They waited there in silence for long than was healthy.
The air inside that damp hideout was getting worse and worse as the day dragged on.
Past noon Brenin could not help but convulse. He was fighting the curse all he could and do nothing as it overwhelmed him. She watched the beast emerge, two beastly eyes that fell on her.
One motion of her hand forced him back on the ground.
A few more minutes and he regained his mind. Another hour squirming before the fur receded, the muscles, the muzzle, until he felt his clothes on him again.
He was in no mood to talk after that.
Hunger pushed him toward the black bread he had left. He brushed away the worms, bit his dry meal; she knew it tasted like sand to him; he kept expecting to have to share but the werewolf would not leave her spot.
But that was it, that was the last of his bread.
Brenin sighed.
"If the guards don't come, hunger will do me in."
"I will get food for you."
She was keeping her eyes close, as if sleeping, as if the light had not slipped away from her back to lose itself further away in the soil.
"So." He grumbled. "How many of you are there?"
"I am the only one."
"You come from Cormoran, right? Don't deny it, Grisval spilled the beans. What kind of crazy devils haunt those castles..."
Joan did not feel the need to answer that. To her this man kept chasing after his own tail, now that he had one, rather than face the present.
She could have asked him in turn the many questions she had about him, had she cared.
So it was on him to break the silence again.
"What turned you into... this?"
"A ritual."
"And you were what, a victim, an acolyte, the ringleader?"
She looked at her hand. In her memory it was still a black paw.
"I was alone."
"You really don't like to talk, do you?"
"We are not talking." She let her eyes close again. "You just like the ring of your own thoughts. All I hear is your appetite for murder. Sing any variation of that tune but don't call that talking."
"Great! Just sweet." And he put his hands behind his head. "We can't even agree on what talking is."
But she had not lied.
There was talking and talking. As he peered for information not once did he really care to hear what she had to say. And the human in turn, as she told him, had done nothing but looked to fuel his hatred.
He would have blamed a ritual's victim of turning like her tormentors.
So he already knew what he wanted to hear; and there was nothing new he could tell her.
The afternoon was already stretching far, sun still high yet pushing past and behind more clouds. Tomorrow would still be spared but the day after the sky would pour all it had on the land.
She rose her head.
Ears perked, on alert, Joan waited for something to repeat through the gap left above her.
Those were steps, from a single person, a male. For her moment her heart hoped for Grisval but she quickly concluded that one was too frail. It could be anyone then, if that person didn't stop in the landfill of rocks.
He stopped there.
Brenin approached. He could not quite hear it himself, got startled when the rock above them moved. Someone struggled to push it aside.
She held Brenin's sleeve and whispered: "Go."
The woodcutter looked at that monster, then at the hole and, after a moment, started to climb the rope. Just then he heard his friend's voice calling:
"Brenin? Are you there?"
"Roland!"
And Brenin to hurry up, to help push the stone aside and get out. There was the blacksmith's apprentice, black hair longer by three days or so and still no beard on that pristine face the furnace blackened each day.
They plain embraced, too happy to see each other again.
"It's been too long!" Brenin complained, then soured. "I'm sorry for the fair."
"Can't be helped. I should have waited before telling Maud."
And Roland patted his arm.
"Look at you, so healthy! I feared you would let yourself starve to death! Here, I brought you..."
"Oh come on!"
"... It's just what I could gather on the way."
He took the leather sack from him and put it on his own shoulder. The two friends were laughing a bit, cheerful. Less cheerful. Their gaze went heavy.
"Brenin, I don't even know where to begin. Lord Abelard showed up at the forge and told me to find you. I am dead serious."
"But you are okay, though? They won't do anything to you?"
"I'll be okay." He hid his doubts behind a smile. "Just how much do they know? And how come you know his wife?"
"What?!"
Roland explained from the top.
First a twin had come and told him to find his friend. To find him he was advised to look for wild beasts. Since the saintess, he meant the church, had gone mad blessing everything in sight, he checked with them.
That's where he met the hunter who reminded him about the cache.
As far as the apprentice could tell, Brenin had to be working for the bear or at least for the saintess; anything else made no sense to him.
But above all, Roland had to deliver a message.
"So. You have to take his wife to the road for Cormoran. Tomorrow, he didn't say when exactly. He will meet you on the way with a priest. Does any of that make sense to you?"
"No." Brenin admitted. "Who even is that wife, I've never heard a lord's son got married!"
"Me neither, but we have to find her. The Pivert know everything about us and if we don't do what they say, we are dead."
At that moment he heard a noise behind his friend and looked down to see the silver dog near the woodcutter's legs. It gave him a jolt to see it so close, from nowhere, with such fierce features.
The dog kept its head low and he could not tell if it was sad or angry.
Brenin had seen it as well. He could tell by scent who she was and from there suddenly that talk about a wife made more sense, if barely.
"That dog is with you?" Roland checked.
"Yeah, you could say that. Eh, I think I can handle the whole wife thing. And if that son is alone, that could even be the occasion to..."
The dog growled.
"No, forget it." Brenin continued. "Better lay low for a while longer."
"Sure. I'll look after Maud for you, don't worry. She will be okay. You stay safe, alright? Who knows, if things settle we'll get to drink together the three of us!"
"Yeah! Let's give it, just... two more weeks, or so."
"Better late than never."
They shook hands again, but before he departed Roland stopped again. Stray dogs could attack without a warning, yet he crouched and carefully approached a hand to pet this one.
She let him.
He couldn't help but smile while scratching the fur on her head, up behind the ears and along the neck.
"That's a wonderful dog you found." Roland mused. "If wolves existed, they would look like that. Bigger, stronger, but quite like that. Don't you think?"
Brenin had a sour laugh at the thought.