Night of the Wolf (16 page)

“More than once,” Maeniel replied.

“I thought so.” He still didn’t look at Maeniel. “I’m surprised you didn’t go and leave me or at least take the packs. They have valuable things in them.”

“Not to me.”

“No! Yes! But then, I can believe, after what I didn’t see last night, that a few golden trinkets might not impress you. But if not gold, what do you want?”

“I need your help to get across the river and enter that settlement.”

“And what do you plan to do then?”

“Steal a woman.”

“Oh, no,” Decius moaned. “Don’t you realize it’s as much as both our lives are worth to offend that chieftain over there? Oh, help me, father of all the gods. If Cynewolf doesn’t kill me, Fulvia certainly will.”

“Who is Fulvia? Stop whining and explain.”

“Fulvia is my mistress. I’m one of her freedmen. Oh, sisters of Zeus, I was happier when I was a slave and a bath attendant, before that louse Firminius decided I had a nice ass.” He gestured at the river. “Do you think I’d come to this godforsaken, frozen, muddy ditch of my own free will? Do you realize how much wine these turd holes drink?”

“Probably not as much as the Romans.” Maeniel was exasperated.

“Well . . . maybe not . . . Oh, in Isis’ name, what does it matter? It’s enough to line the Basilian family and Fulvia’s pockets with gold, not to mention the commission I will get and my continued freedom.”

“But you’re free now!” Maeniel uttered the words through his teeth.

Decius’ laugh was hollow. “Oh, yes, probably in law and in theory! I can’t imagine Fulvia or Firminius paying attention to any known law. No, depend upon it: if I don’t maintain Fulvia’s monopoly with these ghastly Gauls and please that big, hairy chieftain across the river, they’ll recoup part of their losses by selling me at auction. I’ve seen her do it before to other men unfortunate enough to blunder at the wrong time. Please, please, I beg you, don’t drag me into the kind of trouble flouting this chieftain’s hospitality will cause me.”

Maeniel uttered a snarl that set Decius’ knees to shaking.

“I’m beginning to believe all the things I didn’t see last night are true.” But when Decius looked around, he found himself alone. “Maybe he’s gone,” he muttered.

He was just beginning to feel relieved when a large gray wolf trotted out of the forest and took his place at Decius’ knee. “No,” Decius whispered. “He’s not gone.”

Across the river the ferry departed the opposite shore. A man driving a small flock of sheep, perhaps eight or ten, joined Decius at the landing. He was followed by a lady on a fine strawberry gelding and accompanied by two footmen.

The sheep didn’t like the gray wolf at all. They huddled into a ball around the shepherd.

The lady dismounted and took up her position next to Decius. She was obviously of noble birth; a glance at her jewels made this clear. Add to them the fine carriage of her horse and the two well-armed warriors who followed her, and it was obvious she was no ordinary person.

She wore a heavy cloak with the hood back. She was magnificently beautiful, but it was plain she was no longer in her first youth. Her hair, dressed with gold chains and coiled in braids at each ear, was threaded with gray. Fine lines could be seen in her cheeks and there were crow’s feet around her eyes.

She ignored Decius and stared off pensively into the middle distance, watching the ferry making its laborious way toward them. One hand held the cloak at the neck, the other hung at her side.

The wolf poked his nose into her hand.
Ahhh,
the wolf thought,
sweet, clean, perfumed flesh. Woman flesh. Woman smell. Woman, woman, woman softness. Ahhh.

She felt the nose in the palm of her hand and looked down. “Oh, my, what a magnificent animal. Is he yours?” she asked Decius. She offered her hand to the wolf. He sniffed the soft fingers enthusiastically; one doesn’t want to give up one’s dignity completely, but he waved his big, plumed tail gently.

Then she stroked his head and scratched properly behind the ears. The wolf’s mouth opened and he gave her a big, happy, doggy grin. “So beautiful, so well behaved,” she told Decius. “You’re lucky to own so fine an animal.”

The wolf turned his head and gave Decius a more ironic version of the same canine smile.

Decius got control of his throat and answered, “Why, yes, my lady, he—” Decius’ voice squeaked involuntarily and he was forced to clear his throat. “He’s been no end of help to me on my journey.”

“Yes, well, maybe, but the sheep are afraid of him,” the shepherd commented.

