Protector Kaiyou Tsunekura made Nyall tell the other fifth-year Servant novices of the drills his father made him do as a young wolf. He told them about combat shifting exercises and bar relays with shifting stations. He reminisced about falling into his skin at the finish of some days because he barely had the strength to carry the weight of his skin to eat and to bed. They all seemed shocked at the rigorousness of the Wemyss training until he got to posting.
“No way, Nyall.” Terrance shook his head. “That’s not possible. No one can jump and shift like that.”
Kaiyou raised an eyebrow. “Just because you have not seen a skill does not mean it does not exist. Who else does not believe it is possible?”
All the others raised their hands tentatively, even Bennett, who was quickly becoming Nyall’s best friend. The Shogunate stood and waved for his trainees to remove their chairs, as he walked around placing small colored mats on the floor.
To Nyall, Kaiyou inclined his head. “Show them.”
Nyall looked at the mats, “On the pillows? I have not jumped on pillows since I was a pup of three or four.”
“Pretend they are pups, and you are teaching them a new game,” Kaiyou ordered over the grumbling of the others.
Shrugging, Nyall stripped out of his kilt, and stepped on the first mat. “Do ye want to call the shifts or do ye just want me to go?”
“Do it as quickly as you can, the way your father had you train Luca Dolbeau.”
Nyall flinched slightly at the mention of Delilah’s lost mate, Luca had been his friend, but he focused on making the ten jumps with shifting as quickly as possible. He never thought when he was training as a youth that his path would lead him here to train fellow Servants of the Moon.
The others gaped at him as he finished and turned back to the center of the room, then Kaiyou said, “Wolf.”
Nyall jumped back to the previous mat, shifting to his wolf. As soon as his paws touched the mat, Kaiyou called, “Skin.”
Nyall jumped, landing with one knee bent, ready to spring to the next.
“Beast.”
“Skin.”
“Beast.”
Nyall’s beast shifted smoothly before it landed. It tapped its toe claws on the mat in expectation, but Kaiyou didn’t call any other shifts. Instead, the instructor turned back to his gawking students. Only eight had made it this far, Nyall made nine, but he was far further in his martial training than any of the others. Kaiyou’s younger brother Ketsu was training the eleven younger apprentice servants in years two through four of Wanderer training, leaving Nyall as the only first year. The brothers had talked and decided it was a boon to have Lyallfr’s son to help with the martial training.
Kaiyou announced firmly, “By the time, we leave in the spring for the Eye of the Goddess, we will be posting and doing many of the other martial practices of the Wemyss Warrior Wolves. Nothing worth having is easy. I suggest you pick young Nyall’s brain on how to do this without falling and breaking something. Begin practicing; you have one week to learn.”
Terrance made a disgruntled, dismissive sound, “It’s impossible and a lot of good it did New Wemyss, they all died.” He ended up on his back with Nyall’s beast snarling in his face.
“Stand down, Comhnyall.” Kaiyou’s alpha tone vibrated the room. Those standing dropped to their knees, but it only caused Nyall to blink at him.
After a few moments, Nyall stepped back into his skin. Rage flushed his face as he spat the words at Terrance. “They sent as many warriors as we had elder, adult, and juvenile pack members to attack us, and they used a witch, so we couldn’t communicate. We were killed because the magic stole our wolves from us, but it didn’t stop us from fighting back with silver. Our warriors and shewolves couldn’t use their wolves or beasts, until after I killed the witch outside the keep. My Mamó’s magic protected me when the witch tried to burn me. Then Alpha Wemyss used those that were left to slaughter the honorless dogs, even though we were vastly outnumbered. He knew we had lost so he sent me away with his daughters to protect them. But I went back to bury the dead, I scented the blood of the survivors who fled, and as of this day, only one remains alive. Someday, I will stain my teeth tearing out his heart, and I will roll around in his blood until my wolf is painted red.”
