Beauty and the Werewolf fhk-6

by Mercedes Lackey

  When the moon rose, it was a lot easier to see. The silver light poured down through the bare branches and reflected off the snow, and if it hadn’t been so cold and lonely, she would have stopped more than once to admire how pretty it was.

  However, it was tremendously cold; already, despite the two pairs of socks over her feet and the fleece of her sheepskin boots, her feet were like ice. She wished she could run, but the snow was deep enough that running was a bit difficult. But I could run a bit, then walk awhile — that would warm up my feet, too — she thought, vaguely.

  But her thoughts were shattered by the howl of a wolf.

  All the hair on the back of her neck tried to stand up, and an instinctive chill went down her spine. No use trying to tell herself it was a dog, for no dog ever sounded like that. She remembered what Ragnar had said about “hungry beasts” coming down into these woods.

  She stopped on the road and listened, hard, hoping to hear others respond to the first howl. She knew, thanks to Granny, that she had nothing to fear from a pack. Wolves in a pack were strong enough to take down their normal prey; they might go after sheep or even cattle, but they would avoid humans.

  But there were no answering howls, barks or yips. This was a loner — and loners were dangerous. Old, diseased or the wrong-headed young males that refused to fit into a pack, they could feed themselves well enough in spring, summer and fall on mice and rabbits and other small game, but when winter came, they began to starve. Something had to be wrong with a wolf if a pack wouldn’t allow it to at least hover at the fringe and glean scraps. A lone wolf in winter was generally a wolf with an empty belly, and a wolf with an empty belly forgot he wanted nothing to do with human beings.

  She lurched into a trot, just as the wolf howled again —

  Nearer.

  She had to fight herself not to run. Right now, running wouldn’t do anything but get her exhausted and make her easier prey. Instead, she dropped the useless basket and scanned the snow on both sides of the road for a fallen branch of manageable size. What she needed was something like a weapon.

  The wolf howled again, nearer still. Clearly he had her scent. She couldn’t tell if that was a hunting howl or not, but it probably was.

  Fear overcame sense for a moment and she ran a few steps before she got control of herself again. She had to look strong. A weakened wolf might hesitate to try to take down something that looked able to defend itself.

  She spotted a club-size branch sticking out of the snow and made for it, pulling at the exposed end. It proved to be attached to a bigger branch, but a sharp tug fueled by fear made it yield a bit, and a second, two-handed wrench brought a satisfying crack of wood, and she found herself with a decent, sturdy cudgel.

  She trotted onward, but then movement out of the corner of her eye made her freeze.

  She looked up at the top of the ridge.

  There, black against the moon, was the wolf, looking down at her.

  He didn’t look old, or ill. He looked huge, and in good health.

  That was not good.

  A big, healthy, single wolf had probably been driven out of his pack for aggression. Maybe cub-killing. Granny had told her about one such beast that had eventually required a Champion to come kill it, since Prince Florian’s father, King Edmund, had been too young and his father too old to hunt it themselves. Granny wouldn’t tell her why, which was curious, but she claimed such beasts attracted a malignant magic toward themselves that made them bigger, faster and, above all, much smarter than ordinary creatures.

  She could feel its baleful stare, and she had no doubt that Granny was right.

  Stand and threaten? she wondered, more chills creeping down her spine. Or try to run?

  At that moment, the wolf gathered itself and leapt, and her body decided for her. It ran.

  The wolf had miscalculated. It landed in snow deeper than it was tall; as she glanced back over her shoulder, she saw it was floundering.

  This made no difference to her terror, of course.

  She thrashed her way down the road, heart pounding and mouth dry, expecting at any moment to be leapt on from behind. One hand still clutched the stick, while the other flailed at the air as she fought to keep her balance. She was running as fast as she could, and getting nowhere, and she could almost feel the wolf’s hot breath on the back of her neck.

  A glimmering of sense fought its way through the fog of fear. There! Up ahead was a huge old tree, something of a landmark for her on the road to Granny’s. If she could just get her back against it, she might be able to fend the beast off!

  She put on a burst of speed she hadn’t known was in her, and reached the tree just as she heard panting and growling practically on her heels.

  Instinct, not reason, made her duck, and the wolf soared over her head to crash into the trunk of the tree. A shower of snow shook down on them both as the tree limbs above them rattled with the impact.

  She paused for a moment. He rolled onto his feet, but slowly, shaking his head and staggering. She realized that he must have been stunned. She had a moment of relief, but the tree was no shelter now, for he was between her and it. She shook off her indecision and ran on, trying to think of another place where she might make some kind of a stand.

  Then she remembered. Not that far past the tree was a cluster of boulders. There was a nook there that she might be able to wedge herself into. The wolf would only be able to come at her from the front, if she could manage that.