The lady bestowed a charming smile on the shepherd. “I’m sure they have no reason to worry with a strong man like you to look after them.”

The shepherd looked bludgeoned. Decius sighed.

She scratched the wolf behind the ears again. To Decius’ jaundiced eye, his companion gave every appearance of ecstatic delight. “Oh, you’re a fine fellow. I’m sure when we reach my brother’s stronghold across the river I can find you a nice, big, meaty bone.”

“Your brother!” Decius exclaimed. “Then you must be the Lady Enid.”

“I am,” the lady replied.

“How delightful to meet you,” Decius gushed. “I’m here to bring your brother greetings from the Lady Fulvia and the Basilian family. Greetings, salutations, and presents from his Roman friends.”

“How very kind of you,” Enid purred. She responded well to the proffer of a gold bracelet, offered with respect when they reached the other side of the river.

Thus it was that the wolf found himself under the table in the chieftain’s great hall, occupied with the promised meaty bone, while Decius flattered and bribed the man before his own hearth.

Things such as two exquisite wine pitchers in silver and bronze with animal head finials on the handles and lids. A service for six, wine cups, a platter for cakes, cups embossed with nude men and maidens, a tray embossed with the same men depriving the maidens of their right to be called maidens.

“Ooh, how naughty.” Enid snickered.

“How valuable?” the chieftain muttered as he turned and weighed them in his hands.

“They are pure and heavy silver,” Decius said.

Cynewolf dug his thumb into the bottom of the tray and found it unyielding. “Not really. Pure silver is very soft.”

“Well,” Decius fluttered, “some baser metal has to be mixed with the precious one in order to render it useful at all. Perhaps you will be better satisfied with these.” He presented him with a dozen golden torques.

The chieftain bent one and grunted, apparently satisfied with its flexibility.

“To be sure,” Decius said in an oily voice, “we will expect the same—or even perhaps a larger—order for wine this year.”

Two other men sat at the table with the chieftain. One wore Roman dress and even a toga—an affectation for him, really, as he was not a Roman citizen. The wolf didn’t know this, but the chieftain and the rich and successful farmer seated on the other side did.

Under the table, the wolf examined the bone from top to bottom. All of the meat was gone, completely stripped off by the canine fangs and the shearing rear molars. There always is a risk to bone cracking and this was a large one, but the wolf gave the equivalent of a mental shrug and bit down.

Crack! The sound echoed loudly in the silent room. All of the men in the room started, as did the only woman, Enid.

Decius shivered. He didn’t know quite why. The hall, round after the ancient custom, was covered with a high, cone-shaped roof. The hearth, also after ancient custom, was black and dead. The only light was supplied by hazy daylight streaming in from the smoke hole at the apex of the roof. A still-higher cone, which prevented rain and snow from entering, protected the smoke hole, so the light that did enter was rather indirect and dim. A large round table, also after ancient custom, surrounded the hearth.

The chieftain pushed the gold aside. “We can’t talk business today. It’s unlucky.”

Decius cleared his throat. “Tomorrow then.”

Mir entered. He was dressed in a long, dark cloak that covered his body and hooded his head. None of the three men sitting at the table would look him directly in the face. He walked quietly to the table and sat down beside the rest.

From the other side of the room, Decius and the wolf stared at him across the dead hearth. The bone cracked again as the wolf cleaned out the marrow.

“Tomorrow,” the man beside the chieftain said.

“Tomorrow,” the man in the toga said.

“This is not an auspicious day,” Mir contributed.

Decius found, for some unguessable reason, his mouth was dry.

“Enid,” Mir said. “Go and make sure she bathes and eats the porridge.”

The look of sweet amiability faded from Enid’s face and she looked pinched and drawn. She had been examining one of the silver cups in a desultory fashion. Suddenly, she banged it down on the table and directed a look of fury at Mir.

He met her stare without flinching. She turned away first.

For a second, the wolf thought she looked old. Then she rose and, without a word, exited the hall.

Decius shivered again and remembered he had not seen a single fire in the entire encampment despite the cold. He felt as if something old and dark had entered the room and sat coiled, waiting like a serpent in the shadows.

Under the table, the wolf whined softly, almost inaudibly, and Decius knew his peculiar friend felt it, too.

