Wolfbreed (22 page)

“Damn.”
Uldolf cursed as a spasm went down the length of his back. As the muscles tensed up along the length of his body, he thought,
Blasted idiot. So you worked slower than you wanted. When was the last rest you took?

Uldolf called himself a fool three times as the rake fell from his hand. He tried to straighten up, reaching for the knot in his back, and gasped, losing his balance. By the time he was windmilling his arm and falling into the freshly seeded loam, the embarrassment hurt worse than his back.

“Ulfie!”

“Oh, no,” he muttered, spitting dirt and barley out of his mouth.

Lilly was on her knees, pulling him out of the furrow. He hoped to all the gods that his father and his sister weren’t watching him being pulled out of the muck by a woman half his size.

“I’m all right,” Uldolf protested.

Lilly clutched him to her chest, embracing him so hard it fired the pain in his back again.

“Please,” Uldolf gasped.

She buried her face in his neck.

“I’m fine, Lilly. Really, it was just a knotted muscle.”

She mumbled something into his shoulder. It sounded like, “N-no hurt.”

“What?”

She let him go and leaned back so he could see her face. Her eyes were red and puffy, and there was a black streak on her cheek where her tears had washed some of the dye from her hair. She grabbed his shoulders, and with a very serious expression, said, “No hurt, Ulfie. No hurt!”

“I told you, I’m fine.”

She shook him. “No hurt!”

“Lilly, I’m fine.” He was beginning to wonder if she actually heard him. She looked into his face, but he didn’t know if she was actually seeing him. He tried to sound reassuring. “Stop this, before my family sees us. It’s embarrassing.”

She stopped shaking him, hands on his shoulders. Her lip was quivering, and he reached up and wiped one of the tears away.

“There’s nothing wrong. I don’t even feel it anymore.” He leaned forward, caressing her cheek. “So,
please
stop.”

Lilly closed her eyes, and abruptly pushed him away with all her might. Uldolf flew backward into the neighboring furrow. “What?”

“No!”
Lilly screamed. She stood up, hands balled into fists.
“No!”

“Lilly?” Uldolf tried to get upright, but his hand slid in the dirt, refusing to give him purchase.

She shook her head violently, her hair flying into a disordered cloud around her face. She struck her legs with her fists, still screaming, but if there were words in it, Uldolf couldn’t make them out.

“What’s wrong?” Uldolf heard the first trace of fear in his own voice.

he same two words ran over and over through Lilly’s mind.
Ulfie’s hurt. Ulfie’s hurt
.

She ran to him, terror clutching at her heart, her stomach sick with every bloody memory she’d tried to forget. She clutched at him as if she could pull him out of the mud like he pulled her out of the frigid water.

No hurt. No hurt. No hurt
.

Everything became mixed up in her head. Her master, her sister Rose, Hilde, Ulfie, Uldolf …

She pulled Ulfie up off the ground. He was the only thing left that made sense. The only thing in the maelstrom that was her world that she was sure of. She shook him, trying to tell him.

No hurt
.

Then she heard him say, “Please, stop.”

Her thoughts froze. She couldn’t think, couldn’t speak. All she could do was feel.

In her head she saw the blood. Smelled it.

She heard the screams.

And she knew what she had let the other one do, in the name of her master’s god. And it terrified her.

edim was rocking the plow back, trying to dislodge it from a stubborn patch of clayey earth, when he heard Lilly scream.

He whipped around at the sound, instantly convinced that something had happened to Uldolf. Looking across the field, he didn’t see his son at first. Gedim’s pulse raced and his tongue became heavy with the copper taste of fear. Lilly was hunched over, screaming, shaking her head back and forth.

Below her, he finally saw his son sprawled in the fresh soil.

“Uldolf!”
Gedim didn’t know what had happened, but he started running toward them.

ama!” Hilde cried, jumping down from her place on the wall overlooking the rear field.

Burthe had been planting herbs in the small garden by the side of the cottage. For once, she heard the problem at the same time as her daughter. Lilly sounded terrified, in agony, like every mother’s worst fear compressed into a single hysterical wail.

Burthe dropped the spade she’d been using and turned around toward the field. She saw Gedim already running from the other field and she saw Lilly wailing, but her heart froze when she saw no sign of her son.

ldolf backed up, pushing himself along the furrow with his legs. “Lilly, you’re scaring me.”

At the sound of his voice, she turned around and glared. Tears still streaked her cheeks, but her eyes were wide, and her lip was curled in something that was almost a snarl.

What had come over her?

“It’s me, Uldolf. Don’t you recognize me anymore?” The snarling expression receded a fraction, replaced by confusion.

“Please, stop it.”

She shook her head violently.

“Uldolf?” She blinked as if she was suddenly surprised to see him. Her expression had changed, too, the terror and the inexplicable snarl replaced by something else.

Sadness.

She spoke again, and her voice carried none of her earlier hesitancy. “I am so sorry.”

Lilly looked down at him, and he saw the same deep sadness in her eyes. She no longer cried, as if what she felt had passed beyond tears.

“I am so sorry,” she repeated, the depth in her eyes now reflected in her voice. “I can’t—”

Her voice broke, and she turned and ran for the far wall.

“What?” Uldolf finally got his arm purchase to help him get to his feet. “Lilly!” He called after her. “Wait!”

She ran in a headlong sprint for the edge of the field. When she reached the stone wall around it, she vaulted it without slowing. He
ran after her, but by the time he reached the wall, she had vanished into the woods.