Wolf's Cross

by S. A. Swann

  He knows. He knows what I am. She felt her stomach sink. Josef knew what she was, and she wouldn’t even have the cold comfort of being the one to tell him.

  “I came here to save you.”

  “S-save me?”

  “Yes. You have a chance to repent of your sins. There is even a bishop present to grant you absolution. Please, you must abandon your pagan practices. Tell us where the shrines are, where you leave your sacrifices.”

  She stared back at him in total confusion. Her pagan practices? She was a Christian. Whatever else she might be, she knew that much. She had been baptized. She attended Mass, confessed her sins.

  “Maria, my heart has been weighed by suspicions since you showed me your father’s cross. It was not until after you confronted me that I understood what this must be, how a good woman like you could be involved in such evil.” He took her shoulders and looked into her eyes, an expression of heartbreaking concern across his face. “This creature, it is not your God. It is a satanic deception meant to lead you from salvation.”

  Her eyes widened as she realized how fully Josef had misunderstood. “Please, I’m not …” She trailed off, not knowing how to correct him without making things worse.

  “I see it, Maria. You know this thing. That is why you spent this morning trying to convince me of its humanity, isn’t it? It is why you know of wolves when I mentioned no such thing to you. You sensed it here just a moment ago, didn’t you?”

  She hesitated for a long time before finally saying, “Yes.”

  “You’re trying to protect it.”

  Maria felt tears burning her cheeks. Even in error, he came too close to her heart. All he was mistaken about was why. “You don’t understand. I want this to stop.”

  “I know,” Josef said. “When you disappeared, you sought it out, didn’t you?”

  “Please—”

  “Did it explain why it slaughtered your lord Bolesław and seven other men?”

  “They were hunting him.”

  “Did it explain the villages it has laid to waste? Forty men, women, and children left to rot on the steps of their own church?”

  She wanted to deny it, but she had seen Darien’s eyes. She had heard him. Yes, he had reason, but the reason was so deep and grave that she could see Darien using it to justify anything.

  In her confusion, she had to force her heart from turning completely away from Darien’s brutality, because, after this, he would be all she had—all she ever would have. She hugged herself and shook her head, telling herself that she really wasn’t a wicked person.

  She must have said it out loud, because Josef answered, “I know you aren’t.”

  She looked up at him.

  “I was watching your face when you saw the evidence of its slaughter; I saw the betrayal in your eyes. Even if this thing is the god of your ancestors, even if you sacrifice to it, this wrath was not what you were asking of it, was it?”

  “No.” She wasn’t even certain what it was she wanted from Darien anymore. Or Josef. Or herself. She did know that she didn’t want more people hurt or killed, and that included Darien. In her confusion, she finally said to him, “If you lead them away from here, away from him, the killing will stop. I know it will.”

  “Maria,” he said, lowering his voice, “does your family know what you’re doing?”

  She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

  “They don’t, do they?”

  “I—”

  “You gave your brother the dagger because you realize that they’re in danger.”

  “No.” But he was right: for all she’d been drawn to Darien, she didn’t trust him. Couldn’t trust him. Especially with her family.

  “You know that this beast is nothing that will be turned aside by an offering.” Josef released her shoulders. “Come back with me, make things right with God. Make them right with yourself. I see in your face—you know you’re on the wrong path.”

  “I can’t go back.”

  “Please. If Brother Heinrich discovers what you’ve done, he won’t be merciful. If you don’t come forward and seek sanctuary with the bishop of your countrymen, I don’t know if I can keep protecting you.”

  “If he discovers—You haven’t told them?”

  “If I had, I wouldn’t be here.”

  Guilt compounded on guilt. She looked up at the darkened sky and felt as if the world were caving in on her. “No, you cannot sacrifice yourself for me, lie for me, when you have no idea what I’ve done.”

  “What have you done?”

  “I—” She couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t tell him of the animal hunger, the lust that burned within her. Worse, even though she wanted more than anything to turn him away, she had sensed Darien watching, and she knew that if Josef walked the nighttime path back to Gród Narew, Darien would—

  “I’ll go back with you,” she said. It would give her time to think. Perhaps the bishop could give her absolution. If not, once Josef was safe in the fortress, she could slip away during the night. She knew the place intimately enough. Then she would find Darien, and if the Order would stay here, she would lead Darien away. They could go east, away from the frontiers of the monastic state, past the point the Germans would ever dare explore. “Just let me say good-bye to my family.”

  Darien returned to the clearing in the dark of night, his rage now cold and hard as a stone. He would mete out a grand vengeance—both to the Order and to the wretches who had imprisoned his mate, turning her against him and her kind. In the process he would show her the true face of the humans she lived with. She would have no choice but to reject them.

  As distasteful as it was, he retreated into human skin and dressed in the clothing that allowed him to walk within the humans’ world. When he took her away from this place, they would shed these rags. Then they would both forget everything of the human world.

  But only after he exacted his last payment of flesh and bone from the Order here, and only after he had proved the worthlessness of humanity to her.

