“But, milord –“
I brushed her fragile cheek with my knuckles. “Be safe, my sweet Nima. Go on now. I know you’ll find a good husband. And thank you for the food. I’ll always treasure your kindness.”
Her chin on her shoulder, her odd green eyes worried and alarmed, she obeyed me. Clasping her basket to her thin bosom, she rounded the corner of the street and vanished.
I sighed.
“Well done, boy.”
“I like her. Will she find a good husband?”
“You said so, didn’t you?”
“That doesn’t mean –“
“There he is!”
“Duty calls,” I murmured.
Again luring them in close simply by standing still, I folded my arms across my chest and leaned against the doorway. Nima’s fruit rumbled in my stomach. I need to end this debacle soon, I thought. I’ll faint from hunger otherwise.
Fingering my brow where the goose egg sprouted, I hissed in pain. It had long since stopped bleeding, but the swelling around my eye increased. After dinner, I’ll have to heal it, I supposed. I certainly needed my eye to see through.
My friends learned a bit of caution. Spreading out, Soldier-Merchant, Burly, Troubadour and their companions approached at a careful walk, as though sneaking up on me might prevent me from pulling another vanishing act.
When they came with a few rods, I raised a grin. “Bye, bye, gents.”
I translocated myself to a rooftop, a warehouse, were I any judge, just as Soldier-Merchant and Burly and friends pounced. They floundered about cursing, flailing, shoving one another when once again I eluded capture.
On the far side of the square from Nima and her fruit, I rested atop the single building, and crossed my legs and arms.
The determined soldiers followed, implacable. Pushing through the laughing, jeering, milling crowd, they gathered under me, staring up, mouths working in annoyance or anger, I couldn’t tell which. I peered down, quite safe from their swords and their ropes.
“Aren’t you boys tired yet?” I asked politely. “All that running around.”
“Come down or we’ll be forced to burn it from under you.”
“Are you serious?” I asked, astounded. “Get out of town.”
“This is our town,” replied Burly, exchanging a puzzled glance with Troubadour. “Why would we leave it?”
I swear it, my eyes rolled all by themselves.
“Torches!” cried Soldier-Merchant.
Being a mild-weathered, sunny day, torches weren’t immediately to hand. My would-be captors fumbled about, shrugging shoulders, mumbling questions. Burly glared at them. I laughed outright.
One brave lad dove into the crowd, ran across the square, vanished into a small wooden structure. Within two minutes, he emerged with three torches. The crowd, no doubt curious, opened up a passage through as the young man trotted back, waving his prizes, triumphant.
Soldier-Merchant quickly lit them with his flint and steel.
“Don’t you dare burn that building down,” screeched a voice from the crowd.
Burly and I both glanced up as an old man and his wife emerged to the forefront of the watching spectators.
“Everything we own is in that warehouse,” the old man cried, his arm around his weeping wife’s shoulders. “Don’t you dare, I say.”
Burly might have hurled an insult into the old man’s teeth, but my voice drowned his out. “No worries, my geriatric friend. These idiots won’t harm your building or your possessions.”
“Says who?” challenged Soldier-Merchant.
“Says I.”
Soldier-Merchant, Burly and Troubadour, the ringleaders, earned the honor of carrying the torches toward the flammable warehouse. The other Wolf skinners held back, waiting with eager anticipation. The crowd growled, angry mutters carrying across the mass like wind through the heather. My three captors, ignoring the dire threat at their backs, grinned up at me as they spread apart to set aflame three different sections of the warehouse at the same time.
I permitted the idiot trio to lift the torches toward the structure before I blew the flames out.
The crowd roared, not with anger, but with laughter. Soldier-Merchant, Burly and Troubadour gaped in utter shock at the blackened stumps of their precious torches, smoke curling gently upward.
“People who play with fire tend to get burned,” I said conversationally.
Three sets of tonsils stared up at me.
“What of you? You play with fire all the time.”
“I know,” I replied absently. “But I’m an expert.”
