The Wolf King Read online

  “What?” Regeane whispered, knowing as she did so that Lavinia was telling the truth. A set of preternaturally sharp senses warned her there was a corpse in the room, and it was in the bed.

  She lifted one hand to her face; she felt a sense of drunken disorientation, but she hadn’t been drinking. She’d been riding along a trail at the pass. The horse reared. Her last horrifying memory was the realization that the horse Audovald was toppling over. The earth that formed the narrow road must . . . must have . . .

  Regeane touched her cheek. Her hand was cold, icy. The bite of her own cold fingers on her skin startled her and brought her back to full alertness. She moved as far away from the bed as she could.

  “Is there no place cleaner and better favored than this . . . this death chamber, hereabouts?”

  “No,” Lavinia whispered. “We women come here because it’s safe. Even if she—” Lavinia indicated the bed.—“isn’t the most pleasant company in the world, at least she won’t beat and rape us. Something I can’t be sure won’t be done by the abbot’s livelier companions.”

  Yes, Regeane thought. This was a nest of brigands, if not something worse. Worse, the idea troubled her clouded mind. What could be worse, this side of death? But just possibly she was not this side of death. Perhaps she had died when the horse . . . fell? She wasn’t sure it had fallen, but then—no. Yes, she was, she was sure: the horse fell. How far down was it into that valley? Someone, she couldn’t remember who, said almost a mile down. No, nothing could survive a fall like that. So she was dead. But how so? Since she could still feel, think, move, and yes—she took in a deep breath of the freezing air—yes, she could also breathe.

  But she might as well be dead, she was so cold. She eased toward the low fireplace where the child Morgana crouched. The woman Lavinia picked up a log from a metal rack near the hearth and threw it on the almost-dead coals. It hissed, sputtered. The bark must have been wet. Then it caught and flamed up, sending a burst of heat into the room.

  Regeane stretched out her hands gratefully toward the radiant heat rising from the newborn fire. She closed her eyes, seeing the hot redness behind her lids. The chimney smoke in her nostrils and clinging around her clothing had a far cleaner odor than anything in the putrid room around her.

  “Ahhh, that feels good,” Lavinia whispered.

  Regeane felt her mind was beginning to clear. “My . . . husband?”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Lavinia snapped. “I’ll bet you don’t even know his name.”

  “I don’t, but he tried to help me. He may even have saved my life. So where did they take him? And what are they going to do to him?”

  “Hush. Be glad they have him to occupy them until morning. Let them finish killing him and tomorrow I’ll . . .” She turned back to where Regeane had been standing and gave a harsh gasp of surprise. The girl was gone!

  The Saxon was not an optimistic man and, indeed, his worst fears had been confirmed. He’d heard—even among the Lombards—dark tales about this place, the so-called monastery at the foot of the pass. Those tales had bothered him not at all, for he had planned to avoid at all costs the functionaries of the Frankish king. He didn’t know if they would return him to his Lombard owners, but he didn’t plan to test their charity. Nowhere in this harsh world could a friendless, kinless man hope for shelter or even compassion. This was his firm belief, and nothing in his life had even begun to persuade him otherwise. Certainly not this experience.

  He’d managed to get sufficient control of his reflexes to prevent his head being battered to a pulp on the floor, but he remained tied. On the way to wherever they were taking him, he simply concentrated on keeping his tender skull away from the cobbles; otherwise, he ceased to struggle and tried to let himself go limp. Tied or not, he was still entangled with the bearskin, and the thick pelt kept him from being bruised or brained by his captors’ careless handling. The thing was lucky, or maybe it wasn’t. He’d been captured wearing it, but then, it probably saved his life when he was sold to the Lombards. But in the slave pens, he’d had to fight three men over the damned thing—or was it four? The whack on the head had been hard . . . But then his speculations were ended, because he found himself in the monastery chapel. He was stretched out on the floor.

  The thing—that was how he thought about it—the thing that giggled was examining him. A finger prodded him in several places. “You sure you didn’t hit him too hard?” it questioned the servitors who’d been dragging him along. “He looks dead.”