  Once his human mask was in place, he reached down into the leaves and dug up the cross Maria had left behind. “These chains were so important to you,” he said. “Fitting that they will finally free you.”

  XXV

  When Maria stepped into her family’s cabin, her mother and three brothers were waiting for her. All of them looked at her, and she felt the weight of their stares.

  “You’re no longer wearing your father’s cross.”

  Her hand moved unconsciously to her heart to touch it, but it wasn’t there. “I lost it in the woods.”

  She saw the pain in her stepmother’s face, and it was all the sign she needed that she had crossed a line that she couldn’t recross.

  Władysław had stopped smiling, but it was clear that he didn’t yet understand. “We can go and look for it in the daylight.”

  Maria shook her head. “I don’t need it anymore.”

  “What do you mean?” Władysław said.

  Her stepmother stood. “Your sister is leaving.”

  Maria nodded. “I’m going with Josef. I’m not coming back.”

  Shock froze her brothers’ faces, Władysław’s most of all. Her stepmother looked at her with a crooked smile and said, “It happens, doesn’t it? Children leave home.”

  “It isn’t safe for me to stay,” Maria said.

  “What danger are you in?” Władysław asked. “I’ll protect you.”

  “Your sister doesn’t need your protection,” her stepmother said. “I don’t think she’s concerned for her own safety.”

  “What?” Władysław looked confused.

  Maria met his gaze. “I told you what I was.”

  “No,” he said. “You were playing me for a fool. You still are. But that joke’s gone too far.” The silence that followed pained her, but Maria said nothing to break it. Władysław turned to her stepmother. “Mother, tell her to stop these lies.”

  “Your sister is not a liar.” She walked up t
o Maria and said, “Your father knew that this would happen someday. There’s another one, isn’t there?”

  “Someone like me,” she said.

  “Someone like you?” Władysław echoed, his voice weak and distant.

  “His name is Darien.”

  “But,” her stepmother said, “you are leaving with Josef.”

  “No,” Władysław said. “You’re saying that this Darien—he’s responsible for the killings? The Order, they’re hunting him, aren’t they?” He grabbed her arm. “You’re saying you’re this thing—but this other one, he’s the killer, the one with blood on his hands?”

  “They would kill him otherwise.” Maria spoke the words, but they rang hollow in her own ears.

  “And what would the Order do with you? This Darien draws their wrath. Is he that much to you that you wish to draw it as well?” Władysław’s grip on her arm was hard, bruising, as he shook her. “Is he more kin to you than your own family? I won’t allow you to go. You aren’t going to indulge in these madwoman’s tales before men who would take you seriously enough to set you to fire.”

  She wanted to scream, but Josef was outside, and she didn’t want him to hear the words, even in a language he couldn’t understand. Instead, her voice came out in a harsh whisper that took on the growling aspect of the wolf: “My brother, I am not human. And you will let me go.”

  His eyes widened and his grip loosened.

  “Release me.” The words came out in a snarl, and he snatched his hand away as if she had burned him. “Mother is right. I am no liar. And if I remain here, you are all in danger—if not from the Order, then from Darien.”

  “Maria?” Her stepmother was in tears. “You don’t have to choose this path. We’re your family.”

  “You said Father knew this day would come.”

  “But like this? Your brother is right. If this Darien has taken so many lives, do you want to join him?”

  “There’s no choice left for me, Mother. All I can do now is keep myself from Lucina’s fate.” Maria felt her own tears, and she touched her stepmother’s cheek. “I won’t hurt anyone just to be with those I love.”

  Then she turned away and left her home.

  She walked with Josef in silence. She watched the dark shadows of the woods around them. The shadows beyond the reach of Josef’s lantern seemed more ominous than they had ever been to her before. She should flee into the dark, she thought, disappear. If Josef weren’t here, she would. If she were certain that he would be safe.

  Is that why she was here?

  She didn’t know anymore. She didn’t know who she was, or what she was. She only knew that she was afraid. Afraid for herself, afraid for Josef, and afraid for her family.

  She was afraid for Darien, too—even as she listened for his footfall, sniffed the wind for his scent, and scanned the few columns of moonlight that broke the shadows for any hint of yellow fur or the glint of a pale blue eye.

  Josef himself seemed lost in thought.

  She kept thinking of the woman she had been, how she might have received Josef’s declarations. It seemed some sign of how far she had fallen that she couldn’t imagine how she would have reacted before tonight, before meeting Darien.

  It began to dawn on her how pale he looked.

  “Josef, are you well?”

  “I am fine.” But she heard an edge to his voice that made him a liar. She placed a hand on his shoulder and realized that she smelled blood.

  “Josef, your wounds—”

  “They are no matter.”

  She spun him around to face her.

  “Maria—”

  She pulled up his surcote and placed her hand against his shirt. He gasped, and she felt a dampness through his shirt. “You’re bleeding.”

  “I can make it.”

  “You’re a fool if you think that. And I’m a fool for not noticing sooner. You’re going to lie down here, now.”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

  She grabbed his hand and pressed it against his shirt. His eyes widened, and he gasped again in pain. “Do you feel that? You’ve pulled your scar open. You need to stop moving and put pressure on it, now.”