“It’s very close to evening,” the chieftain said to Decius. “Go to the rooms we have given you. Light no fire. It is forbidden. Bar your door and don’t come out until morning.”

“Ye-ye-yes,” Decius stammered. He rose. There was bread, cheese, and a flagon of wine on the table. He took them with him. “I’m leaving . . . I’m leaving. I’m leaving now.” And then he was gone.

The wolf lay crouched, silent now, the bone forgotten, his belly pressed close to the floor. He regretted he hadn’t come sooner and that he had bothered with that miserable Decius. He regretted he hadn’t been able to persuade her to leave with him last night.

What! Had the storm frightened her? He didn’t know. What was happening all around him? He didn’t comprehend human purposes and their strange and sometimes contradictory ends. He only knew he distrusted them—distrusted them to the bottom of his heart and the marrow of his wolf bones.

“When?” the chieftain asked Mir. He didn’t look at him.

“At sunset, between the day and the night. When it is neither day nor night, in a place neither dry nor wet, neither rock nor soil. Then . . .” Mir glanced up at the smoke hole. The hazy light was fading.

The wolf eased back out of the hall and into the muddy street. The sun had fallen below the palisade wall and, because of the lack of torches or even candles, everything around him was in deep shadow.

Where was Imona? This time he realized he couldn’t find her. Last night the wind had been blowing, sweeping away the fetid smell of the muddy streets strewn with kitchen garbage or the rank outhouse effluvia that clogged his nostrils, a smell that always reigned wherever any large group of humans congregated. Among this maze of human sign, she was as much lost to him as when Mir had taken her away from her farm in the valley.

Then the wolf had to dodge to avoid being stepped on because suddenly the streets were filled with people. They were all dressed as Mir had been in the hall, wrapped in black cloaks, hooded and cowled. They didn’t look at each other and, after a few moments, the wolf realized why: some of the gliding shapes weren’t really there, but only shadows that passed through walls without any discernable difficulty.

Near him, a woman was sick or very afraid because the heat her body gave off was visible to him. The woman moaned softly, “The dead. The dead are here.”

The wolf’s hackles rose as another of the hooded figures passed next to him, radiating a thick, stinking, deadly cold. He was at the bottom of an icy river and the fish were stripping the flesh from his bones. No mind was left. The raw fear of death dissolved all reason. Only a lonely vortex of terror, bitter rage, and despair remained.

Imona,
the wolf thought. His thought was an image, a woman’s face smiling into his.

The crowd moved in the direction of the gate. The wolf followed. When he reached it and passed through with the rest, he saw Imona.

She stood not far from the open portals, Mir on one side, Enid on the other. She alone of all the company wore a white gown.

The wolf threaded his way among the legs of the throng, trying to get close to her, but he was too slow. Before he could get near to her, she, Mir, and Enid began walking, attended by a knot of men, prosperous men of middle age, their cloaks of heavier material than Mir’s, their faces closed. The wolf caught the scent of hostility, a stench between hostility and fear.

It forced him back. Something in black. Something whose draperies the wind could not move. It stank and had no more mind than the first he’d sensed. It gibbered brainlessly. Hating, hating, raging at the yawning abyss trying to claim it. Clawing with fleshless fingers at anything it touched, even itself

The breeze blew and the caped and hooded humans clutched at their clothing, holding it down against the wind. The blast was icy. Despite sun in the daytime, the night would be cold. The snow of last night had melted and the path Mir and Imona took led them around the walls toward the back of the stronghold.

The grass under their feet was brown and sere. Mounds of even darker, withered clover dotted the sward. As the procession reached the back of the hilltop stronghold, they turned downhill.

The wolf was closer now and he could see the gown Imona wore wasn’t truly white, but rather woven of sheep’s wool left its natural color, a mixture of white and gray, here and there streaked with rust contributed by wild mountain ewes.

The sun was very close to the horizon now and the long, red slanted rays poured a last fire-gold light into the scrubby woods at the base of the hill.

Imona wore a torque around her neck, and the incandescent last light burned it to brilliance. Enid’s hood was back and the wolf could see her coiled braids. Otherwise, the pale-clad Imona seemed flanked by two black figures, very like the ones who surrounded the wolf