The Wolf King (43 page)

Chiara was staring in horror at the amorphous thing fighting desperately for existence, coiling, twisting like a maddened bundle of serpents threading its way in and out among the living green.

Again the wolf felt the sadness she’d sensed in the tent when they fought before. The grief at what was going to be lost, a sense of anger that it must end and in this way.

Chiara struggled toward the shadow. “You take your life from us. Take mine. I love you. I’ll let you in. Come to me. Don’t, don’t die. I love you.”

Not enough,
Regeane thought. And the bear won. What force could not compel, trickery could not accomplish, and threats could not achieve, compassion did.

And Regeane and Chiara both let him join them.

The wolf and Matrona faced off in the shallow water at the edge of the lake among the trees. The bones of the planet leaped out here, but the rock ridges were softened by moss, or something that looked like moss. It grew in thick mats between the scattered trees and threw up fruiting bodies densely covered with fine lacework enclosing what looked like jewels.

Matrona became woman to make a meal of the moss’s berrylike fruits. She sat in the shade on a green velvet cushion of the same plant and began to ease the sweet fruit from its enclosing matrix. They looked rather like grapes, red, purple, green to almost black, but didn’t taste like grapes. They were both sweeter and more spicy.

“Want to quarrel?” she asked Maeniel.

“No. How do I get back? She may need help.”

“The answer is you can’t,” Matrona said. “Not until the journey is completed. Besides, she has help. The dead called her during her journey to rescue you, and they will escort her until she either succeeds or fails in her mission. Let her go, eagle wolf. It is her time. She must find out who and what she is.”

Maeniel sat down near Matrona and watched the water rippling across the moss-grown rocks and looked out over the lake. It was beautiful in the cloud-scattered sunlight, an expanse of open water reflecting the changing cloud mountains moving over its surface.

“I want to keep her,” Maeniel said. “I love her.”

“Keep her safe or keep her stupid?” Matrona asked, laughing.

“Both, if necessary,” Maeniel shot back.

“Well, you will fail in both cases ultimately, and she will not be grateful for your efforts.”

“So you say,” he answered, and was wolf again.

“Don’t challenge me, my lord,” Matrona said.

Maeniel, more massive even than Matrona, stalked toward her stiff-legged.

“Don’t challenge me. Not just because you might lose— and you might—but because you are wrong. You chose this course, the path of human advancement under this king. I warned you that you had all a man could desire. Good friends, a beautiful wife to spoil, prosperity, and even a modicum of power and safety. More than most mortals will ever attain. But it was not enough. You must join the struggles of the masters of war. Well, now you have attained that objective also. The king awaits you. You took the oath. Keep it. I would wander into the mountains, abandon the stronghold, see him fail, but you—who are my leader—chose to accept him. Honor your oath, wolf, else you will regret taking it.”

Maeniel turned human again. He reached for one of the fruit-laden stalks and twisted it.

“Stop that,” Matrona said as she felt the upsurge of distress all around her. “The moss puts a lot of effort into its fruiting bodies. Don’t damage them. Take what you like as far as the fruit is concerned, the moss doesn’t care. Spreading them even helps it.”

He gave Matrona another one of his long, slow looks. “You talk to the moss.”

“You talk to Audovald. You carry on long conversations with him during which you discuss all manner of farm business. Who is pregnant, who will give the most milk, and which one or another will generate particularly fine product for cheese making.

“Not to mention meddling in the personal affairs of your stock. What stallions are favored by the mares as a group for leadership and protection in the high pastures, which of the females—goat, cow, sheep, the stable cat even—is feeling peckish and may have a difficult pregnancy this year, and I cannot think what else. So why should I not speak to moss? Do not offend it. The creatures of this place offer us hospitality, protection, and direction. They advise us on the best routes to travel. Go to your king. You have chosen him against my advice. I will serve him, pleasure him, and protect him out of loyalty to you.”

“I am humbled,” Maeniel said.

“You are not and will bully Regeane as much as you can as soon as she returns. You have spent too much time as a man and are learning hypocrisy, not to mention greed.”

