by S. A. Swann
He looked across at Brother Semyon, who watched the slaughter with a dire intensity. Erhard had to remind himself that he was in the company of a servant of God, a man who had taken the same vows as Erhard had. He was not in a position to judge a man's heart, and Erhard was never more grateful for the fact that judgment was in God's hands alone.
“Do not turn away, Brother Erhard,” Brother Semyon said quietly.
Erhard reluctantly turned back to the scene on the field. Two men were dead from grievous wounds to the neck. The last surviving pagan had backed into a corner, clumsily wielding his sword one-handed, the ruin of his wounded right arm shoved under his armpit.
Lilly stood upright to face him. Blood covered her, glistening on her muzzle, matting the fur on her legs and torso.
The wounded man did his best to keep the shaking sword point between him and Lilly. “D-don't come any closer ...”
Lilly slowly walked toward him.
“No. I will—”
Lilly stopped a single step from the tip of the threatening blade. “I won't let you—”
She grabbed the blade in her half-paw, half-hand. She easily tore it free from the man's grip. Her paw bled where she had grasped the sword, but only for a moment. The massive wound in her belly had already sealed itself.
The bearded man shook his head, weeping, as Lilly stared at him with pitiless green eyes.
“By the gods,” he said. “Mercy.”
“Why?”
She descended upon him, giving him little chance to scream.
***
Wolfbreed, Brother Semyon called them. Beasts that could cloak themselves in a human skin at will. Things that lurked in the nightmares
of every rural village and hamlet. Anywhere that bordered a wilderness
could harbor such unholy things.
Lilly stood in the courtyard, in the form of a human child. The only sign now of her bestial nature was the blood staining her naked skin. She faced the two of them, staring up at Erhard. The bottom half of her face was black with gore, and her eyes glinted green behind the clotted strings of her hair.
“Where did she—” Erhard began. “Where did it come from?”
“A wild version of what you saw—a wolf of human size and posture— slaughtered a convent of brethren of the Order nearly eight years ago.”
Brother Semyon stared down at Lilly. He had never once turned away from the carnage she had wrought, but now, to Erhard he seemed to be looking through her.
“I never heard of this,” Erhard prompted.
“It was never made widely known. It was when we still defended the crown of Hungary against the Cumans, three years before that troublesome man expelled us for asking the respect due us ...” Brother Semyon smiled. “But you don't care for the politics of the matter, do you?”
“Such a creature attacked the Order?”
Semyon nodded. “My convent. My brothers. We were crossing the frontier. The beast struck first at our horses while we slept. We did not know at the time what we faced, and thought ourselves bedeviled by some human villain.” He finally turned to face Erhard. “Now, in that Transylvanian wilderness, the old pagan modes of worship still abound. A
nearby village had a reputation for not fully embracing Christ, and we went there to find satisfaction for our losses.”
“What did you find there?”
“At first? Protests of innocence. But I was persuasive. I uncovered the priest of their false god, and the site of their sacred groves, and tales of their vengeful spirits and the things that lived in the woods.”
“The wolfbreed?”
“My name, not theirs. I will not pollute my tongue with the names of the pagan gods by which these were called ...”
“What happened?”
“My Komtur was a righteous man, but prone to err on the side of mercy when doing the Lord's work. He did not approve of the aggressiveness of my questioning, or the cost in blood for my answers. He took the priest in chains, and sent me to meditate on our Lord's mercy. But the beast came for them that night, and when I returned from my meditation, I found only their blood.” Semyon turned away from Erhard to stare again at Lilly. “But it left me the priest.”
“Lord have mercy.”
Semyon nodded. “I did not. And I learned from the priest, before he died.”
An animal, Semyon told Erhard, a beast fed upon the sacrifices of the village. The priest believed that he had called its wrath down upon the Christians. From the priest, Semyon heard of its ability to change its shape at will, its ability to heal from most any wound and, most important, its weakness.
“We had confiscated from the priest a dagger of silver. After his death, I took that weapon and followed the beast to its lair. The monster was beyond anything you've seen today, and it was only by the grace of God that I landed a mortal blow before it tore out my throat.”
“But these children?”
“That creature was feeding its young, Brother Erhard. Our horses, my brothers, all meat for its larder. I walked into its lair and found bones and half-eaten corpses, and ten of her whelps. Two months old, if that.”
“Rose? Lilly?”
“Birthed of that creature, and weaned on human flesh.” Erhard prayed to himself.
After a long pause, he finally found the strength to speak. “Surely this is the hand of evil itself. How can the Order give succor to such things?”
“As you must realize,” Brother Semyon said, “there has been much debate upon this matter. Come, and I will enlighten you.” Semyon led him away from the balcony as a trio of guards came to place silver shackles on an unresisting Lilly.
***
In the twisted idolatry of the pagan tribes, these beasts were a personification of their brutal gods, red in tooth and claw. Of course, Semyon said, that was a satanic deception meant to veil pagan hearts and minds from the glory of God, and lead them away from salvation.
When divine providence led Brother Semyon to find a litter of these creatures, the debate had been over exactly what kind of deception they were.
There were three possibilities.
