Lucrezia shouted something at the driver, but Lorenzo didn’t pick out her words over his own ragged breaths and the pounding of hooves and the crack of the whip. He glanced at the prior and felt a flood of fear at the man’s expression.
Montguillon stared with bulging eyes beyond the running men and horses. His lips moved at running speed, as he chanted something in a low voice. He crossed himself.
Lorenzo looked back. Martin, Fourier, and Marco ran with slack, frightened expressions. The two horses jerked their heads at the ropes, nostrils flaring, eyes wild, still trying to get through in spite of Martin’s rebuke.
A dozen shadows flanked the road some hundred yards back. Wolves. Cloaked by the gloom of twilight, they emerged from the woods and meadows on either side. They fought through drifts of snow and weren’t yet closing the gap. But soon they would reach the road and the parallel tracks of the sleigh’s runners, which cut a convenient path toward their quarry.
Marco broke out in front and reached for the back of the sleigh to hoist himself up. Lorenzo grabbed his cloak and yanked him back.
“No, you idiot. It will stop the sleigh.”
“But, I can’t—” he gasped “—can’t keep running.”
The wolves had reached the road behind them and gathered in a circle, sniffing and greeting each other, as if they’d been on the hunt separately and only now come together to finish the job. For a moment, they didn’t move, and a wild hope rose in Lorenzo’s chest as the shadowy figures fell behind.
They were six men and six horses, plus Lucrezia and her dog, a mastiff bred to fight off wolves. Even a starving pack wouldn’t attack that, would they?
He glanced back again. The moon crept above the trees, round and full and tinged with red from the setting sun and the haze of ten thousand wood fires in Paris. Hovering next to a massive, gnarled oak, it look like a severed, bloody head, held aloft by a bare, skeletal branch.
The lead wolf lifted his muzzle to the sky and howled. Soon, all six wolves were howling. It formed an eerie song that carried through the night air and turned Lorenzo’s spine to ice.
His legs pounded the ground like a blacksmith’s hammer, driving him forward. When he looked back again, the wolves had broken into a long, loping trot. They appeared in no hurry, but even so their pace devoured the gap. Another minute, maybe two.
“Go!” Lucrezia screamed at the driver.
Simon redoubled the blows with his whip. They were almost to the crest, where the trees crowded the road on either side, and the slope was flattening out. The sleigh was speeding up.
“Jump in,” Lorenzo said. “Now.”
Martin reached the sleigh first, followed by Marco. Lorenzo redoubled his pace. Marco grabbed his wrist.
“He’s not going to make it!” Lucrezia cried.
Lorenzo looked back. Fournier had fallen behind. His legs were pumping and his arms flailing for all he was worth, but if the sleigh didn’t stop, he’d never make it. He was behind the two galloping horses from Saint-Denis, first five feet, then ten. The wolves were almost upon him.
Lucrezia had a dagger, and before anyone could stop her was sawing at the ropes that restrained the two horses. Lorenzo saw at once what she meant to do. Release them and hope they bolted. The wolves might turn their attention to the slowest horse and leave them alone. Fournier would have a chance.
Lorenzo groped for his sword, only to realize he wasn’t wearing it. He’d packed it away during the journey and jumped out to push the sleigh without giving it any thought. Marco struggled to haul him in while Lucrezia cut at the ropes.
Lorenzo pulled free.
“What are you doing?” Marco cried.
“My sword!”
Marco groped in the bags at his feet. He came up holding a sword, which he tossed back. Lorenzo caught it, stopped running, and turned around. The sleigh slowed, but didn’t stop. Lorenzo ran back toward Fournier, who struggled forward with the wolves almost upon him. At that same moment, Lucrezia cut the second rope with a cry. Both trailing horses came loose. They shied in opposite directions. One tried to reach the meadow to the right—foolishly, as it was thick, unbroken drifts in that direction. The other raced past the sled, continuing down the road.
Lorenzo shouted and waved his blade. Fournier ran toward him, panic on his face. He fell, got up again.
The wolves glanced at the fleeing horses, then continued toward the struggling middle-aged servant. Lorenzo got his first clear look at the beasts. They were nothing like any wolves he’d ever seen before.
