Wolf's Cross (20 page)

“Yes, Brother Josef, but we need details to act. Generalities do not provide usable strategy.”

Josef bowed his head. It felt as if his heart were melting and oozing through the wound in his belly. “Forgive me, sir.”

“You do not require forgiveness,” Heinrich said, “but perhaps more of an investigative nature. You asked no questions?”

“I was concerned that too intent an interest would betray our purpose here.”

“I am glad you’ve taken our prior discussion to heart and err toward caution.”

Josef found himself unaccountably angry at his master. He tried to tell himself that it was the pain of his wound doing ill things to his mood, but in his heart he also knew that he had begun to doubt the reasoning behind their secrecy. It was clear that Maria knew something of what they hunted. How could telling her of the Order’s work be wrong? Wouldn’t the knowledge that there were servants of God here to root out the monster reassure more
than alarm? If the beast began rending flesh in their midst, would their silence do anything to keep the peace, or to keep the innocent from being hunted?

He gritted his teeth and forced out something appropriately humble.

Heinrich placed his hand on Josef’s shoulder and said, “Do not fret for our task. The Duke has heard our petition and has seen our writ from the pope.”

“He knows, then?”

“Only what he needs to know: that we hunt a murderous servant of the Devil.”

“But not what it is?”

“He is sending out a group of Poles, along with Brother Reinhart, to search for evidence of our cause.”

“Are they armed with silver? Do they know that this thing can walk abroad like a man?”

“Don’t concern yourself. Reinhart shall see the Duke’s men safely through. They merely need to find a scene of this creature’s bloodlust; he will not lead unprepared men to face the thing themselves.”

“But—”

“I said not to concern yourself,” Heinrich snapped. “Mind your words, Brother Josef, and do not presume to instruct your superiors.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, and the words were like ashes in his mouth.

B
rother Reinhart marched through the woods accompanied by a half dozen Poles from Duke Siemowit III’s personal guard. They were led by the Duke’s deputy, Wojewoda Bolesław himself.

In the Duke’s wisdom, he had decided that his men would take
their survey of the area on foot. Reinhart had the uncharitable suspicion that this was to avoid returning a mount to one of his German “guests.”

Though, he had to admit to himself, such a search through the woods was done more easily on two feet than on four. It was also because Komtur Heinrich’s men had been mounted in close woods such as these that the creature’s attack, the last time they had last faced it, had been so costly.

Maneuverability alone, however, was not so much a comfort with the Order’s weapons still stored within Gród Narew. The Duke hadn’t permitted Reinhart so much as a knife. He had been sent out with this troop of obnoxiously loud Poles to tramp through the woods barely better than a prisoner. He questioned the utility of including him in the party at all. If the monster had left evidence of its passage here, it would be quite obvious even to the boorish Bolesław, who tromped ahead, shouting commands to the Polish guard with broad and unsubtle gestures that lowered Reinhart’s already low opinion of Slavic nobility.

And the large, heavily bearded Bolesław was probably as fine an example of the szlachta as anyone might find.

At least the man could speak passable German, even if he shouted orders in the cacophonous tongue of the Poles. Reinhart found their language even more unpleasant in the ear than the few words of Old Prussian he had heard, spoken by the handful of unrepentant pagans who haunted the woods within the Order’s domain.

Ahead of them, Bolesław raised a hand and shouted to his men. As one, six men in mail and heavy boots ceased moving and talking, and the woods around them grew suddenly silent. Reinhart felt his own breath catch in his throat. They had found something.

“Shall our monk come forward and examine this?” Bolesław waved Reinhart forward. “You are interested in unnatural deaths?”

Reinhart flexed his hands, wishing for the pommel of a sword.
He said a silent prayer as he walked up next to Bolesław to see what the man had found. The monster they hunted was not subtle, but Reinhart had not expected to come across sign of its passage so soon after leaving the fortress.

“So, Brother Reinhart, tell me if this is the work of satanic forces.”

Reinhart looked down at Bolesław’s feet, where the corpse of a mange-ridden hare lay half-buried in leaves and pine needles. Crusts of mucus covered its nose and mouth, and scavengers had already taken the eyes, leaving an empty socket to stare up at Reinhart.

“This is not a joke,” Reinhart said. The wrath he felt now could not be kept out of his voice, and it was only with God’s grace that he prevented himself from closing Bolesław’s obnoxious mouth with his fist. “What we hunt is deadly, and evil.”

