Wolfbreed (48 page)

How often had she relied on the ignorance or stupidity of her adversary? Surprise was more deadly than the wolf, as her rapist had discovered. But she had no surprise in the keep.

If, somehow, she could shed her bonds and stay unmolested for the few seconds it took for the wolf to come, she trusted in the wolf’s ability to take anyone. But that couldn’t happen while Erhard carried her, surrounded by swordsmen. Five swords would have pierced her body before Erhard’s body hit the ground.

When they emerged into the night air, she saw the wooden structure of the pyre, she saw the soldiers carrying torches, and she saw the Prûsans who would be forced to watch.

It was a familiar scene—the Order demonstrating the wrath of their God.

I was that wrath …

She saw Uldolf, and Burthe, and Gedim, bound and held in place upon the pyre. Uldolf faced her. Bloody. Beaten. The sight ignited a coal of rage in her chest, and she could hear the muscles and bones in her body groan and creak—

Not. Yet
.

Erhard carried her up to the last stake on the pyre, facing the crowd. She allowed three men to hold her up against the stake. She smelled the fear on all of them. They left the burlap in place around her body as they took a heavy rope and tied her to the stake. Through it all, she kept her head down, chin to her chest pressing against the torc, and she kept her limbs rigid against the pull of the rope.

The three men tightened the rope, but even though they knew what she was, and even though they expected her to try and
escape, they still—as everyone did—underestimated the strength of her frail human body. As they pulled the rope tight against her, they didn’t realize that her arms were behind, pushing against them, giving her space at least the width of her arm between the small of her back and the stake.

ldolf watched as Lilly’s master carried her up to the pyre. He wanted to scream at him, at everyone. If Lilly was evil, she was an evil created by them. An evil created in service to their own cruel God. If she should burn, those in the Teutonic Order should roast in the same fire.

He strained his neck to look out over the crowd beyond the torches. All those people, many who knew him, knew his family. Would they just stand there, watching them put to fire?

Whenever he met someone’s eyes, they turned away.

This is really going to happen
.

He turned to look at Lilly, and even she seemed to have given up, face down, singing quietly.

Of course she’s given up. She gave up when I attacked her …
She had been ready to die at his hand. Why would that change now?

He had only spared her out of the hope that he could exchange her for his family. That’s what he told himself.

He kept telling himself that.

Even if the Order had commanded her actions, that didn’t absolve her from what she had done to him. Even if it did, how could it excuse what she had done after, coming to him years later, taking advantage of his fragile memory …

“It’s bad to remember …”

She had been ready to die at his hand.

Why?

He wanted to scream at her. She was a monster, and a monster doesn’t show remorse.

Once Lilly was secured, the soldiers left the platform. The swordsmen who had accompanied Lilly out of the keep stepped back to take their places in the line of other soldiers with torches. The men with the crossbows remained in the front line, kneeling, loaded bows aimed up at Lilly.

Uldolf watched Brother Erhard take a position with the other knights of the Order. Of all the soldiers here, only six men stood bearing the black cross. None of the Teutonic Knights bore torches. That duty seemed reserved for the secular knights, their squires, and the few guardsmen remaining from the original garrison here.

The pyre now was the sole focus of a large semicircle of armored Christians. The ground around the pyre was clear for twenty paces in every direction, lest the righteous be singed by the flames. The Prûsans gathered behind the soldiers, staring at the pyre, their faces painted with the same disbelief that Uldolf felt.

They were Christians, weren’t they? They had pledged their fealty to the Order and the Order’s God. They were supposed to have the rights of any Christian—to speak their defense, to face a trial, to only face punishment ordained by law. Summary execution, being burned on a pyre without even the offer to recant; not even unrepentant heretics were treated this way.

A wedge of guards wearing checked colors of green and gold parted the crowd around the pyre. In their midst walked a large man wearing crimson robes trimmed with fur. Next to him was Sergeant Günter. Günter’s face was blank, unreadable, a stark contrast to the man’s enthusiasm when Uldolf had handed Lilly over.

Where are your epic stories of Prûsan prowess now?

