The Wolf King (18 page)

“Probably. It’s a thing I’ve noticed when women have several children, and she has borne five. Sometimes they have an increased flow.”

She didn’t ask him how he came by this knowledge, because his answers were almost invariably truthful and sometimes very disconcerting. She wondered where he had gone.

Hugo’s guest was with Hugo, watching his futile attempts to persuade one of the older ladies of the court to yield up her virtue. He felt sheer disgust, at least in part because he knew this particular lady was considered to be a pushover by most of the nobility, but she was something of a connoisseur where male seduction was concerned, and Hugo’s absolute lack of technique rather appalled her.

“You are,” his guest told Hugo, “a complete fool.” Hugo broke off his attack—because that was pretty much what his attempts at seduction amounted to. He’d managed to corner Ilease in a window embrasure, and she was straight-arming him.

Hugo stalked over to a table and poured himself some wine. “I’d like to see you do any better,” he muttered under his breath to his guest.

His guest exerted all his strength, and Hugo found himself a spectator at what followed. Hugo’s guest never heard that “liquor is quicker,” but he knew it. Liquor and other blandishments offered to the lady Ilease persuaded her to accompany him to Hugo’s chamber, where he gave Hugo a comprehensive lesson in lovemaking with Ilease as the subject. Hugo had not known that a woman could be pleased and penetrated in so many ways, so many times. It was almost dark when Ilease staggered away from Hugo’s door. She was exhausted, sore, scandalized by her own behavior, and black and blue in a few places. None of which could be attributed to Hugo’s guest, but to her own rather overenthusiastic acrobatics. She was wearing a silver bracelet and a gold broach and felt profoundly satisfied.

After she left, Hugo—who hated to part with anything of value—began to whine about his guest’s generosity.

“Shut up. I can find things like that anytime I want. When you need some more, I’ll get it for you, but in the meantime, shut up.”

Hugo staggered out of bed. He was nude. “What have you done to me?” he whimpered. “I can barely walk.”

His guest stopped him at the window.

Hugo moaned. “It’s cold, my teeth are chattering…”

“Hold still,” his guest commanded. “You’re lucky I’m in a good mood.”

Hugo’s window looked out over the half-ruined Roman city toward the pass at Susa. “Keep complaining,” his guest snarled, “and I might toss you out. Want to risk it?”

Hugo was silenced. He wasn’t sure if the spirit could accomplish this feat, but he remembered the kicks after the debacle at the inn and the physician’s exit from the dining room in Florence. He wasn’t sure and didn’t care to push his luck.

“I’m leaving now,” his guest said. Then he kicked Hugo’s legs out from under him.

Hugo landed on the floor with a screech and a crash.

“Get the wine. Take the flagon to bed with you and don’t— don’t—get into any mischief until I return. Is that clear?”

“Y-yesss.” Hugo moaned, but his guest noticed he was already crawling toward the flagon on the table.

The wolf woke before the moon rose over the peaks above him. He drifted like a shadow down toward the riverbank in the valley. Brown dairy cows gorged in the open between copses of trees. Predator or not, they ignored him except to raise their heads from time to time and keep track of his progress.

Though the moon wasn’t shining into the valley, its light silvered the sky above and he could see almost as well as he could by day. Keeping to the shadows, he crossed the earthworks thrown up near the river, then approached the town. As far as he was concerned, the going was easy, though the rock fall above had left its debris all across what had been clear pasture at one time, and trees had taken root in the rocky rubble. The cover it gave him compensated for any inconvenience.

He was able to make his way to the town and draw very close to its walls without being seen. It was bigger than it looked from high up in the valley. It was walled and the gates were closed. The wolf paused in the brush along the river. Something about it didn’t feel right. Had Regeane been there, she might have warned him. She herself had taken shelter along the Appian Way in a tomb that wasn’t there… but then, she hadn’t noticed anything wrong at the time, and he could see nothing overtly wrong here.

A pour-off that cut through the remnants of the rock slide ran past the town into the thick half-drowned brush on the riverbank. It seemed to have undermined the walls at the bottom near the water. The wolf eased down into the brush. Yes, there was a crack in the wall just before it joined the first house. Over the water the walls were unnecessary and the houses themselves presented blank walls to the stream. He looked through the crack and saw the cobbles of a square. He began to dig with a view to enlarging the hole.