“As you have said, but perhaps you might be more forthcoming about what signs you seek?” Bolesław kicked the hare’s corpse, lifting it off a writhing bed of maggots to flop over onto the tip of Reinhart’s boot. “Are you sure this is not the handiwork of our quarry?”

The other Poles laughed, but there was a deadly serious glint in Bolesław’s eyes.

“You will know its work when you find it,” Reinhart said. He kicked the dead hare off his boot and turned to the Poles. “And when you do, you will not laugh.”

“I do not—” Bolesław was interrupted by a shout from one of his men. Reinhart turned to look at the commotion. One of the Poles held up an empty boot.

T
he trail grew more obvious as they followed: broken branches, bloody bits of torn clothing. As soon as it was
clear to Reinhart that they had found the trail of their quarry, he asked Bolesław to order the party’s return so that Reinhart’s brothers could rearm and come out to finish the thing.

“For a boot and a few rags? My Duke would require something more substantial, Brother Reinhart.”

It was only a couple miles deeper into the woods that Reinhart saw Bolesław regret those words.

They followed a game trail into a dense thicket, then up to a rise that appeared to end in a twisted mass of undergrowth and deadfalls. They might have turned back if not for one man who saw something in the undergrowth. The Pole ran up and retrieved a dirty brown object.

He lifted it to reveal a severed human head as ill-used by scavengers and as maggot-ridden as the hare Bolesław had kicked upon Reinhart’s boot. The grotesque sight was met with a number of gasps, and the whole character of the expedition changed.

Bolesław took a step forward and stared at the dead, eyeless face. “Lukasz,” he whispered.

“Do we have substance enough for your Duke?” Reinhart asked. “If we return now, we can—”

He was interrupted by another Pole, who had taken a position at the highest point on the rise. He was shouting something as he looked down, crossing himself, then making gestures Reinhart thought were purely pagan.

Bolesław turned and charged up the rise with more speed than Reinhart would have credited him for. As Reinhart followed, he saw the color leach from the massive Pole’s face so quickly that, when he reached his side, the large man had taken on the aspect of a wraith.

Reinhart looked down and shuddered.

“Jesus wept.”

He prayed as he gazed into the bowl-like ravine before a cave mouth. The ground was black with tarlike mud, covered with
flies and the prints of a massive wolf. Scattered evenly around the small clearing were the remains of men, horses, and animals less identifiable. No body had been left intact, and some of the men still wore bits of armor.

Reinhart saw the Devil’s hand. The dead had been taken here, placed here, carefully arranged so the fiend could revel in its handiwork.

“You are right,” Bolesław told him. “We must return and arm your fellows—” Bolesław was interrupted by a wolf’s howl. And when the woods swallowed the last echo, the only sound left was that of Reinhart’s breathing and the creak of the other men’s armor.

Without any prompting, Bolesław pulled his sword from its scabbard, and Reinhart saw the glint of silver on its edge.

“God help us,” Reinhart said. “It is here.”

D
arien followed the men from the fortress, silently and beyond their sight, breathing in the scent of eight men. One scent was familiar, even if he hadn’t seen the black cross on his surcote.

Darien allowed the men to walk far from the paths and the walls of the fortress. They marched, loud and unconcerned, into Darien’s domain. If the loud ones had been alone, he might have ignored them. But in their midst was a member of the Order, and Darien could not turn away from the opportunity to reduce the Order’s ranks. He recognized where they were when one of the men found a boot that had once graced the foot of the oaf who had attacked Maria. The men followed Darien’s trail, picking up cast-off rags, until they found themselves at the edge of Darien’s lair.

When they stopped, he padded to just within sight of them.
Three looked down upon his cave, and another held the head of Maria’s oafish attacker up by the hair.

Now was the time, while they were distracted and had no weapons in hand.

He sat on his haunches and concentrated. His forelegs creaked as they lengthened, and his forepaws became clawed hands. His back and chest broadened, his shoulders twisting painfully, bringing forth a howl.

The howl reduced his element of surprise, but it brought him the smell of fear, which was worth more. He dove into their midst as the men scrambled to draw their swords. He landed on the back of the rearmost, slamming him to the ground as he clamped his jaws around the back of his neck.

T
he words were barely out of Reinhart’s mouth when yells of alarm rose from the Poles. He turned around to see a massive golden-furred monster taking down one of Bolesław’s men. He saw slavering jaws crush the man’s neck and shake his head like a rag doll’s, independent of the body.