Free The Wolf King by Alice Borchardt Page B

again. His holiness Pope Hadrian did me the courtesy of looking into the matter himself, but neither one could be found. Antonius here will attest, as he was privy to the matter. Probably their throats were cut and then their purses, or vice versa. Likely their bodies wound up in the Tiber, as it’s done duty as a Roman cemetery since the city was seven hills of farmland.
    “Now as far as the monastery is concerned, it had its own rather considerable demesne, and those lands do not touch mine in any place. While my wife and I journeyed here, an avalanche occurred. It wiped out a long stretch of the road the Romans built over the pass. We were obliged to take a detour and saw smoke. We investigated and—”
    Someone screamed, “Fire! Fire!”
    The king ran to the door and pushed the flap aside. Fire painted the low clouds of the night sky. Antonius turned toward Maeniel. Chains were lying on the floor. The gray wolf was gone.
    The Saxon cut a long slit in the canvas. Fortunately the tent had something of a list to it, and the fabric was loose. The first thing he saw was a cocked and loaded crossbow pointed at the entrance to the tent. The second, third, and fourth things he saw were corpses.
    One looked as if it had been butchered. The second was neatly decapitated. The third was the reason the tent pole was loose: it had been pulled out and driven through the man’s body, back into the ground.
    Then he saw the figure on the bed. It moved. The Saxon stepped through the slit into the tent and looked down at Otho. The open, staring eyes looked up at him and blinked. The Saxon reached out and jerked the two knives out of Otho’s arms and the two swords out of his legs.
    Somehow Otho managed not to scream. He could have screamed in that extremity, even though his throat and tongue were so swollen they almost blocked his air passages. The pain was so dreadful that he could have screamed. But he managed to suppress any sound as he lost consciousness.
    As he was pushing Otho’s legs through the tent slit, the Saxon sensed the thing behind him. He turned, sword upraised. The shape was a bear this time, but no living bear was ever this big.
    It swung one set of hooked claws at the Saxon’s face, and he parried with the sword, chopping deep into a foreleg. The thing gave a scream of sheer fury, but the sword couldn’t stop the forward motion of the blow. The paw caught the Saxon on the side of the head, sending him spinning.
    But Regeane was wolf and into the tent, a streak of dull silver in the halflight. The thing was partially turned, recovering from the blow it struck the Saxon. She slashed at the thigh, going for the deep arteries, but failed, though she inflicted a respectable wound to the muscles of the upper leg. Blood sprayed everywhere.
    It roared again in fury and went after the silver wolf on all fours, crowding her toward one corner of the tent where the powerful clawed forelegs could literally rip her to shreds.
    Matrona, a black wolf, landed on its back. The neck was too thick and powerful for her to bite, so she went for one massive shoulder and felt her canines grate on bone.
    This time the thing screamed in agony. It spun around, trying to reach the black wolf. Failing that, it began twisting from side to side in an attempt to throw her off.
    Whap.
The black wolf’s body was snapped almost like a whip. Matrona wondered if her back would break, but hung on, her teeth buried to the gums in the giant bear’s shoulder.
    The silver wolf got her feet under her and charged again, this time going for the lower leg. If she could snap a bone, the battle would be over for good and all—or so she thought.
    Behind the knee. It would take a few seconds for it to get to her. She lunged and connected perfectly. Another scream as her canines severed tendons and sank into the gristle of the knee capsule itself. But both female wolves had forgotten what they were fighting.
    Abruptly it changed tactics and snatched up the