by S. A. Swann
Günter pushed forward from behind the ranks to stand next to Erhard. “Uldolf?” Günter asked. “Is that you?”
Uldolf. Erhard knew that name. Uldolf was one of the Prûsan men that the bishop had ordered rounded up. Uldolf in particular, because he was the son of the last chieftain of Mejdân.
Uldolf stopped advancing. “Yes,” he answered Günter and looked around at the mass of soldiers.
Judging by the complete indifference with which Uldolf regarded the dead, and the near emotionless character of his voice, Erhard suspected he had been present for the bloodletting.
He lost his arm during the fall of Mejdân. He has seen this before.
Erhard stepped forward. “The bishop would have a word with you.”
“Am I your concern?” He swayed a little, and lowered himself onto one knee. When he did, Erhard saw that he held a dagger flat against the top of his burden. The other men, upon seeing the unsheathed weapon, drew their own blades. All except Günter.
“What do you mean, showing naked steel to a knight of the Order!” Johann barked at him. “Speak quickly if you mean to keep your head.”
Uldolf looked up at all of them as he deftly unrolled the body from his shoulder. “Not steel,” he said to Johann. He looked at Erhard. “But you know that.” He stepped back from the body, keeping the dagger pointed at it.
Lord Jesus, please grant me strength ...
Uldolf had not brought them another corpse. The cloak fell open as he backed away, revealing a naked seventeen-year-old girl, severely bound and quite conscious. She looked up at Erhard with familiar green eyes. Around her neck was a silver tore.
“Uldolf, my boy, how did you capture her?” Günter said.
“So, am I right? This is what you want? Not me, not my family?”
Erhard found it impossible to believe that he faced her again.
“Lilly?” he finally asked.
“Master,” she answered quietly.
***
In the stable, when Uldolf had draped his cloak around her and picked her up, Lilly had tried to retreat into herself. Things weren't supposed to happen like this. She had given up. It should have been over. But Uldolf didn't give her an escape into death, and the refuge she had in her own mind no longer existed.
She wanted to give control back to the other one, her other self, but felt a sick confusion when she couldn't remember who that was or who she was now. Memories mixed in her head refusing to retreat, ignoring her attempt to segregate them between one or the other.
Please, where are you? I don't want to be here anymore. No answer.
She heard someone yell at Uldolf, and in a few moments, he rolled her off his shoulder onto the ground. And Lilly found herself staring up at the face of Brother Erhard.
“Master,” she whispered.
He looked down at her, and she could read the betrayal written across his face. Seeing him, so soon after Uldolf s rejection, she reached a nadir of self-loathing. The Order had been the one thing that had given her purpose—a purpose for what she was, not something she could only pretend to be.
One of the knights attacked her, but her master stopped the man before the blade fell.
“Sir,” the man said, “the bishop ordered her death. After all of this—”
“Too many questions remain unanswered,” Erhard said.
How could she explain her betrayal? She had turned on everything the Order had given her. For what? A memory? To give herself to someone who had every reason to hate her?
Uldolf demanded to see his family, and her master promised he would. But her master's voice was flat and dead, leached of all the authority she remembered. It frightened her that her master seemed as near hopelessness as Uldolf did.
Please, she thought, let my return mean freedom for Uldolf s family.
Her master closed the cloak about her and picked her up. Several others objected, shouted warnings. But even if her master cared to heed them, the warnings were unnecessary now. Even if she had been unbound, she had no reason to try and escape. She had nothing left to fight for.
***
Uldolf handed the silver dagger to Sergeant Günter and stood as the knight bent down to pick up Lilly. He wanted to feel something, but all he had left was a throbbing numbness—as if his emotions had been amputated like his arm, leaving only a phantom itch behind.
Sergeant Günter slapped him on the back. “I think you saved us all, son.” The man smiled broadly at Uldolf. “I just want my family,” Uldolf said. The sergeant chuckled. “You know, I'd hold out for some greater reward.” He lowered his voice. “You have any idea how many Germans they had hunting this beast? Look at what it's done.”
Uldolf nodded, and looked away from him and toward the other soldiers. Günter's cheer seemed blasphemous in the face of what had died here.
The leader cradled Lilly in his arms and called out orders to the others in German. Uldolf couldn't follow what the knight said, but it was fairly clear that he was separating out one group to accompany him to the keep, and another to take care of the dead and wounded.
Uldolf looked at Lilly's face but all he saw there was a blank resignation …
He turned away, rubbing his right shoulder. There was no question that this was the right thing to do. No question at all.
But—
The knight holding Lilly—Brother Erhard, her “master”—was as much the reason for the slaughter of Uldolf s first family as Lilly was. More so, since it was his hands that created her—if not the monster herself, then her mind.
If you didn't hold my family, I would see you both dead—but you, sir knight, most of all.
Günter babbled on about Uldolf s heroism as they walked back to the castle. To the sergeant's mind, Uldolf s capturing of the she-wolf was worthy of a saga in its own right. Günter asked a few questions about how such an event came about, but the man was so enthused that he had already started stringing together his own unique version of events.
