Wolfbreed (14 page)

“Sergeant?” The man addressed him in flawless Prûsan.

“Yes, sir.”

“By my count you’ve lost fourteen men.”

“Yes, sir.”

Erhard shook his head. “God have mercy. Christ have mercy.” The knight stared up at the keep, whose gray-white walls were turning scarlet in the setting sun. The reflected light gave a bloody tinge to the white of his mantle. “I am afraid we are to be sorely tested.”

“Sir, may I ask why—”

Erhard held up his hand. “Please, not here. Tell me first, did she trouble the townsfolk?”

“No.” He added, “Praise be to God,” making a conscious effort to use the singular in front of Erhard. “The creature made its escape to the east.”

“What is in that direction?”

“There is a road and some farms when the land flattens again.”

“Did you find any signs of what became of her?”

You mean, did I send out my four remaining able-bodied men after that thing, armed with silver daggers? No I did not, you addle-brained monk. Some of us are not quite as eager to meet God as you are
.

“After tending to the dead and injured we did search the woods below the eastern wall. We found nothing of substance. A footprint in mud, bloody fur caught in a thicket, a tree freshly clawed.”

Erhard nodded. He whispered something in Latin then reverted to the Prûsan tongue. “Show me the scene of the disaster.”

fter the removal of the soldiers’ remains for proper burial, the lowest levels of the keep’s storerooms had been left as they had been after the monster’s escape. Günter led Erhard alone. None of Günter’s men wanted to retrace these steps, and Erhard took none of his own.

They each carried a lantern, and the pair carved long fingers of shadow across the damp walls—shadows that mirrored the ribbons of ruddy black where blood had dried. It smelled of rotten meat and death down here.

Erhard paused briefly by the short table where Manfried’s sword and dagger still rested. Then he walked down the corridor to the banded door and checked its edges.

“I told you,” Günter said. “Manfried opened the door on his own.” He wanted to make it clear that this was no Prûsan’s doing.

Erhard nodded. “I see that.” He examined a long gouge on the floor that traced an arc from the doorway halfway to where the door now hung open. Unrecognizable fragments of silver rested on the ground where the gouge terminated. “He didn’t know enough to remove my seals before opening the door. The lower one was wedged under it.”

He picked another silver remnant from the edge of the doorframe and shook his head. “This was the second line of defense. How did she escape the shackle? You cannot tell me that Manfried removed her chains as well?”

“No.” Günter waved inside the cell. “The creature amputated its own foot.”

There was a long pause before Erhard said, “She did what?”

“You can see for yourself, if you don’t smell it already.”

It seemed to dawn on Erhard that the stench was coming from inside the cell itself. He turned and shone his light inside, muttered “Christus,” and crossed himself.

“The state of this cell …” He turned to look at Günter with an expression that was half accusing, half shock. “Was this your doing?”

Günter shook his head. “We followed your strictures. Food and water, no other contact.” He gestured at the feces-and urine-soaked straw. “She had a clean bucket for refuse, which she chose not to use.”

Erhard looked down at the filthy straw mats, his face white-skinned. He walked in and knelt next to the manacle that still held a woman’s foot, now black with rot. In the lamplight, the slightly glistening skin undulated with an infection of maggots.

“She couldn’t break the silver?” Günter asked.

Erhard nodded, looking at the cell. He shone the light around, until it settled on a corner of the room where a small pile of clothing rested on top of an upturned bucket.

“She shed her clothes and befouled this cell. She tore her own foot off to free herself from touching the silver binding her—so she could change herself. This was long in the planning.” Erhard straightened. “Manfried was a young man, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Romantic, perhaps?”

“Sir?”

“She is more of a monster than I knew. She seduced a man with his own pity. God have mercy on his soul.”

It
was
appalling to Günter, the lengths this thing had gone to, to delude poor Manfried. However, at the moment, there were other aspects of the monstrosity that concerned him more.

“Sir, I tried to ask you before, silver is supposed to kill it. Why is it still alive?”

“What do you mean?”

“One of my men fired a silver-tipped crossbow bolt into the creature’s head.”

Erhard straightened up. “He did? Are you certain?”

“Yes, I witnessed it myself. Just before it slaughtered him.” Günter shuddered at the memory, but for some inexplicable reason, Erhard was taking Günter’s news very well. In fact, it seemed to brighten his mood considerably. Günter didn’t understand the reaction. “Don’t you understand what I’m saying? You told me that silver was the only thing that could kill it! But it
didn’t
!”

“Silver isn’t poison to this creature, Sergeant. All a silver weapon does is give it a normal wound. A cut from a steel sword will seal up as soon as you withdraw the blade. This foot had probably regrown within an hour. But your man’s crossbow bolt—that would injure her as well, as it would have injured you, had he fired it into your skull.”