The first possibility was that these creatures were members of the legion of Hell itself—demons sent to Earth to harass mankind. Three facts argued against that. The creatures were formed of earthly matter—blood, flesh, and bone like any other animal. They were also mortal, difficult but not impossible to kill. Last, evidence of the infant creatures showed that they gave birth, aged, and would eventually die.
The second possibility was that they were children of men, witches and warlocks possessed of demonic forces that gave them the monstrous ability to transform. However, it was argued that the creatures' ability to heal was not a false miracle. As such, it could only be granted by God. And were they possessed by the forces of Hell, those forces would be vulnerable to the rites of exorcism. But the words of Christ showed no power to compel them begone, or halt their changes.
The last possibility, given that they seemed neither demon nor men possessed, was that they were some order of earthly beast heretofore unknown within Christendom. No more a demon than the creature that had swallowed Jonah. Just a beast. One that could be trained, like a dog, or a horse, or a slave.
In the end, Brother Semyon had explained how fitting it was that the forces of Christendom could forcefully rend the veil of falsehood from the eyes of pagans by turning their own brute gods against them.
As Brother Semyon told Erhard this, Erhard couldn't help remembering the courtyard, and Lilly facing the Prûsan brute.
Could such a thing be an instrument of God?
But was it any crueler than what he had seen, and done, in the Holy Land? If this was the path God had set before him, Erhard would have to follow it.
“Brother Semyon,” he asked, “you said that you found ten of these creatures. I saw only six.”
In response, Semyon nodded. “Their training has been hard,” he explained.
Prime
Anno Domi
ni 1239
Nolite fieri sicut equus et mulus,
quibus non est intellectus.
In camo etfreno maxillas eorum constringe,
qui non approximant ad te.
Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule,
which have no understanding:
whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle,
lest they come near unto thee.
—Psalms 32:9
Chapter 6
Ten years after first setting foot in Brother Semyon's half-ruined monastery east of the city of Torun, by the River Drweca, Landkomtur Erhard von Stendal had left Lilly in the care of the keep at Johannisburg. He originally had no plans to visit that outpost again. He had been on the way to Balga and the spring campaigns to the east, as he had every spring for nearly a decade.
And then a courier arrived with a summons for him—a plain piece of parchment that had borne the seal of the Hochmeister of the Order. It had read, “Your audience is required at our houses in Marienwerder, no later than this Easter.”
It was signed “Hochmeister Conrad of Thuringia.”
Conrad's predecessor, Hermann von Salza, had elevated Erhard to Landkomtur in Jerusalem. Conrad had only borne the title of Hochmeister for a few weeks. Now, abruptly, he was in Prûsa, commanding an audience.
Erhard had briefly contemplated taking Lilly, but despite her training and her human appearance, she was still a grave secret. A convent of knights accompanied by a maiden bound by a silver chain would raise questions that would be unwelcome to Erhard, his Order, and his mission.
Fortunately, Johannisburg was small and now had a keep equipped to keep Lilly safe and unobserved while Erhard met with the new Hochmeister. Erhard was unconcerned about the limited springtime garrison at the keep. In a decade of service, no one but Erhard had ever had to lay a hand on Lilly. Of all her siblings, she had always been the most obedient, the most intelligent, and the most accepting of the missions given to her. She was the one ultimate expression of Brother Semyon's plans for the wolfbreed, and trained so, Lilly was only a threat to enemies of God and the Order.
When he had taken Lilly to Johannisburg, she had walked meekly into her cell to await her master's return.
That was almost a week ago.
Landkomtur Erhard von Stendal now rode the streets of Marienwerder, his mount slogging through a mixture of mud, slush, and manure that stank despite the cold.
The buildings leaned over the streets, crowding between the city walls and the shoulders of the castle. The bishopric here had been founded less than a decade ago, yet the gates Erhard had just ridden through led into the most important city in Christian Prûsa—a city as populous and diverse as any in northern Christendom. Around him, Erhard heard German, French, and Italian, and even the broad-nosed men of Prûsan heritage were speaking some more civilized tongue.
The castle here was three times the size of the keep at Johannisburg, and was a hive of activity, almost more crowded than the city below it. Grooms took their horses, and servants led them to a barracks that could easily hold twoscore knights.
Erhard and his men took the evening meal with the resident brothers, more than two dozen men, enough for two full convents of brethren. They ate in silence as scripture was read, and after the clerks read the concluding prayers and the servants took the remaining bread for alms, one of the lay brothers came to Erhard and said, “They will see you now.”
***
“They” were several of the highest-ranking members of the Teutonic Order in Prûsa. It included the Landmeister of all Prûsa as well as the new Hochmeister, Conrad of Thuringia himself. To Conrad's right sat an unfamiliar man in a bishop's robes. The brothers of the Order were all plainly dressed in white or somber-hued linens decorated only by the black cross of their Order. The only departures from the ascetic dress of the knights were the rings worn by Hochmeister Conrad as a token of his rank.
In contrast, the bishop was as out of place as a peacock within a murder of crows. The man's hands glittered with rings, and his cloak had obscenely voluminous velvet sleeves trimmed in fur. He wore a heavy gold cross on a chain. The bishop was heavy as well, and the chain for his cross disappeared into the folds around his neck, which were nearly as full as the folds in his robe.
