by S. A. Swann
“I see.” The knight stood in front of him, the others walked into the narrow alley to join him. “And for what reason are you sneaking behind these stables at this early hour?”
“I have a room in the house over there.” Uldolf gestured at the house, past the trio of Germans. One of them said something in German that Uldolf couldn't understand. The knight glanced back at the man, and then returned his gaze to Uldolf. “He wonders if you prefer to enter by the window.”
Uldolf heard Lilly gasp, and he turned away from the Germans.
She had tried to retreat, but too late. Two more men had come upon them from the other direction. Lilly struggled between them; each of the pair had hold of one of her arms.
“Let her go!” Uldolf shouted. He moved toward them before he had a good chance to think about what he was doing.
The knight grabbed for his arm, but he was grabbing from Uldolf s right. He had no arm there to grab. Instead, the knight took hold of his cloak, and the strap of his bag underneath. Uldolf took another few steps before the knight pulled back on him, and the strap on his bag snapped taut across his neck.
Lilly screamed, “Ulfie, no!” as his head snapped back and he fell backward. Uldolf slammed back into the mud at the knight's feet, his cloak splayed beneath him, and the contents of his bag scattered on the ground around him. The breath had been knocked out of him, and it took a few moments to push himself upright.
When he did, he saw the knight picking something up out of the mud.
The silver dagger.
Chapter 25
Things were going too fast for Lilly to make sense of them. Her mind was still reeling from Uldolf s—Ulfie's—embrace last night.
He had said he loved her.
Loved her.
Hope was an emotion that she couldn't understand—either of her. Her thoughts slid back and forth so often now that it became hard to figure out who was thinking them. So she followed Uldolf, barely paying attention to what was happening outside her own head.
She had to tell him. She couldn't tell him. No, she had to tell him everything, no matter how painful. But saying the words now, even if she could say them, would ruin everything. But if there was any small chance that he could understand—that he could know and still love her—how could she deny him the truth?
It was bad to remember.
But was it better to forget?
She sensed the Germans' approach much later than she should have. She shouted her pathetic, stammering warning too late.
Ulfie told her to run.
But she hesitated, not wanting to leave him. She had hesitated long enough for two rough Germans to catch up with her and grab her arms. Then the knight grabbed Ulfie and yanked him to the ground, tearing his cloak and his bag.
Now the knight had something in his hand, and Lilly froze.
A dagger.
The dagger.
The dagger she had used to ...
She shook her head, tears welling up. No! This isn't my fault. It isn't!
The knight grabbed Uldolf by the shirt and pulled him from the ground with his left hand, dagger in his right. He slammed Uldolf into the wall of the building opposite the stable. Two of the other Germans ran to hold him there.
“Tell me how you came by this dagger.”
“I found it.”
The knight took the pommel of the dagger and slammed it across the side of Uldolf s face, tearing a savage gash across his cheek. Blood poured down the side of his face.
“No!” Lilly screamed.
The knight looked cruelly down at him and said, “Do not lie to me.”
“I was ...” Uldolf spat up a mixture of blood and saliva. It trailed from his mouth and down his chin. “T-trapping game. I found it in the woods.”
The knight backhanded him again. Lilly felt the blows as if they were striking her. She wished they were. She knew that she would recover from the blows. Uldolf wouldn't.
She closed her eyes, her brain screaming, Help me.
Help us.
She looked for the other, frantically trying to pull her braver self out of the twisting chaos that was her mind. The other one could save Ulfie—save Uldolf.
Uldolf spat more blood, and it splattered the front of the knight's white surcoat. The knight slammed his fist into Uldolf s gut, dropping Uldolf to his knees—
Lilly's rage finally spilled over the fear and confusion, mixing and twisting and leaving someone who wasn't quite her, nor anyone else.
“Stop it, now!” she screamed.
Everyone stopped, even the knight beating Uldolf. They all turned to face Lilly, the sudden tenor of her voice commanding their attention.
She faced them all, no longer struggling. She stood, arms spread as if she didn't even notice the men holding her biceps. Her dyed black hair hung in strings across her face. She stared at them with eyes that were green, cold, and pitiless.
She stared especially hard at the knight, who was looking at her with a slowly growing realization.
“Leave now,” Lilly said. “While you still can.”
The fear in his face made her smile.
It didn't surprise her when he yelled at the others, “She's the beast! Use the silver, kill her!”
The two men holding her might have heard her laugh, right before she dropped to her knees in front of them. They held onto her upper arms, and the suddenness of her movement pulled them forward, bending them over her shoulders—shoulders that were already broader and more muscular. Her nose wrinkled in her lengthening muzzle as she smelled the sour musk of fear from the men beside her.
Her surcoat tore when she reached up and sank her claws into the necks of the men to either side. The Germans in front of her were still scrambling to draw weapons and form a line, the knight still yelling about the silver.
She ducked down, flipping the two men over her shoulders and into the line of Germans. The line split apart, one of the Germans falling to the mud under his thrashing, wheezing comrade.
