The Wolf's Hour (42 page)

Snow dusted the forest. The northern wind promised brutality, but still the soldiers remained.

October waned. The sky darkened, burdened with clouds. And on one morning, as Mikhail returned from hunting with a freshly killed rabbit in his jaws, he found the enemy less than fifty yards from the white palace.

There were two of them, both carrying rifles. Mikhail darted into the brush and crouched, watching the soldiers approach. The men were talking to each other, something about Moscow; their voices were nervous, and their fingers clutched the triggers. Mikhail let the rabbit slide from his mouth. Please stop, he told the soldiers in his mind. Please go back. Please…

They didn’t. Their boots crushed the foliage down, and every step took them closer to Wiktor, Franco, Alekza, and the child. Mikhail’s muscles tensed, his heart pounding. Please go back.

The soldiers stopped. One of them lit a cigarette, cupping the match from the wind. “We’ve gone too far,” he said to the other man. “We’d better get back, or Novikov’ll skin us.”

“That bastard’s crazy,” the second man observed, leaning on his rifle. “I say we set the whole damned woods on fire, and be done with it. Why the hell does he want to set up a new camp in this mess?” He looked around at the forest, with the awe and fear that told Mikhail the man was a city dweller. “Burn it to the ground and go home, that’s what I say.”

The first man blew plumes of smoke from his nostrils. “That’s why we’re not officers, Stefan,” he said. “We’re too smart to wear stars. I’ll tell you, if I have to dig another damned trench, I’m going to let Novikov know where he can stick his-” He stopped, smoke whirling past his head, and stared through the trees. “What’s that?” he asked, his voice hushed.

“What’s what?” Stefan looked around.

“There.” The first man took two more steps forward and pointed. “Right there. See it?”

Mikhail closed his eyes.

“It’s a building,” the first man said. “See? There’s a minaret.”

“My God, you’re right!” Stefan agreed. He instantly picked up his rifle and cocked it.

The noise made Mikhail open his eyes again. The two soldiers stood not fifteen feet from him. “We’d better tell Novikov about this,” Stefan said. “I’ll be damned if I’m going any closer.” He turned away, hurriedly striding through the woods. The first man flicked his cigarette butt aside and followed his companion.

Mikhail rose up from his crouch. He could not let them get back to their camp. Could not; must not. He thought of bones being wrenched from the Garden like fragile roots, of Renati’s skull being blown to pieces, of what these men would do to Alekza and Petyr once they returned with their guns and explosives.

Rage burned in him, and a low growl started in his throat. The soldiers were crashing through the woods, almost running. Blood was still in Mikhail’s mouth from the dead rabbit; his body darted after the soldiers, a black streak through the gray forest. He ran silently, with the tight grace of a killer. And even as he closed on the two men and judged the point to begin his leap, he knew a simple fact: a wolf’s tears were no different from a human’s.

He sprang up and forward, his hind legs like iron springs, and he landed on the cigarette smoker’s back before the man even knew he was there.

Mikhail drove the man down, into the dead leaves, and clamped his jaws on the back of his neck. He wrenched the head violently left and right, heard the sound of bones splintering. The man thrashed, but it was the death throes of nerves and muscle. Mikhail finished breaking his neck, and the man died without a sound.

There was a shuddered gasp. Mikhail looked up, his green eyes glittering.

Stefan had turned, and was lifting his rifle.

Mikhail saw the soldier’s finger tightening on the trigger. An instant before the bullet left the rifle Mikhail leaped aside, diving into the underbrush, and Russian lead kicked up a gout of Russian dust. A second shot rang out, the bullet passing over Mikhail’s shoulder and thunking into an oak tree. Mikhail swerved left and right, sliding to a sudden halt on a carpet of dead leaves, and heard the soldier running. The man bellowed for help, and Mikhail went after him like silent judgment.

The soldier tripped over his own boots, scrambled up, and kept going. “Help me! Help me!” he screamed, and spun around to fire a shot at what he thought was coming up behind him. Mikhail, however, was circling around to cut him off from his camp. The soldier kept running and screaming, dead leaves in his hair, and Mikhail burst out of the underbrush and started to leap but in the next second there was no need to waste the energy.

The ground opened under the soldier’s feet, and the man went down into the dirt and leaves. His screaming stopped, on a strangled note. Mikhail stood carefully on the trench’s edge and looked down. The soldier’s body twitched, even with seven or eight sharpened stakes piercing him. The smell of blood was very strong, and that coupled with Mikhail’s rage, caused him to spin around and around, snapping at his tail.

