Wolfbreed (20 page)

“What?”

“I will never hurt you, Ulfie.”

Uldolf thought of how panicked he must have looked, running outside. “You just scared me, running off like that.”

She buried her head in his shoulder and whispered, “Ulfie.”

“Just don’t do it again.”

She didn’t say anything more as he walked her back to the cottage. Apparently, the one sentence had taken a lot out of her.

hat killed it?” Burthe asked.

Gedim looked up from the carcass and shook his head. “I don’t really know. The tracks here look like a wolf, but they’re too
big, and there aren’t enough of them. You’d need a whole pack to take on a bull this size—but a pack would pick on an animal that’s already sick or injured, or a calf.”

“A mountain cat?”

“Maybe.” Gedim stood up and looked around.

“You think it’s still here?”

“No,” Gedim said. “I think we would have heard it, whatever it was. I’m surprised we didn’t hear it make the kill in the first place.”

“I’m not, the way you snore.” Burthe turned to look at Uldolf leading the girl back to the cottage. “And it appears that Lilly heard it.”

“Um.”

“Well,” Burthe went on, “this should certainly stock the larder for a while. It seems that the gods have favored more than our guest, this time.”

“Uh-huh.” Gedim stared off toward the woods.

“What is the matter, husband?”

Gedim shook his head. “Nothing. It’s obvious what happened. Some animal attacked this elk off in the woods somewhere, and this bull was strong enough to stumble out here, and our guest managed to scare the animal off …”

“It seems her name’s Lilly.”

Gedim looked at her a moment. “Oh, yes.
Lilly
scared the animal off.”

“Are you sure nothing’s wrong?”

Gedim shook his head. “Yes. And you’re right. This is a stroke of luck—as long as we butcher it before some Germans walk by and decide we’re poaching. This meat needs to be dressed and stored today. Have Uldolf bring the wheelbarrow and some knives out here.”

s the day progressed, the dressing and disposition of the carcass took all of Gedim’s attention, so much so that he completely forgot the unease he had felt earlier. As he had said, it was obvious what had happened. The elk had stumbled into their field and collapsed from its wounds.

Despite the marks he saw, leading back into the woods …

The elk was nearly sixteen hundred pounds. There wasn’t any predator Gedim knew of that could have
dragged
it here.

y midafternoon the next day, despite Uldolf’s best efforts, about half the tree was still there. Gedim had done his best to work around the obstruction, but it was now at the point where the fallen tree was holding up the plowing. So now, with the sun halfway down in the sky, both Gedim and Uldolf were working to clear it.

They worked in silence, removing the last few branches from the tree’s crown. After nearly an hour Gedim said to his son, “You’ve been awfully quiet lately.”

Uldolf looked up from the limb he was chopping. He shrugged and looked back down at his work. When it appeared that Uldolf had nothing to say, Gedim went back to the limb he was working on.

He was finding it both frustrating and a source of pride that his one-armed son was disassembling the tree almost twice as fast as Gedim himself was. Almost to the point that it might actually go faster if Gedim wasn’t in the way.

They worked in silence for a few more minutes before Uldolf asked him, “That elk. That was a good stroke of luck, wasn’t it?”

“The best we’ve had in quite a while.”

Uldolf nodded, chopping harder. He was shirtless, and his upper body was coated with sweat. “If it hadn’t …”

Gedim lowered his axe. “Son, ‘might haves’ are pointless.”

Uldolf kept at the limb. It was nearly twice as thick as his thigh, and Uldolf was halfway through it. Each blow of the blade threw up splinters and wood chips. They adhered to Uldolf’s sweaty arm, making it look as if he had sprouted a thick coat of blond fur below the elbow.

“What would we have done with her?” Uldolf asked, breathing the words between blows of the axe. “We were nearly out of food.”

“Not ‘nearly.’”

Uldolf shook his head and stopped chopping. After a moment, he asked, “Did you ever talk about giving me up?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Am I?” Uldolf shrugged his right shoulder. Only a slight hollow marked where an arm had been. “A crippled child? That had to be a huge burden.”

Gedim sighed. “You’ve been our son since we took you in.”

Uldolf started attacking the branch again.

“Now, hold on.” Gedim walked up so only the trunk of the tree was between them. “Stop!”

The axe stopped moving, but Uldolf didn’t look up.

“I
should
toss you out of the house just for talking such nonsense.” Gedim folded his arms. “If you so much as hint to my wife that she doesn’t love you as much as the woman who bore you, I will personally beat you within a hair’s breadth of living.”

Uldolf nodded.

“We took you in because we loved your first family, and we loved you—Look at me, you self-pitying brat.” Uldolf raised his head, and Gedim could see tears. The sight filled him with anger, frustration, and an aching sadness. “Damn it, son, are you going to doubt me now?”

“No, Father.”

Gedim stood there while Uldolf resumed chopping the branch. He was dumbfounded about what to do next. He thought those wounds were long healed. He had long ago dropped the “adopted” when he thought of Uldolf. Uldolf was as much his son as if he’d been born of his own flesh.

Uldolf had certainly come into their house with the requisite blood and tears. The memory was seared in Gedim’s brain; he could still taste the smoke, smell the blood.

He could still see his uncle’s chambers as he had found them. He remembered stepping over the eviscerated corpse of his five-year-old niece Jawgede, Uldolf’s little sister. He remembered the blood streaking the walls, the tapestries hanging in rags. He remembered the small tearing sounds as the soles of his boots adhered to the blood on the floor.

He remembered a woman’s hand, bejeweled and manicured, discarded in a soldier’s empty helmet; a boot holding a leg from the knee down, somehow standing by itself; the head belonging to the chieftain of Mejdân, Radwen Seigson, staring at him from beneath half a table.

And he remembered finding his ten-year-old nephew, Radwen’s son Uldolf, bleeding to death from his shoulder.

Gedim didn’t remember exactly how he had gotten the boy out of that hell, but he remembered the boy’s delirious pleas. The same two words, over and over again.

“P-please, stop.”

Uldolf never described what had happened in that room, and Gedim had never asked. Uldolf had said more than once that the fever from the wound had stolen much of his memory. Though sometimes Gedim heard his son cry out in his sleep, and wondered if Uldolf simply didn’t
want
to remember.

ldolf felt something snap under his axe, and he took a jump backward as the weight of the limb tore it free of the small amount of wood holding it upright. It fell next to him with a satisfying crunch.