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Chapter Text

Argant flexed his hand, marveling at the movement of his fingers. They seemed simultaneously too long and too fragile after wearing a bisclavret's paws for so long.

Wearing. As if the form of a bisclavret was clothing that he took on and off. When it was the reverse. Very much the reverse.

His king laughed and took his flexing hand, clasping it to his chest. Something Ronec had not done since long ago. Since they were just a prince and a lord's heir. Ronec said, "I see you and yet I cannot believe my eyes. I thought you were dead. That woman made me think you were dead and lost to me."  

His betrayer had done more than that.

Argant blinked, looking at the scarlet of Ronec's tunic, bright even by candlelight, that so beautifully matched the wool of his hose, which just this morning had appeared gray to his eyes. The eyes of a bisclavret. He breathed in and felt an aching emptiness at how little that inhale told him. Nothing of goose-fat-soaked trenchers, blackbird subtleties, and roasted leeks, though his mouth still remembered the flavor of under-table treats from Ronec's hand. Little of Ronec's warm unique scent.

He flexed his fingers again, this time spreading them over the solid warmth of Ronec's chest. Marveling at how sensitive his fingertips were. How soft the velvet felt. 

"My dear Argant, you have been lost to me for so long, and here you are." There were tears in Ronec's kind eyes. 

No. That look was not driven by kindness. What he'd had done to extract confessions out of Argant's betrayer and lover had not been kind. 

Betrayer. Hard to call her his wife after she’d claimed to love him. Vowed before church and God to love and hold to him. Claimed to love him to his face many times. Yet on learning the truth of him, she had seen him as a monster. While still claiming to love him, she'd extracted the last secret. That it was the clothing from her hand that allowed him to retake a man's shape.

In the cruelest way, she had not merely taken up a lover or denied Argant any further clothing from her hand. 

She had kissed Argant with love when he went to the woods, while her lover waited to steal his hidden clothing once Argant was in the shape of a bisclavret. While she destroyed every last set of clothing that she'd given Argant. She did this so that everyone would think Argant was dead. So that she could live in Argant's home and enjoy the wealth of Argant's lands with her lover. So that she could call her lover husband while she coupled with him in the marital bed she'd shared with Argant. So that when Argant, in bisclavret's shape, whined at the edges of his own home, she could have men he'd known his whole life drive him away with cudgels and torches. 

That much she and that lover confessed when Ronec's men distressed them. All the while she'd urged Ronec to see what she saw. That Argant was a monster.

"Argant, be here and now with me." Ronec's grip was firm. A king's command. Argant blinked and looked into Ronec's loving eyes.

Argant had seen that same look years ago. They hadn't said the words of devotion that his betrayer had sworn, for a prince did not have that freedom, but when the old king had gone to war against the Franks, Argant had shared Ronec's pallet . Argant had resisted the lure of the wilderness to be Ronec's strong right arm in that war. Acted as his protector in the battle that had made Ronec fatherless and a king. Held him in his grief. Traded kisses for comfort and tears. 

"Argant?" Ronec framed Argant's face with his hands. Argant had not forgotten that Ronec's hair was strawberry blond or that his eyes were green. Memory supplemented candlelight. Even so, the range of colors was greater than he'd seen in a very long time. 

He cleared his throat and tried to frame words. Clumsy in his mouth. He didn't want the first thing he said to Ronec to be an inarticulate cry. A monster's voice.

"Take your time." Ronec pressed a kiss to his forehead by way of benediction and command. 

He wetted his lips again. His voice was a rough rasp. "Not dead. Bisclavret." Not garwaf, he told himself. He had never been a garwaf, though the difference was just a few miles, the distance to the northern border and Frankish lands. He felt the snap of his jaws on the leg of the lord who'd conspired with his betrayer to condemn him to an animal's lot. He tasted his betrayer's flesh, for all he'd spat that flesh out with a curse.