  She peered frantically up the road, searching for it among the shadows as she ran, and her breath burned in her throat and lungs. She sobbed a little from the fear and the pain of her side, then shook her head to clear it of sudden tears, and when she could see again, finally spotted the boulders. The sight of that shelter gave her another burst of strength out of nowhere. She flung herself at them, floundering through deeper snow to reach them. Then the drift gave way to no snow at all, and she felt blindly along the surface until her hands hit nothing at all and she fell into the gap.

  The next thing she knew she was wedged into the nook, staring out into the moonlit snow patterned with the shadows of branches and gasping in huge, burning breaths. And that was when the wolf appeared again.

  This time he wasn’t running. With his head down, ears back and fur bristling, he stalked toward her. She grasped her club in both mittened hands and waited, the sweat from her run cooling and making her shiver with more than just fear. He wasn’t gray; he was dark, black maybe, and bigger than any canine she had ever seen except for the mastiffs used for hunting boar and bear.

  He gave out a low, rumbling growl that she answered with a strangled whimper.

  She saw him tense, and knew he was going to leap again. Just as he did, she hunched down and thrust her improvised club blindly forward and up. She wasn’t strong enough to knock him down, and didn’t try. She felt the end of the club hit — something — and she shoved with all her might as he sailed over the top of her again, assisted by her blow.

  This time she wasn’t lucky enough for him to have another accident; he didn’t go headfirst into the boulder. Instead, he reacted to what she had done instantly. She heard claws scrabbling against the stone above her head, and then he was gone. But a moment later he leapt down from the top of the boulders to land in front of her again in a cloud of loose snow.

  He eyed her, breath steaming in the moonlight. She shrank as far back into the rock as she could. All I can do is make it too hard for him to drag me out, she thought, through the fog of panic. If I make him work too hard for his meal, maybe he’ll give up. Why doesn’t he just give up and go after a nice fat sheep?

  He growled, and paced nearer. No leaping this time; his muscles were tensing in a different pattern. Then he moved; fast and agile. He lunged at her and snapped.

  She thrust the splintery end of the branch at his nose, not his jaws. If he managed to get hold of the stick, she would never be able to hold on to it. She had to fend him off without losing this slen
der defense, because there was nothing between her and him but her cloak if she did.

  He jerked away, but it was hardly more than an irritated wince as he went back on the attack and continued to lunge and snap. She alternated poking with frantic beating of the end back and forth between the walls of her nook — not trying to hit him, just trying to make it harder for him to reach her. His growling rose in volume and pitch, filling her ears.

  Her arms and legs burned with fatigue; her feet felt like blocks of ice. She tried to shout at the beast, hoping to startle it, but she couldn’t even manage a squeak from her tight throat.

  How long had he been trying to get at her? It felt like hours. Clearly he was not giving up.

  His eyes glittered blackly in the moonlight. They should have been red, a hellish, infernal red.

  Suddenly he backed up, studying her. She held her breath. Was this it? Had he finally decided she was more trouble than she was worth? Or was he figuring out some way to get past her stick?

  A moment later, the question was answered as he lunged again, his jaws closing on her stick.

  He backed up, digging all four feet into the ground, hauling and tugging. She held on for dear life, breath caught in her throat, violently jerking the stick from side to side, trying to shake him off, bashing his muzzle against the boulders. As she felt her feet slipping, felt herself being pulled out of the crevice, in desperation she kicked at his face.

  Moving too fast for her to react, he let go of the stick and his teeth fastened on her foot, penetrating the sheepskin as if it was thinner than paper.

  A scream burst from her throat as the teeth hit the flesh of her ankle.

  That somehow startled him, as nothing else had.

  He let go as if her foot was red-hot, and backed away. She scrabbled back into the safety of the crevice, sobbing. Now, at last, she found her voice.

  “Go away!” she cried out, her voice breaking. “Leave me alone!” Stupid, of course; the beast couldn’t understand her. And even if it did, why should it leave such a tasty meal, when with a little more work, it would have her?

  But the wolf backed up another pace, head down, tail down, ears flat, staring at her as if it hadn’t until that moment understood it was attacking a human.

  Now, rather than growling, it was eerily silent.

  “Please,” she sobbed, “please just leave me alone!”

  It stared at her. What was it thinking? She scrabbled to her feet again, stick at the ready, still weeping. Her ankle hurt, and she didn’t dare look down at it to see how badly it had been mauled. Surely there was blood-scent on the air now. Surely that would goad the beast into a final, fatal attack.

  It backed up another pace, still staring. As she sobbed again, it finally made a sound, an odd interrogative sound deep in its throat.

  And then, inexplicably, it ducked its head, abruptly turned away and plunged off, running into the woods. It bounded through the snow, a swiftly moving black streak on the white, weaving among the shadows. A moment later, it was gone. Except for the burning pain of her ankle, the entire incident might have been a nightmare.

