When Horse Killer was young, though not young enough to excuse his cruelty, he chased a foal from a caravan tucked into a shoreline forest, eager to make it his supper.
She rushed in a screaming panic into the raging ocean. Like a gaping, wet maw, white caps sharp as any teeth, the waves rose and swallowed her. Horse Killer reared back his pursuit, dancing away from the water so the tide could not even reach his paws. Frozen in horror at the shore’s edge, he watched as she was dragged beneath the grey water by a riptide or some deep-born creature. Just as she disappeared beneath the hissing waves, a boy from the caravan burst from the treeline and hurled rocks at Horse Killer, howling and chasing after him. One stone struck him hard enough to break layers of fur and skin on the back of his head, but it did not slow his escape. Horse Killer vanished into the treeline before the Stone Throwing Boy could land another blow.
Later, in the forest, he came upon a woman wandering the path, stumbling and wailing. Keeping close to the shadows, stalking on his soft paws, Horse Killer followed her. She dragged herself around for hours, and it was nearly sundown when she finally stopped, collapsing beneath a tree at the edge of a clearing and resting her head against the trunk. Horse Killer stepped into the waning light, offering her a soft growl in warning. She lifted her head, eyes wide and bright with tears.
“Why are you weeping?” he asked from across the clearing. She lifted a large stone from beside her and held it up to strike him if he came too close. He remained still, and she dropped the stone.
“Have you come to eat me?” It was a question, but sounded like a plea, such was the weight of sorrow in her voice. Horse Killer dared to cross the clearing, keeping slow and low to the ground.
“No,” he said and lay down in the dirt in front of her. “Will you tell me why you are crying?”
While the sun set, she told him the story of her husband, a great warrior who had fallen in battle alongside his steed.
“His stallion was the greatest beast I have ever seen, broad as an ox, tall as a moose, swift as a deer. Before they went to fight, he sired a single foal.” She leaned close and hissed into his ear, “She was all they left me, and she was chased into the sea by a wolf.” Horse Killer lowered his head onto his paws and pinned back his ears, but did not growl or bare his teeth. She put her hand on his head and dug her nails into the wound where the Stone Throwing Boy had struck him; the blood was dry, but the wound still smarted with the pressure. He whined in pain.
“I did not kill her!” She leaned down and bared her teeth at him.
“What would you have done to her?”
The foal would have made a fine meal for Horse Killer. Better, he believed, than one of the grown, broken horses, a caravan dog, or even the Stone Throwing Boy. The stallion must have been something to behold for his progeny to be so swift and lovely. A fine meal, indeed.
The Weeping Woman released his head and stood, kicking him swiftly in the ribs. He whined again, scrambling to his feet. He tore through the meadow toward the treeline. She lifted the stone and threw it after him, but he was too swift and the stone too heavy. Dirt sprayed as it struck the ground in his wake.
Many miles away and many months later, Horse Killer found a burnt-out battlefield, rotted, unburied bodies lying broken in a vast clearing. He searched for a man and a horse but found neither. This army had no cavalry that he could see. A pair of ravens were perched on a yellowing aspen at the edge of the clearing. Their shining black feathers and clever dark eyes were stark against the bright leaves.
“Hello,” Horse Killer said, sitting beneath their branches. They cocked their onyx heads and looked down their beaks at him.
“Did you see this battle?” They bobbed their heads and cawed. “Did you see a great man atop a great stallion?”
“We saw no such thing,” one said, flying down and alighting on a broken pike. Not a pike, he realized as he looked closer, but the broken handle of a pitchfork. “The men here were only peasant boys. None of them mounted.”
“Have you seen many battles in this area?”
The raven still perched in the aspen cawed and flitted off, the one on the pitchfork jumping into the air to join her companion. Horse Killer followed them to the next battlefield.
It was a small scuffle, barely any fallen soldiers, and among them, the only cavalry belonged to the enemy. Well, the Weeping Woman’s enemy. Horse Killer had no enemies.
The final battlefield was sprawling. So many fallen men lay before him, and not just men. Horses. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe. Horse Killer spent days in search of the mightiest man and beast.
When he found them, they were surrounded by their slain enemies. He knew he’d found the Weeping Woman’s husband by the bones of a massive warhorse entangled with him. Even picked apart and rotted away, he could see they belonged to a great beast. Horse Killer pulled the helmet from his rider’s rotted skull and the sword from his disintegrated hands.
The ravens had helped him find each battlefield, but as they did not care for the living, they could not lead him back to the caravan. So, he set off alone. As nomads, they proved difficult to track. He returned to the seaside where he'd first seen them and tried to follow their trail, though it proved cold and fruitless. He searched all along the coast, through the countryside, and the forests. He searched with the sword in his jaws and the helmet atop his head for years. Word spread from village to village, city to city, about a wolf wearing armor and carrying a sword.
