Wolfbreed

by S. A. Swann

  After Oytim retrieved the weapons, the bells had stopped ringing. Oytim ran as fast as he could down the stairway, slowed by his field boots and cumbersome burden. His thoughts swung wildly between two questions:

  The first question was, what happened? It couldn't just be the prisoner escaping; there was only the one woman.

  The second ...

  Silver bolts?

  The bolts frightened him. While they were silver, they were nothing like the ornate daggers they had been given by the Landkomtur, Erhard von Stendal. There was nothing fancy or ceremonial about them. The shafts were purely utilitarian, except for the precious metal forming the tip.

  But why? Silver was a soft metal, and might have difficulty piercing even light armor. There was no point in making a real weapon from such material, unless ...

  Oytim came from a small village deep in the Prûsan countryside, on the fringes of a wilderness where even the knights of the Order were wary to tread. He had listened to the stories of his grandparents, telling about the things that lived in the wilderness, still guarding the sacred groves; things that preyed on men who had walked away from honoring the old gods. Things that could only be bound or injured by the purest of metals.

  No, those were only stories. Just fragments of a false faith he had discarded. He was baptized Christian, and he knew that the spirits of the forest were falsehoods, deceptions by Satan that had no power over those with a true faith in Christ.

  Besides, they were nowhere near those woods here. Even if the creatures from his grandmother's stories did haunt the shadows of that dark place, they wouldn't be here, in this keep, in the heart of Christian Prûsa.

  At the end of the curving windowless stairwell, Oytim burst through the vaulted archway into the granary. The large stone room was filled with ranks of wooden bins holding wheat, rye, and barley against the winter. It

  was the highest of the storehouse levels, and with the winter just fading, it was the only level now being used as such.

  Beyond the ranks of storage bins, a heavy wooden door barred the way to a set of curving stone stairs that descended several levels underground, where there was space to store supplies for all of Johannisburg in the unlikely event the town was threatened with siege.

  A dozen soldiers stood, weapons drawn, facing the door. More than half the garrison was here. Sergeant Günter and most of the German soldiers were nowhere to be seen.

  One of the soldiers, a man named Tulne, turned to Oytim.

  “Where in hell have you been?”

  “The sergeant ordered me to get these.” He handed Tulne one of the crossbows.

  Tulne sheathed his sword and took the weapon. “What is he thinking? Crossbows?” He looked around the granary. “Does this look like an open field?”

  Oytim shook his head and pulled three quarrels out of the canvas bag.

  “I'm wondering about our sergeant, Oytim. If a battle comes up here, it will be over before a second shot's nocked.” He held up a bolt. “What's this tipped with?”

  “Silver.”

  Tulne snorted. He set the front of the crossbow on the ground, placing a boot in the stirrup and bending over to pull the tension. “That's nonsense. No one would put a silver tip on a crossbow bolt. Get those others loaded. We might have three shots before the fun's over.”

  Oytim bent and loaded the second crossbow. “Where is the sergeant?”

  Tulne tilted his head at the door as he hefted the loaded crossbow. “He took the Germans down there and told us to bar the door until he came back.” Tulne yawned. “Don't look so nervous, Oytim. Don't you think six soldiers can handle a single prisoner?”

  Oytim looked around and saw none of his tension reflected in the dozen other guards facing the door. Everyone had weapons drawn, but they were at ease, talking softly to each other.

  Tulne laughed and slapped him on the back. “A woman, Oytim. A single woman against six battle-hardened soldiers? Or perhaps you doubt the Germans' mettle? No worries then. We have thirteen Prûsan warriors up here.”

  A few others overheard and glanced at Oytim, sharing Tulne's amusement. Oytim had allowed pagan superstitions to cloud his thinking.

  He laughed at himself. “You're right, of course—”

  Something heavy slammed into the door. The thud of the impact echoed across the stone vaults, leaving the assembled soldiers in sudden silence.

  “No,” Tulne whispered.