He was so lost in himself that he started when Ronec's hands slid down over the tattered tunic, all that was left of his last set of clothes. A forgotten garment in a trunk that had survived his betrayers purge of them. "How did this happen to you? Was it your… wife?"

Ronec spoke that last word as if it was sour cabbage in his mouth. But then, Argant's marriage had been arranged by his father from the time of his youth for his own protection, and consecrated during Ronec's father's last illness. For fidelity and love of his betrayer, Argant had forsworn his king's sweeter favors. 

"No and yes." He closed his eyes. Ronec's hands were a warm and steady tether to an errant tuft of thoughts blown hither and thither. "I have always been thus." A simple way of compressing his father's angry instructions. The old priest his father had brought to pray over him for hours. The cold baths. The rough wool shirts. The ritual of drawing on his humanity, provided he had the gift of a garment. "When I… hunger-wild, I change."

Ronec pressed a hundred light kisses to his face. Kisses that Argant returned as fervently as any hound with their master. He could be a hound, not a bisclavret. He could stay by the hearth and not long for the wild. He told himself what had never been true.

When passion's flare had Ronec reaching to skim his tunic from him, the king stopped the motion short. "You won't," he paused, clearly trying to think how to frame the question. "That woman said you could only resume your shape if you put on your own clothes. Does this mean that you will change back if you undress?"

"No." Argant swallowed. "It is as a bisclavret that… I must," he struggled for the words, "When I am in a beast's shape I need…clothes that are…a gift from someone…sworn to me…so I can be human again. As a boy, clothes from my father, who held me at the baptisimal. As a man, from my…" he smiled sadly, "wife." He didn't want to think about the many times he'd tried to steal clothing from a washer woman. Bathing knights. From Ronec himself. To no avail.

He didn't want to dwell on it. He had his human shape for now. He carefully removed the worn tunic. The last garment his wife had given him. 

When they were both bare, they lay together in the old way. Argant could feel the undoing of a loss in every caress and kiss. In the firm grasp of Ronec's sword-calloused hands on his body. In the sensation of his own fingers over soft skin and hard muscle. 

When Argant came, he cried out like a man and nothing like a wolf. He shuddered in Ronec's arms and wondered when the wild would call him away again. He'd been in the form of a bisclavret so long. So often. He'd left his betrayer three days out of every seven, for all he'd done his best to love her as a husband should. 

He found that he was weeping. He tried to say that he was happy, that it had nothing to do with what they had done, but Ronec merely said, "Shhh… I know. I understand. I'm here."

Argant wept until there was nothing left of the storm. 

He had meant to stay awake and explain. But he fell into a deep sleep, where he dreamed that his mother was holding him in her arms as she carried him into the deep woods. She smiled and laughed. Setting aside her under- and outer dress without shame, she took the shape of a silver-furred bisclavret. He dreamed of running and playing with her in that form. A pup and his dam. Until her wolfish face went cloud-pale and she faded into mist. 

He chased the clouds and found that he was chasing a hart, a veritable king of the forest, through a wild and fierce mountain range like nothing in Brittany's lands. He dreamed that he chased that hart until they came to a glen, where a massive tusked boar with bristling hair rooted in the muck. He dreamed that the boar and the hart stood on the far side of a wide, moon-dappled pool. That pool reflected all the brilliant green that his bisclavret eyes could not see above. He dreamed that, in that pool's reflecting waters, no antlered hart nor tusked boar stood. Instead, he saw two human faces with golden eyes that were the same color as his own and as his mother's. 

He woke to find Ronec looking at him worriedly. Ronec said, "You were calling out for your mother in the old Brittonic tongue. Tell me, what did you dream about?" 

Argant wanted to answer. He wanted to obey his liege in all things, but a question troubled him. So he answered a question with a question. "Why aren't you afraid of me? That first day in the woods, you called off your hounds. Why did you spare a monster?"

