XVI
What attacked you, Josef?”
Josef opened his eyes groggily. He used to wake for dawn prayers, but during his convalescence he had allowed sloth to overtake him. Maria’s voice woke him, and he was alarmed at how late in the morning he must have slept. He blinked and looked up at her. Her face was radiant in the rosy light from the window.
“What attacked you, Josef?”
When she repeated herself, the sense of the words finally penetrated his sleep-addled mind. “Maria, I am not permitted to speak of—”
She leaned over him and said, in a low voice, “I am not asking what is permitted.”
Something had changed in her manner—enough that he imagined that her appearance had changed slightly, too. Her skin almost glowed, even as her eyes bore down upon him. “What happened?”
“I need to know what you chased into the woods here. What did you bring with you?”
“Why are you asking me these questions?” He pushed himself upright and realized that the sky outside was lit only with the first rays of dawn.
“Why?” He saw her ball her fists, and her arms seemed to vibrate. “Why did you tell me to avoid these woods at night?”
“Did something—”
“Happen?” she whispered.
Josef looked at her and felt fear grow in his heart. Obedience was a weight upon him, and he was being forced to ignore the danger to Maria—to everyone at this fortress. They had chased this thing here. Could they not take any responsibility?
“It is not my place to reveal my Order’s secrets,” he said, more to himself than to her.
“Is it anything like a wolf?” she snapped.
Josef froze, staring at her.
She knew.
Maria stared into his face and whispered, “But not a wolf, is it? Something horrible, something so angry …”
Her breath caught, and her eyes glistened. Her shoulders shook, and Josef reached up and put a hand on her arm. “How did you—”
“Don’t touch me!” she shouted, knocking his hand away. She ran out of the room before Josef could respond.
He didn’t know what shamed him more, the fact that he had placed the Order’s rule between himself and Maria’s safety or the fact that he was considering placing Maria ahead of his vows to the Order. I am an imperfect servant.
In his heart, he knew what was right. He pushed himself out of bed.
It was clear now that the creature they hunted was still present, closer to this place than they might have imagined. He needed to tell Komtur Heinrich, and they needed to act before the demon left another village in ruins, before Maria was hurt.
But as he moved, driven by fear for her, he remembered the bruise on her face and how it had disappeared. That quiet, ugly voice told him that there were other ways to know what they hunted.
He forced the thought away.
Outside the chapel, Komtur Heinrich said, “We know that the legends of these beasts are manifold.”
Josef pulled in a shallow breath; deep breaths ignited fiery pains in his gut. “Sir, forgive me, but this servant seemed to speak from direct experience.”
“I see. What details did this person provide to you? Was there anything that could be of help in our search?”
Josef shook his head. “I thought just the confirmation that it was still in the woods was worth bringing to your attention.”
“Yes, Brother Josef, but we need details to act. Generalities do not provide usable strategy.”
Josef bowed his head. It felt as if his heart were melting and oozing through the wound in his belly. “Forgive me, sir.”
“You do not require forgiveness,” Heinrich said, “but perhaps more of an investigative nature. You asked no questions?”
“I was concerned that too intent an interest would betray our purpose here.”
“I am glad you’ve taken our prior discussion to heart and err toward caution.”
Josef found himself unaccountably angry at his master. He tried to tell himself that it was the pain of his wound doing ill things to his mood, but in his heart he also knew that he had begun to doubt the reasoning behind their secrecy. It was clear that Maria knew something of what they hunted. How could telling her of the Order’s work be wrong? Wouldn’t the knowledge that there were servants of God here to root out the monster reassure more than alarm? If the beast began rending flesh in their midst, would their silence do anything to keep the peace, or to keep the innocent from being hunted?
He gritted his teeth and forced out something appropriately humble.
Heinrich placed his hand on Josef’s shoulder and said, “Do not fret for our task. The Duke has heard our petition and has seen our writ from the pope.”
“He knows, then?”
“Only what he needs to know: that we hunt a murderous servant of the Devil.”
“But not what it is?”
“He is sending out a group of Poles, along with Brother Reinhart, to search for evidence of our cause.”
“Are they armed with silver? Do they know that this thing can walk abroad like a man?”