In another moment he heard shouts: more soldiers, rapidly approaching. Mikhail turned and sped back to where the first man lay dead. He gripped the corpse’s neck between his jaws and struggled to haul the body into the brush. The body was heavy, and the flesh tore; it was a messy job. From the corner of his eye he saw a flash of white; Wiktor came to his side and helped him drag the corpse into the darkness beneath a thick stand of pines. Then Wiktor snapped at Mikhail’s muzzle, a signal for him to retreat. Mikhail hesitated, but Wiktor roughly shoved him with a shoulder and he obeyed. Wiktor crouched down in the leaves, listening to the sounds of the soldiers. There were eight of them, and as four pulled the dead man off the stakes the other four began to stalk through the forest, their rifles cocked and ready.

The beasts had come, as Wiktor had always known they someday would. The beasts had come, and they would not be denied their bloody flesh.

Wiktor stood up, a ghost amid the trees, and ran back to the white palace with the foul scent of the beasts in his nostrils.

5

A hand gripped Mikhail’s shoulder, rousing him from a restless two hours of sleep, and a finger pressed against his lips.

“Quiet,” Wiktor said, crouching next to him. “Just listen.” He glanced at Alekza, who was already awake and clutching Petyr close, then back to Mikhail.

“What is it? What’s happening?” Franco stood up, with the help of his staff.

“The soldiers are coming,” Wiktor answered, and Franco’s face blanched. “I saw them from the tower. Fifteen or sixteen of them, maybe more.” He’d seen them in the deep blue predawn light, darting from tree to tree, thinking they were invisible. Wiktor had heard the squeak of wheels; they’d brought their machine gun with them.

“What are we going to do?” Franco’s voice quavered on the edge of panic. “We’ve got to get out while we can!”

Wiktor looked at the low-burning fire, then slowly nodded. “All right,” he said. “We’ll go.”

“Go?” Mikhail asked. “To where? This is our home!”

“Forget that!” Franco told him. “We’ll have no chance if they catch us down here.”

“He’s right,” Wiktor agreed. “We’ll hide in the forest. Maybe we can come back after the soldiers clear out.” The way he said it told them all he didn’t believe it; once the soldiers found the pack’s den, they might move in themselves before the first snow. Wiktor stood up. “We can’t stay here any longer.”

Franco didn’t hesitate. He cast aside his staff, and gray hair began to scurry over his flesh. Within a minute he was changed, his body balanced on three legs. Mikhail would have changed, too, but Petyr still wore human skin and so Alekza couldn’t change either. He elected to remain human. Wiktor’s face and skull began the transformation; he threw off his robe, sleek white hair emerging from his chest, shoulders, and back. Franco was already going up the stone stairs. Mikhail grasped Alekza’s hand and pulled her and the child after him.

Fully changed, Wiktor took the lead. They followed him through the winding passageways, past the high vaulted windows where the trees had broken through-and suddenly they saw the dawn sky light up. Not with the sun, which was still a red slash across the horizon, but with a sparkling, sizzling ball of white fire that rose from the forest and arced down, bathing everything with garish, incandescent light. The ball of fire fell in the palace’s courtyard, and two more rose up from the woods and fell after it. The third one smashed the remaining stained glass from a window and came into the palace itself, sputtering and glowing like a miniature sun.

Wiktor barked at the others to keep moving. Mikhail lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the blinding glare, his other hand locked on Alekza’s. Franco ran on his three legs just behind Wiktor. Beyond the windows, darkness had turned to false, cold white daylight. Something about this was dreamlike to Mikhail, as if he moved through the corridors of a nightmare on sluggish legs. The glaring light cast grotesque, distorted shadows on the walls, merging those of human and wolf into new life-forms.

Mikhail’s sense of unreality remained even when the soldier-a faceless shape-appeared in the corridor before them, lifted his rifle, and fired.

Wiktor was already leaping for the man, but Mikhail heard Wiktor grunt and knew the bullet had hit its target. Wiktor drove the soldier down under his weight, and as the man screamed Wiktor tore his throat out with one savage twist.

“They’re here! Over here!” another soldier shouted. “A dozen of them!” The noise of boots echoed on the stones. A second rifle fired, and sparks leaped off the wall just above Franco’s head. Wiktor turned, slamming into Franco to back him up the way they’d just come. Mikhail saw perhaps eight or nine soldiers in the corridor ahead; escape through that route was impossible. Wiktor was barking, his voice hoarse with pain, some of the soldiers were shouting, and Petyr wailed in Alekza’s arms. Two more shots rang out, both of the bullets ricocheting off the walls. Mikhail turned and ran, pulling Alekza with him. And then he came around the bend of a passage and stopped short, face-to-face with three soldiers.