A half mile away in a cave, Gimp woke to the triumphant shout of Hugo’s guest. “He’s sprung my trap. Get down to the river and man the nets.”

The digging was easy, Maeniel thought. Almost too easy.
I’ll be through in a minute
, he thought, and plunged headfirst into the river.

The wolf was a strong swimmer but the river, fed by snowmelt from the glaciers at the top of the pass, was freezing. Shock rendered him temporarily helpless. He was dragged along by the swift-moving current into the rapids, white water spreading, swirling over a stony bed.

A creature less tough than he might have been killed. Maeniel was rolled over and dragged along the rocks that floored the riverbed. As it fell toward the valleys beyond, the stream widened abruptly, and for a second the wolf was stranded in a shallow spot. He got his legs under him, then he was dragged down into the current again and sucked into a boiling maelstrom that spit him over a falls and into a millrace at the bottom, and then slammed him into the meshes of a steel net. For a second he was trapped underwater. He struggled frantically against drowning, and was pulled to the surface. Aware he was in human shape, he felt the metal cut into his skin as the collar closed around his neck.

In her tent over a hundred miles away, Regeane sat up in her bed, clutching her throat.
A dream
, she thought.
It was a dream
, she tried to tell herself. She had just dreamed about the time Gundabald had chained her up, and about the second time when he’d
tried
to chain her up… but her fears wouldn’t quiet themselves.

A few seconds later, the Saxon was looking into the tent. A torch flared in his hands. The light blinded her. The coiling flames cast an eerie glow around her face.

Regeane was hardly immodest; she was wearing a woolen shift and a white lawn overgown trimmed with lace. “He… he… has met with—I don’t know—I can’t…”

“Are you sure?” the Saxon asked.

“No! Yes, yes… I am.”

A second later he was looking at a wolf. The shift and gown were on the floor. He felt her thick ruff as she surged past him. Then she was gone. As wolf she ran through the forest toward the pool. When she reached it, she saw the moon was full and its reflection was mirrored in the still surface.

The silver wolf paused, and the fair, pale light glowed on the long guard hairs on her coat. Once again she felt the odd strength the light brought her, as she had on that long-ago night in Rome after her mother died, when she found herself alone on a dark and dangerous road.

Since then she had been a bold adventuress, friend to a pope, and shared the favors of his lover, Lucilla, then wife to the lord Maeniel—the spoiled wife of the lord Maeniel. Did the gray wolf think his protection had changed her essential nature? If he did, the more fool he for believing such a ridiculous thing. She was the same Regeane who had adventured across the campagna and into worlds beyond to save Antonius’s life. The selfsame woman who had not hesitated to risk the stake and death by fire to help her friends. And the more fool she for letting him shake her hard-won confidence in the abilities conferred by her double state and push her into allowing him to journey alone into danger: an act of folly on both their parts.

Had he been captured? Was he dead?

She didn’t know. Whatever happened, she must act in the belief that something could be done to save him.

She turned, trotted along the lake’s edge, and began to climb up to the Lady’s Mirror. Again, as before, the rose and blackberry canes parted at her touch, but she was disappointed when she reached the pool to see the same sky and moon reflected in this water as in the pond lower down. If there was a gate here, it was closed. The woman was fearful.
What will I do? How will I reach him
? The ever-practical wolf said simply,
You are thirsty, might as well have a drink of water
.

Her muzzle dropped to the pool. But when her nose touched the water, she found she was looking into a moonless world just at the instant of first light, when the sky is a band of fire opal across the eastern horizon and there is breathless hush, all still, and the outlines of the world’s garden are suffused by the jewel-like light of the first sunrise.

Regeane didn’t hesitate. She dove forward.

The water closed around her soundlessly. An observer would have been disconcerted by the lack of a splash. The pool shimmered for a moment and then the moon’s light returned to the water, a disc bright enough to dim even the farthest stars.

