The Wolf's Bounty

by K. T. Harding

  She obeyed him and rushed through the kitchen door. A stout woman with arms as red as lobsters sweated over the stove. She didn’t even turn around when Raleigh entered. Raleigh pushed her way through the kitchen and broke through into a quiet, carpeted hall leading to the main staircase.

  A second later, Dax stuck his head through the kitchen door. “Upstairs, Miss....”

  She flashed him a bright smile. “Raleigh.”

  “Of course, Miss Raleigh. Bishop’s office is upstairs.”

  “Just Raleigh,” she corrected him. “Raleigh is my first name. Raleigh Douglas.”

  He nodded her up the stairs, and she followed his instructions to a nice landing overlooking the main hall. The farther she went, the more signs of life she noticed. Lamps burned in the upper passage leading to a series of rooms. Their doors stood open so she could see inside. She passed a neat bedroom with a fire burning in the grate. A little farther on, and she heard the clink of metal against glass.

  The sound led her to a room at the far end of the landing. She eased the door back and found herself staring into the most unusual room she ever beheld in her life. Shelves lined every wall to the ceiling, but only one held books. The others held curious collections of stuffed game animals, glass jars of unrecognizable brews, equipment she didn’t understand, and strange objects made of all manner of gleaming metal.

  A large work table stood against the far wall under the windows. A commanding view of the driveway spread out beyond the panes. Anyone standing at that desk could see the coach bringing her to the building.

  She had to look twice before she saw a figure crouched in front of the desk, but she couldn’t recognize any of the figure’s features. One glance told Raleigh it was a man, a very tall and powerfully built man. Broad shoulders filled out a black frock coat stretching to his knees. He wore black pants and polished black boots.

  She couldn’t see anything else because a strange device covered his head. It reminded her of a knight’s jousting helmet. It buckled behind his neck, and metal plates obscured every other part of his head except a fistful of black hair curling out under the buckles.

  A door slammed downstairs, and the man shot to his feet. He whipped around to face Raleigh, and she almost had a heart attack at what she saw. Two huge goggles stuck out of the front of the helmet. A thick glass lens made one of the man’s eyes look almost as big as the rest of his head. Tubes and wires stuck out of the helmet and ran into a metal globe covering the other eye. Lights blinked on its surface, and it pinged and buzzed against his skull.

  Raleigh could only stand and stare. She’d never seen anything like it before. Was this Knox Bishop? Was this the creature she had to work for? That man at the Gingerbread House must have been right. This monster wasn’t human. Maybe he wasn’t even alive. Maybe he was some kind of machine.

  Her heart pounded against her chest, but she dared not run out of the room. Why would an innocent kid like Dax show such obvious signs of admiring Knox Bishop if he was a machine? This didn’t make sense, but Raleigh would be jiggered if she turned tail and ran at a time like this. Whatever Knox Bishop was, he wasn’t as dangerous or frightening as a kataract. Her hand flew to her gun.

  He stared at her from across the room. A rumbling sound came from inside the helmet. Then he took a step toward her. Instinct took over. Raleigh whipped out her gun and aimed it at his chest. Shooting him in the head would do no good. The bullet would bounce right off that thing.

  He stopped, and another muffled sound came from inside. When she didn’t move or lower her weapon, his hand flew up. She cocked the hammer and tightened her finger on the trigger to fire. At this range, she could drop him like an ox.

  He didn’t attack, though. His hand grappled around behind the helmet, and he unfastened the buckles holding it on. He slipped it off and shook out a full head of shoulder-length black hair. She found herself staring at a very normal-looking man. He wore a smooth leather waistcoat over his crisp white shirt, and a gold watch chain swayed between his buttons when he moved. A full black mustache covered his upper lip, and black eyes glinted at her above his high cheekbones.

  He wore two crossed pistol belts slung low over his hips. His frock coat covered them, but their silver handles gleamed in the lamp light. Raleigh understood a man who wore guns like that. He was a fighter, and he kept himself ready to fight at any moment, day and night.

