Wolfweir (15 page)

-Be brave, my wolf-Queen, she whispers sternly. Wipe your face. Don't let the others see you go to pieces.

Lucia smiles, wipes her eyes with the cloak.

Master
Tavil's
shaggy head reappears.

-Go!
he
shouts, waving his hand. Go. You must go. Take them all away now.
Malvic
and his Knights will follow shortly.

-Yes, Master
Tavil
.

-Go!

The servants are carrying out boxes of small
deerhide
drawstring sacks. The sacks clink.

-This is
Wolfweir
gold from the treasury, she shouts. Each one of who
can must
carry two of these sacks, Lucia cries.
Children, one sack.
Tie them to your belts, to leave your hands free for fighting. Quick as you can, now. Ready? We're going out through the Hidden Passage to the marshes. Torches, I say, where are the torches?

Slow Motion

If the battle for
Wolfweir
castle looked savage and chaotic from the ramparts, it was even more so in the thick of the fighting.

Alphonse Didier-Stein had never been in a battle before. He had only read about them in books. This battle did not resemble any he'd read about. It was a whirl of bodies, a tangle of lances,
a
riot of clashing swords. It felt like being snatched into a whirlwind.

Mud flew from the horses' hooves, spattering everywhere like rain, all but blinding his pine eyes.

The puppet boy saw the Man-wolf Knight just ahead of him unhorsed, run through by a lance. Then beheaded by a Vampire's scimitar as he lay senseless and moaning in the mud.

He kicked his horse in the ribs and rode down on the crouching black-
caped
figure. Whirling his cutlass like Pirate Jack Fury, he beheaded the Vampire even as it stood, holding the Man-wolf's dripping head.

But then a horse crashed into his, and Alphonse flew spinning through the murk, and landed face down in churned mud.

He jumped to his feet, wiping the mud from his eyes, in time to parry a savage attack by a Dragoon. Alphonse cut the Dragoon at the knees, and the man fell screaming.

Alphonse leaped astride a
riderless
horse, whirled, and rode hard back into the fray, smashing aside lance points with his cutlass.

He glimpsed the kingly figure of Gar
Fith
-- yes, it was him. There was the lurid red gleam of the Blood Amulet dangling on its heavy tarnished silver chain around his neck.

The High King of the Man Wolves was surrounded by black flowing shapes --
Vampyes
, slashing at him from all directions.

Sparks flew as if in a forge. The High King was howling curses and cutting down the black shapes as they whirled at him, some on horseback and some diving
inkily
from the air.

And now Alphonse, his pine-eyes wide in horror, saw the High King knocked from his horse, crashing to the mud.

And, almost simultaneously, Alphonse saw the elegant black-armored figure of Edward
Blackgore
leaping from a horse, sword glittering aloft, to take the High King's head.

Alphonse kicked his mount and smashed through a group of Dragoons from behind, trampling them.

It all seemed to be unfolding in deep, murky nightmare slow motion.

The Blood Amulet

The High King of the Man-wolves now smashed at the
Vampyre
Lord with a mailed fist, sending him sprawling. He staggered to his feet, snatching up his muddy battle cutlass.

Edward
Blackgore
rebounded at the High King like a fury, and naked steel screeched and sparked as they fought.

Alphonse, rushing to the High King's side, felt a sharp blow from behind, and suddenly he was somersaulting.

Shot!

He landed in deep mud, and the horse, also somersaulting, landed squarely on top of him with a scream. Alphonse heard his limbs cracking like tinder wood.

He writhed and struggled and clawed to get out from under the kicking horse. He did not know how long it took to free himself. Maybe he crawled out from under, or maybe the horse rolled away.

But as he stood shakily, knock kneed in the whirl of the battle, he saw that the High King had brought down Edward
Blackgore
, and was straddling the
Vampyre
Lord to deliver a death blow.

Alphonse's puppet mouth
gaped
open wide when he saw a lance thrust through the High King from behind, the gleaming point sticking out from the muddy breastplate, and a gush of bright blood.

The High King of the Man Wolves staggered, howling, as the lance lifted him from his feet, dangled him, then dropped him ingloriously face down into the trampled muck, where his corpse lay still.

Alphonse now saw who had killed the Wolf King.

It was Lady
Blackgore
, on horseback, holding a Dragoon's lance -- in full armor, her head tilted back, laughing joyously.