As a boy, when traveling in Dalmatia with his father, uncle, and brother, wolves had menaced their caravan while threading through a mountain pass. The Boccaccio traders had a donkey suffering from an inflamed hoof that had been relieved of its burden and was balking at the rear of the caravan at the end of a long tether. Wolves appeared on the hillside above them, staring intently at the lame pack animal. A few arrows chased them off, but that night they burst into the camp, scattering animals and men. When morning came, the lame donkey was missing, and only a single, bloody hoof and foreleg on the riverbank testified that either wolves or donkey had ever existed.
Those wolves had been large and aggressive, with an animal cunning in their eyes. But still beasts, and with a respect for armed men and large, healthy animals.
These animals were taller than the Dalmatian wolves. Their heads were larger, their muzzles longer and more toothsome. At the same time, they carried a lean, starved look. Their ribs stood out and their legs were long and bony. The skin and fur stretched taut against their faces. Their eyes gleamed with a horrific, knowing intelligence.
Frightened and desperate, Lorenzo ran back to help Fournier.
“Lorenzo!” Lucrezia screamed. “It’s too late!”
With horror, he realized she was right. He and Fournier were running toward each other, but the wolves would reach the man first. The lead animal leaped through the air and knocked the servant to the ground. Two more sprang on him before he could rise.
Fournier cried for help. He reached his knees, but one of the wolves had him by the arm and dragged him back down. Another wolf snapped at his belly. Fournier screamed, tried to rise. And then wolves were all over him. Fournier flipped and kicked and squealed like a pig being gutted alive. Muzzles went in, biting at the man and snapping at each other, fighting over their still-living meal.
“Lorenzo!”
Lorenzo stopped, terrified. Fournier kept screaming, even as wolves tore hunks of flesh from his legs and belly. The lead wolf came up with blood at its muzzle. It spotted Lorenzo and bared its lips in a snarl.
He fled. At once the wolves sprang after him. They were almost at him when a massive brown shape shot from the sleigh. It was Tullia, Lucrezia’s mastiff. It barreled into the wolves, roaring. The wolves backed off with howls and wails. They quickly regained the initiative and formed a half-circle around the dog.
By the time Lorenzo caught up to the sleigh, Tullia had abandoned the brief fight and was racing back to where Lucrezia cried desperately for her return. The wolves didn’t follow; the mastiff’s enraged attack seemed to have worked. The pack returned to the now-still victim of their hunt.
Lorenzo got up into the sleigh and collapsed, shaking and horrified by what he’d seen and heard. Tullia leaped in and Lucrezia buried her face in the dog’s neck. Then, to his surprise, she pushed aside her dog and wrapped her arms around Lorenzo’s neck.
“Praise the saints! I thought you were dead.”
“No, I’m all right. Fournier—” he began.
He couldn’t tear his eyes away from Fournier, lying in the snow, almost completely hidden by a snarling mass of wolves, feeding on his flesh.
“What a good man you are, Lorenzo,” she said. “He was a servant but you didn’t think twice.”
At last he turned his gaze. “It didn’t do any good,” he said, bitterly. “I couldn’t save him. Brutes—I want to kill every last one of them. Is your dog all right?”
“Uninjured, praise God.”
Lorenzo grabbed the mastiff’s huge head in his hands and gave it a friendly shake. Her tongue hung from her mouth and she panted for air.
“You are a good dog,” he said. “You saved my life.”
“She is the bravest dog in France,” Lucrezia said, then placed a kiss on its head.
Then she squeezed Lorenzo again. She was still trembling.
“All right, all right,” Marco said, sounding peeved. “Let him go. He’s not a child, he can comfort himself. He doesn’t need a woman to caress back his courage.”
Lucrezia released Lorenzo, and he pulled away with some reluctance.
Simon eased up on the whip. They weren’t on the downslope yet, but it was flat and they were putting distance between the sleigh and the wolves behind them. The howls receded in the distance.
“Those brutes,” Marco said. “They took him down like a lamb.”
“At least the sleigh is lighter,” Montguillon said.