  “Dead, my ass,” a voice he recognized as belonging to one of the men by the gate snarled. “Open your eyes, pig.”

  Somebody, probably the speaker, drove a boot into his ribs.

  The Saxon whispered the vilest epithet he knew and opened his eyes. They were gathered in a circle around him. He’d never seen a worse band of cutthroats. They were all scarred, missing eyes, hands, noses, even lips. But what sent a frisson of sheer terror through his body was the fact that the speaker, one of the men he remembered from near the gate, was the man his companion had stabbed in the throat. And not only was he alive, but he seemed in reasonably good health.

  The thing, the giggler, laughed a nasty titter. “Odd, he cannot believe you are alive.”

  Odd hawked and spat a disgusting mixture of phlegm and blood at the Saxon. “No thanks to him and his pretty pussy.”

  The Saxon twisted his head aside just in time to keep the mess from splattering in his face.

  “She’s a fair hand with the knife, that woman of his,” Odd said. “Maybe she’ll stay awhile, keep us company.”

  Yes, the Saxon thought, there’s the hole in his throat, almost like another mouth, where her knife went in. Someone had stitched it shut. It was a red line from his Adam’s apple to just below his ear. No, he should be dead. How was he not?

  “Too bad,” Odd said. His voice sounded thick, harsh—as if cutting his throat had interfered only with his ability to speak. “Too bad we couldn’t get Gui back. The pig spilled too much of him against the post.”

  “Was that the one I brained?” the Saxon asked.

  Odd laughed, an odd bubbling sound. Then he hawked and spat again. “I’m not all fixed. I’m still bleeding,” he whined.

  “Cut me loose,” the Saxon said. “I’ll fix you like I did Gui. You won’t bleed anymore, you bastard.”

  Someone else kicked him. A good kick, vicious, it knocked some of the wind out of him.

  “Beg for your life, pig,” the giggler said. “They did.” He gestured toward the choir stalls along the wall of the chapel.

  Yes, the Saxon recognized it as a church, one of the Christian kind. He and the other slaves had been herded into one every week on the estate where he had been imprisoned. These places reminded him of nothing so much as cowsheds, but with higher roofs. They were long and fairly narrow. All along the walls there were seats with high backs carved of wood. These were for the priests, who were the only ones allowed to sit down. The slaves, and those few peasants who had braved the service intended for the villa’s lowest field hands, knelt on the bare stone floor while the skirted Christian priests engaged in some complicated rite at an altar on one end of the room.

  The cold, the pressure on his bare knees, and the stink of his fellow slaves’ unwashed bodies, not to mention the presence of the taskmasters paid to keep the slaves from creating a disturbance, had rendered the whole ceremonial experience miserable. At certain times during the service—he was never sure which parts—the overseers struck with their whips at any slave unfortunate enough to make the slightest sound. Once, after seeing one of his more half-wit fellows who cursed the Christian god in the middle of the rites deprived of his eyes and tongue, he concluded this god was worse tempered than his people’s spirits of wind, cold, storm, fire, desire, and fruitfulness. They, at least, were indifferent to human suffering. The Christian god was downright malicious. In fact this maggot-brained abbot, surrounded by what he was now sure were dead men, was a fitting servant for th
at god.

  “Beg for your life.” The abbot kicked him this time.

  “Piss on you,” the Saxon said.

  “Beg,” the abbot squealed. Snot ran from his nose, drool from his lips. He seemed disappointed. “By now,” he whimpered, “they were all begging.”

  “Shit on you,” the Saxon said. “I wouldn’t give you piss, it’s too good for you.”

  “I know, I know,” one of the men near Odd shouted. “Let’s show him our guests.” He pointed to the choir stalls.

  “Yes,” the abbot said.

