The Wolf King (40 page)

When he spotted some waterfowl, ducks with dark feathers and brilliant green heads, traveling in family groups with fuzzy ducklings paddling behind them, he froze into immobility, preparing to make a snack of mother and baby duck both.

Regeane felt disgusted and even the wolf was annoyed. So she broke cover and startled them into flight. The ducks exploded around his face in a flurry of wings and loud alarm cries. As they fled, he swung around and his jaws snapped shut less than an inch from her face.

She recognized this for what it was, a form of intimidation, and stood her ground as he glared at her. She was no match for him and had discovered over the brief time of their marriage that almost nothing else was either. Certainly none of the pack he had gathered around him could match him for sheer lethal ferocity as man or wolf, but oddly, he wasn’t nearly as ready as a human male might be to try to overawe her with sheer physical might.

The females of the pack had their own hierarchy. Regeane wasn’t at the top of it. Matrona was. But Regeane was a strong second and learning the ropes quickly from Matrona. And one of the lessons was to demand the respect that was her due. Even from him.

So the staring contest ended with him turning away.

And again she fell in behind him.

For the next few miles the road was submerged by the spring floods. No one remained to tend the ditches that once drained it. So the two wolves found themselves swimming, at times wading through mud. There were snakes. Regeane was indifferent to them, but to pay him back for attacking the ducklings she pretended to be preparing to eat one—behavior that raised his hackles and drew a savage snarl of disgust from him.

Regeane looked up from the wiggling reptile and gave him a look of innocent astonishment, one so meltingly tender that he divined her purpose at once and stalked away stiff-legged with his nose in the air. The snake, somewhat distressed and conveying its fear in rapid snake, the language of movement, slithered away quickly and gave a last tongue flick and an indignant neck curve—
that was very unkind of you
—and vanished into a thick stand of pickerel weed showing the first of its spring flower spikes.

They were united, however, in their feeling about frogs. Both thought them absolutely delicious, so they strolled along, dining as they went.

At length the road resurfaced and the going became easier, though there were fewer succulent frogs to be found. The ground began to rise. It was here they crossed the trail of Armine, Chiara, Hugo, and Gimp. They had only two men with them and were pursued by a half-dozen soldiers and three dogs.

Regeane thought in horror,
Too many for us
. But Maeniel turned onto the trail seemingly without a second thought.

Yes, Regeane remembered. The girl saved his life. They must try to help. Maeniel broke into a run. Regeane followed.

The bear knew he was in a running fight. He’d become aware they were being followed when Armine and Chiara crossed the river. Gimp was waiting at the ill-omened ford where the family had been killed.

Regeane had observed,
The water must be high by now at the crossing
. It was.

Hugo’s body was flung across a saddle, belly down.

The bear swore.

Chiara heard him but for once said nothing. Both she and Armine were frightened. Gimp was, as usual, dozing. He managed this even on horseback.

The bear brought him awake with a loud roar. Then he repossessed Hugo’s body. He slid off the horse, staggered, and had to circle the horse three times to work out the kinks. But then he vaulted into the saddle.

Armine’s escort noticed almost nothing. They were hideously hung-over, and Chiara, Armine, and the bear were pretty sure they would be worthless in a fight. All they could hope for was that the king would be too busy massacring his other enemies to give much thought to them.

Vain hope.

The bear detected the pursuit before the rest. He left the trail, leading them to the Roman road through the marsh. Armine started to protest. He spurred his horse up to where the bear—as Hugo—was leading the party.

“Where—”

“They’re after us,” the bear replied.

“Oh, no, I’m not worried about myself, but Chiara… When I think what might happen to her—”

“I won’t let it happen,” the bear said. “I won’t let them take her.”

“Promise?”

“I give you my word,” the bear answered, and then a look of ferocity crossed his face, a look that Hugo could never have originated. “I’ll kill anyone who lays one hand on her. I promise. I vow, I swear I will.

“Now you, Armine, make sure this carcass stays on the horse while I visit our pursuers.”

Hugo’s body slumped. Armine got a firm grip on his arm.