Günter was too involved in his own half-fictitious drama to notice what Uldolf saw—that none of the Germans in this group of soldiers seemed to share his enthusiasm. Uldolf thought that they looked at him with the same ill regard with which they looked at Lilly. Disturbingly, it seemed as if that attitude extended to the sergeant as well.
Finally, Uldolf said, “Perhaps there may be a better time to discuss this.”
Günter squeezed his shoulder. “We should regale these Germans with a tale or two of a true Prûsan hero.”
That drew a few stares that even Günter couldn't completely ignore. He let go of Uldolf s shoulder and said, “But you're right. Not now.”
The whole procession had taken on the aspect of a nightmare—a dream where he walked a fixed path toward some dread outcome and found himself powerless to stop or turn aside.
When the cluster of soldiers walked through the gates of the castle, Uldolf saw exactly how nightmarish the world had become.
People were massed under a canvas shelter in the bailey of the castle, as if escaping a siege. Men, women, children—Uldolf saw most of the free Prûsan population of Johannisburg crowded against the castle wall and under guard by frowning Germans. Uldolf saw garments ranging from barely utilitarian rags to finely woven and brightly dyed clothes of wealthy merchants.
They were quiet, and for the most part already looked like ghosts. But they weren't the only ghosts Uldolf saw here.
The stronghold of Mejdân had once stood upon the site of this castle. Somewhere beneath his feet, the blood and bones of his first parents had been buried with the ruins of what had been Uldolf s home for the first ten years of his life. Now the only sign that it ever existed was the mound upon which the keep stood. The new Christian rulers were very good at erasing the remnants of the old order.
Bringing the monster to account should have finally put that part of his past to rest. But his feelings were all wrong.
He had hidden from what happened, had refused to acknowledge it for years, and he began to realize th
at regaining the memory came at a deep cost. Every step he took into the Order's realm cut deeper, and every breath he took seemed more suffocating.
Confronting Lilly had been a reflexive, almost unthinking act. Far from relieving the pain he had just begun remembering, it brought the memories into sharper focus.
He could still smell the blood.
He could hear Radwen Seigson's ghost whispering, “These are the enemy, the hands that cut these stones and placed them on my grave—as much as the hands that tore my head from my body.”
Inside him, he felt long-forgotten dams crumbling. The eight-year-old barrier leaked memory, anger, and grief; a maelstrom of blood and pain, the scope of which he was only beginning to perceive.
He was left to wait with a guard in a small chapel next to the keep. He sat down on a plain bench, alone before a large wooden cross, and slowly realized that there was nothing he could do.
It could not be fixed.
After eight years, in the chapel of his enemy's god, Uldolf finally wept for his family.
Chapter 28
Sergeant Günter made a point of being the first one to bring the news to Bishop Cecilio. He made his way to the bishop's chambers as quickly as he could while still maintaining a measure of dignity. In some sense, this was still his castle—and now that the episode with the wolf creature was over, everything should return to some semblance of normalcy. It couldn't be soon enough.
Günter had accepted Christ and served the Order, but he had the uncomfortable feeling that his superiors were forgetting on whose land they trod. It was one thing to treat unbaptized pagan idolaters like this, but the people the bishop had rounded up were Christian freemen whose only crime had been the ill luck of being Prûsan.
He reached the bishop's chambers, and for all his hurry, was made to wait by one of His Grace's personal guard.
No, definitely not soon enough.
As he waited outside the door, he imagined the bishop's expression when he told him that it was a Prûsan they had to thank for capturing the monster. It was an uncharitable thought, but unlike the brother knights of the Order, Günter didn't consider himself obliged to feel guilty for it.
When he was led in, the bishop was bent over a long sheet of paper. The bishop spent several moments writing what seemed to be a substantial order before glancing up in Günter's direction.
“What is it, Sergeant?” The bishop spoke in his mutilated German, pushing himself away from the table with some effort.
“The monster has been captured, Your Grace,” Günter said, in better German than the bishop could manage. “The hunt is over.”
“We are certain of this?”
“I witnessed it myself, and Brother Erhard was present to identify the creature.”
“Is it dead?”
Günter shook his head. It was the one part of the whole episode that did not sit well with him. “No, Brother Erhard wanted to question the creature beforehand. He is restraining it now.”
The bishop shook his head and muttered something in a language Günter didn't know. Then he returned to his laborious German. “I will have to talk to Brother Erhard. Questioning the devil's subject will only lead him into further deception. Thank you for your news.” The bishop turned to regard his paperwork.
Günter remained where he was, wondering how to properly continue the conversation.
The bishop glanced back at him. “Is there something else?”
Günter nodded. “Yes, Your Grace. The man who captured the creature, his name is Uldolf—”
“That name ... He is one of the Prûsans who hadn't been brought to the castle yet? Part of—” The bishop stared a moment, as if trying to remember the name. He shook his head. “Part of the old chieftain's family?”
“Yes, he is. He managed to subdue the monster and brought it to Brother Erhard, bound and—”
“He is here, then?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Secure him in a cell.”
