XXXIII
As the monster ran for the woods, Josef got to his feet in time to see one of the surviving knights of the Order take aim with a crossbow.
“No,” he called out. “You might hit—”
The man didn’t listen, and Josef’s fears were confirmed when he saw the bolt sprout from Maria’s thigh before the pair of them disappeared into the forest.
Behind him, Maria’s mother sobbed, “My daughter!”
Władysław cradled his mother and looked at Josef with an accusing stare more cutting than any words.
“I will do what I can to save her,” Josef whispered.
He ran toward the road. As he passed the front of the cottage, a mailed hand grabbed his shoulder. “What fool thing are you doing?”
He turned to faced the barrel chest of Wojewoda Telek Rydz.
“My duty.”
Telek hooked his head back toward the road. “To him?” A few of the uninjured Polish guardsmen were tending to the Komtur’s wounds. He lived, but appeared unconscious. Josef looked about and saw that half the men had fallen injured, and half who had fallen were unquestionably dead. He was one of only four men of the Order still breathing.
“To God,” he said carefully. “I made a vow to protect the innocent.”
“There’s no honor in suicide, lad.”
“Is there honor in blocking my way?”
Telek lowered his hand and said, “Take some men with you, so you have some chance.”
“No,” Josef said. “You cannot leave the wounded here alone. Take them into the cottage, where it’s defensible.” Then he ran, before Telek could delay him any longer.
From behind him, he heard the Polish knight say, “Godspeed.”
God help us all, Josef thought.
He ran through the forest, following gouges the beast had left in the forest floor as it ran. The woods were silent except for an occasional demonic howl that seemed to echo from everywhere at once. He passed a horrid scene where blood and fur and bits of flesh were smeared thick on the ground and the trees.
From there he followed an unmistakable trail of blood, and the howls became louder, more urgent, more horrible.
But worst was when he heard a human voice—Maria’s voice—screaming, “No!” Followed by what had to be the voice of Satan come to earth—a pained, manic howl that sounded as if it should rend the very flesh from its throat.
He came upon the hellish scene and nearly howled himself.
The beast’s fur was red and black with clotted gore across the whole of its body. It snarled, the left side of the face toward Josef, dominated by an empty, bleeding eye socket. It cared nothing for Josef. Blind to him, it was focused on the tiny white form underneath it.
It was crouched over Maria’s limp human body, horribly violating her as it kept one hand wrapped around her neck. It choked her, slamming her head into the ground.
Josef couldn’t find the breath to scream. He ran, swinging his silvered sword, bringing it down on the beast’s neck.
But he didn’t have the strength or the momentum to sever the monster’s neck. He managed only to tear a gaping wound, exposing the monster’s spine but not severing it. The creature reared, dropping Maria’s body, and turned to face him.
It made a predatory sound deep in its throat, dragging its right leg as it turned and raising its left hand toward him. Half its face was ruined, and it stared at him with a single, hideously human eye. The left half of its face, under the ruined eye, turned up in a fang-bearing smile that could chill death itself.
Then it sprang at him—faster than a man, even in its horribly crippled state. It was all Josef could do to lift the point of his sword, only to have the hilt jerk free with a wrist-snapping force.
The fetid jaws opened to tear out his throat as they fell upon him. He felt the teeth against his skin, and the hot outrush of breath, the slither of its tongue against his Adam’s apple.
But the jaws did not close.
He looked up, pain flaring in his wrist and arm as the full weight of the thing pressed him into the ground. He stared up into the bloody crater that had been its left eye. No breath, no motion. Dead.
He sucked in a breath, calling out, “Maria!”
Please, God, do not let her be gone. Please …
“Maria!”
He heard someone grunt, and the corpse pinning him shifted. For a panicked moment he thought the monster was coming back to life; then it rolled off him. It landed on its back next to him, a silvered sword impaling it through the neck upward, burying itself deep inside the monster’s skull.
Above him, Maria stood gasping for breath, sweating, covered in blood. She wobbled on her wounded leg and fell to her knees next to him. “Josef,” she whispered, placing her hand on his chest. “I’m glad it’s you.”
He reached up with his uninjured hand and grasped hers.
She closed her eyes and lowered her head. “Please be quick.”
He sat up, wincing at the pain in his stomach and his wrist. “Be quick?”
“You came to kill us, didn’t you?”
He touched the side of her face and said quietly, “Him. Not you.”
