Night of the Wolf (18 page)

Hirax watched Drusus narrowly. The old man’s eyes closed and his chin dipped toward his chest. “Worn out old fart,” Hirax said under his breath. “Go where you want to, Scorpus.”

Scorpus sniffed and started walking toward a denuded group of oaks on the edge of the clearing. He didn’t really want to relieve himself. He had another flask hidden in his mantle and was looking for a quiet place to finish it: someplace where the rest wouldn’t see him and demand their share.

Holly and large bunches of mistletoe grew among the oaks. The forest was like a big room in some unearthly house. The mist was so low, the treetops were lost in it. The light was bright, a diffuse glow reflected from the snowy surface of the ground and the clumps of white covering bare limbs and the few evergreens that remained.

The holly leaves and red berries glowed against the omnipresent paleness. The mistletoe branches nesting higher with their delicate green boughs and gray-white berries seemed ghosts of summer fruitfulness caught in the tracery of small, slender trees.

To Scorpus, they were an added inconvenience. They grew so close together, it was difficult for him to push his way past them. The sharp spines on the holly leaves drew the occasional drop of blood from his arms and hands. It was as if they were trying almost consciously to bar his way. But, at length, he got through them.

A few yards ahead, a finger of the mountain stretched out, just a jumbled pile of gray rocks, wet with the fine snow and crowned with a tangle of white birches, their paper-white bark only a little darker than the almost glowing snow around them. There were several sheltered spots where he could sit and finish his wine without being interrupted.

Of course, the wolves had seen him. They watched from their holly coverts as he left the rest and struggled through the trees. To them, an animal that quit the protection of the herd must be sick or seriously disabled in some way.

Scorpus hadn’t an inkling that White Shoulder was only a few feet behind. Maeniel flanked White Shoulder on the right, the mother of the pack on his left.

Maeniel still had misgivings. Was this the sort of hunting White Shoulder envisioned? And, if so, did the new pack leader understand the possible consequences of killing a man? The rest of the pack apparently felt the same because they dropped well back of the three leaders.

Scorpus paused.

So did the wolves. White Shoulder drew his lips back from his teeth in a silent snarl. The mother of the pack bumped White Shoulder as if urging him forward, but he didn’t respond, only stood frozen with a look of murderous ferocity on his face.

Scorpus lifted his tunic and with a shiver—the air reaching his bare skin was cold—took his penis in hand and began to pee. The stream arching away from him created a yellow-rimmed hole in the snow.

You didn’t kill them,
Maeniel remembered.
Oh no, you didn’t kill them, not even if they took your kill. After all, you could always kill again. But if your skin formed a parka, the fur surrounding a man’s face to keep off the chill, you were not going to be doing any killing then.

When they came to rob you, the first thing their women did was make a fire out of whatever was available. Then the whole band advanced with flaming brands in one hand and fire-hardened spears in the other. Occasionally, a wolf pack would stand its ground. It always lost. It was a disaster for a winter pack if its strongest members ended by coughing out their lives when their lungs were pierced by those wooden javelins or dying slowly in agony, infected and unable to eat when they were disembowled.

No, these creatures were not legitimate prey. Standing against them was simply too costly. In victory or defeat, the pack that did faced ruin.

Scorpus finished, shook his organ and tucked it carefully away, then pulled the clay flask from under his mantle and lifted it to his lips.

The she-wolf whined.

Scorpus went ice-cold with fear. He turned, flask still in his hand, and saw the three wolves only a few paces behind him.

White Shoulder lunged toward him. Maeniel dropped back. So did the mother of the pack. She’d given the game away and they both knew it.

Maeniel’s shoulder slammed into her, sending the bitch flying head over heels.

Scorpus smashed the clay jug down on White Shoulder’s head. In and of itself, it wasn’t enough to do permanent damage or even stun a wolf the size of White Shoulder. But when it connected with the wolf’s skull, it broke and the wine splashed all over White Shoulder’s eyes and nose.

For a few seconds, he was blind and in terrible pain as an involuntary reflex caused him to sniff the acidic wine into his very sensitive nose.

