The Wolf King (3 page)

Fine, thick feather ticks filled the bed box. They were covered by silk sheets and a heavy fur comforter.

She’d left no note, but her nightgown was thrown across one of the chairs by the hearth. He lifted it, brought it to his face, and inhaled deeply. It was permeated with her. She followed an ancient Roman custom, lavishing particular attention on it because she knew it especially delighted him. She rubbed oils of different fragrances into separate parts of her body. Her arms roses; hands citron; neck myrrh, as were her breasts; lavender, from the Frankish kingdoms, on stomach and thighs; sage and bay on legs and feet. A ravishing mixture of odors: food, fruit, and herbs at the same time.

There were four chairs near the hearth and four board games scattered on a table. Her attendants each had an accustomed chair. Matrona, the one facing the fire; Barbara, across from her; and Antonius, her chamberlain, with his back to the fire. Gavin also left traces near the hearth. Maeniel considered him with a touch of jealousy. He was a bull in rut and would take anything offered, but Matrona kept him on a short leash.

He could almost see them of an evening, laughing, drinking together, sharing a game of chess or backgammon. Gavin liked to gamble and sometimes played for high stakes, but Antonius, who usually took his money, kept him from plunging too deeply around the women. There had been an unpleasant moment when Antonius first came to the stronghold from Rome, with Regeane. Gavin accused him of cheating at cards and threatened Antonius with a sword. Maeniel wasted no time. He picked up Gavin and heaved him through the nearest window.

Antonius had been horrified. But Maeniel conducted him to the window—the same window he’d thrown Gavin through—and pointed out the red wolf struggling in a snow bank. “He doesn’t like it,” Maeniel said. “His fur is short. And it takes him hours to work his way back to the gates. He won’t draw on you again.” Then he ambled away, but before he left he asked Antonius, “Did you cheat?”

“Of course,” Antonius replied.

“Don’t,” Maeniel said.

And as far as he knew, Antonius hadn’t cheated again. But he won anyway, since he was—on his slowest day—at least twice as intelligent as Gavin—or any of the rest of them, for that matter.

Maeniel moved back toward the bed. Regeane and Matrona had perfumed the sheets and coverlet. In their world few people slept alone. When Regeane retired for the night, she normally took one of her women with her when he was not there.

Outside, the wind pounded the shutters. He could hear its whispering scream through walls five feet thick. “No,” he whispered. “No.” He didn’t care who had gone with her. He would leave tonight and… He turned and saw Barbara sitting in her chair by the fire.

His body jerked in a startled reply; he averted the change with an effort of will, a conscious effort.

“Barbara! You didn’t go?”

“No.” She shook her head. “You forget. I’m not up to dealing with the weather.

“Antonius is a lot younger than I am,” she said. “I tried my best to keep her here, but no one would listen, least of all Regeane.” She rolled her eyes heavenward. “And as for the rest, when I suggested they restrain her ardor for travel in howling blizzards, all I got were some very peculiar looks.”

“They can’t imagine interfering with another’s freedom of action,” he explained as he walked over and settled in Regeane’s chair across from Barbara.

“That Gordo,” she went on, “that fool nearly didn’t bother to tell me you’d arrived. He just happened to mention it as he passed through the kitchen on his way to God knows where.”

“He’s going hunting,” Maeniel said.

“In this?” Barbara gestured toward the shuttered windows.

“It’s probably not blowing as badly down in the valleys. Even if it is, he can always pile up somewhere and sleep.”

“At least she rode Audovald,” Barbara commented.

“That makes me feel better,” Maeniel said. “Audovald is a very responsible creature. That mare I gave her is a flighty female, too young and nervous—”

“If she weren’t a horse, I’d call her a bitch,” Barbara said. “She’s only interested in one thing—”

“I told her,” Maeniel said, “not until spring.”

“Er, yes,” Barbara said slowly. “You told Regeane—”

“No! I told the mare she might as well forget about it… and not to go stretching her neck out of the stall to lift the latch or try to jump over the half door.”

“Yes,” Barbara mused. “You told the mare… Amazing. I’d like to know how you did that.”

