Wolf's Cross (9 page)

He was clearly an outlaw, and the only thing that had saved
her from a fate worse than Lukasz was that outlaw’s momentary good graces. Such a liaison belonged safely in a ballad, with knights and maids who needn’t worry over consequences beyond the last stanza.

She thanked God that her evening’s adventure had spawned no such consequences. Lukasz was spineless in the face of actual power, and she suspected that Darien could buy the wretch’s silence with only a few well-chosen words. And even if Lukasz should bring a grievance to the Wojewoda Bolesław, Maria doubted that her name would arise in the complaint.

And even if it did, she would much rather face Lukasz’s words than his hands.

The door to the darkened cottage opened. Maria’s stepmother stood in the doorway. “Maria?”

“Yes, Mama?” she said quietly, realizing that she had been standing outside for a long time. She looked up; the insects and the frogs had renewed their nighttime singing.

“It is very late.”

“I’m sorry, Mama. I had work—”

“Your face.” Her stepmother drew a sharp breath and ran to her side, lifting Maria’s chin toward the moonlight. “You’re hurt.”

“It’s nothing.”

“You’re bleeding. We have to wash it, at least. What happened?”

“I—” She almost choked on her words, remembering her promise to Darien nearly too late. “I fell, in the dark.” She felt the heat of the lie on her face, and the shame of it nearly brought her to tears. The deception was pointless. Whatever her promise, she was certain that the lie was obvious, drawn across her face for anyone to see.

Especially for the woman who was the only mother she had ever known.

But Maria’s stepmother didn’t seem to notice the clumsy lie. She kept staring at the bruise where Lukasz had struck her, blinking a couple of times. She stayed like that for a long time, until Maria said, “You said we should wash it?”

Her stepmother broke from her reverie and let go of Maria’s chin. “Yes. Come in and relight your lantern. I’ll fetch water and some linens.”

Maria followed her stepmother into the cottage, thinking how preoccupied she seemed. Then she scolded herself. Whatever her stepmother felt about Maria, she had lost her husband. She had the same right to grieve as Maria did.

In the dark, her stepmother surprised Maria by reaching out and touching her shoulder. Almost as if she knew what Maria had been thinking, she whispered, “I know your father was mistaken. God protects you still.”

Maria reached up and touched her cross and wondered if her mother knew about Darien.

T
he man Darien carried had exhausted his voice after the first mile. He made a token struggle when Darien crossed the river, but after that came only the occasional hoarse plea, which Darien ignored.

Even at the healthy pace that Darien traveled, it was over half an hour carrying his burden back to his current homestead. The cave was hidden on three sides by impenetrably dense woods, the only approach to it a game trail that led up a rise and appeared to dead-end in a solid wall of twisted growth and deadfalls. It wasn’t unless one stood on top of the rise itself and looked down the sheer drop that faced the wall of trees that the cave mouth could be seen.

Darien stood at the crest of the rise above the cave and unceremoniously unloaded his burden. The man tumbled out of his arms and down the rise to land screaming in the small clearing in front of the cave mouth.

Darien watched the man struggle below, rolling back and forth while cursing. “Who are you?” the man finally said, comprehensibly. He panted, cradling his broken arm, then struggled to his feet on the uneven footing of dead leaves and gravel. He had to lean against the trunk of a tree, because his left foot now bent at an odd angle. “Who the hell are you? And what do you want?”

Darien took the man’s knife and tossed it casually down. It fell with a clatter against a helmet transfixed by a spear of cold moonlight, near where Maria’s oaf supported himself. The man looked down at the knife, and at the helmet.

Then he gagged and screamed when he saw the prior owner’s head rotting inside it.

“God have mercy! What fiend are you?”

As Darien removed his shirt, the man babbled on, his words increasing in speed and volume as he looked around the clearing, finally seeing the remnants of men, armor, and horses scattered before the mouth of Darien’s lair.

Darien didn’t say anything to the man. It was more amusing to allow him to come to his own conclusions. As Darien stripped off his belt and removed his breeches, his prey had the presence of mind to channel his panic. He fell to his knees and scrambled toward a sword that had fallen just a few feet away, shoving aside a bloody gauntlet and the partly gnawed skull of a horse.

The man brought the sword up to point in Darien’s direction. The point shook, the silvered edge catching fragments of moonlight.

Darien stood naked above his prey and laughed.

“Are you insane? Say something, monster!”

Darien spread his arms and let free the mental chains that held his flesh in check. His bones creaked as they thickened and grew, and he felt his muscles tear and reknit as they spasmed and writhed under skin that darkened and grew a pelt of golden hair.

He had been injured by every weapon known to man, he had broken every bone in his body, he had even felt a silver crossbow bolt pierce his brow, sending bony splinters into his left eye—but no pain matched the feeling of the wolf tearing free from within his flesh. Every nerve fired a welcome agony, a red-hot knife ripping through his body, bringing an ecstatic release in its wake.

He howled and looked down at the cowering man below him. He wrinkled his nose and licked his muzzle with a long, lolling tongue. He crouched on lupine legs, so that his hands, long-clawed and still vaguely human, rested on the edge of the bluff in front of him.