Her eyes opened and she looked at him almost as if he had offended her. “I am a monster, just as he was. A soulless demon. You said so.”
“I was wrong.”
“Do you mean to torment me now? Do you know what I could have done—”
“What have you done?”
“I could—”
“Maria?” She looked at him, her eyes moist with tears, skin pale from loss of blood. “What have you done? How many lives have you taken? How many men have you left crippled or dying?”
She shook her head. “None yet. You have to stop me before I do. Before I become like him.”
“You aren’t going to become like him.”
“How can you say that? You’ve seen what I am.”
“I can say that because I’ve seen who you are.”
Her lip trembled and she half-leaned, half-collapsed into his arms. He held her with his good arm as she sobbed into his shoulder, “I don’t want this.”
“It’s over,” Josef said. “The monster is dead.”
“I’m a monster, too. The Devil has taken me.”
“Have you killed innocents? Have you renounced Christ?”
“No, but I—I—gave myself to Darien. He took me and I wanted it.”
He held her tighter. “Are those worse than the sins of any man?”
“I’m a servant of the Devil.”
“I am unarmed.”
“What?”
“A true servant of Satan would finish me in my weakness. If you believe you are evil, if you are a monster, why don’t you kill me?”
She let him go and stared at him in horror. “Josef, I couldn’t.”
He smiled. He placed his fingers on her lips and said, “Do you wish God to forgive you?”
“Y-yes.”
“Then He will.”
Maria’s heart raced as Josef led her back through the forest. He had explained how this was necessary, but still the fear grew thicker inside her even as the fog burned off around them. She told herself that fear—any sort of fear—was ridiculous now. She had been prepared to die.
But the fact that she hadn’t died made each moment afterward precious, and she clung to each one as tightly as she clung to Josef’s good arm.
He was, again, naked to the waist. This time his shirt had gone to bind her wounds, and she wore his cross-bearing surcote to cover herself. The embroidered head of a black wolf rested over her left breast, defaced by Darien’s blood. She kept glancing at it, feeling as if it meant something but unsure of what.
Josef couldn’t carry anything in his right hand. The wrist wasn’t broken, but it had been severely dislocated, and it had swollen black and purple. Since he supported her with his good arm, she had to carry the skin.
Darien’s skin. Not all of it, but enough from his head and face to show that the beast was dead. It clung to her fingers in a way that made her wish that she was horrified at the violence done to him, but she couldn’t even bring herself to feel regret at his demise.
Josef led her out of the woods in front of her cottage. For a moment, the scene almost seemed normal, before she smelled blood and heard shouts from inside her home, and saw the glint of a crossbow from between two slightly open shutters. She tensed, waiting for the shot, but someone called out, “Hold!”
She stood there with Josef, her feet sinking into the mud of the road, the black soup of it squeezing through her toes. And as they waited, Josef whispered, “Forgive me for what I’m about to do.”
I’ve already forgiven you for trying to kill me.
Still, the tension made her tighten her fists. Her free hand dug into the greasy underside of Darien’s pelt, and the one across Josef’s shoulder clutched the broken head of the crossbow bolt until it cut into her hand.
Let this work, she prayed, hoping that Josef was right and God still cared for her.
The cottage door opened, and Wojewoda Telek stepped out, his sword drawn. He walked forward, stopping a few paces from them.
“It’s over,” Josef called out. “The monster is dead.” He nudged Maria and she tossed Darien’s skin at Telek’s feet.
Telek prodded the skin with his sword, then lifted it so that the outline of the giant wolf’s face was recognizable drooping from the point. Maria bit her lip, because she recognized Darien in the sagging, empty skin.
Telek held the skin up so that the people in the cottage could see. Maria thought she heard a muted cheer from someone inside. Still holding up the skin, Telek turned back toward them and said, “Step away from her.”
Maria swallowed. She wanted to tell Josef not to sacrifice anything more for her, but before she could speak, he flatly said, “No.”
“There were two beasts,” Telek said. “One blond, one black. You hold the other.”
“You’re wrong,” Josef said. He spoke loudly, as much to the men inside the cottage as to Telek. “This woman is an innocent in all of this.”
“Innocent? These things can pose as human, even as a woman. Her cross was found in a slaughtered boy’s hand.”
“Yes, Wojewoda Telek, and where was she when that boy was killed? You and Brother Heinrich are yourselves witnesses to her blamelessness in that death.”