The Saxon, waiting in the place where he promised Regeane he would, woke in the night. He could not tell why at first, then he saw the three horses. They were grazing near the trees at the edge of the clearing. One, the dark, nondescript, leggy bay, he recognized as Maeniel’s Audovald.

He sat up in his blankets. “Horse, what are you doing here?” the Saxon asked.

Audovald raised his head and prodded the neck of the horse nearest him.

A small animal, the Saxon thought. But then in studying the animal more closely, he saw it was not small. It was simply so well proportioned it seemed small but was actually larger than Audovald. It was outlined against the brilliant sky, its head against the stars.

It studied him for what seemed a long time, while the Saxon yawned and rose to his feet. When he was standing, it galloped downhill toward him. For a second the Saxon had the uneasy feeling that it meant to trample him, but it pulled up short just as it reached him, then reared high above him. If the creature meant him harm, the Saxon couldn’t imagine why. But then it seemed that it didn’t, because the hooves dropped harmlessly to the ground, and it pranced about in front of him rather the way a dog does when it’s time to hunt, when it wants to greet an absent master or just would like to play.

“Friendly?” the Saxon asked.

The horse nuzzled his face, the nose soft on his cheek. The Saxon patted the sleek neck and the horse knelt, going down gracefully on one knee.

“What?” the Saxon asked, astounded.

The horse blew through his nostrils. It sounded impatient. Then, when he didn’t react, he was nipped gently but firmly on the instep of one foot. The Saxon was an adequate horseman but not a devoted one. He threw a leg over the horse and it rose with him seated on its back. Then it simply walked around his fire and strolled down to the creek for some water. It drank its fill. The Saxon kneaded his fingers in the horse’s mane.

How to control it?

When the horse was finished drinking, it stood expectantly. The Saxon pressed lightly with his right knee. The horse moved left. Pressure with the left knee, the horse moved right.
How wonderful
, the Saxon thought. He tapped with his heels at the animal’s flank, and the horse began to trot. The Saxon leaned forward. The horse’s pace increased. And then they were going like the wind. They crossed an open meadow, then the horse slowed as they passed into the trees, but once on a game trail, the horse’s pace increased again until they passed the tree line and burst out into the open. He could hear the meadow grass crackle under the beast’s hooves; though winter was over it was cold enough that the dew still turned to ice. The horse galloped powerfully across the high mountain meadow and then, just at the edge, he stopped and looked out across the world.

The mountains rose all around the Saxon. The snow-covered peaks seemed to glow from within with a light of their own. Above, the arch of the Milky Way flowed, a river of light. The deep valleys below were drowned in hazy shadow. No human light intruded into his vision. Except for the wind and the silence, he and the horse were alone.

The Saxon never knew how long he and the horse stood absorbed in the presence of eternity, but at length he began to find the air cold, and the unending wind seemed to suck the warmth from his body. He felt stiff and half-frozen when he exerted the gentle pressure necessary to turn the horse, leave the high meadow, and return to his camp.

When he reached it, he found the fire built up. Maeniel and Matrona were present. They were both dressed.

The Saxon saw that the other horse was Matrona’s mare.

The Saxon dismounted and began to rub his mount down with his own mantle. When they drew close to the fire, he saw the horse was a strawberry roan with darker legs, nose, and tail. He found that he needed neither halter nor rope to lead him. It was sufficient to place a hand on his neck and indicate direction. He was rubbing the legs when Maeniel approached him.

“Have you something to say to me, my lord?” the Saxon asked.

They both knew what he meant. Regeane, with the Saxon’s contrivance, had followed anyway.

Maeniel sighed. Whatever the Saxon’s motives, he was faithful and honorable. No, this was between himself and Regeane. “I have a message from Audovald,” Maeniel said.

“Audovald?” The Saxon’s eyebrows rose. “Audovald is your horse.”

“He is.”

The horse dropped his nose again and brushed the Saxon’s cheek as if to say, “Listen.” The Saxon rose. He was a big man but the horse was two handspans taller at the withers than he was.

“Audovald,” said Maeniel, “told me the horse comes from a place far away where the warriors are friends and companions to their mounts and do them no evil. But his human was killed and the family sold him far away. He would not wear bridle nor saddle and never any bit. So he was tortured, kept awake, poorly fed, and beaten to try to break his spirit. He fled and could not be captured, but it was hard for him to live alone. Humans had always cared for him.