Aloud, I said, “Folks, remember I’m a professional. Don’t try this at home.”
I leaped down from the rooftop, landing easily on both feet. The drop, easily two stories’ might have injured anyone else. The watching spectators ahhed again, murmuring, pointing, remembering the huge ex-slave with the friendly manners who challenged the evil mercenaries.
“Get over yourself already.”
Like a wolf, I found my balance instantly. I inwardly grinned at Darius’s acid comment, and spread my open arms wide. “You boys suck rocks. I mean, really.”
“I’ll show you the meaning of suck,” grated Burly, lunging in, his sword high. “You are so dead.”
As I had for time out of mind, I awaited his rush, his attack, with patience. Let the fight come to you. Let your opponent make the first move. Allow him his one mistake.
“Kill him.”
“I don’t think so.”
Burly was big. He was fast. He had skill. What he didn’t have was instinct.
He held his sword a fraction too high. He charged way too fast. He closed sooner than was wise.
Pacing forward to meet him, I ducked under his falling sword, and sidestepped in the same motion. His blade whistled over my head at the same instant my fist connected with his diaphragm.
Burly dropped his sword to the dirt with a heavy clang. His right hand, still raised to strike, fell toward me without force or a weapon. He stopped, urking, his dirty eyes bulging, as I kicked his knee out from under him.
Burly fell, choking, his right hand on his throat while his left sought his broken leg.
“Another one bites the dust,” I murmured.
“Leave ‘im be!” cried a voice from the spectators.
“Let him go,” chanted another voice. “He’s not what you want.”
Soldier-Merchant and Troubadour eyed their fallen friend with worry and growing alarm. At the mob’s sudden support of me, they added shock and dismay to their repertoire of emotions. Two more Wolf skinners melted into the crowd and disappeared.
The crowd took up the mantra, calling ‘let ‘im go’ over and over. Let ‘im go. Let ‘im go.
“For someone who claimed to not know how to fight,” said a strong voice from the company, “he certainly does an awesome imitation of it. I’m done.”
A broad-shouldered man turned, sheathing his sword and walked toward the crowd.
“Where are you going?” called Troubadour. “We can take him down if we stick together.”
The young man turned back. “A dead man can’t spend money.”
He eyed Burly on the ground, moaning, clutching his leg. His eyes returned to me with a half-smile and a respectful salute. “You won’t be taking him down. You’re the ones who’ll be ground into dog meat.”
Soldier-Merchant, wiser now, might have caved in and relented had not Troubadour whispered in his ear. Damn it all.
He thinks to kill me with my own sword, no less, I thought.
Troubadour spoke in a low voice, gesturing toward me and the now irritated mass of spectators. Behind them, the clamor went on, now with fists pumping the air in time to their chants. Troubadour smiled at last as Soldier-Merchant girded up his spine. The pair glanced around at the angry faces and decided to the victor went the spoils. I represented the wealth Brutal promised and nothing changed that by one jot.
“This is ridiculous,” I snapped,
irritated. “Cease already. I can kill you without even thinking about it.”
“Never,” gritted the Soldier-Merchant. “You’re mine.”
“Ours,” amended another, echoed by his brothers in arms.
“Ours,” added the troubadour with the sword he stole from me.
“All right,” snapped the soldier-turned-merchant, bitterly, under his breath. “Ours.”
I noticed the mercenaries didn’t hear his last comment.
“I refuse to surrender,” I declared, my arms again crossing my chest. “You’ll yet serve me.”
“Only in hell,” said the soldier.
“Very well,” I said, my hands on my hips. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“If they want to visit hell, send them there.”
“Don’t push me,” I snapped aloud. “They can visit hell on their own time, not mine.”
Soldier-Merchant and Troubadour exchanged a long look.
“And that’s my sword, you gutless wonder,” I growled. “I’ll be having it back.”
The Troubadour lifted it, his lips pulled back in a sneer. “It’s my sword now.”
“Just kill him and be done with it.”
