The Wolf King (21 page)

The land around the river was turning quickly into fen and marsh as the river continued its snakelike course through the wetlands. The silver wolf found herself swimming as often as walking. She was sighting a lot of ruins. They were slowly being engulfed by the marsh. Most were only tumbled stone overgrown by willow, water oak, giant reed, and cattails, but from time to time a roofless house, the inside filled with green weeds, would stare at her with eyeless windows from the other bank.

In the distance the sun was sinking into a ledge of smoky clouds riding just above the horizon. The air was warm now in the valley of the Po, and occasionally she was troubled by a mosquito. The pools were filled with waterfowl, ducks and geese of all kinds, but the hungry wolf had no idea how to hunt them.

The woman, however, was able to admire them as they took wing at the mere sight of her. She was wondering if she had another hungry night ahead of her and metaphorically shaking her head over the deficiencies in her wolfish education, when she saw the town.

The ruins spread out on both sides of the river. Broken stones, solitary columns, fragments of a forum with its shattered temples long robbed of anything of even the slightest use to anyone—a melancholy sight in the slanting golden light of the late afternoon. The woman sighed. The wolf tested the air.

For brigands,
she told her companion. Ruins were not charming but sinister places, often unpleasantly populated after dark. The more dangerous outcasts of her world often found shelter in them.

The wolf, still in the shadows of the overgrown riverbank, tested the air again. No, nothing, but this place bothered her. Why? She had no idea.

She pushed into and among the shattered stone blocks that once housed the town. No, nothing human could live here. All that remained of the town was part of the marsh already. She found herself leaping from one small stone island to another. She paused on one, wider and fatter than the others, to get her breath and look down into the water. A big fish rested in its shadow, slowly moving its fins to hold its position in the sluggish stream. Regeane had learned fishing after the manner of wolves from Matrona. Within moments, she’d caught, killed, and consumed her dinner and was relaxing on the big stone block, basking in the warmth of the late afternoon sun.

Now, a den.

The Romans had bridged the river here. The arches were still standing. Roman engineering being what it was, they were probably good for another thousand years. The river hadn’t destroyed the bridge but spread around it, engulfing the town. Where the bridge once terminated near the forum, it passed under an arch topped with what once must have been a guard post overlooking the drowned forum. A few leaps from block to block and a short swim brought her to the guard post.

The guard post had been reached by a narrow stone stair that now began in water and went up the top of the arch onto a platform. The wolf couldn’t climb the stair, but the woman could—and did. It was difficult and the stones were slippery and damp, but when she reached the top she found she could survey the countryside for miles around. She was also dressed in webwork of white, flowered waterweed.

Well,
the woman thought,
not so strange
. She’d been covered by fern on her journey through the other world. The waterweed was equally fresh smelling and beautiful.

The sun was touching the edge of the horizon and slightly obscured by the sooty clouds, but their shadow was more than compensated for by the metallic purple, red, and gold reflections thrown back by what she could see from here were wide wetlands, both open and forested, inhabited by a rich variety of birds, fish, and no doubt deer, wild boar, and other magnificent game. And far away in the distance, downstream, she saw the distinct towers of what she knew must be Pavia, faintly picked out against the blazing colors of the sunset by a few pinpricks of light.

Regeane lifted her robe of waterweed from over her shoulder and let it fall back into the tarn below; became wolf; turned once, twice, three times, then four; lay down, dropped her brush over her face, and slept.

Pavia was the breadbasket of the Lombard Kingdom. Here, on estates where slaves toiled raising crops on reclaimed wetlands, most of the wealth of this rich kingdom was concentrated. The Romans had adorned the city with the best of their manufacturers. Most of the people who lived in this jewel set in a countryside of magnificent abundance were either wealthy or slaves here to tend the needs of the wealthy or care for their property when they were absent. The city showed this, being a collection of magnificent villas, expensive public municipal buildings, and recreational establishments.