“Don’t concern yourself. Reinhart shall see the Duke’s men safely through. They merely need to find a scene of this creature’s bloodlust; he will not lead unprepared men to face the thing themselves.”
“But—”
“I said not to concern yourself,” Heinrich snapped. “Mind your words, Brother Josef, and do not presume to instruct your superiors.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, and the words were like ashes in his mouth.
Brother Reinhart marched through the woods accompanied by a half dozen Poles from Duke Siemowit III’s personal guard. They were led by the Duke’s deputy, Wojewoda Bolesław himself.
In the Duke’s wisdom, he had decided that his men would take their survey of the area on foot. Reinhart had the uncharitable suspicion that this was to avoid returning a mount to one of his German “guests.”
Though, he had to admit to himself, such a search through the woods was done more easily on two feet than on four. It was also because Komtur Heinrich’s men had been mounted in close woods such as these that the creature’s attack, the last time they had last faced it, had been so costly.
Maneuverability alone, however, was not so much a comfort with the Order’s weapons still stored within Gród Narew. The Duke hadn’t permitted Reinhart so much as a knife. He had been sent out with this troop of obnoxiously loud Poles to tramp through the woods barely better than a prisoner. He questioned the utility of including him in the party at all. If the monster had left evidence of its passage here, it would be quite obvious even to the boorish Bolesław, who tromped ahead, shouting commands to the Polish guard with broad and unsubtle gestures that lowered Reinhart’s already low opinion of Slavic nobility.
And the large, heavily bearded Bolesław was probably as fine an example of the szlachta as anyone might find.
At least the man could speak passable German, even if he shouted orders in the cacophonous tongue of the Poles. Reinhart found their language even more unpleasant in the ear than the few words of Old Prussian he had heard, spoken by the handful of unrepentant pagans who haunted the woods within the Order’s domain.
Ahead of them, Bolesław raised a hand and shouted to his men. As one, six men in mail and heavy boots ceased moving and talking, and the woods around them grew suddenly silent. Reinhart felt his own breath catch in his throat. They had found something.
“Shall our monk come forward and examine this?” Bolesław waved Reinhart forward. “You are interested in unnatural deaths?”
Reinhart flexed his hands, wishing for the pommel of a sword. He said a silent prayer as he walked up next to Bolesław to see what the man had found. The monster they hunted was not subtle, but Reinhart had not expected to come across sign of its passage so soon after leaving the fortress.
“So, Brother Reinhart, tell me if this is the work of satanic forces.”
Reinhart looked down at Bolesław’s feet, where the corpse of a mange-ridden hare lay half-buried in leaves and pine needles. Crusts of mucus covered its nose and mouth, and scavengers had already taken the eyes, leaving an empty socket to stare up at Reinhart.
“This is not a joke,” Reinhart said. The wrath he felt now could not be kept out of his voice, and it was only with God’s grace that he prevented himself from closing Bolesław’s obnoxious mouth with his fist. “What we hunt is deadly, and evil.”
“As you have said, but perhaps you might be more forthcoming about what signs you seek?” Bolesław kicked the hare’s corpse, lifting it off a writhing bed of maggots to flop over onto the tip of Reinhart’s boot. “Are you sure this is not the handiwork of our quarry?”
The other Poles laughed, but there was a deadly serious glint in Bolesław’s eyes.
“You will know its work when you find it,” Reinhart said. He kicked the dead hare off his boot and turned to the Poles. “And when you do, you will not laugh.”
“I do not—” Bolesław was interrupted by a shout from one of his men. Reinhart turned to look at the commotion. One of the Poles held up an empty boot.
The trail grew more obvious as they followed: broken branches, bloody bits of torn clothing. As soon as it was clear to Reinhart that they had found the trail of their quarry, he asked Bolesław to order the party’s return so that Reinhart’s brothers could rearm and come out to finish the thing.
“For a boot and a few rags? My Duke would require something more substantial, Brother Reinhart.”
It was only a couple miles deeper into the woods that Reinhart saw Bolesław regret those words.
They followed a game trail into a dense thicket, then up to a rise that appeared to end in a twisted mass of undergrowth and deadfalls. They might have turned back if not for one man who saw something in the undergrowth. The Pole ran up and retrieved a dirty brown object.