The bear never knew how he moved, but he could do so quickly. In a few moments he saw Desiderius’s men. They, too, had turned on the Roman road. A footman had charge of the three dogs. They were straining at their leashes. Killers. War dogs. Big, dangerous, vicious. The dog handler carried a whip. They seemed to respect it and him, but they lunged in fury at everything else, including the mounted warriors accompanying them, when they approached too closely.

The bear disregarded them. He’d recovered from his fight with Regeane and Matrona, but it had taken him some weeks. He had been drained near to death or dormancy when he found Gimp and then Hugo. The guardians of the tomb had saved him from—death?—dormancy?—who knows. Some form of nonexistence. A fierce battle with the dogs right now might deplete his energies beyond the point of being able to protect Chiara and her father. And, oddly, this was what worried him the most. The fear that she might fall prey to Desiderius and his mercenary army.

Eventually the king would have her killed, but before she died, the bright, brave little spirit would be broken in the cruelest possible way. The first guilt the bear had ever known crawled in his soul at the memory of the suffering of the “abbot’s” prisoners at that human monster’s hands. He was being paid out now for his callous support of the madman’s desires, but the creature had loved him, worshiped him. This was his connection to the realm of light: the emotions of the creatures whom he was able to make his own. Like the abbot, Hugo, Gimp, and others he had preyed on over the centuries, the millennia, in fact. He could not live without their love, awe, hatred, fear, pain, and yes, even joy.

No true beasts like those maddened, ruined—yes, they were ruined by systematic human cruelty—dogs could ever offer him the energies that sustained his conscious living, human presence. Without humans he must fade, sink into mumbling stupidity like Gimp and then— He pushed the thought out of his mind. How to stop them? A much easier target was the horses. The men couldn’t see him but the horses were a far simpler matter.

He materialized in front of them. He took the bear form and roared.

The results were more than satisfactory.

A few seconds later, he was back in Hugo’s body, chuckling. The sound made Armine’s blood run cold.

“Try to make the best speed possible,” he told Armine. “I gave them a little something to think about. By the time they catch their horses and get the creatures calmed down, we should be well on our way.”

Armine studied the man riding by his side. He was clean. He was wearing Hugo’s oldest clothes, shirt, dalmatic, and riding pants reinforced by leather at the rear, knees, and ankles. But the face was so completely changed he could see nothing of Hugo in it. It was the face of a warrior: dangerous, strong, bold, fearless, and oddly handsome. He was leaning back in the saddle, knees clamped to the horse’s sides. He controlled the reins easily with one hand, while the other rested on the knife in his belt.

They were moving fast in a straight line down the center of the Roman road. When they reached patches of mud or washouts where the road was gone, he prodded his horse easily into a gallop and passed through without difficulty.

“What did you do with Hugo?” Armine asked.

The thing in Hugo’s body grinned in a completely wicked manner. “I ate him.”

Armine gave him a weary look. “My lord, don’t toy with me. Did you destroy Hugo’s soul when you took his body?”

“No, but you are very… There are many things about the world you don’t understand. I tried to tell your daughter. The lightning killed Hugo. When I returned after seeing the wolf off, I found what remained on the porch. He was still breathing, just barely, but his brain, the part of you that is in the skull, was… mush.”

Armine nodded. He had more life experience than Chiara. He knew severe head injuries were often fatal.

“I took the body. I can use it.” The creature shrugged. “But Hugo is gone. The man you knew resided in his brain; when that brain was destroyed he went wherever it is… your God sends them. Heaven, hell, I can’t say. He is not my God and doesn’t explain these things to me. But trust me, Hugo won’t be back.”

“I can’t say I entirely regret that,” Armine commented.

The bear laughed. The hollow echoes of the sound set Armine’s teeth on edge.

“Don’t do that,” Armine said.

“Chiara doesn’t like it either,” the bear replied. “But—” He broke off, looking preoccupied. “Damn. They are coming again and gaining ground.”