Lilly stood, the bloody rags of her human clothes falling to the mud beneath her paws. Her muscles rippled under red fur marked by a streak of black dye that extended from her forehead down the length of her back. She flexed forepaws that still resembled hands, and bore claws longer and sharper than any wolfs had a right to be.
She snarled, breathing in the scents of blood, sweat, piss, and fear. She spread her arms, as if to embrace the quartet before her. She still smiled.
“Will you leave now?” she asked them in German.
Despite their surprise, the men were well disciplined, and prepared. They closed ranks before her, holding silvered blades in guarded positions before them. They left no openings in front of them, giving their fallen member time to get to his feet. Once all four closed ranks, they advanced on her deliberately.
She could retreat back down the alley, but there would be more soldiers that way, friends of the two now squirming in the mud.
Besides, Lilly didn't want to ...
She growled and leapt—not directly at the men as they expected, but up and to the right, at the wall of the stable. In one bound she had grabbed the edge of the roof and pulled herself onto the thatched surface, above the Germans. She rolled a few times and dropped off of the edge, behind them.
They were too close together and too slow to follow her that quickly. She grabbed the man on the end nearest the stable. She wrapped one arm around his neck and hooked her other hand over his helmet, yanking his head back hard enough to shatter vertebrae.
As the man went limp, Lilly realized that she felt it happen. This wasn't some strange dream she would wake from. These were her own red-furred arms holding a once-living man.
Her master's training took over as the next man swung his silvered weapon at her. Without thinking, she turned to place the corpse's armored torso between her and the blade. She let the body drop with the blow so that the corpse folded over the second man's blade, dragging it down. She thrust her claws up, piercing the fleshy under
side of the attacker's jaw.
I am doing this ...
She tried to distance herself from the frenzied blood lust, but she couldn't. The rage she felt wasn't some cold outsider, it was her own. This is what it felt like, to be the other one ...
But she was the other one.
Another man fell groaning to the ground, broken by her master's training. The last one standing was the knight, a brother of the Order. She wished he was her master.
Even so, she asked, “Why?”
“Return to Hell, you bitch!” he screamed at her, taking a wild swing at her head.
Lilly easily avoided the blow. She had trained for this all her life, and the motion of the swordsman was too familiar. One-on-one, she could see and read his movements, react to them before he knew himself what he intended to do.
She could have torn open his throat as he passed, or taken an arm, or landed a crippling blow on the back of his neck. Instead, she let him stumble by unscathed, spinning around to face him as he turned back around.
“Why don't you run?” she asked as he screamed something inarticulate, bringing his sword to bear. This time she ducked and grabbed his arms. The impact hurt her wrists, but she was more used to pain than he was. The sword tumbled out of his grip.
She slammed him into the wall of the stable. “Why is it so important to kill me?”
“You are a creature of Hell!” the knight spat back at her. “What does that make my master?” she asked.
She held him there, pinned, his face a hair's breadth from her muzzle. She could smell the fear on him as his composure began cracking. He began chanting a prayer in Latin.
“What does that make my master?” she asked again, fighting the rage, fighting the desire to sink her teeth into his face and end his—
“Uldolf?” she whispered. The word felt alien in her lupine mouth.
No, please, no!
She slammed the knight into the wall and whipped her head around to look at where Uldolf had fallen.
He was gone. His satchel and cloak remained where they had fallen, now resting in a stew of blood and mud. He had seen it all.
No.
He had seen enough.
Lilly looked down at her gore-covered forearms pinning the knight to the wall and whispered again, “Ulfie ...”
Blood and tears fell from her face onto the black cross of the knight's surcoat.
Interlude
Anno Domini 1231
A few days after Uldolf taught her to swim, Lilly heard the horn of her master, calling her to Mejdân. It came in the night before dawn. Three long blasts, followed by two short blasts.
Her first thought was that she would not see the boy Uldolf again.
Something inside her objected to the thought. Is that how we serve our master?
Guilty over thinking about something other than her master's will, she walked through the woods, circling the timber walls of the city and making her way toward the main road and the gate inside. The woods were strangely still, the creatures as silent as they were when Lilly used her real form to eat.
Something else inside her objected to that thought. Is that body more real than the pink flesh we're wearing now?
Until Uldolf, she had been trained to think little of her human body. It was nothing more than a shell, a disguise, a falsehood. It wasn't until Uldolf had treated her as another human, and she had learned that her human form was capable of more than receiving punishment, that she thought of her human form as real.
The wolf is the real one. That is the will of God.
Telling herself that made her calmer and less frightened.
As she pushed through the woods, the sky lightened through the branches above, turning purple, and then pale rose. As she moved west, she caught scents on the air. She smelled something acrid, as if something far away was burning. As she came closer to the main road through the woods to Mejdân, she smelled the stink of people and animals.
Before she came in sight of the road, she could hear them, feet and hooves slogging through mud, the breathing of men and horses, and the rattle of wheeled carts. She heard very little speech.
