Category: Ancient Britain

The Wolf in the Trees

The rain had not stopped since the hill.
It drummed on oak leaves, hissed across the ash of the fire, slicked every blade of iron until the men and women of the Black Shields looked like shadows burnished in oil. The night smelled of wet earth and smoke, of wounds bound with linen that would not stay clean.

Storm slept little. When he closed his eyes, the hammer fell, and the nails drove, and he woke with the sound of iron in his skull. So he stayed upright with his back to the birch, watching the drip of water through branches, listening to foxes bark and owls call, waiting for morning.

At dawn, a shape lingered beyond the edge of the fire’s reach. Low, black, moving between trunks with the patience of hunger. Storm’s hand went to the haft of his knife before he realised what he saw.

A wolf.

Not the lean carrion-pickers that shadowed armies, but broad in the shoulder, thick in the ruff, eyes burning with a colour no dog had ever worn. It did not growl. It did not flee. It stood in the bracken and watched him.

“Boldolph,” Storm breathed, though he knew the beast before him was no man, no brother, no shieldmate returned. But something in the tilt of the head, in the way it lifted its nose as if to scent not flesh but memory, made his chest tighten.

The others woke one by one. Cadan saw it first and rose with his knife ready.
“Leave it,” Storm said. His voice was rough with the weight of command.
Brianna squinted through the rain. “Is it a sign?”
Storm shook his head. “It is a wolf. That is enough.”

But when the wolf turned and padded into the thicket, Storm followed. He did not tell the others to stay; they knew.

The trail wound between dripping ferns and stones slick with moss. Once, the wolf vanished altogether, and Storm thought he had been chasing a ghost but then the shape appeared again on a rise of ground, waiting. Guiding. Testing.

At last they came to a hollow ringed with oaks older than any fort or cross. Their roots knotted together like clenched fists. At the centre lay a cairn of stones blackened with age.

The wolf set its paws upon the mound, lifted its muzzle, and gave one long, shivering call. Not to the pack for there was no pack—but to the world itself. Then it was gone, as if the trees had folded and swallowed it whole.

Storm touched the cairn. Cold. Wet. His fingers came away with lichen and soil. And something else. A groove cut deep, filled with rain. A mark he knew from chalk scratched on gateposts and painted on stolen shields. A ring.

The Gold Ring.

He knelt, pressing his forehead to the stone. For a breath he smelled not wet earth but smoke from a hall long gone, heard not rain but the laughter of those who had died before him. Nessa. Morrigan. Boldolph. Rayne.

The voices came like wind through hollow wood: Hold fast. The story is not done.

Storm rose. His wrist throbbed where the nail had kissed bone, but his grip was steady when he returned to the camp.

Brianna looked at him, sharp-eyed. “What did you find?”
“A place,” Storm said. “A promise buried under stones.”
Cadan spat into the fire. “More promises.”
“Not words,” Storm answered. “A mark. The old ring. It waits for us.”

The rain eased then. Just enough to let the fire breathe.

That night, when the Black Shields moved again, they did not march as hunted rebels, but as something else. A rumour clothed in rain, a shadow given teeth. And always at the edge of the path, in the corner of sight, Storm thought he saw the wolf pacing them between the trees.

© StormborneLore Emma Hewitt, 2025. All rights reserved.

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