A company of the Roman civil militia swept past, riding hard after Basil and his men.
Silence fell. The silver wolf slipped out of the brush and stood, paws in the dust of the road, dread and terror churning inside her.
Beyond the walls of the villa she could hear voices. She moved off down the road quickly, instinctively, seeking the comfort of darkness, the obscurity of the night.
There was no moon, only the dazzling streamer of the Milky Way arching above her. A road of light. She didn’t know what Lucilla or Basil had seen. Basil had a face full of mud. Lucilla was fighting for her life.
One thing the silver wolf did know. She didn’t want to go back. The silver wolf was free, bewildered, frightened, and yet aquiver with frantic joy.
She was free.
She trotted on, dropping into the mile-eating lope of a creature that makes nothing of a fifty-mile hunt.
The wolf’s heart sang. Old memories called out of the ebb and flow of the blood in her veins. Memories not her own. Oh, there were forests the wolf’s heart remembered: tall forests that clothed mountainsides, trees of pine, fir, and spruce, a landscape bejeweled by the blue lakes filled with fish. Lowland forests of oak, ash, beech, and elm, swarming with the dark antlered shapes of deer. They fed in clearings drenched by moonlight.
She hunted them, age upon age long gone. She was the swift-footed, sharp-fanged mistress of the night, taking her blood tribute in the silver glow. She fled across sun-drenched plains where the smoke of grass fires hung sharp in her nostrils. She ate her fill of beasts fallen in panicked flight from the flames.
She tracked her prey across frozen, lifeless wastes. Her belly rumbled with hunger. Her paws, frost-crusted with splinters of ice forming between her pads, left bloody footprints in the snow. Her heart yearned for the warm, blood heat of the kill, a full belly, and sleep.
She was all these things and more—strength, courage, and a defiant beauty. Am I wolf or woman? she wondered, then stopped on the crest of a low hill to feel the stillness, the aliveness, the perfect solitude of the night. It enfolded her as a mother’s arms enfold a child and protect it from harm.
The wind was cool, refreshed by the scent of dew just beginning to settle on green growing things. It ruffled the fur of her neck and face pleasantly. The woman would have been cold, but the wolf, protected by her pelt, was warm.
The legion of stars shed a faint light on the landscape. On one side, the dark hills rolled away, sloping gently into the plain of Campagna; on the other lay the city of Rome, its lights a cluster of fireflies flickering around the smooth, black snake of the Tiber. The breeze from that direction carried the stench of an open sewer.
Am I wolf or woman? she wondered again. Both the wolf and the woman were in accord with each other; each would be incomplete without the other. Yet the open spaces of the hills and even the desolation of the war-shattered Campagna called out to the wolf’s heart. She wanted to turn her face into the clean wind, to vanish into the tall grass and remain a beast among beasts forever.
But the woman knew better. The woman knew morning would come and she would find herself naked and defenseless and alone. For better or worse, her destiny was forever linked with sleepers whose lights flickered like dying embers in the valley below.
Neither wolf nor woman, she thought, but something more than either one, or less, different and so, perhaps, damned. Would she end hated and accursed, dying in flames at a stake, condemned by the church? Or perhaps stoned by humans fearful of her powers? She remembered with icy fear the funeral party’s quick acceptance of Silve’s accusation. Others might be as precipitous as they.
That she had lived this long was a challenge to the accepted order of her world—a challenge to death. And live she would until life was torn from her. Live and never yield the woman to save the wolf, or the wolf to save the woman. She would live to be herself, to be free or be dead.
She trotted to the center of the road and sniffed the air. Amidst the smell of horse and sweat, animal and human, there was the scent of blood.
The wolf dropped her nose to the ground. She’d wounded one of Basil’s men. He was still bleeding. She set off in pursuit.
Basil and his men hadn’t returned to the city. They’d circled its outskirts, traveling out across the Campagna toward the sea.
On the rich plain of the Campagna, nature had once smiled beneficently on man. Blessed with the fertile soil of volcanic peaks, mild summers, and gentle winters, it once overflowed with milk and honey. Now, no more. Four centuries of warfare over that pearl of prizes, the imperial city, had turned it into a wasteland of swamps and ruins.
