The Legend of the White Wolf

The second knock was louder, insistent, part of no dream she would want. She heard her husband's chair scrape the floor as he rose to answer it, grumbling as he always did about the lateness of the hour and the work the unknown caller was keeping him from. She heard his voice, and knew without understanding the words what he was asking. The answer came no louder than the wind, and he asked again who it was.

Lightning split the night, and the third knock split the door. At first she thought it was the thunder, but then the thunder came, even as the door fell rattling to the floor. She heard her husband cry out, and sat stiff upright, her eyes wide in the dark and the blankets clutched at her throat. Angry voices came in on the wind and brought the smell of the storm with them. Flesh struck flesh and her husband cried out again. Another blow; he fell silent. She rolled from the bed and crouched low in its shadow, watching the bar of flickering light under the door to the front room. Figures passed back and forth wildly, their shadows jumping like sparks in a roaring fire. The angry voices continued, though now her husband did not answer. She could make out the words now, but they meant nothing to her. They were simply angry. That she knew already.

Her husband was dead, she was sure; such voices would not have let him live. How long before they broke down the inner door as well, and came for her? The door thumped and shivered, and for a moment she was sure they were here—but nothing further happened; one of them must have fallen against it. Crashing and tearing and cracking from the other room told her that they were wrecking the store. These were not mere thieves in the night, then, she thought. They came not to steal, but to kill and destroy. And soon they would come for her.

Slowly, to make not the slightest noise, she crawled across the bedroom toward the window. She reached up and put one tentative hand on the glass. It was cold and moved with the patter of rain and the wind. She glanced down at the thin nightdress she wore. The blanket had accompanied her on the crawl across the floor; she now wrapped it tight around herself and shivered into it. She couldn't open the window without alerting the intruders; it had always squeaked, and the weather would only make it worse. Perhaps if she waited for the noise in the other room to reach a crescendo, she could yank the window open all at once, and the sound would go unnoticed. Yes, that is what she would do.

For what must have been a thousand beats of her frantic heart she stood there, her cold hands on the handles of the window, her head cocked to the sound of destruction in the front room, waiting for just the right moment. It never came. The sounds died out, and the angry voices became whispers. She could hear their footsteps now, heavy booted steps thundering through the planking of the floor.

The door burst in.

Three men flew in after it and tumbled to the floor in a shower of splinters. She screamed and jumped backward. The window sill caught her knees and she fell back against the glass. It could not hold her. It shattered, and she fell out into the rain. She fought her way out of her blanket, struggled to her feet in the mud of the flowerbed, and ran. Behind her she could hear the invaders at the broken window, but she did not turn. If they were following her, she did not want to know.

The night sentry at the back gate of Keep Etavo grumbled mightily as he trudged toward the pounding on the gate. It was far too late for anything good to come in, and the storm rattling through the keep guaranteed that whatever it was, he would be thoroughly soaked and frozen before he was rid of it. And those bastards in the sentry shed hadn't even saved him any wine from the party this evening.

He slid open the peephole in the postern door and peered out. He could see nothing through the rain and dark, but the pounding resumed.

"Hey!" he shouted through the hole. "If you'll stop that racket and come over here you might get something done. Who are you, and what do you want?"

The pounding stopped. He heard murmuring and shuffling, and soon from the rain emerged a shaggy grey form with a hunched back.

"Is that you, Tero?"

The sentry started. "Who are you?"

"Tero, it's me, your cousin Nika. Open up, will you? We're drowning out here."

Tero turned stubborn. "Nika's no hunchback; now, who are you?"

"I got somebody on my back, Tero. Come on, open up!"

Tero looked more closely. Sure enough, the hunch above Nika's fleece jacket developed a head and two arms wrapped around Nika's neck. The hunch was a woman, and she looked dead. Tero opened the postern and practically dragged his cousin and his burden through it, down the passage, and into the warm sentry shed.

Tero had no wine, but he did have tea, and Nika huddled over it gratefully. Tero tended to the woman. She was youngish, and slender, and dressed only in a flimsy nightdress that now hung from her in rags. Her skin was translucent marble and was clammy to the touch. Her face and arms and breasts were scratched, as if she had crawled through a briar patch, and her bare feet were covered with mud and blood. She was still alive, Tero noted, though her breathing was shallow and irregular.

"What's the story, Nika?" he asked, chafing her freezing flesh with his blanket.

"I don't know," said Nika. "She just showed up like that, raving something about bloody murder and broken windows. Thought I ought to bring her to the keep, you know?" "Sure," said Tero. "Know who she is?"

"You don't?" Nika shook his head. "I guess she does look different today. That's Trader Grivas's wife. The one you've been panting after for months now. Don't look so hot now, though, does she?"

"Shut up," growled Tero. He looked closely at the frozen marble statue of a woman he held in his arms and swallowed down a tightness in his throat. "Something's happened to Trader Grivas," he said. "We'd better wake Etavo."