The Silver Wolf (41 page)

Grim as it was, she knew her duty. Even the wolf bowed to a law so ancient the wolf could not remember its inception—we do not abandon our own. Antonius’ and Lucilla’s struggles were part of her life now. She had so chosen, both as wolf and woman, and must keep faith. She trotted out past the reeking corpses and plunged into the water.

During her swim the current carried her toward the crowded heart of the city near the Corso. She emerged from the water and shook herself dry amidst the rabbit warren of twisting streets near the Tiber. It was an area so subject to floods that only the poorest of the poor lived there.

The narrow cobbled streets were wet and slimy with urine. Household refuse and rotting garbage clogged the gutters. The smells from the tumbledown human dwellings scalded her senses.

The fighting must have been fierce, since she passed a corpse here and there. One, lying in an alley, had an intact lower body, but the face and head were pounded to a bloody pulp. Another dangled by its feet from a balcony, head down, except it didn’t have a head and its entrails bulged out of the split-open belly, gleaming wet and slick in the faint moonlight.

The silver wolf trotted on, thankful that these dangerous streets were almost deserted. Ahead she saw the lighted windows of a wineshop near the Corso.

She melted into the shadows at once as she tried to edge quietly past the door … Until she saw him.

At first, she took him for a large dog, perhaps a mastiff. Her hackles rose as she prepared herself to fight, but then she realized she was looking at one of her own kind.

She’d been fooled at first by his color. He was brown, but shading to red. The slenderness of his muzzle, the mask of darker fur at the face, and the slanted eyes all proclaimed wolf to her. He was not interested in her. As far as she could tell, he hadn’t seen her at all.

He sat to one side of the wineshop door. His ears stood erect,
eyes eager and expectant. His mouth was open, its red tongue curled in a big doglike grin.

Two drunken men emerged from the wineshop and helped each other down the street. The wolf ignored them.

The next two who came through the door were a young girl with a painted face wearing a tattered silk gown leading a much older soldier—a prostitute and her customer.

The soldier staggered and leaned heavily on the girl’s arm.

The wolf ducked down with an expression of unabashed delight and came up with his head under her skirt.

The silver wolf saw surprise, then consternation chase themselves across the girl’s face as the cold nose and the wet tongue reached their goal. She shrieked and jumped away. While making her escape, she let go of the soldier. He fell heavily to the cobbles.

The girl kicked hard at the wolf. He fled into the darkness of an alleyway next to the wineshop.

Then she turned back to assist her prostrate customer. She bent over, trying to pull him to his feet. A mistake, the silver wolf realized as she soon saw the other wolf’s head appear from around the side of the building.

In that position, she was obviously irresistible. In a second his head was under her skirt again. She gave vent to a scream of outrage and fury as she fell forward over the soldier and they both rocked together on the cobbles.

The soldier lurched to his knees and drew his sword. He swung hard, a mighty and terrible blow had it landed. It didn’t. The edge of the sword struck sparks from the stony street. The wolf was behind him in a flash. Sharp teeth nipped him hard on the backside.

A threatening snarl set every muscle in Regeane’s body quivering for a second until she realized it wasn’t directed at her, but at the red wolf. The soldier gave a soft screech, dropped the sword, and clutched at his backside. The red wolf scurried away from the pair, moving back into the alleyway where he sat down, tried to look innocent, and scratched his ear with his hind leg.

Two other wolves appeared beside him. One was gray, and
only a shadow in the gloom, and the other so black it seemed at first only a pair of eyes suddenly catching the light.

The gray snarled at the red wolf again. This time there was less menace and more reproof in the sound.

The soldier and the girl got to their feet. They both looked around wildly for a few seconds, then bolted into the door of a lodging house next to the wineshop.

The three wolves slipped silently into the light streaming from the tavern door. Then, they all froze as they caught sight of her.

The red wolf grinned, his tongue lolling as it had when he was waiting for his victims. He started toward the silver wolf. She brought him up short with a snarl so vicious she surprised even herself. She was going to take that red wolf apart if he came near her.

His mouth snapped shut, and he gave a soft whine that might have represented an apology and stepped back toward the other two.

