Wolfbreed (41 page)

Interlude

few days after Uldolf taught her to swim, Lilly heard the horn of her master, calling her to Mejdân. It came in the night before dawn. Three long blasts, followed by two short blasts.

Her first thought was that she would not see the boy Uldolf again.

Something inside her objected to the thought.
Is that how we serve our master?

Guilty over thinking about something other than her master’s will, she walked through the woods, circling the timber walls of the city and making her way toward the main road and the gate inside. The woods were strangely still, the creatures as silent as they were when Lilly used her real form to eat.

Something else inside her objected to that thought.
Is that body more real than the pink flesh we’re wearing now?

Until Uldolf, she had been trained to think little of her human body. It was nothing more than a shell, a disguise, a falsehood. It wasn’t until Uldolf had treated her as another human, and she had
learned that her human form was capable of more than receiving punishment, that she thought of her human form as real.

The wolf is the real one. That is the will of God
.

Telling herself that made her calmer and less frightened.

As she pushed through the woods, the sky lightened through the branches above, turning purple, and then pale rose. As she moved west, she caught scents on the air. She smelled something acrid, as if something far away was burning. As she came closer to the main road through the woods to Mejdân, she smelled the stink of people and animals.

Before she came in sight of the road, she could hear them, feet and hooves slogging through mud, the breathing of men and horses, and the rattle of wheeled carts. She heard very little speech.

She stepped out of the woods at the edge of the road to face a column of people heading for Mejdân. The smoke smell was closer, as were the smells of blood and urine and burnt flesh. Whole families trudged in silence next to exhausted horses. Wagons carried wounded men and women, some whose stillness showed them past living.

Lilly stood and watched the procession. These were the people who troubled her master, godless ones fleeing before God’s army. They would seek refuge within the stronghold of Mejdân.

False refuge.

“Hurry, child,” someone called to her, “do not fall behind.”

Lilly smiled to herself as she slipped into the moving column of Prûsans. She would make her master proud.

illy made it inside easily. In the chaos of refugees, no one paid any attention to a nine-year-old girl. The guards of Mejdân were more interested in getting all the farmers, animals, and wounded behind the defensive walls of the village as quickly as
possible. It was simple enough for her to slip away and find an unobtrusive hiding place.

She made a nest in a stable loft above a dozen goats that were shoved into a stall meant for one or two. It was the perfect spot, because it was in the shadow of the central stronghold, which sat on a rise overlooking the rest of the village. There were no buildings between her and the stronghold.

She heard the Mejdân defenders shut the gates that evening.

A few hours later, she heard her master’s army arrive. She heard the gallop of fresh mounts and the rustle of mail. Even padded, it had a metallic sound distinct from the Prûsans’ leather armor.

It would be soon.

During the night, to build her strength, she took one of the goats. She did it carefully and as silently as possible—though no villager could have heard her movements through the terrified bleating.

She was cautious to snap the kid’s neck without recourse to tooth or claw, and withdraw into the loft with her kill as quickly as possible. No blood splattered the stall below, and when a guard came to investigate the commotion, he was confronted only by eleven terrified goats that bolted for the gate as soon as he arrived.

In the human scramble to recapture the goats, no man looked up into the loft to see her dark-furred silhouette huddled against the straw. She remained motionless until the men left.

Only then, to the distress of the animals below her, did she begin to eat.

When her master’s second trump sounded two nights later, calling her to attack, there was little left of the animal but greasy bones and bloody straw.

hree days into the siege of Mejdân, Uldolf woke to someone screaming.

His eyes opened as the sound abruptly cut off. He lay in his cot, half convinced it was a dream. His father had explained siege-craft to him. It was all waiting. All about who had more food, more will. The Christian invaders didn’t have near enough men to throw an attack against the wall of the village—not a successful one, anyway.

Someone else screamed.

Uldolf sat up. This was no dream, and the screams came from inside the stronghold. The enemy was inside.

Uldolf crawled out of his bed and crept up on the narrow door to his room. When he reached the door, he felt his foot slide in something wet and sticky. He shuddered slightly and opened the latch.

The door swung into the room, pushed by the weight of the body leaning against it. He stared at it, uncomprehending. Even as he felt the fear drain into a small cold ball buried in his gut, his conscious mind could not make the image sensible.

Several long seconds passed before he was able to form the question in his mind.

Where is his head?

He took a step back, staring at the corpse in the lamplight that spilled from the hallway. Blood caused the dead man’s leather armor to glisten in the firelight. The man had drawn his sword, and the blade rested next to his leg, as if he had never had the chance to use it.

Uldolf’s father had been wrong. There would be no long siege. The enemy was attacking them now.

Almost as if in a dream, Uldolf watched himself step over the body and pick up the sword. It was heavier than the wooden ones his father’s guards let him train with, and the hilt was slick with blood and sweat.

Uldolf stepped into the hallway and saw the dead man’s head,
upside-down, leaning against a wall. His name had been Oldan, and he had been one of the men who showed Uldolf how to wield that wooden sword—how to block, to cut, to thrust.

Uldolf tightened his grip on the sword and ran down the hallway.

He ran past more bodies and parts of bodies. He didn’t spare the time to look at them closely, to see if he knew them—to see if they were friend or foe. His feet were coated with blood, sticking to the floor with every step. His breath burned like molten copper.

He turned the corner and saw the doorway to his parents’ chamber. Just as he came in sight, something small flew out of the doorway, to slam into the wall. It bounced off, to roll nearly back to the threshold.

Uldolf stared for several seconds at it, before he understood what he saw.

Jawgede
.

It was his sister, barely half his own age, and her torso had been torn open, legs to throat.

He screamed something that might not have even been words and ran through the doorway, past his sister’s body.

It was the blood he felt first—so
much
blood. It splattered the walls and coated the floor, the ferric smell of it so heavy that his throat closed up, choking on the thick, humid air. Then he saw the bodies—pieces of bodies—strewn about with the broken furniture and shredded tapestries.

And in the midst of it all stood a monstrous red-furred, half-wolf
thing—

It had its back to him, pulling apart a body it had pinned to the wall. Under the creature’s clawed hand, Uldolf saw his father’s face.

Uldolf moved without thinking, charging at the thing’s back, forgetting what little training he had been given on the proper way to wield a sword. He used it as a spear, without thought of defense. He connected because the wolf thing was paying him no attention
at all. The blade only penetrated because he hit it in the soft part of the torso, under the rib cage.

The creature howled, letting go of his father. But, to Uldolf’s horror, his attack was far too late. His father’s body slid to the ground, followed slightly later by his head.