He lifted it to reveal a severed human head as ill-used by scavengers and as maggot-ridden as the hare Bolesław had kicked upon Reinhart’s boot. The grotesque sight was met with a number of gasps, and the whole character of the expedition changed.
Bolesław took a step forward and stared at the dead, eyeless face. “Lukasz,” he whispered.
“Do we have substance enough for your Duke?” Reinhart asked. “If we return now, we can—”
He was interrupted by another Pole, who had taken a position at the highest point on the rise. He was shouting something as he looked down, crossing himself, then making gestures Reinhart thought were purely pagan.
Bolesław turned and charged up the rise with more speed than Reinhart would have credited him for. As Reinhart followed, he saw the color leach from the massive Pole’s face so quickly that, when he reached his side, the large man had taken on the aspect of a wraith.
Reinhart looked down and shuddered.
“Jesus wept.”
He prayed as he gazed into the bowl-like ravine before a cave mouth. The ground was black with tarlike mud, covered with flies and the prints of a massive wolf. Scattered evenly around the small clearing were the remains of men, horses, and animals less identifiable. No body had been left intact, and some of the men still wore bits of armor.
Reinhart saw the Devil’s hand. The dead had been taken here, placed here, carefully arranged so the fiend could revel in its handiwork.
“You are right,” Bolesław told him. “We must return and arm your fellows—” Bolesław was interrupted by a wolf’s howl. And when the woods swallowed the last echo, the only sound left was that of Reinhart’s breathing and the creak of the other men’s armor.
Without any prompting, Bolesław pulled his sword from its scabbard, and Reinhart saw the glint of silver on its edge.
“God help us,” Reinhart said. “It is here.”
Darien followed the men from the fortress, silently and beyond their sight, breathing in the scent of eight men. One scent was familiar, even if he hadn’t seen the black cross on his surcote.
Darien allowed the men to walk far from the paths and the walls of the fortress. They marched, loud and unconcerned, into Darien’s domain. If the loud ones had been alone, he might have ignored them. But in their midst was a member of the Order, and Darien could not turn away from the opportunity to reduce the Order’s ranks. He recognized where they were when one of the men found a boot that had once graced the foot of the oaf who had attacked Maria. The men followed Darien’s trail, picking up cast-off rags, until they found themselves at the edge of Darien’s lair.
When they stopped, he padded to just within sight of them. Three looked down upon his cave, and another held the head of Maria’s oafish attacker up by the hair.
Now was the time, while they were distracted and had no weapons in hand.
He sat on his haunches and concentrated. His forelegs creaked as they lengthened, and his forepaws became clawed hands. His back and chest broadened, his shoulders twisting painfully, bringing forth a howl.
The howl reduced his element of surprise, but it brought him the smell of fear, which was worth more. He dove into their midst as the men scrambled to draw their swords. He landed on the back of the rearmost, slamming him to the ground as he clamped his jaws around the back of his neck.
The words were barely out of Reinhart’s mouth when yells of alarm rose from the Poles. He turned around to see a massive golden-furred monster taking down one of Bolesław’s men. He saw slavering jaws crush the man’s neck and shake his head like a rag doll’s, independent of the body.
The monster straddled the corpse on doglike legs, balanced on huge splayed paws that dug claws into the forest floor. Its forearms were long and ended in clawed imitations of human hands. When it raised its massive wolf’s head, its muzzle was stained with gore and its lips were pulled back into something between a snarl and a demonic grin. One pale blue eye seemed to stare directly into Reinhart’s soul.
The two Poles near the fallen man drew their swords and raised them against the creature.
Reinhart yelled at them: “The head! Sever the head or pierce the brain!” Next to him, Bolesław shouted in his own language as he stepped between the creature and Reinhart, holding one of the Order’s silvered swords.
Bolesław’s words must have been a reprise of Reinhart’s instruction, because both swords came down toward the wolf’s head. But the creature moved blindingly fast. One forearm rose to deflect the flat of one incoming blade, and as the other blade swung toward its throat, the beast snapped at it, catching the blade in its jaws and tearing the sword out of its wielder’s hands with a shake of its head.