The gray wolf glided fully into the light from the door. He was to Regeane’s eyes the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. In the absence of mirrors in a wolf’s life or standards for comparison to herself, Regeane had forgotten how magnificent wolves were, and even she herself was.

He was the deep matte-silver-gray of a shadow on snow. His belly and the backs of his legs were as pure a white as a high-piled drift near a glacier. His shoulders and chest were massive and deep. Below them the slender, delicate legs seemed to tread the earth with a touch as light as a dancer’s. The head and soft upright ears were framed by a ruff as thick as the powerful musculature below. The darker markings on his face set off a pair of eyes so beautifully expressive they might have been those of a lover gazing on his beloved.

The silver wolf felt a tremor run through muscles that had unconsciously stiffened for combat. She relaxed her threatening posture and raised her head.

Were they her kind?
she wondered.
Surely they must be. These weren’t the diminutive, skulking wolves found on the Campagna, but Arctic giants, mountain predators
.

The big gray seemed to carry a whiff of the high fastness with
him. A memory of meadows awash with flowers, of slopes dotted with the graceful whorled shapes of snow-mantled spruce and fur. Of cold so deep it cleared the air of all other scents and drenched every breath with pure lightness.

On his hind legs, he would top most men by a foot or more. And he’d be a formidable opponent for even a thing so large as a bear.

Yet, the silver wolf knew she need not fear him. The knowledge ran deeper than the wolf’s thought or even her savage memory. Instead, she felt an incredible femaleness for the first time as a wolf. A sheness not in the sense of feeling smaller or weaker, but a sleek awareness of her own wild beauty. Though there was no question of a contest between them, she was more than a match for him in speed and her jaws were just as powerful as his. The silver wolf met him as an equal. She encountering a he, each knowing in their coupling they could ignite a brief, exquisite fire in each other’s flesh.

The silver wolf felt a quick stab of heat in her loins. A tightening that sent a shiver of delight over her skin. Every hair on her body stood erect for a second.

The gray made a soft sound in his throat. It was not a growl, but something akin to the purr of a great cat. The ruff at his neck flared out almost like the folds of a fur cape, as if to say “Look upon me. Am I not everything you could desire?”

The silver wolf was stunned. She was too young to reciprocate this first mating gesture, but was secretly delighted. The woman was horrified. The images flooding the wolf’s mind were so deliciously sensual … The antics of a long tongue in certain places, the fangs in that magnificent muzzle could probably groom the fur in a number of excruciatingly sensitive spots with sweet tenderness, and how comfortable to spend an icy night cuddled in the curve of a big, warm, strong body. The woman wanted to be disgusted with herself, wanted to be angry—and was afraid. If only there hadn’t been that almost anguished delight mingled with the fear in her heart.

Suddenly there was a flash of bright light and a loud babble of voices sounded in her ears as the tavern door swung open. Another of its customers tumbled into the street.

The silver wolf was in motion almost before she thought, and
she found herself dodging into the inky cover of another dark street, her mind a turmoil of warring emotions.

THE THREE WHO HAD BEEN WOLVES DONNED their clothing amidst the charred and blackened timbers of a burned-out house.

“I don’t see what’s so awful about having a little fun,” the one who had been the red wolf said. “What’s the good of being shape strong if you can’t enjoy yourself?”

“Wash your face,” the woman who had been the black wolf said. “You stink of those women.”

“Oooh, I love the musk,” the red wolf moaned delightedly.

“And men talk about bitches,” the black wolf said.

The man who had been the big gray belted on his sword. “Wasn’t she beautiful?” he asked.

“Magnificent,” the red wolf agreed.

“Obviously a lady,” the black said.

“She didn’t like me,” the red wolf said.

“That proves my point,” the black said. “One more step and she’d have torn you limb from limb.”

“She’s certainly one of us,” the gray said in a dreamy tone, “though she doesn’t know how to communicate yet. She didn’t understand.”

“Oh, yes she did,” the black wolf said. “That one little gesture when she seemed to turn her whole body to silver flame says more than whole volumes to an experienced eye.”

“I must have her,” the gray said, looking up through the tracery of broken timbers at the pale wash of moonlight.

