XXVIII
How could this man have her cross?
Maria stared at it, and her first impulse was to grab it from Brother Heinrich’s bloody hand.
But the disrespectful impulse was unlike her.
Or unlike the Maria she had been.
“You recognize this?” Heinrich said. “Perhaps it is yours?”
Maria backed away from him until she felt the bricks of the inner wall press into her shoulders. The man who had escorted her still had his sword drawn, but the point was lowered and he was looking from her to Heinrich to Telek.
Telek stepped up next to Heinrich. “Brother Heinrich, can you explain your sudden interest in our servants?”
She heard someone calling her name and turned to look back toward the gate. Josef. No! Why is he here?
“Just this one. See her face?”
She took a step toward the gate.
“What about her—”
She didn’t hear the rest of Telek’s words, because Brother Heinrich’s fist slammed across the front of her face. She felt the bones of her nose give way as she inhaled choking mouthfuls of her own blood.
“Maria!” Josef yelled, pushing through the knot of confused men by the gate.
“Whore!” Heinrich yelled at her as she fell to her knees, spitting up blood. “Harlot! Succubus!”
“Brother Heinrich!” Telek grabbed Heinrich’s shoulder and pulled him back. “What in the name of Heaven do you think you are doing?”
Maria heard the sound of metal being drawn, and she looked up at Heinrich and Telek. Heinrich was pulling his sword from the scabbard at his hip; he stopped only when Telek grabbed his wrist. “Look,” he told Telek. “She cannot conceal what she is.”
Heinrich stared down at her with a gaze as cold and impassive as death, while Telek’s eyes slowly widened. Josef yelled, “Don’t touch her,” but his voice seemed very far away.
In her face, Maria felt her bones twist and her flesh flow in a tiny painful echo of her changes. She didn’t need to touch it to know that her nose was healing. She felt it immediately when the blood stopped flowing and her sinuses cleared, and she could breathe in the scents of fury from Heinrich, and fear from Telek.
“Christ preserve us,” Telek said.
“She is a demon.” Heinrich freed his wrist from Telek’s grip to continue drawing his silvered sword.
Her heart pounded, and she felt her bones creak and her flesh begin to burn with the imminent change. Her mind might be frozen, but her body was not, and it cared to live.
She crouched, and the way sensations spun in her head, Heinrich seemed to move very slowly, lifting the sword.
Like a rearing elk, she thought.
Suddenly Josef was there, between her and Heinrich, holding Heinrich’s sword arm. She felt the beast within her about to burst forth, and she couldn’t stop it.
Heinrich yelled, “Josef! She is a deception sent to tempt you away from your vocation!”
Maria sprang from her crouch, at a gap that Josef’s struggle had made between Heinrich and Telek. She felt hands reaching for her still-human shoulders, but they only grabbed her clothes. The grip couldn’t stop her movement once her feet touched ground. She ran off toward the stronghold, pulling her assailant after her until she heard the sound of tearing fabric. Then her attacker fell to the ground, holding the greater part of her surcote.
Heinrich yelled as Josef pulled at his sword arm, but Josef still had enough strength to hang on. He struggled to restrain Komtur Heinrich as Maria leapt past them.
“Let go, you fool!”
Telek grabbed at her as she passed, but she moved almost too quickly to follow with eyes, much less hands. Still, the large Pole managed to grab the back of her surcote. But the force of Maria’s movement was such that it pulled the heavy man off balance. Telek took a single stumbling step before falling down, his hands filled with torn fabric.
The scene distracted Josef enough that he didn’t see the man who landed the blow on his back.
Pain shot through his midsection, flaring brightest in his newly stitched wounds. He lost his grip on Heinrich’s sword arm, and his master spun around, facing into the stronghold.
“After her!” he commanded.
Something slammed into the gate.
Everyone turned to face the barred entrance. Outside, a man yelled, screaming in Polish. Someone moved to unbar the gate, and three of his fellows grabbed him and pulled him, protesting, away from the door.
On the other side, the man screamed again. Something slammed the door once more, and the screaming stopped. A low growl replaced it—a growl that made Josef’s stomach shrivel into a hard little ball.
Heinrich turned to face the door. “Have your men retreat into the stronghold.”
“What?” Telek had just pushed himself upright. “One creature—”
“These walls are no barrier to it!”
“Brother Heinrich, I don’t think—”
Another scream came out of the mists, this time above them and to the right.