Ronec cuffed the side of Argant's head lightly. "None of that." The touch turned into a caress. "I would like to claim that I recognized you, but no. You were a gentle and courteous marvel. A massive silver-haired wolf, several times the size of a regular one, who bowed to me." He kissed Argant's cheek. "If I am not afraid now, it is because you are my own heart returned to me. Now that I have answered your question, do the same courtesy to your liege lord and king." Ronec tapped Argant's nose.

Argant haltingly described his dream. "But I don't know what it means. My mother died of ague when I was quite small. I couldn't even swear that my mother looked like the woman in my dream." 

Outside, the dawn was well past flirting with day through what the cold arrow slits would admit of the sky. He looked at that light as if it would give him an answer,all the while wondering when the hunger for the wild would drag him from Ronec's side. Wondering how long this garment would last before it wore away to rags.

Ronec squeezed Argant's shoulder. "We'll ask Gwydion. The oldest and wisest of my advisors. The one who stayed my hand when you took your revenge, and so saved my heart." 

When they finally emerged, all the king's knights were gathered in the great hall of Ronec's hunting lodge. Argant looked into the eyes of every man there, but he only found approving smiles and welcome for his return. Ronec took his place at the high table, insisting that Argant take a place at his right hand. He then called for old Gwydion to join them. 

The old man took his time getting up from his bench and going up the stairs. "How may I serve your majesty?"

Ronec had Argant repeat his dream. The words came more easily the second time. 

Gwydion pursed his lips. He said, "I remember your mother. A man would need to be older and more withered than myself to forget a beauty like the lady Argantlowen. Hair like silver and eyes of gold that spoke of secrets." Gwydion's lips curved as if pressing out secrets themselves. "Your father went to the kingdom of Gwynedd with a message of friendship from our kingdom to theirs and returned with Lady Argantlowen as his wife." 

Argant didn't wonder that his father had never spoken of this. He had known all his childhood that his father's heart was buried with his mother in the family chapel. Still, he wished Gwydion would tell his story faster.

Ronec squeezed his hand and said, "That's a pretty memory, and I delight in knowing from where my most beloved vassal gets his splendid looks, but what does that have to do with his dream?"

"My apologies, your majesty. I tell this out of order. Lord Argant's father spoke of enduring several trials to win that lady. The final trial was when he fought three knights by a pool in a green wood. The knights' standards were those of a hart, a boar, and a wolf. The wolf I might add was part of Lady Argantlowen's own crest."

"The wolf knight must have been Lady Argantlowen's brother," said Ronec.

"He must have," said Gwydion in a way that might have been a question. Gwydion looked at Argant with fierce pale eyes under bristling brows. "The first half of your dream is clear. Your mother was the same as you, and just as you have inherited her striking appearance, you have inherited something else. As to the second half, that is equally clear. You must have heard the story as a child, with perhaps slightly more detail than your father would admit in court."

"Can you tell me nothing more of this curse?" asked Argant.

Gwydion's expression softened. "If you wish to know more of what you inherited from your mother, then you must leave Brittany and go to the land of her birth to find it out." 

"No." Argant realized that he was the one who had spoken. He clasped Ronec's hand under the table and squeezed. He would not leave Ronec's side if he could avoid it.

Ronec squeezed back. He said, "My cousin the king of Gwynedd has often invited me to visit. I think I will take him up on this offer. Thank you, Gwydion. Your counsel has been useful." A dismissal that the wise old man understood. When he went back to his place, Ronec said for Argant's ears, "You were condemned to a half existence. Even now, this hunger-wild may drag you from my side at any time. I refuse to allow you out of my sight, and I refuse to do nothing. Your mother's family must know a way for you to hold onto a man's form." 

Argant wanted to protest that it had just been a dream. He wanted and did not want. In the end, he accepted Ronec's help with a nod.

Chapter Text

But a king's court could not move lightly. Messengers were sent ahead to the kingdom of Gwynedd, while the court caravan made its slow way to the coast. 

