Wolfbreed (39 page)

We’ll only hurt him again
.

We’ll never hurt him
.

No!

Yes!

Lilly arched her back underneath him, wrapping her legs around his waist.

“Ulfie!

hey didn’t move for a long time after. Uldolf felt as if the gods had taken turns shaking his body until his bones had
liquefied. He was quite certain that he would soon have a fair share of oddly shaped bruises down his back and legs. Lilly appeared nearly as drained, eyes closed, mouth half open, face glistening with sweat.

Uldolf rolled on his side, as much as the narrow bed would allow. He shook his head. “What were we thinking?”

Lilly blinked and turned to look at him. “I love you, Uldolf.”

“You mentioned that,” Uldolf said. He laid his head down next to hers. “I love you, too.”

edim didn’t sleep. The pain in his head and the absence of his family merged with the weight of Günter’s words to keep him from any thought of rest. The sense of helplessness tore at his gut. There was no way out of this for him or his family. This wasn’t like the fall of Mejdân, when the victorious Germans were satisfied with fealty and professions of faith. The choices then were stark, but they were choices.

No choices faced him now. He could do nothing to change the horrid outcome. For all of Sergeant Günter’s assertions, the man was blind. Gedim’s words would not change anything. The sergeant’s self-deception was probably necessary; the man worked for these pitiless Christian bastards. If the man had understood what Gedim did, he probably would be forced to slit his own throat.

This bishop from Rome wouldn’t care for what Gedim said, under whatever duress he said it. Gedim had seen enough in his life to know that if this man had come to Johannisburg in search of a Prûsan conspiracy, he would find one.

He didn’t know if what the sergeant had said about Lilly was
true or not. But, in his despair, he was quite aware that the truth of the matter was beside the point.

In his heart, he unexpectedly found himself hoping that the story was true. If they were to slaughter him and kill his family, he would wish the full wrath of the old god Pikuolis upon them, his gray hand on their throats, dragging them into their graves. If Lilly was such a monster, such a servant of the Evil One, let her work his will upon them. Let them feel his pain.

The guards threw open the door to his cell sometime before daybreak. They hauled him to his feet and marched him out into the hallway. Neither man was familiar. Both had the paler skins and narrower faces of the Germans.

For all of the sergeant’s words, this was no longer a Prûsan town ruled by Germans. It was a German town with an inconvenient Prûsan population.

The two Germans dragged him through the bowels of the keep, up to a room that was slightly bigger than the room where he had been held. The only light was from a pair of torches set in sconces by the far wall. There were at least three men in the room, but Gedim did not get a very good look at them as the guards pushed him across the floor to face the wall between the torches.

Someone spoke in thickly accented German. At best, Gedim’s understanding of the language was elementary, but this speaker mangled the language too much for him to make out.

“I don’t understand,” he said, in his own butchered German.

One of the men holding him pushed his face into the wall, igniting a flare of pain from the side of his wounded face.

A familiar voice said, in Prûsan, “You are Gedim, son of Lothar, brother of Reiks Radwen Seigson of Mejdân?”

“Damn it, Günter,” he spat in Prûsan, flecks of blood staining the wall in front of him. “You know who I am.”

The men pressed him roughly into the wall.

“Answer yes or no.”

“Yes!” His lips tore against the rough stone as he spoke.

Günter repeated Gedim’s answer, in German.

Someone behind him pulled his arms back and bound his wrists together as the man with the bad German spoke some more. Günter translated, voice flat, as if he was dictating a letter. “You farm land to the west of Johannisburg, lands retained by you after Mejdân was Christianized?”

“Yes.” The word was half a gasp as his arms were pulled straight back and upward behind him. He heard a rustle above him. He looked up to see anonymous hands pass a rope over a hook embedded in the ceiling.

More unintelligible German, and Günter translated. “You accepted baptism and our Lord Jesus Christ?”

“Yes.”

“Do you not still pay homage to the pagan idols of Perkûnas, Patrimpas, or Pikuolis?”

“No.”

The rope pulled taut and his whole body spasmed as his arms were pulled upward behind him, yanked by the rope binding his wrists. Agony tore through his shoulders, overwhelming the faint pains where the broken flesh of his face ground against the rough wall.

Bad German shouted in his ears, and Gedim almost felt the breath of the questioner on the back of his neck, despite the pain.

Distantly, he heard Günter speak. “Lies will not lessen your pains. Truth now. Do you worship these false gods? Do you sacrifice to their idols?”

Gedim could barely sputter. “No.”

The rope pulled again, and his heels left the ground and his body slammed into the wall before him. He could feel with a searing clarity the point at which the bones of his shoulders separated.
Gedim’s awareness faded until his whole universe was the sensation of bone twisting against flesh.

Then it faded slightly as the tension released. Feet flat on the ground again, he slumped against the wall, gasping and sweating. He couldn’t move, because any shift in his weight fired agony in his dislocated shoulders.

“Confess your idol worship,” Günter translated, and this time the sergeant added the word “Please.”

Some errant part of Gedim’s mind rebelled.
Why should I ease the weight on your ass-licking soul?

Then the tension returned, and Gedim blacked out.

old water fell like ice across his back, snapping him awake and igniting the fire in his arms.

“Confess your idolatry.” Not Günter this time, but spoken in a German slow and deliberate enough that Gedim could follow.

Gedim spat. “May Pikuolis come himself to drag your soul screaming to Hell.”

The room was silent for a time. Günter, still present, translated. “He honors Pikuolis, lord of the dead.”

Gedim hung his head. He pitied the poor sergeant. Somehow Günter still thought he could improve on the situation.
Even with pain and blood blurring my vision, I can see the only thing separating you and me is time …

More German, too quick to make out.

“The truth will end this sooner,” Günter told him. “You will now tell us of the creature named Lilly, and how you came by her.”

They put tension on the rope, not enough to make him pass out—but enough to remind him of what it
could
feel like.

He didn’t want to tell them anything. The last thing he wanted to say was how Uldolf had found this woman, or what
it seemed he meant to her. He would sooner kill himself than tell them how Burthe had conspired to hide the woman from the Order.

But they wouldn’t let him kill himself, and when he thought his limits were reached, his feet left the ground. At that point, what he wanted didn’t matter anymore.

rom the window of his room, Uldolf watched the first predawn light reach the sliver of sky that was visible between the stable and the inn. The sky was deep violet, becoming lavender near the eastern end of the alley.

Soon the gates would open for the day.

He looked down at Lilly, asleep on the bed. She had wrapped the single blanket around herself, leaving only her head and her left leg exposed. He found himself splitting his time between watching the sky, looking at her face, and allowing his gaze to travel along the naked length between her ankle and where the curve of her thigh tucked under the blanket.

Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, he wasn’t looking at her in a particularly lustful manner. He stared at her more in fascination, the way he would at a striking sunset, or at a field of wildflowers on a particularly clear blue day, or the way he did sometimes at the pool by the oak he had shown her so long ago. There was her beauty, but there was something else. It danced on the edges of his mind, as if he only saw the shimmering surface of the water. Underneath was something dark, cold, threatening …