Storm Wolf (10 page)

The Master, watching them from the barn door, laughed at Alexei.

“How gallant,
vilkatis
,” he mocked the werewolf. “Denying yourself so that the maiden can eat. You will not be able to remain so gallant for long, I fear. You may, indeed, be forced to accept my offer to eat the wench. But that is no matter to me, either way. Do as you will.”

Spīdala and Alexei, having finished their repast, continued to sit in the growing darkness until the Master insisted that they join him in the barnyard. Spīdala reluctantly stood and left the empty basket beside the milking stool as she and Alexei joined the Master outdoors. He was standing, his back to the barn, looking across the quiet fields and the surrounding forests. Alexei could hear the farmhands somewhere nearby, singing in the dark after they had eaten their supper.

He whined, wishing he could join them, but knew it was impossible so long as the Master of Wolves held him in captivity.

The Master pointed to the earth at his feet. “Kneel down here,
vilkatis
,” he barked. Alexei padded across the barnyard and knelt down as the Master had ordered.

“Now, you climb aboard his back, Spīdala,” the Master ordered next. Spīdala stared at his back and then walked forward and quietly took her place astride Alexei’s broad shoulders, followed by the Master, who climbed aboard Alexei’s back as well, wedging his crutch alongside him between his saddlebag hanging over his shoulder and his hip.

“Now,
vilkatis
,” the Master instructed, “you will carry Spīdala and me across the forest to the next farm, several miles in that direction.” Out of the corner of one eye, Alexei saw him gesture at the woods across the fields before them. “When you see the manor of the farmer, I think you will recognize that he is one of the wealthier farmers in this district. He will not notice what we will need to relieve him of tonight. And if he does notice it, I do not care. Do you understand me,
vilkatis
?”

Alexei nodded. He braced himself and then stood, afraid of how heavy the Master and Spīdala together would weigh. At first, Alexei felt only Spīdala astride his shoulders, in front of the Master, as if she were the only one he carried. But then he felt the crushing weight of the Master behind her and stumbled, his rear haunches nearly collapsing.

Spīdala reached out and grasped Alexei’s ears to steady herself as he stood with the two riders on his back. The Master wrapped his free arm around Spīdala’s waist and pulled her back against his chest. “Does my weight confound you,
vilkatis
? Imagine if this were the beginning of the season and my food satchel was full for distribution among your forest brothers. You should be glad that the satchel is nearly empty now. You will have a much easier time of it!” The Master laughed again and Alexei struggled to take a step forward. “You may go now,
vilkatis
. Carry us to the farmer’s manor beyond the forest there.”

Alexei took a deep breath, preparing to follow the Master’s instructions. He had never carried riders through the air before. There was no way that he could carry the Master anywhere if he were simply bound to the earth, he realized. Flying would be the only way he could obey the Master’s directions, and so he gathered his strength and launched himself into the air.

Once airborne, the weight of the Master became somewhat more tolerable, and Alexei began to trot upward and then across the treetops. He felt Spīdala grip his ears so tightly that he nearly cried out, but he knew that she must be both terrified and exhilarated to see the earth from above, as he had been the first time he had taken to the air as the village werewolf back home. He could feel her shift and move, her legs gripping his barrel chest as tightly as her skirt allowed, and imagined that she must be leaning out to look this way and then that as she struggled to keep her balance and not fall from his shoulders.

He thought of Grete and how she would have been as thrilled and terrified by a ride on his back through the sky. He wished he could have shared this with her as well as with Spīdala and felt tears well up in his eyes.

He trotted as quickly as he could through the air without frightening or dislodging Spīdala.

“Faster,
vilkatis
!” demanded the Master, kicking Alexei’s ribs several times with his heels. “Did you think I meant this only to be a tour of the skies for the wench?” He heard the Master spit, and Spīdala gasped as the Master roughly pulled her back against his chest even more tightly.

