Night of the Wolf by Alice Borchardt

inflict a fatal wound in seconds.
    The officer got between the sow and the trooper. The spear he carried was the Roman battle spear, the pilum. The spearhead was mounted on a three-foot length of steel bolted to a beechwood pole.
    The spearhead entered the sow’s chest. The shock brought the officer to his knees, but he held on as the pig ran up the pole and reached the supporting beech handle. There, she stopped. The officer was strong, but her weight pushed him back several feet. Then she shuddered, blood gushed from her mouth, and her legs began to fold under her.
    Maeniel was the only one who saw Leon move, and he didn’t understand why.
    Leon stood near Imona’s loom. The officer’s back was to him. He stepped forward, snatched the short Roman thrusting sword from its sheath, then, in an eyeblink, he plunged it into the Roman officer’s back.
    For a moment the world was still. A frozen tableau. Everyone stared at Leon in stark, unbelieving horror. Then the farmyard exploded into chaos.
    The officer screamed, a cry so filled with raw agony that it made Maeniel’s skin crawl. The spear pole fell from his hand as he clutched at the sword hilt protruding from his back.
    Perhaps Imona screamed also, but if she did, Maeniel never remembered it. In any case, all other sounds were drowned out by the cries coming from the farm below.
    The trooper who still held his spear drove it through Leon’s body. To his credit, Des tried to defend his wife and mother. He turned, pushed them away, and shouted, “Run!”
    The trooper who’d thrown his spear still had his sword. It was out of its sheath in an instant. Des was a farmer, not a soldier. All he had was a mattock he’d been using to chop weeds. The trooper’s sword knocked the upraised tool from his hand, sheared through the arm holding it, and sliced into his chest, cut away the ribs, and entered his lung. Des fell, his hands pawing at the massive chest wound as his hammering heart emptied the blood from his body.
    The old woman tried to run, but stumbled and fell after a few steps. Kat was able to run, and she did, but in the wrong direction. Instead of turning for the hillside where she might have been able to hide herself among the trees, she fled into the open field with two of the troopers in hot pursuit.
    The woman camp follower, the one who’d been leading the cart, ran up. The old woman was still struggling to rise. The camp follower brained her with a rock. Then the remaining trooper and the woman crucified Leon on the dooryard tree that sheltered Imona’s loom. He was still alive, kicking, as the trooper hoisted his body and the woman drove two knives they’d taken from the farmhouse into his hands. The spear hung from his chest. The whole front of his tunic was saturated with blood.
    The other two troopers returned, dragging Kat by one arm.
    Maeniel wasn’t sure if the Roman officer was unconscious or dead. He didn’t react when the woman pulled the sword from his back. She sliced off his linen tunic with her knife and began bandaging him. The wolf decided he couldn’t be dead.
    When the screams began to come from the house, the woman looked up from her task, an expression of disgust on her face.
    Imona began to struggle again. “Kat! My God, Kat! They have her in the house.”
    Maeniel whispered, “What will you do? Give them another subject for their attentions?”
    The camp follower went to a small fire burning in a pit in the dooryard. She lifted a flaming branch and began setting the low-hanging, thatched roof alight. In a few moments, fire began running up the roof blazing near the smoke hole.
    Kat’s frantic screaming stopped and the troopers came running out of the house, coughing, eyes tearing from the smoke.
    “You piece of excrement,” one of them screamed at the woman. “We aren’t done with her yet.”
    “Pig’s brother, dog’s father. Yes, you are! My master’s only wounded. If Lucius dies here, it will be your fault. I swear! I