  “What do you want?” he growled. “What are you doing in here?”

  She couldn’t be more surprised if he spoke a different language. She never once considered lowering her weapon. “I’m Raleigh Douglas. I have an appointment with Knox Bishop.”

  “I’m Knox Bishop, and you can’t be Raleigh Douglas. Raleigh Douglas is a man.”

  “I’m the only Raleigh Douglas you need to know about.” She fished the letter out of her vest pocket. “I have a letter from you offering me an apprenticeship. I was supposed to show up here at ten o’clock.”

  His head snapped around, and he gasped when he saw the clock. “Ten o’clock! Jumping Jehosephat!”

  “Didn’t you see the coach pull up?” she asked.

  He waved the helmet still dangling in his hand. “I didn’t see anything with this on, and I didn’t hear the chime, either. Well, it is indeed ten o’clock, but I can’t offer you the apprenticeship. I only hire men. I thought you were a man with a name like Raleigh Douglas. I wouldn’t have hired you if I’d known you were a woman.”

  Raleigh glared at him. “Well, whose fault is that? I traveled all the way here on your promise to give me a job, and I’m not leaving until you do.”

  “I won’t do that,” he returned. “The job is much too dangerous for a woman.”

  She cocked her head. “Did you even read the letter I sent you? I can fight as well as any man. Give me a chance, and I’ll prove it.”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry. It’s out of the question. If you can’t afford the fare back home, I’ll give you some money. Dax can give you a ride to the post station, but I can’t give you a job. Sorry about the misunderstanding, but you can’t blame me with a name like that.”

  He turned back to his work table. He pretended she just vanished into thin air because he didn’t want to talk to her anymore. She stood rooted to the spot. She still aimed her pistol at his broad back. She couldn’t let him turn her out like this. She wouldn’t let any man dismiss her like some kind of chambermaid. She came all this way. She wouldn’t leave without some acknowledgment.

  She set her teeth hard and lowered her voice to a snarl. “Turn around. Turn around and look at me.”

  He whirled around to face her. His mouth opened to say something, but when he saw the gun pointed in his face, he stopped. Just for a fraction of a second, he looked her in the eye. He took in the hard determination written there. Then he swept his glance once down to her boots and back up to her face.

  She expected him to say something similar to all the cutting comments she heard this morning. She wasn’t dressed in a ladylike manner. She should get herself a nice gingham dress and an apron—all the same stuff. She knew what he saw when he looked at her. Her pants, her leather vest, her dark orange shirt, her guns, her boots—they all told the same story.

  To her surprise, he didn’t make any nasty remarks. He softened. “Put the gun down, Raleigh.”

  She sized him up one more minute, and the gun fell to her side.

  He tossed his helmet onto the work table. He combed his fingers through his hair and crossed the room to another desk she didn’t see at first. He dropped into a pivoting chair and leaned back with a sigh. “Listen. You don’t want this job. It’s dangerous. It’s nasty. It’s not a job for a young lady.”

  She smacked her lips for the hundredth time. “Did you even read my letter? I can handle dangerous and nasty, and that’s the first time anybody ever called me a young lady. I can do this. At least give me a chance.”

  He plucked a single sheet of paper from his desk and squinted at it. Raleigh rec
ognized her own handwriting. “Yes, I read your letter many times. I’ve read it several times a day since I first received it. You claim to have fought ula’ree. Is that true?”

  Raleigh jammed her pistol into her holster. “Everything in that letter is true. Do you think I would claim it to get a job I couldn’t handle?”

  He waved the letter aside. “So tell me how you kill ula’ree. I want to know.”

  “They usually come after the garden. They root around and dig up the turnips and carrots and potatoes. If you show yourself while they’re eating, they attack and gore you with their tusks, so I rigged up a straw man in the barn door connected to a trip wire running across my carrot bed. When the ula’ree trip the wire, the straw man jumps down into the barn door and dances around in front of them. I tied old pots and pans to the straw man’s back so he rattled a lot and attracted their attention. They stop eating and attack the straw man. They tear him down and gore him on the ground so they don’t see me standing a few feet away. I can take all the time I want to shoot them behind the ear with my crossbow.”

