Wolfbreed

by S. A. Swann

  His back slammed into the floor and she landed with her full weight on his chest. He only managed one more weak swing in her direction before the weapon clattered to the ground and he stopped moving.

  She sensed three more men advancing on her from behind, almost on her. She whipped around and jumped, not at the trio, but over them.

  She was too quick for them to bring a blow to bear. They held their swords defensively, protecting their bodies, not the space above their heads. Even the knight with the silver sword moved too slowly.

  They all spun to defend against an attack from the rear, but it had not been Lilly's intent to attack the three of them.

  Erhard had taught her that surprise was more deadly than the wolf.

  ***

  It leapt directly at Johann, and he brought his sword to bear to cut into its belly as it attacked him, but he had misjudged the height. It didn't leap on him, it leapt over him. He could feel the heat of its breath on his face the moment it was above him. He smelled blood and scorched fur.

  He pivoted around with his remaining two men, expecting to be attacked from behind. Instead, the beast took a bound and dove away, into the armory.

  What?

  A green-and-yellow-clad form sailed out of the doorway, slamming into the opposite wall. Inside he heard the other man scream.

  Then the lanterns went out, plunging the corridor into complete darkness except for the flickering crosses shining through the arrow slits.

  “It's trying to blind us!” Johann called out too late. A massive shadow erupted from the darkness, passing to his right. He tried to bring his sword down on it, but it was already gone, as was the man on his right.

  “Back to the wall,” he called out to the other man. He fell back, and heard something strangled and wet to his left. “Do you hear me? Fall back!” He heard no answer from either man.

  Something growled in the darkness. “They can't hear you anymore.”

  Johann's heart raced. He looked around, but all he saw were vague shadows in the darkness and the pyre burning behind the crosses of the arrow slits. He held up his sword, its silver the only ward against this thing. He pressed his back against the corridor wall and pleaded, “Get thee behind me, Satan.”

  “I am not Satan,” whispered the thing in the darkness. A feral snarl seemed to come from every direction at once. Then, abruptly, a massive shadow eclipsed the sight of the arrow slit in front of him.

  “And I am not behind you.”

  Johann screamed.

  ***

  When the screaming started, the first thing Erhard thought was, Lilly is in here with us.

  Everyone looked toward the curving stairway, and for the moment the riot on the other side of the main door was forgotten. For close to a minute, the noise continued from up the stairs. The last voice, Erhard recognized as Sir Johann ...

  Five more men near the stairway had swords drawn and were already climbing. Erhard called to them, “Hold! Do not go up there.”

  “Sir?” One of them turned toward Erhard. “The bishop is up there!”

  Erhard nodded. “You will stay here. I will take my brothers to rescue the bishop.”

  “Sir, there are only five of you—”

  “Meaning there's only twelve of you to guard against a breach.” Erhard looked at his brother knights. They smiled at him grimly. “And, unlike you, we know how to fight this thing.”

  He drew his sword and led his men up the stairs.

  ***

  Lilly followed the bishop's men up to a large storeroom at the top of the keep's tower. Here the stairs ended. Ahead of her was a torchlit room stacked with boxes and barrels. Large iron cauldrons sat next to large murder holes set in the floor by the exterior wall. Massive pillars supported squat vaults bearing the weight of the ceiling. About a third of the sconces along one wall held lit torches, as if the bishop's men had been in the midst of lighting them.

  None of the bishop's men were in sight, but their smell was mixed with the scent of dust, dry wood, and the stench of tar and pitch.

  She stayed low to the floor, slinking along behind a row of wooden crates that smelled of old canvas.

  “Give me the girl,” she called out to them in German, “and I will let you live.”

  The edge of the crate in front of her splintered as a crossbow bolt blew through to embed itself in the stones of the floor. She reached over and pulled the bolt out.

  It wasn't silver.

  She licked the blood off her muzzle and bared her teeth.

