Gonji: A Hungering of Wolves (21 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

Lightning split the sky above the treetops, and an ominous rumbling of thunder vibrated the ground beneath their feet.

“Let’s get on with it,” the cavalry captain from Normandy ordered impatiently.

The gravediggers glanced at Jacques Moreau, and it seemed to the magistrate as if they were blaming him personally for having to be about this ghoulish work. All were apprehensive at the site of the hidden grave, for it was clear that something had churned the earth freshly—it was not as the rebels from Lamorisse had left it when they’d consigned Rene Farouche to the ground. Even the cruciform planted there hadn’t done its warding work.

Moreau felt the sweat trickling down inside his sleeves, the gusting wind chilling him to the core. A minor cavalry captain had been the field marshal’s response to the town’s plea for representation from Paris. And
he
seemed anxious to be done with this business. Short-tempered and imperious, the captain might almost have been hand-picked by the Farouche themselves.

A sense of doom hovered over the gathering. Jacques felt a wild urge to flee. It was all too clear what would happen when the grave was opened and the mouldering corpse of Rene was exhumed. They’d be accused of murder, in spite of the fact that they’d set this up themselves; their irrational accusation about lycanthropy would militate against them. It was as simple as that. Why hadn’t Moreau seen it before?

Because he was a poor leader and administrator, that was why. And now the whole town would pay.

The horses grew skittish, save for that of Roman Farouche. The duke’s delegate sat smugly astride his black charger. By some fiendish method of control over the animal, he’d caused it to lower its head and stare unwaveringly at Moreau alone, like a bull about to charge.

Jacques’ heart hammered in his breast. He began to think ragged-edged, panicky thoughts about who would care for Guy.

One of the gravediggers gasped and lurched backward. The townsfolk were afraid to approach the grave to see.

“Would someone sober care to explain this?” the captain asked peevishly.

At the bottom of the grave lay a large timber wolf. They’d switched corpses.

“It is simple, Captain,” Roman Farouche explained archly. “These misguided gentlemen have grown disenchanted with the administration of the province. In their hostility they’ve fashioned superstitious nonsense as a rallying point for their rebelliousness. Like as not, they got drunk one night and vented their spleen on this poor creature—which, by the way, is poaching in this province. This dying species is protected. Ah, well…” He shrugged as if assessing the work of delinquent children.

The captain wheeled his mount and led his escort away in an ill humor. The townsmen began to back away from the grave site. Moreau could feel the vindictive gazes of those who’d opposed this scheme. Even Wyatt and Darcy remounted slowly, despondently, seeing nothing left to gain by remaining here.

Moreau felt desperately alone.

“Magistrate—” Roman Farouche rode up beside him, his expression unfathomable.

“Oui?”

Roman sighed. “Why do people do such things? Look again.” He indicated the grave.

“Non.”

“I said
look again.”

Moreau experienced a powerful thrust of psychic power that eroded his will. He turned and looked.

The rotting corpse of Rene Farouche now reposed where the wolf had been. Moreau’s hand went to his mouth to stifle an outcry. He glanced about. No one else seemed to have noticed. Instead, they looked from him to Roman questioningly.

When next he peered down, the wolf had again replaced the dead shape-shifter.

“Illusion, you see,” Roman said casually. “You must be careful of what you believe in.” He held out a hand, gesturing toward the road.

Moreau’s heart seized up for an instant. “
Mon Dieu
—you…
bastard!”

He glared up at the thinly smiling Roman. For a second, Moreau had seen his dead wife—alive again and in the arms of Rene Farouche. Then the ghastly apparition had vanished.

“I would hold my temper in check if I were you, Moreau,” the fiend told him. “You’re in serious trouble as it is. You’ve either murdered the son of a great lord—but that’s silly, isn’t it?
Non,
we’ll call it the unlawful slaying of a wolf. One of my father’s private stock. But he’s in a generous mood, of late. You see, his prodigal son returneth—that’s an old biblical prophecy fulfilled,
n’est-ce pas?
At any rate, it’s happened. And he may spare you punishment beyond a stiff fine and a tax increase, if you’ll answer me truthfully one question—”

Moreau felt a vain hope, trusting now even in the word of a Farouche, if it meant escaping his looming fate.