“Not even in your wildest dreams,” I muttered, not caring if they heard me. “This boy will learn some manners if I have to pound it into his soft misshapen head.”
The pair exchanged yet another long look. The crowd quieted as the tensions rose, and the simple folk stepped backward, shuffling, knowing that within moments the battle would commence. They may have supported me, but now they knew they failed and I’d soon go down under such superior numbers.
I waited, patient, until they moved back and the brave company of reward hunters spread apart and circled me. I heard four creep on the balls of their feet behind me, while two pairs flanked me to either side. I faced Soldier-Merchant, Troubadour and four more. Two kind souls dropped to their knees beside Burly and tended his injuries.
“What’s your name, boy?” I asked, my eye on Soldier-Merchant.
Surprised, he answered honestly. “Um, Lux. My name’s Lux.”
“Lux,” I said. “You and your friends are about to learn a secret.”
“A secret? What secret?”
“My name,” I said, raising my hands, palms flat together, my fingers over my lips. “They didn’t call me The Wolf for the hell of it.”
Before Lux and his musical friend could glance at one another, I shifted shape.
Where once a big man in a stained white tunic and brown breeches stood, an enormous jet black wolf with strange grey eyes took his place and stared down at them, fangs gleaming.
My sudden transformation stunned the stout men who threatened me. Their eyes bugged out in sudden fear, their jaws slack. My sword dropped from Troubadour’s drooping hand to fall, with a dull clang, into the dirt. Lux took a step backward, then two, then three. Two men to my front dove into the safety of the crowd as I listened as the pair to my rear melted away.
I expected the crowd to also flee, panicked, afraid, running from the huge wolf in their midst.
Uh –
The massed crowd of spectators bent to one another, whispering, pointing, many smiling. If they felt horror, I never scented it. Were those murmurs of delight I heard wafting on the slight breeze? I sensed little fear, and witnessed instead admiration.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Only the men who threatened me with harm screamed their terror from their lungs with every breath, from their pores, to stink in my nostrils. My wolf instincts homed in on them, and I flattened my ears, my upper lip curling. My eyes slitted of their own accord as I stalked them, my hackles rising, stiff, along my shoulders and down my spine.
My ripping snarl, emerging from deep within my chest and radiating outward, cracked like thunder. Troubadour, the nearest and the only one dumb enough not to retreat, I pounced on first. All right, maybe I chose him because he dared take my sword and then laugh at me. He would pay for his crime –
“With his life?”
– with his dignity.
My front paws on his chest, he went down, screaming like a young girl, on his back. I snapped my fangs inches from his white face, his eyes rolling back in their sockets. His shrieks of terror assaulted my ears at the same time the rank odor of urine flooded my nostrils.
History surely repeats itself, for yet another victim of mine pissed his drawers.
Stepping off his chest, I nipped him to his feet. Charging him, driving him, I forced him to flee, howling, his britches wet and dripping, into the sphere of laughing spectators. He vanished, his cries of panic muted with distance.
Lux tried to flee, I’ll give him that. Dropping his own blade, he bolted. No man, however fleet, could run faster than me when I’m irritated.
Leaping onto his back, I drove him face-first into the dirt. I kept him firmly planted on the ground with my right paw between his shoulder blades, his legs kicking, his hands beating uselessly as he tried ineffectually to rise. His screams muffled, I growled low in his ear.
“You think you can skin The Wolf?” I asked, my breath hot against his throat. “You dare accost me? I warned you not to mess with me. You were given every chance to back off and leave me alone. Did you?”
Lux screamed, dust blowing out from either side of his face. He sucked in more, choking, gasping, breathing in nothing but dirt. His hands slapped the ground not just in panic, but as a drowning man slaps the water that fills his lungs. His body, not just his emotions, felt as though it were dying and fought for life.
I held him there for a few more choice seconds, knowing he’d not die in that short span of time. “Remember, Lux,” I growled. “Remember that things are not always as they seem. And remember that sometimes it’s best to just mind your own bloody business.”