  A second impact, louder than the first. The massive oak bar holding the door shut vibrated, and stone dust puffed from behind the iron braces supporting it.

  Oytim was abruptly aware of a flaw in the keep's design. The door they faced, while it was barred, was not intended to keep an enemy at bay. The

  defensive doors were all placed at choke points, to give the defenders the advantage—but those doors were all placed assuming the attacker came from outside, from the single entrance. The enemy they faced now came from the opposite direction. This door was one of few that could be barred from the “wrong” direction.

  Even the bar that sealed it was an afterthought, as it was rare that the lower levels were used as a prison.

  It was never meant to withstand a heavy attack. It was too large, formed of a single layer of oak planks, and lacked even the metal studs to interfere with a chopping weapon.

  The space of one heartbeat passed, then the door shook again. The sound of groaning wood filled the storeroom. Half the soldiers ran to the door to hold it in place, leaning their shoulders against the bar holding the door closed.

  One of the soldiers next to Oytim, a barrel of a man, grabbed the third crossbow and took a step back so that he, Oytim, and Tulne formed a row blocking the exit of the granary.

  “An army,” Tulne muttered.

  “No,” Oytim said. “Silver bolts.” He knelt and braced the loaded crossbow on his raised thigh. He sighted at the door, which was visibly moving forward with each impact, the gaps between the oak planks widening as its surface slammed against the bar. The force of each blow pushed the soldiers on the door backward.

  “Superstitious nonsense,” Tulne said.

  Oytim wasn't listening anymore.

  He steadied his breathing. There was only going to be one shot, and he needed to be ready. Whatever came through that door, he couldn't flinch, couldn't hesitate.

  The next impact was accompanied by a distinct metallic snap. One of the iron brackets holding the bar broke free of the wall. The men holding the door scrambled to keep the bar from shifting. The three remaining brackets still held.

  The pounding stopped.

  Tulne lowered his crossbow. “What? Did they just give up?”

  “No,” Oytim whispered.

  Not meant to take this kind of punishment, the wrecked door sagged. The third plank, near the center, creaked and tilted out a hand's breadth at the top of the doorway, pivoting on the oak bar. One of the men, Cawald, reached up to push it back into place.

  Cawald suddenly fell to his knee, screaming, his right leg disappearing into the gap the tilting board had made in the bottom of the door. His neighbors reached for him as he thrashed to the ground.

  He screamed and kicked at the door with his left leg, his right one vanishing through the door, all the way to his hip. His comrades grabbed him under the arms, braced their feet against the wreckage of the door, and strained to pull him back.

  The two men fell backward as Cawald disappeared through the gap. His piercing scream came to an abrupt stop and the tilted plank slowly rocked back the way it had come.

  Then it kept going, falling into the chamber beyond the doorway, leaving a dead column of darkness in the body of the door.

  Oytim took aim at the gap, certain he would see something move in the darkness, a glint of tooth or eye—

  “No, you idiots!” Oytim screamed at the men by the door. Two had closed on the breach from either side. Using the remains of the door for cover, they bared their swords to strike at anything that might reach from the gap. But
they blocked any shot Oytim had at the chamber beyond.

  Something moved in the darkness and the soldier to the right of the gap lunged at it. His sword arm lost itself in the darkness, and then his body froze, as if his blade had just hit a stone wall. A look of almost comical surprise crossed his face. Then his body lurched forward, as something pulled his sword arm and slammed his torso against the door. He turned toward the man next to him, as if about to call for help. Then his whole body twisted sideways, his feet leaving the ground as his body was yanked completely through the breach.

  “Gods preserve us,” Tulne said, voice cracking.

  The other men were closing in on the door, but of the original six men who had been holding the door, there were now only two. And one of them was staring at the darkness that had swallowed his comrade rather than holding the door.

  Something slammed the door again, and the brackets holding the oak bar in place gave way with a scream of twisted metal and a cloud of masonry dust. The heavy oak bar fell as the remaining splintered planks of the door collapsed outward.