Unlike most of rocky Italy, it was not locally defensible and no power remained strong enough to protect it. The fortress of Casino, towering alone above the plain, offered refuge to those few travelers who braved its fear-haunted darkness. Only armed parties of men traveled here alone at night. They, and the silver wolf, drawn by she knew not what.
She moved with the easy lope of a hunting wolf, following the trail of blood, the scent of horses and men clear in her nostrils now.
Her nose caught the tang of woodsmoke, even before she saw the fire. She increased her pace.
It had once been a temple of Apollo, a sanctuary of the god of light. Now, the tall columns were fallen and the cella was an empty shell. Even the statue of the god was gone. Only the face of the dread monster brooded from the pediment—her hair snakes, her tongue protruding from her mouth as if to lap up the blood of sacrifices.
Basil and his men were camped in the ruins. They were gathered around their fire blazing on the broken porch of the temple.
The wolf stole up through the black poplar trunks of what once had been the gods’ sacred grove. She stopped, face screened by the tall grass, listening and watching. The wolf was disappointed. Basil had many more men with him than he’d had at Lucilla’s villa.
Far too many for a lone wolf to challenge.
Basil stood on the stained marble steps to the temple, speaking to someone hidden by the firelight. “There’s no rescue for you, and none for that brother of yours. Not now that I have him. Whatever path he takes leads to his destruction.”
“Do you hate him so much then?” a voice asked from the doorway into the ruined cella.
The wolf knew the voice. Antonius. She eased to one side, where her eyes weren’t blinded by the flames, and saw him, robed in black, the mantle, as always, covering his face.
“Hate him?” Basil asked. “Christ, no. I don’t give a damn about him. When I take the city, he can stay pope as long as he does as he’s told.”
Pope! That rocked even the wolf’s mind. Regeane had known “Stephen” had power. But she hadn’t guessed quite what kind or how much. That Stephen might be Pope Hadrian himself hadn’t entered her mind.
She drew closer. She peered through a leafy screen of low bushes and tall grass at the men gathered before the porch of the temple.
“I can’t think I’ll be of much use to you,” Antonius said with angry bitterness. “I’m a dying man, and I hope my brother has more sense then to let you blackmail him with threats against my rotting carcass.”
“A very apt description, my friend. The stench of the charnel house does hang about you,” Basil said. “But you were a young man when you were taken with the disease, and I’ll lay odds you’d last a long time tied to a cross.”
The two eyes, all that Antonius ever showed the world, closed slowly. The shoulders under the black mantle slumped in resignation. He got to his feet, went to the fire, and fished out one of the flaming branches.
“I assume,” he said to Basil with quiet dignity, “that you wouldn’t begrudge even a captive a fire against the cold.”
Basil drew away as if afraid of contagion. “No, I wouldn’t, and you’ll have food if you want it.”
“I don’t.”
“As you wish,” Basil said indifferently. “Now crawl into your hole and give the rest of us some relief from the sight and stink
of you.”
Whack! An arrow quivered in the trunk of a sapling near the silver wolf’s shoulder. In seconds she was twenty feet away, deep in the darkness. It took all the woman’s strength to master the wolf’s reflexes.
She heard Basil shout, “What the devil!”
“Eyes!” one of the men shouted. “The eyes of some animal, watching us from the darkness beyond the fire.”
The silver wolf stood trembling among the tree trunks.
“Build up the fire then, and stop shooting at shadows,” Basil snarled.
The silver wolf crouched and then moved farther away as men with torches approached the spot where she’d been hiding.
Some laughed. “Look, Drusis. You killed a tree.”
“I saw eyes,” Drusis insisted stubbornly. “I missed, that’s all.”
“Whatever it was, it’s miles away by now.”
“The eyes were big and high up off the ground. It was a wolf. I’ve hunted wolves.”
“Not on the Campagna, you haven’t,” Basil said. “It was likely an owl.”
Still arguing, they returned to the camp and began to bed down for the night.
