The Wolf Hunt Page 3

  Her eyes stung, and sobs of panic pulled at her throat. The forest had lured her in, beguiling her with bluebells, and then closed in behind her. She felt an irrational certainty that something was waiting farther in among the shadows of the trees — something animal and rank and monstrous. She would be caught in the forest at night and then it, the thing in wait, would have her.

  She told herself angrily that she couldn’t have come far out of her way. She had not been walking fast: she couldn’t be more than two miles from the road. If she walked due east, she would reach the road long before nightfall. There would be houses there, and people, and food. Meanwhile, she should try to find water. She would feel much better when she’d had a drink.

  She sat up straight, set her teeth, pushed the heels of her hands against her eyes, and recited two Aves and her favorite prayer to Saint Michael. Then she climbed resolutely to her feet and began pushing her way eastward through the thick undergrowth, ignoring the tempting tracks that led in any other direction, and hoping she’d soon find a stream.

  After a mere ten minutes or so of struggling through the bushes, she heard the sound of running water. A few seconds later, she broke through a screen of saplings into a clearing among the oak trees. A spring bubbled up into a deep green pool, then ran off through a sward of impossibly green grass as a little stream. Wood anemones, celandine, and the wild pansies called heartsease grew beside it, and the stream was half-covered with the shining white cups of water crowfoot. As she came into the sun, she paused first because of the beauty of the place — and then because of the wolf which lay on the grass beside the pool.

  Eagerness and misery were lost together in the icy jolt of terror, and for an endless moment she stared into the animal’s face. She found afterward that all the details of it had impressed themselves on her mind so perfectly that she could recall the whole picture simply by closing her eyes and remembering her fear. The wolf was sprawled on its side, its head up, as though Marie had woken it from sleep. Its coat was a dark gray, tipped with black at the tail and brushed with black along the back, but paling on the belly and legs almost to white; the muzzle and ears were masked with brown. The brown eyes were incongruously black rimmed, like a painted courtesan’s at a fair; the mouth was open, black lips slack around gleaming white fangs, red tongue panting in the heat. It seemed enormous, staring at her with the grim confidence of a lord in his castle facing an offending serf. Marie remembered stories of the beasts: children disappearing in the forest, babies snatched from cradles, a pile of white bones and a few scraps of cloth all that anyone found of them. She wondered why she didn’t scream.

  The wolf moved first. It jumped to its feet, its hackles rising and its ears flattening. At once Marie, too, broke from her paralysis. She bent and grabbed the nearest branch. “Scat!” she shouted, swinging her stick so that it cut the air with a vicious hiss.

  The wolf’s mouth curled in an insolent doggy grin — and then it turned and loped off into the forest.

  After a minute, Marie went forward and stood over the pool, nervously listening. There wasn’t even a rustle in the undergrowth. The wolf had simply run away.

  It was as frightened as I was, she told herself shakily. Humans hunt them more than they hunt us. She knelt down by the spring to drink.

  The water was delicious, fresh and cold and sweet. She sat down on the grass when she’d finished drinking, pulled her shoes off, and soaked her sore feet and scratched legs. The water’s touch seemed to take away all pain. A nightingale was singing from a tree nearby. Farther away a cuckoo called, and a woodpecker knocked intermittently: ch-ch-chunk … chunk and then a long pause, as though he were tired. The air was full of a heavy summer hum, a mixture of running water, insect songs, and the soft noise of leaves shifting in a breeze too light to be felt. Marie lay down in the sun and wriggled her toes. The weariness she’d struggled against for hours washed over her. She hadn’t actually taken her rest, back at the fallen tree. She would take it now.

  She didn’t expect to fall asleep, not with the urgency she felt to get out of the forest, not after the encounter with the wolf. But the exhaustion she’d pushed back so determinedly drowned her, and within minutes her eyes had closed and she turned into the soft moss under the blanket of sun, and slept.