They gaped at him, surprised to see a human being. But the first man regained his wits and trained his rifle barrel at Mikhail’s chest.

Mikhail heard himself growl. He reached out, a blur of motion, grasped the barrel, and uptilted it as the gun fired. He felt the hot streak of the bullet as it kissed his shoulder. His other arm lunged forward, and it was only when his hooked claws sank into the man’s eyes that he realized his hand had changed. It had happened in an instant, a miracle of mind over body, and as he tore the man’s eyes out the soldier screamed and staggered back into his companions. The third man fled, bellowing for help, but the second soldier began firing his rifle wildly, without aiming. Bullets shrieked off the walls and ceiling. A shape jumped past Mikhail; it had three legs, and it plowed headlong into the soldier’s belly. The man fought Franco, but it was Franco’s legs that were crippled, not his fangs. He tattered the soldier’s face and got a grip on the throat. Mikhail was on his knees, his body contorting, and he shook off his deerskin robe and let the change take him.

There was a flash of metal. The soldier drove his arm down, and the knife he’d drawn sank into the back of Franco’s neck. Franco shuddered, but he didn’t release the man’s throat. The man pulled the knife out, struck again and again. Franco crunched down, crushing the soldier’s windpipe. The knife sank into Franco’s neck up to the hilt, and bloody spray burst from Franco’s nostrils.

Two more soldiers appeared in the whirl of gunsmoke, fire sparking from their rifle barrels. A hammer blow hit Mikhail in the side, stealing his breath. Another bullet clipped his ear. Franco howled as a bullet struck him, but he propelled himself forward, the knife still in his neck, and sank his fangs into the leg of one of the soldiers. The other man shot Franco at point-blank range, but still Franco clawed and bit in a frenzy. Wiktor suddenly bounded out of the smoke, dark blood streaming from his shoulder, and he slammed into the second man, knocking him to the floor. Mikhail was fully changed now, the smell of blood and violence igniting his rage. He leaped upon the man Franco had attacked, and together he and Franco made quick work of him. Then Mikhail swerved and lunged onto Wiktor’s combatant, his fangs finding the throat and tearing it out.

“Mikhail.”

It had been a soft groan.

He turned, and saw Alekza on her knees. Petyr was squalling, and she held him tightly. Her eyes looked glassy. A thin creeper of blood oozed from the corner of her mouth. Her knees were in a puddle of it. “Mikhail,” she whispered again, and offered the child to him.

He couldn’t take Petyr. He needed hands, not paws.

“Please,” she begged.

But Mikhail couldn’t answer, either. The wolf’s tongue could form no words of human love, or need, or sorrow.

Alekza’s ice-blue eyes rolled back into her head. She fell forward, still holding the child, and Mikhail realized that Petyr’s skull was going to smash on the stones.

He leaped over a dead soldier and slid underneath the child, cushioning Petyr’s fall with his body.

He heard more soldiers coming through the smoky corridor. Wiktor barked: a sound that urged him to follow. Mikhail stayed where he was, his mind dazed, his joints and muscles full of frost.

Wiktor bit Mikhail’s wounded ear, and tugged at him. The soldiers were almost upon them, and Wiktor could hear the squeak of wheels: the machine gun.

Franco staggered forward, gripping Mikhail’s tall between his teeth and jerking backward, almost ripping the tail off. The pain charged through Mikhail’s nerves. Petyr was still wailing, the soldiers were coming with their machine gun, and Alekza lay motionlessly on the stones. Wiktor and Franco kept pulling at Mikhail, urging him to get up. There was nothing more he could do, for either Alekza or his son. Mikhail raised up and snapped at Wiktor, driving him back, and then he eased carefully out from underneath Petyr so the child slid to the floor. He stood up, the taste of blood bitter in his mouth.

The shapes of men stood in the smoke. There was the sound of metal scraping metal: a firing bolt being drawn back.

Franco lifted his head, awkwardly because of the knife in his neck, and howled. The noise echoed along the passageway, and stilled the finger that reached for the machine gun’s trigger. And then Franco hobbled in the direction of the soldiers, his body tensing for a leap. He flung himself into the whirling smoke, his jaws gaping wide to tear whatever flesh his fangs might find. The machine gun chattered, and the bullets cut Franco in half.

