Prince Wolf

by A. Katie Rose

  “Um,” ventured the burly merc, glancing around at the stout fellows at his call. “You’re hands are tied, slave,” he said. “There’s not much you can do to us.”

  I half-turned, gazing down at the urking man at my boots with my limited vision. I nudged him with my toe. “So you say,” I replied dryly.

  “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” said one of Burly’s friends. “Look, he took out three good lads in as many seconds. With his hands tied.”

  “Oh, come on,” Soldier-Merchant said. “He got lucky. Let’s take him down.”

  “You really don’t want to make me angry,” I said slowly, fixing Soldier-Merchant with my icy, one-eyed, stare. “You won’t like me when I’m angry.”

  He ignored me and remembered Brutal’s reward.

  “Are we cowards or are we going to be rich men?” Soldier-Merchant called, waving his sword. “He’s just a damned slave. Let’s get him!”

  Gathering Burly, the troubadour with my sword and five of his friends, he led the charge. They rushed me, grinning, raising not their swords but their hilts. From ten rods away, they came on, spreading apart to circle me round. I couldn’t take on all eight, they knew, with only two feet and no hands. I almost heard them think it.

  Damn it, this is their own stupid fault.

  With a sigh, I lashed out.

  I hurled all eight backward in a swift power blast. They lost their grips on their swords, their clothes blowing about them, and landed on the hard-packed earth of the town square. The milling, rapidly growing crowd of onlookers ahhed in surprise and wonder as the tough guys floundered in the dirt, gasping, holding aching ribs, trying to regain lost wind and fractured dignity.

  “You should kill them.”

  “Whyever should I?” I replied aloud, not caring who heard me. “These blokes couldn’t fight their way out of a whorehouse.”

  I waited until Soldier-Merchant and Burly stumbled to their feet and picked up their lost swords, their faces covered in dirt. As I had done earlier, they spat and coughed dust from their mouths and lungs, gasping for breath. They watched me now with the respect I think I’ve earned.

  “Oh, really?”

  “I did earn it,” I replied absently. “I earned every bit of it in the Arena.”

  Once I had their attention, I worked my magic into the ropes. Like dead snakes, they flopped into the dust at my feet. I gazed down at those loose coils, feigning frank surprise, before lifting my face to witness the stunned expressions of Soldier-Merchant, Burly and their pals. The crowd went silent.

  “Check it out,” I said, my tone awed. “Is it, like, magic?”

  “I really don’t want any part of this.”

  The young merc who first questioned the wisdom of taking me on sheathed his blade. Seizing the shoulder of his nearest companion, he dragged that one, unprotesting, with him. The pair melted into the spectators and vanished.

  “The boy is smart,” I said conversationally, rubbing my wrists where the ropes cut in. “Pity you boys don’t have the sense the gods gave your average potted plant.”

  “Who are you?” gasped Burly, his voice hoarse. His dirty brown eyes wide with an emotion just short of fear. A little, maybe, but plenty of belligerence and greed made the foolish part of his mind ignore his wiser instincts.

  I ceased rubbing my wrists and examined my fingernails. “Surely you remember. I’m the Bloody Wolf.”

  The crowd ahhed again, whispering, murmuring, heads bobbing together, fingers pointing. No doubt, the tale of my visiting this backwater town would regale for years, told and retold beside the fires on long winter nights and over beer in taverns. Those who witnessed me in my fury firsthand would never buy their ale again, for their story, told and retold, earned them a lifetime of free booze.

  “That’s not magic,” gasped Soldier-Merchant. “He just untied them, that’s all.”

  I quirked my lip in a quick smile, just short of a snarl. “Oh, that’s right, he just untied them. Let’s see. What will convince them they’re messing with the wrong Wolf?”

  I gazed around, my lips pursed, the watching multitude hanging on my every move, my hands on my hips. “What’s in that shed over there?”

  “Firewood,” called a faceless voice from the spectators.

  “Perfect,” I replied happily, rubbing my hands together. “I certainly don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  Before Soldier-Merchant drew his next breath, the shed exploded. With a low, coughing roar, smaller faggots, larger logs and chunks of the shed blew out, all in flames. The crowd cried out in fear, in panic, ducking low with their hands held up to protect their faces as spears of wood swooshed low overhead. Bright sparks hit the dirt and went out. A man with lightning reflexes ducked before the shed’s hasp brained him between the eyes.