The silver wolf waited until the camp quieted. They left only one man on guard to tend the fire. He sat dozing on the temple steps, secure in the knowledge that no large party of men could take them by surprise in the open country.
During the commotion, Antonius had withdrawn into the interior of the temple to sleep.
The wolf whined and snapped at the air as Regeane took control of her. Antonius was in deadly danger and the woman’s sharper human mind comprehended it at once.
She grasped that neither Hadrian nor Antonius would alter state policy under threat of Basil’s blackmail. In fact, he was a suicidal fool to attempt such a ploy. Antonius would die a horrible death.
An enraged Hadrian would, no doubt, avenge him by killing Basil. Everyone would suffer and nothing would be changed.
The wolf didn’t comprehend the convolutions of human cruelty. To her, Antonius was simply a friend. A pack brother, stricken and in need of protection. The woman stepped back and loosed her reins on the wolf. She acted on instinct.
She drifted slowly and silently around to the back of the temple and found what she sought.
Although it had been faced in marble, the fabric of the structure was clay brick. One of the trees of the grove had fallen and taken down part of the wall of the cella with it. A hole gaped wide. The entrance, choked with weeds and brambles, was only a few feet above the ground.
The wolf forced her way through without difficulty and stood looking out at Antonius.
He sat before his small fire, head bowed, his back against the wall near the door.
She walked toward him and stopped on the other side of the fire. Even alone, he kept most of the mantle wound around the lower part of his face, but the wolf could see enough of that face to understand why.
On one side, his lips were gone and she could see the teeth. The lesion extended up into the nose. The area spared by the disease was haunted by the shadow of a great beauty.
The human ruin reminded Regeane of one of those statues of ancient gods, abandoned, broken, part of the face eroded by wind and rain, but still bearing traces of the glory of its prime. As Basil said, Antonius was very young.
His eyes were closed.
The silver wolf stood there, baffled.
When she entered the building she hadn’t had any clear plan in mind, only a hope of somehow helping him to escape Basil. Escape. The idea was ridiculous. She couldn’t even make him understand what she wanted. How could she talk to him? How could she persuade him to talk to her?
The woman would have laughed. The wolf was only frustrated. She whined softly, expressing her aggravation.
He blinked, looking surprised, but not frightened.
At first he must have thought she was a dog because he made as if to stretch out his hand. Then his eyes took in the long, vulpine muzzle, the erect ears, and the magnificent silver-black ruff that framed the face. He drew the hand back.
“My poor friend,” he said. “Have we usurped your den? Your eyes must have been the ones Basil’s archer shot at.”
Since the wolf simply stood, staring at him, he continued. “What is it? Do you want something from me? Something to eat? I almost wish you had me in mind. Your teeth and jaws would be more merciful than Basil’s cross.”
He turned to one side. A half-loaf of bread, some olives, and goat cheese lay on a wooden trencher near the doorway. He lifted it and set it in front of the silver wolf.
“Here, take this. I have no appetite for Basil’s food. The less I eat, the sooner I’ll be free of Basil and no longer a trouble to my brother.”
The silver wolf dropped her nose to the trencher, then, ignoring it, trotted to the door, skirting the glow cast by Antonius’ small fire.
The man on guard was slumped against the base of one of the ruined columns. He’d piled some fresh fuel on his fire. It burned high, the flames wavering and crackling in the night breeze. The guard snored softly.
The wolf returned and stood by Antonius’ fire, looking over it into his eyes.
“Wolf, you are beginning to puzzle me very much. You don’t behave like any wild beast I’ve ever met.”
Deliberately she reached out, set her teeth in the edge of his mantle, and pulled.
“What?” he asked in surprise. “You want the mantle?”
Desperate to make him understand, she lunged, caught him by the wrist, gently, and pulled. Regeane was a small woman, but she was a big wolf.
Antonius slid a foot or so away from the fire.
She released his arm and stepped back.
He stared at her, then at his wrist in astonishment. “If you wanted to kill me,” Antonius said softly, “you could kill me easily.”
