Wolfbreed (13 page)

During the story, Gedim caught himself hoping that no harm had come to Uldolf’s cloak. They didn’t have the resources to replace something like that right now.

But the thought shamed him.

There had been a time when that kind of thing didn’t matter so much. Gedim had once been part of the warrior clan that ruled the village of Mejdân, the younger brother of Radwen Seigson, and heir to a wealth of land, slaves, and cattle. When Mejdân fell, he had been one of the few baptized that the Teutonic Order, in their strange Christian logic, had considered of “noble” blood. So, the Order had allowed him to retire with his farm, his cattle, and a few of his slaves.

Over the past eight years, the Germans had ended up with the great part of the wealth he had been allowed to keep—if not through taxes and tithes, then simply in barter so he could keep his family fed through winter.

His last ox had died during the past winter, and Gedim was loath to admit that it was the meat from its carcass, and the grain they would have fed it, that had helped keep his family fed through this winter.

He didn’t want to think about next winter.

Just when Uldolf finished recounting the details about his difficulties with his cloak, Gedim’s wife came out to call them in for dinner.

They followed Burthe into the cottage, which was filled with the smell of barley stew. Gedim thought he could smell the remnants of the former occupant of the skin Uldolf had been cleaning.

Hilde was up and smiling, the first time Gedim had seen her out of bed since a week before he’d left for Johannisburg. She sat on a stool by the hearth, where a stew pot hung over the coals on an iron hook. Hilde had a look of intense concentration as she stirred the pot with a long-handled wooden spoon.

The newcomer sat at the table. Burthe had managed to clothe
her in a threadbare surcoat and a ragged chemise that had been destined to be recut for Hilde to wear. Through the loose neck, Gedim could see the edge of the bandages on her shoulder. More bandages wrapped her head, so he couldn’t see the damage Uldolf had told him about. Her hair was long and red. The way the girl smiled at Uldolf gave no sign how close she had been to death.

Gedim shook his head at his new houseguest.

“So, what’s your name, child?”

She looked at Gedim and frowned.

“I don’t think she can understand you,” Uldolf said.

“No? You’ve been speaking Prûsan, I take it?”

He looked at the girl and repeated in German, “What is your name?”

She didn’t respond any better.

“That is inconvenient.” He eased himself into the chair at the table opposite the girl and studied her. “Where did you come from?” he asked. The girl might have been all of seventeen, but the frustrated expression on her face made her look younger. “How are we going to get you back home?”

She opened her mouth as if to say something, but it only came out as a grunt. She shook her head, and looked down at the table. She seemed close to tears.

“You see—” Uldolf started to say.

Gedim held up his hand and said, “Shh, son.”

When he had been a warrior, before this end of Prûsa had become a province of Christendom, he had seen men suffer from head wounds, and those who survived were never unchanged. The evil effects of such a blow could damage a man in ways more profound than simply losing an eye or a limb.

“Child, you do understand me, don’t you?”

She looked at him with piercing green eyes. She tried to speak again, but her lip trembled and she appeared on the verge of tears.

“Don’t try and talk,” he told her. “It’s the blow, I think.”

Uldolf sat down and looked at her. “She’s mute, then?”

“I’ve seen head blows on the battlefield steal more than speech from a man.” He turned to the girl. “I wonder if you know how lucky you actually are. Not just that you survived those wounds, but that my son found you.”

She looked at him with her head cocked as if she might be trying to understand him.

“What do we do with you?” Gedim said. “You cannot tell us who you are, or where you belong—”

“She belongs here!” Hilde pronounced, walking around the table and proudly placing a steaming bowl of stew on the table. “She’s our guest. Mama said so.”

Burthe slid a spoon in front of him, and Gedim gave his wife a look that asked, rhetorically, Who exactly is the head of this household?

She smiled back with an expression that said, We both know the answer to that question. Now eat your supper.

Gedim pulled his spoon toward him and said, “Well, if that’s what Mama said.”

The girl sniffed the bowl, then looked at the four of them as Hilde set spoons down in front of her and Uldolf.

“Go ahead,” Uldolf said. “The guest breaks bread first.”

She licked her lips, looked at her spoon, then looked down into the large common bowl again.

“It’s all right,” Uldolf told her.

After looking back and forth between Uldolf and the bowl, she finally reached down and shoved her hand into the stew.

“Ew!” Hilde said.

Even Burthe seemed taken aback as the otherwise attractive girl shoveled handfuls of the stew into her mouth.

Uldolf looked mortified.

For his own part, it took a supreme effort of self-control for Gedim to keep from erupting in laughter.

“I guess she was hungry,” Uldolf finally said.

She certainly was. When she looked up from the bowl it was with a quizzical expression, as if she was wondering why no one else was eating. Burthe took the opportunity to reach over with a rag and wipe off her face.

