by S. A. Swann
“You saved me,” she whispered, again feeling the unaccountable fear welling up. Her mind was still fixated on the rude ballad sung by the knights of the szlachta, where the prize for saving the maid were the favors that had been about to be stolen. Now, however, Josef’s role had been usurped by this man, which gave the song a much darker tone.
He paused with his hands in his hair and laughed. Then he lowered his hands, shaking his head, and looked at her with the good humor of someone sharing a joke that held meaning only between two old friends. Unlike Lukasz, his humor fully engaged his eyes—all except the scar above his left eye, which tried to darken the expression toward sarcasm or cruelty.
“Saved you? From that oaf? Please, I did not intend to insult you.”
Maria opened her mouth, but no words came out.
He stepped back and looked at her with those strikingly asymmetrical eyes. “I know you could have dealt with him yourself. Blame my impatience.”
“T-thank you?” she whispered, unsure of who this man was, what he meant, and why the very air was trying to terrify her with each breath.
He stepped forward and held out his hand. “I’ve been rude, but I wished to meet you. It has been very long.”
Against her better instincts, Maria reached out and placed her hand in his. Looking into his face, listening to him, she could hardly do otherwise. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.
The touch of his lips on her skin sent a jolt through her whole body. Everything seemed to freeze at once—her breath, her heart; even the air hung still around her, as if the wind itself had been transfixed by the apparition in front of her. She was thankful for the clouds when they took the moon away again, allowing the shadows to hide the flush upon her cheeks.
Again just a silhouette in the darkness, he lowered her hand.
“Who are you?” she asked, not prepared for the way her voice caught in her throat. Is this what the maid in the ballad felt? Did she willingly give herself, or was she struck so insensible by her rescuer that she couldn’t do otherwise?
“My name is Darien,” he said. “And what is your name?”
“Maria.”
“Maria.” His voice caressed the word in a way that made her shudder inside.
I cannot stay here. His very presence is seducing me.
She sucked in a breath and forced herself to emerge from her thrall. “Lukasz.” She spat the word, and it was an effective antidote to Darien’s mesmerizing presence.
“Lukasz?” His voice took on a different tone; Maria didn’t know if she was glad or not that his expression was cloaked in shadow now.
“The man who attacked me, he is in service to the szlachta, and he will bring charges against you before the Wojewoda Bolesław.”
“Should I care about this?”
“Do not make light of it. Bolesław is the deputy of the Duke himself, and wields that power in his stead. His word could have you face the lash, or worse. He could bond you as a slave to—”
Darien laughed. Like he had laughed before, but something in this laugh felt harder in the moonless dark. Then the moon finally returned through the clouds and she felt as if she might have imagined it—especially as the laugh trailed off, almost as if he was puzzled why she didn’t find humor in the possibility of him being condemned.
Her epiphany came in a flash: Of course. He’s outlaw. What other type of man would lurk in these woods at night but a bandit already on the run from the law of the Duke and his deputy? Of course he was amused. He was probably wanted for crimes far beyond any Lukasz could claim against him.
“Forgive me for presuming to advise you on your affairs,” she said.
“After so long,” he answered, “I can forgive many sins. And do not worry about your oaf Lukasz. When he wakes, I am certain I can teach him the value of discretion.”
“I must go home,” she said.
“You must?”
“Yes.” She managed to say the word with none of the hesitation she felt. Even so, as she gathered her cold lantern she had the involuntary impulse to speak the lines from the ballad: “Is there anything I can offer to repay your kindness?”
She listened, stunned at the words leaving her own mouth, and her breath caught as she waited for his response. What do I do if he asks for the same favors given the knight in that ballad? The thought was terrifying. Why had she said those words?
He reached over and touched her cheek opposite where Lukasz had struck her. He caressed her face as if he knew her invitation for what it was, and the touch was gentle, as if he knew it wasn’t her intent.
“All I ask now is your discretion. Say nothing of what happened here. Nothing of me, nothing of your vile oaf Lukasz. If you must go home, go now.”
He took his hand away and stepped back. Something in her wanted to reach for him, even as she edged away from the darkness she felt inside him. Again, she spoke against her own will: “How will I find you again?”
“I will find you,” he said. “Now go!”
He spoke with such an aura of command that she was out of sight of Darien before she realized she was running.
VIII
Darien stood in the center of the wooded path, still disbelieving. It had been decades since he had entertained even the hope of finding someone else. He had been resigned to being singular, unique.
“Maria,” he whispered, savoring the taste of the name in his mouth. He drew in a deep breath and let the remnants of her scent fill his lungs. There was no mistaking it—not her scent, not the taste of her skin.
She had even invited him to do more than taste.
Maria was unquestionably one of his kind. If he had believed in God, he would have thought it providence that had placed her in his path. And, for once, it gave him something more than vengeance to look forward to.
Then he heard a weak groan from the woods.
First things first.
Darien slipped back into the woods and stood above the semiconscious man who had assaulted Maria. He had already forgotten the oaf’s name. Not that any name was necessary; he was simply meat that, at the moment, had earned slightly more of Darien’s hatred than most men.
