Wolfbreed (10 page)

Lilly stood upright to face him. Blood covered her, glistening on her muzzle, matting the fur on her legs and torso.

The wounded man did his best to keep the shaking sword point between him and Lilly. “D-don’t come any closer …”

Lilly slowly walked toward him.

“No. I will—”

Lilly stopped a single step from the tip of the threatening blade.

“I won’t let you—”

She grabbed the blade in her half-paw, half-hand. She easily tore it free from the man’s grip. Her paw bled where she had grasped the sword, but only for a moment. The massive wound in her belly had already sealed itself.

The bearded man shook his head, weeping, as Lilly stared at him with pitiless green eyes.

“By the gods,” he said. “Mercy.”

“Why?”

She descended upon him, giving him little chance to scream.

olfbreed, Brother Semyon called them. Beasts that could cloak themselves in a human skin at will. Things that lurked in the nightmares of every rural village and hamlet. Anywhere that bordered a wilderness could harbor such unholy things.

Lilly stood in the courtyard, in the form of a human child. The only sign now of her bestial nature was the blood staining her naked skin. She faced the two of them, staring up at Erhard. The bottom half of her face was black with gore, and her eyes glinted green behind the clotted strings of her hair.

“Where did she—” Erhard began. “Where did
it
come from?”

“A wild version of what you saw—a wolf of human size and posture—slaughtered a convent of brethren of the Order nearly eight years ago.”

Brother Semyon stared down at Lilly. He had never once turned away from the carnage she had wrought, but now, to Erhard he seemed to be looking through her.

“I never heard of this,” Erhard prompted.

“It was never made widely known. It was when we still defended the crown of Hungary against the Cumans, three years before that troublesome man expelled us for asking the respect due us …” Brother Semyon smiled. “But you don’t care for the politics of the matter, do you?”

“Such a creature attacked the Order?”

Semyon nodded. “My convent. My brothers. We were crossing the frontier. The beast struck first at our horses while we slept. We did not know at the time what we faced, and thought ourselves bedeviled by some human villain.” He finally turned to face Erhard. “Now, in that Transylvanian wilderness, the old pagan modes of worship still abound. A nearby village had a reputation for not fully embracing Christ, and we went there to find satisfaction for our losses.”

“What did you find there?”

“At first? Protests of innocence. But I was persuasive. I uncovered the priest of their false god, and the site of their sacred groves, and tales of their vengeful spirits and the things that lived in the woods.”

“The wolfbreed?”

“My name, not theirs. I will not pollute my tongue with the names of the pagan gods by which these were called …”

“What happened?”

“My Komtur was a righteous man, but prone to err on the side of mercy when doing the Lord’s work. He did not approve of the aggressiveness of my questioning, or the cost in blood for my answers. He took the priest in chains, and sent me to meditate on our Lord’s mercy. But the beast came for them that night, and when I returned from my meditation, I found only their blood.” Semyon turned away from Erhard to stare again at Lilly. “But it left me the priest.”

“Lord have mercy.”

Semyon nodded. “I did not. And I learned from the priest, before he died.”

An animal, Semyon told Erhard, a beast fed upon the sacrifices of the village. The priest believed that he had called its wrath down upon the Christians. From the priest, Semyon heard of its ability to change its shape at will, its ability to heal from most any wound and, most important, its weakness.

“We had confiscated from the priest a dagger of silver. After his death, I took that weapon and followed the beast to its lair. The monster was beyond anything you’ve seen today, and it was only by the grace of God that I landed a mortal blow before it tore out my throat.”

“But these children?”

“That creature was feeding its young, Brother Erhard. Our horses, my brothers, all meat for its larder. I walked into its lair and found bones and half-eaten corpses, and ten of her whelps. Two months old, if that.”

“Rose? Lilly?”

“Birthed of that creature, and weaned on human flesh.”

Erhard prayed to himself.

After a long pause, he finally found the strength to speak. “Surely this is the hand of evil itself. How can the Order give succor to such things?”

“As you must realize,” Brother Semyon said, “there has been much debate upon this matter. Come, and I will enlighten you.” Semyon led him away from the balcony as a trio of guards came to place silver shackles on an unresisting Lilly.

n the twisted idolatry of the pagan tribes, these beasts were a personification of their brutal gods, red in tooth and claw.
Of course, Semyon said, that was a satanic deception meant to veil pagan hearts and minds from the glory of God, and lead them away from salvation.

When divine providence led Brother Semyon to find a litter of these creatures, the debate had been over exactly what
kind
of deception they were.

There were three possibilities.

The first possibility was that these creatures were members of the legion of Hell itself—demons sent to Earth to harass mankind. Three facts argued against that. The creatures were formed of earthly matter—blood, flesh, and bone like any other animal. They were also mortal, difficult but not impossible to kill. Last, evidence of the infant creatures showed that they gave birth, aged, and would eventually die.

The second possibility was that they were children of men, witches and warlocks possessed of demonic forces that gave them the monstrous ability to transform. However, it was argued that the creatures’ ability to heal was not a false miracle. As such, it could only be granted by God. And were they possessed by the forces of Hell, those forces would be vulnerable to the rites of exorcism. But the words of Christ showed no power to compel them begone, or halt their changes.

The last possibility, given that they seemed neither demon nor men possessed, was that they were some order of earthly beast heretofore unknown within Christendom. No more a demon than the creature that had swallowed Jonah. Just a beast. One that could be trained, like a dog, or a horse, or a slave.

In the end, Brother Semyon had explained how fitting it was that the forces of Christendom could forcefully rend the veil of falsehood from the eyes of pagans by turning their own brute gods against them.

As Brother Semyon told Erhard this, Erhard couldn’t help remembering the courtyard, and Lilly facing the Prûsan brute.

Could such a thing be an instrument of God?

But was it any crueler than what he had seen, and done, in the Holy Land? If this was the path God had set before him, Erhard would have to follow it.

“Brother Semyon,” he asked, “you said that you found ten of these creatures. I saw only six.”

In response, Semyon nodded. “Their training has been hard,” he explained.