  The abbot jumped up and down with glee, but on the second hop the Saxon saw where this was leading and managed to roll. The abbot landed on his ribs. The Saxon bucked like an angry horse—tied or not, he could move—but then they all took turns seeing if they could stay on top of him. He gritted his teeth, twisted and turned, trying to stay alive while the whole crew tried stomping him to death. Fortunately, only a few of them had boots heavy enough to do damage, but he heard one rib snap and then another; then he lurched up face first against the wooden rood screen in front of the altar, retching and gasping for breath.

  The rest backed away, sounding winded, but the abbot got in a few more kicks in the region of his kidneys. “My, he is an entertaining one,” the abbot burbled happily. “We haven’t had one with this much energy in a long time. Yes, let’s show him our guests.”

  Two of them got him by the arms and towed him back to the middle of the long room.

  “The torch,” the abbot shouted.

  A torch flared somewhere near the altar and arced through the air in the abbot’s direction. With surprising skill, the abbot plucked it out of the air, then shoved the flames in the Saxon’s face. The abbot’s companions looked even worse in the light. They all must have died at one time or another. One’s head lolled strangely on his shoulders. Hanged? Another’s skin was blackened, had an oily sheen, and part of a charred bone was visible at the elbow. Burned?

  Death didn’t seem to have altered their drinking habits. They were passing around a flagon. When it got to Odd, he took a hefty pull, then danced up and down, gagging and screaming, when some of the wine ran out of his cut throat and down his chest. The rest found this hilariously funny.

  “It stings,” he screeched. “It stings.”

  The Saxon imagined it did. Parts of the gash in his throat must still be raw. They were all, dead or alive, much taller than the abbot, but even so, he dominated them, for all his idiot gaze and constant drooling.

  “Look,” the abbot said, moving toward the choir stalls lining the sides of the church. He thrust the torch at what sat there.

  The Saxon got only a glimpse, but the brief sight was almost enough to unnerve even him. He was almost sure he himself was going to join the things seated in the stalls before morning, if indeed the sun ever shone on this cursed place. And if morning ever came, it probably wouldn’t for him. He turned his face resolutely away and closed his eyes.

  The abbot gave a screech of fury and charged back toward him. “You’ll look. You’ll look or the first thing I’ll do is put out your eyes.” He slammed the torch into the side of the Saxon’s face.

  He heard himself scream as he felt and smelled his hair and skin burning. He could hear the abbot laughing.

  “I knew I could make him scream. I make them all scream sooner or later.”

  “I can believe that,” the Saxon said when he recovered enough to say anything.

  “Do, oh, do believe it.”

  The torch was between himself and the abbot. All he could see were flames.

  “Pull him up,” the abbot ordered. “Get him on his feet. Bring him over so he can look at the other guests.”

  He was jerked to his knees. It took at least five or six of them. The Saxon was a big man. As they did, a thought occurred to him. The critic in his brain told him it was a rotten plan, but the more optimistic part of his mind suggested since he was fresh out of bright ideas, he might as well try this one.

  He screamed loudly.

  They let go of him and he fell, fell hard, and he screamed again. Not difficult. He had two broken ribs and they were excruciatingly painful.

  Normally he wouldn’t have screamed, being something of an iron man. But screams seem to entertain these monsters. So give them a few, he thought.

  “What’s wrong?” Odd asked drunkenly. “We didn’t hurt you that much . . . at least not yet.” Then he began laughing and spewing droplets of wine and blood from his cut throat.

  “I’m hurt,” the Saxon moaned. “Hurt inside. When you jumped on me, you must have broken something.”

  Odd kicked him and the resulting scream satisfied the rest that he was really hurt and not faking, because Odd put his boot toe into one of the broken ribs. The reflex of sheer agony arched the Saxon’s back, and he almost fainted.

  This aroused the abbot’s anxiety. “Come on, get him on his feet. I want him over there before he dies on me.

  “He,” the abbot said, indicating the darkened altar, “will only let me play with them till they die. He won’t let it go on any longer. He won’t bring them back. If this one dies,” he sniveled, “I won’t get him back again. And I want to keep him for a while.

