Wolf's Cross by S. A. Swann

his pack followed the forms of serving Christ. The men of the German Order, whose symbol was the black cross, who ruled all the lands beyond their little village.
    As he ran into the night, he tried several times to tell himself that the man on the horse hadn’t worn a tabard bearing the black cross of the Order. He had been mistaken. It had been the shadow of a branch, a fold in the fabric, not a black cross.
    Anything
but a black cross.
    The fear grew as he realized that the wound in his side where the crossbow bolt had grazed him was not healing. His fur was slick with his own blood, and it hurt for him to breathe. That wasn’t supposed to happen. A cut in the flesh like that should heal in a matter of moments, and even faster when he wore this form.
    But the cut from the knight’s bolt burned as he bled. His lungs burned as he panted. His eyes burned as he wept.
    As fatigue gripped him, he dropped to all fours, letting the energy of the full wolf push him forward. But even the wolf had limits, and he couldn’t run forever. Deep in the midnight-black woods, his legs gave out and he curled up under a tree, panting and sobbing, and half-hoping that the knight of the black cross would find him and finish him off, so that he would no longer have to be afraid.

    T he knight didn’t find him, and Darien woke in his naked human form, shivering and tacky with his own blood. He wandered the woods for two days, losing hope until he finally found a familiar scent, and a game trail that he knew. His heart swelled once he was back on familiar ground. He ran along the path as fast as he could in the fading evening light, the branches and briars on the path tearing at his feet and leaving scratches that healed almost as quickly as they were made.
    He slowed only as he began smelling other things. Blood. Smoke. Roasting meat.
    And a scent that he remembered. A smell he knew belonged to the knight and his horse.
    Darien stopped on the path, shaking his head. He tried to deny it, just as he had tried to deny the black cross on the knight’s tabard.
    Fear rooted him to the spot for what felt like hours. Slowly, inevitably, he pulled his feet free from his paralysis. He stepped slowly at first, moving toward his home as if in a dream. The awful smells wrapped around him, almost choking him, and before he realized it, he was running as if the knight were on his heels, chasing him.
    He reached his village before he was ready. Even so, the smells had already told him what he would find.
    The fires had died, but the smoke hung over the village like an evil fog, burning his eyes and imperfectly hiding the damage. Every building had burned, leaving nothing more than haphazard piles of broken timbers. The damage was so complete that, once he had taken a few steps into the remains of the village, he could no longer tell whose homes they used to be.
    He walked naked through the haze, too stunned to be afraid anymore. He called out, “Mother? Father?” But no one responded.
    The smell of horses was almost as rank as the smell of smoke and blood. And when he rounded a smoldering pile of wood that had once been someone’s home, he saw one. The animal was sprawled in a muddy track that was a soup of hoofprints, mud, shit, and blood. Its head had been torn nearly free of the rest of it, so that its dead eyes could stare at him over its shoulder.
    It could have been the knight’s horse. It wore metal plates on its head, and a mail skirt, and draped across it was a torn sheet that, under the mud, soot, and blood, bore the black cross of the Order.
    I didn’t bring them here
.
    He kept repeating that to himself, as if thinking something often enough would make it true.
    “Mother? Father?” He no longer shouted at the ruins around him. He no longer feared that he wouldn’t find his family. Now he feared that he would.
    He encountered two other dead horses, left where they had fallen. Darien passed other remnants of battle, stray bits of armor,