The Wolf King (19 page)

Hugo received a shove, a hard shove, in the direction of the baths. “Go, wash yourself.”

Cursing the whole world and everything in it, Hugo staggered away.

He was still there. Chiara knew she was not alone.

“Is this wise?” she asked. She was surprised at the reply. It was thoughtful, even judicious.

“Yes, I do believe so. In the first place, creatures such as Maeniel are very difficult to kill and have resources even they are unaware of. If I tried and failed, he might win his freedom and, once free, he would be a terrible enemy. I can, as you have seen, do
some
things, but I am not as strong as this man-wolf is. Hugo…”

“Don’t bother,” she said. “I wouldn’t trust him to go to the market and buy onions. I see, or I believe I see.”

“Good,” was the reply.

“By the by,” she said, her eyebrows lifting. “Do you have… Hugo accused you of wanting this Maeniel’s beautiful wife.”

“Go back to bed,” Hugo’s guest said sharply. “And don’t trouble me with any more questions.”

Gimp wasn’t a bad man, and in his own way—because he was used to doing as he’d been told—he was more efficient than Hugo. He’d been told to fish this stranger out of the river and chain him up. And Hugo’s guest told Gimp exactly how to chain Maeniel up, and Gimp did it, being afraid to disobey. He went in mortal terror of Hugo and his guest, only hoping to somehow be free of them both. The one had killed him and the other had in some incomprehensible way saved his life.

He chained Maeniel to a staple on the wall of the cave, put another pair of fetters on his hands, and then a separate set on his feet. And since he was not cruel, he gave the prisoner an old tunic and covered him with a blanket.

Maeniel held off the change. He didn’t dare. It didn’t take him long to figure out that Gimp was only slightly smarter than the average tree stump, and he didn’t want to unsettle his captor’s mind. Minds. Actually there were two or three others, but they were, if possible, even slower than Gimp.

They sat looking like owls lined up on a log, watching him, appearing very much as if they expected him to turn not into a wolf but at least a dragon. He decided he’d best disappoint them. So he vomited water, twice, and then somehow fell asleep.

Near dawn the sound of Hugo’s arrival woke him. Gimp, accompanied by the rest, got up and went outside. A very loud argument ensued and Gimp returned, as it appeared, alone.

“You can tell Hugo to come in,” Maeniel said. “I heard him, and I can smell him. I know he’s here. He has a rather distinctive aroma even when he’s as freshly bathed as he is now.”

There wasn’t much light outside. Gimp pushed another log into the fire at the cave entrance, and Maeniel saw him more clearly for the moment and knew this wasn’t Gimp. He would have been hard put to tell someone not endowed, as he was, with wolf as well as human senses how he knew, but he did.

“Who are you?” he asked. Even chained as he was, he managed to sit up and set his back against the stone wall.

“The bear,” came the answer. “I am the bear.” Then Gimp-not-Gimp laughed. It was a distinctly unpleasant one.

“We fought,” Maeniel said.

“Probably more than once,” the bear answered. “If you have the same kind of memories that I do.”

“I do,” Maeniel said, “but more recently.”

“Yes. I was the bear then and, as always, in the past. I am the bear, and once we contended for the world.”

“Yes,” Maeniel said. “But I was the wolf then and not part of the fight.”

“Oh, yes,” Gimp-not-Gimp said. “You even then were part of their bands, though you followed them through the snow and begged scraps from their feasts. They relied on you and you were welcomed at their fires.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Maeniel replied slowly. Then he said, “The bear, all the bear, remember you, though they will not admit it. They remember when you hunted almost as equals and they felt honored to take your name.

“Even these Romans,” Maeniel continued, “called themselves sons of the wolf, suckled at a bitch wolf’s teats. They, the sons of the wolf, left their tracks across the world, and these wild barbarians still take names from you and, sometimes yet, challenge you.

“Yes,” Maeniel said. “If you say you are the bear, then your people are long gone, forgotten. The trees, the grass, the wide starry sky know them no more.”

“Yes,” Gimp-not-Gimp said. “And I will never be done mourning them. Even if I alone am left to remember, I will always yield them the tribute of my everlasting sorrow. But this is more difficult than I thought, because you seem to understand.”

