The Wolf King Read Online Free PDF Page B

altar, retching and gasping for breath.
    The rest backed away, sounding winded, but the abbot got in a few more kicks in the region of his kidneys. “My, he is an entertaining one,” the abbot burbled happily. “We haven’t had one with this much energy in a long time. Yes, let’s show him our guests.”
    Two of them got him by the arms and towed him back to the middle of the long room.
    “The torch,” the abbot shouted.
    A torch flared somewhere near the altar and arced through the air in the abbot’s direction. With surprising skill, the abbot plucked it out of the air, then shoved the flames in the Saxon’s face. The abbot’s companions looked even worse in the light. They all must have died at one time or another. One’s head lolled strangely on his shoulders. Hanged? Another’s skin was blackened, had an oily sheen, and part of a charred bone was visible at the elbow. Burned?
    Death didn’t seem to have altered their drinking habits. They were passing around a flagon. When it got to Odd, he took a hefty pull, then danced up and down, gagging and screaming, when some of the wine ran out of his cut throat and down his chest. The rest found this hilariously funny.
    “It stings,” he screeched. “It stings.”
    The Saxon imagined it did. Parts of the gash in his throat must still be raw. They were all, dead or alive, much taller than the abbot, but even so, he dominated them, for all his idiot gaze and constant drooling.
    “Look,” the abbot said, moving toward the choir stalls lining the sides of the church. He thrust the torch at what sat there.
    The Saxon got only a glimpse, but the brief sight was almost enough to unnerve even him. He was almost sure he himself was going to join the things seated in the stalls before morning, if indeed the sun ever shone on this cursed place. And if morning ever came, it probably wouldn’t for him. He turned his face resolutely away and closed his eyes.
    The abbot gave a screech of fury and charged back toward him. “You’ll look. You’ll look or the first thing I’ll do is put out your eyes.” He slammed the torch into the side of the Saxon’s face.
    He heard himself scream as he felt and smelled his hair and skin burning. He could hear the abbot laughing.
    “I knew I could make him scream. I make them all scream sooner or later.”
    “I can believe that,” the Saxon said when he recovered enough to say anything.
    “Do, oh, do believe it.”
    The torch was between himself and the abbot. All he could, see were flames.
    “Pull him up,” the abbot ordered. “Get him on his feet. Bring him over so he can look at the other guests.”
    He was jerked to his knees. It took at least five or six of them. The Saxon was a big man. As they did, a thought occurred to him. The critic in his brain told him it was a rotten plan, but the more optimistic part of his mind suggested since he was fresh out of bright ideas, he might as well try this one.
    He screamed loudly.
    They let go of him and he fell, fell hard, and he screamed again. Not difficult. He had two broken ribs and they were excruciatingly painful.
    Normally he wouldn’t have screamed, being something of an iron man.
But screams seem to entertain these monsters. So give them a few
, he thought.
    “What’s wrong?” Odd asked drunkenly. “We didn’t hurt you that much… at least not yet.” Then he began laughing and spewing droplets of wine and blood from his cut throat.
    “I’m hurt,” the Saxon moaned. “Hurt inside. When you jumped on me, you must have broken something.”
    Odd kicked him and the resulting scream satisfied the rest that he was really hurt and not faking, because Odd put his boot toe into one of the broken ribs. The reflex of sheer agony arched the Saxon’s back, and he almost fainted.
    This aroused the abbot’s anxiety. “Come on, get him on his feet. I want him over there before he dies on me.
    “He,”
the abbot said, indicating the darkened altar, “will only let me play