The silver wolf’s head emerged from the water. Daybreak was graying the trees around this lake into visibility. She swam toward the shore. The tree roots reached the water and ran down below the surface and felt like slimy ridges under her paws as she scrambled toward the edge of the lake.

She pulled herself up on the bank and shook the water out of her coat. The world of the trees was foggy and dim. It was silent except for a faraway cry too distant to put a name to. Above her the trunks rose up and up until they vanished into a low fog bank. Not one side branch could she see.

She knew the sun was rising because the light grew brighter and brighter. She’d never seen trees like this. They left no spot of bare ground between the trunks and roots. They covered the earth the way scale mail formed the cuirass of a warrior, the roots and the trunks spreading out over the ground until they touched the roots of another tree, where they formed knuckles and turned down into the earth.

Things did grow here in the region of perpetual shadow. Soil trapped in the nooks and crannies of the twisting roots supported a magnificent variety of ferns and other odd plants the like of which Regeane had never seen before. Something that rooted itself in bark dropped long trailing stems covered by leaves so tiny and numerous that they looked like fur and were just as soft as fur when she stroked them, except that they were green, cool, and ever so slightly moist. Others were like the ferns she was used to, but many were larger, filling the holes between tree trunks with a dazzling array of green lattice and lacework. But however bewitched they were, none disguised the fact that the trees created an almost impossible surface over which something like a wolf would not be able to travel.

As a human she might be able to find passage between the massive trunks, but she suspected that one wandering among them might do so forever or until starvation and despair claimed him—or her. In the growing light, she saw the lake emerge from a cave or overhang not far from where she surfaced.

Regeane forsook the wolf and turned human. She dove back into the lake and swam toward the cave. As she approached more closely, she saw it was no cave but a gorge thickly overgrown by the gigantic trees. Their roots from above hung down into the water, forming a vast network as impassable as the bars of a giant cage. The trees drank as the water pulsed between these big, spongy roots and flowed an unguessable distance down a stair of rocks only just faintly visible through the mesh of roots.

No,
Regeane thought. She had been placed on a road and it led in only one direction. She was about to turn and swim back into the lake when she saw it. It was all red feathers, ruby scales, and teeth.

It fell on her neck with a screech and sank claws into her shoulder. She was wolf in one jarring, protective reflex and her jaws closed over the thing and ate it. But before she could think, it was gone.

Then the wolf turned and swam toward the outlet from the lake into a river. By the time she reached it, the light was much brighter. Clouds rolled above, moving swiftly as if driven by high winds aloft. The low mist that greeted the morning was gone, but the surrounding trees were so tall the clouds moved among them. Like mountains, they caught the ever-changing maelstrom of vapor. They admitted long shafts of light that tracked hither and yon over the fern forest growing in the embraces of giant trees.

Regeane the silver wolf followed the river. It led her in a winding course over heavy cobbles. It wasn’t deep and most of the time covered only the wolf’s paws. To Regeane there was no sight or smell other than that of damp air and a pleasant almost-rain smell that she associated with green, growing plants. She regretted that she’d eaten the red thing. That was a problem. But it had attacked her and the wolf was hungry. She wondered if it might poison her, but after a few hours of her trek, she decided that if it hadn’t bothered her by now, it probably wouldn’t. The only other animal life she’d run across had been small creatures that let out a small, bell-like sound when disturbed, then flew off, vanishing into the misty aisles of the fern forest that stretched out from the river for an unknown distance on either side.

Near what she surmised was noon, the river widened and expanded into another marshy lake. It was lined with water plants. Some she knew: the large, purple-pink Egyptian lotus, flowers borne high above the water; the blue spires of pickerelweed blooming in massive clusters near the giant tree trunks. Yellow cress abounded, and Regeane turned human for a few moments to make a meal of some.

She found a tree festooned with the long creeping plant covered with small, soft leaves. She took hold of one of the vines and discovered that at the terminal of each long furry stem, there were fruits. She tried one. The taste exploded in her mouth. Rich, tangy, and then sweet. She knew she would never be able to describe this to anyone. As with most things, they tasted of themselves alone.