The man groaned on the forest floor, not quite recovered from striking the tree whose roots now supported him. A fractured bone protruded from his arm, and the side of his face was swollen and bloody.
Had it only been Darien, he might have left this sack of meat to live or die as it saw fit. If not for his actions, this pathetic man would be beneath Darien’s notice. But Darien had told Maria that this man would learn discretion.
He laughed silently at his own joke as he reached down and threw the unconscious man over his shoulder. Almost completely over; he had forgotten how light men were when they wore no armor. He grabbed the man’s ankle just in time to keep him from sliding all the way down his back, then pulled as he stood so that his burden was draped properly across his shoulder.
At some point during the process, his burden had awoken and started bellowing at him through a broken jaw, pounding on his back with his good arm. Darien ignored both as he slipped deeper into the woods.
Maria stopped in front of her family’s cottage. She had run all the way here after her meeting with Darien. She thought she should be out of breath, but she only felt a little flushed.
Her exhilaration, she told herself, was from the brisk run and the release of her fear upon coming home. She had better sense than to think it had anything to do with Darien. He might have helped her, but he was unquestionably dangerous. More dangerous than her perennial nemesis Lukasz could ever hope to be. Lukasz was young, strong, and armed, and Darien had tossed him aside like a sack of grain, disarming him simply with his bare hands.
He was clearly an outlaw, and the only thing that had saved her from a fate worse than Lukasz was that outlaw’s momentary good graces. Such a liaison belonged safely in a ballad, with knights and maids who needn’t worry over consequences beyond the last stanza.
She
thanked God that her evening’s adventure had spawned no such consequences. Lukasz was spineless in the face of actual power, and she suspected that Darien could buy the wretch’s silence with only a few well-chosen words. And even if Lukasz should bring a grievance to the Wojewoda Bolesław, Maria doubted that her name would arise in the complaint.
And even if it did, she would much rather face Lukasz’s words than his hands.
The door to the darkened cottage opened. Maria’s stepmother stood in the doorway. “Maria?”
“Yes, Mama?” she said quietly, realizing that she had been standing outside for a long time. She looked up; the insects and the frogs had renewed their nighttime singing.
“It is very late.”
“I’m sorry, Mama. I had work—”
“Your face.” Her stepmother drew a sharp breath and ran to her side, lifting Maria’s chin toward the moonlight. “You’re hurt.”
“It’s nothing.”
“You’re bleeding. We have to wash it, at least. What happened?”
“I—” She almost choked on her words, remembering her promise to Darien nearly too late. “I fell, in the dark.” She felt the heat of the lie on her face, and the shame of it nearly brought her to tears. The deception was pointless. Whatever her promise, she was certain that the lie was obvious, drawn across her face for anyone to see.
Especially for the woman who was the only mother she had ever known.
But Maria’s stepmother didn’t seem to notice the clumsy lie. She kept staring at the bruise where Lukasz had struck her, blinking a couple of times. She stayed like that for a long time, until Maria said, “You said we should wash it?”
Her stepmother broke from her reverie and let go of Maria’s chin. “Yes. Come in and relight your lantern. I’ll fetch water and some linens.”
Maria followed her stepmother into the cottage, thinking how preoccupied she seemed. Then she scolded herself. Whatever her stepmother felt about Maria, she had lost her husband. She had the same right to grieve as Maria did.
In the dark, her stepmother surprised Maria by reaching out and touching her shoulder. Almost as if she knew what Maria had been thinking, she whispered, “I know your father was mistaken. God protects you still.”
Maria reached up and touched her cross and wondered if her mother knew about Darien.
The man Darien carried had exhausted his voice after the first mile. He made a token struggle when Darien crossed the river, but after that came only the occasional hoarse plea, which Darien ignored.
Even at the healthy pace that Darien traveled, it was over half an hour carrying his burden back to his current homestead. The cave was hidden on three sides by impenetrably dense woods, the only approach to it a game trail that led up a rise and appeared to dead-end in a solid wall of twisted growth and deadfalls. It wasn’t unless one stood on top of the rise itself and looked down the sheer drop that faced the wall of trees that the cave mouth could be seen.
Darien stood at the crest of the rise above the cave and unceremoniously unloaded his burden. The man tumbled out of his arms and down the rise to land screaming in the small clearing in front of the cave mouth.
Darien watched the man struggle below, rolling back and forth while cursing. “Who are you?” the man finally said, comprehensibly. He panted, cradling his broken arm, then struggled to his feet on the uneven footing of dead leaves and gravel. He had to lean against the trunk of a tree, because his left foot now bent at an odd angle. “Who the hell are you? And what do you want?”
Darien took the man’s knife and tossed it casually down. It fell with a clatter against a helmet transfixed by a spear of cold moonlight, near where Maria’s oaf supported himself. The man looked down at the knife, and at the helmet.
Then he gagged and screamed when he saw the prior owner’s head rotting inside it.
“God have mercy! What fiend are you?”