“Oui, monsieur?”

“Tell me what you know about a woman named Claire Dejordy.”

Moreau’s lips quivered as he spoke in a low voice, relating the woman’s disappearance, telling a tale that was completely true…until a scant few days ago. And all the while he spoke, Moreau was forming a resolve born of fear.

Nothing mattered anymore. Not these people, not the town. Only the safety of his son.

* * * *

The Wunderknechten from the gravesite returned to Lamorisse to find the town in turmoil. Three Huguenots had been murdered during the day by unseen assassins. There’d been a reprisal. Two Catholics on their way to evening services were shot to death by pistol fire from a nearby alley. As usual, the garrison troops had seen nothing.

Moreau and his band brought the angry populace to order, then the magistrate called a meeting at Chabot’s inn. The
auberge
overflowed with a press of anxious citizens, dozens listening at the door and windows as Moreau tried to settle them by appealing to the toleration principles of the Wunderknechten without ever naming the forbidden movement.

A sudden cloudburst preceded the arrival of Serge Farouche and his terrifying retinue of surly mercenaries and obedient wolves. The latter creatures behaved like trained hunting dogs, heeling and assembling at Farouche’s spoken commands and curt gestures. The townsfolk gave them wide berth, clearing away from the front of the inn like an uncovered warren of rabbits.

The burly, bearded marshal dismounted along with two of his cutthroats. Bringing his wolves into an alert seated posture with a slap of his thigh, Serge cut a swath through the crowded inn with his piercing silvery eyes.

His resonant bass voice enjoined fearful silence, though it scarcely ever rose much above a whisper. His gaze fell on a table near the center of the floor, and the party seated thereat scrambled to clear it for him and his men.

“There’s been violence in Lamorisse,” he said slowly, like a father about to reluctantly punish wayward children. “Violence done to Huguenots. This
is
a Huguenot province, by the last decree of the Grand Seigneur…”

Wyatt Ault and Darcy Lavelle sat next to each other near the bar, staring at the floor.

“I forgot,” Darcy whispered. “It’s my turn to kill
you
again.” But he’d been heard by more than Wyatt.

“You have something to say?” Serge Farouche spoke without looking at Darcy; yet everyone in the
auberge
knew who was being addressed.

“Je suis fache
—sorry, sir,” Darcy said. “I only said that you’ll no doubt discover the guilty parties.”

“Is that right?”

Moreau was overwhelmed by the tension in the inn. He feared for his friend but still was surprised to hear himself say, “I’m the magistrate here, sir. It seems the guilty parties have already been struck down in a vendetta.”

“Two for three, Magistrate?” Farouche smiled without humor. “You see, news reaches me wherever I might be in my jurisdiction. But two for three is not quite an eye for an eye, is it? You must trust in your leaders to deliver justice to—”

“If a third Catholic must suffer unjustly, then take me.”

Reynald Labossiere shambled toward him from the bar. Gabrielle Chabot whispered harshly behind him, but he paid her no heed. Serge Farouche raised a hand and pointed at him without looking.

“This can only be Monsieur…Labossiere. Turning yet another cheek. Come closer, Labossiere.”

Reynald swallowed and shuffled up to the table. Farouche grabbed his face in a huge hand and squeezed, gouging his cheeks and eyes. “You don’t have balls enough to murder anyone, Labossiere, but I
like
having you around. You’re a good example to these people—” He released his grip and crashed a backfist blow into Reynald’s nose, knocking him into a backward stumble.

“Stop it!” Gabrielle Chabot shrilled, catching up a bottle and hefting it menacingly. Her father grabbed her from behind.

Blood poured from Reynald’s nose. Serge Farouche rose from his seat with the slow-creeping portent of a black cloud enveloping the sun. He rotated his gaze till it riveted Gabrielle.

“Bring—her—here.”

Voices hissed. All through the inn, hands searched out pistol grips and blade hilts. Farouche and his men glanced around them, abruptly surprised to find themselves on the level of their subordinates now rather than lording over them.

Suddenly the wolves crowded at the door, emanating a chorus of growls. There was a long, hostile moment of stillness, full of the promise of imminent mayhem.