  He chuckled under his breath and tossed the letter on his desk. “Very clever. Very clever, indeed. I’m impressed. You’re the first person I’ve ever met who realized how useless it is to attack them head-on.”

  “Listen, Mr. Bishop,” she began.

  He cut her off with a chop of his hand. “Just call me Bishop. Everybody does.” He swiveled his chair to face away from her and growled through gritted teeth. “Whatever you do, don’t call me Knox. Only my mother ever called me that, and I can’t stand it.”

  “All right, Bishop. I came a long way to get this job. Give me one chance, and you’ll see I can hold my own. You won’t be disappointed. I promise you that.”

  He shot her a sidelong glance. “Do you understand the consequences if you fail? Do you understand you could be dead within the hour if you can’t hold your own?”

  “I’m sure I’ve already faced much worse than you can throw at me,” she replied. “Give me a chance. Just once.”

  He shot out of his chair. “Oh, all right. Just don’t blame me if you get your head shot off. If this is the best way to get rid of you, I’ll go along with it just once.”

  He pushed a button over his desk and crossed back to his work table. He fiddled with his stuff until Dax appeared at the door. Dax gave Raleigh a surprised smile.

  “Take Ms. Douglas down to the armory,” Bishop told him. “Make sure she has everything she needs, and give her a suit of armor, too.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Raleigh started to say, “I don’t need armor,” but he already turned away. Dax touched her arm. “This way.”

  She cast one last look at Bishop. He adjusted some wires on his helmet and didn’t turn around. She hurried out of the room to follow Dax down the stairs. He showed her past the kitchen to another staircase hidden behind a door. It dropped into the basement, where Dax lighted the lantern.

  In the golden glow, Raleigh saw racks and racks of weapons lining the walls. Full suits of medieval armor hung in the corners. She grimaced at them. “I am NOT wearing one of those.”

  Dax laughed at her. “Not that. This.” He handed her a breastplate. “It fits over your chest with another one around the back. It protects you from any shots to the chest, but it won’t interfere with your mobility very much.”

  She examined the plate from every side. “Does Bishop wear one of these on the job?”

  He nodded. “All the time. He wouldn’t leave the house without it.”

  “All right. If it’s good enough for him, I’ll wear it.”

  He strolled down the racks. “What else do you need? Here’s a cutlass and a rapier. Here’s a bolo and an atlatl.”

  Raleigh waved both hands. “Whoa, whoa. I don’t need any of that. I’ve got everything I need in my carpetbag. Where did you put it?”

  He took her back to the kitchen. The cook watched when Raleigh took out her throwing blade and strung her crossbow over her shoulder. She buckled the wallet of bolts to her belt. “These are all I need.”

  Dax stared at her with wide eyes. He murmured in a reverential whisper. “You don’t know how lucky you are to be going out with him. I would give anything to go on a job with him, just once.”

  She clasped the armor around her chest. It fitted better than she expected. “From what he said, it sounds like he wants to protect you from the danger. He must care about you a lot.”

  “I would gladly die to fight at his side just once.” Dax sighed. “He’s the best, you know, truly the best.”

  “How long have you worked for him?”

  Dax dug his toe into the carpet. “I never really got to work for him, not really. I started driving him around when I was just a kid. He would send me out to buy extra coal and sometimes groceries—little jobs like that.”

  “Have you ever asked him to take you on a job?”

  Dax’s head shot up, and his eyebrows flew up. “Oh, I could never come right out and ask him that. Never!”

  “Well, if he’s right, I won’t be coming back from this job, so maybe he’ll be desperate enough for another apprentice to take you on.”

  “Don’t say that!” he exclaimed. “You’ll come back. You’re confident. You’ll be just fine.”

  “What about the other apprentices? Weren’t they confident, too?”