She noticed while she was making a meal of cress and fruit—the sort of meal the wolf was ill adapted to make—that the clouds had begun to thicken menacingly. She let go of the vine and let herself drop back into the water. Wind moved over the surface of the water, ruffling it slightly. Reeds and sedges began clicking their stems. Regeane noticed they were bent, as shore grasses often are, molded by the prevailing winds. So this rain must come often. High above, lightning zigzagged across the sky.

Using the ferns as stepping stones, Regeane climbed back up the tree. The epiphytal plants grew everywhere on the deeply fissured bark, and the long soft stems of this particular plant, the one that grew the fruits, were stronger than they looked.

Higher up than the drooping creeper grew a giant fan-shaped fern with big, lacy leaves. It looked as if it lived on rain. A broad, leafy holdfast tied it to the tree, and the fronds spread out from its center.

When she reached a spot among the ferns, she looked down and found she could see through the clear water to the lake bottom. It, too, was covered by the massive roots that formed the forest floor. The life in this place seemed to be a gift of the great trees. They were quite literally everywhere.

The water plants that didn’t drift on the surface were rooted among the trees, and she saw the long shapes of some sort of fish sculling along the drowned tree trunks. The sky was almost black now; the whole world as far as she could see was wrapped in the green gloom that presages a rainstorm. Above, lightning flashed and a terrific thunderclap shook the water forest. Not far away one of the giant trees burst into flame. Then the wind hit and the rain battered her body. She was blinded for a second when the wind forced a mixture of smoke, steam, embers, and smoldering bark toward her, engulfing her body in the debris of the burned tree.

Regeane closed her eyes and ducked her head against the lace fern to shelter herself from the wind-driven rain. Only a few hundred yards away, in spite of the rain, the giant tree burned like a torch, hissing and spitting as the fire consumed the resin-filled heartwood.

It seemed to Regeane that some dark tower burned, because the tree was tall enough to carry the fire into the dark, rolling clouds high above. All around Regeane heard a rising cry of grief, a moaning shout of bottomless sorrow.
The wind
, she tried to tell herself.
The wind. It must be the storm wind
. But then the wind ended, the rain pounded straight down, extinguishing the fiery tree, and Regeane was surprised to find she was looking out at the world through an enclosure of fern fronds. She was wrapped in the soft fronds of the fern she rested against.

For a second she was frightened but then realized the fern fronds offered no more resistance than a fine lace dress. In fact, they covered her like a piece of clothing, warming her against the chilling rain. For a time she rested, dozing against the fern’s supporting clasp until the sky cleared and the overcast broke up into puffy, white shapes.

The fern released her, spreading its fronds to catch the intermittent sunlight. Regeane jumped down. Her momentum carried her to the bottom of the lake where she pushed off from the silt-covered roots. Just before she broke the surface, a school of fish swam by, their bright scales a flash of mirrored light in clear water. She felt a sudden knifelike chill, and when her head broke the surface she found herself wolf in the shallows of the river that ran out of the mountains past a fort and its town. The air was cold and the sun was going down.

Before dawn Hugo was pulled out of bed. He landed on the floor.

“I have him,” his guest shouted in his ear.

“Who?” Hugo asked.

“The wolf,” his guest shouted again. “Maeniel, the gray wolf.”

“No,” Hugo said, clutching his head.

“Yes!” His guest was jubilant.

“Did you kill him?”

“No. Why would I do a stupid thing like that?”

“Because he’s dangerous,” Hugo snarled. “Big, strong, and very dangerous. There was at least some truth in the tale I told Armine. I know. I saw him.”

“I don’t care who or what he’s killed, I want him. And besides, he will make your reputation at this court in Pavia. No small matter. Don’t worry. I will tame him.”

“Don’t worry,” Hugo muttered, beginning to dress. “That’s just what Gundabald said before he visited them the last time. They killed him and then one of them probably ate him.”

“Yes, the two women nearly got me,” Hugo’s guest said.

Hugo’s face froze. “You met them?”

His guest laughed.

“Oh, yes, we met. They killed my votary. She—the bitch— and a friend. I almost got her again, but that time she came with another woman. They took the cringing human that I was torturing away from me.