He caught the scent of the man below voiding himself, and his face twisted into a lupine version of a smile.

“Monster,” he whispered, too low for his terrified prey to hear. “You call me monster after everything men have taken from me? And for less reason?”

Then he leapt down.

M
aria lay on her bed and stared into the shadows. Below the loft that held her bed, her brothers snored. She was the only one awake in the cottage now, and the night was half over already. In a few hours she would have to get up, draw water for her family, and start the walk down to Gród Narew.

She would have to walk the same path.

It had never concerned her before. She had known these woods all her life. They had never felt threatening to her. But
now she had to face them again, and her hands still shook when she thought about what had happened. What had
almost
happened.

She should have told her stepmother, whatever she had promised Darien. Not just because the lie was a sin that weighed on her soul, but because the lie pushed Hanna away. The lie made sure that Maria was alone in her own home.

She held her cross and allowed tears to come.

Who was Darien to ask this of her?

He did save me from Lukasz
, she thought,
and asked only for my silence when he could have asked for much more …

It might have been better if he had.

She bit her lip, feeling a flush across her body as she remembered the touch of Darien’s lips on her hand, his hand caressing her face. She remembered the look and feel of Josef’s chest, and wondered if Darien’s would be as strong, as warm …

I am not a wicked person
.

She couldn’t keep herself from imagining his lips on hers, and his hand touching other parts of her body, her hand touching his body. But in her wicked fantasy she was unsure if it was Darien who took her or Josef.

She prayed to God to settle her thoughts; the prayer’s answer was long in coming.

But in time, she did sleep.

Anno Domini 1331

T
wenty-two years ago, when he was a child, Darien hadn’t hated anyone at all. His family—his pack—had even adopted human ways in the face of ever-expanding human claims to the dark woods of the Baltic. They lived away from men, but any travelers who had the misfortune to find themselves in the haunted wood where Darien’s pack made their home would be well-treated as guests. And, later on, would have a guide to take them back to the normal trade paths.

The village, hidden deep in those woods, had once housed a pagan community that treated Darien’s ancestors as gods. But, long ago, the Germans had come and killed those who hadn’t converted and carried away those who had. The village had not remained empty for long. The pack of Darien’s great-grandfather had decided that it was wise, with human warriors trampling through their lands every season, to add to the camouflage of their human skins.

When the Order came again, they found a Christian village, including a church built upon the ashes of a pagan shrine.
Human gods meant nothing to the pack, so pledging fealty to the Order’s was of no consequence. For something over a century, from that generation to Darien’s, the village endured.

During his childhood years, Darien knew little of the outside world, other than the fact that there were these creatures called “men” who lived beyond the woods. He was taught, very carefully, that he would wear only a human skin in front of anyone not of the village.

The village was remote enough that, for the first nine years of his life, he saw no one who wasn’t of the village. By his tenth year, he had come to doubt the existence of such creatures as men. He’d started to think that he’d been told mere tales, to scare him and keep him from hunting without his parents.

He knew he was old enough to hunt on his own. He had taken down a bull elk all by himself the last moonless night his family had gone hunting. And he had done so in the skin of a full wolf, which was not as hard as he’d thought it would be. Hunting before, he had always taken the halfway skin, which left him hands to grip and tear at his prey, as well as a muzzle to bite the neck. But his parents had told him that to be an adult, he would have to learn to use all the wolf he had within him.

So, despite his reluctance, he’d done so, and the experience had changed him. Everything human became slow, pale, and bland in comparison. Even the power of the halfway skin couldn’t compare with the freedom he’d felt when he’d leapt at the animal’s neck.

He had become an adult.

Ever since, his bones ached for the change, and his tongue was hungry for the taste of the blood hot from the animal’s neck. Even though they were still eating from the carcass he had taken, Darien wanted to take another.

That was why he had slipped away from his parents on a cold spring evening only three days afterward. He had shed his human
skin to revel in his fresh, fully lupine form. He didn’t understand why his parents were so reluctant to do this more often, or in the light. The freedom he felt was indescribable, the power over every creature in this forest. He could take any creature he wished and taste its lifeblood.

He ran free as evening grew deeper, losing himself in the woods. He ran beyond the limits of his scent without quite realizing it. He was too intent on snapping at stray rabbits, taking the small bodies apart in a deadly snap of fangs and a spray of blood and fur.

The shadows were long, and his muzzle slick with the blood of small animals, before he realized that he was lost. The thought struck him suddenly when he stumbled on an unfamiliar path heavy with strange scents. He stopped with the sudden realization that his disobedience had passed far beyond what his parents might forgive. He had no chance of returning before dark, before he would be missed.

He looked desperately back and forth along the strange path, searching for any sign of familiarity, sucking in the air and hoping for the scent of his mother, his father, anyone from the village.

He would never be taken on a hunt again …

And with the growing terror in his breast, he would accept that as a worthwhile price for finding his way home.

Panic and immaturity kept him from doing what his parents had told him to
always
do if he found himself in unfamiliar territory; he didn’t change back. He couldn’t. The woods were cold and dangerous, and he couldn’t face them clad naked in his weak human form. Fear made him pull himself into the halfway skin, the one he felt safest in while facing whatever terror the forest held.