The girl glared at Burthe, which made Gedim want to laugh all the more. “Prûsan,” he muttered, chuckling. “Red hair aside, the girl is pure Prûsan.”

“What are you saying, Gedim?” Burthe gave him a harsh look.

“I’m saying she just needs to see an example of proper manners,” Gedim said, raising his spoon.

edim walked out of the cottage and found Uldolf standing out in the field, staring up at nothing. The sky was cloudless, and stars coated the moonless sky like a layer of frost. The last claws of winter bit at his skin as he walked up next to his son.

“You should come to bed.”

“I know.”

“You did good.”

Uldolf shook his head. “No, I didn’t. I was a coward. I was a few minutes’ walk from the town gate. But I carried that woman five miles rather than try and get help there, just because I didn’t want to get caught for poaching a damned hare.”

Gedim reached out and placed a hand on Uldolf’s shoulder.

“She could have died because of that,” Uldolf said.

“Son, has it occurred to you that she might have been a victim of the soldiers in the garrison there?”

Uldolf turned and looked at him, frowning. “You think so?”

“If someone was going to just abandon a woman to die in the shadow of Johannisburg Castle, who is the most likely culprit? Some random brigand, who can safely ply his trade an hour’s ride away from any law at all, or the only men in the area who have little to fear from Christian law?”

“You think they could?”

“Son, I’ve seen war. I’ve also seen the men that the Order uses. They hire anyone willing to buy their God’s favor with blood, gold, or a few mealy words. The Prûsans they employ—A Prûsan in the service of the Order is little better than those brigands you’re concerned about.”

“But—”

“A man who looks for his own flaws will always find them,” Gedim said. “I know you. You are not a coward. If you really believed you could trust the soldiers in Johannisburg, I know you wouldn’t have hesitated a moment to go there, whatever you might have been accused of. Now come back. Hilde needs her sleep, and I don’t want you waking her by crawling into bed at some ungodly hour.”

“Father?”

Gedim turned around, hoping that the boy was done belittling himself.

“How bad do you think it is?”

“Her head?”

Uldolf nodded.

“I don’t know, son.”

“You said you had seen men injured like that.”

Gedim sighed. He didn’t talk much about his years as a warrior. Not just because he had little use for the glory that men tried to ascribe to the brutish business, but it showed how he had fallen in his own eyes. When he should have fought, in the end he had capitulated and accepted baptism. Though, looking at the man Uldolf had become, he couldn’t come to regret the decision.

“Most died quickly,” he told his son. “But I saw two men survive. One was struck blind even though his eyes were undamaged and still reacted to light. The other could speak, and knew his life up until the blow fell, but he lost the ability to remember anything after. He would greet everyone by saying, ‘Well met, I have not
seen you in ages,’ even those he broke bread with that morning. Months after, you would talk to him and he would be convinced that he had just woken up from being struck down in battle.”

“What about her? I thought at first she spoke some other language.”

“I don’t think she speaks any, at the moment.”

“So she lost her memory, like the man you remember?”

“Not like him. He would talk to you, and remember who you were, if he had known you before the injury. She hasn’t lost her ability to remember. From her looks, she remembers
you
quite clearly.”

Uldolf turned so Gedim couldn’t see his face. “Like a child, an infant, then.”

“If so, she is a quick one. I’ve not yet seen a baby that could learn the use of a spoon that quickly.”

“Maybe she’ll learn to speak again.”

“Maybe.” Gedim took Uldolf’s shoulder and led him back toward the cottage. “Now Hilde needs her sleep. We can talk about this later.”

ight days after the carnage at Johannisburg Castle, Sergeant Günter Sejod had the dubious honor of greeting a full company of fresh soldiers, secular knights, squires, turcopoles, and various men-at-arms—all led by seven armored men bearing white mantles over their shoulders, displaying the black cross of the Order of the Hospital of St. Mary of the Germans in Jerusalem.

Günter had expected the Landkomtur to return with some dramatic gesture on behalf of the Order. Christian charity aside, he couldn’t help but picture it involving his head parting company with his shoulders.

He had
not
expected Landkomtur Erhard von Stendal to return with nearly fivescore men. When the Landkomtur had left his monstrous prisoner in Günter’s inadequate care a fortnight ago, he had originally been heading for campaigns east with only six other knights, a few retainers, and the redheaded woman.

The redheaded monster
.

The mass of men rode inside the castle walls and made camp in the bailey, in the shadow of the stone keep where so many had recently died.

Riding at the fore was Landkomtur Erhard himself. He rode his mount across the bailey and drew the animal up within a few paces of Günter. One of Günter’s surviving men, arm still splinted from when the cell door crushed it, reached up to hold the horse for the Landkomtur to dismount.

Günter walked up and held himself at attention. He watched as the Landkomtur surveyed the half-dozen men who remained. Erhard’s frown was ominous.