“Now I want my revenge. She will certainly come looking for him, but I will possess the lord Maeniel—and her in the bargain. Wait, see if I don’t.”

“No,” Hugo said. “Kill him. Or he’ll find a way to kill you.”

“Pig.” Hugo’s guest exerted all his strength again, but this time he failed. He’d wasted much too much of his energy on last night’s sexual encounter, and besides, Hugo was in mortal terror of Maeniel. That lent him strength he had no idea he possessed.

They began wrecking the room.

Hugo’s guest started hurling everything he could lift at Hugo. Hugo’s contribution to the brawl was to run madly from place to place, tripping over the furniture and yelling at the top of his lungs.

His guest snatched up the bedclothes and made a credible attempt to smother Hugo with them. Hugo escaped by crawling under the table. His guest then dropped the linens, snatched up the wine pitcher, and tried to dash the contents into Hugo’s face. He needn’t have bothered: it was empty. But the same could not be said of the chamber pot…

Hugo stood up and gave vent to a howl of fury and disgust that rattled the rafters, then he seized the table and threw it in the general direction of his guest’s voice and actions. At this point in the proceedings, Chiara opened the door.

“Are you both out of your minds?” she shouted. “My father is in terror, as is everyone else within earshot. I’m sure someone has called the watch.”

There was a sound of feet pounding, and a few seconds later a half dozen armed men dashed past Chiara into the room. Hugo had managed to get himself quartered in the palace and did not want to lose his place at the center of the action. He attempted to fob off the captain of Desiderius’s personal guard with a story about getting out of bed and falling over the chamber pot.

It was a story the grim-faced old soldier did not believe, and he gave a stern warning that the king kept an orderly house and to please minimize such disturbances in the future.

Chiara told the captain that she had heard the noises and ran to see what was the matter. This he did believe, since she was dressed in the four layers of clothing required by her virginal status and the very cold mountain nights. However, he did accompany Chiara back to her rooms and saw her safely inside. She ducked back out as soon as he was gone.

Hugo reeked of stale urine and his guest was still furious. “You cowardly bastard. You whimpering, sniveling excuse for a human being. You cock-sucking louse. You—”

“Stop,” Chiara whispered. “Abusing him won’t get you anywhere. Well, at least nowhere you want to go. If you rouse that old iron-pants martinet again, you can both look forward to spending the night in the street.”

This was true. Both creatures subsided.

“God!” Chiara whispered to Hugo, “You stink. Go bathe and remember you took—” She glanced around.“—
his
money and you made some promises.” She stamped one small foot. “Don’t tell me you aren’t prepared to keep them.”

“He’d better be,” Hugo’s guest said.

“Well,” Chiara said to Hugo. “What have you to say for yourself?”

“He—he—he’s captured that thing.”

“What thing?”

“The man-wolf,” Hugo said, and spat. “And he won’t kill it.”

Chiara looked taken aback. “Why not?”

“Because he, the lord Maeniel, has great powers, and I want control of him… and them.”

“And of his beautiful wife the lady Regeane,” Hugo supplied.

“Yes, there’s that,” Hugo’s guest stated flatly. “I fought her in Rome over a silly, sullen drab. Then again with my priest. She killed him, she and her kinsman, a Saxon lord. Though she doesn’t know him, he is her kinsman. And then in Charles’s camp, I was nearly bested—extinguished, I suppose you would put it.”

“Killed?” Chiara asked.

“Yes. I do not die, at least not the way you do, but I can be destroyed. And she and her woman Matrona nearly succeeded.

“Now… now I have him and want her.” He shook Hugo the way a dog shakes a rat.

Chiara stepped back because he splattered a little. There had been a lot of pee in the pot, and Hugo’s hair and clothes were wet.

“Wash yourself, pig.”

“I think you better do as he says,” Chiara told him.

Hugo whispered something really vile under his breath.

“Shut your filthy mouth,” Hugo’s guest said.

“You’re both against me,” Hugo moaned.

“No, I’m not,” Chiara said. “I, too, think it might be wiser to do away with this creature Maeniel, as you call him, but, but… you and I have accepted his favor and so bound ourselves. As I see it, we have no choice in the matter.”