Wolfbreed (4 page)

Half human. Half wolf. Its limbs were long and muscular, and even with the stooped, downcast posture it stood upright, as tall as a man. The arms were nearly human, ending in large inhuman hands that flexed fingers ending in curving black claws. Its head was that of a monstrous she-wolf, with jaws that could snap a man’s neck in half.

It panted as it stared at him, tongue lolling from its muzzle.

Not waiting for his subordinates, Günter threw his considerable weight into the door. It moved slightly.

Even without the silver seals intact, just getting the barrier closed would be enough to hold the thing. Like the chain, it was much too heavy, even for the strength of …

“Sergeant!” one of his men screamed.

“Are you children? I told you! The chain—”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the creature take a limping step forward, over Manfried’s body.

Impossible! The manacle is pure silver. The chain is too heavy, too strong. It couldn’t break—

It hadn’t.

Now that the creature had moved forward, Günter could see something he had missed before. On the floor, connected to the wall by the heaviest chain that the German blacksmiths could
forge, wrapped in a silver manacle banded with iron, rested the rotting foot of a seventeen-year-old girl, dismembered above the ankle.

The door slammed open, blowing free from the seal wedged between it and the floor. The door threw Günter backward, and one of his men screamed as the door pinned the man’s arm against the wall.

The beast stood in the doorway, its hunched posture uneven because one red-furred leg terminated in a bloody stump. Even as Günter watched, the leg seemed to lengthen, growing toward where the amputated limb should have been.

“Silver!” he yelled at his men. “Use the silver weapons!”

Jacob led a trio of men, jumping over Günter to reach the beast. All three were young, in training to become knights of the Order. They all had the fire in their belly, and Günter expected they would storm the gates of Hell itself.

The way they screamed out to God and Heaven now, it was possible that they believed that was exactly what they were doing.

Jacob reached the beast first and, even in the narrow confines of the corridor, the young man’s form was perfect, bringing his sword up and under the beast’s reach, cleaving into the torso under the beast’s left forearm. The force in the blow would have taken an armored opponent to his knees, cracking the ribs of anyone wearing less than a solid breastplate. Against the naked red-furred torso, the edge cut deep into the side of the chest and should have cleaved a lung at the very least.

But the blade was not silver.

“Damn Erhard,” Günter spat. “Damn him to Hell for this.”

No one heard his cursing in the midst of the shouts and prayers that echoed through the stony halls.

Landkomtur Erhard von Stendal had bequeathed this monster to them. He had told Günter that there was no true danger. He had said that the silver manacle and the silver seals safely bound
the creature. He had said that the daggers he gifted the garrison, and the bolts locked upstairs in the armory, were mere precautions.

There was no reason to burden the men, especially those who were recently baptized, with knowledge of the prisoner’s nature. Silver-clad swords and axes would raise too many questions, beyond the questions of unseemly extravagance.

Jacob laughed at the beast, obviously convinced he had delivered it a mortal blow. Blood flowed down the blade, foaming at the wound when the thing panted.

“Your dagger,” Günter ordered, even as he realized that Jacob wasn’t wearing it. Jacob couldn’t accept such unseemly wealth on his belt, the pious idiot.

Günter scrambled to his feet, drawing his own silver weapon from his belt. He charged to save the fool, who didn’t even realize he was in mortal danger.

Jacob turned to him with a bemused expression. “Sergeant? I have it—” Jacob’s gloating was cut short. His blow should have driven any creature into shock, but not this one. This beast was only given a moment’s pause by the sword piercing its side, and when it moved, it showed no sign of pain.

It tore the sword from Jacob’s grip, pulling it out of its side, and rammed it, hilt-first, into Jacob’s face.

The blow was strong enough to be instantly mortal, and the force of it sent Jacob’s lifeless body through the line of advancing men, onto Günter.

Günter fell to the ground, his helmet bouncing off the stone floor hard enough to stun him.

Around him he heard the sounds of screams, and prayers, and tearing flesh. His stomach tightened at the smell of blood as he spent a short eternity pushing Jacob’s corpse off of him. His hands slid in blood as he tried to regain his feet.

Günter shuddered and took a step back, raising his dagger.

The only other man left alive down here was a softly weeping soldier, one of Günter’s fellow Prûsans, who still had his broken arm trapped between the heavy door and the wall. The corpses of five other men sprawled on the floor between Günter and the creature, some in several pieces.

The creature panted, limping down the center of the hallway toward Günter, its forearms and muzzle smeared with blood that glistened black in the lamplight. Günter thought he could see remnants of human flesh caught in its claws.

The beast regarded Günter with pitiless green eyes.

Günter backed up to the wall, holding the tiny silver blade between himself and the creature, praying to Christ, and Perkûnas, that he would at least die well.

Again, the gods refused to pay any attention to Günter Sejod. The beast snarled at him and bared its teeth—or maybe it smiled at the impotent blade shaking between them. Then it hunched over and loped past him on three legs, faster than Günter would expect a man to run.

It ran toward the stairs.

ytim scrambled down the narrow spiral staircase toward the keep’s granary. He carried three crossbows and a canvas bag of, of all things, silver-tipped bolts. The weapons had been in a special locked case in the armory. No one had ever mentioned the case or its contents to him—not until the alarm bells woke him from sleep and Sergeant Günter had grabbed him, handed him the key, and ordered him to retrieve the contents.

As Oytim had rushed toward the armory, Sergeant Günter had led every other soldier barracked in the keep down toward the lower storerooms where the prisoner was kept.

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.