I took my weight off his back and flipped him over with my paw. He grunted, his eyes blinded by sweat, dirt and tears. His hands rose to feebly wipe grit from his face, gasping, wheezing, coughing out the dust he inhaled. I let him sort himself and breathe in a few precious gulps of clean air.
My hearing swiftly told me the other brave adventurers had discovered the merits of leaving well enough alone and had decamped, safe, unharmed. No humans threatened my back or my flanks, and only the approving crowd looked on.
“He’s so handsome,” giggled a female voice. “I just love his fur. It’s so very black.”
“Check out those eyes. I love his eyes.”
“Surely he’s a lord,” whispered someone else. “A lord from some far off place.”
“An island, maybe,” answered another. “A mystical, magical island of strange, wonderful creatures.”
“Surely,” muttered another. “He’s not for us, drat it. Why can’t he be our lord?”
Cleared of dirt and tears, Lux finally opened his eyes to find me, grinning down into his face. A wolfish grin didn’t equate well with the human smile, and Lux knew I stood ready to disembowel him. He just knew it, and reacted accordingly.
He screamed.
“Blimey,” muttered an irritated voice from the mass. “He’s a loud bugger and no mistake.”
“Shut him up, milord,” called another. “He’s not worth it, so he’s not.”
“You surely aren’t,” I said, sitting back, permitting Lux to scramble backwards on his hands and butt, his face, under the plastered grime, ghost-pale. Several feet from me, he collapsed, turning over to propel himself into what he hoped were the welcoming hands of the crowd. He fell on his face again, his hands and feet scrabbling uselessly.
The townsfolk stepped away from him, harsh comments and sneers thrown down onto his shoulders. An old lady, carrying a basket of shopping and wearing a wool skirt of blue, kicked dirt into his face. A sturdy farmer spat on him, his spittle falling to splat on Lux’s head.
I changed form.
I stepped forward. My strong right grip seized hold of Lux’s shoulder. Lifting him, squirming, shaking dust off his clothes, I he
ld him up. His body dangled from my hand, his toes not quite reaching the ground. He danced for me, the terrorized dance of the prey in the clutches of the predator.
I grinned into his dirty, panicked face. “I’m hungry,” I said.
“Urk,” Lux replied, hanging from my hand and grinning in fear, a skeleton’s last grin.
“I even paid for my meal.”
“Ugh,” he replied, still grinning.
“Show him no mercy, lord,” called a voice from the masses.
“Kill him!”
“He would have shown you none, milord.”
“Death!” screamed another.
Like a wildfire fed on dry grass and a hot wind, the once peaceful crowd turned ugly between one heartbeat and the next. Like the rioters in Soudan after Rygel and I escaped the palace, Lionel dead and Brutal incapacitated, these people found their rage and reveled in it. Their raised voice called for blood and nothing less would satisfy them.
The spectators chanted. Their raised fists pummeled the air in time to their shouts. “Kill him. Kill him. Kill him.”
Even the old lady who kicked dirt into Lux’s face screamed for his blood, her round eyes hard and unmerciful. A fist hurled a rock from a row in the middle and struck true. Lux grunted again as the stone bounced off his cheekbone. Blood trickled to the corner of his mouth.
The rock-thrower inspired the rest. Fruit, vegetables, more rocks, clots of horse manure flew through the air to strike him, and also me, as sometimes their aim fell short. I held up my arm to repel a rotten cabbage as the angry people pelted the source of their anger with anything they could get their hands on. The cabbage fell apart and rained down to fall at my feet with a musky, decayed odor.
This is getting out of control, I thought.
“You really should calm them down.”
“I will.”
“Humans get so very emotional, you know.”
“Like wolves.”
Wonder of wonders, Darius shut up.
I raised Lux higher with my right hand as I raised my left, trying to placate. “He can’t harm us any more, good people,” I called. “Relax, now. It’s all good.”
Prince Wolf Page 18