As they came to the alignment, a place where hundreds of massive stones stood in lines for miles all the way to the sea, Argant felt a frisson like lightning in his bones. He moved quickly to hide, to remove his clothing before it could be torn as he changed. With a bisclavret's eyes, he saw the fey hawk-knights twittering from the tops of the stones. He growled to let them know that his king was not their prey.

"Why have you changed? What are you growling at?" asked Ronec, but Argant was in the shape of a bisclavret and could not speak. Ronec was a man, and could not see what Argant saw. He picked up Argant's clothing carefully.

Finally, when they made it to the white ship of the king, Ronec said, "Take my tunic. The green one that brings out the gold of your eyes." He laid it out for Argant on the bed in his cabin, next to the ragged tunic. He then left to give Argant privacy.

Argant tried it. He did, but Ronec's gift didn't work. The only thing that allowed him to take human form was to sniff at the clothes given to him by his lady betrayer and put them on.

When he took human shape, Argant could hardly explain what had happened other than to say, "Fairy knights." 

He huddled next to Ronec while the boat coursed across the waves. As the waves grew rough, he felt a cold frisson. He had just enough time to save his clothing before he once again took his bisclavret shape and growled at the sea. Gray-green maids with weed-tangled hair called out to him from the waters. "We are the daughters of Dylan of the Second Wave. We mean you no harm." They smiled with razor-sharp teeth. "We're here to welcome you home." 

He howled his rejection. He was a knight and lord of Brittany. A monster of her forests. His loyalty and love were Ronec's.

"Cousin, you'll see."

"What happened? Why did you change? What are you growling at?" asked Ronec, but Argant was in the shape of a bisclavret and could not speak. 

As the ship approached the cliffs of Gwynedd, Ronec again said, "Take my tunic. The gold-embroidered one that brings out your eyes." He laid it out for Argant on the bed. Next to the ragged tunic. 

Argant tried it. It worked no better than the last time.

When he had the shape of a man, all he could say to Ronec was, "Sea-maids." 

Argant followed Ronec to the court of King Llywelyn of Gwynedd. Their bristle-bearded host welcomed them loudly and called for massive casks of beer to be opened in their honor, and for platters of white bread to be brought out well drenched with the meat of a fatted calf. He said all this in the old Brittonic tongue, which was the only language spoken in those lands.

Through the meal and the warbling of the bards, Llywelyn looked at Argant again and again. Until finally he said, "Cousin, King Ronec, you are fortunate to have a bleiddwn in your service. How did you come by this good fortune?"

Argant froze. He knew what the word bleiddwn meant. He spoke the old tongue as well as he spoke his native Gallic. Wolf-man. His lips longed to form the question that his throat refused to give air to.

Ronec asked for him, "How do you know my Lord Argant's nature? Do you know why he is cursed?"

Llywelyn’s laughter boomed inside the hall. "Would that all my knights were so cursed. We'd conquer a kingdom vaster than Arthur's in days of old. But as to why…" He smiled. "There's an easy answer." He summoned a bard to sing an old tale.

The song was about two brothers: Gilfaethwy and Gwydion. Argant looked to the lower table, though Gwydion had protested his old bones and gone to bed. The song started with the brothers committing a terrible crime upon the virtue of a lovely lady. In punishment, they were turned into animals by their uncle. A hart and a hind. A boar and a sow. A wolf and a wolf-bitch. The brothers coupled as animals. After Gilfaethwy had given birth to a fawn and pup, and Gwydion had birthed a piglet, their sentence was ended. Their uncle baptized their sons Hyddwn, Hychddwn, and Bleiddwn, and provided for swaddling that gave them their humanity. When they were grown, they became fierce knights in their time. 

Their names meant: stag-man, boar-man, and wolf-man.

Argant said softly, "I am a child of sin and beasts."

"Ha, it's an old song," boomed Llywelyn. "If a sin, then an ancient one where all who committed the crime are long since dead."

"This song mentioned nothing of what calls a bleiddwn to the wild places or what might keep them in their wild form. What it has to do with clothing."

