The Wolf King

by Alice Borchardt

  Avernia shrugged. “I can’t think that what she’s doing here matters. The problem is how to get rid of her.”

  “God,” Stella whispered. “God. Ansgar is the best thing that ever happened to me. Why does she come here now and ruin everything? I’ll kill her if she makes me look a common strumpet to him.”

  “Well, that’s what you were.”

  The crack of the slap echoed in the room. Avernia shrieked so loudly that Stella was certain it had been heard in the street. Avernia burst into tears and began to run toward the door. Stella jumped up and threw her arms around Avernia. “No, no, don’t. Don’t run out there and create a scene. You have as much to lose by this as I have. You must stay here and help me think of a way out of this.”

  Avernia wanted to have hysterics, but there was so much truth in what Stella said that she brought her anger and hurt under control at once. She had a husband also, the town blacksmith. She’d borne him five children, all living and prospering in the new city. She couldn’t afford scandal about her past, either. “All right, but don’t slap people who are just telling you the truth. Put your mind to solving this. Losing your temper with me won’t help.”

  “Yes, yes. Be quiet and let me think.” Stella began to pace up and down. Her second circuit of the room brought her to the window. She looked down at Lucilla in the square below. She paused, then strode quickly over to her husband’s desk against the far wall opposite the bed, sat down, found a wax tablet, and laboriously began to write.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t think Lucilla will want to interfere in my life if I give her a few problems of her own to worry about.”

  “How will you do that?”

  Stella didn’t answer but instead asked, “Are your sons still riding to Florence to purchase scrap iron?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then they can carry a letter.”

  “They will if I tell them.”

  “You had best tell them, and not one word to Ansgar. Hear me? Not one word.”

  “I don’t—”

  “I do.” Stella looked up. “You had best keep your mouth shut. Do it for both our sakes. Or that big, strong, bad-tempered husband of yours will find out how you earned your dowry.”

  Avernia gasped. “No.” She made the sign of the cross. “I am silent as the grave, and so are my sons. I swear it.”

  Sometime just before dawn the Saxon asked Matrona, “How did you know I was not a peasant?”

  She laughed. “What peasant knows how to clean the rust from mail, pick a fine warhorse and battle train him, sharpen a sword so expertly that it will shave a boar’s bristles but leave the blade polished like a mirror? In the matter of the sword, I watched you with the weapon you picked up at that hideous place where you and Regeane tried to shelter. The thing had the look of a fire poker and, indeed, I believe someone probably used it for that purpose, but within a week you had it clean, sharp, and glowing like moonlight.”

  “Though mistreated, a fine weapon,” the Saxon agreed. “I had to sacrifice some steel to clear the corrosion and rust from the blade, but since it was finely crafted in the first place, it was not harmed in the process. All sharpening takes steel from a blade; a good smith allows for that.”

  “Spoken like a true farmer,” Matrona said. “They always worry a lot about their edged toys.”

  “In my country, sometimes they do,” the Saxon replied. “I cannot be sorry for being taken for a son of the soil.”

  “Yes! Is that why you let them use you as a mule when you were sold across the mountains?”

  “How did you know?”

  He must have blushed; Matrona felt the heat in his skin. “Your body is marked by both the harness and the lash,” she said. “Why didn’t you let your kin ransom you?”

  He was silent.

  “Why?” she asked again.

  “Am I sharing your bed or are you sharing mine?”

  “We are in the forest, there are no beds,” Matrona answered.

  He absorbed this for a moment. “No promises between us.”

  “None. Mutual pleasure, that is all.”

  “I was too proud. My lady mother was dead. I would not have men point at me and say, there goes a man with a known price, and then hear women laugh. I would rather do the work of a mule.”

  Matrona sighed. “Men, the things they do in the name of honor.”

  “I think you cannot know. Many nights I confess I lay weeping in the vile cowshed where we were chained, wishing desperately for my home, my horses, hawks, and hounds. They would have killed me in some slow fashion had I been recaptured. I killed two men when I escaped, but better death than everlasting slavery, everlasting exile.”