  ***

  Erhard and his brother knights gazed at the carnage outside the armory. He looked at the bodies, barely visible in the light coming through the arrow slits from the dying pyre outside. The bodies were twisted, broken, echoing every battlefield he had ever seen.

  Perhaps it was the press of time, but again Lilly's violence was uncharacteristically restrained. The two men with the bishop's livery still breathed, and Johann's men had fallen with their bodies intact.

  That was a bad sign. For him, Lilly had always fought like an animal, tearing her victims apart, leaving a horrid display for the survivors to reflect upon. Since her escape, she seemed to fight more and more like a soldier, attacking not for the slaughter, but to take her opponent out of the fight.

  I have done this, he thought. I taught her. I showed an animal how to fight like a man. Better than a man.

  “Gather crossbows for us,” he told his men. “And silvered bolts.”

  One of his men carried a hooded lantern and edged the shutter open just enough to illuminate the armory itself, slightly better than the corridor.

  “You know what we face,” he whispered. “If you're within arm's reach, she can kill you. She's heading up after the bishop, so she will be cornered.” He hefted a crossbow, pointed it down, put his foot in the stirrup, and drew back the tension. “If you see a shot, take it. Kill or disable. Keep the walls to your back so that you see her coming.”

  He loaded a silver-tipped bolt.

  “Don't let her surprise you.”

  ***

  The men of the bishop's entourage were little effort. The first had been crouching to fire ineffective crossbow bolts at her. She leapt on his chest and pulled his upper torso up until she broke his spine in half.

  The second swung a sword at her while standing too close to a murder hole. She dove low, biting his calf, hamstringing him, sending him screaming backward through the hole, falling five stories to the bailey below.

  While she was crouched before the murder hole, the third one cut deep into her shoulder with his sword. She sensed the man approach her, but the fact these men were not armed with silver allowed her to concentrate solely on attack. And even though the blow was only about a hand's breadth from being mortal, decapitating a moving target with one stroke of a sword was a near impossible task.

  He didn't get the second stroke. His head collided with one of the tar-filled cauldrons, hard enough to crack the iron and knock the lid askew with a massive clang. The lid released noxious odors from the viscous black contents. The man dropped his sword and went slack.

  She heard the fourth man running toward her and raised her limp burden up between herself and the attacker. The attacker's sword glanced off the unconscious man's mail. The attacker shifted to thrust around Lilly's improvised shield, and Lilly threw the unconscious man at him.

  The attacker fell backward under the deadweight and she could sense that he was the last soldier in here.

  Where's the bishop? Where's Hilde?

  As the man scrambled to push his comrade off of him, Lilly leapt on his sword arm, biting through his wrist. He yelled curses as he dropped his sword. Lilly didn't understand the language.

  She grabbed him by the neck one-handed, and dragged him upright.

  “Where is she?” she growled at him in German. The man closed his eyes and prayed.

  She held him for a moment, muzzle wrinkled in an angry snarl, shoulder itching where the latest wound knit togethe
r. She felt a horrible ache in her stomach, the smell of blood igniting a fierce hunger in her gut. The wolf was pure bloodlust now. All it wanted was to taste more of this man's warm pulsing flesh.

  But the wolf was not the only part of her present.

  “You think death is the worst I can give you?”

  The man continued praying, and Lilly dragged him to the open cauldron. She slammed his back to the wall. His eyes flew wide and his prayer stopped with a gasp.

  “Tell me!”

  The man shook his head.

  She hooked her claws into his belt and upended him, shoving him headfirst into the cauldron. The tar was barely liquid; the brazier heating the contents had just begun its work. Even so, she managed to shove his body in all the way to the upper torso. His legs kicked wildly, his arms flailing.

  Pulling him out was more difficult. His belt pulled free and she had to take her grip on his thigh.

  He came free with a sucking sound, his helmet lost somewhere in the cauldron. His body was featureless black from the chest upward. Fist-size clumps of warm tar dropped from his face. It took him several seconds of effort to even open his mouth.