Martin, still looking back into the darkness at the other servant, turned with a glare on his face that the prior didn’t seem to notice. Wisely, the servant kept his mouth shut and looked away moments later.
Lorenzo bit back his own response to Montguillon’s disgusting comment, something nasty about having sacrificed the wrong person to the wolves. But it wasn’t as though the prior had thrown Fournier out of the sleigh; the man had gotten out of his own accord.
Montguillon peered ahead through the darkness. “See that clearing? That must be the way down from here. We’ll be safe now.”
Marco nodded. “I’m sure you’re right. Once we were all together, those wolves left the sleigh alone. So long as we all stay up here, we’ll be safe.”
Lorenzo thought about how the pack had ignored the two fleeing horses. How they’d interrupted their meal to go after him.
“Let’s wait until we’re down from the hills before we start gloating,” he said.
Chapter Ten
The stray horses caught up to them first. Lucrezia had looked over Tullia for the third time, relieved not to find an injury, and was turning her attention to inspecting Lorenzo’s arms for scratches or bites when the animals came thundering down the hillside after the sleigh, now picking up speed in the open. The ropes Lucrezia had cut trailed after them in the snow.
“They’re no idiots,” Lorenzo said. “They don’t want to be alone tonight any more than we do.”
“Drive them off,” Marco said, “they’ll lead the wolves right to us.”
“These wolves don’t need any help finding us,” Lorenzo said.
Lucrezia thought it heartless to even discuss sending the animals back to their deaths. True, she’d cut them loose to distract the hunting pack. She’d done it with a twinge of guilt and a silent prayer that they’d escape. Relief had flooded through her when she spotted them coming down the road after them.
“Don’t wait for the next village,” Lorenzo said to the prior. “Find the first farm house or crofter’s hut and ask for lodging.”
“We can make it to the chatelet,” Montguillon said. “Another hour, that’s all. We have moonlight.”
“Light isn’t the problem, those wolves are.”
“I’m not spending the night in some hut while wolves surround us.”
Lorenzo scowled and opened his mouth like he wanted to argue, then turned away. His dislike of the prior was evident, but he also seemed afraid. Marco had only hinted at the mortifications of the flesh his younger brother had suffered at the hands of the Inquisition, and Lorenzo seemed so humiliated by the subject that she doubted he’d ever discuss it. Was it possible he was more afraid of Blackfriars than of wolves?
Perhaps. A wolf might tear your throat out, might even devour you alive. But you would be dead soon enough. Humans were not so gentle. What beatings and abuse had Lorenzo suffered at the hands of men like Henri Montguillon? The thought made her burn with anger. And not a little fear of her own.
If the prior caught Lucrezia, they would do all of that and more. It would begin with torture. It would end with her tied to a stake, and a slow, lovingly cultivated fire, designed not to destroy the body too quickly, but to roast it as carefully as a suckling pig. The pleasure for the burners was dependent upon maximum suffering for the victim of the fire.
When she wasn’t worried about wolves—both those in fur and those in monk’s cowls—she thought about Marco and Lorenzo Boccaccio.
The passage of years since seeing either of them had also changed her perspective in important ways. They were as handsome as ever—Marco perhaps more suitable for a portrait than the more boyish Lorenzo.
Throughout the day, while Marco made witty comments, or shared interesting observations about France, she found herself thinking that perhaps he had matured during the past few years. He was from a good family, nearly as rich as Lord d’Lisle albeit less connected to power than the king’s cousin had been. And he was her age, not two years younger, like Lorenzo.
But Lorenzo’s act of bravery in going back for the servant touched her. And she was charmed by his sudden shyness when she looked him over for injuries from the wolves. Then, when Marco started in on Lorenzo again, it came across not so much the concerned, sometimes teasing older brother, but mean-spirited. She began to doubt the piety with which he’d sent Lorenzo to suffer penance at the monastery.
A howl sounded in the distance. Conversation stopped in the sleigh.
They traveled through empty pasture now, quite different terrain from the forested hill where they’d come under attack. There were no trees, no hedges, only open meadow. But no sheep. And no houses or lights anywhere in sight. The moon was high above the trees now, the orange and red bleeding away until only yellow remained. Moonlight reflected off the snow to illuminate their way. A slight indentation was the only thing to mark the road.