Telek opened his mouth to speak, but he obviously had not had a chance to think about the matter. He shook his head and said, “Explain, then, how it came to be there.”
“Lost when she was caring for my wounds in the woods or bringing me back to Gród Narew. The boy found it during his duties. And I ask you this: Why would a disciple of evil, a demon cloaked as a man, spend her life wearing a cross made of silver? Would the Devil bind himself like that? Would this monster stand mute and powerless before these accusations while I stand here unarmed, and you stand holding only steel?”
Telek lowered his sword and looked at Josef. “Perhaps—”
“Lies!” The door slammed open, and Heinrich stumbled out of the cottage holding a long silvered sword. Half of his face was covered in bandages, and his chest was bound tightly, but he ran toward them as if in full health. “Lies and deception!” he cried.
Telek stepped into his path and leveled his skin-draped sword at him. “You will stop and lower that weapon.”
Heinrich pulled up short, but he didn’t lower his sword. “That woman is a vile temptress, an agent of Satan. You saw yourself how she healed. You saw her change—”
“Did anyone see this girl grow into a slavering monster?” Josef countered.
Maria tensed, expecting someone to call out, to say they had watched her transform into the black-furred beast. But no one did.
Heinrich looked up into Telek’s face. “You grabbed her. You must have.”
“Brother Heinrich,” Josef said, “before God, can you bear witness against this woman? Can you say that you saw her become this demon?”
The sword lowered slightly and he looked around, and for the first time she could see something like uncertainty in the half of his face that was not covered by bandages. “Someone must have seen this,” he said. No one answered him. “She jumped, naked and wounded, on this monster—”
“A monster that was threatening her family. And you mention that in testimony to her evil?”
“I saw her heal!” Heinrich said finally—the only unarguable evidence he had left.
“Wojewoda Telek?” Josef asked. “Do you have a plain dagger to lend me?”
Telek looked back over his shoulder, frowning and furrowing his brow.
“Please?” Josef added.
Telek pulled a steel dagger out of a sheath on his belt. He held the hilt up to Josef. Josef looked down at his wounded wrist and said, “Perhaps you would be good enough to do this for me?”
“Do what?”
“Cut her.”
“What?”
“Take her arm and draw blood,” Josef said. “You claim she is this demonic beast. Cut her with anything but silver and she will heal, as Brother Heinrich says.”
Telek shook his head.
Maria held out her naked left arm, shaking slightly because of the wound in her shoulder.
“Are you afraid she is not what you think she is?” Josef asked.
Telek flipped the dagger around in his left hand, still holding the sword in his right. He hesitated a moment, then quickly drew it across Maria’s forearm. The blade was sharp, and she barely felt the cut, but it quickly welled up with blood. It began to sting as the blood dripped slowly down the skin of her arm.
Maria squeezed the crossbow bolt with her good hand, the silver point digging into her flesh.
Telek stared at the cut; it refused to heal.
Heinrich lowered his sword at last.
“Satan has been deceiving us,” Josef said. “He has deceived us with blood, chaos, and confusion. He deceived you, Brother Heinrich, with your own anger. You saw this woman, whom I love, as leading me astray—so much that you did not see how your own wrath led you astray. Satan would have you kill an innocent woman and believe your duty done.”
Heinrich’s sword pointed at the ground. He looked at Maria, and she could tell that he did not truly believe Josef’s words. But his expression said he was beaten, as if he couldn’t quite understand how to fight them. She could see the weight of his wounds bearing upon him, and she felt a strange sympathy for this old man, understanding what he had lost here.
Telek sheathed his dagger and walked up to Heinrich, slapping the flat of his sword, and what remained of Darien’s face, into the monk’s chest. “Take your prize and leave my lands.” There was little trace of sympathy in Telek’s voice.
“The black one is still—”
“Brother Heinrich, that black-haired beast did not trouble us before you arrived. I suspect much the same will continue after you leave. You came here hunting your wolf, and you have your wolf.”
“We have a duty to hunt all—”
“As I see it, you can return to your master with one of two tales. You can tell how, after great sacrifice, you found your quarry and defeated it, or you can return telling how you’ve annoyed the Masovian court, broken the peace, and allowed the secrets of Brother Semyon to be known to all the szlachta in Poland.” He withdrew his sword, leaving the gory prize in Heinrich’s hands. “I will let you pray for guidance, but I expect you to quit Gród Narew at the next sunrise.”
