Twenty-nine - The Red Riding

He sat unmoving amidst the strewn stalks of straw that were scattered across the floor of the cell, inhaling the raw stench that emanated from his fellow prisoners. It was a pungent mix of human odours, the scents of blood and sweat mixed with urine and tears, the dreaded offal of human suffering. He could hear some of the other children whimpering even now, crying in the dark, isolated tiny bodies shaking with fear and despair. The stench was always the same and the wild boy was familiar with it by now, but this time he found there were new scents for him to inhale. Moving slowly and quietly through the sleeping bodies that lay all around him, he made his way to the barred door that led out of the cell, sniffing as he did so, recognising a different spoor in the caged area directly across from theirs.

While the children had wept and whimpered, the wolves across the way had snarled and howled their disgust at their captors. Once the show of contempt was over however, they simply settled down to wait, the pack lying together in one great furred mass, bodies tightly pressed for warmth and comfort. As the wild boy looked he saw, like himself, there was one member of the pack that had not surrendered to slumber. The wolf sat at the cage door, looking across the way, inhaling the scents of the children that rested so tantalisingly close, yet out of reach. They hadn’t fed the children. They hadn’t fed the wolves either. The wild boy knew what that meant. He stared unflinchingly at the creature regardless, observing him coolly, taking in the eyes of the beast, glowing in the dark, the powerful body and the thick grey coat that hung regally over the muscular frame. They sat regarding each other for some time, two wild things in the silent dark, but no wilder than the place of madness and death they both now shared.

The wild boy was woken roughly the next morning by the stony-faced men who entered the cell. They kicked casually at the children scattered across the floor to rouse them. The men carried bundled cloaks of white and they gave one to each child to wear, outfits made of rough sheep’s wool. The other children did not resist. Some of them even smiled and laughed as they donned their new clothes, turning in little circles to show off their apparent finery to their comrades. The wild boy recognised their ignorance for what it was. They didn’t know why this was happening. They thought their torments were over. The wild boy eyed off the rough and muscled men that dressed the children. He saw scratches and scars on their bodies and thought they must be used to herding fierce beasts, having done so for some time. They were hard men, with thick skin and without emotion, but still he scratched and bit at them when they came to adorn him with the funereal garb. It took four of them to hold him down long enough to force the clothes onto him.

When the men began to herd the children out of the cell and down a darkened tunnel towards a great wide set of double doors, the wild boy was horrified to see some of the others were still laughing and smiling, comparing their outfits with each other. Did they really imagine that through those doors their loving parents waited to embrace them? The wild boy stood at the centre of the crowd, eyes narrowed, expression fierce. He had seen his parents slaughtered before him by the men who had brought him here. In the darkness before the closed doorway he tore the sheep’s clothing from his body, his expression savage as he shrugged off all vestiges of the covering in the dark before the doors were opened.

As the entrance swung wide before them, the children stumbled out in a group, hands held up to ward off the bright light that streamed down on them from outside. Too long they’d been kept in darkness and the rays of sunshine were nothing short of blinding. Blearily they peered between fingers, trying to make sense of where they were. The wild boy was already striding away from the rest, pacing purposefully across a sandy ground that bore bloody patches here and there, with discarded weapons lying randomly about, half buried in the sand. There was a roaring in all their ears, the excited shouts of a vast crowd.

The children looked up as their eyes adjusted to the light to find themselves within a vast arena. All around them tiered seating rose in circles, and every tier was packed with cheering crowds of people. The toga clad spectators were a mix of both poorer working class and the white robed rich nobles, segregated into different areas. Despite their backgrounds they were all united in their excitement for the show, shouting and applauding in a vast wave of sound as the confused children looked up at them. All except one, who kept his eyes firmly on the ground beneath his feet, scanning back and forth until he saw what he was looking for. A sword, half buried in the sand. He stood over it for a moment before stooping to retrieve it. He liked to imagine it was his father’s sword.

It was a large weapon, designed not for a child but for an adult to wield, but the wild boy held it easily none-the-less. Looking into the depths of the shining blade he thought he could see the faces of his parents, looking back at him. Their caring visages were smiling at their son, and for a moment he closed his eyes and remembered the warmth of their love. A love that had been taken from him. His eyes snapped wide and he turned, brandishing the blade, ready for battle. On the other side of the arena another set of doors was opened and the hungry wolf pack came raging forth like a great grey wave of teeth and claws.