Alexei seethed with anger at the Master on Spīdala’s behalf. He imagined himself sharply turning, flying sideways, maybe even upside-down, in order to throw the Master from his back. But that would dislodge Spīdala as well, and though the Master could no doubt survive such a fall, Alexei was sure that it would kill Spīdala. So he bit his lower lip and trotted a little more quickly, enough so that the Master might be satisfied but not so fast as to frighten or topple Spīdala from his back.

The forest spilled out beneath them in a sheet of dark treetops. What would have been a walk of several hours through the trees was instead a flight of an hour or two above the trees, and when Alexei could see the edge of the forest ahead of him, he knew that the farmer’s manor the Master wanted must be nearby.

Alexei could see the fields stretching out below them, the barns and cottages of the laborers black smudges in the night. Then he saw one of the grandest houses he had ever seen and knew that must be the manor the Master had described. The kick in the ribs confirmed his supposition. “There!” ordered the Master. “Descend there!” Alexei dropped down and circled the grand house. He came around again and was trotting along even lower, his feet nearly touching the earth.

The shock of his paws actually coming down onto the ground, trotting as slowly as he was, still nearly threw Spīdala from his back. She yanked on his ears and he did cry out, a great wolf howl echoing in the night. The Master kicked him in the ribs again and threw Spīdala off Alexei’s shoulders, tufts of fur coming away from his ears in her fists as she cried out and fell flat onto the ground.

“Did I give you leave to reveal our presence?” he hissed at his two captives. “Do that again and you shall know the full weight of my anger!” He kicked Alexei in the ribs once more and slid off the werewolf’s haunches, adjusting his crutch beneath his armpit. Alexei whirled around to face the Master, snarling and growling. Spīdala was a few feet away, pushing herself up. Alexei felt her anger seething out towards the Master even as her fear of him made her struggle to not cry out.

The Master seemed unconcerned with Alexei and Spīdala as he hobbled to the manor and peered at its dark windows. A wisp of smoke curled up from the chimney, the coals of the kitchen fire banked for the night and awaiting the morning cooking. The Master turned back to Alexei and Spīdala, who was now on her feet.

“Forget your anger,” the Master snarled at them both. “I have an errand for you, Spīdala. Did you think it was only the
vilkatis
that I had instructions for tonight?”

“An errand?” Alexei could hear the anger and fear still struggling with each other in Spīdala’s voice, even as the growl still hovered in his own throat. “What errand is that?”

“I have need of the farmer’s trinkets,” the Master explained, turning back toward the house. “The rings and baubles he has given his wife over these past many years. She has more than she could ever wear, and it is only right that they share their gaudy jewels with me.”

“Why is that?” Spīdala wanted to know, still gasping with anger at having been thrown from Alexei’s back. “Why should anyone share anything with you? What do you need the rings and jewels for?”

The Master glanced back over his shoulder at her. “The jewels have certain properties. They can be used against me, to keep me and my wolf children from the animals as well as the farmhands on this estate. I need to take the jewels before the farmer can learn how to properly use them to bar me and my wolves from his property.” He turned back to the house. “But do not think that you will be able to use them against me, either. I want you to fetch the trinkets from their hiding places and place them directly into my satchel, here.” He patted the saddlebag under his cloak. “You will never directly touch the jewels or ever see them again. They will be of no use to you… or to the farmer, even if he does ever appreciate their true worth.”

“And how did you think that I would be able to do this for you?” Spīdala hissed at him. “Did you think I would break a window or smash the door down and then… what? Steal into the farmer’s bedroom undetected and bring back out his wife’s jewelry box?”

The Master shook his head sadly. “Spīdala, my child, do not play the simpleton with me. I expect you to charm the jewels to come to me of their own accord.” He limped ahead on his crutch and then sat down on the steps leading up to a wide porch encircling the farmer’s grand home. The Master slipped the leather saddlebag off his shoulder and set it on the step beside him, the flap turned back and sitting open.

“Charm the jewels?” Alexei heard the shock in Spīdala’s words, the anger and fear. “How shall I do that?”