“Blood of the saints,” Lorenzo whispered. “Look.”
She followed his gaze and her throat went dry.
The wolves came down the road behind them. Traveling in long, loping strides, they ran in single file along one of the tracks left by the sleigh runners. The lead animal was larger than the others. His fur had a ruddy color, enhanced by moonlight until it looked auburn, while the others were more black or brownish-gray. His tail was missing its tip.
Lucrezia’s breath caught in her throat.
Two nights earlier, after the attack on her house, Lucrezia and Martin released the dead mastiff from the gibbet and carried it back to the house to wrap in linen and prepare for burial. While positioning Cicero’s head, Lucrezia discovered something in his mouth. With Martin’s help she pried open the dog’s jaws and removed what turned out to be the tip of a tail, about as long as her little finger. Reddish fur, like a Pyrenees wolf.
It had to be him. The bastard had attacked and killed Cicero. And this was the same pack that had come into her house at night. Driven off by her servants and two mastiffs, but not without cost. Cicero didn’t return when called, but pursued the wolves into the Seine. The watchmen found his body on the left bank, together with two children and a murdered, partially eaten toll collector. The work of loup-garou. Why they’d fingered Cicero as one of the shape shifters, she wasn’t sure.
The wolves closed steadily. There were eight of them now, some fifty yards back, still single file, but bunching closer now. No howls or snarls—running in silence.
The two trailing horses with the cut ropes kept running behind the sleigh until the wolves were within twenty yards, then they panicked. Struggling through the deeper snow ahead of the sleigh, they lost the road and galloped at an angle into the meadow to the left.
“Oh, don’t do that,” Lucrezia said.
Sure enough, they plunged into drifts up to their hocks and struggled to continue forward. One of them stumbled and fell behind the other. The sleigh passed them to the right. The floundering, exhausted horses must have presented an almost irresistible target for the wolf pack. But the wolves paid them no attention
.
“For God’s sake, why don’t they go after the horses?” Lorenzo asked.
“These are no ordinary wolves,” Montguillon said.
“Prepare yourselves!” Marco cried.
The pack had broken into a sprint, bounding faster through the snow than Lucrezia would have thought possible. They fanned across the width of the road, with two wolves coming up on either side of the sleigh.
Tullia rose to her feet and leaned over the edge. She barked in a deep, booming voice. The brothers and Martin drew swords, and the prior gripped his stave. Lucrezia had her dagger. Tullia roared her challenge.
The big wolf with the bob tail was off to the right side. He leaped for the sleigh and got his paws up. An enormous head filled with snapping teeth was suddenly over the edge, with the rest of the wolf about to make it inside as well. Montguillon swung with his staff. It struck the wolf across the muzzle and it fell off with a yelp.
“My lady!” Lorenzo yelled.
She turned as a second wolf leaped on the other side of the sleigh. She slashed at the air with her dagger, and Lorenzo thrust past her with his sword. The wolf fell off. Tullia drew back to spring down and fight them, and Lucrezia wrapped her arms around the dog’s neck with a cry. The dog would land in the middle of the pack. They’d tear her apart.
Wolves were all around them now. Leaping for the back of the sleigh, racing up along the sides. Biting and snarling at the horses, who were out of their minds with fear. As they reared and brayed, the sleigh jerked to one side, then the other.
Montguillon screamed. A wolf had gotten itself inside the sleigh. It was on top of him, snapping at his neck. He had his arms up and tried to push away the animal with his knees, but it was too big.
Lucrezia released Tullia. The dog threw herself over the back seat into the front row, where she fell on top of the wolf. Dog and wolf rolled over the prior, while Martin tried to get free and bring his sword to bear at the same time. There was little room for longer blades in the close confines of the sled.
Lorenzo and Marco came over the seat after the dog. They thrust with their swords. The wolf howled. It tried to get free, to escape, but Tullia was at its throat and the brothers were slashing and stabbing.
The Wolves of Paris Page 8