  She righted his body and slammed him back against the wall, his face a blank lumpy mass, his mouth a ragged hole opening in a gasping wheeze.

  She stepped to the side as he choked and started raising him toward a blazing sconce set in the wall.

  “Do you feel the fire yet?”

  The man started screaming in Latin, Italian, and German. “No ... Don't ...” were the only words she could make out.

  “Tell me!”

  Lilly's world was focused on this one man, who knew where Hilde and the bishop had gone. Her ears filled with the man's polyglot pleading and cursing. Her nose filled with the scents of tar, pitch, and blood.

  That was why she was unaware that her master had followed her here until a silver-tipped crossbow bolt tore through the left side of her back.

  Chapter 34

  Lankut helped Uldolf and Burthe carry Gedim clear of the riot, over to the outer wall. Here they were just one of a dozen small groups tending to injured. Uldolf looked at the blocky form of the keep, solid and impenetrable.

  “It's going to be a slaughter,” he whispered.

  Lankut brought a bucket of water and asked, “Whose?”

  “All they have to do is wait everyone out. I'm surprised more of the guard hasn't come to finish us off.”

  “Uldolf, do you know how many guardsmen are Prûsan?” He reached down and wiped blood off Gedim's face. “There's a reason they guarded their prisoners with foreigners.”

  “What about Sergeant Günter?” Uldolf asked.

  “Oh, him and his bootlicking—”

  “Please.” Burthe's voice cracked. “Have you seen Hilde? Do you know where my daughter is?”

  Lankut shook his head. “I'm sorry. I was manning the gate when—”

  Uldolf stood. “What is that?”

  The top of the keep tower was wider than the base, the floor extending out over the tower walls supported by closely spaced wedges of stone. Between every third pair of those wedge-shaped supports there was now a square opening flickering with torchlight.

  “Someone opened the murder holes,” Lankut said.

  “What?” Burthe asked.

  “The siege defenses,” Lankut explained. “So the defenders can throw stones and pour burning tar on attackers.”

  Uldolf shook his head. “Why aren't they just firing crossbows into the crowd?”

  “I was wondering—” Lankut began.

  Someone screamed by the tower. Uldolf turned his attention back up to the top of the tower. A body fell through one of the murder holes, plummeting, flailing and screaming, to slam into the bailey just behind the thickest mass of the Prûsan crowd. Before the crowd enveloped the body, Uldolf could see the tattered colors of gold and green.

  “That was one of the bishop's men,” Lankut said.

  “The bishop had Hilde,” Burthe whispered. Uldolf looked up at the top of the keep.

  His sister was somewhere up there.

  Did Lilly go in there?

  For Hilde?

  ***

  Erhard led his men slowly up the cylindrical staircase. They treaded softly and slowly, twisting rightward toward the top of the keep. The route was narrow, and the stairs uneven, to give the advantage to the defenders against attackers coming from below. Even in the confined space, the five knights carried crossbows nocked and ready to fire.

  The stairwell would be a bad place for a fight. Just spacing out enough to wield their weapons meant that Erhard wasn't even in sight of the last two men following.

  He led his men while leaning forward and looking up, extending his sight line as far as the slit in the hooded lantern would allow. As they reached the last few spirals of the stairway, he noticed light from above.

  He waved back so the man behind him shut the lantern. The darkness closed in, but not completely. Above them he heard a massive clanging noise, followed shortly by a familiar growling voice.

  “Where is she?”

  By the position of the voice and the subsequent crashing and screaming, they had their opportunity. He waved the knights after him, running as quickly as they could manage up to the highest level of the keep.

  “You think death is the worst I can give you?”

  The few seconds it took him to run up the last two circuits of the stairway gave him time to realize why the bishop had retreated up here. He came up here to ready the siege defenses. In Erhard's opinion, the impulse was terribly premature.

  “Tell me!”