  “Yes,” Matrona answered.

  “Even you?”

  “Yes. Once, a time or two, I made the choice; but I’m falling asleep.”

  He replied by embracing her more tightly. He didn’t know if he clung to her or she to him, but after so long alone, the feel of a woman’s body was comforting.

  He owed Regeane and her people everything. He dreamed of them, the wolves in the mist. Graceful, confident, moving down at nightfall ghostlike through the trees. Above, the sun was slipping into shadow as the clouds moved down from the mountains. He had been going down to his camp. Also, he was carrying a gutted deer carcass over his shoulders. He’d wondered if they would attack, try to take the deer from him. But they didn’t.

  One by one, they appeared, so like the patchy snow on the forest floor, gray white with glowing eyes, that he was not aware they were present until movement drew attention to them. He saluted them and watched them pass, the massive leader and his she the last. And he knew, without knowing how he knew, that they had been watching him, able to attack and kill him easily had he made any move against the rest, but they respected the coiled power they saw in him, as he in them. So they had a truce, one dangerous predator to another.

  And when he was in the greatest danger of his life, they had come to offer protection and comfort, and they had sheltered him and set him free.

  When she woke the sun was casting shafts of light between the pines. He was up; she smelled fresh bread. She rose, pushed the blankets aside. He averted his eyes and offered her his mantle. Matrona chuckled.

  “What? You are not cured yet?”

  “Looking at you makes me want to begin again.”

  “Make sure your wife is a warm-natured woman, otherwise I pity her. There is nothing better or worse than being constantly pursued about the house by a panting husband.”

  “Better or worse?” He got no reply and when he turned, she was gone.

  The golden dragon lay among the folds of his mantle on the forest floor.

  The virgin wolf is the fastest of all, the most dangerous. The wind and driving rain were in Regeane’s face, but the rain didn’t bother her. The wolf is a wonderful bad-weather animal and the wind told her in which direction the killers were fleeing among the narrow, twisting streets of the town. The Roman grid pattern had long been superseded by the medieval mileage of tangled footways leading to miniature plazas.

  The chase was complicated by the fact that in their terror, the fugitives ignored walls, fences, and even dwellings blocking their way to freedom. Led by the warrior with the scratched face, they kicked down the door of one house, exited into a walled garden, and jumped the wall—it was covered with spikes—when Regeane, hot on their heels, exited the house. She had two seconds to decide whether she would follow. Since she’d had no occasion to find out how high she could jump as a wolf, she was gratified to learn she could clear seven feet, but one of the spikes brushed her stomach, sending a chill of terror through her whole body. As soon as she landed in the stony street beyond, she understood why they had undertaken a maneuver hazardous even for a human. The dismay in their faces was almost comical. Almost. She could have been impaled on one of those spikes and killed.

  The leader picked up a stone; thrown by a man’s arm it was almost as da
ngerous as a crossbow bolt. She jerked, twisting to the left with the sinuous grace of a snake. But it caught her in the left chest, paralyzing her foreleg at the shoulder. She let out a cry of anguish, half howl, half scream, as she plowed into the stony street. But her legs were already moving, her claws catching at cracks in the paving. The pain—and she realized that the only injury was intense pain—receded and she got her legs under her.

  The scratch-faced one was almost on top of her. Throat: too close. Groin: he was a soldier, too much chance he was wearing protection. The sensitive inside of the upper thigh: beautiful—it was his turn to scream. But he had a bigger rock. It grazed the side of her face, almost amputating one ear. She was forced to jump back, and he was on his feet and away but now he was leaving a trail of blood.

  To a wolf it might as well have been a trail of burning pitch. She let out a cry, wolf speech, The quarry is just ahead, and heard and smelled rather than saw Maeniel and the rest at the end of the street. The chain striking the stones made a fearsome clatter. Then she took out after them again.