Alphonse saw Edward
Blackgore
leap to his feet, grinning like the ghoul he was, and approaching the High King's corpse with a dagger in his mailed fist -- to deliver the coup de grace, no doubt.
Or to take a prize.

The Blood Amulet!
the
puppet boy thought. If it fell into the hands of the
Vampyre
Coven --

He sprinted forward, his pine limbs clicking, drawing
a loaded pistols
from his belt as he rushed.

Jumping over bodies, fallen horses, splashing in deep mud.

He had lost his cutlass in the melee. But yesterday in
Wolfweir
castle, at Lucia's advice, he had loaded the twin dueling pistols with balls dipped in Holy Water.

This, she'd said, could kill a
Vampyre
-- but only with a direct hit to the heart.

He had little hope of that. Edward
Blackgore
was in full armor. As was his laughing Vampire Lady.

But he only needed an instant's diversion.

He got it. The Vampire Lord turned his head as Alphonse leaped. Alphonse fired point blank into Edward
Blackgore's
grinning mouth.

As the
Vampyre
staggered wildly, his skull blown apart into a spray of brains and teeth and bone fragments, then quickly recombining into the same greenish-pale grinning mask, Alphonse darted past him, slid on his belly through the blood soaked mud, and snatched the Blood Amulet from its chain.

He heard Lady
Blackgore's
screech. But he had the Blood Amulet, clenched in his fist. He stuffed it into a pocket of his tunic, under the battle armor, even as he stuck the smoking pistol back into his belt and yanked out its twin.

Jumping to his feet, he saw Lady
Blackgore
ride at him, the lance point leveled at his puppet chest.

He fired. The ball smashed into her steel breastplate, and the
Vampyre
Lady somersaulted backward from the saddle.

Ha
ha
!

The horse kept charging, nostrils and eyes wide, nearly mad from the savage sounds and sights of battle.

Alphonse, sticking the pistol into his belt to free both hands, dodged aside and, smoothly as smoke, stepped into the dangling stirrup and launched himself into the saddle.

Grabbing at the wild black streaming mane with both wooden hands, clamping his pine knees tight, he stayed hard and low in the saddle as his new mount flew like a proverbial vampire bat out of the black cave of hell, plunging through and out of the mass of tangled and clashing bodies.

Right into the cold, dark, deep and rushing river.

Rats

Lucia di
Fermonti
, Queen of
Wolfweir
Castle, crouched in the reeking darkness of the low narrow tunnel. Startled by a
spiderweb
, she'd dropped her torch. It rolled around, flaming, then hissed out.

But there were other torches moving up from behind her. She waited until she could see clearly by the wavering illumination. Looking over her shoulder, she saw two Boy Wolves. They were identical: twins. Both had the same silly tufts of dark fur sticking up from behind their wide human ears.

-My Queen?
asked
one, uncertainly.

It was Cedric. She recognized him now. The other was Jason.

-My torch fell. It went out.

Lucia's teeth were clicking. She was covered in
spiderwebs
.

-Assist me, please, she whispered.

There was no need to whisper. They were deep in the dripping tunnel. It was much like the sewer through which she and the puppet boy Alphonse had made their grandly stinking entry into Paris, that dawn before they left for the Alps and the Kingdom of
Wolfweir
.

It didn't smell quite as nasty. Small mercies, Lucia thought, trembling at the clinging dampness of the cobwebs.

-Yes Queen.

The Boy Wolves came forward from their respectful distance and began to tear away the sticky webs. Lucia stood with her eyes shut.
Gasping.
Finally she stilled her panic.

-Enough, she said.

It was good enough. She could see clearly again and move without too much shuddering.

They stepped back.

-Onward, Lucia said. Give me your torch. We must go onward.

From behind the boys boomed a wolfish
voice:

-Queen Lucia!

A Wolf Man stepped forward. He was wearing a battle breastplate of leather and steel. One arm hung in a sling. He was caked in blood, most of it not his own.
Missing his battle helmet, though he wore a sword at his side.

-
Malvic
!

She embraced him.
Lightly, so as not to cause him injury.

-Ah, he whispered into her golden hair. Ah.
My good Queen.
Leading your people now.
Your father is a proud wolf tonight!

Lucia wept a little. More of the women and children were coming up through the tunnel. The darkness evaporated: everywhere torches blazed. Lucia saw jagged veins of crystal in the rock.