  She dreamed, thinking she was awake. She lay on the moss in the sun, and saw the wolf coming back. Its mouth was still curled in the insolent grin, and its red tongue lolled. It slipped through the new shoots of bracken, and as it came it seemed to grow larger, heavier, more misshapen. Then it rose on its hind legs, and she saw that it was a man, a wolfish, savage man, naked except for long hair that covered his body like the bristles of a pig. His nails were curved yellow claws, and his teeth were fangs, bared in the same wolf’s grin. His genitals were red and erect. Marie tried to cry out in horror, to run away, but she couldn’t move. He came closer. Now the hair on his body had become rough hempen cloth, patched with hide, and he wore his wolf skin as a cloak and hood, its empty eye sockets staring above his own. He stood over her, still grinning, then turned and spoke to two others who had appeared beside him, his harsh voice framing words she could not understand.

  Marie opened her eyes with a jolt, looked up wildly, and found that the man was there.

  The nightmare horror of it was so great that for a moment she thought she would be sick. She couldn’t move, and only stared up, round-eyed, white with terror.

  The man laughed and said something to her. She still couldn’t understand, but suddenly realized why: he was speaking in Breton. She recognized the language, though she couldn’t speak it. In Chalandrey even the peasants spoke French.

  The man said something else and offered her his hand to help her up.

  Marie sat up, looking from the hand to the man, and then to his two companions, who stood a little behind him, grinning, leaning against their short bows. They were all heavily bearded, rough-looking men, fairly young, dressed in the hemp tunics and hose patched with hide of her dream. The man before her did have a wolf-skin cloak, but it was an old, tatty one, badly cured. She swam back to reality, weak with relief. These men were nothing worse than woodcutters or swineherds, ordinary peasants going about their own business in the forest. She had glimpsed them while she drowsed, and the wolf-skin cloak had joined the wolf she’d seen in a nightmare. Then relief gave way to alarm: she had drowsed, but for how long?

  She glanced around at the sky, and saw that the sun was low now, slanting through the trees; it was late in the afternoon, almost evening. She pulled her heels under her and jumped up, then wobbled uncertainly on her bare feet.

  “I’m sorry, good man, I don’t speak Breton,” she told the man in the wolf skin. “But if you can help me out of the forest this evening, I’ll be grateful.”

  One of the other woodsmen laughed and said something. Wolfskin shrugged and replied. He caught Marie’s sleeve. “Nan gallek,” he said, and grinned again.

  She understood that much: “No French.” She pulled her arm away from him fastidiously — his hand and clothes were filthy. “I want to get out of the forest,” she repeated slowly, then waved an arm at the trees around her, and pointed eastward. “Out of here. Broceliande forest — no, nan.” She fumbled at her belt for her purse. “Here,” she said, taking a coin from it, “I’ll pay you for your trouble.”

  Wolfskin whistled and took the coin. The one who’d laughed said something else — a joke, because they all laughed. To her horror, Wolfskin reached over and grabbed at the purse, which was fastened to the belt. Marie clasped her hand over it.

  “No!” she exclaimed angrily. “Take me to Mont St. Michel first. At Mont St. Michel, yes, you can have any money I’ve got.”

  “Mont St. Michel!” repeated Joker. “Eee — religieuse.” He made another joke, which the other two found even funnier.

  Wolfskin took Marie’s hand and firmly pulled it off the purse. She protested angrily and slapped at his hand, and Joker slid behind her, grabbed one arm, then
the other, and twisted them behind her back. The pain shocked her. Calmly, Wolfskin unfastened her belt, slid the purse off, and hefted it appreciatively in his hand.

  “Thief!” shouted Marie in astonished outrage. Nothing that had ever happened to her before had prepared her for rough robbery by peasants in dirty hemp tunics. She struggled to free her arms, and Joker jerked them upward, stilling her with another spasm of pain. She stood still, blinking, choked by a white-hot fury of indignation. What would she do without money? How could she get home now?

  The third woodsman held out his hands, and Wolfskin tipped the contents of the purse into them. Money-man hefted the coins, sorted them out, and made a comment: the amount. The other two grunted appreciatively. Joker nodded at Marie and made another joke. Wolfskin didn’t laugh this time. He merely smiled, said something to Marie in a friendly tone, and pinched her cheek. His cheerfulness was even worse than his thieving, and Marie could do nothing more than glare wordlessly. Wolf-skin said something more, then untied her wimple and pulled it off. He stroked her braided hair, traced the line of her jaw lingeringly down along her throat, and smiled. “Kaer,” he said, sounding almost affectionate.