  They emerged from the stairs, spreading along the walls to prevent an attack from the rear. However, God was with them. Lilly was in the open, by the one section of the wall where the bishop's men had lit the sconces. She stood with her back to the knights, in all her lupine fury.

  Muscles rippled in her back, her fur streaked by blood, soot, and tar. She had a man pinned, his upper body covered by black ooze, and her muzzle was wrinkled in a horrid snarl as she slammed him into the wall close to a flaming sconce.

  “Do you feel the fire yet?”

  Her tar-coated victim screamed a babble of languages at her. “Tell me!”

  His men had taken the few distracted seconds to take cover and aim. The first shot buried a bolt in Lilly's back, just above her left hip. The next was a split second later, just as she started reacting, burying itself in her back just below her right shoulder. The third and fourth bolts missed as she dodged, dropping the tar-covered man, who fell against the sconce, releasing a shower of embers. Erhard fired, and buried a bolt in her left thigh as she disappeared behind a thick stone pillar.

  For a moment the only sound was the creak of the bows as the five knights recocked their weapons.

  Then the bishop's man started screaming. Erhard looked away from Lilly's hiding place, and saw the tar-covered man staggering away from the wall, toward the knights. Flames licked at his head, and toxic black smoke rolled from his shoulders. He tried to beat at the fire with his hands and only succeeded in spreading the burning tar.

  Erhard shook his head and leveled his crossbow at the man's head, which was already an orb of orange flame. Erhard fired, ending the man's agonized screams. The body fell over flat on the stone floor, rolling flames covering its back.

  He gestured to the others, pointing along the walls of the stone room. They nodded, two going the short way toward Lilly's refuge, the other two going the long way. Then Erhard bent, putting a foot in the crossbow's stirrup to recock his weapon.

  “Brother Erhard?” The familiar voice was labored, wheezing.

  Erhard ignored her as he placed a bolt in his crossbow. The silver tip glittered, reflecting flames from the burning corpse in the room. Oily black smoke spread across the ceiling.

  “Is your God just?”

  Bolt cocked, he leveled it at the storeroom in front of him. There were piles of boxes and barrels between the stone pillars, o
ffering some cover around the edges of the room. However, standing here by the stairs, he could cover the central area of the large room. With the others circling to flank her, the injured monster couldn't move without entering a field of fire.

  He heard her cough, and he aimed the crossbow toward the sound.

  His eyes watered and he wanted to cough himself. The flames from the burning corpse filled the room with the stench of tar smoke and charring flesh.

  One of the pair of knights circling around the dark side of the storeroom fired at something. Erhard couldn't see them anymore. He had lost both men in the dark and the haze. He heard something crash and splinter, then everything was quiet for a moment.

  He heard her cough again. “Would a just God forgive you?”

  He heard one of his men in that direction cry out.

  God, don't let me lose focus.

  Erhard reined in his own sense of panic and braced himself to cover the open area should Lilly reveal herself.

  Across the room, on the other side of the burning body, Erhard saw the other two knights moving, crossbows raised. Then he lost sight of them behind the rolling black smoke.

  Erhard heard the sounds of a struggle, someone uttering a startled “Huh?” Then he heard a crossbow fire. A few seconds later, a second one fired.

  Erhard thought he heard a body thudding to the ground.

  They got her!

  Erhard coughed. They had to find the bishop and get out. The smoke was thickening, and the flames had spread to some of the storage crates. There were barrels of tar among the stores, and when those caught it would become Hell itself up here.

  He ran around to the knights. He had to follow along the wall because the fire made the central part of the room impassible. “Do you see where the bishop—”

  Erhard stopped, because one of the knights lay crumpled on the ground, a crossbow bolt sticking out of his right eye. His own crossbow rested on the ground between his legs, bolt still nocked.

  Erhard spun around, too late.

  Ahead of him, just visible through the smoky haze, stood a naked, blood-soaked seventeen-year-old girl. She stood over another body, this one with a bolt buried deep in his throat.