Wiktor turned in the opposite direction and ran along the corridor, jumping over the dead soldiers. The machine gun was still speaking, bullets ricocheting off the walls like hornets. Mikhail saw Alekza’s body shake as another bullet hit her, and a slug whined off the stones beside Petyr. It was Mikhail’s choice; he could either die here or try to get out. He whirled around and followed the white wolf.

As soon as he sprinted away, he heard the machine gun cease firing. Petyr was still crying. One of the men shouted, “Hold your fire! There’s a child in there!”

Mikhail didn’t stop. Petyr’s fate, whatever it might be, was beyond his control. But the machine gun didn’t fire again, and the rifles were silent. Maybe there was mercy in the Russian heart, after all. Mikhail didn’t look back; he kept going, right behind Wiktor, his mind already turning away from the present to the future.

Wiktor found a narrow ascending staircase and went up, leaving drops of blood on the stones. Mikhail added his own blood to them. They got through a glassless window on the upper level, slid down the sloping roof, and crashed into the thicket beneath. Then they were running side by side into the forest, and when they’d gotten a safe distance, they both stood panting in the chill dawn light, the dead leaves beneath them spattered with drops of red. Wiktor burrowed into the leaves and lay there, half hidden, as he rasped with pain. Mikhail wandered in dazed circles until he fell, his strength gone. He began to lick his wounded side, but his tongue found no bullet; the slug had pierced the flesh and gone through at an angle, missing the ribs and internal organs. Still, Mikhail was losing a lot of blood. He crawled beneath the shelter of a pine tree and there he drifted into unconsciousness.

When he awakened, the wind had picked up, swirling through the treetops. The day had passed; the sun was almost gone. Mikhail saw Wiktor, the white wolf burrowed in the leaves. He got up on all fours, staggered to Wiktor, and nudged him. At first he thought Wiktor was dead, because he was so terribly still, but then Wiktor groaned and rose up, a crust of dried blood around his mouth and his eyes dull and lost.

Hunger gnawed in Mikhail’s belly, but he felt too drained to hunt. He staggered in one direction and then another, unable to decide what it was he should do. So he just stood in position, his head drooping and his side damp with blood again.

From the distance there was a hollow booming noise. Mikhail’s ears twitched. The sound repeated itself. He realized it was coming from the southeast, where the white palace was.

Wiktor walked through the forest and up a small, rocky ridge. He stood motionless, staring at something, and after a while Mikhail gathered his strength and climbed up the ridge to stand beside him.

Dark smoke was rising, whirling in the wind. A red center of flames burned. As Wiktor and Mikhail watched, there was a third explosion. They could see chunks of stone flying into the sky, and they both knew what was happening: the soldiers were blowing the white palace to pieces.

Two more blasts shot banners of fire into the falling dark. Mikhail saw the turreted tower-where his kite had been caught, long ago-crumple and go down. A larger explosion bloomed, and out of that blast flew what appeared to be fiery bats. They were caught in the wind, whirling around and around in fierce maelstroms, and in another moment Mikhail and Wiktor could smell the scorch and char of mindless destruction. Fiery bats spun over the forest, and began to fall.

Some of them drifted down around the two wolves. Neither one had to look to see what they were. The burning pages were written in Latin, German, and Russian. Many of them held the remnants of colored illustrations, rendered by a master’s hand. For a moment it snowed black flakes of civilization’s dreams, and then the wind swept them up and away, and there was nothing left.

Night claimed the world. The fires grew wild in the wind, and began to feed on trees. The two wolves stood atop their ridge of rocks. The flames gleamed redly in two sets of eyes: one that had seen the true nature of the beast, and hated that sight; and another that stared in dull submission, glazed with final tragedy. The flames leaped and danced, a mockery of happiness, and green pines shriveled to brown before their touch. Mikhail nudged Wiktor: it was time to go, to wherever they were going, but Wiktor didn’t move. Only much later, when they could both feel the advancing heat, did Wiktor make a noise: a deep, terrible groaning sound, the sound of defeat. Mikhail climbed down the ridge and barked for Wiktor to follow. Finally Wiktor turned away from the flames and came down, too, his body shivering and his head slung low.

It was as true for wolves as it was for humans, Mikhail thought as they wound their way through the forest. Life was for the living. Alekza, Franco, Nikita… all the others, gone. And what of Petyr? Did his bones lie in the ruins of the white palace, or had the soldiers taken him? What would happen to Petyr, out in the wilderness? Mikhail realized he would probably never know, and maybe that was for the best. It struck him, quite suddenly, that he was a murderer. He had killed human beings, broken their necks and ripped out their throats and… God help him… it had been easy.