To Erhard's surprise, the bishop was the first to speak.
“You are Landkomtur Erhard von Stendal?” The bishop's German was heavily accented.
“Yes, Your Grace.”
The bishop nodded. “You have the title of province commander, but you have no province. Can you tell me how you came by this title?”
Erhard narrowed his eyes and looked at Hochmeister Conrad. The grand master's expression was grave. “Please do well to answer Bishop Cecilio's question.”
“It was granted to me by Hochmeister Hermann von Salza when I served in Jerusalem.”
The bishop grunted something in Italian. Erhard didn't know the language well enough to understand much of what the man said, but what he did hear sounded something like, “stupid diversion of resources.”
Erhard stood a little straighter, steeling himself against the unchristian resentment building in his breast. He knew that there was no shortage of men in the Church who questioned the priorities of the Order's mission in the north. There were those who believed that any and all forces of Christendom should be directed to supporting and defending the Holy Land. To them, the fact that the Baltic was home to tribes of heathen barbarians was almost irrelevant.
Such men were also concerned with how quickly the Order had grown here, and how many more secular crusaders were being recruited for the campaigns in Prûsa than for the support of the Church's tenuous hold against the Infidel in Jerusalem. Men like the bishop didn't account for the fact that the crusaders to Prûsa had a much shorter and easier journey, and
could travel home at the end of a campaign in a matter of a month. To men like the bishop, every sword in Prûsa was one less sword in the Holy Land.
Erhard thanked God that it wasn't his place to make that argument here. He waited for the bishop to continue his questioning. Instead, the bishop addressed Hochmeister Conrad in a tone that Erhard thought bordered on disrespect. “Is this kind of elevation a common practice in the German Order?”
Who is this odious man? Erhard thought.
Hochmeister Conrad educated the bishop on the normal course of affairs in the Order as far as the brethren rising in ranks. Erhard watched the bishop gesture as he spoke with the grand master. In the flashes of glittering jewels on the bishop's fingers, Erhard saw an explanation, and it was a grave one.
In the midst of the jewelry was a papal signet.
The bishop was a representative of the pope, and one that seemed hostile to the Order. That wasn't a good sign. The Teutonic Order had prospered in the last decade because of the dual patronage of both Frederick II of the Holy Roman Empire and Pope Gregory IX. Both rulers, spiritual and secular, had granted the Teutonic Order domain over Prûsa. Support for the Order was one of few spots of common ground ever found between the two. The hostility between Gregory and Frederick was epic and long-lived, escalating to the point where the pope had actually invaded the emperor's lands when the emperor had gone to the Holy Land to fulfill his vows in a crusade.
Relative peace had reigned between the two for the past decade mainly because of the diplomatic intercession of Hochmeister Hermann von Salza, who had maintained close and friendly relations with both. His abilities had not only helped to secure peace between the Papal States and the Empire, but had managed to increase the Order's temporal power to the point where it was a near autonomous force in the north of Europe. Within the confines of Prûsa, the Teutonic Order was legally answerable only to the pope, but in effect, answerable only to God.
Since the recent death of Hermann von Salza, however, Erhard had heard that the tenuous peace between pope and emperor was crumbling. Now it seemed the unquestioned favor granted to the Order was beginning to crumble as well.
> When Hochmeister Conrad completed his explanation of the normal process of ascension in the ranks of the Order, Bishop Cecilio shifted his massive bulk forward to peer at Erhard from deep-set eyes. “This is not your story, is it?”
“No, Your Grace, it isn't.” Erhard looked back at the bishop's face, and he could tell that this was a man for whom simple respect was not satisfactory. Bishop Cecilio was a man who was accustomed to command through fear. The sense of entitlement Erhard felt from the man was in stark contrast to Hochmeister Conrad, who had several years ago abrogated a noble birth and title to join the Order as a simple knight.
“Perhaps you can explain your position and how you came by it.”
Erhard did not like the sound of where this was going. What he did for the Order was a secret of monumental significance. He looked directly to Hochmeister Conrad for guidance. “With my master's leave, Your Grace.”
“Do not try my patience, Brother Erhard. I come here with full papal authority to review this matter.”
Erhard nodded to the bishop. “To whom I owe fealty and obedience. I serve at the pleasure of His Holiness first of all.” He turned back to Hochmeister Conrad. “But of those present in this room, after God, my duty is to my master.”
“Such insolence,” the bishop muttered. Erhard was prepared for more of an outburst, but it didn't happen. Bishop Cecilio seemed to defer ever so slightly to Conrad. It seemed the Order still reigned here, although the balance was more precarious than Erhard would have liked.
Hochmeister Conrad steepled his fingers. “There are no secrets in this room. Speak freely and enlighten Bishop Cecilio on how it is you have served God, the Church, and our Order these past ten years.”
Erhard nodded and silently prayed for strength. Then he raised his head and spoke. “In the year of our Lord twelve hundred and twenty-nine, in Jerusalem, I was called to an audience before Hochmeister Hermann von Salza ...”