  Logs and faggots from the shed cascaded all around, most in flame, more smoking, to fall in ragged discord at the feet of the crowd. I didn’t want anyone hurt, and thus contained the explosion accordingly. The debris and flames ended several rods from the crowd’s edge. I wanted –

  “To show off.”

  I snickered. “Perhaps I did at that.”

  Behind the townsfolk, the shed burned merrily as courageous men tossed buckets of water on it. White smoke hissed upward, the flames dying slowly, withering away under the onslaught of the firefighters. Within a radically short period of time, the flames died, leaving only smoke to coil lazily upward.

  Soldier-Merchant and Burly stared from me to the burnt shed, the alarmed crowd, and back again.

  Once I had their attention fully, I folded my arms across my chest. “I’m still hungry. I’ll have the dinner you so rudely interrupted.

  “You boys,” I continued, pointing at them each in turn, marking them. “You’ll serve it to me, on your knees.”

  That declaration ticked off Soldier-Merchant enough that he set his jaw and raised his sword. Perhaps he’d been a military man of rank, for he certainly knew how to rally his men. “Come on,” he rasped, his voice hoarse. “He’s just one escaped slave. He’s worth millions.”

  “Are you?”

  “Oh, please.”

  “For that, I’d turn you in myself.”

  I waited, my arms folded, until Soldier-Merchant, Burly and the troubadour had rallied at least eight stout fellows at their backs. Bristling with arms and righteous greed, they charged me, eleven against one. Their arms raised high, those brave men hacked downward. Grimaces of effort sliced their faces, their teeth slicked white with saliva.

  Their swords, and their efforts, struck nothing but dirt.

  All eleven of them staggered, floundered, cursed, and cast about, trying to find me. They bumped into and swore at one another, searching, in vain, for me. The crowd beyond them ahhed again, many taking notes, I was sure.

  “Yoo hoo,” I called, from atop a wagon just beyond the spectators. “Over here, boys.”

  The team it was hitched to snorted in fear, dancing in their traces, prepared to bolt. Though they couldn’t see me, for their blinkers hid me from their sight, they scented my wolf odor, sensed my predatory size, and simply knew I was there to eat them. I’d trapped them, and they knew it. They planned to blow and soon.

  “Easy, lads,” I murmured, hopping down from the load. “You’re not my dinner tonight. Be still.”

  To calm them, I walked swiftly away and into the crowd. As I’d hoped, my departing presence prevented a wild bolt with someone’s valuable cargo hitched to their panic.

  “Hullo, mum,” I said, greeting an old woman in a pale pink bonnet and a light grey shawl wrapped about her emaciated shoulders. “Nice day, what?”

  After a small jolt of shock, she returned my smile. “Indeed, good sir,” she replied, dropping a tiny curtsey. I patted her shoulder before taking the hand of a big farmer.

  “Taking in the sights, old boy?” I asked brightly.

  I received a gap-toothed grin in return. “Traded in m’hogs, suh,” he answered. “Must needs get supplies an
d a fair skein of wool cloth fir m’wife.”

  With a quick sleight of hand, I placed one of my silver half-crowns in his hand. I winked with my single eye at his shocked, dropped jawline. “Buy her something special,” I murmured. “From me.”

  “I will, suh,” he replied, knuckling his brow. “Thank ye, suh.”

  Walking amid the spectators, I took hands, offered greetings, dropped coins into pockets or hands, smiled, laughed, asked a few questions about their lives or their day. Finding a dirty, scraggily bearded man dressed in tattered wool, leaning a crude cane, I paused a moment. He peered owlishly up at me through eyes filmed in white.

  “What do you need, father?” I asked, my hand on his bony shoulder.

  “Tch,” he commented, his head twitching slightly. He smiled revealing two brown teeth in a wide expanse of pink gum. “Naught, laddie,” he muttered, nodding, smiling. “Naught as you’re here.”

  Into his hand I placed a silver half-crown. “Don’t spend it all in one place,” I advised.

  In a deft move, he pocketed the coin, nodding, his toothless smile endearing. Though I knew he didn’t see well at all, somehow those filmed eyes glanced through me.

