The Wolf King Read Free Page A

them that. She’d spoken in hope of protecting them both from any opportunistic lechery among what she was sure, by now, must be a nest of brigands.
    “What is it?” the woman shrilled. “Are you dumb like poor Morgana here?” She indicated the more wretched of her two companions, a child.
    “No, I’m not dumb,” she heard herself answering. “Yes, he is my husband. What are they doing to him? Where are they taking him? All we ask is shelter for the night, then we will leave in the morning and never trouble you again.”
    The blond one, the one called Morgana, began to whimper. She sounded like a dog, a dog whipped too often.
    The lank-haired one leaned toward her. “Look, look, Lavinia. She… has…jewels.”
    The woman reached forward haltingly, to fumble at her neck. The idea of being touched by any of these women was repulsive. She eased backward.
    “Don’t like us, do you?” the older woman taunted. “Don’t worry. When you’ve been here as long as we have, you won’t look much better. Fact is, you’ll probably look worse.
    “Sully here probably isn’t much older than you are. But right now
he
won’t be able to keep his hands off you. Forget about your man and be nice to the abbot. He rules here.”
    “Sully, Morgana, bring her along now. Girl, you come with us. Don’t give us any trouble now and you won’t get hurt. Be a shame to spoil your pretty face.”
    Then the two slatterns closed in on either side and began to hurry her along the corridor.
    Again the weird feeling of dislocation. Her memory was a jumble of images, images she couldn’t sort out. Every time she moved, she felt dizzy and her head hurt. Every step sent a dagger of pain into one side of her face. The horse reared. She saw its head against a sky streaked with red, orange, and black, a sunset sky. The snow was blue in the failing light. She was a good horsewoman. Somehow she knew that she should have been able to control him, but this animal was insane with terror and it was falling. Falling. And there was pain. Pain then as now, like an ice dagger driven into her ear and cheekbone.
    Then he was fumbling with her dress. At first she was overjoyed, thinking it meant the end of the rearing horse, the pain, the cold. Not passive cold but a stinging burning chill in her hands and feet. A cold that crept, preceded by a buzz of agony, through her fingers and toes, then feet and hands. She had known she was freezing to death. Not a peaceful death, but an awesomely agonizing one as ice crystals formed in her flesh, bringing paralysis and pain on top of pain… driving deeper toward the bone.
    Then she was sure all this was part of a nightmare and she would wake safe and warm in her bed… with… and then she lost the trail in confusion. But he would be there and she had simply been dreaming. It took only seconds for her to realize warmth and safety had been the dream and the nightmare… reality. But he did have her over his shoulder, and he was insulting the Franks, her people, in Saxon. He’d wrapped her in this bearskin and seemed to mean her no harm.
    Then they were in a room and God, God, the stench. But the older woman, Lavinia, was lighting a many-branched oil lamp with her taper. The lamp flared temporarily, throwing a blinding light into what had been darkness only seconds before. When her vision cleared, she saw the older woman had something like horror in her eyes. Morgana crouched down near a fireplace in one corner of the room, shivering. Sully was pointing again at her neck.
    “Jewels, Lavinia… jewels. Can I have some?”
    Lavinia shook her head, was shaking her head over and over. She ignored Sully. “I knew it would happen one day,” she said. “They’d bite off something too big to chew or sink their fangs into, something strong enough to eat them. And now, by the look of you. woman, they have. What is your name, girl, and of what family are you?”
    She looked down at herself, trying to see what inspired such