As Darien removed his shirt, the man babbled on, his words increasing in speed and volume as he looked around the clearing, finally seeing the remnants of men, armor, and horses scattered before the mouth of Darien’s lair.
Darien didn’t say anything to the man. It was more amusing to allow him to come to his own conclusions. As Darien stripped off his belt and removed his breeches, his prey had the presence of mind to channel his panic. He fell to his knees and scrambled toward a sword that had fallen just a few feet away, shoving aside a bloody gauntlet and the partly gnawed skull of a horse.
The man brought the sword up to point in Darien’s direction. The point shook, the silvered edge catching fragments of moonlight.
Darien stood naked above his prey and laughed.
“Are you insane? Say something, monster!”
Darien spread his arms and let free the mental chains that held his flesh in check. His bones creaked as they thickened and grew, and he felt his muscles tear and reknit as they spasmed and writhed under skin that darkened and grew a pelt of golden hair.
He had been injured by every weapon known to man, he had broken every bone in his body, he had even felt a silver crossbow bolt pierce his brow, sending bony splinters into his left eye—but no pain matched the feeling of the wolf tearing free from within his flesh. Every nerve fired a welcome agony, a red-hot knife ripping through his body, bringing an ecstatic release in its wake.
He howled and looked down at the cowering man below him. He wrinkled his nose and licked his muzzle with a long, lolling tongue. He crouched on lupine legs, so that his hands, long-clawed and still vaguely human, rested on the edge of the bluff in front of him.
He caught the scent of the man below voiding himself, and his face twisted into a lupine version of a smile.
“Monster,” he whispered, too low for his terrified prey to hear. “You call me monster after everything men have taken from me? And for less reason?”
Then he leapt down.
Maria lay on her bed and stared into the shadows. Below the loft that held her bed, her brothers snored. She was the only one awake in the cottage now, and the night was half over already. In a few hours she would have to get up, draw water for her family, and start the walk down to Gród Narew.
She would have to walk the same path.
It had never concerned her before. She had known these woods all her life. They had never felt threatening to her. But now she had to face them again, and her hands still shook when she thought about what had happened. What had almost happened.
She should have told her stepmother, whatever she had promised Darien. Not just because the lie was a sin that weighed on her soul, but because the lie pushed Hanna away. The lie made sure that Maria was alone in her own home.
She held her cross and allowed tears to come.
Who was Darien to ask this of her?
He did save me from Lukasz, she thought, and asked only for my silence when he could have asked for much more …
It might have been better if he had.
She bit her lip, feeling a flush across her body as she remembered the touch of Darien’s lips on her hand, his hand caressing her face. She remembered the look and feel of Josef’s chest, and wondered if Darien’s would be as strong, as warm …
I am not a wicked person.
She couldn’t keep herself from imagining his lips on hers, and his hand touching other parts of her body, her hand touching his body. But in her wicked fantasy she was unsure if it was Darien who took her or Josef.
She prayed to God to settle her thoughts; the prayer’s answer was long in coming.
But in time, she did sleep.
Interlude
Anno Domini 1331
Twenty-two years ago, when he was a child, Darien hadn’t hated anyone at all. His family—his pack—had even adopted human ways in the face of ever-expanding human claims to the dark woods of the Baltic. They lived away from men, but any travelers who had the misfortune to find themselves in the haunted wood where Darien’s pack made their home would be well-treated as guests. And, later on, would have a gu
ide to take them back to the normal trade paths.
The village, hidden deep in those woods, had once housed a pagan community that treated Darien’s ancestors as gods. But, long ago, the Germans had come and killed those who hadn’t converted and carried away those who had. The village had not remained empty for long. The pack of Darien’s great-grandfather had decided that it was wise, with human warriors trampling through their lands every season, to add to the camouflage of their human skins.
When the Order came again, they found a Christian village, including a church built upon the ashes of a pagan shrine. Human gods meant nothing to the pack, so pledging fealty to the Order’s was of no consequence. For something over a century, from that generation to Darien’s, the village endured.
During his childhood years, Darien knew little of the outside world, other than the fact that there were these creatures called “men” who lived beyond the woods. He was taught, very carefully, that he would wear only a human skin in front of anyone not of the village.
The village was remote enough that, for the first nine years of his life, he saw no one who wasn’t of the village. By his tenth year, he had come to doubt the existence of such creatures as men. He’d started to think that he’d been told mere tales, to scare him and keep him from hunting without his parents.
He knew he was old enough to hunt on his own. He had taken down a bull elk all by himself the last moonless night his family had gone hunting. And he had done so in the skin of a full wolf, which was not as hard as he’d thought it would be. Hunting before, he had always taken the halfway skin, which left him hands to grip and tear at his prey, as well as a muzzle to bite the neck. But his parents had told him that to be an adult, he would have to learn to use all the wolf he had within him.
So, despite his reluctance, he’d done so, and the experience had changed him. Everything human became slow, pale, and bland in comparison. Even the power of the halfway skin couldn’t compare with the freedom he’d felt when he’d leapt at the animal’s neck.