Wolfbreed (52 page)

Johann shook his head. “Your swords are not enough?”

“The … creature …”

“I’ve seen what that thing can do. If it was here, you would already be dead.”

“Sir Johann!” one of his men shouted.

Johann turned around to face the man. He had already grabbed three crossbows, but as Johann turned, the man dropped them and reached for his sword. The man’s eyes were wide, his skin pale, and he faced the door to the armory.

Johann turned to face the doorway himself.

At first he didn’t see anything but the light cast across the corridor by the lanterns in the armory. Then he glanced at the floor. In the hall, in front of the door, a slick of blood was slowly edging into the light.

illy had been following the bishop’s men up the stairway in the keep. She had paused when two men ahead broke off from the others to go into a room by themselves. She waited for the other men to disappear higher into the keep, leaving the two stragglers alone.

She did not want to leave two armed men behind her as she went after Hilde. She would have to deal with them. Just when she was about to charge the room, she heard more men ascending the curved stairs behind her.

Instead of ambushing the two men, she backed herself into an embrasure between the top of the stairs and the door. She flattened herself, fur against stone, in the alcove alongside the arrow slit, in the deepest shadow next to the light shining from the pyre outside.

She watched as a knight led six men down the corridor past her.

She recognized the man. He was the man Erhard had kept from beheading her. He held a silver weapon. She looked at the other six, and saw only two other silver swords. But the others might
have silver daggers and she couldn’t allow them the time to use them.

They passed by her, oblivious.

She watched as four of the men rushed the room where the bishop’s men had gone. The three men remaining in the hallway had swords drawn, all their attention focused on the open doorway.

She silently padded from the embrasure and behind the rearmost soldier. She grabbed his face, covering his mouth, and snapped his neck before he could even suck a breath in surprise. The man in the middle noticed something and turned toward Lilly as his comrade slid to the ground. She silenced him with her claws, gently lowering the bleeding corpse to the floor of the corridor.

The last man made the mistake of paying all his attention to what was happening inside the room. His body slid to her feet as she licked her muzzle. In a moment, her prey would realize something was wrong.

She waited in ambush, three bodies by her feet.

Lilly quietly panted, thinking,
This is what I do. This is what I’ve been trained for
.

Why does it feel wrong now?

From inside the room, she heard someone call out in German, “Sir Johann.” She heard people move, and something crash to the ground, and she could smell fear.

A shadow moved in front of the doorway, and from inside she heard a voice call out, “No, don’t—”

A man stepped out of the doorway, bearing one of the silver swords in his hand. He faced Lilly, and she snarled.

Even stinking of fear, he brought the sword to bear for an attack, stepping toward Lilly. But he was too focused on her, and didn’t watch his footing. His left foot came down on the hand of his fallen comrade, throwing his stance off and giving her an opening.

She leapt, taking him down by his left shoulder. The impact carried them down the corridor, past the doorway. Her jaws clamped down and she tasted metal, leather, and smoke. He tried to bring his sword back up to ward her off, but the flat bounced off her forearm.

His back slammed into the floor and she landed with her full weight on his chest. He only managed one more weak swing in her direction before the weapon clattered to the ground and he stopped moving.

She sensed three more men advancing on her from behind, almost on her. She whipped around and jumped, not at the trio, but over them.

She was too quick for them to bring a blow to bear. They held their swords defensively, protecting their bodies, not the space above their heads. Even the knight with the silver sword moved too slowly.

They all spun to defend against an attack from the rear, but it had not been Lilly’s intent to attack the three of them.

Erhard had taught her that surprise was more deadly than the wolf.

t leapt directly at Johann, and he brought his sword to bear to cut into its belly as it attacked him, but he had misjudged the height. It didn’t leap on him, it leapt over him. He could feel the heat of its breath on his face the moment it was above him. He smelled blood and scorched fur.

He pivoted around with his remaining two men, expecting to be attacked from behind. Instead, the beast took a bound and dove away, into the armory.

What?

A green-and-yellow-clad form sailed out of the doorway,
slamming into the opposite wall. Inside he heard the other man scream.

Then the lanterns went out, plunging the corridor into complete darkness except for the flickering crosses shining through the arrow slits.

“It’s trying to blind us!” Johann called out too late. A massive shadow erupted from the darkness, passing to his right. He tried to bring his sword down on it, but it was already gone, as was the man on his right.

“Back to the wall,” he called out to the other man. He fell back, and heard something strangled and wet to his left. “Do you hear me? Fall back!” He heard no answer from either man.

Something growled in the darkness. “They can’t hear you anymore.”

Johann’s heart raced. He looked around, but all he saw were vague shadows in the darkness and the pyre burning behind the crosses of the arrow slits. He held up his sword, its silver the only ward against this thing. He pressed his back against the corridor wall and pleaded, “Get thee behind me, Satan.”

“I am not Satan,” whispered the thing in the darkness. A feral snarl seemed to come from every direction at once. Then, abruptly, a massive shadow eclipsed the sight of the arrow slit in front of him.

“And I am not behind you.”

Johann screamed.

hen the screaming started, the first thing Erhard thought was,
Lilly is in here with us
.

Everyone looked toward the curving stairway, and for the moment the riot on the other side of the main door was forgotten. For close to a minute, the noise continued from up the stairs. The last voice, Erhard recognized as Sir Johann …

Five more men near the stairway had swords drawn and were already climbing. Erhard called to them, “Hold! Do not go up there.”

“Sir?” One of them turned toward Erhard. “The bishop is up there!”

Erhard nodded. “You will stay here. I will take my brothers to rescue the bishop.”

“Sir, there are only five of you—”

“Meaning there’s only twelve of you to guard against a breach.” Erhard looked at his brother knights. They smiled at him grimly. “And, unlike you, we know how to fight this thing.”

He drew his sword and led his men up the stairs.

illy followed the bishop’s men up to a large storeroom at the top of the keep’s tower. Here the stairs ended. Ahead of her was a torchlit room stacked with boxes and barrels. Large iron cauldrons sat next to large murder holes set in the floor by the exterior wall. Massive pillars supported squat vaults bearing the weight of the ceiling. About a third of the sconces along one wall held lit torches, as if the bishop’s men had been in the midst of lighting them.