Coda
Wagons came from Gród Narew to carry away the dead and wounded. It was evening before all the men left Maria to her home, her family, and Josef. Her mother dressed her wounds—all but the cut on her arm, which healed by itself as soon as she let go of the silver head of the crossbow bolt she had clutched in her hand.
She fell into an uneasy, feverish sleep on one of her brothers’ beds. Over the next few days, her body fought the infection of the silver-inflicted wounds. She faded in and out of awareness, but Josef was always there, next to her bed, holding her hand, wiping her brow, caring for her the way she had cared for him.
In her fever, she found the symmetry of it comforting.
They weren’t that different, she thought. They had both been chained, hiding themselves—he behind the black cross of the Order, she behind the silver cross of her father. Yet now that they were free, they had lost their proper places in the world.
But when she tried to tell Josef of her epiphany, her German was not quite up to the task. His response was to gently brush the hair from her face and say, “My place is by your side.”
In her more lucid moments, she came close to hating herself for what he had given up for her sake, but she couldn’t bring herself to regret the fact that he had. During one point of clarity she said to him, “You’re not going back.”
“I told you, I’ve left the Order.”
She looked up at him and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
He squeezed her hand and said, as he had before he knew what she was, “If God had wanted me to remain a monk, He would not have placed you in my path.”
She still couldn’t quite understand how someone could sacrifice so much for her, for what she was. But for all she mourned for his loss, she was grateful to him.
The day after her fever broke, she opened her eyes and did not see Josef. Instead, the rotund bearded face of Wojewoda Telek loomed over her bed, making her flinch and gasp as if confronted by her nightmares made flesh.
Telek saw her reaction and drew back, and she felt someone squeeze her hand. Turning her head, she saw that Josef was still next to her, and that helped calm her racing heart.
Still, her voice had trouble finding itself. All she could manage was “W-why?”
Telek smiled down at her. “Forgive me for disturbing you in your sickbed, but I came to fetch Josef before the Duke makes his leave of Gród Narew.”
She realized he was speaking German for Josef’s benefit.
“Is there something wrong? I don’t understand.” She feared that some sort of trial might be at hand, the Duke taking his ire out on the remaining Germans in his domain.
“The Duke wishes to reward the hero of these past events; Josef’s valor and bravery were witnessed by many. Three times he engaged these monsters by himself, the final time returning with the skin of the wolf. Ennobling a foreigner is almost never done, but the szlachta all agree with the Duke’s decision.”
Maria opened her mouth, then closed it. She was filled with a mixture of joy and fear at hearing that Josef might find himself elevated to the szlachta. God surely was repaying him for his sacrifices by granting him a position in Masovia. But what did that mean for her? For them?
She looked up at Josef and her vision blurred. “That is good news, Wojewoda Telek.”
Josef said nothing, though he looked down at her with an expression that said, I will not leave you.
But doubt already squeezed her heart. Maybe you should.
“I also wished to speak to you, Maria.”
She turned to look at Telek again. He was regarding her with a puzzling expression—not one she was accustomed to seeing on her betters. In fact, it was almost identical to the way he had looked at Heinrich after the Order had crossed the river: wariness mingled with respect, as if he regarded a peer, not a serving girl.
But she had to be misinterpreting that.
“Before Brother Heinrich and his surviving knights left our lands, he did press his case before the Duke—despite my interventions.”
Maria sucked in a breath. Telek was talking about her.
“Still, the man has little head for politics, and is so convinced of his own righteousness …” Telek shook his head, his mouth curving into a tight-lipped smile. “His most damning accusation came down to the nature of the cross you wore.”
“Father’s cross?” Maria’s hand traveled to the empty space between her breasts, as if she could clutch at a memory. Her breath caught in her throat.
“You see, the Duke was familiar with such a token. His father, King Władysław, had commissioned a dozen such silver crosses and matching chains, to give as rewards to some of the men who had served with him when they pushed the Order back to Toru, over twenty years ago. The fate of one such cross was the subject of much gossip at the court a few years later.”
Telek looked at her, as if she should know of what he spoke. When the silence stretched on for too long, filled only by her beating heart, she quietly asked, “What happened?”
“One of these men, while noble in battle, was less than noble in his own household. It is said that when his wife fell ill after bearing his third son, he took one of his newer serving girls to bed, wearing little but the cross on his neck. When he awoke, both cross and servant were gone, never to be seen again.”
