Chapter Three

The town is larger than I expected. We seem to trudge forever between close-set walls, until at last lights pierce the darkness and we step out into an open space. Ugly buildings huddle around a central square, their wooden walls mottled and peeling, sun bleached but stained in dark streaks by the oily dust. It hangs in ugly halos around the lanterns, clings to my skin and coats my tongue, the taste rank, the stink of it making my throat raw.

People look through grimy windows and step out of doorways as we pass, gaunt, pale faces staring as I stumble along between my captors. I'm still bare-chested, and I see a few look me over with nods and whispers, leers and knowing glances.

I'm frightened and confused, too tired now for the heat which gripped me when I was first taken. My stomach rumbles; I've not eaten since the berries, and my meals over the past few days have been scant enough that I'm light-headed with hunger and exhaustion.

The square is empty, but as we cross it a bell begins to toll. My captors drag me onward; more people spill out of the surrounding buildings, watching and gossiping, their eyes on me like a tangible thing, and I feel a blush rise in my cheeks under the unaccustomed scrutiny.

Ahead, a building stands taller than the rest, more solid looking, though the walls are just as black-streaked as the rest of the town. Two huge doors, carved with the same snarling wolves I saw on the leader's cloak, stand open, and the hunters drag me inside.

It's dim within, the air hot and still, the tainted stench of the town somehow stronger, as if concentrated inside those thick walls. We're in a large room, filled with long benches; one end of the room is raised slightly, with a table and chairs upon it, and the bell tolls overhead.

Another man sits in one of those chairs, his wrists lashed to the arms. He looks to be about my age, with broad shoulders and handsome, well-sculpted features, but his skin is as pale as the other townsfolk, his short hair lying lank against his forehead. His frightened eyes are wide and startlingly blue as he takes in my arrival, and my heartbeat stumbles at the sight of him.

The leader drags me forward, pushes me down in the chair opposite the bound man, and ties me in place. "You two behave yourselves," he mocks, "while we fetch the priest to examine you."

With that, he turns on his heel and departs, his hunters falling in behind him.

As the heavy doors swing shut, the bound man across from me draws a shuddering breath, then breaks into a wracking, ugly cough. It sounds terrible, wet and harsh, and it goes on and on, leaving him red-faced when it finally ends in a ragged wheeze.

I stare at him, my old fears about the town rising up. I imagine I can feel my own lungs seizing, filling with the dust and stink that hangs heavy in the air.

"You're sick," I blurt when the other youth finally catches his breath. "What can they want with you?"

He looks at me, licking pale lips with an equally pale tongue. "The same thing they want with you," he says; his voice is thin and rough, but still there's something in it that makes a strange warmth steal through me. "I failed to make my lawful pilgrimage to the Temple; I knew I wasn't strong enough to journey a week or more. But the gods have their needs, and those who can serve are rare, so the Temple has sent out hunters to find any who failed to present themselves willingly for examination."

He coughs again, and the warmth drains from me. I think of Da, coughing his life away, and of my own lungs already feeling raw. "Why?" I ask, bewildered. "What service do these gods demand?"

He looks at me as though my words are foreign to him. "The Wolf Gods must sire children to fuel their power," he says. "Only men may serve them...and so, only those men who are blessed to be omegas can carry the gods' holy seed."

I gape at him, trying to wrap my mind around his words. The gods demand men, men who are blessed – or cursed – to carry...

"But, that's unnatural!" I protest. "How can a man bear a child?"

He stares at me, wide-eyed. "Where have you lived all your life, to not know of the gods and their ways?"

I'm saved from answering by the heavy doors swinging wide, admitting Garik and his bounty hunters. Behind them comes an old man. Unlike everyone else in the town, he isn't dressed in stained and worn homespun, but in a draping tunic made of the same fine, silvery-blue fabric which lines the hunters' cloaks, belted with a wide sash of midnight blue.

The priest, I realize. The priest of these unknown gods who think to get children upon men.

My skin feels tight, flushed and prickling with a sudden mix of shame and arousal that I do not understand.

The huntsman with the wolfshead clasp pulls out the other man's chair; a knife flashes, slicing the ropes that bind his wrists. "Eugen Coalman," the hunter says with a leer, "it is time for you to be examined, and to determine if you have been blessed by the gods."

He rises unsteadily, and I see him sway, with fear or weakness I cannot tell. I expect the hunters to lead him away, but instead they begin roughly stripping him of his clothing, revealing broad shoulders and a body that clearly was fit and strong not so long ago, though sickness has stripped away much of his flesh.

Garik shoves him down across the heavy planks of the wooden table, bent over so that his ass sticks up in the air, pale and vulnerable. Eugen pants softly, his breath wheezing in his throat.

The priest circles the table slowly, his wrinkled face impassive while the hunters leer and jostle one another. Eugen's hands rest slack on the table; I try to focus on them, to spare him the indignity of being watched, but as the priest reaches out to stroke a long line down his spine those pale fingers clench, and I can't help but raise my eyes and watch the spectacle unfolding before me.