  The street rose sharply and turned into a climbing stair. When she passed the bend, she saw the one she’d marked struggling in a welter of blood. She knew she must have nicked the big artery in his thigh. Almost she pitied him, but then she remembered Itta’s eyes looking up at her, open, empty in death, through the clear water, and she knew he must have been the one to push the woman into the water, drive his knife through her ribs, holding her to the muddy bottom in the shallows until she drowned.

  Her pity evaporated. She jumped, clearing his struggling body, and continued after the rest. By the nose she knew Maeniel, Robert, and his friends were behind her. That damned chain, what an ungodly racket. What would they do about that damned chain?

  The street was a ramp now and curved outward, looking down on the city. The spear seemed almost leisurely as it arched above her. For a second she slowed and all her muscles jerked. She was thinking it might be aimed at her, but it wasn’t, and she could see that clearly once it flashed overhead.

  A beautiful throw. Beautiful. She and Maeniel hunted together after the human fashion and she knew how a spear should be handled. Of the four remaining criminals, the two older men were flagging now. The boys outpaced them.

  The spear, at the highest point of its arc, broke, then fell, catching the slowest of the fugitives at the point where the shoulders joined the neck and shearing through the spinal cord. He fell, bonelessly dead even before he hit the ground. Three remained. Wolf kill, cat kill, they kill different ways. The wolf runs its prey into the ground. The cat is agile, the bite a death blow dispatching its victim instantly. But to the beast of mutable flesh and tangible moonlight, both ways were open.

  Wolf kill, Regeane thought and loosed her last kick. Deadly, almost as fast as a cheetah, faster than most beasts of the hoof can run, she came, closing the gap between herself and the other straggler. He’d killed the boy and taken pleasure in the deed. The son had been, for all his weedy build, only a child and almost defenseless, an easy kill.

  The broad, shallow-stepped street curved out over the town below with only a low safety wall between the street and a fall into the jumble of red-tiled roofs below. Behind, making the best pace he could, Maeniel felt his heart jump into his throat. He dropped back, ready to take out any man among Robert’s friends who loosed another spear, but none among them even looked like trying it. They, as much as the wolf, scented blood and were ready to go hand to hand with the survivors.

  Ahead, Regeane paced her chosen prey. He caught sight of her from the corner of his eye. He was running at the outer edge of the street, the safety rail no higher than his knee. He swerved toward it and his knee slammed painfully into the stone curb, but he might have saved himself if her shoulder and snapping jaws hadn’t crowded his left side. He lost his balance and went over. The scream was terrible, chilling, but brief. His head contacted a terra-cotta roof tile. It snapped his neck and crushed his skull.

  Regeane slowed for the final push. The street had reached the hilltop and the two ahead were counting on being faster than the wolves or Robert and his friends on the downslope. The rain had abated but the wolf warned Regeane that the storm had not ended, since it was growing darker by the moment. The light was failing and a greenish nightmare twilight hung over the city. Lightning flashed, striking close by, and the almost simultaneous explosion of thunder struck terror into the wolf. She almost escaped the woman’s control. She slowed drastically. Her hair stood on end as static electricity danced like fire on her pelt, but the woman commanded the wolf. Inexorably, she shook off her fear, and her vision, dazzled by the flash, cleared. But when she was able to see ahead, she found the remaining pair of fugitives had vanished.

  In the square, Chiara watched in wide-eyed shock as the mob took up the chase.

  “I warned you, dammit, I warned you,” Hugo’s guest roared.

  For a moment Chiara didn’t reply, then she said, “At least thank God they’re gone.”

  “Don’t bother to thank God. Thank the bishop. If he hadn’t spoken up when he did—”

  “We might well be dangling from the rafters. The mob was hot to hang someone, and they might have accepted substitutions.”

  The bishop was standing up. “No,” he said to Chiara. “They are not all gone.”

  The weapons of Desiderius’s guard had taken some effect. There were five sodden, bloody bundles left lying on the cobbles. At least three of them were still moving. Even though the sky was growing darker, the rain was abating; the bishop shrugged away his golden cope and robe. He was dressed in a worn linen tunic and trousers. He jumped a bit awkwardly from the porch and began to make the rounds of the wounded. Absolving as well as he could the sins of the living as well as the dead, he began to call out orders.