  She waited, sure that this was nothing more than an incredibly clever ruse on the beast’s part. But — nothing disturbed the serenity of the clearing. And after a moment, she pried herself out of the cleft in the rock, testing her ankle. It held under her weight, even though it hurt as badly as anything she had ever suffered, and only a little blood spotted the leather of the boot.

  She broke into a limping run, moving as fast as she could for the safe haven of the city walls.

  Behind her, a long, mournful howl drifted over the trees.

  There was a great press of people getting into the gate, so no one noticed her state as she crowded in among them. The streets on the way to the Beauchampses’ home, however, were quiet.

  On the one hand, as she limped homeward, she wished desperately that she would encounter someone she knew, someone who could help. On the other — she knew what would happen the moment her father discovered what had happened. She’d never be allowed outside the city gates again.

  She began to try to think how she could treat her own injury — after all, Granny had been teaching her this very sort of thing for years, now. But as it happened, Bella met Doctor Jonaton at the front door. She had completely forgotten this was his evening to attend Genevieve, and of all of her stepmother’s doctors, he was the one she trusted the most. He was putting on his cloak as she stumbled inside.

  “Bella!” he exclaimed, catching her as she overbalanced. “Good heavens, child, what is the matter?”

  Her teeth were chattering so hard she could scarcely get the words out, but as he helped her in to sit at the fire in the empty parlor, she managed to get out the story of her narrow escape.

  “Let me see your foot,” he demanded, and wouldn’t be put off. He pulled the boot off her foot, and she suppressed a yip as he peeled the stockings off, reopening the puncture wounds. He examined the white foot, critically, shushing her as she tried to protest that it was nothing.

  “Don’t tell anyone what happened, please!” she begged. “Father is still at the warehouse, and Genevieve will have hysterics. No one has to know but us.” He frowned fiercely, and rang for a maid.

  “Mistress Isabella has hurt herself,” he said shortly, when Marguerite appeared. “I want hot water and clean bandages.”

  The girl’s eyes were as big as saucers, but she ran off and returned in no time with what the doctor asked.

  “Don’t let Father know, please?” she begged him. “They’ll never let me outside the walls again if you do! I was stupid. I should have known better than to go through the woods at night, but even Granny didn’t think it was dangerous. I know it could have been horrible, but it all came out all right, didn’t it?”

  He didn’t look up from his work, sponging off the wounds, which were no longer bleeding, then bandaging the ankle with salve and a wrapping of clean cloth. “I have to report a wild-animal attack like this to the Sheriff,” he said, with an unusually stern expression. “That’s the law, Bella. If wild animals begin attacking humans, they need to be hunted down. What if someone else is caught unawares by this beast? What if it’s a child?”

  “But don’t tell Father, please!” she begged. “I promise, I’ll make sure that if I’m caught by darkness, I’ll stay with Granny, and I’ll do my best never to be caught like that again.”

  “I would be a great deal more at ease if you would promise me never to go out there afoot again,” he replied, now looking up at her, his eyes worried. “If you had been ahorse, the creature would never have attacked you in the first place. Your father can afford the use of a livery horse.”

  “I promise,” she pledged fervently.

  “And I am not happy that he is not to know about this,” the doctor continued.

  Well, she wasn’t happy about keeping it from him, either. “I’ll tell him I was hurt, myself,” she said — not promising to tell him how she was hurt, only that she had been. “He’ll probably insist that I hire a horse himself after I do.”

  “Stand on that,” the doctor commanded. She did; it hurt, but no worse than a sprained ankle. She said as much.

  “Good.” He rang for the maid again. “Mistress Isabella needs to go up to her room and rest,” he told her. “Help her to bed, and bring her supper there.”

  “But — ” Bella began.

  “I will be the judge of what you can do, young woman,” the doctor said sternly. “You’ve had a bad experience, and you need rest. The household can tend to itself for one night.”

  With a sigh, she gave in and let Marguerite help her up the stairs, out of her clothing and into bed. But when she brought up a tray, Bella had recovered enough to write out orders for the household. Mostly, they were orders of who was to obey whom, with the Housekeeper getting official precedence over the chief of the manservants, who fancied himself a Butler. Mathew Breman is to follow the directions of Mrs. Athern, she wrote firmly
and clearly. Unless and until such time as Master Henri appoints him to the official position of Butler, Mrs. Athern is his superior in the household, and if and when that day comes, she is then his equal in all things except the handling of the plate and wine cellar.

  She handed the letters over to Marguerite, with the strict instructions that they were to be delivered to the Housekeeper and Mathew. There, she thought wearily, settling back to eat her long-postponed dinner as her ankle ached dully. With luck, that will keep things settled until I can deal with them myself.

  It seemed strange that the doctor had been so insistent that he had to report the wolf attack. Wild animals attacked herds and flocks all the time, and although attacks on humans were not common, they were not rare, either. Such things were generally the business of gamekeepers and foresters; what on earth business could it be of anyone in the city? In fact, it was properly the business of Eric von Teller.