  ***

  Günter ran after the creature, armed only with the silver dagger. It was suicidal, but the carnage had pushed him beyond reason. He did not want to survive to see his men slaughtered.

  Dagger in one hand, lantern in the other, he ran up the five dark levels toward the main door. The stairway was close, and turned tightly, so that any step might bring him face-to-face with the creature. The stone steps were slick and uneven, and he nearly twisted his ankle several times in his haste.

  There were doors at each level of the stores, though only the uppermost one had been barred. Even so, the creature had thrown open each one with enough force to crack the timbers and wrench iron hinges from stone. One door had been so damaged it took several minutes to pull it open enough to allow him through.

  Once Günter was past it, his gaze fell on a bloody hand print marring the stone wall. No human hand had made it. The palm was padded, like a wolfs paw, and the fingers were longer and thicker than a man's. Above the print, the creature's claws had been strong enough to leave four parallel scratches on the worked face of the stone.

  Somewhere above him he heard a powerful impact. He looked up, and a fine dust filtered through the cracks in the stonework above him, stinging his eyes.

  She's reached the main door ...

  He shouldn't have felt the fear as deeply as he did. Even if she could force open the oak bar on the door—something that should require a battering ram—beyond it were thirteen Prûsan warriors, and he had ensured that they would at least have the silver bolts to use on the creature. Thirteen trained battle-hardened men, armed with silver.

  It should be enough.

  He feared it wasn't.

  Redoubling his efforts, he ran. But he wasn't surprised when the screaming began.

  He shuttered the lantern and cast it aside, hoping that if he came up behind the monster, he might have a clear attack on its back. He ascended the darkened stairway, listening to screams, the sounds of sword against stone, and a low growling that tried to turn his guts to water.

  He took the last turn in the stairway to face a corridor filled with light that shouldn't have been there. The light spilled in from the granary beyond the now-open doorway. Shadowed against the light of the granary, he saw a chaos of bodies moving in the hallway. The air was thick with the sound of Prûsan cursing and the smell of blood. Even if he could make no sense of the chaos in front of him, he saw enough to understand that they fought more than a bloodthirsty monster.

  It was a beast that knew enough of tactics to fall back into the corridor after smashing the door. The greater part of the Prûsan guards had fallen in after it, into a space too enclosed and dark to fight effectively against even a normal enemy.

  Günter gripped the useless dagger, ordering his men to fall back into the granary, where the open floor might give them a chance. But his shouts were nearly inaudible for the sound of clashing metal and screaming men.

  From beyond the melee, a crossbow bolt struck the stone near Günter's head, striking sparks.

  No, wait until you see a target.

  A man fell near Günter, anonymous in the dark. The man groaned briefly before he stopped moving. Günter reached for him, to drag him to the safety of the stairwell, but as he grabbed the man's shoulder and pulled, he had the sickening realization that the weight only amounted to half a body.

  He fought his gorge and stepped out of the stairwell, past the dead man, toward the rapidly disintegrating melee. He saw the silhouettes of two more bodies strike the walls to either side of the corridor, and he saw the clear, hunched form of the monster standing unobstructed in front of the doorway.

  Günter charged, too late, at the creature's back. As he moved forward, he heard a crossbow fire and a howl filled the chamber unlike any sound Günter had heard from the throat of man or beast. The wolf-thing in front of him charged out of the doorway just as Günter struck. The blow that should have sunk the silver dagger into a vital part of its neck instead had Günter tearing at the air, losing his balance, and tumbling onto the splintered wreckage of the door.

  He looked up and saw the lupine demon clearly in the light of the granary; rippling muscle, blood-red fur, claws, and gore-drenched muzzle all closing on the two men still standing, Oytim and Tulne. Both were at the far side of the granary, holding crossbows. Oytim still had a bolt nocked. It had been Tulne who had fired the bolt buried in the beast's shoulder, and he was desperately trying to reload the crossbow as the creature charged.

