The Wolf King Read Online Free PDF Page A

she couldn’t remember who, said almost a mile down. No, nothing could survive a fall like that. So she was dead. But how so? Since she could still feel, think, move, and yes—she took in a deep breath of the freezing air—yes, she could also breathe.
    But she might as well be dead, she was so cold. She eased toward the low fireplace where the child Morgana crouched. The woman Lavinia picked up a log from a metal rack near the hearth and threw it on the almost-dead coals. It hissed, sputtered. The bark must have been wet. Then it caught and flamed up, sending a burst of heat into the room.
    Regeane stretched out her hands gratefully toward the radiant heat rising from the newborn fire. She closed her eyes, seeing the hot redness behind her lids. The chimney smoke in her nostrils and clinging around her clothing had a far cleaner odor than anything in the putrid room around her.
    “Ahhh, that feels good,” Lavinia whispered.
    Regeane felt her mind was beginning to clear. “My… husband?”
    “Don’t be a fool,” Lavinia snapped. “I’ll bet you don’t even know his name.”
    “I don’t, but he tried to help me. He may even have saved my life. So where did they take him? And what are they going to do to him?”
    “Hush. Be glad they have him to occupy them until morning. Let them finish killing him and tomorrow I’ll…” She turned back to where Regeane had been standing and gave a harsh gasp of surprise. The girl was gone!
    The Saxon was not an optimistic man and, indeed, his worst fears had been confirmed. He’d heard—even among the Lombards—dark tales about this place, the so-called monastery at the foot of the pass. Those tales had bothered him not at all, for he had planned to avoid at all costs the functionaries of the Frankish king. He didn’t know if they would return him to his Lombard owners, but he didn’t plan to test their charity. Nowhere in this harsh world could a friendless, kinless man hope for shelter or even compassion. This was his firm belief, and nothing in his life had even begun to persuade him otherwise. Certainly not this experience.
    He’d managed to get sufficient control of his reflexes to prevent his head being battered to a pulp on the floor, but he remained tied. On the way to wherever they were taking him, he simply concentrated on keeping his tender skull away from the cobbles; otherwise, he ceased to struggle and tried to let himself go limp. Tied or not, he was still entangled with the bearskin, and the thick pelt kept him from being bruised or brained by his captors’ careless handling. The thing was lucky, or maybe it wasn’t. He’d been captured wearing it, but then, it probably saved his life when he was sold to the Lombards. But in the slave pens, he’d had to fight three men over the damned thing—or was it four? The whack on the head had been hard… But then his speculations were ended, because he found himself in the monastery chapel. He was stretched out on the floor.
    The
thing
—that was how he thought about it—the thing that giggled was examining him. A finger prodded him in several places. “You sure you didn’t hit him too hard?” it questioned the servitors who’d been dragging him along. “He looks dead.”
    “Dead, my ass,” a voice he recognized as belonging to one of the men by the gate snarled. “Open your eyes, pig.”
    Somebody, probably the speaker, drove a boot into his ribs.
    The Saxon whispered the vilest epithet he knew and opened his eyes. They were gathered in a circle around him. He’d never seen a worse band of cutthroats. They were all scarred, missing eyes, hands, noses, even lips. But what sent a frisson of sheer terror through his body was the fact that the speaker, one of the men he remembered from near the gate, was the man his companion had stabbed in the throat. And not only was he alive, but he seemed in reasonably good health.
    The thing, the giggler, laughed a nasty titter. “Odd, he cannot believe you are