She stepped out of the woods at the edge of the road to face a column of people heading for Mejdân. The smoke smell was closer, as were the smells of blood and urine and burnt flesh. Whole families trudged in silence next to exhausted horses. Wagons carried wounded men and women, some whose stillness showed them past living.
Lilly stood and watched the procession. These were the people who troubled her master, godless ones fleeing before God's army. They would seek refuge within the stronghold of Mejdân.
False refuge.
“Hurry, child,” someone called to her, “do not fall behind.”
Lilly smiled to herself as she slipped into the moving column of Prûsans. She would make her master proud.
***
Lilly made it inside easily. In the chaos of refugees, no one paid any attention to a nine-year-old girl. The guards of Mejdân were more interested in getting all the farmers, animals, and wounded behind the defensive walls of the village as quickly as possible. It was simple enough for her to slip away and find an unobtrusive hiding place.
She made a nest in a stable loft above a dozen goats that were shoved into a stall meant for one or two. It was the perfect spot, because it was in the shadow of the central stronghold, which sat on a rise overlooking the rest of the village. There were no buildings between her and the stronghold.
She heard the Mejdân defenders shut the gates that evening.
A few hours later, she heard her master's army arrive. She heard the gallop of fresh mounts and the rustle of mail. Even padded, it had a metallic sound distinct from the Prûsans' leather armor.
It would be soon.
During the night, to build her strength, she took one of the goats. She did it carefully and as silently as possible—though no villager could have heard her movements through the terrified bleating.
She was cautious to snap the kid's neck without recourse to tooth or claw, and withdraw into the loft with her kill as quickly as possible. No blood splattered the stall below, and when a guard came to investigate the commotion, he was confronted only by eleven terrified goats that bolted for the gate as soon as he arrived.
In the human scramble to recapture the goats, no man looked up into the loft to see her dark-furred silhouette huddled against the straw. She remained motionless until the men left.
Only then, to the distress of the animals below her, did she begin to eat.
When her master's second trump sounded two nights later, calling her to attack, there was little left of the animal but greasy bones and bloody straw.
***
Three days into the siege of Mejdân, Uldolf woke to someone screaming.
His eyes opened as the sound abruptly cut off. He lay in his cot, half convinced it was a dream. His father had explained siege-craft to him. It was all waiting. All about who had more food, more will. The Christian invaders didn't have near enough men to throw an attack against the wall of the village—not a successful one, anyway.
Someone else screamed.
Uldolf sat up. This was no dream, and the screams came from inside the stronghold. The enemy was inside.
Uldolf crawled out of his bed and crept up on the narrow door to his room. When he reached the door, he felt his foot slide in something wet and sticky. He shuddered slightly and opened the latch.
The door swung into the room, pushed by the weight of the body leaning against it. He stared at it, uncomprehending. Even as he felt the fear drain into a small cold ball buried in his gut, his conscious mind could not make the image sensible.
Several long seconds passed before he was able to form the question in his mind.
Where is his head?
He took a step back, staring at the corpse in the lamplight that spilled from the hallway. Blood caused the dead man's leather armor to glisten in the firelight. The man had drawn his sword, and the blade reste
d next to his leg, as if he had never had the chance to use it.
Uldolf s father had been wrong. There would be no long siege. The enemy was attacking them now.
Almost as if in a dream, Uldolf watched himself step over the body and pick up the sword. It was heavier than the wooden ones his father's guards let him train with, and the hilt was slick with blood and sweat.
Uldolf stepped into the hallway and saw the dead man's head, upside-down, leaning against a wall. His name had been Oldan, and he had been one of the men who showed Uldolf how to wield that wooden sword—how to block, to cut, to thrust.
Uldolf tightened his grip on the sword and ran down the hallway.
He ran past more bodies and parts of bodies. He didn't spare the time to look at them closely, to see if he knew them—to see if they were friend or foe. His feet were coated with blood, sticking to the floor with every step. His breath burned like molten copper.
He turned the corner and saw the doorway to his parents' chamber. Just as he came in sight, something small flew out of the doorway, to slam into the wall. It bounced off, to roll nearly back to the threshold.
Uldolf stared for several seconds at it, before he understood what he saw.
Jawgede.
It was his sister, barely half his own age, and her torso had been torn open, legs to throat.
He screamed something that might not have even been words and ran through the doorway, past his sister's body.
It was the blood he felt first—so much blood. It splattered the walls and coated the floor, the ferric smell of it so heavy that his throat closed up, choking on the thick, humid air. Then he saw the bodies—pieces of bodies —strewn about with the broken furniture and shredded tapestries.
And in the midst of it all stood a monstrous red-furred, half-wolf thing—
It had its back to him, pulling apart a body it had pinned to the wall. Under the creature's clawed hand, Uldolf saw his father's face.
Uldolf moved without thinking, charging at the thing's back, forgetting what little training he had been given on the proper way to wield a sword.