, had gotten eaten, and her escort had only barely gotten away and now, according to Elinor, had joined a monastery after what he’d seen. It was experience, not fear, that had made Hamish guess that the injuries he’d spotted on Feradach’s face were from wolves. For quite some time, Fergus and the neighboring kings had an open call for wolf hunters, and the hunters would come at the end of the summer with a bag full of tails and get paid for each.

Merida had found the entire thing barbarous until the first time she’d gotten cornered by a pack. Wolves and humans were in a centuries-long battle where some years the humans won, and some years the wolves did.

So Merida and Fergus and Hamish galloped.

The wolves were silent as they hunted the family, unlike the silly-eyed hound dogs Fergus hunted with. The wolves were clever, too, trying to separate and trick the horses off the path and into traps, just as Merida had done with Feradach all those weeks ago. And the wolves were fast. The horses were, too, but they’d already been ridden all day after a lazy spring.

“I’m going to stop and fight them, Merida!” Fergus shouted. “You take Hamish!”

“I’m not leaving you, Dad!” Merida said.

Hamish’s eyes were wide with fear. Brionn darted in and out of Humor’s legs in a way that threatened to trip both of them. The wiry dog couldn’t decide if he was valorous enough to face the wolves or terrified enough that he needed to take cover. Merida understood entirely.

She reached for her bow.

But before she could decide which wolf to aim at first, a wild, pure horn sounded.

The wolves faltered.

The horn sounded again.

Merida and Fergus wheeled their mounts in circles, searching for the source of the horn.

It sounded a third time.

Suddenly, a massive creature with spines all over its body barreled out of the woods and between the horses. It was roaring. Arrows sprayed around it; one of the wolves let out a squall and bolted. Again, that horn sounded wildly. The Midge reared; Sirist spun. It was chaos.

“We’ve got you!” someone shouted. “You’re all right now!”

The commotion turned out to belong to a group of people dressed in leather armor and rough tunics. The creature with spines was a massive dog of the same breed the Dásachtach’s men had brought to DunBroch, only wearing clever leather armor with spines made of antler stitched all over it. And the horn was a substantial, rough instrument that both commanded the dog and terrified the wolves, who clearly understood what it meant. They were all led by a man with very black hair and enormous black eyebrows. The back of his leather armor was similiarly covered with spines, just like the dog, who returned to him with its tongue lolling happily.

This man was the first one to notice whom they had just rescued. His enormous black eyebrows shot up, and then he dropped down to one knee in immediate fealty.