“When your husband wanted something, you found a way to accomplish it, did you not?” The Master pulled a pipe and tobacco from somewhere in the folds of his cloak and prepared to smoke. “I trust I shall not need to beat you, as he did, for you to discover a way to accomplish this.” He struck a flint and lit the pipe, the burning wad of tobacco in the bowl of the pipe becoming a red coal winking in the night. The Master leaned back against a post supporting the roof over the porch, and the white smoke hovered and curled around his head.

Alexei slunk over until he stood beside Spīdala, wanting to somehow give her the strength and knowledge she needed to do what the Master had asked. She wrapped her fist in the fur between his great shoulders, covering her mouth with her other hand as she struggled to think how she might do as the Master had instructed.

“I think I know a way,” Spīdala muttered at last.

“I am glad to hear it,” the Master answered, still smoking his pipe on the porch steps. “Please proceed.”

Spīdala knelt in front of Alexei and looked into his eyes. “Please do not think ill of me,
vilkatis
,” she whispered. “You know that I do this only because there is no way we can escape the Master—yet. But we will find a way, werewolf. I promise us both that!”

Alexei nodded and yipped once. He sat down on his rear haunches, keeping his head up. Spīdala stood and faced the house, gently grasping Alexei’s ear with one hand. The other she held towards the Master as she began to sing.

The words were quiet and Alexei could not understand even the ones he could make out. A few he thought he recognized from having heard other farmhands speaking to each other, so he guessed she must be singing in Latvian. But what the words were, he had no idea.

The smell of the Master’s pipe grew stronger. The tobacco smoke seemed caught in the melody, slinking and slipping and twisting in the air like a snake. But Alexei caught another scent in the air as well, a scent growing stronger as the song went on. It was the sickly smell of magic being twisted and perverted to do something that it had never been meant to be used for. That smell, twisting in the air with the scent of the tobacco smoke, nauseated Alexei. He swallowed, trying not to vomit what little he had eaten with Spīdala earlier that night, but kept his eyes on it, mesmerized by the smoke serpent’s movement.

The tobacco smoke undulated in the air above them as it grew thicker and longer, more smoke coming from the Master’s pipe than Alexei had thought one pipe of tobacco could ever produce. The smoke serpent curled about above them, and Alexei tilted his head back so he could watch it coalesce, until Spīdala’s hand, still clutching his ear, touched the fur between his shoulders. Spīdala bent her own head back to see the smoke serpent and reached toward it with her free hand.

Sparks of brilliant scarlet popped within the smoke serpent all along its length, and with each tiny burst of color, the serpent’s undulations paused and the color seeped into the silver-white cords of smoke. Gradually the scarlet suffused the entire smoke serpent, and it hung suspended above them, its serpentine form complete at last. Its head clasped its tail in its mouth, and Alexei could clearly see the scarlet scales that sheathed its now still form.

Spīdala kept singing her quiet song another moment, and then her words stopped, her voice stilled.

The serpent opened its mouth and the tail slipped from between its now visible fangs. Raging flames shot from its throat and plumes of smoke twisted up from its nostrils. Spīdala pointed to the ground at her feet, and the great length of its body unfurled behind it as it slithered down until it hovered before Spīdala.

The dragon’s forked tongue flicked in and out between its fangs as it tasted Spīdala’s breath. Its eyes glittered like deep red jewels and its nostrils quivered as occasional wisps of smoke still curled up into the night. Alexei thought the beast was peering into Spīdala’s eyes as if waiting for instructions of some kind. Would it attack Spīdala? He was not sure if he should fear the dragon that she had called forth from the Master’s pipe smoke, but he felt his muscles tensing as he involuntarily prepared himself to leap into the air to fight the dragon. The beast appeared a wild thing, not a tame one, and he was ready to protect Spīdala if need be.

“
Pūķis
,” Spīdala addressed it, and it seemed to recognize its name. Its great serpentlike head nodded to acknowledge Spīdala.