The others stared at him in shock at his revelation and the vicious vow of vengeance. Nyall trembled as the rage refused to leave him, without being dismissed he turned and stalked out of the training room before he hurt someone. Outside, he had his fur on before the snow that blew inside settled to the floor and bolted away.
Kaiyou addressed the other novices calmly, “Comhnyall is a Wemyss Warrior Wolf, he earned his first twelve-kill mark when he was barely fourteen. He fought to defend this Temple from rogues sent to take over the island and kidnap the Delphi. He may be the youngest in the training groups, but he has killed more than everyone in this room together except me… Terrance, you would be wise not to mock the loss of his pack or the dishonorable way in which it was accomplished unless you wish to be dismissed from your apprenticeship with the Servants of the Moon.”
Hours later, Nyall found himself sitting on the Delphi’s cliff looking down at the ice. He wanted to jump, he wanted to join Moire and their pack, but he couldn’t. Finally, Nyall turned and trotted back to the Warrior’s barracks and training hall. Seven of his fellow trainees were trying and failing miserably to shift while jumping. Terrance was just sitting in the corner, ignoring them. Shaking his head, Nyall wrapped his kilt around his waist and, in the quiet voice his father always used when explaining a new skill, he began to teach them to speed shift while simply jumping vertically. It was something he had learned when he was six or seven from copying his older brother, but none of his fellow trainees had ever heard of such a thing.
By evening meal, most of them were laughing and joking with each other about how they tried and failed comically to complete a shift while mid-air. Bennett begged Nyall to show them ‘posting’ for real. Their boisterous conversation in the commons, drew many to follow them out into the dark night with torches. At the place where they normally hung prey to clean or fish to dry, Nyall climbed to the top of the tall log poles using his beast’s claws then shifted back to his skin.
“Essie, will ye call the shifts for me?”
Esther grinned, “Do you want me to call them as fast as I saw your father when he was training here six years ago?”
Nyall shrugged, “If ye want to.”
“Wolf!” Essie shouted. Nyall’s paws barely touched wood when she called out, “Skin!”
Ten minutes later, many were clapping as Essie called out sets of three shifts. “Beast, wolf, beast.”
Nyall easily made the jumps, shifting mid-air effortlessly. It was getting so cold that it was painful for his skin, and the breaths of the crowd rose like a mist over them.
He was about to repeat the set when a hooded figure called out, “Skin and come down.”
Nyall leaped down and landed mere inches from the Delphi.
“Did you have fun showing off like a fool?” Her voice was soft but insulting, frigid as the air around them.
“They wanted to see the skills of the warrior wolves, Kaiyou said to train them,” Nyall snarled in a disrespectful tone.
“And what happens when the warrior no longer has his wolf?” Delilah’s voice purred in contempt. “When his wolf is bewitched, and he has only his skin to fight with against those whose wolves are tainted with dishonor and sorcery? What then, Wemyss Master-at-Arms?”
Nyall bent until he was breathing into her hood, “My skin is strong enough to kill even the most wretched dogs.” Rotating suddenly, he kicked the post he had just jumped from hard enough that all heard it crack. Two powerful punches and it splintered, keeling over. Nyall picked it up and broke it over the stump.
“Damn…” Essie muttered at the same time as Bennett.
“If you can make kindling and impress my slut of a sister, then finding a willing choice mate shouldn’t be difficult because you can keep her den and bed warm,”
Nyall rose up over Del like the shadow of death, “I’ll. Not. Do. It.”
Putting her hood back, Delilah tipped her head at him. Her moon-lit eyes glowed slightly in the torch-lit darkness. “A pack of the weakest mongrels can still take down an alpha who stands alone.” Turning, Del walked gracefully back toward the Temple, calling back over her shoulder. “Clean up your broken stick, Servant.”
Shaking her head, Essie followed. The crowd began to disperse as Bennett offered Nyall his kilt and cloak.