One day, when he graying around the muzzle, he stopped beside a silver stream to drink and rest. While he was lapping, a girl emerged from the forest, a basin resting against her hip. She froze before him on the opposite side of the brook.
“Horse Killer,” she said, eyes wide, not in fear, but awe. A myth lay before her, old and weary, but a legend nonetheless.
He paused his drinking. “My name is Leofric.”
She laughed and began to fill her basin, “No one knows that. No one calls you that.”
“Aren’t you afraid of me?”
“There is a stream between us. Can you swim?”
“I cannot,” he said. With an aching heart and a chill through him, he recalled the foal as the water swallowed her up. She’d been right to escape him that way; he was much too afraid of drowning to follow.
“Why are you wearing that helmet when you are covered in thick hide and fur? Why do you carry a sword when you have teeth and claws?”
Because the memory of that day had risen, he told her the story about the foal and the Weeping Woman, all the battlefields he had picked through, and the years he’d searched for the caravan.
“If you come with me, my uncle will help you,” the River Girl said, “but you will have to cross the stream.”
Though the water was shallow, Horse Killer knew it would be cold, and the current was quick and strong. He was old now, old and weak and resigned to his cowardice. He rested his head on his paws with a whine.
“I cannot,” he said in defeat. The River Girl sighed, lifted her basin, and left back the way she came.
Horse Killer was asleep by the stream when a stone struck his helmet. He leapt to his feet, baring his teeth and growling in the direction the stone had come from.
The Stone Throwing Boy was much older now, a man really, but Horse Killer recognized him. His arm had improved, too, he surmised from the way he’d rung the helmet like a bell with that stone.
“Come for another foal?” the Stone Throwing Boy asked venomously. Horse Killer bowed his head so the helmet tumbled off and set the sword behind it.
“I brought these for her if she still travels with you. If she still breathes.”
Behind him, peeking out from behind a tree, was the River Girl from the day before. He nodded at her, “Fetch the ramp from my wagon.”
When she returned, dragging a long, flat piece of wood, the Stone Throwing Boy helped her place it across the stream. “Bring your sword and helmet, Horse Killer,” the Stone Throwing Boy said. He felt his fear like a weight hung on his aging heart as he crossed the makeshift bridge, not daring to look down at the water.
They led him back to the wagon, and the Stone Throwing Boy welcomed him inside. Horse Killer tried to climb up without the ramp, but his joints were too stiff, and he whined in pain, sitting and looking expectedly at his human companions. The Stone Throwing Boy and his niece helped to lift him in. The Stone Throwing Boy set the helmet atop the River Girl’s little head. She laughed, pounding on it with her bony fists.
“Are you hungry?” the Stone Throwing Boy asked Horse Killer. He licked his chops.
He gave Horse Killer a bowl of bubbling stew, and one each for himself and the River Girl. Horse Killer ate eagerly, though he was careful to mind his manners. He had not eaten the food of man since he was one. The stew meat was gamy and oily, almost with a metallic taste. Predator meat. A bear or a panther, probably, maybe even a wolf.
“How did you learn to speak?” the River Girl asked as her uncle fixed Horse Killer a bowl of wine.
“I learned from my mother, same as you.”
She nodded thoughtfully.. “Was she a wolf or a woman?”
“A wolf,” he said, though he couldn’t remember.
“Speaking of mothers, go fetch yours,” the Stone Throwing Boy said, “tell her an old friend has come to call on her.”
She left without argument, taking the sword and helmet along, and Horse Killer stared penitently into his stew. “Will she want to kill me?”
The Stone Throwing Boy shrugged and refilled the bowl of wine.
Hours later, Horse Killer stumbled out of the wagon and found the Weeping Woman standing beneath a cold moon, holding her husband’s sword. When Horse Killer appeared, she pointed it at him.
He came close enough to strike and lay down at her feet, resigned to the fate he had sought out. The weapon was no consolation, but a reminder of her rage and sorrow and want for vengeance. It didn’t compare to the mighty steed the foal would have been today, the living animal he’d taken from her. “Will you kill me then?” It was a question and a plea.
She raised the sword with shaking hands, and Horse Killer closed his eyes in preparation. He felt no twinge of the cowardice that gnawed him as he crossed the river, only acceptance and relief.
The Weeping Woman struck the sword into the dirt beside Horse Killer and collapsed to her knees with a sigh. He rested his head in her lap. She petted behind his ears, right over the scarred spot where the Stone Throwing Boy had struck him that day on the beach.
“I would have killed your foal. A fine meal she would have been for me, and full-bellied on her flesh I would have felt no remorse,” he admitted, answering her question after so many years.
“And now?”
Remorse. Remorse. Remorse.
"Now, I am sorry."