No one fortunate enough to enjoy amenities such as the racetrack, the arena, or the extensive and comfortable baths worried in the least about the ring of respectable but poor timber, stucco, and brick homes and shops that ranged the city, clustering on the inside and outside of the walls. The streets here were narrow, the houses were not spacious villas, and the people who lived in them worked for a living and were not in a position to enjoy the theater, the arena, and the baths.

The Lombards were of course not Romans, but when they took the town, they decided that living the way the departed Roman inhabitants had was a suitable prize for the conquerors. But by now the system was beginning to fray at the edges. Slaves were more expensive. The poorer class of the town were proving more difficult to control—much more demanding about their legal rights, for instance—than the rather cowed humiliores of Roman times. But the direct presence of the king and court were to some extent holding things together.

The hypocaust in the baths was still fired. Gladiators rarely fought in the arena, and the bishop kicked up a terrific fuss when one of them happened to get killed. Not because he sympathized with the poor man but because it should not be entertaining to watch blood be shed. But so long as they stuck to pagans, the elderly prelate didn’t get in too much of a snit. And if all else failed, there were always public executions and runaway slaves to be punished, so the Lombards had been able so far to preserve some aspects of Roman culture. And since slaves could still be purchased to be worked to death on the vast estates, and the crops still brought in a good price, the Lombards felt they were doing their best to preserve classical society.

Maeniel was brought into the forum at the center of the city. He was still in chains. The cold-eyed commander of the king’s guard was taking no chances. Maeniel had never seen Desiderius before, but he was immediately sure the tall, graying man looking at him from the steps of a converted temple of the goddess Roma must be the Lombard king.

The concept of the goddess Roma was a late classical invention. By then the entire empire had been a jackdaw’s nest of odd religions, including not a few cults of quite human deified emperors. Someone, it is not recorded who, swept the whole mess together and decided that if there were disputes about how state worship was to be conducted, the best and safest thing to do would be to throw a few sacrifices and a lot of incense at a personification of the Roman state apparatus from time to time; thus, if questions arose as to where the loyalties of individuals or groups lay, they could cover themselves by saying they paid homage to the goddess Roma.

She was a sort of generic stand-in for antique gods, dead emperors, the whole gang from Olympus, local spirits evil and good, fairies, trolls, kobolds, incubi, succubi, gnomes, dwarves, tommyknockers, and anything and everything that happened to go bump in the night, whose propitiatory rites might have gotten somehow neglected, overlooked, ignored, or just plain forgotten. The temples looked good and the votary wasn’t worshiping anything or anyone who ever could have existed, and only those really crazy Christians could possibly object to tossing a little incense on the coals.

This particular temple was now a Christian cathedral. The goddess, cosmopolitan that she was, probably never turned a hair. But the new bell tower looked awkward near the fine, late Roman concrete, marble, and brick basilican edifice.

Maeniel sighed and dismounted. The chains dragged.

Twelve rather steep marble steps led up to the large double bronze doors. The captain of the king’s guard poked the business end of a spear at the small of Maeniel’s back and said, “Move.”

Maeniel, not wanting any closer acquaintance with the spear,
moved
, up the steps, across a narrow porch, and through the bronze doors. The bishop, or someone dressed impressively enough to be a bishop, aspersed him with holy water and blessed him as he passed. Since Maeniel didn’t give off sulfur fumes, burst into flames, or vanish in a cloud of smoke, both the bishop and the king decided it was safe enough to follow him up the aisle into the church.

The king took a seat on one side of the altar and the bishop on the other. Maeniel looked at each one of them. The look was wolfish, but they apparently didn’t take it as such. Behind him, Maeniel heard the sounds of people crowding into the church.

The Lombard lords and ladies had priority. They and their servants—carrying fans, chairs, stools, smelling salts, nosegays of herbs against contagion, and last but certainly not least, food and drink—got all the best seats near the altar. Behind them the townspeople pushed their way into the spaces left clear by the nobility until every nook and cranny of the building was packed full.

Maeniel waited. In the interim, he bowed his knee to Christ, saluting him as the most powerful of all gods and paying his respects. Then he rose to his feet. The chains clanked when he went down and again when he rose; otherwise the church was silent.