  “So get him up,” he screeched.

  The corpse gang, because that’s how the Saxon thought about them now, jerked him to his knees again. The Saxon made his body go limp. He fell, fell hard.

  “Get up,” the abbot screamed, and battered him with the torch.

  The Saxon screamed and moaned but made himself lie still, then let out an absolute roar of sheer agony when the abbot pressed the torch against his side.

  I must be dead, Regeane thought. Yes, that would explain everything. I must be dead; otherwise how could I see so well in the dark? She was following the curve of the wall away from the room where the women had conducted her, but she was able to see the long hall around her. In fact there even seemed to be a light ahead, and she heard the distant sound of shouts and screams. Yes, there was a light. Regeane made herself hurry but found when she reached the silver glow it was only the moon shining through broken rafters above. Outside, the storm must have blown itself by. Now the moon shone fitfully through the swiftly moving cloud rack above.

  The wind slashed through the broken roof, raising gooseflesh over every exposed inch of her skin. The cold was bitter, but the breeze was clean and it deadened the smells around her. Snow had blown in through the hole in the roof and drifted on the floor. It was frozen, slippery, and she tried to ease her way around it. Her riding boots were clumsy on the frozen surface.

  “What? Woman? Are you mad? I tried to get you away from him.” The whisper came from the shadows near the patch of moonlight.

  Regeane recognized the voice, that of the old monk who’d let them in at first. “I must find my husband,” she replied.

  “Don’t repeat that lie to me,” he answered with some asperity. “I sent you away with the women to try to save you from our so-called abbot and his demonic crew, and here I find you rushing back. Are you in such a hurry to meet your doom? The man is a runaway slave. I felt his collar when he ran into me at the door. He’s no husband to a woman like you.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Regeane said. “I must help him. He tried to save me.”

  The man, only a shadow in the gloom, clutched at her arm, but she pulled away with surprising ease. Just then a terrible scream ran out.

  “No-no-no,” the old man moaned. He snatched at Regeane again, but she was already running toward the chapel. She saw big double oak doors just ahead. One was closed, the other open just a crack. Faint light spilled out into the empty hall.

  She stretched out one hand and pulled it open.

  To Maeniel, the sensation was more like flying than falling. A fall is the primal terror, yet he was still not as afraid as he might have been, because the snow-filled darkness was so thick. It seemed to him that the trail just vanished, then he was flying, then he landed. The wind went out of him in a
rush. He might have lost consciousness, but he wasn’t sure. He only knew he’d been slammed hard into a pile of rocks, the wind completely knocked out of him. He did what a human would do in like circumstances: he lay very still and tried desperately to get his breath.

  While he was doing so, his vision began to clear. Not much help, he thought, since all he could see were long draperies of blowing snow whipped like gigantic lengths of fabric by the storm winds. But when he looked up, he was able to see, even in the misty gloom, that the trail was gone, wiped out by a monster avalanche that had plunged down from the glacier-bound mountain slope above.

  Regeane, he thought, and began to struggle. But it seemed an eternity before he could manage to get to his feet. By then the light was getting better, and he was able to see what saved his life. He was on the spread of snow from the avalanche itself. The whole topography of the landscape was altered. Not only had the trail down the mountainside been swept away, but part of the peak was gone, spread fanwise across what had been a steep drop to the valley with its mountain torrent in the gorge below. Now the slope was no longer so steep, and the river was trying to carve a new path over the debris of the glacier fallen from the mountain.

  The wolf crouched and howled again.

  And again he was answered.

  The light was growing, though the snow was still falling. It was less a curtain than a haze, and not far away he saw a dark spot against the snow. It was Audovald. The horse was half buried. Only his neck and one forehoof were clear.

  The horse blew through his nostrils when the wolf approached. Is it you?

  Yes. They touched noses.

  Audovald was reassured. Are you angry?

  The wolf touched noses with him again. No. I’m frightened. This was a body movement by the wolf and otherwise untranslatable.

  I lost her. This was a cry of pain from the horse.