Free Wolf's Cross by S. A. Swann Page A

human, rested on the edge of the bluff in front of him.
    He caught the scent of the man below voiding himself, and his face twisted into a lupine version of a smile.
    “Monster,” he whispered, too low for his terrified prey to hear. “You call me monster after everything men have taken from me? And for less reason?”
    Then he leapt down.

    M aria lay on her bed and stared into the shadows. Below the loft that held her bed, her brothers snored. She was the only one awake in the cottage now, and the night was half over already. In a few hours she would have to get up, draw water for her family, and start the walk down to Gród Narew.
    She would have to walk the same path.
    It had never concerned her before. She had known these woods all her life. They had never felt threatening to her. Butnow she had to face them again, and her hands still shook when she thought about what had happened. What had
almost
happened.
    She should have told her stepmother, whatever she had promised Darien. Not just because the lie was a sin that weighed on her soul, but because the lie pushed Hanna away. The lie made sure that Maria was alone in her own home.
    She held her cross and allowed tears to come.
    Who was Darien to ask this of her?
    He did save me from Lukasz
, she thought,
and asked only for my silence when he could have asked for much more …
    It might have been better if he had.
    She bit her lip, feeling a flush across her body as she remembered the touch of Darien’s lips on her hand, his hand caressing her face. She remembered the look and feel of Josef’s chest, and wondered if Darien’s would be as strong, as warm …
    I am not a wicked person
.
    She couldn’t keep herself from imagining his lips on hers, and his hand touching other parts of her body, her hand touching his body. But in her wicked fantasy she was unsure if it was Darien who took her or Josef.
    She prayed to God to settle her thoughts; the prayer’s answer was long in coming.
    But in time, she did sleep.

Interlude
    Anno Domini 1331
    T wenty-two years ago, when he was a child, Darien hadn’t hated anyone at all. His family—his pack—had even adopted human ways in the face of ever-expanding human claims to the dark woods of the Baltic. They lived away from men, but any travelers who had the misfortune to find themselves in the haunted wood where Darien’s pack made their home would be well-treated as guests. And, later on, would have a guide to take them back to the normal trade paths.
    The village, hidden deep in those woods, had once housed a pagan community that treated Darien’s ancestors as gods. But, long ago, the Germans had come and killed those who hadn’t converted and carried away those who had. The village had not remained empty for long. The pack of Darien’s great-grandfather had decided that it was wise, with human warriors trampling through their lands every season, to add to the camouflage of their human skins.
    When the Order came again, they found a Christian village, including a church built upon the ashes of a pagan shrine.Human gods meant nothing to the pack, so pledging fealty to the Order’s was of no consequence. For something over a century, from that generation to Darien’s, the village endured.
    During his childhood years, Darien knew little of the outside world, other than the fact that there were these creatures called “men” who lived beyond the woods. He was taught, very carefully, that he would wear only a human skin in front of anyone not of the village.
    The village was remote enough that, for the first nine years of his life, he saw no one who wasn’t of the village. By his tenth year, he had come to doubt the existence of such creatures as men. He’d started to think that he’d been told mere tales, to scare him and keep him from hunting without his parents.
    He knew he was old enough to hunt on his own. He had taken down a bull elk all by himself the last moonless night his family had gone hunting. And he had