“What did you ever do to piss off the Delphi?” Bennett asked as he gathered an arm load of the broken wood.
Picking up the largest piece, and resting it on his shoulder, Nyall growled deeply as they walked toward the pack community wood piles. He bowed his head, using his long blond hair to veil his rage after he dropped the post with a heavy thump. “On my birthing anniversary, I told her I would nah be king without mo ceile. I told her to tell the Moon to find another.”
While they walked back, Bennett gawked at him, blinking, “Mo ceile, what’s that?”
“Ceile means mate in the old tongue. My true mate, Moire, went to the moon with my pup still in her belly. I will not even consider finding another, no matter how stubbornly the Delphi demands it.” Nyall bent over the splintered wood, picking up more pieces. “My future died with them. I can still feel her when the moon rises, and I would rather die and be with her than follow some fairy story destiny about the monarch of this land coming from my pack.”
“It’s not a story,” Terrance growled at Nyall. “My grandmother is one of the oracles who confirmed the prophecy made by Delphi Eshuani in 1870. She sent me here because she said, the king had come, and I was to serve him during the war against the unfaithful. My brother was there with my grandmother when the Delphi took the monarch wolf home. He said the monarch was feral and killing the brown furs after losing his mate and pack… Seriously, are you him?”
“No,” Nyall said firmly as Essie interrupted, “Yes.”
He gave her a hard glare, but she just tipped her head in a way identical to her sister and smirked, “Your bark doesn’t scare me, Nyall MacGeal, and neither does your bite. You are to come to The Delphi’s scrying room… Now.”
“Is she going to apologize?” Nyall snarled and Essie laughed mirthlessly.
“Del, apologize… ha! Would the Moon apologize?” Shaking her head, she beckoned. “Let’s go, your Majesty.”
Essie went to find Kaiyou. It surprised Nyall how rarely the Temple pack used their pack link to speak to each other when they weren’t in their wolves, but then he realized that the pack had no real alpha. The Moon was their Alpha and the Delphi, their Luna. Nyall stood quietly by the door of the Delphi’s scrying room for a full minute before he reached up to knock.
“It’s open m’ogha (grandson),” Mamó ’s wolf called to his to come in.
Nyall entered and was shocked to see Del with her hand on Ainsley’s shoulder. Ainsley was sketching very slowly, unlike the quickness she usually sketched with when he had seen her drawing after waking up from a dream. Her pencil moved in slow motion. This time, she didn’t look awake. And Del was obviously having a vision.
“Go and look if ye want, ’tis the reason I summoned ye.” Mamó pointed at the drawing Ainsley was working on. “What do ye see?”
Nyall bent to one knee, he answered quietly. “It is me, and Kaiyou, but is that Del or Essie?”
Mamó sat down in a chair, leaning on her cane. “Ainsley be drawin’ Delilah’s moon marks and not her sister’s. See how they travel down her arms? It looks like ye are goin’ to be travelin’ with the Delphi.”
“But traveling where?” Essie asked as she silently closed the door behind the Shogunate.
Kaiyou glanced at the image, murmuring, “Obviously, to a bookshop.”
Essie gave him a withering glare, and the Shogunate regarded her with a blank face and emotionless dark eyes. “Save your heated looks for my rejected brother.”
Throwing up her arms, Essie marched out, grumbling under her breath. Mamó chuckled as Nyall looked after Essie, confused. “Is Ketsu Essie’s mate?”
“Nay, but they have potential, an’ despite Esther’s misguided desire to protect him from her true, she still loves him and he, her,” Mamó revealed in a disappointed tone.
“You see much, old one,” Kaiyou responded with admiration.
“I think ye mean, I’ve seen too much, Shogunate,” grumpily Mamó retorted as she stood. “I’d pack a bag, m’ogha. Ye never know when the Moon will send ye on a new path.” Then she hobbled out. Nyall followed her but Kaiyou stayed behind with the oracles.
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