Wolfbreed (50 page)

ldolf watched, horrified, as the muscles in Lilly’s neck suddenly began swelling and writhing. The pulsing veins grew, branching, and spidering under the darkening skin. Her cheeks lengthened and her nose flattened as her clenched teeth pushed forward, sharpening under snarling lips that thinned to invisibility.

Her shoulders broadened, and Uldolf saw claws poke through the burlap, between the ropes in front of her. Below her, the front of her feet splayed out into massive paws whose claws dug into the wood surface of the platform.

The groaning increased in volume, and Lilly jerked forward.

Someone beyond the fire shouted in German.

Two bolts erupted from the stake, near her head. One grazed her neck, the other tore through the flesh of her ear on the other side.

The whole platform shook with a massive snap, as if God himself was cracking a whip to scourge the heathens. Even the flames danced in response, rolling up with an eruption of smoke and embers. The top half of Lilly’s stake toppled forward as more bolts thudded into the platform around her. Uldolf felt a pain in his shoulder and momentarily thought he had been hit by one of the bolts.

He looked down and saw that it wasn’t a bolt, but a massive wood splinter, about the length of his hand, sticking out of his right shoulder. He glanced up and saw the bottom half of Lilly’s stake, split and broken, with a pile of shredded burlap and leather at its base. For a few moments, he didn’t see where Lilly had fallen.

ünter numbly watched the proceedings. He knew that what he felt right now was probably matched by all the Prûsan eyes focused on the flames in front of the keep. The Order had promised that a Prûsan who accepted the Christian God would be the same as any Christian; that the Church would respect a convert’s life and property.

The bishop’s pyre argued otherwise.

It was as if the last eight years had not happened. How many times would the Church insist on demonstrations of fealty?

Uldolf and his family weren’t any less Christian than Günter was, any less than most of the Prûsans here. But the bishop was showing that baptism, and worship of the Christian God, wasn’t enough.

How many of us still respect the old gods?

Uldolf himself had returned the creature to the Germans, and now he faced a horrid death for his efforts. Günter looked at the bishop next to him, who was holding Gedim’s screaming daughter as he shouted a prayer in Latin. Günter, bishop, and child stood in the clearing between the pyre and the curved line of soldiers.

If this is your path to salvation
, Günter thought,
then let me be damned
.

“The creature is moving!” someone shouted in German.

Günter turned to face the pyre. It was hard to see through the glare. The four stakes were rippling silhouettes behind heat and flame. But there was something happening in front, where the monster had been tied. He saw a shadow there, half crouching.

He also heard a creak underneath the crackling flames, as if a long-unused door was opening.

He heard the snap of crossbows firing from the line of soldiers behind him. He didn’t see where the bolts went, but right after the first ones fired, he heard a sudden massive crash, as if the opening door had slammed shut.

The monster’s stake collapsed to the platform, and the flames belched rolling smoke and embers toward the sky. Günter felt burning heat wash across his face and his eyes watered. As the flames died down, he saw that all that remained of the monster’s stake was a splintered stump pointing crookedly at the sky.

The bishop stopped praying.

More bolts sailed into the flames, but Günter didn’t see their target.

It’s using the flames for cover. The crossbowmen can’t see well enough to aim …

Suddenly a monstrous lupine shadow moved behind the flames. It raised a five-foot length of splintered wood above its head—the top half of the creature’s stake.

The splintered log sailed out of the flames and arced over Günter, Hilde, and the bishop to slam into one of the crossbow-men, knocking him back into the crowd of Prûsans.

“Kill it!” the bishop screamed in German. “Shoot the thing.”

More bolts sailed into the pyre, to what effect Günter couldn’t tell.

The shadow moved behind the flames, too fast for him to follow. Günter had horrid visions of the fight in the keep.
This thing will not die …

The bishop was wrong. This was not a tool of the Christian Satan, something subject to the wrath of the Christian God. This creature was serving the lord of the dead Pikuolis, come to punish the Prûsans for turning away from the old gods.

A flaming chunk of wood sailed from the pyre. It arced to Günter’s right, striking another crossbowman in the side of the head. The man vanished under a shower of sparks, and his crossbow fired, the wild bolt striking another soldier in the thigh, taking him to his knees.

The Prûsan crowd swelled. German shouts came from the fringes of the mass of people. At the edge of the crowd, away from the pyre, a line of soldiers tried to keep order. They were too far away to immediately realize what was happening at the pyre. All they knew was that the mass of Prûsans were trying to escape. They didn’t yet know why the Prûsans were trying to run from the pyre.

Günter stared in horror as he saw torchlight glinting off a raised German sword at that end of the crowd.

He heard Brother Erhard screaming “No!” at the Germans, but his order was already lost in the screams as the soldiers began cutting down Prûsan men, women, and children.

ldolf couldn’t follow what was happening anymore. The fire was too close, the heat and smoke burning his eyes and making them water. He heard people yelling unintelligibly in German and Prûsan. He heard screams. But all he could think of now was the burning in his chest, and the heat on his skin, and the smell of burnt hair. He prayed that the smoke would asphyxiate him before the flames licked against his feet.

Then a nightmare image blocked his vision. A slavering muzzle appeared in front of his face, its breath even hotter than the air off the burning pyre. Its red fur was scorched, and the skin beneath cracked, blistered, and bloody. It looked at him with green eyes.

Lilly, if you kill me now, it would be a mercy
.

The massive jaws opened and she bent down, burying her face in his chest. He felt teeth and saliva. He felt claws raking his chest. He felt the flex of her jaw muscles against his chest, and very briefly, the slither of her tongue against his stomach.

Then the ropes supporting his body gave way.

He fell forward, toward the fire, stopped only by a massive arm covered in scorched fur. She bent over him and her muzzle descended to meet his face. He felt the thing’s lips against his as its teeth bit through the leather holding the wooden gag in his mouth. When the wolf’s face lifted from his own, he spat out the wood. “What—”

Her face descended again, and he felt a pain in his shoulder as she bit the large splinter and pulled it free from his flesh.

Then she hugged him to her chest, smothering his face in scorched fur, and jumped. He felt the heat of the flames as they passed through. He tried to scream at her not to leave his parents, but he could barely breathe.

She let him go and he fell back against a cold stone wall, facing the pyre. The flames now reached higher than the tops of the
stakes. He looked into the flames, eyes watering, trying to see his parents.

“Uldolf!” his mother called to him.

Uldolf turned and saw her sitting against the wall. His father’s head rested unmoving in her lap.

“Mother?” Uldolf shook his head. Too much had happened too fast. “Is he …”

“His wounds are bad, but he breathes.” She looked up past him, face pale.

Uldolf turned to see the wolf thing standing there. She was little more than a shadow against the pyre, half wolf and half human. He wondered where the soldiers were. He could hear swords clashing and men shouting, but it was all on the other side of the pyre from him.

“Why?” Uldolf whispered.

The monster spoke in Lilly’s voice. “See to your parents.”

Then she leapt away, and he lost sight of her in the glare from the pyre.

omething sailed out of the crowd and struck Günter in the side of the head. The impact rang against his helmet and knocked him to his knees, the fire towering up ten or fifteen paces in front of him. It took a few moments for his vision to clear, and in those moments, chaos had come to reign. The mob had become a living thing, a monster worse than the wolf—a mass of peasant rags and panicked faces, pulsing and swelling. The soldiers tried to raise their weapons against it, but it was like attacking the sea.