  It was only then that she realized she had worse to fear than robbery. She jerked backward in horrified disbelief, then gasped as the move twisted her arms. “No,” she said, shaking her head wildly. “Nan. No, you don’t understand; I’m a noblewoman, a lady novice — my family will pay a ransom for me!”

  She realized as she spoke that, even if this were something that might have moved them, she didn’t look like a lady. She was dressed for a convent, it was true, but the clothes were not so distinctive: any woman might wear a plain black gown and white wimple — and, for that matter, no particular vocation was needed to have a place in a monastery. The fact that her habit was good cloth wasn’t very apparent now that it was covered with bark and moss scrapings and kilted up above bare feet. To these men she must appear simply a peasant girl, a monastic servant, perhaps, who’d run off on a private holiday and now wanted to go back to her employment. They’d found her alone in the forest. She plainly wasn’t herding pigs or cutting wood or gathering herbs or engaged in any other honest occupation, and if three rough, healthy young men meet up with a wild, disreputable girl in a lonely place, what are they expected to do?

  Wolfskin caught her head in both hands and kissed her eagerly. His breath stank, and his tongue was slimy. She remembered with the vividness of hallucination the scent of her mother’s sickbed and the cold slime on the skin of her dead baby sister. As soon as his mouth pulled away from hers, she screamed as loudly as she could.

  He was surprised. He slapped her, and said something angry and impatient. She screamed again, and he put his hand over her mouth. At this the fury she’d felt since he grabbed her purse boiled over: How dare this filthy peasant treat her like a whore? She straightened her arms as much as she could, threw herself backward, nearly knocking Joker over, and lashed out at Wolf-skin with a bare heel. She caught him hard on the thigh, and he shouted, then slapped her again, so hard this time that her shoulder twisted almost out of its socket, and she screamed in pain. Wolfskin grabbed both shoulders and shook her, shouting into her face.

  “No!” she screamed back, so furious that she had no room even for fear. “No! Even a stupid lout like you must understand that much French! You stinking brute! No! No!”

  Money-man shoved past Wolfskin and tried to smother her shouts with another kiss. Marie bit his tongue as hard she could, and he jumped back, spitting blood. They all began to swear indignantly, as though she were deliberately teasing them, inciting them to lust by appearing in their path and now perversely refusing to satisfy them. Joker twisted her arms, and Money-man punched her in the stomach. There was nothing she could do to defend herself, and she sagged, retching. Wolf-skin elbowed Money-man aside and grabbed her. He dug his fingers into her buttocks and dragged her against him, moving his hips back and forth. He started to grin again. She caught her breath and screamed even harder, struggling to get away. Joker shouted at her, angry and irritable. Stop fooling, his tone said; get down to business. It all seemed unreal, a nightmare. This was not something that could happen to her, a girl of good family and enclosed life, a scholarly girl who wanted to be a nun. “No!” she cried again, shaking her head desperately. She kicked frantically at Joker’s legs, trying to make him let go, but Joker hooked a foot about her ankle, tripped her, and forced her down onto her side on the grass. He said something else. Money-man laughed at it. Wolfskin nodded, knelt over, and began unfastening her gown with the same deliberation with which he’d stolen her money. Money-man hauled the bottom edge of the skirt up and sat on her legs, pinning her to the ground, while the other two stopped twisting her arms long enough to pull the gown off. She screamed again — “No! No! No!” But the only result of her cries was that Wolfskin shoved her wimple into her mouth to muffle them. Money-man pushed her linen shift up to her waist, and Joker caught it and pulled it over her head. It was tight, and he hadn’t bothered with the laces. When he dragged it up it caught on her chin and twisted it back, and wrenched her arms in their tight linen sleeves above her head. Legs and arms pinned, stripped like a rabbit being skinned, half-suffocated, she heard, in anguished disbelief, the three men laughing.