  Josef nodded and swayed a little. She helped him to a clear spot by the side of the road, and by the time he rested the lantern on the ground and lay down, she was bearing most of his weight. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said.

  She pulled his surcote and his shirt up, exposing the dressing on his stomach. “God help us,” Maria whispered. The dressing glistened moist and black in the moonlight.

  She undid the dressing and looked at the wound.

  Josef groaned.

  “Please, don’t move. The top of the scar has pulled apart. The blood’s flowing freely, but not fast. If we stanch the flow, you’ll be all right.” She grabbed the bottom of his surcote and started tearing strips from it. The thick fabric tore easily in her urgency, but the only comment from Josef was “I won’t be needing that anyway.”

  She bound him up and kept her blood-soaked hands pressing on his stomach. Her only comfort was the fact that this was only as bad as it seemed because Josef had been bullheaded enough not to stop when he must have felt his wound tear.

  “So,” he said after some time had passed, “when do we resume our journey?”

  “When you stop bleeding, or a cart rolls by on the way to Gród Narew.”

  After another long pause, he said, “You have a good heart.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “Don’t I? I’m dragging you to testify against yourself. Wouldn’t it have been easier just to let me bleed?”

  “Be quiet. Save your strength.” She was astounded that he had any left. How much of a search had he gone on with her brother? How long had he been bleeding before he’d even looked ill?

  “Josef,” she asked, “if I hadn’t been hiding something, if I wasn’t what I am, would you have come for me?”

  His eyes had closed, but he whispered, “I love you, Maria.”

  Her heart ached. “Josef, you shouldn’t say that. You don’t know what I am. I don’t even think you know Darien.”

  When he didn’t answer, she looked down and saw that he was asleep.

  Darien spent much of the night observing the comings and goings of the watch on the walls of Gród Narew. There were more men on the walls than he remembered from his prior journeys to this place. Watching for him, he suspected. Still, they were men, and relied too much on their eyes.

  The ground that had been cleared before the skirts of Gród Narew was designed to withhold concealment from an army, not an individual. Even in human skin, he could come close to the wall unobserved just by keeping to the opposite side of the stone fences that defined the surrounding pasture. The closer he came, the less the guards’ gaze drifted toward him. They believed they would see any threat as it emerged from the distant woods, paying little thought to the ground at their feet.

  He approached on the side of the fortress opposite the moon and the main gate, and by the time he had reached the closest of the stone fences, he was deep in the shadow cast by the outer wall. Between him and the bottom of the wall were about thirty paces of bare grass.

  He cleared it in fifteen, with no alert from the guards above.

  He listened, and even with his dull human ears, he could hear the men walking the wall above. The log-and-earthwork wall towered above him, seven or eight times the height of a man.

  He flexed his fingers and reached up.

  This would be easier in his true body, but that was what they watched for. Besides, he wore Maria’s cross.

  So he hooked fleshy human fingers into the flaws in the log skin of the wall and pulled himself up. He scaled it, jamming into gaps so small that his fingers bled. With the silver cross so close to his skin, the wounds were slow to heal, but Darien accepted the pain. He welcomed it. He hated this body that was so like his enemies’, so it felt right that it should suffer like he would make them suffer.


  His fingers continued to slide across rough wood and bark, and he forced them into the cracks, pushing deeper and harder. By the time he reached the top of the wall, he had lost most of his fingernails.

  He hung on the edge, in the last of the moon-cast shadow, listening to the movements of the guards. Their steps were slow and lazy, and after a few moments one passed in front of Darien, oblivious to his presence.

  He could tear this place apart.

  But that wasn’t why he was here.

  He waited until the guard’s heavy footfalls left him to join another, farther down the wall. Darien heard the beginnings of a whispered conversation and took the chance to chin himself up enough to look over the edge of the wall. Forty paces away, two guards talked while looking out over the vista commanded by Gród Narew. In the other direction, thirty paces away, a third guard walked away from Darien, equally intent on looking for threats coming from his quarter of the woods.

  Darien pulled himself up silently and alighted briefly on the walkway between the two sets of guards. He flexed his aching hands until the joints creaked, pausing just long enough to see if he was being observed.

  No alarm came; he vaulted off the inner edge of the walkway and into the darkness below.

  Darien slipped through the darkened alleys of the human stronghold, choking on the smell of men that filled the air. He slipped past oblivious guards, weaving his way around until he found the stables.

  The smell of equine prey was a relief after the stench of humanity. It also reminded him dimly of the man who had attacked Maria; he remembered his smell better than his face.

  Horses shuffled and nickered as he slipped inside, but none panicked. They might feel uneasy at a stranger’s presence, but, wrapped in a man’s skin, he wasn’t a subject of fear. He might have ridden one had he chosen to.

  Instead, he walked through the sawdust in the darkened stables, passing the rumps of a dozen horses. The moonlight reached in just enough to show the floor and the outline of the nervous horses.