“But it didn’t kill—”

“Men have stumbled off the field with similar wounds, most to die very shortly after.” Erhard clasped him on the shoulder. “If you’d pray for something, pray for that.”

When Erhard let go of him, Günter heard him add in German,
“And pray that I find her body.”

t night now, Hilde had to share her bed with Ulfie. Hilde liked being close to her brother, even though Ulfie snored like her father did, and sometimes he moaned and had nightmares. But when he was quiet, she liked to rest her head against his chest and listen to his insides gurgle, and she liked the way her brother smelled after the day was over. Earthy, like the field after a hard rain, or like their horse when he wasn’t working and got so full of himself that he rolled in the pasture.

She was probably too old to sleep with her brother—he was almost too big for her bed, feet hanging off the end—but their guest was sick from the nasty wounds that Mama had sewn up. Mama said that fevers almost always came after someone was hurt that bad, and as bad as it seemed, Mama said she thought that their guest was doing well. Better than Mama expected her to.

Hilde was still scared for her. She didn’t know if Mama really thought she was doing well, or if Mama just didn’t want Hilde to worry. Sometimes Mama and Papa would avoid saying things, afraid that Hilde might not understand what was happening.

However, Hilde understood what a fever was, and how awful it
could be. Sometimes it seemed that she had spent most of her life fighting to wake from a fever, and it made her wish she could make their guest feel better.

But there was also some selfishness with the sympathy. Hilde loved Ulfie, yet there were times she wanted a big sister.

It was very late. The sun had been down for hours, and Hilde thought she was the only one in the house awake right now. Ulfie was snoring as badly as Papa was, and Hilde wondered how Mama could sleep through all the racket. However, even without the noise, Hilde didn’t feel tired. She supposed that she’d had so much sleep when she’d been sick that she didn’t need as much now.

She spent her time in the dark wondering about their guest—who she was, where she had come from. She was so pretty that Hilde imagined she must be a lost princess, or a fairy, from some far-off place where people didn’t talk like normal folks. Maybe that’s why she didn’t speak—

Hilde heard something odd in the cabin and held her breath. In her mind she had made their guest a fairy princess who had escaped from a tribe of evil ogres. The sudden odd sound made her think that the ogres might have come for her …

But that wasn’t what she heard.

Very quietly, she thought she heard a girl’s voice say, “No.”

Hilde sat up. Ulfie didn’t stir; he slept like a stone. A very loud stone.

She looked across the cabin and saw their guest stirring. She was speaking, but low, and her voice sounded like a girl’s. Not much older than Hilde even though she was nearly Ulfie’s age. Hilde thought she heard her say, “No,” again.

Hilde carefully slid out from between her brother and the wall, off the foot of her short bed. The light in the cabin was dim, cast by strips of moonlight filtering through the shutters, but Hilde could see enough to keep from stumbling as she walked to Ulfie’s bed.

She stopped at the head of the bed. A strip of moonlight had
fallen diagonally across the woman’s face, lighting part of the bandage on her head, a strand of hair, a slice of her damp brow, and a single eye, half-lidded, looking at Hilde.

Hilde touched her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

She grabbed Hilde’s hand so quickly that Hilde gasped and tried to pull away. But the grip was much stronger than Hilde was. The woman’s eyes opened as she looked at Hilde, though she didn’t seem to quite see her.

“Rose?” the woman whispered. “Is that you?”

“You’re talking!” Papa had said that she couldn’t talk because of the wound to her head, but if she talked now, it meant that Mama was right; their guest was getting better. Hilde smiled. “Let me wake Mama.”

“No!” The woman’s grip tightened. “Don’t get the guards. He’s their master, too.”

“You’re hurting me,” Hilde whispered.

Her grip loosened. “How did you get through the bars, Rose?”

“What bars?”

“You can’t escape, Rose. They won’t let you.”

“Why are you calling me that?”

Her hand let go, and she reached up and touched Hilde’s face. “Don’t leave me again. I don’t know if I can face him alone.”

Her breathing became heavy. Hilde looked at her and thought of how her own fever had made her dream of things that weren’t really there. She didn’t remember much of those times, but she did remember when she had talked to Mama thinking Mama was their horse. She had kept asking how he had gotten through the people door, and why he had started talking in Mama’s voice.

Hilde touched the woman’s brow, under the bandages, and it still burned with fever. The woman didn’t know what she was saying. Hilde saw the tears on her cheek and decided if she wanted to call her Rose it was fine. “I won’t leave.”

“Thank you.” Her hand lowered to the blanket.

“If I am Rose, who are you?”

“Don’t you know me? I’m Lilly, your sister.”