“So ardent,” the black wolf said. “I can’t believe it. I’ve never seen you this way before.”

“My blood runs hot by night,” the gray said. “All I remember by night is that I am a leader. The semblance of humanity in me is just that—only a semblance, and I lust after enemies to overawe, to tame and then rule; for a mate before whom I can flaunt my strength and power, one who will match the heat of my passion with her own.”

“Then you likely picked the wrong one,” the black said. “She probably thinks of herself as a human woman at most times. And human women are more abject slaves than our cousins the
dogs.” She spat into the thick jumble of wood ashes at her feet. “I’ll wager she’s married to some lout who beats her by day and rapes her every night.”

“I hope not,” the gray said ominously, “for his sake. Otherwise he’ll make the near acquaintance of my teeth. Mayhap that is all I can do for her. But if her man is a brute, I shall certainly rid her of him, that I promise. I don’t find these Romans all too difficult to kill.”

The woman who had been the black wolf chuckled nastily.

“I take it you’re not hungry then,” the red said.

“We dined tonight,” she said, “on an unwary footpad who was foolish enough to try to slip a dagger between his ribs.” She gestured toward the gray. “The fool was tender. A bit fatty for my taste, but tender.”

“Hmmm,” the red said hopefully, “do you think we could find another? I’m starving.”

“Let’s go try,” the gray said. “I hope we see that silver beauty again. Maybe we can follow her home and, if her husband is minded after the fashion of most humankind, I’ll crack his bones and lap the marrow.”

THE SILVER WOLF CROSSED THE CORSO AND paused to sniff the wind lightly. The mixture of odors blunted her nose, confusing the wolf, and frightening the woman. At least a dozen fires were burning in the city. Beyond the overpowering smell of wood smoke hung a miasma of death and decay. She realized the city belonged neither to the pope nor to the Lombards, but only to itself.

A tide of Caesars, barbarian conquerors, and kings had passed through it and over it, but in the end its real rulers had always been its turbulent and stubborn people. They held it now. The tide Lucilla had spoken of was at the flood. The magnates who controlled the lands that fed the city and its angry, independent people would decide the issue between the Lombards and the pope.

She thought of the others she’d seen.
Were they really like her?
For a moment a dream she’d believed dead had possessed her, the dream of love.
Who had the gray been? What kind of man was he by day? Churchman, warrior, thief, or madman?

The silver wolf wanted to go back and find his spoor. To follow him. Find him and begin the long frolic that would end in … what? Did her kind, partaking as they did of the nature of both beast and human, make love as men or wolves? Or was their coupling some secret beauty denied to both beast and man? Something unique only to themselves?

She suspected it was. The wolf’s free heart cried out for the gray, urged her to find out who and what he was. Images flowed freely through her brain. They could carry their dance of love across a world that was a garden to them. They could consummate their desires high on a mountain peak where no man’s foot had ever trod. There, the snow packs so deep and the crust freezes so hard their wide paws can fleet across it the way a flung stone skips over water. Comfortable where the windchill alone would kill a man in minutes, they could find a trysting place for a pair of lupine lovers. Did the deep woods beckon, they might easily penetrate places pathless to humankind. Hidden among trees so tall, with trunks so thick they would laugh at the bite of an ax. They could explore the endless possibilities of desire in moonlit glades and worship the mistress of the night together.

Oh, God, the dream was real. A gnawing hunger in the wolf’s heart, a pain in her throat.

The woman cringed in terror. Whoever he was by day, how could he have the power to protect her from the wrath of both king and pope? In the instant their eyes met, he had wanted her as much as she wanted him. She was caught in a trap and she could not pull him down to perish with her.

No, she would grit her teeth and embrace a man. And try to forget the mysteries of moonlight.

The stench of a slaughterhouse jerked the wolf away from her thoughts.

She eased along the Corso, moving stealthily from shadow to shadow. When she smelled it, she realized the horrible odor was coming from the insula where Antonius had lived with the rest of the maimed outcasts of the city. Two Lombard soldiers guarded the door. They had set torches in brackets above their heads and the street was brightly lighted around them.