  “You men go fetch litters. There are some in the church. The wounded must be moved to some safer spot. And take up the dead—” The corpses still lay where they had been placed earlier for the king’s inspection. “Place them on the porch, sheltered from the rain until they can be given Christian burial.”

  Gimp, directed by Hugo’s guest, and a couple of the other men helped in moving the bodies, while another party, some of them women, ran to the church.

  Armine continued to hold a still-trembling Chiara. “Child,” he said. “You have seen this day enough to unsettle the souls of grown men. Indeed, I shall not forget it.”

  The bishop returned to the palace porch. Armine gave him a hand up. His clothing was drenched, his sparse hair plastered to his scalp, but he looked oddly younger than he had when he had been weighed down with his ceremonial cope and golden robe.

  “Two are beyond help. One, I don’t know. Badly wounded. The remaining two will likely live if they are taken to shelter and given prompt attention.”

  Just then two men with a litter arrived. The bishop directed them in moving the wounded to the church. Chiara pulled free of Armine’s grip and ran to the other end of the porch where the corpses now lay. The two youngest were together at the end of the row; they had been placed close to the palace door. Chiara looked down at Mona and her cousin. The skull-crushing wound in the boy’s head had been washed by the rain and the mourners. It was a raw, red gash in his livid scalp and face. Mona’s slit throat had been sewn together, but her hand showed the stump of a finger where the ring had been cut off.

  “They are not more than children,” Chiara whispered, reaching down to touch Mona’s face.

  “She was fourteen, he twelve,” Hugo’s guest told her.

  “How did you know?”

  “I heard it being discussed. I hear a lot of things. Now come away. I warned you.”

  Chiara ground her teeth. “You shut up, you . . . you . . . you . . .”

  “What must I do next?” the spirit said, and laughed. “Teach you some mighty oaths?”

  “I wish you had a face so I could slap it,” Chiara said. “And by the way, what did you mean by that charade in my bedroom last ni
ght?”

  Before he could answer, Armine arrived. “Dearest daughter, to whom are you speaking?”

  Chiara looked around wildly. “Gimp,” she more or less suggested.

  “He is not here,” her father said sternly.

  “Hugo?” she said hopefully.

  “He is in an absolute spasm of terror, clinging to the bishop’s chair.”

  Down at the other end of the portico the bishop was trying to pry Hugo away from his chair and having little success in his endeavors. Most of the rest were crossing the square on their way to the cathedral. The rain slowed but the sky was black as night.

  “Come, the weather is worsening. Come,” Armine said in a tone that brooked no disobedience. He took her hand and began to pull her toward the edge of the porch.

  “No,” the spirit said. “Don’t.”

  Chiara pulled free and spoke to the empty air in a way that frightened Armine more than the storm or the mob had.

  “No,” she repeated. “What’s going to happen?”

  “Be quiet,” Hugo’s guest said. “I’m listening. One.”

  Chiara glanced around, eyes dilated with terror.

  “Two,” Hugo’s guest said. “Down, down, down,” he shrieked. “On . . . three.”

  The lightning bolt hit. The whole forum was illuminated with an unearthly blue glow. The church tower, highest structure in the forum, crumbled, the heavy stones punching like nails through the leaded roof of the cathedral. The wooden framing crumbled and burst into flames.

  Chiara saw the bishop flung away from Hugo as if by a push from a gigantic hand. Hugo was looking up at the sky, his mouth hanging open, and then a split second later, Chiara realized Hugo could see nothing. Only the whites of his eyes were showing, and then he collapsed like a rag doll.

  Armine somehow stayed upright, clinging to his daughter tightly. The bishop spun ’round and ’round until he, too, somehow ended up in Armine’s arms. The explosion of thunder was simply deafening, the worst sound Armine had ever heard since the time he had only just barely escaped an avalanche in the Alps some years before. In fact, this sound was even worse.