The king chose to speak first. “My lord Maeniel, what are you doing in my kingdom?”

Maeniel answered truthfully, largely because he’d spent a lot of time trying to come up with a convincing story to explain his activities to the king and hadn’t, even after a good many hours of serious effort, been able to think up an even halfway believable story.

“Your majesty, I was endeavoring to spy out the disposition and number of your troops in order to bring the intelligence to the Frankish king Charles.”

“This is not a secret,” Desiderius replied. “I have reinforced Ivrea and Susa. He must come by one route or the other. I will be waiting for him.”

“So I saw,” Maeniel said.

The king nodded. He was older than Charles by some years, his dark hair was threaded with gray, and an air of weariness and doubt hung about him.

He will lose,
Maeniel thought.
I can see it in his face. He doesn’t have the self-assurance he should have to defeat the Frankish king. He doesn’t have the self-assurance any king must, to maintain his position. I have chosen the right side. Whatever my fate, this man is doomed
.

“An honest answer,” Desiderius said.

“I know,” Maeniel said. “I couldn’t think of a good lie.”

A soft titter of laughter swept the church.

“Very well,” Desiderius continued. “What then am I to think of the other stories told of you?”

“Oh,” Maeniel said. “What stories?” He tried to sound guileless. He didn’t quite succeed.

“That you are a powerful sorcerer in league with the devil, able to change your shape at will from man to beast and back again, and have come not to gain knowledge of my military plans, but to take my life,” the king said.

Maeniel took a deep breath and answered as well as he could. “My lord king, I have no designs on your life. I am a soldier, not a paid assassin. And I know nothing of the devil. Nor, if such a being exists, am I in his debt.”

Someone laughed.

Maeniel recognized Hugo. “Oh, well,” he said. “I thought you’d be here, Hugo. Why don’t you step out where I can see you?”

Hugo laughed again. “I think not.”

“You’re smart,” Maeniel said. “Because if I ever get my hands on you—”

“Be silent,” Desiderius said. “A clever answer, my lord Maeniel, but only a partial one. If you please—answer the whole question.”

“I am not a sorcerer,” Maeniel said. “And you may place what trust you like in the tales this deluded fool tells, but I would not lay a wager on the veracity of any statement coming from his lips.”

“Very well,” the king said. “Then you deny his charge?”

Maeniel felt the blood turn cold in his veins. The king lowered his eyes and wouldn’t meet his gaze.
A trap
, Maeniel thought.
A trap
. He was wearing the mantle they’d given him last night. Naptha. At a touch of the wax light in Hugo’s hand, it burst into flame.

The wolf took him with the full strength of mindless mortal terror as his clothing burst into flame. Maeniel’s fetters and flaming clothing landed in a heap on the church floor, and the gray wolf was restrained only by the iron collar around his neck.

The chain brought him up short and at midleap, and the captain of the king’s guard brought the butt of his spear down hard on the wolf’s skull. Hard enough to kill, but there was enough life left in the wolf’s body to bring him through the change and leave him lying on the church floor in the human shape, bleeding from both the nose and mouth and deeply unconscious.

The silver wolf woke to the tramp of feet on the bridge and then remembered there were no human feet within fifty miles, and yes, there were arches but no bridge.
The dead
, she thought.
This ruin is a place of the dead, as Cumae was
. She rose up woman without willing it and found herself looking at the dark world.

She could see the bridge as it once stood and, when she turned, the city forum with its marble square was intact, but all except the city was black. She could see no moon or stars but only the Roman cohort on the bridge: their commander and the men who followed. She was deeply puzzled by their appearance. They must be Roman, the temples and the forum all proclaimed a Roman place, but the armor and weapons they carried were archaic. Triple-ring breastplates, spears, single-edged chopping swords, long laminated wooden shields—the exteriors were painted but there were no colors in this world— helms with thick cheekpieces and feather crests. A wolf’s head bared its fangs at her from each shield. The centurion, the leader, carried no shield but wore three feather crests.