Scorpus ran. He ran as he had when he joined the legions fifteen years ago as a young man. He ran as he didn’t think he could still run, like an eighteen-year-old.

Just ahead, he saw a fissure in the broken rock. He thought— no, hoped—it was narrow enough and deep enough so that the wolves couldn’t reach him after he squeezed himself in. He didn’t scream, almost instinctively knowing it would be a waste of breath.

White Shoulder was down, ineffectively pawing his eyes and nose. The she-wolf slunk back to the rest in terror of what they had almost done.

Maeniel plunged after Scorpus, but the delay had been enough. Scorpus squeezed into the crack sideways as deep as he could get.

Maeniel was right behind him. He drove forward, almost reaching Scorpus’ right hand. The man did scream then, but the groping fingers found a stick, a thick heavy branch fallen from the trees above. He transferred it to his right hand and, on the gray wolf’s second attack, he got him across the skull with it.

Maeniel staggered back, dizzy. Scorpus pushed himself deep into the fissure and clung to his shelter the way a drowning man clings to a plank.

By then it was clear to Maeniel and the rest of the wolves that Scorpus was not to be dislodged. In fact, from the expression of stark terror on Scorpus’ face, it appeared he might not relinquish his cover until sometime in the spring.

Maeniel wasn’t disposed to waste any more time with him, not at present.

White Shoulder had shaken off the worst effects of the wine, though from time to time he still whimpered and pawed at his muzzle.

Maeniel melted into the holly and oaks and vanished with the rest. He had to think and by now he was much better at it than most wolves.

He felt they should leave at once and head back for the mountains. With luck, the officers in the Roman garrison might not believe the tale told by that idiot who remained crouching in that crack in the rock, especially if the still-falling snow filled in their tracks. But White Shoulder and his bitch weren’t having any, and the gray realized they intended to stay until they killed.

Drusus remained dozing on the high seat of the cart. He hadn’t noticed that Scorpus had wandered off. Drusus finally fully awakened when the other three legionnaires began loading lengths of logs into the cart. He yawned and counted his men. “Where’s Scorpus?” he snapped to Hirax and Statilius.

The two legionnaires dropped the log they were carrying and looked around. “He said he was going to take a leak,” Statilius said.

“Do any of you dimwits know which direction he went in or how far?” the centurion asked.

They didn’t know. Even Hirax hadn’t noticed where Scorpus had gone.

Alarmed, Drusus climbed down from the wagon seat and threw some more kindling on the fire. He checked his sword to be sure it was loose in the sheath and would draw easily. Then he began circling the clearing, looking for tracks.

At length, he found a few shallow depressions he felt sure were left by Scorpus’ feet. The problem was the humidity was low and the snow was so dry it didn’t take tracks well. The powdery stuff that was falling quickly filled in any mark made on it.

Drusus briefly considered the footprints. He looked up. The overcast was so low the treetops were hidden in the hazy whiteness. He himself could not see far into the increasing snow fog. He loosened his sword in the sheath again, a nervous gesture.

“I’ll go find him,” Hirax said in his thick, accented Latin.

“No, no, you won’t!” Drusus snapped. “If something out there picked him off, it’ll get you, too.”

Hirax made an obscene reference to Drusus’ ancestry, then accused him of being a coward.

Drusus didn’t reply, not at first. The only sign of emotion he showed was that his eyes narrowed slightly, at least in part because he noticed Marcus and Statilius were watching both of them intently. He sensed this was the final assault on his waning authority over the cohort. If he allowed Hirax to get away with this, his men could make his life so miserable he might end it by falling on his sword before the expected bonus and discharge came through. This would certainly happen if he allowed Hirax to draw him into swordplay here and now. He was no match for the younger man and was certain to go down in humiliating defeat.

“Very well.” Drusus nodded. “It isn’t a test of courage, Hirax, but if you want to make it one, go ahead. Suit yourself.” Then he turned away, an expression of complete indifference on his face. “Shape up,” he shouted to the two other soldiers. “Get the cart loaded. It’s late and I believe this three-times-accursed snow is coming down harder every minute.”