  At my gesture, a matronly woman stepped toward me, curtseying, unafraid.

  “Can you care for him, mum?” I asked. “Here’s a bit for your trouble.”

  Into her palm I placed two gold crowns. At this sudden wealth, the woman staggered, her mouth ajar. I caught her elbow, hiding what glinted in her hand from those who watched. I certainly didn’t want her robbed the moment the crowd split up.

  She folded the coins into her hand, nodding firmly up at me. With her arm about his shoulders, she took the old man in hand. He tottered away, leaning carefully on his cane, muttering at any who would listen: “That’s the King, right enough, the true King. The King blessed me, so he did.”

  Beyond the crowd, they vanished.

  Though few paid the old beggar any heed, many bowed or knuckled brows as I passed among them sharing a word, a jest, a laugh. I dropped a few coins into hands that needed them, spoke to them in a friendly fashion. No face that turned to me did so in antagonism, anger, rage or greed. These simple folk returned my smiles, laughed, pointed me out to their friends with pleasure and anticipation.

  “It’s your charisma.”

  Diverted by the sound of a crying baby, I hesitated, my head up. Turning, I found behind two rows of people, a young woman frantically trying to shush her child. Wrapped in a blanket and lying in a basket, the infant wailed and screamed. The only fear I found in that mass of people? A young mother overwrought and at her wits end trying to care for her colicky baby and still carry her burden home.

  The folk parted for me as I walked toward her. She saw me approach, her heavy bundle on her back and her arms filled with her basket. Her tears poured down her cheeks as she tried yet again to hush her baby, her left arm around the basket and with her right tried to soothe the squalling infant. She shot me swift glances of worry, of distraught, through her tears.

  “Here,” I said, my tone calm. “Let me help you.”

  “Is no trouble, milord,” she gasped. “Truly, she just –“

  “She has an upset stomach,” I murmured. “May I?”

  At the young mother’s quick nod, I lifted the screaming baby from the scratchy blanket and wicker. Though I’d never held a human infant before, much less one as red-faced and loud as this one, I followed my instinct. I cradled her in the crook of my left arm, nestling her in the hollow between my forearm and biceps. I thought my hard muscles might make her uncomfortable, yet she quieted a little.

  “She doesn’t feel well,” I said, tickling her purple lips with my finger.

  Her anxious mother, her brown eyes wide as she stared at the tiny form of her baby inside my massive arm, nodded, not breathing. “I thought not to trouble you, milord,” she whispered.

  “No trouble, lass,” I said, bending my face over this helpless creature in my arm. “She’ll feel better in a bit.”

  As I rubbed my nose against the minute one of the crying baby, I sent the softest breath of my healing magic into her tiny form. Without dropping into a trance, I immediately knew where the infant’s troubles came from. On the advice of a neighbor, the young mother gave her child an extract from a mushroom to help her sleep at night. The concoction distressed the baby to no end.

  My infinitesimal healing soothed the tiny girl’s outraged stomach. She quieted instantly. Her red face paled to pink, then to a normal, healthy shade of fleshly color. She burped, and smiled. Her chubby fists waved, her tiny bare feet kicking against the palm of my hand.

  “See?” I asked, enchanted. “She feels better.”

  Open-mouthed, the mother received her baby from me, unable to speak. Around us, the crowd murmured in awe, voices carrying on the light air.

  “Don’t give her any more of that mushroom,” I said, conjuring three gold coins to hide within the baby’s blankets. “She’ll be wakeful for a night or two, then her sleep will resume normally.”

  “Surely, milord,” the mother said, gently placing her now-happy baby inside the folds of her blanket in the basket. “Thank ye, milord.”

  I waved over a strapping lad, and sneaked a half-crown into his hand. “See the lady home, will you?”

  He bowed over his gift. With the boy carrying her heavy pack, the young mother easily lifted her baby with both arms. I watched them depart, the crowd parting for them before falling back into place, smiling a little.

  “Slick.”

  I basked under Darius’ admiring comment for perhaps two whole seconds.

  Though I stood higher than everyone in the spectators by both shoulders and head, Burly, Soldier-Merchant and their friends apparently just then discovered my whereabouts. As though I’d just sneaked into the folds of humanity, hiding like a coward.