  As Günter scrambled to his feet, the creature descended on Tulne. The massive red-furred back hid Tulne from Günter's view, but the man's scream was cut short before he hit the ground.

  Günter ran, jumping over broken timbers and broken bodies while, in front of him, the beast turned its snarling, gory muzzle toward Oytim.

  Oytim fired the crossbow up, into the creature's face. Less than two paces away, the bolt tore into the creature's head. The beast screamed as it clutched its face, the howl torn free from the throat of Hell.

  Günter was halfway to them when the creature grabbed Oytim by the throat with its free hand and tossed the man aside like a rag doll. He hit the side of one of the grain bins with enough force to crack the wood. He fell to the ground and did not move.

  Günter stopped because the creature was whipping around wildly and howling, one hand clutching the side of its face, the other thrashing blindly around. It was frenzied, lashing out with a reach half again as long as Günter's.

  All he had was a single silver dagger.

  He stood just out of reach, praying that Oytim's shot was true and had pierced its eye, putting a killing shot into its brain.

  But Günter's gods were deaf.

  The creature slowly stopped howling, and stopped its wild thrashing. To Günter's horror, the creature lowered its hand and looked at him with two green eyes. Oytim's shot had been too high, too far to the right, and at too steep an angle. The shot had cracked the bone, but had been deflected by the curve of the monster's skull and didn't penetrate. Blood streamed down the creature's face from the gory wound, but it was neither dead nor dying.

  It stared at Günter, an evil snarl on its lips. Hopeless, Günter raised his dagger, closed his eyes, and prepared to die.

  After several moments, when the attack didn't happen, he opened his eyes again.

  The beast was gone.

  Chapter 4

  Uldolf wasn't having a good morning.

  He had already checked five of his snares, and he hadn't caught anything. One would think that if he was going to risk his freedom trapping game on the Order's land, he might, just once, capture something. However, it had been a hard winter, and it seemed that the game had been picked thin even on the land directly under the Germans' keep.

  So when, in the early dawn hours, he approached his sixth snare, hidden in the underbrush by a lightning-uprooted hemlock, and saw a hint of fur, he almost cried out in t
riumph, despite the risk of being caught.

  Instead, he just allowed himself a smile.

  His breath came out in a puff of fog as he knelt down next to the snare. He had a hare—a thin beast with patchy fur, but still a hare. His sister was recovering from a fever. She needed the meat and Uldolf wasn't about to be choosy.

  He glanced around the woods on the off chance someone else might be around. This was the most dangerous part of his crime. Even if he was found on this land with a hare in his bag, he could probably protest effectively that it came from elsewhere. Unlike elk or bear or any other large animal, there wouldn't be the automatic assumption that he was stealing from the Order. At least, as long as no one saw him setting these snares in the woods below the Johannisburg castle wall.

  Uldolf didn't see anyone, but that was unlikely in the sliver of time before sunrise and Prime. The maze of thickets, steep hills, and ravines that rolled out from the eastern edge of Johannisburg was not inviting to casual foot traffic. It was thick and treacherous enough to be part of the town defenses from the time before the town had a Christian name or a stone keep lording over it. If he wished, he could have easily come within a hundred paces of the castle itself without being observed—all the way to the narrow frontier where the woods were cleared before the lower wall.

  Because of the steep character of the land there, there was no village between the east side of the castle and the lower wall—just the mound of earth shrugging up from the hillside to support the smooth gray walls of the castle. The town itself unfolded west of the castle, where the slope of the land was more gentle and even.

  Few people came down here, and fewer still now that the old modes of worship were suppressed and the groves sacred to Perkunas were destroyed, ignored, or forgotten. Uldolf remembered, though. Not because he honored the old gods—he was a baptized Christian like every free man in the Order's domain—but because it was one of the few parts of his childhood he could remember without feeling pain or loss. He had known these woods since