The wolf made a low sound in her throat, an urgent sound. She ran to the hole in the temple cella, then back toward Antonius.
“This is madness,” Antonius said. “What are you? Who are you?”
She caught the corner of his mantle again and tugged.
“Don’t you see? They have horses. I’d be ridden down,” he whispered.
This time she snarled softly, her lips lifting clear of her teeth.
Antonius got up. “I’m standing here now, explaining myself to a wolf.”
She tugged again at the mantle.
“Maybe you’re right. Anything seems better than the fate Basil has planned for me.”
HE HAD TO SADDLE THE HORSE ALONE. SHE FOUND the saddles in the darkness for him, the scent of leather loud as a shout in her nose. She stood in the shadows at the edge of the camp keeping carefully downwind of the horses, waiting impatiently and watching the guard who still snored on the temple steps.
The horses were picketed on one long rope tied between two trees. Her teeth severed the rope with one bite. The nearest horse to her reared, a black shape against the sky. She leaped aside, dodging the slash of a forehoof.
The horses tore free. Still tied together, they didn’t run, but circled and milled.
The silver wolf would have loved to have been able to curse. As it was, she leaped back from the milling animals with a vicious snarl of fury. It was too dangerous. She couldn’t get close enough to cut them free of each other.
Antonius’ horse reared. The wolf saw he’d lost control of it.
He stayed in the saddle by a miracle.
The guard on the temple steps gave a shout.
The wolf was frantic.
Basil and his men awakened, reaching for weapons and torches.
The wolf flattened her ears and lunged, nipping at the hocks of the nearest of the horses. The animal lashed out at her with its heels and bolted at Basil and his men.
They thundered in a tight group across the bedground of Basil’s camp, Antonius’ horse following.
In blind panic, Basil’s men scattered to avoid being trampled. Basil himself ran to the top of the temple porch as the h
orses flew past, followed by Antonius on the last of them, clinging desperately to the pommel of the saddle. “Stop him!” Basil screamed.
The men around him were too stupefied to react. Basil snatched a crossbow and fired.
The wolf saw Antonius’ horse swerve and stagger as the bolt thudded into its side.
Basil grabbed another bow and the wolf went for him, taking the path cleared by the stampeding horses.
“Deus meus,” someone screamed. “It’s the dog. The dog from the villa.”
“Dog, nothing,” another voice shouted. “It’s Lupa herself, the wolf of Rome.”
Basil spun around, taking aim at the flying silver shape.
The fire blazed ahead of the running wolf, between herself and Basil. She saw the rage in his eyes above the bow and the glitter of a sharp-ridged bolt aimed at her. She cleared the fire on one bound and crouched, gathering herself as the bow thrummed.
The head of the bolt seared her back as it grazed past, plunging into the fire. She leaped upward, fangs gleaming, for Basil’s throat.
Basil aimed a clubbing blow at her with the spent bow. It took the wolf in the ribs, sending her rolling down the temple steps.
“Kill the damned thing. Kill it,” Basil screamed to his men.
The wolf got her legs under her and ran.
She followed the horses. The woman strove to control the wolf. Part of her was terrified, yet, she was exultant and delighted. She’d deprived Basil of his prey and nearly gotten him. She slowed her pace and looked up at the stars, realizing for the first time the horse Antonius was riding was running the wrong way—away from Rome, out across the wilderness of the Campagna toward the coast.
She stopped, sides heaving, and became aware for the first time that she was injured. The scratch seared her back, out of reach of her healing tongue. It itched and burned. She shook herself. Her fur rose, then fell back into place. Not mortal, she decided. Not even serious.
In the silence far away, Basil’s voice came to her ears. “After them,” he was telling his men. “The horse is wounded. I put a bolt through its ribs. Antonius is crippled and won’t get far on foot.”
The men’s reply was unintelligible, even to the wolf’s preternaturally sharp ears, but it was evidently a demur because she heard Basil shout, “In the name of God, why am I afflicted by such fools? Take the torches. The thing’s just a wild animal. What are you, women, to be afraid of such a thing?”
The Silver Wolf Page 13