Imagine, imagine a world without boundaries, a world without nations, cities, farms, or even laws or rules. The ice shield covered the poles. In the summer it retracted. In the winter it extended itself to the edge of the many seas. In the summer the giant beasts that dominated the limited wilderness between sea and ice spread over the vast plains, the green valleys caught in the folds of the wrinkled, nameless mountain ranges, and the shorelines of the vast wild seas.

This world boasted of incredible riches and brutal hardship. Deer and elk gifted with twelve-foot sets of antlers, wolves that ran in packs and were the size of small horses, mammoth elephants with giant, curved tusks and hairy skin dominated this world.

Matrona and her people hunted, loved, lived, and conquered among animal beings the like of which the world had not seen since the dinosaurs were destroyed and have never been seen since. They wept at the end of each summer, cut off their fingers in token of grief, and slashed their faces. They did this in terror, hoping that whatever gods ruled their universe would see their sorrow and in time give them again the gift of springtime. Then they followed the massive herds of prey animals down in a wild and dangerous journey from the high plains, the mountains, the hills, and the forests to winter along coasts, on islands bared by the shrunken ice-locked sea amid the wind-swept promontories battered by terrifying storms.

In this world a woman must bear four children to raise one; a man must father seven to replace himself. But love they did and snatched joy from the jaws of death and knew transcendent happiness in the shadow of the sword.

Matrona rose from the waters of the swamp like a cicada bursting its shell and confronted the two wolves. Regeane and Maeniel gave each other guilty looks.

“You gave Charles your word,” she said to Maeniel.

He cocked his head to one side. In wolf this was
So
?

“It was all your idea,” she reminded him.

He hung his head, looking like a scolded dog.

“I don’t want your apologies,” Matrona said. “Speak to your consort.”

Maeniel looked mutinous, but only for a moment, then he turned to Regeane. They touched noses.
Can you handle this
?

She gave a low grunting sound in her throat.

Matrona understood it as well as Maeniel. It was
I will try
.

The head of a cattail landed near Regeane’s feet. Someone had swiped a sword through the stem. She looked up. The wolf’s eyes saw the outline of Remingus between herself and the sun. He was as solid as he had been on the day when he went to the square with her in Pavia.

“The bear is near,” he told Regeane.

The wolf flicked an ear forward, then back. She felt annoyance.

Remingus continued. “Chiara and her father—he is trying to defend them. He will fail. The girl, Chiara, saved your husband. You owe them a blood debt.”

Regeane set out at a dead run.

Maeniel tried to follow. He leaped into the air, halted, and was pulled back the way a dog is when he reaches the end of a chain, forepaws in the air, standing on his hind legs. Matrona had hold of his ruff. She held him back. Maeniel’s mind dissolved into berserk fury. With the movement of a giant dragon, his body writhed and then broke free. He turned and faced Matrona.

She stood, woman, about eight feet away. Magnificent in her absolute nakedness. Her hair a wild tangle of ebony silk that hung to her waist. Big breasted with dark, strongly marked nipples, a wide rib cage that sloped down to a narrow waist, then spread again into wide, graceful hips. The hair at her groin grew thick, black and curly, a dark silky sable pelt covering her sexual structures. Not protecting them, enhancing them, the hair rising like a wedge whose point terminated just below her navel. For the first time in their long friendship, her femaleness struck him like a club. She smiled, dark eyes glittering with knowledge that made Eve seem a simple, innocent girl. White teeth, canines slightly longer and more pointed than other women’s, flashed in a savage, triumphant grin.

“Let her go,” she commanded. “It is time. Come. By your own will, you serve a human being. A human king. The more fool you, but it is what you have chosen. So be it. She must now go on alone.”

Human,
Maeniel thought. No, Matrona was not completely human. She was the… other. He studied her, the red rage roaring in his brain. The others. They had not always had fire. They got it from the men. But her people hadn’t needed it either. The hair pattern on Matrona’s body was that of a creature that had ancestors, close ancestors, comfortable in their own pelts—as were the wolves.

Matrona’s ancestors had emerged from the beast state just in time to battle the hideous and beautiful, but mortal and terrifying, agonizing cold. A cold and dark that threatened to sweep all before it and end the life of all land creatures and most of the vegetation they fed upon.