Oh, Mother, was that where you were for so long? Maria felt the edges of panic creeping in. Telek was going to bring her stepmother to account for a crime she had committed on Maria’s behalf. She couldn’t bear the thought—
“Of course,” Telek said, “that is unlikely to have been the cross you wore.”
Maria’s mouth had already opened to protest her stepmother’s innocence, to offer herself to justice in her stead, but Telek’s words stole her breath.
Josef spoke on her behalf: “Why talk of these tales now? Are you here simply to torment a woman on her sickbed?”
Telek shook his head. “Your concern for her becomes you, but I suspect she can care for herself ably enough.” If anything, his smile broadened. “As I told the Duke, it is surely improbable that your necklace is the one from that old story. For many reasons, the most important of which is that the servant who stole it was unquestionably German.”
German? It was my stepmother.
“I informed the Duke that what I had seen was most likely a necklace of some base metal, kept at a high polish. And since the object in question was lost during that final battle, Heinrich could not provide any smith’s marks that could have shown your necklace’s provenance.”
Maria’s hand still clutched her chest, where her cross had once rested. Telek placed his hand on top of hers. She felt something in his grasp, cold and metallic. He took his hand away and kept looking at her face. “It is a shame that it was lost.”
Her father’s cross—her stepmother’s cross—now rested on the back of her hand. She was speechless, not knowing what to say. Josef placed his own hand over it, squeezing her hand beneath. “Yes, it is,” he told Telek.
“You might be interested to know,” Telek added, “that the Order, as well as the Church, did not always consider these wolf creatures demonic.”
“What do you mean?” Maria asked.
“Brother Heinrich carries an interesting history, which I had a chance to peruse. At one time, in fact, these creatures may have been enlisted in the service of God. Or, at the very least, the Order itself.”
Josef looked shocked. After a moment, he said, “This was the Brother Semyon you spoke of, wasn’t it?”
Telek stood up and placed a hand on Josef’s shoulder as he looked down at Maria. “To your Brother Semyon, these creatures were as much of earthly origin as you or I. But to my thinking, it seems that if the Order’s history of training and using these creatures has borne ill fruit, it may be because they had the bad sense to take a being that thinks as a man and treat it as less than one.”
Maria stared at him with a growing realization. He knows. He knows what I am.
“What are you saying?” Josef asked. She could hear the edge of suspicion in his voice.
Telek let go of Josef’s shoulder. “I’m saying nothing of import right now.” He looked at Maria. “I just hope that, despite your obviously imminent betrothal to this young man, Gród Narew will not be completely deprived of your service. I urge you, in the future, to think upon my goodwill and reciprocate it.”
Maria looked up into Telek’s face and nodded.
“I’ll leave you alone for a moment.” He turned to Josef. “Only a moment, though; the Duke’s court should not be kept waiting.”
As Maria watched him leave the cottage, she whispered to Josef, “He knows what I am.”
“He suspects.”
Maria shook her head. “No, he knows. He saw me heal as well as Heinrich did. He knows, and he … he …”
Josef bent over and stopped her stutter with a kiss. When he raised his head he told her, “He knows that the black-furred wolf was as much the hero in this as I am, even though Heinrich is blind to it.”
Her breath caught at his touch, at his breath on her face, and she thought of Telek’s other words.
Betrothal.
She raised her head and kissed him back, lifting her hand to caress the side of his face. Eventually he lifted his head, smiling. “He said only a moment.”
She looked into his eyes. “You will come back to me?”
“Always.”
“But they’ll give you a position, land. I have no dowry; I’m a common woman—”
“You are anything but common, Maria. There is more nobility in you than I’ve seen in anyone born to the role.”
“I am also a monster,” she whispered.
“No, you aren’t.” He said it sharply, as if rebuking her.
She felt her heart thudding again in her chest. Just the possibility that he might really care for her, might really love her …
“When we came out of the woods,” she couldn’t help asking, “what you said before Telek … Did you mean it?”
“Mean what?”
Maria swallowed. “You said, ‘this woman, whom I love.’ Do you still, even after knowing what I am, what I become—”
He placed his fingers on her lips and said, “Stop fretting over what you are. I love you because of who you are.”
Relief filled her. “I love you, too,” she whispered.
And when he left to go with Telek, she closed her eyes and imagined that somewhere, Lucina, her mother, had found peace.