  “There he is!” Burly shouted, pointing his sword, rallying his men.

  Soldier-Merchant, busy telling his troops how much I was worth to High King Brutal, advanced at a military trot, his well-armed men at his back.

  “Here we go again,” I murmured, my tone conversational.

  “Just hang tight, milord,” said an old man at my left. “They’ll go away on their own, milord.”

  I patted his shoulder. “Unfortunately, these lads won’t. Good thought though, my friend. I don’t want any good people harmed.”

  Waiting, waiting, until they closed the distance, I lured them in with the promise of my huge body lying in chains at Brutal’s feet. I let them approach, allowed them their visions of wealth and glory, the ideal that they, and only they, could capture The Bloody Wolf. As though I willed it, the crowd parted, stepping aside with a large inviting path that led them straight to my feet. Grinning, they advanced, their weapons at the ready.

  I permitted them to come within a single rod of me before I translocated myself to the other side of the square.

  There I lounged, at ease, leaning against a shop’s lintel. I joined a simple serving wench, her arms filled with a basket of fruit. She avidly watched the crowds and the would-be Wolf skinners with interest and curiosity, her pale face and eyes shadowed by her delicate white and pink bonnet.

  Until I, in my huge, hulking, scarred, body emerged from nothing behind her.

  A sharp screech filled my ears as she wheeled, panicked, in horror at the sight of me. I was there to kill her, she was sure, drink her blood from her throat as I mocked the brave hunters who sought to drag me to my just reward. My size, my scars, my muscles cast her into a frenzy of terror.

  “Chill,” I said, my finger over her lips. “I won’t hurt you, lass. What’s your name?”

  “N – N – Nima, milord,” she stammered.

  She tried to fold in upon herself, hiding, abasing, knowing that subservience to me might save her life. She wasn’t the prettiest of girls, with heavy brows, a large space between her two front teeth and skin dotted with red pimples. Her eyes tried to meet somewhere in the m
iddle of her nose, yet they were foremost her best feature. Large, incredibly green eyes rose quickly to mine then dropped to her feet.

  “Nima,” I said, smiling. “What a pretty name.”

  I stroked my finger down her lowered cheek and under her chin.

  I raised her waxen face up to mine, forcing her to meet my eyes. “What have you there, Nima? Fruit?”

  “Y - yes, m - milord,” she replied, shaking, trembling, holding the basket up between her body and mine as protection. As I made no immediate move to slay her, her fear slid slowly away, receding from my sensitive nostrils.

  “I’m very hungry, Nima,” I said, my finger stroking her cold face, my smile inviting her own. “May I?”

  Like the crowd before her, she sensed my nonviolent intentions, and calmed under my grin. “Of course, milord,” she said, relaxing, her own smile blooming. Despite her less than attractive face and her gap-toothed smile, her eyes made her as beautiful as Ly’Tana. Her cheeks filled out in a swift blush of hot pink.

  Perhaps I’d inherited Rygel’s ability to charm women as well as magic from his blood. I’d never enchanted a woman before, yet here a lady found me charming indeed.

  “It’s your animal magnetism.”

  “Whatever.”

  I accepted a small fruit from her basket and bit into it, its juices running down my chin, its tart flavor squeezing my throat’s glands. I swallowed, shivering, and bit again, my belly rejoicing at the prospect of food. I finished it in a gulp, holding her with my gaze. Licking my lips of its sweetness, I withheld my greedy urge to grab another.

  Instead, I seized her gaze, captured it, made it my prisoner. My sticky right hand cupped her cheek. I lowered my face to nuzzle my nose against hers.

  My finger flitted over her eye. “I love green eyes,” I murmured.

  “Milord,” she breathed, enchanted.

  My sticky fingers entangled her own.

  “Don’t tease her like this.”

  Like a cold dash of water over my head, I straightened.

  This is cruel, I thought, you’re making this simple girl fall in love with you. Darius is right.

  I am teasing her.

  I smiled down at Nima again, yet this time without using the charm. I caressed her arm this time, not her cheek, seeing her smile falter. “Go on home now, lass,” I said. “Things are going to get ugly now, and I don’t want you caught in the cross-fire.”