The wild boy heard cheering in his ears and saw the other children, lambs to the slaughter, running in terror, screaming. All was chaos and blood as the ravenous beasts tore at the helpless children with their teeth. One of the carnivores came racing at the wild boy and was surprised as the blade cut through it. It fell upon the sands, painting them hot and red with its life force, dying almost instantly under the surgical precision of the boy’s stroke. Another wolf edged close and the wild boy slashed its throat open, his expression fierce but his movements controlled. By this time most of the other children had been savaged and the pack was busy stripping them of their flesh. A few survivors had been corralled against the curved wall of the arena, screaming and weeping as the wolves closed in on them and the crowd roared its appreciation of the show. But there was one wolf that wasn’t partaking in the frenzy.

It was larger than the others, its thick coat greyer, its savage eyes lit with power. The wild boy recognised it as the one he had watched in the cage last night – the one that had been watching him. It paced towards him, stopping just beyond the reach of his sword. The boy stood his ground, weapon raised, ready for the attack. It took him a moment to realise that the wolf had no intention of attacking him. When he realised that, he felt his sword arm dropping, his eyes staring intently into the eyes of the beast before him, realising that, no, this was no beast. The beasts were the ones in the stands around them, screaming for blood. This was something else. They were something else, two wild things. Wild, noble and powerful… but more powerful together.

“You are like me,” the wolf said to him. “You rage at the chains that bind you. You tear at the flesh that bleeds. You run from those who would find you. You bite at the hand that feeds.”

As the boy watched the wolf lowered itself before him, bowing low but keeping its eyes fixed on those of the boy. The boy’s own eyes went wide with a sudden understanding.

“From darkness to darkness, your blood broods in hiding,” the wolf said. “Yes, you are like me. Come and run the Red Riding.”

All around them in the stands the spectators looked on in shock as the wild boy mounted the back of the wolf. Where before there was shouting and cheers a sudden silence fell. Even the other wolves paused in their feasting and the surviving children forgot their terror for a moment and looked on enthralled as the giant wolf trotted around the arena, the wild boy sat upon its back, brandishing the sword above his head. The sword dripped red with blood just as the wolf’s slavering teeth showed glistening crimson. The wolf began to trot faster then, picking up speed as the boy held tight to it with his knees and wrapped his free hand into a fist clenching its thick grey hair. With a sudden mighty spring the great wolf leapt up from the arena with the boy upon its back. Members of the audience were frozen in horror as the beast soared upward, impossibly high, sailing straight over the enclosure walls to land heavily in the first tier of the audience that had been looking down upon the fighting below. They screamed in sudden terror as the boy and wolf landed in their midst, both snarling as the people scattered before them, falling frantically this way and that.

The wolf did not hesitate for even a moment, leaping through the crowd, tearing indiscriminately at the people with its fierce teeth. All around the members of the audience were running through the stands of the arena, screaming. Their faces were filled with terror now, terror for this beast that they had thought they could watch safely from a distance. The wild boy struck just as much calamity in their hearts, as he continued to ride upon the wolf’s back, swinging his sword in frenzied arcs, just as ferocious as the animal was, his expression just as savage.

Down in the arena something strange was happening. Walking as though in a trance, under some kind of spell, each of the surviving children walked steadily up to a wolf, climbing atop them as they knelt down in the sands to welcome their riders. Then the strange partnership of child and wolf followed the example the wild boy had shown them, with the remaining wolves leaping up into the stands as well, joining in the slaughter. They plagued their way across the tiered seating, slashing and biting and tearing, while the crowd stampeded before them, more of their number dying in the panicked crush of bodies desperate to escape. When the carnage was done, when all the spectators had either fled or bled, the wild boy and the great wolf stopped and turned back toward the pack scattered throughout the stands around them. In unison they howled and the pack howled with them. Then they were running and riding together, the wild boy and the great wolf in the lead, the whole pack racing out of the colosseum, through the cobbled streets towards the outer hills that lay beyond the city. They left behind them the great structures of ordered civilisation, racing to embrace the twisted natural forms of the great wilderness beyond.

There were legends that stated the city had been built by a man raised by wolves. It had all started with two brothers, suckled by beasts, raised in the wild. No legends would be told of the day of the wild boy though - afterwards none would speak of it ever again. For when the two hunters had united the crowd had caught a glimpse of its own forgotten heart as the two wild brothers had ridden together in a song of violence that was outside of their control. They let them go, the children and the wolves, the slaves and the beasts, and did not hunt for them again. For after all, theirs was the city of the murdered brother, land of Romulus. Rome… the empire of the wolf.