“I’ll show you sometime,” he answered absently. “But Audovald is sensible. He can find his way down the mountain in the dark. I’m glad he’s with her. What is this business about the meat? Why is Gordo going hunting? And don’t you find it disconcerting to live with us?”

“I don’t know why he’s going hunting, and no, I don’t normally find you or your friends disconcerting. Compared to the average husband, you’re a breath of fresh air. Any other man would probably be taking out his temper on the rest of us.”

“No,” Maeniel said. “I’ll just go after her. Right now.”

“In this? With night coming on?” Barbara objected.

“Doesn’t matter,” he replied.

The shutters rattled and slammed as wind battered the building.

“I hope none of them has started on the livestock,” he muttered as he was rising. “You tell them the sheep are here for wool and milk, the same goes for the bull, cows, and goats. No snacking, on pain of my grave displeasure. Got that?”

Barbara nodded. “I believe they’re all present and accounted for. The livestock, I mean. As far as your followers are concerned, I can’t say.”

“Need any money?”

“No,” Barbara said. “I promised I’d stay here while she was gone.”

“Fine. I’ll bring her home when I find her.”

Barbara followed him downstairs, across the great hall, down another flight of winding stairs, and watched him as he melted into the night.

It was bad, he thought as he made his way down the trail, but the wind was at his back and he could see fairly well. As wolf, he could travel even in a howling blizzard—as Barbara put it. But this wasn’t that severe a storm. “Of course,” he grumbled to himself deep in his throat, “there should be no storm at all. It is spring. The sky should be clear, not a pall of rolling billows shadowed by mist. The sun should be out during the day, warming the air and melting the frozen rivers and streams and turning the valley fuzzy green with new growth. But no, here is this last gasp of winter…” Abruptly he hushed himself. He stood stock-still. He waited for the wind to drop. It was blowing the thick ruff of fur at his neck up around his ears and battering his sensitive tympanic membranes inside with its harsh fluttering sound.

The sound came again. A scream, a horse scream, a cry of pain, terror, and distress.

Above the wolf the mountain towered, its top lost in cloud. Beside him on one side, an only half-seen gorge fell almost straight down to a river still locked in ice. A wolf can see in almost pitch darkness, but now there was little light for Maeniel’s eyes to use. He maintained his position on the trail by touch: the feel of his paws on the snow, his sense of wind direction, and the slope of the trail under his feet. He couldn’t travel any faster without putting himself in danger.

He pushed his pace. He knew he was heading roughly in the direction of the sound he’d heard. That was all he could do at the moment.

This was his domain.

His domain in the human, legal sense. As the man Maeniel, he held it, courtesy of Charles, king of the Franks. Those coming up and over the pass followed his road and his rules. He’d not heard of any travelers coming this way, so the horse must be his and with his wife’s, Regeane’s, party.

Audovald? He didn’t want to think so. No, Audovald was not simply a horse, he was an old and trusted friend, and Regeane—God, oh, God, Regeane had been on his back. He paused, a particularly vicious blast of wind flattened his fur, and the cold ripped at his skin. He shook himself violently to clear the snow from his pelt, thinking he had spent too long in the Roman city.
The mild climate there softened me. If it is Audovald, he will know my voice
. Maeniel lifted his head and howled. He gave the cry all he had, beginning in the deep baritone hunting call up and up, ululating through loneliness, then moving into the highest registers of grief and inconsolable longing, up, up almost beyond the range of human ears.

He was answered. The sound was a whistling neigh of deep distress.

Despite the wind and cold and darkness, he began to run. First bound was fine, but the second carried him out over and into nothingness.

“Regeane,” she whispered, and turned toward the bed.

“I wouldn’t look there, noble lady,” Lavinia said. “She was one of the abbot’s favorites and took poison. He likes them better dead than alive. So she’s still here, but smells bad and has bits and pieces falling off her now.”

“What?” Regeane whispered, knowing as she did so that , Lavinia was telling the truth. A set of preternaturally sharp senses warned her there was a corpse in the room, and it was in the bed.                                                                         

She lifted one hand to her face; she felt a sense of drunken disorientation, but she hadn’t been drinking. She’d been riding along a trail at the pass. The horse reared. Her last horrifying memory was the realization that the horse Audovald was toppling over. The earth that formed the narrow road must… must have…

Regeane touched her cheek. Her hand was cold, icy. The bite of her own cold ringers on her skin startled her and brought her back to full alertness. She moved as far away from the bed as she could.