“Audovald met him in the high pastures. He told him he knew a human who would understand him. You are the man, or,” Maeniel said, “should I ask, are you the man?”

“I am,” he answered. He turned to the horse. “There will be only trust between us.”

“A saddlecloth might be advisable,” Matrona said. “Protect his back, your ass.”

The horse blew softly.

Audovald turned to Maeniel.

“He accepts,” Maeniel said.

The horse gave a cry and reared, dancing around the fire.

“He is happy,” the Saxon said. “He is no longer alone.”

“Neither are you,” Matrona said.

“Ask him his name,” the Saxon said to Matrona.

“He gives you leave to name him when you are ready,” she answered. “In the meantime, you ride to the other army, the one commanded by Bernard, Charles’s uncle. The gray wolf will lead you. Tomorrow he must attack at Susa. The wolf can show you both what path to take.”

Bernard, Charles’s uncle, was still at Ivrea. At this moment he was sitting beside a fire in the open beneath a tall mountain peak. Despite the fire, he was still cold, so cold he was wrapped in a heavy cloak, the all-purpose garment of the people from slave to emperor. A man without this combination blanket, overcoat, raincoat, weapon concealer, and general all-around means of survival was unfortunate indeed. In fact the general term among the Franks for poverty was
naked
, the naked back in particular. Bernard’s cloak was undistinguished, rather like the mantles of all the soldiers around him. He’d long ago learned the folly of decking himself out splendidly in battle.

You stand out.

The enemy runs you down and kills you.

The added incentive for killing you, besides winning the battle, is the possession of your magnificent outfit. One aristocratic kill could make the average foot soldier—who usually didn’t even own a good sword—a wealthy man.

He’d learned this from Charles’s father, Pepin the Short, a man with a permanent grievance against the world because of his height. Any overdressed soldier, no matter how highly connected, was automatically run through bogs, swamps, rivers, lakes, and even duck ponds, or set to—in the event of drought—digging latrines for the army. Pepin’s permanently jaundiced view of almost everyone and everything made him a difficult enough individual to deal with on a day-to-day basis without anyone going out of their way to annoy him. Bernard had learned to don protective coloration early.

Bernard was worrying about Charles, or rather worrying about what Charles would do to him if he couldn’t attack the Lombard forces at dawn as he was supposed to. Charles, it was told, was somewhat better-tempered than his father, but he was, roughly speaking, about twice as ruthless. Neither Bernard nor any of his officers cared to think about what Charles would do if they failed to keep their appointment tomorrow.

The officers, young men all, showed a tendency to drown their sorrows at supper, so they were sleeping. But Bernard, who had neither the head nor the stomach for heavy wine drinking, sat wakeful and worrying. When Charles had attacked at Susa, Desiderius had predictably pulled his forces away from Ivrea.

Bernard had arrived and found the token garrison Desiderius had left behind completely unprepared to meet him. What followed had been more of a slaughter than anything else. Something, someone, had managed to stampede the garrison’s horses. He and his men overran their position in what had been a somewhat worse-for-wear Roman fortress. The defenders might have surrendered had they been asked, but Bernard didn’t bother to inquire. He killed them all.

Since then things had gone badly. Bernard had started for Susa with an entire army. It was lost. He had six officers; they were drunk. He had thought he could find guides. As payback for the slaughter at the fortress, Bernard found that everyone in the vicinity of the fortress abruptly decamped at the sight of his army. Then the fog, a springtime feature of warm lowlands near cold mountains, closed in. All armies easily panic, and this army began to hover on the verge of uncontrollability. Bernard was afraid to push them too far, and so here he sat, freezing his ass off by this miserable fire, surrounded by drunken and exhausted soldiers, and wondering what the hell he was going to do in the morning.

Since he considered himself well camouflaged, he was surprised when a man strode out of the darkness and hailed him by name. Bernard’s hand tightened reflexively on his sword hilt. He was alone despite the veritable carpet of men sleeping around him, and for a second he wondered if he was going to be murdered in the middle of his army without anyone being the wiser, when he recognized the Saxon.