Then: “This town—Lamorisse,” Serge said. “It’s becoming bold. Your actions have been noted, and your lords even now consider your fate. If you’re looking for trouble, then look for Huns. There are Huns about. Highwaymen. I can smell them. You have my permission to kill them on sight, if it’s trouble you’re—”

There was a scream from outside. A man was stumbling about in a frenzy, clutching at his arm. He’d been bitten by a wolf.

“Someone must have stepped on one of my pets,” Serge said. Then he seemed to take note of the setting sun. There was more urgency to his movement as he walked his men through the parting crowd and remounted to ride off amidst pounding hooves and the howling of the wolves.

“Well, we’ve done it now,” someone fretted above the tense muttering.

“Well,
I’m
ready to have at these monsters,” another man stormed.

“Christ, Gaby, what’s
wrong
with you?” a woman called over to the concierge’s daughter, who ignored her to attend on Reynald with a linen cloth.

“What the hell did you do that for, Reynald? Are you crazy or just stupid?”

“Oh, leave him alone. We’ve one stout Christian spirit left among us anyway—”

“Nonsense—we’re free of the burden of self-flagellation. Christ suffered once for all—”

“Perhaps it’s a good thing,” a Catholic countered. “He’ll gain us all indulgences for Purgatory.”

“All right, stop it, everyone,” Jacques Moreau shouted. “We must be united in this business—Catholic and Huguenot alike. We are God’s children against an evil enemy. Reynald, are you fit enough?” Labossiere nodded into the blood-soaked rag as Gabrielle continued to chide him.

“Where’s that goddamn wife of yours? Probably riding with them—”

“Jacques, tell us what happened at the grave—”

“Did the field marshal come?”

But Moreau was searching out Henri Chabot, who was gesturing with reassurance as he cast his eyes up toward the rooms on the second floor.

* * * *

I
can smell them…

Wilfred Gundersen and Claire Dejordy hid in a small storage room on the second floor of the Chabots’ inn during the unfolding of the events below. When Wilf had heard Farouche’s words, he’d experienced the eerie sensation of having been personally singled out. He’d gripped the hilt of Spine-cleaver, preparing for an attack that never came.

He exhaled a relieved breath now as the predatory band pounded away.

“Mon Dieu,
I’m sorry we came here like this,” Claire whispered, clinging to Wilf’s arm for support. “Lamorisse has become an awful place. Worse than when I left. If only I knew what’s become of Simon. I know he came back. I’m so afraid for him.”

“All this will change,” Wilf said forcefully, nodding with an angry determination. For he’d seen what evil, rapacious powers could do to one’s homeland.

“What can we possibly do against them?” Claire asked forlornly.

Wilf’s jaw set with fierce pride. “I know what Gonji would do.”

* * * *

Young Guy Moreau heard Mme. Lavelle humming in the parlor as he watched the world go dark and the rain slant across the view the cracked-open shutter afforded him. He hoped his father would come home before night lay deep over the land. Mme. Lavelle was very nice to him, but he always preferred to sleep at home, near his
pere,
where he knew that nothing could frighten him.

Lightning flashed. The face that appeared at the bars beyond the shutter caused him to lose control of his bladder. But he didn’t scream. He just stared at those sharply pointed horns, at the wicked grin on that devil’s face.

The devil who had tried to get him at the bridge. The one from his nightmares.

“Do you know me, little
garcon?”
the satyr Belial whispered to the quaking child. “I
know
you do. Your papa did a very bad thing, and one day…soon…I’m going to get
you
for it.” The satyr emitted a laugh of hellish glee. The shutters slammed open. Guy staggered back with a shrill outcry.

But the satyr was gone.

Blanche Lavelle rushed into the bedchamber and closed the shutters against the rain that lashed in through the bars.

“Oh, my goodness, Guy! I’m so sorry. You’re going to get—
Guy
—” She hurried to the quaking boy’s side. “What
is
it?”

But the youth seemed not to notice her. Instead he just kept rapidly repeating the prayer his mother had taught him to chase away things that scared him in the night, looking for all the world as though he’d seen the Dark Deceiver himself:

“Heart of evil / Hie away / Choirs of angels / Thy power stay…”