“Is there no place cleaner and better favored than this… this death chamber, hereabouts?”

“No,” Lavinia whispered. “We women come here because it’s safe. Even if she—” Lavinia indicated the bed.—“isn’t the most pleasant company in the world, at least she won’t beat and rape us. Something I can’t be sure won’t be done by the abbot’s livelier companions.”

Yes,
Regeane thought. This was a nest of brigands, if not something worse.
Worse
, the idea troubled her clouded mind. What could be worse, this side of death? But just possibly she was not this side of death. Perhaps she had died when the horse… fell? She wasn’t sure it had fallen, but then—no. Yes, she was, she was sure: the horse fell. How far down was it into that valley? Someone, she couldn’t remember who, said almost a mile down. No, nothing could survive a fall like that. So she was dead. But how so? Since she could still feel, think, move, and yes—she took in a deep breath of the freezing air—yes, she could also breathe.

But she might as well be dead, she was so cold. She eased toward the low fireplace where the child Morgana crouched. The woman Lavinia picked up a log from a metal rack near the hearth and threw it on the almost-dead coals. It hissed, sputtered. The bark must have been wet. Then it caught and flamed up, sending a burst of heat into the room.

Regeane stretched out her hands gratefully toward the radiant heat rising from the newborn fire. She closed her eyes, seeing the hot redness behind her lids. The chimney smoke in her nostrils and clinging around her clothing had a far cleaner odor than anything in the putrid room around her.

“Ahhh, that feels good,” Lavinia whispered.

Regeane felt her mind was beginning to clear. “My… husband?”

“Don’t be a fool,” Lavinia snapped. “I’ll bet you don’t even know his name.”

“I don’t, but he tried to help me. He may even have saved my life. So where did they take him? And what are they going to do to him?”

“Hush. Be glad they have him to occupy them until morning. Let them finish killing him and tomorrow I’ll…” She turned back to where Regeane had been standing and gave a harsh gasp of surprise. The girl was gone!

The Saxon was not an optimistic man and, indeed, his worst fears had been confirmed. He’d heard—even among the Lombards—dark tales about this place, the so-called monastery at the foot of the pass. Those tales had bothered him not at all, for he had planned to avoid at all costs the functionaries of the Frankish king. He didn’t know if they would return him to his Lombard owners, but he didn’t plan to test their charity. Nowhere in this harsh world could a friendless, kinless man hope for shelter or even compassion. This was his firm belief, and nothing in his life had even begun to persuade him otherwise. Certainly not this experience.

He’d managed to get sufficient control of his reflexes to prevent his head being battered to a pulp on the floor, but he remained tied. On the way to wherever they were taking him, he simply concentrated on keeping his tender skull away from the cobbles; otherwise, he ceased to struggle and tried to let himself go limp. Tied or not, he was still entangled with the bearskin, and the thick pelt kept him from being bruised or brained by his captors’ careless handling. The thing was lucky, or maybe it wasn’t. He’d been captured wearing it, but then, it probably saved his life when he was sold to the Lombards. But in the slave pens, he’d had to fight three men over the damned thing—or was it four? The whack on the head had been hard… But then his speculations were ended, because he found himself in the monastery chapel. He was stretched out on the floor.

The
thing
—that was how he thought about it—the thing that giggled was examining him. A finger prodded him in several places. “You sure you didn’t hit him too hard?” it questioned the servitors who’d been dragging him along. “He looks dead.”

“Dead, my ass,” a voice he recognized as belonging to one of the men by the gate snarled. “Open your eyes, pig.”

Somebody, probably the speaker, drove a boot into his ribs.

The Saxon whispered the vilest epithet he knew and opened his eyes. They were gathered in a circle around him. He’d never seen a worse band of cutthroats. They were all scarred, missing eyes, hands, noses, even lips. But what sent a frisson of sheer terror through his body was the fact that the speaker, one of the men he remembered from near the gate, was the man his companion had stabbed in the throat. And not only was he alive, but he seemed in reasonably good health.