again. “This has nothing to do with my blindness.”
“You don’t know what it’s like for a father. I lived it all over again … Watching you get whipped brought back the memory of how the wolves scratched your face. It was too much.”
“I didn’t think about that. I —”
“There you stood, your flesh being torn, and again I couldn’t help. Again.”
“I didn’t want to be helped.” Merlin reached out painfully and clutched his father’s shoulder. Sliding his hand down, he brushed against the cold metal of the marriage-covenant band on his father’s arm.
Owain patted him on the head. “You’re braver than is good for a blind lad.”
“Tas … Father … I know I’ve asked before, but when I’m better, would you please come to chapel?”
Even as Merlin asked the question, the armband grew warm. And then hot.
His father jerked away and stood. “Had enough of monks. The troubles they cause.”
The gem on the armband gleamed red in the smithy flames. It reminded Merlin of the glowing eyes of the wolves from his nightmares, and he turned away.
Why did his father never want to go to chapel? Ever since Merlin started visiting four years earlier, his father had never approved. Sure, he’d blacksmith tools for the monks, but always grudgingly. And Mônda, Merlin’s stepmother, treated the monks with open derision. She would yell at Merlin in Eirish if he even mentioned them.
His father filled in the silence by changing the subject. “How’s your back? Your tunic’s bloody, and you’re sweating.” He wiped Merlin’s forehead with a dank-smelling cloth.
In truth, Merlin felt tired and weak. The darkness had crept into the smithy, and he yawned, hoping for sleep and the chance to forget his father’s stubbornness, as well as his own painful welts.
“You get some sleep, and we’ll talk more in the morning.” His father slipped out the back door, and the iron latch clicked shut.
Merlin lay awake long into the night, unable to sleep, hot and in pain. Wondering if he had a fever, he felt his own forehead with little result. He tried to doze but couldn’t get comfortable.
Outside, a wolf howled.
Then another. And close to the smithy. Too close. Were they after the goats? He lay perfectly still, straining his ears for any additional hints of the wolves’ location. One breath became twenty, then thirty. Nothing. As he began to relax, he heard it: low growling, just outside the smithy’s walls. A wolf began tearing at the slats of the window near the bellows, claws and teeth raking through the old wood.
They weren’t after the goats.
“It can’t be,” he whispered. After seven years, they were hunting him again.
His trembling fingers traced the scars running from his eyelids as he forced himself to sit up on the bed. Finding the tin box of char, he slid off the lid, blew on the coals until they glowed, and finally held the tip of the rush lamp to it. The oil-soaked reed began to smoke but didn’t light.
The wolf snarled now, and chunks of wood splintered and fell to the ground.
The wick flared, lighting the room with a pale shimmer. Barely enough for his feeble vision to guide him.
More wood cracked away as the wolf ripped at the shutter.
Why hadn’t his father mounted an iron grate in the window? Merlin fumbled next to his pallet and found his dirk. At least his father had made this for him.
Other wolves scratched at the double doors facing the road, and the hinges groaned.
Merlin’s eyes searched for details, fear making his hands numb. Had he fastened the bar before bed? Leaping from his pallet, ignoring the pain, he ran barefoot across the blacksmith shop. The rush lamp gave enough light for Merlin to avoid the blur of workbenches between him and the doors.
The wolves clawed at the heavy doors and pushed them open a crack.
Merlin slammed his body into the oak timbers, sending pain shooting through the wounds on his back. Grimacing, he lifted the bar from the floor and banged it into place. He slumped down and sucked in a mouthful of air.
Beyond the bellows, the wolf at the window grunted as it scrambled through.
Merlin’s heart pounded as he found his footing and ran toward the wolf. But he tumbled over a stool and sent his knife skittering into the darkness.
Weaponless, he jumped at the workbench, hoping to find his father’s latest sword, but instead his panicked hands found hammers … rasps … chisels … and scrap iron. Where’s the sword? If only his