“Men,” Telek ordered, “to the stronghold! Seal the doors!”
Josef was caught up in the retreat through the massive door into the stronghold. While men maneuvered to shut the doorway, Josef kept pushing through the crowd, into the Polish fortress proper, following the path Maria had taken. His Komtur and Telek showed no more interest in him.
Heinrich yelled, “Where are the rest of my men and their weapons?”
“I sent orders to them to assemble and arm themselves in the great hall.”
Then Josef passed beyond hearing.
Where had she gone?
He slowed as he passed a corridor that crossed the main entry hall. His fist pressed against the tightness in his stomach as he tried to guess which way Maria had gone. She had been moving so fast, she could be anywhere.
Down one corridor, he heard a woman screaming. He grabbed a sword from an armorial display and ran off in that direction.
A few steps into the stronghold’s halls, her broadening shoulders finished the job that Telek had begun on her clothes. She tossed aside the rags her clothes had become, whipping her head around and looking for some escape.
She ran through halls she had known all her life but that now seemed unfamiliar. Everything seemed small and twisted—the colors wrong, surreal, unnatural through her wolf eyes. The place was rank with human stench: cookfires and sweat, sex and piss, ale and unwashed linens. The walls closed in on her, amplifying her fear, driving her forward.
A woman stepped into her path, and Maria recognized her: Lucja worked in the kitchens with her. Lucja looked in her direction and screamed in terror. Maria instinctively reached out to reassure her, but Lucja saw only a black-furred forelimb reaching for her and fell to the ground in a faint.
Maria watched her fall, and looked down at herself. Here, in Gród Narew, her new half-lupine, half-human body was much more monstrous. The lean, muscular body, the shaggy black pelt, the massive paws and clawed hands all belonged in the depths of some primeval forest. Such a thing as her did not belong here.
She stepped over Lucja’s unconscious body and ran on.
Josef passed the shreds of Maria’s surcote and her other clothes a few paces from a fallen servant. The woman was sprawled facedown on the floor, and despite the obvious—she had brown hair and was clothed—Josef’s first fear was that he was looking at Maria’s body. It only took a second for him to understand that both conclusions were mistaken. The woman was not Maria; nor was she dead, or even injured.
She began rousing even as Josef approached and knelt by her. As she recovered, her eyes widened and she sucked in a breath for another scream.
“It is all right, miss,” he said to the woman, hoping she understood German.
Unfortunately, she didn’t. She started screaming at him in her Slavic tongue so quickly that he doubted that he would have understood her even if he knew the language. He shushed her and said, “I’m German. Please, just go hide somewhere.”
“German,” she repeated. She stared at him for a moment, then grabbed his shoulders and said, “Wolf!”
He thought, It’s inside, even though he knew that the creature in here was not the same one.
He pointed back the way he had come, yelling, “Hide!” Then he ran off to follow Maria. Behind him, the woman called after him, “Wolf! Wolf!”
Ahead, he heard more screams and growls.
No. Please God, no.
As she ran, trying to escape the alien human world pressing down on her, Maria heard noises in the distance. A growl followed by a scream.
Darien.
The screaming came from outside the stronghold, and it was hard for her to determine a direction. She stopped at an intersection near the kitchens to try to focus on where the growls were coming from. She stood for a moment with her head cocked, fighting the disorientation and the panicked urge to run.
Someone near her screamed. She whipped her head around to see another servant she knew—an old gray-haired woman emerging from the kitchens. The woman stared at Maria, dropping a basket of root vegetables and scattering orange-white tubers across the floor. Behind her, through the archway into the kitchens, things clattered and people gasped.
“No. Please.” The words left her mouth, distorted by the lupine muzzle but recognizable. The plea turned the woman’s shock into terror, and she ran. In the kitchens, Maria saw all the other servants, people she knew, running from her.
She felt her eyes burn.
Then fire slammed through her side—a flare of pain, sharp and quick. She clutched at herself and saw a steel blade poking through her abdomen. Blood coated the shining blade, glistening in the lantern light. She looked down at it in shock and watched as it was withdrawn from her body.
She growled and turned, clutching the hole in her gut. As she did, the blade swung at her, glancing off her shoulder, slicing a strip of skin and muscle from her upper arm and slamming the flat against the side of her head, making her left ear ring.
Then she saw her attacker. “Josef?”
