Wolf King

When he found her in the snowbank, he was sure she must be dead. These Franks were fools about bad weather. True, they had come from beyond the Rhine and conquered Roman territory; but too much soft living since then had ruined them. He was surprised and angry. Not with the gentle creature he was sure she must have been, but with her menfolk and guardians. Because she must have been surrounded by those dedicated to her interests. This girl was obviously a noblewoman. To be abandoned here to the fury of winter's last blizzard seemed an impossible fate for such a woman. In the name of God! No, that name was bitter on his tongue. The woman-skirted priests told him the powers his people honored were demons, that they were somehow evil. They claimed that their Jesus was the only god. But his own godswhatever their moral stripewere better suited to the sort of life his people lived than this fool Christ. He quickly brushed the snow away from the woman's face, wondering if she was dead. He pulled off his glove. He was warming to a fine fury; he would have no problem with the cold. What manner of men had charge of this slender beauty, that she was left here to die? He touched her cheek, then her forehead. Cold. Cold and hard as marble. She was wearing a silk gown trimmed with sable, and a white brocaded mantle. The wind was howling around him and the world was sinking into a cold, gray blueness as the sun set somewhere beyond the clouds. He lifted her hand. Icy but still flexible, not stiff yet. His outer mantle was a thick bearskin, somewhat worn and stained. No, very worn and stained, but warm. He leaned over her, lifted her head, and tried to see if her breath fanned his cheek. The hard, wind-driven pellets of sleet, mixed now with the blowing snow, stung his uncovered nose and lips. He couldn't tell anything. He paused for a second, then vented his frustration with one sharp curse word. He could put his hand down her dress, but to touch a young woman in certain places, even with her permission, was considered a particularly vile offense. He was hesitant, not wishing to dishonor her family even if she was a corpse. Then he spat out another curse, this one directed at himself. If she wasn't already dead, she might easily die while he stood over her dithering about the proprieties. He pushed his hand down her dress, feeling for the heart where the throbbing can most easily be felt, on the left chest below the breast. He was rewarded by warmth and a slow but steady throbbing. After that he wasted no time. He pulled off his outer bearskin mantle, threw it on the snow drifted at the roadside, then lifted her and wrapped her tightly in the heavy fur. He reflected that both he and the mantle were probably harboring a few fleas, kept alive by the warmth of his big body. This girl didn't have nearly the healthy temperature he did; maybe the little bastards would die. At any rate, the extermination of his vermin compan- ions was the only benefit he was likely to derive from this particular adventure. He had planned to avoid the monastery at the foot of the pass, to find some secluded place to sleep through the blizzard, then continue on his way unobserved by the Franks. No possibility of that now. If he didn't get this girl to someplace sheltered and warm, she would soon die. Well enough for him to curl up inside his mantle and let his own body heat seal out the cold. He could survive almost subzero temperatures wrapped in the skin. That was, after all, why he'd killed the animal in the first place. He'd met the bear in the mountains when he was no more than fourteen. It had been an old animal, humpbacked and silver about the muzzle, but well fed, with a thick winter pelt. "It seems," he had said to the bear, "I am your destiny." The bear reared on his hind legs and roared a challenge. "You may go if you wish,&quBorchardt, Alice is the author of 'Wolf King' with ISBN 9780345435262 and ISBN 0345435265.