The other swordsman tried again, but the beast leapt on him as he raised his sword, slamming him into a tree. That man’s sword went flying, along with part of his arm. A third man ignored the admonishment to attack the thing’s head and drove a plain steel sword into the creature’s side as it eviscerated its victim against the tree.
In response, the beast whipped its head around. It still had a sword clenched in its jaws, and the point of it pierced its attacker’s face. The man fell at the beast’s feet as it turned to face the three armed Poles converging on it.
Reinhart ran to the first fallen man, who had not had the time to draw his weapon. He had to roll the body to get the sword out. As he struggled to free the weapon from the dead man’s belt, he heard screams, and growls, and the sound of rending flesh. His heart thudded in his throat as he finally pulled the sword free.
Not silver, but through the palate into the brain …
He whipped around to face the monster.
But it wasn’t there.
The headless corpse of Wojewoda Bolesław, lord of Gród Narew, had fallen across his disemboweled countryman, his leather-gauntleted hand still clutching the pommel of a now-broken sword. The other half of Bolesław’s silver sword was embedded in the heart of a tree. Of his head, Reinhart saw no sign.
Two other attackers lay on either side of the tree, throats torn open in awful symmetry as they stared sightlessly up at the sky.
Reinhart spun around, looking for the beast, but the closeness of the trees limited his visibility even in broad daylight. He backed toward a tree to gain some cover behind himself. Something rustled to his right, and he spun to face in that direction, keeping the tree at his back. He thought he saw a shadow move between the trees.
Then he heard a scream.
The last man, Reinhart thought. The man who had swung his sword into the beast’s mouth only to be disarmed. That man had fled into the woods.
Not far enough, or quick enough. His scream was cut short with a horribly liquid sound, followed by a soft crunch.
Reinhart tightened his grip on the sword in his hand. He wanted to pursue this fiend, do his best to finish it, even as poorly armed as he was, but discipline made him hold his ground. Running—either after this thing or away from it—would be suicide. The creature was faster and could attack from any angle. If he showed his back, even in pursuit, he would suffer the same fate as the Poles.
“Face me, demon!” he yelled at the woods.
Even without a silvered weapon, it was still possible to kill it, if he could strike before it inflicted a mortal blow. He prayed for the strength to do what was required of him.
A morning breeze carried the sound of a soft growl from the surrounding woods, wrapped in the nauseating scent of blood. He edged around the tree, stepping over the outflung arm of a corpse, carefully minding his footing as he stared at the trees for any hint of motion, any signal of attack.
It would rush him, he decided. It would wait for a break in his attention and rely on its speed and strength to overwhelm him before he could bring a blow to bear. Expecting that, he braced his sword in both hands. He could use the creature’s momentum to pierce its skull.
“Do you fear God’s judgment?” he called. “Face me!”
Something low spoke from the woods, a growling sepulchral voice that could have belonged to Satan himself: “Why would I concern myself with your God?”
A creaking growl filled the air, coming from just beyond the trees in front of Reinhart. It was as if the woods were hungry.
“Show yourself,” he called, willing his voice not to tremble.
“Speak more,” it said. “Yell, scream, call on your God. Let me hear it.”
A bead of sweat dripped out from under Reinhart’s helmet, stinging his eyes.
“You may mask your fear from other men, knight, but to me you reek of it. I taste your terror in the air around you, and it tastes as sweet as your flesh.”
“I am ready for you, Devil.”
“I am no devil,” the trees whispered at him. “And you are far from ready.”
Something exploded out of the underbrush at him, and Reinhart swung his sword, aiming head-high. As he had hoped, the momentum carried the onrushing body onto his sword, impaling it through its open jaw and through the back of its skull.
But it wasn’t the wolf whose deadweight pulled his sword arm down. It was the Pole who had tried to run, his face torn away so that only a blood-soaked skull looked up at Reinhart. He put his boot on the corpse’s chest to pull his sword free.
A gold-furred shadow leapt over the corpse as Reinhart pulled. He felt its breath against his cheek, followed by a wrenching pain in his neck that sent the world away into a blood-soaked darkness.