  “I really don’t know. Some of them were foreigners who didn’t speak English. The others never talked to me. They wouldn’t stoop so low.”

  Raleigh clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, I would. Now come on. I’m all set, so let’s go back upstairs and get him.”

  Chapter 5

  Bishop showed no sign of seeing or hearing Raleigh and Dax when they returned to his office. He set up a test tube rack on his work bench and donned a stained white apron that hung past his knees. He put his helmet back on, and the lights blinked on.

  He pulled on long rubber gloves that came up past his elbows. Then he started taking jars and bottles off the shelves on all sides. He poured driblets of the contents into the test tubes. The mixtures foamed and smoked and turned odd colors.

  Raleigh couldn’t believe her eyes, but the sight didn’t surprise Dax at all. He watched in adoring silence. Whatever else Knox Bishop was, he certainly impressed that young man.

  Bishop took his concoction to a device bolted to his table. He slotted the test tubes into a wheel and turned a crank handle. It spun the tubes around, faster and faster. When it stopped, he took them out one at a time, poured off a little from each into a glass phial, and stuck the phial into a loop in his pistol belt.

  He unbuckled his helmet and set it on the table. He raked his hair off his forehead with his fingernails and smoothed down his mustache before he noticed Dax and Raleigh standing in the doorway.

  His eyes flashed at Dax. “What are you doing standing there gawking? Bring the coach around to the door.”

  Dax jumped out of his skin. “Yes, Sir.” He raced out of the room.

  Raleigh listened to the boy’s heels pounding down the stairs. “He’s certainly very enthusiastic. He thinks the world of you.”

  Bishop spun the dial on a safe above his desk and took out another breastplate and matching back piece. He slipped off his frock coat and buckled them around his chest. “Enthusiasm does not qualify anyone to do this job. In fact, it would prove a most deadly liability. As far as what he thinks of me, he wouldn’t think so much if I let him get himself killed, would he?”

  “Why not let him at least train?” she asked. “He said you won’t even let him handle a weapon.”

  “I’ll be the one to decide what he does and what he doesn’t do. It’s my job to make sure he goes home to his family at the end of each day.”

  “What about your apprentices? Is it your job to make sure they go home to their families at the end of each day?”

  “Of course not. If someone makes their living getting killed, that’s their business. Dax is another matter altogether.”


  “In what way?”

  He pulled out his pistol and checked the priming. Then he stuck on a broad black hat. “If you’re ready, Miss Douglas....” He waved toward the door.

  “For the love of God,” she muttered, “don’t call me that.”

  Bishop strode out of the room and hit the stairs two at a time. The farther he went, the faster he walked until his frock coat sailed out behind him. He flew along the hall with great black wings flapping on either side.

  He burst through the kitchen so fast the cook didn’t have time to look up from stirring a pot of soup on the fire. Raleigh raced after him, and they jumped into the same coach parked outside the back door. Bishop slammed the door, and Dax whipped the horse into a gallop.

  The coach jostled down the driveway and into the street. Raleigh didn’t dare look out the window to see where they were going. She sat back in the seat and did her best to look calm and composed.

  Bishop paid no attention to her. He checked his other pistol and returned it to its holster. Then he pulled a locked wooden case from under the seat. He unlocked it with a key from his watch pocket and pried back the lid.

  He took half a dozen daggers and throwing knives from inside and hid them all over his body. He took a small glass ampule of something and wedged it between his right cheek and the gum inside his mouth. It made his cheek bulge out on that side and made him look fierce and deadly. She didn’t want to talk to him at all when he looked like that. She pitied whatever poor creature he was going out to fight right now.

  The coach clattered through the streets. Raleigh leaned her head back on the seat and closed her eyes to calm her nerves. The townspeople must feed Bishop’s reputation with all sorts of wild stories when they saw the black specter of his coach racing by.

  Steady rain drummed the roof and shone in slick puddles in the road. Bishop stuck his head out the window when the road wound into a forest outside of town. He shouted up to Dax, “Take the south road toward Swatham.”