Llywelyn shrugged. "A geas on the swaddling I would warrant. I could have my bards sing a hundred songs about the fierce sons of Bleiddwn, but they would only tell you what you already know. That such a person can take the form of a massive wolf."

Ronec asked, "Where do they live?"

Llywelyn stroked his beard. "Sons and daughters of those lines keep to the peaks of mount Glyder Fawr, but they are no more forthcoming than the pile of stones they roam." He slapped his thigh. "I will go with you."

Chapter Text

The courts of two kings moved no faster than the court of one. This gave Argant time to hear many songs of proud hyddwn, violent hychddwn, and raging bleiddwn, every one a tragedy of heroic battles and lost love. All too often the love of a bleiddwn was killed by the fury of the very one who loved them.

The deeper into the forests they went, the more Argant's fear for Ronec grew. What also grew was the longing for the wild spaces. 

Until one night, he slid naked from the pallet he shared with Ronec. In the presence of his sleeping lord, he took on his bisclavret shape and crept out of their tent into the light of the waxing moon with his tunic clutched in his jaws. He longed to howl his sorrow at the curved hole in its round shape that made him think of the space he'd left in their bed. But this was for Ronec's own good. 

So he crept away in the night. In that shape, he ran far faster than kings' courts could even dream. He leapt across a rushing stream. Three beautiful women washing golden armor in the moonlit rush of water laughed as he arrived.

"Well met by moonlight, son of Argantlowen."

"Welcome home, son of Bleiddwn."

"Ware the moon's madness, line Gwydion."

He paused, but the armor that they washed in the stream was not his own. It was not Ronec's. It was not covered in blood. He ran on.

He ran through the night and slept during the day. Ever the moon waxed bright and brighter until it loomed brilliant as a golden dish on the horizon. He set down the tunic in his mouth and called to the moon with all the longing of his heart. He couldn't hold it in any longer. 

That was when Argant saw the mighty hart, which looked at him across a forest glade with golden gleaming eyes. The antlers on his head branched a dozen times and gleamed with a subtle fire. The hart turned and ran into the dark of the forest. As in his dream, Argant followed after. 

They came to the dappled pool from his dream. There by the pool, a massive boar wallowed in the muck. With a start, he realized that the boar was a sow. As he watched, the sow took on a massive woman's form, with only her curling hair for meager modesty. She said, "I am Vanora app Hychddwn."

The stag was no more modest. He took the form of a tall man with golden hair and a thick golden beard. He said, "I am Trynt app Hyddwn. Well met."

Argant stepped behind a sheltering tree to take on a man's shape and put on the worn threads of his clothing. When he was dressed, he said, "Where is there a bleiddwn? I have questions."

Vanora held her left hand under her own breast and squeezed it meditatively. "You are here. We heard your call and we came." 

"Weren't you sent by Gwydion?" asked Trynt.

"I…" Argant had in a way been sent by a Gwydion. He said, "Yes, but he's just an old man."

Vanora snorted and slapped a wide muddy hand on her rounded thigh. "Gwydion is a trickster."

"A sorcerer," added Trynt, "and the father of our line."

"Speak for yourself," said Vanora. "He's the sow of my line." She grinned with wide white teeth in the brilliant moonlight. "But where is your suitor?"

"I," Argant shook his head. "I left him."

"Agh," shouted Vanora. 

"I am here," said Ronec, stepping from the woods. He had leaves in his strawberry curls. 

"Excellent!" shouted Vanora. She didn't wait. She took the form of a sow again and charged at Ronec, who barely had time to leap out of the way of her tusks. 

Argant moved to help him, but found he could not move, as if bound by moonlight.

Trynt said, "The battle has begun. First Vanora will face him. Then I. Then you."

"I don't want to fight him," Argant snapped, trying to pull towards Ronec but failing. 

"You will when the battle lust is on you." Trynt looked at Argant curiously. "Didn't your mother warn you?"

There were a number of ways to answer that, but they all required words, when all of Argant's attention was on the battle. "No."