“What?”
The bishop nodded. “He is part of the family that sheltered this creature and hid it from us. He is also the son of the last pagan chieftain here. It is clear that he is central to the secret pagan community here.”
“Your Grace? I don't think you understand. Uldolf brought the creature to us.”
“Indeed, you said he captured the thing. May I ask how?”
“I ...” Günter felt a chill fall over the room, and began to sense that relating stories of Prûsan prowess would not be the best thing right now. “I was not present when he captured it.”
“Considering how much harm this thing has inflicted on Christian soldiers, do you think that one pagan youth could subdue it with any natural methods?”
“Uldolf isn't a pagan. He was baptized, as you and I—”
“This youth must have had some diabolical sorcery on his side, or else he was in league with the thing to start with.”
Günter could not comprehend the bishop's logic. “Your Grace, I don't understand what you're saying. If he was in league with it, why bind it and bring it to us?”
The bishop smiled. “Of course the forces of Satan are dismayed now that the Church has stepped in to compensate for the laxness of the Order. The devil's hand was free until now.”
“Your Grace—”
“Sergeant, I see you still don't understand. This Uldolf brought the beast back to us explicitly to convince us of his righteousness—a mark of desperation.”
Günter lacked the wit to form any response at all in the face of that assertion. The premise was so absurd, and voiced with such conviction, that it seemed an assault on the very basis of reason itself.
“Despite his motives, this turn of events is favorable. The search for this creature took men away from the investigation.”
Günter resisted the urge to look back toward the door, to see if there was something to mark the threshold between the world of sense and the world he found himself in. “Investigation?”
The bishop nodded. “We will find every grove, every idol, and every helpmate of Satan. Do you understand, Sergeant?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
It was clear that the bishop would release no one—not until he was satisfied that they were Christian enough. Günter had the sick feeling that in the world that the bishop lived in, a Prûsan couldn't be Christian enough.
“May I ask a question?”
“Yes, Sergeant?”
“The spring planting. There are too many farms left unattended—”
The bishop picked up the letter he had been drafting. “Do not worry for that. There are plenty of lords in Christendom who can donate serfs to assist us with planting and harvest.”
“I understand.” He did. The bishop meant to appropriate what land remained in Prûsan hands. And if serfs and slaves tilled the land, not free men, it left little debate as to whose hands would then own that land.
This wasn't a hunt for a monster, or a battle with Satan. It was all a pretext. This man wanted Johannisburg for his own fief.
“Good, Sergeant. I will need the few good Prûsans to be clearheaded as we go about this. I think Uldolf and the rest will make a fair demonstration of the seriousness of these matters.”
“Demonstration? “
The bishop nodded. “Their punishment should help encourage the true Christians to come forward and expose the remaining idolaters in their midst.”
“I see.”
The bishop waved a hand, dismissing him. “Please, go see to the youth. I need to finish this letter and see to Brother Erhard.”
Günter spoke the three most difficult words he had ever uttered. “Yes, Your Grace.”
He turned and left, before he could do something rash in the bishop's presence.
Good Prûsans?
Demonstration?
For once, Günter prayed to no gods at all. They were worse than deaf— they were actively hostile.
“But the question remains,” he whispered to himself, “what d
o I do about it?”
***
Things had come full circle. Erhard stood within a cell in the lowest level of the keep in Johannisburg Castle. When he had first left her here, Lilly had been clothed like a typical Prûsan peasant woman, with only the token restraint of a silver manacle on her ankle. She had been standing when he had left her.
Now she was at his feet, naked, curled on the floor, bound by thick leather straps that tightly wrapped her legs and arms together. Around her neck was the silver tore that prevented her from changing to her true form.
Lilly looked up at him in a way that almost begged him to correct her. She had always been distant and cold, and seeing a human emotion in her face was wrong.
“You are going to be punished,” Erhard said.
“I am going to be killed,” Lilly replied. It was the first time she had ever directly contradicted him, and it was almost as shocking as the fact that she had escaped. He reached down and backhanded her, splitting her lip open.
“You do not talk back to me!”
“Am I wrong?” she whispered.
Erhard raised his hand again, but stopped himself. What is the point of this? He lowered his hand. “Why did you do this?”
Lilly shook her head. “It doesn't matter anymore.”
“It's the only thing that does matter!” He wanted to strike her again—not to discipline or correct her behavior, but simply to vent his own frustration. He turned away, because he was frightened of the anger that welled up inside him. He asked God for some semblance of composure. “For years, you worked in God's service. Why would you now turn on everything you've ever known?”
“I've turned on everything that ever loved me.”
“What?”
“It's my purpose, isn't it? It is why you value me at all. I can kill.” She looked up at Erhard, tears in her eyes. “My worth is measured in the blood I shed in your God's name.”
“Why did you escape?”
“You abandoned me here. Of all places, here! I tried to forget what you made me do. For years I tried.”
“Forget what?”
Lilly closed her eyes and shook her head. “You need to tell me why you escaped.”