Günter and the fat man emerged into the cleared area around the pyre. The fat one strode the ground as a man with no challenge
to his authority. He surveyed the audience and shouted something in German.

When he was finished, Günter repeated in Prûsan, “Eight years ago, this village was saved from pagan damnation.”

The man spoke again in German.

Günter translated. “The sword of God struck down the wicked, and delivered the truly righteous to the bosom of Christ. All of you who have accepted Christ should rejoice in your hearts that you have escaped the eternal fate of your unrepentant countrymen—the lake of eternal fire that awaits the heretic, the infidel, and the pagan.”

Günter did not match the animation of the fat man. When the large man spoke, it was with force, the guttural syllables hammering the listeners like physical blows, his arms waving, throwing his sleeves out like blood-soaked wings.

When Günter translated, it was emotionless and flat, as if he didn’t understand the words.

“The fight against the Evil One, against damnation, is ever waging. It is fought not just with the swords of the Order, but within the soul of every man, woman, and child here. There are those who profess obedience to God, but speak falsely. There exist those who have not renounced their idolatry. There are those who worship Satan in his many guises. Satan himself can walk among us, taking into his service the false, the unwary, the wrathful, or the ignorant.”

The robed man spun and pointed at Lilly, words hammering from his mouth as if his speech alone could kill.

Günter translated. “This woman is an agent of the devil, responsible for the deaths of many Christians. She holds inside her a soulless beast that exists only to feed on the blood of men. Those beside her are complicit in her crimes—harboring her, providing for her, and hiding her from the agents of God. As such, these idolaters will suffer her fate.”

Didn’t you harbor her, provide for her? Does she only now serve the devil because she refused to serve you?

The man turned toward the audience and said something low and threatening.

“As will,” Günter continued, “any who are found to have raised their hands in opposition to God and the Church, or hinder those who wield the authority of the pope.”

The robed man allowed the words to sink in. He continued, less forcefully, and waved toward the cluster of guards who had brought him and Günter forward. The men parted to reveal a young child.

Hilde!
Uldolf wanted to scream, but the gag still blocked his mouth, and the ropes were so tight that he could barely breathe.

“… show that God is merciful as well as strict,” Günter was in the midst of saying. If anything, his words were even flatter now, drained of every hint of humanity. “This child, while equally complicit in her family’s actions, will be spared so she can be brought into the full grace and forgiveness of Christ.”

This is mercy?
Uldolf thought.
Forcing her to watch her family burn? To watch him die, as he watched his sister die?

The man with the robes took Hilde’s hands in his own, pulling her forward. Hilde looked up at the pyre, as if just seeing it for the first time. She called out, “Mama! Ulfie!” She tried to run, but the man held her too tightly. He shouted something in German that Günter didn’t translate.

The soldiers threw the torches. Uldolf watched as they all cut burning arcs against the night sky trailing sparks. The torches struck the base of the pyre, landing in the tinder at its base, scattering across the platform.

Hilde screamed.

Flames spread around the base of the pyre, and Uldolf could already feel the heat licking his face, the smoke burning his eyes. He looked at his sister, and saw her staring wide-eyed, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Please, Hilde, close your eyes. Don’t watch this
.

The man holding Hilde spoke, and Günter translated, “Let us all pray now for this child’s soul.”

The man started chanting something in Latin, and all the Christians lowered their heads.

Lilly raised hers.

Interlude
Anno Domini 1231

illy wrote her master’s will across the stronghold of Mejdân, scrawled in the blood of the wicked. She met the enemy in dark narrow hallways, rending limbs and flesh. They swung swords and knives and clubs, but in most cases, simply stepping out of the shadows to show her true form was enough to shock the heathens into ineffectiveness. The panicked blows that did land wouldn’t have been mortal even if she had no gift of healing.

She slaughtered her way toward the center of the building, leaving no one alive behind her to raise a warning of God’s approaching wrath.

Almost no one.

Even with blood on her lips and the scent of death filling her lungs, she paused at a door. Whatever was behind it had been important enough for a Prûsan guard to block her way, until she relieved him of his head. She could hear breathing behind it, slow and steady. Someone sleeping.