“I cannot say I am without understanding,” Maeniel answered. “But what is it that you want from me?”

“You, yourself. I wish to join you, join you the way I have possessed Hugo and others.”

“Possess? One possesses a slave. I am no one’s possession.”

“My choice of expression was poor,” Gimp-not-Gimp protested. “For once, after all the ages of preying on these gibbering half-apes who replaced my own kind, I would have an equal partner, one who could share my mind, my will. We could brush aside these quarreling kings and rule the world. Rule it our way. Return it to what it once was: forests without end, savannas where a million wild beasts roamed, deserts bejeweled with flowers that leap from the stems by day and starlit skies by night, oceans that caress clean, white beaches, snowfields that flare with a thousand colors when the northern lights glow in the heavens.

“Remember, wolf, remember when your ancestors roamed free in packs that numbered hundreds and ruled without rivals the long winter night?”

“Yes, I remember,” Maeniel said. “And I remember when the others came, bearers of fire at first, then stone and steel. We struggled then as we do now sometimes, but it was never war. Not as you propose it.”

“Well, look around you. War is the only thing they understand. Look at these kings, ready and willing to spend how many lives—even their own—to control what? I ask you, what? An iron crown made from a nail used to crucify a man who would have despised them both.”

“Yes, I think you may be right,” Maeniel said. “But it is also said, ‘What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?’ Is it my soul you want?”

“Yes. What could withstand us, joined together?”

“I must think on this.”

“Fine. I will see you this evening. This—” He gestured toward Gimp’s body. “—servant of mine will feed you. I await your decision.”

Gimp sat down and slumped against the wall, his face void of expression. A few minutes later he awoke, scratched his head, rose, and stumbled toward the fire at the mouth of the cave.

When Gimp came out of the cave, Hugo was gone. Hugo’s guest had brought clothing for Maeniel, so Gimp brought it into the cave. There wasn’t much of a way for Maeniel to dress, but a mantle was included among the clothing and Maeniel wrapped it around himself and made a meal of the bread and dried meat Gimp brought him.

Hugo’s guest wished a large number of unpleasant fates on Hugo and then departed to search the pass at Susa for Regeane.

The soldiers arrived at midday. They arrested Gimp and put Maeniel on a horse and rode for the Lombard capital at Pavia. Someone Maeniel knew had double-crossed someone else. He didn’t know how or why this had happened. Maeniel’s bet was on Hugo. The scrawny little rat was most likely ready to piss his britches at the thought of facing Maeniel, and he had probably run right to Desiderius as soon as he found out his enemy had been captured. How he’d managed to evade his guest, Maeniel had no idea, but somehow he’d done so, and now Maeniel was on his way to Pavia in chains.

That fact that he’d changed captors was no consolation to Maeniel. The Lombard soldiers made sure he remained as thoroughly fettered as Gimp had, and Desiderius was much more likely to kill him.

Hugo’s guest did not find Regeane. As Wolf, she had already gone beyond Susa. When the silver wolf climbed out of the river, she had no difficulty in locating the spot where Maeniel went in. Then as she cast about downstream, she also found the spot where Gimp and his men pulled him out.

The illusion was still present. The spirit seemed to have no trouble producing these things, but she was not fooled by this one. A town, any town, always had some movement about it. There would have been at the very least smoke, and given the early spring chill, one or more fires would have been burning in a real town. Besides, there would have been noise—people coming and going even late at night. None of this was present.

She saw instantly how he’d been trapped and then, after finding where he’d been chained by his captors, she set out on their trail. She found the cave but reached it after Desiderius’s men had set off for Pavia, taking Maeniel with them. After investigating the traces they left around the cave’s mouth, she sat down in the dim coolness near the entrance to consider matters.

She was afraid to shadow a large party of armed men by day. The countryside was open, and she could only too easily be spotted, driven into a corner by horsemen, and killed. Besides, they would stop at villages along the way, and such were always guarded by fierce mastiffs. Where would they go? Turin possibly, but the Lombard capital Pavia was the likely place. Yes, the Dora Riparia would join the Po downstream, and Pavia was located near the confluence of the Ticino and the Po.

The woman nodded to herself.

The wolf was satisfied also.

For a moment they confronted each other.

What if in the river valley we meet other wolves?

