The Wolf King Read Online Free PDF

alive.”
    Odd hawked and spat a disgusting mixture of phlegm and blood at the Saxon. “No thanks to him and his pretty pussy.”
    The Saxon twisted his head aside just in time to keep the mess from splattering in his face.
    “She’s a fair hand with the knife, that woman of his,” Odd said. “Maybe she’ll stay awhile, keep us company.”
    Yes,
the Saxon thought,
there’s the hole in his throat, almost like another mouth, where her knife went in
. Someone had stitched it shut. It was a red line from his Adam’s apple to just below his ear. No, he should be dead. How was he not?
    “Too bad,” Odd said. His voice sounded thick, harsh—as if cutting his throat had interfered only with his ability to speak. “Too bad we couldn’t get Gui back. The pig spilled too much of him against the post.”
    “Was that the one I brained?” the Saxon asked.
    Odd laughed, an odd bubbling sound. Then he hawked and spat again. “I’m not all fixed. I’m still bleeding,” he whined.
    “Cut me loose,” the Saxon said. “I’ll fix you like I did Gui. You won’t bleed anymore, you bastard.”
    Someone else kicked him. A good kick, vicious, it knocked some of the wind out of him.
    “Beg for your life, pig,” the giggler said. “They did.” He gestured toward the choir stalls along the wall of the chapel.
    Yes, the Saxon recognized it as a church, one of the Christian kind. He and the other slaves had been herded into one every week on the estate where he had been imprisoned. These places reminded him of nothing so much as cowsheds, but with higher roofs. They were long and fairly narrow. All along the walls there were seats with high backs carved of wood. These were for the priests, who were the only ones allowed to sit down. The slaves, and those few peasants who had braved the service intended for the villa’s lowest field hands, knelt on the bare stone floor while the skirted Christian priests engaged in some complicated rite at an altar on one end of the room.
    The cold, the pressure on his bare knees, and the stink of his fellow slaves’ unwashed bodies, not to mention the presence of the taskmasters paid to keep the slaves from creating a disturbance, had rendered the whole ceremonial experience miserable. At certain times during the service—he was never sure which parts—the overseers struck with their whips at any slave unfortunate enough to make the slightest sound. Once, after seeing one of his more half-wit fellows who cursed the Christian god in the middle of the rites deprived of his eyes and tongue, he concluded this god was worse tempered than his people’s spirits of wind, cold, storm, fire, desire, and fruitfulness. They, at least, were indifferent to human suffering. The Christian god was downright malicious. In fact this maggot-brained abbot, surrounded by what he was now sure were dead men, was a fitting servant for that god.
    “Beg for your life.” The abbot kicked him this time.
    “Piss on you,” the Saxon said.
    “Beg,” the abbot squealed. Snot ran from his nose, drool from his lips. He seemed disappointed. “By now,” he whimpered, “they were all begging.”
    “Shit on you,” the Saxon said. “I wouldn’t give you piss, it’s too good for you.”
    “I know, I know,” one of the men near Odd shouted. “Let’s show him our guests.” He pointed to the choir stalls.
    “Yes,” the abbot said.
    The abbot jumped up and down with glee, but on the second hop the Saxon saw where this was leading and managed to roll. The abbot landed on his ribs. The Saxon bucked like an angry horse—tied or not, he could move—but then they all took turns seeing if they could stay on top of him. He gritted his teeth, twisted and turned, trying to stay alive while the whole crew tried stomping him to death. Fortunately, only a few of them had boots heavy enough to do damage, but he heard one rib snap and then another; then he lurched up face first against the wooden rood screen in front of the