Her clawed hand rested against it, and she made a low growl in her chest that never emerged from her throat. Her claws left small trails of blood smeared across the wood, but before she pushed the door open, the room’s occupant groaned in his sleep.

The voice was familiar.

Uldolf?

She snatched her hand away from the door as if it had burst into flame. She stepped back, over the body of the headless Prûsan slumped at the threshold.

No
. The one word was all that her confused thoughts could muster. She would not allow her master’s will to fall over this one boy. It mattered little, anyway. Her master wanted fear, and dead swordsmen. Both he would have in great measure without Uldolf’s body.

“Sleep,” she whispered to the door, turning to tear her way into the heart of the stronghold.

t should have ended there.

It should have ended with her half-human, half-lupine palm resting on Uldolf’s door. She should have stood there and realized the full measure of what she was, what her master was, and what it meant to serve his God.

Some part of her mind did realize it. Something in her recoiled at the thought that Uldolf was here, in the midst of the damned, condemned by her master’s God. Inside her, there was a nine-year-old child named Lilly who understood.

However, there was another Lilly—hunched, red-furred, and snarling; a Lilly born to endure the attentions of her first master; a Lilly who was cold and cared little for pain, or sadness, or joy. This Lilly tasted the blood of man and in it she tasted her master’s favor and a vent for her rage.

This was the Lilly who entered the chambers of Reiks Radwen Seigson of Mejdân.

ive people were in the chamber when she slammed the door open. Two guards rushed her in a futile charge that ended with their torn limbs scattered in the midst of piles of broken furniture. It left three alive: a woman, a child, and Radwen Seigson himself.

The woman fought as Lilly reached for the child, but one blow tore free the intervening limb, and another tore the woman’s face open and dropped her to the ground.

Radwen tried to hide the child behind himself, but Lilly tore the small body from his arms and threw it away, back toward the door.

She slammed the pagan chieftain against the wall and started to tear him apart.

As the warm blood splattered her muzzle, pain slammed through the small of her back, impaling her and causing her muscles to spasm. The pieces of Radwen’s body fell to the ground as she spun in a fury, grabbing her attacker’s sword arm.

The small limb was torn free from the attacker’s body even as she realized who it was.

Everything inside her stopped as the world froze.

Nothing moved except Uldolf, stumbling away from her, blood pouring from his wrecked shoulder. His face shone a pasty white in the lamplight.

He took a step backward, feet tangling in the woman’s corpse as he fell backward. He looked at the woman and his mouth opened in a terrible soundless scream as he pushed backward with his feet, smearing a new trail in the blood on the floor.

She stared at the gaping wound of his shoulder as if it had been
torn in her own flesh. Her master forgotten, she took a step forward.

He stared at her with eyes wide and empty. He screamed at her, “Stop it! Please, stop it!”

Somewhere inside her, a voice said,
God wants this
.

“No,” she whispered.

Uldolf stared through her, tears cascading over pasty skin. “Stop it. Please, stop it.”

My master wants this
.

She reached out and touched his cheek. Her inhuman fingers left a trail of blood across Uldolf’s face. “No. Not you.”

It is what I am
.

Uldolf violently shook his head, escaping her touch. His voice was weaker. “Stop it. Please, stop it!”

“I wasn’t supposed to hurt you, Uldolf.”

It is what we are
.

“No, it isn’t.”

You as much as I, child
.

Lilly shook her head, her own tears mixing with the blood on her face. She turned and ran.

hen her master came for her, she had recovered from the shock. Her thoughts of the boy Uldolf were locked away safely, along with the feelings of the other Lilly—the one who remembered lullabies and who had learned to swim. The one who idly thought that the weak pink body she wore now was somehow “real.”

Lilly told herself that she was no longer a child, and she would never cry again.

Over the following years, she served her master very well, the wrath of his God personified. She knew nothing of mercy or remorse,
and told herself that she cared for nothing, much less the village of Mejdân and the boy who had lived there.