  She did not see what happened next. She only felt Money-man’s callused hands dig convulsively into her thighs, then go limp. Someone shouted in horror. Joker finally let go of her arms. She tried to pull them protectively downward, couldn’t, rolled onto her side and tried again. Then a hand grabbed her imprisoned elbow, linen and arm and hair together, and hauled her to her feet. Wolfskin’s voice shouted something; he dragged her in front of himself and shook her. Marie flailed her free arm in the air, and succeeded in shaking the sleeve down and the folds of cloth off her face. She spat the gag out of her mouth. Wolfskin immediately twisted the arm he held behind her back, which at least shook the other side of the shift down as well. He put something cold against her throat: she realized it was a knife.

  She looked in front of her, and saw Money-man lying facedown on the grass with an arrow sticking from his back. She blinked at him stupidly. It made no sense; she couldn’t see how it had happened. Beyond him there were only trees.

  Wolfskin shouted again. This time, after a pause, a voice answered him from among the trees, as calm and deliberate as Wolfskin’s stealing.

  Wolfskin swore. He pulled Marie backward toward the other side of the clearing. At once there was a hiss, and an arrow buried itself in the turf just behind him. He stopped and shouted something. The unseen other answered in a few calm, unemotional sentences, instructions, perhaps, or conditions.

  Wolfskin shouted a question.

  There was silence.

  Wolfskin shouted another question. Again, there was no answer. Abruptly, Wolfskin shoved Marie aside so violently that she fell. She pulled herself onto her knees and started to crawl toward the trees. Wolfskin ignored her. He took the bow off his back and flung it on the ground. Marie noticed Joker for the first time, lying on his side with an arrow in his eye. Wolfskin faced the invisible archer and flung his arms wide, shouting defiantly — challenging the other, Marie realized, daring him to stop striking from hiding like a coward, and come meet his adversary man to man. She reached the edge of the trees and collapsed, shaking.

  There was another long silence — and then the other man walked out of the trees.

  Wolfskin gave a cry of triumph. The other set down the bow he was carrying at the foot of an oak, dropped a quiver of arrows beside it, and walked unhurriedly toward Wolfskin, pulling his own long hunting knife from his belt as he came. He was clearly of a higher class than his opponent: he was dressed in the standard clothing of huntsmen and foresters, a tunic and hose of plain green wool, rather than cheap hemp. His face was partly hidden, both by the hood of his tunic and by a chaplet of leaves which he wore, as hunters did, for concealment: all that could be seen of it was a black beard, clipped cl
ose to the jaw, and a pair of level dark eyes. He was a bit shorter and slighter than Wolfskin, but somehow looked more dangerous. As he came nearer, he pulled the twist off oak leaves off and dropped it.

  Wolfskin’s first triumph gave way to a look of surprise, then, all at once, of fear. As the other stopped, facing him, he suddenly spat out a single word which Marie did not understand, but remembered afterward: “Bisclavret!”

  The huntsman’s eyes narrowed. Wolfskin gestured toward the trees and spat out something more. Huntsman replied sharply. He dropped into a fighting crouch, holding his knife in front of him. Wolfskin matched him, but he took a step back, and his eyes were flicking frantically about, searching for a way out.

  Huntsman lunged forward with a furious savagery, knife weaving from side to side as though it had a murderous will of its own. Wolfskin flung himself desperately backward — then lunged Forward again suddenly. Huntsman whirled sideways, blocked the blow, catching Wolfskin’s arm on his own, and stabbed violently upward. But Wolfskin had rolled with the block, and even while Huntsman was stabbing, he was tearing at his own skin cloak. He ripped it loose and, with a shout, flung it over the other’s head.

  Marie screamed, leapt to her feet, and stumbled toward the pair with a desperate and confused intention of helping. Huntsman dropped to the ground and rolled sideways to escape the anticipated blow, tugging clinging leather off with one arm. Wolfskin, however, wasn’t attacking: he was running away. Head lowered, one arm clasped to his side and the other working like a pump handle, he thundered into the forest and was gone.