Free The Wolf King by Alice Borchardt Page A

laughed and refused to leave, Otho ordered his servants to throw him out…
    They had failed; hardened gang of mercenaries that they were, they had failed. Oh, how they had failed. In fact, their remaining intact weapons were what pinned Otho to the bed. The only reason he still lived was that it wanted him to suffer. Otherwise, it was content. Prowling the tent night and day in one horrific form or another, it waited. For what, he couldn’t guess.
    So Otho tried to wait, struggling against death because late in life he had added another passion to the desire for wealth that ruled his life, and this passion was fully as overwhelmingly strong as the first. The second was absolute loyalty to the king. Charles, whom men were already beginning to call the Great, was the central love of his life. And Otho was convinced that in tale bearing for this creature, he had somehow betrayed him.
    About the same time, Antonius and Maeniel were led before the king. He was surrounded by a dozen other nobles. The gray wolf had heard that Charles did not wear elaborate or distinctive clothing. In fact, he was often surrounded by men who made a more ostentatious display of wealth than he did, but Maeniel knew him as soon as the man entered the room; knew who and what he was. Only once before had he ever seen an individual with that look in his eyes, and without even asking Antonius to point him out, Maeniel went to one knee.
    Charles was not the best dressed nor the eldest or even the most impressive man present. He was like Maeniel, thickset, muscular, with dark hair, and he wore a short beard—possibly in deference to his wife Hildegarde’s wishes that he not present himself close-shaven to the Langobards who were, after all, famous for their facial hair, being called Long Beards. She wanted him to show he was man enough to cover his chin with hair also.
    He stretched out two strong, callused hands and raised both Maeniel and Antonius to their feet. “Please, no ceremony. If the tales that have been brought to me are found to be false, then I should embrace you both as brothers. If not, then… we will have to see what measures must be taken.”
    So saying, he seated himself in a folding camp chair. The nobility of the Frankish court clustered around him. “I will be brief. Information has been brought to me that you and Antonius conspired in the murder of your wife’s uncle Gundabald and his son Hugo. And that, further, you robbed the monastery at the foot of the pass guarded by your stronghold, murdered the inhabitants, and then burned the buildings, including the church.”
    Antonius opened his mouth.
    “No,” the king said. “Let him speak for himself.”
    Maeniel nodded.
    “First Gundabald and Hugo.”
    “They were men of somewhat licentious habits,” Antonius began.
    “Antonius,” Charles said. “Are you having problems with your memory? I told you, let him answer for himself.”
    Antonius raised his arms, and the chains clinked.
    “Antonius, you can make bad sound like good, day sound like night, morning sound like afternoon, and, in short, by your circumlocutions, thoroughly confuse an army of lawyers, judges, and scribes and bury major crimes in such obfuscating legalese that even a hardworking king and his equally hardworking scholars cannot sort it out. As I said, let him answer for himself.”
    Antonius sighed deeply.
    “Very well,” Maeniel said. “I will be brief. To be blunt, Gundabald was a wastrel and a sot. His son was an apprentice wastrel and sot. So unpleasant a pair were they that his holiness saw fit to remove my wife from their company and place her among holy nuns until we were married.
    “Though they were not the most charming company in the world, I respected them as my wife’s kin. I settled a large sum of money on them at the time of our wedding.
    “The results of my generosity were entirely predictable. Within days after the wedding, they both vanished without a trace and were never seen