He stood before her, panting, wielding a sword, bringing it up to swing at her neck. She raised a hand and grabbed the hilt, stopping his swing with an impact that hurt her wrist. He stank of blood and panic and rage. Sweat glistened on his upper body, and his biceps trembled as he tried to wrest the sword from her grasp.
She had lost him. She had lost everyone.
“I’m so sorry, Josef,” she whispered. His eyes widened, as if he hadn’t expected the monster in front of him to speak. “Why didn’t you stay away?”
“Maria?” The grief in his voice tore her heart apart.
She let go of the sword and stepped back. Josef shook his head but didn’t swing at her again.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” she said, her own words sounding monstrous in her ears.
“No!” Josef shouted. “Stop talking!” And he swung at her again.
She dodged the blow, and the blade struck the brick wall behind her, shedding sparks and stinging clay shrapnel. He swung again, and she knocked the blade aside with her arm, opening a massive gash that sprayed blood across both of them, but only for a moment.
She started backing away from his mad swings. His face was a mask of rage as he tried to cut her down.
“Please,” she pleaded, “stop.” She didn’t fear the blade anymore. It was steel, and even when it landed a blow, the wound sealed within moments. What frightened her was the glaze over Josef’s eyes, as if the man she knew had disappeared completely.
As she backed between the long tables where the meals were prepared, Josef’s sword came down, swinging left and right. She ducked and backed away as the blade slammed into the tables next to her, scattering onions, cabbages, and radishes, and sending pots and dishes flying.
Behind her, the last of the servants escaped out the rear entrance to the kitchens.
In front of her, past Josef, she heard the sound of booted feet and mail. The arch into the corridor suddenly filled with armed men wearing surcotes bearing the black cross of the Order. Two of them had crossbow bolts nocked.
“Brother Josef! Clear us a shot!”
The Germans were armed with silver, and she knew her horrible new body would not shrug those bolts off. The only reason she still lived was because Josef’s insane rage blocked their aim. But she was nearing the end of the tables, backing toward the blazing hearth. In two steps, she would have no choice but to move left or right, or allow Josef to close on her.
She needed to shield herself.
As she stepped back past the end of the tables, she ducked to her right, grabbing the end of the table and lifting. The monster was strong, but the weight of the table—twenty paces long—sent pain shooting down her arms, her legs, and her back. As she lifted, she tilted it toward Josef and the Germans. It knocked him back, and she felt two crossbow bolts slam into the table’s surface.
She toppled the table into their path, then ran for the rear entrance.
It spoke his name in Maria’s voice, and Josef went mad. This monster had deceived him—. No, that was a lie. He had deceived himself. He had always known, but the Devil had seduced him into not wanting to know. Now all the blood that this thing—that she—would shed was upon his hands. He had defied his vocation, and he had violated the memory of his dead betrothed by thinking—
He attacked blindly, furiously, with no thought of defense or of the wound in his belly. He swung at her, pressing the black wolf thing back, inviting a counterattack. Wanting one. In the complex storm of emotions, he wanted her to strike out, to punish him. He had sinned so gravely that he didn’t deserve to survive. Something in him felt that her claws might tear this blot off his soul.
And if she attacked him, it would justify the rage.
But she didn’t. She backed away from him, dodging his blows, her too-human eyes showing a grief and loss he didn’t want to recognize.
His brothers were screaming at him and the monster was ducking under the long table to his left before his rage ebbed to the point where he realized that he was driving back a demon with nothing more than a steel sword.
He should be dead.
The table came up, shedding bread, baskets of vegetables, and an earthen jug that shattered in a pungent explosion of vinegar when he deflected it with his sword. Then the broad surface of the table angled toward him and he scrambled back—dazed more by the thoughts running through his head than the blockage of his path.
He backed into the arms of his brothers in the Order.
He should be dead. She could have disemboweled him a dozen times, but she hadn’t as much as struck out to knock him down. They had chased her into the heart of the stronghold, into the midst of unarmed servants, and the only blood shed had been hers.
The horrifying thought was that the beast he had seen was still Maria, which meant that everything else he had known or thought he had known was wrong.
God help me.
Other knights ran around the edges of the kitchen, avoiding the mass of timber blocking the center of the room. “Josef, are you all right?” asked one of the men holding him upright.
“I am fine,” he lied, bracing against the pain in his gut to follow his brothers.