Grumbling, the two legionnaires complied.

Drusus ignored their complaints, walked over, and stood near the horses at the front of the cart.

Hirax vanished into the forest.

Drusus remembered again how the blue, deep water turned to emerald as the combers approached the shallows near the coast. The last time he’d been able to visit, he climbed the steep slopes, walking among the trellised grapevines until he reached the abandoned stone farmhouse like the one where he’d been born and brought up. Day or night, winter or summer, the air was cool and clear here. The wine, laid down in a limestone cave near the house, yielded a drinkable beverage in a few months.

He could almost taste and smell it, even now. It reminded him of salt air, sweet marjoram, and the wild oregano and thyme growing on the hillsides.

He’d wrapped himself in his toga and spent the night alone there, his only company the sigh of wind in the stone pines. The silver-clad full moon floated among the long-needled branches as the distant sound of the sea lulled him to sleep.

How and why, in the name of all the forgotten Tuscan gods, did he end up in this miserable frozen forest, freezing his backside off and worrying about wolves?

He mentally cursed Hirax.
Fortuna, send the pushy, barbarian, fatherless offspring of a pig to Hades and let him whine and moan among the unburied ghosts along the Styx.

Next to him, one of the horses threw up her head, whickered, and stamped a foot. For these horses, short cobby drays trained to behave calmly even in battle where they drew siege engines, such behavior almost amounted to hysteria.

Yes,
Drusus thought,
the wolves are on the prowl, but it remains to be seen if the elusive gray predators are dangerous.

Hirax followed Scorpus’ trail into the thickets of holly and holum oaks, cursing him all the way. “Where did that bone-headed louse go?” he whispered, then shouted. “Scorpus, where are you?” His voice echoed in the snowy silence. It seemed to bounce around directionless among the surrounding trees.

“Scorpus!” he shouted, then added, “You bastard,” in a whisper between his teeth. Twice he thought he heard answering cries, but the sounds were too muffled and distant for him to be sure what he heard wasn’t his own voice thrown back by the frozen forest around him.

Then he noticed something dark, half-buried in a snowdrift on the windward side of a fallen tree. He turned and walked toward it. Yes, Scorpus’ clay flask. He bent down to pick it up. As his fingers closed around the neck of the flask, he tried to straighten up so he could see it in a better light.
How odd,
he thought as he realized there seemed to be a huge weight on his back . . . then he knew or thought nothing more.

Maeniel watched as the rest cleaned Hirax’s bones. They were furtive, swift, and uncharacteristically silent. But then they shared the same drift of memories he did and understood as well as he that they were doing something forbidden.

In the clearing, Drusus and the two remaining legionnaires built up the fire. He noticed with some satisfaction that they were becoming more and more nervous about Hirax’s failure to appear with the errant Scorpus.

The cart was loaded now with big logs destined to be sawed and chopped into more usable lengths at the fortress.

“Likely they’re somewhere arming themselves against the cold,” Marcus said.

Statilius glanced up at the sky. If anything, the overcast seemed to have increased. The clouds moved lower; the formerly bright light was growing dimmer. They all knew the short winter day was drawing to an end. It went without saying that none of them wanted to be caught in the forest after dark.

“If one of you wants to go and see if he can find them, you have my permission,” Drusus said almost sweetly. He climbed to the top of the box in front of the cart and picked up the reins.

“Are we leaving them, then?” Marcus asked.

“No,” Drusus said. “There’s a better way to search. Come, we’ll use the road.”

The gray wolf slipped away from where the rest were feeding and went back to where Scorpus had taken shelter.

It was snowing more heavily now. He looked at the legionnaire through the veil of small flakes.

Scorpus’ body was wedged between the rock, but his head was turned facing the wolf. His eyes were partially open. His cheeks, nose, and neck were scummed with a thin membrane of ice. An expression of mortal terror remained fixed on his face, but the eyes didn’t move and neither did any other part of his body.

He is dead,
the gray thought.

The two legionnaires peered at them.

“I don’t know,” Marcus mumbled.

“Well, go and look. It’s only about fifty yards from the road.” Drusus sounded completely exasperated.