We will have to deal with that,
she answered to her dark companion,
if it happens
.

They spent the night at a fortified villa belonging to the king. Maeniel was allowed to bathe. Four Lombard soldiers watched him, and since the baths at the villa had gone downhill since Roman times, there was only one—none too clean—plunge served by a nearby spring. But the ancient hypocaust was fired and the water was warm. The building was native limestone. The roof was cement with big glass plugs that let in light. Only one door served the baths as an entrance and exit.

The four Lombard soldiers, by their weapons and regalia palace guard, stood at the door watching him the way eagles watch a chicken yard. Maeniel heard one mutter to another, “He is said to be a powerful sorcerer and able to change his shape.”

“Are you serious?” one of the others answered with a smile.

“Yes,” the captain answered. “And don’t any of you take any chances with him. Whatever else he may be, the brigands hereabouts give his duchy a wide berth. He has a reputation as a fearsome warrior, and when I was in Rome I watched him slowly cut to pieces the most dangerous swordsman the Lombard party could send against him. Take any chances with him and he’ll likely cut your throat—and if he doesn’t and somehow escapes, I will. Got that?”

Maeniel noticed the other soldiers seemed impressed. When he was finished bathing, they gave him fresh clothing and no less than ten stood by while he was fettered again. They took shifts and he was always watched by at least two men and chained to a staple in the wall in the cubicle where he slept.

They gave him a heavy, dark mantle. It was welcome. So near the mountains, the nights were always cold. But it had a strange, powerful odor that gagged him when he got his nose too close to the cloth and sometimes made him sneeze.

None of his guards got drunk, either—something of a surprise since nightly drunkenness was common among soldiers. Given the efficiency of his captors, Maeniel decided that he would make no attempt to escape now. He was sorry to fail in his task, but he hoped a commander as able as Charles would have more than one string to his bow, and he would find someone else to reconnoiter. Possibly all was not lost, and Maeniel could make arrangements to ransom himself. It all depended upon how much Desiderius believed of Hugo’s story; Maeniel didn’t remember Hugo as an impressive individual. Best for him to play the injured innocent and offer a heavy bribe to Desiderius or whoever was making the decisions at the Lombard court. He had, he was confident, the resources to buy his freedom if necessary.

With that, he yawned, made himself as comfortable as possible considering the number of heavy chains on his body, and went to sleep.

Early in the morning, Chiara was wakened by hideous noises in the corridor. Her father slept in an inner room; thankfully, his door was closed. She cracked her door and saw Hugo running back and forth in the corridor. He was bare-assed naked and being flogged by someone or some thing. The hideous noises were his screams, muffled because he had a pewter chamber pot firmly fixed over his head. Between cracks with the switch that she saw swinging at his buttocks and thighs, he was tugging, trying to pull it off. However, the metal was bent in such a way as to make this impossible.

“Oh, no,” she whispered. “Oh, please… please.”

“Get back in your room,” Hugo’s guest said. “I am not finished.”

Hugo screamed, “Blearee, melfph.”

Which Chiara translated as “Chiara, help.”

“Melfph! Melfph! Melfph,” Hugo howled.

“You betrayed me,” his guest screeched. “You dared to betray me. You…” Then his guest lapsed into several other languages, none of which Chiara understood.

Chiara closed the door firmly behind her and stood in the doorway with her back against the planks. “Stop! You just stop,” she told Hugo’s guest.

He did, but not before fetching Hugo an incapacitating kick in the groin.

Chiara brought Hugo a mantle and called for the blacksmith. He arrived carrying a metal saw and a large, dangerous looking metal clipper.

“Thank heavens it’s pewter,” the smith told her. “Any stronger metal and we’d never get it off. But, begging your lady’s pardon, what I can’t understand is how he got it on there so tight in the first place.”

For a second Chiara was at a loss for words. She finally managed, “It was an accident.”

“I see,” the smith said calmly. “Men of his age are sometimes prone to such accidents, but a young woman of your tender years… to be involved in such high jinks as this…”

“Oh… my… God!” Chiara whispered, her face turning scarlet, her ears feeling on fire. “I… I… didn’t, I mean— I couldn’t—I wouldn’t. Oh, God. I just heard noises in the hall… and found him…”