Ronec managed to slip his belt around Vanora's front legs. He jumped into a hoary oak and pulled the belt over the branch. His weight was just enough, barely, to pull the struggling sow up into the air. 

Vanora took the form of a woman again and said, "I yield. You are the victor."

As if that was the signal, Trynt took the form of the hart. He lowered his head and bellowed a challenge. Ronec scrambled back up into the tree, losing hold of the belt. Vanora came to where Argant stood, unable to move. She slapped his back. "Your man's clever. I'll give him that."

"He's a king."

"Nice. Though I prefer my lady-swan," said Vanora.

Ronec broke a long branch from a pine and dug it into the earth. Trynt swerved to avoid impaling himself. Each time Trynt charged, Ronec bared his path. Until, with a sudden thrust, he pushed the branch into Trynt's antlers and twisted it, throwing Trynt onto the ground. Trynt took the shape of a man. "I yield. You are the victor."

The moonlight bonds that held Argant melted away. He jumped forward, shredding the remnants of his clothing. He snapped fierce white teeth at Ronec. All he could think of was blood and flesh. It was everything. The ferocity of a garwaf dazzled by moonlight.

Yet, there in his center was the single abiding thought that this was Ronec, who loved him. Who he loved.

Moonlight. Moonlust. He snapped his jaws closed. Allowing Ronec to hold them closed. Tumbling them both into the shadows. Argant whined, unable to take human shape. 

Ronec slipped a gold chain from around his neck around Argant's neck and pulled. A fine choking leash, but it wasn't enough. He whined again. He lay still while Ronec plucked up his cloak that had fallen in the battle and wrapped it around Argant’s shoulders. 

Argant shuddered in relief and took the form of a man. "I yield." He panted. Nuzzling his face into Ronec's chest. "You are the victor."

Ronec chuckled. "If I put a golden leash on you, will you stay by my side?" A bisclavret's whine emerged from Argant's throat at the thought. Ronec kissed him. "Later, perhaps. Now," he pushed himself to his feet, drawing Argant with him, "what is going on? How was Argant able to retake his human form?"

Trynt laughed. "You defeated us, and he was able to hold onto his human heart enough to resist killing you. His humanity comes from your gifts now."

"Gwydion plays stupid tricks," said Vanora. She strode forward and slapped Argant on the back. "I love a swan woman. You would not believe what he put us through." 

It turned out that both Trynt and Vanora did have clothing, which they put on. Vanora dressed in supple leather and Trynt put on green leaf armor. 

They went to Trynt's castle by way of a passage behind a waterfall. There they were greeted by Trynt's beloved, a stunning fey with long black hair and very sharp teeth. Vanora's large-boned swan lady was there, too, in a dress of white feathers. Alark was, if anything, taller and larger than Vanora. 

Alark smiled at Vanora. "How did the battle go?"

Vanora laughed. "We didn't kill him!"

"Good! Good!" Alark lifted Vanora off her feet. "Let's have sex while the stink of battle is still on you." Thankfully, they left before further discussions occured. 

Which left them with Trynt and his fey beloved, who did not offer their name, but asked to be addressed as the Ruler of Air and Darkness.

This prompted a question from Ronec. "If we eat a meal in this castle, will I still have a kingdom to go back to? Or will many years go by in a single night?" Fey could be tricky, but they were not liars.

Trynt chuckled. "I am not fey, nor is this castle in a fey land."

"Yet," said the Ruler of Air and Darkness, taking a ripe berry from a silver bowl. "Yet."

Ronec thanked Trynt for his hospitality. They ate the meal that was offered and lay down in a goose-down tick… though little sleeping was done that night.

In the morning, they set out. Argant shyly changed into his bisclavret form in front of Ronec. 

Ronec spent the entire journey back to the encampment planning the clothing he would place on Argant's body as a gift, and the leash and collar he would put on him. Argant nuzzled Ronec's side and breathed his scent; he had taken a bisclavret's shape so Ronec could do just that."