Wolf's Cross by S. A. Swann Page B

And something within him knew that this was the form in which to fight men.
    The second arrow plunged into the ground as he stood upright for the first time in three years, wobbly from the violence the change had wrought to his balance and his center of gravity.
    He reached up and pulled the arrow out of his chest. It came free with a tug and a flare of pain, but that was all. Unlike the knight’s bolt, this arrow left no lasting scar. The wound was sealed before the third arrow passed completely through his left shoulder. Darien clenched his fist on the arrow he had pulled from his chest, and the thick shaft splintered in half.
    He ran toward the archer as a fourth arrow flew by, completely missing him. As he closed on the man, he smelled something else. It was unfamiliar, but it was a smell he would soon learn to savor.
    Fear.

    H e dragged the body to a nearby river so he could wash the blood off the man’s clothes. He’d need them, if he was going to walk among men. He licked the blood off his claws and fur, and pulled the archer’s corpse into the shallow part of the river. He fumbled with the clothes before he realized that they were designed for human hands.
    While the body rested on the riverbed, water washing over it and his legs, Darien tried to pull the old human skin back around himself. For a long time it felt as if he had forgotten how. Perhaps he had never had a form like the dead thing in the water at his feet. Perhaps it was a nightmare. Maybe the wolf thing was all he was.
    But as it had with the halfway skin, his body remembered that he had once had a human shape. The change came, like a long-cramped muscle finally relaxing. His flesh poured into the man form suddenly, and with a shuddering relief that caused him to collapse into the river, next to the corpse. Cold water washed over skin that was suddenly naked; his newly flat teeth chattered and his whole body broke into gooseflesh.
    He got unsteadily to his feet and stared at his hands, white and hairless, with impotent nails.
    As weak as they seemed, it had been hands like this that had destroyed everything he had ever cared about. Hands like these could kill just as easily as tooth and claw.
    He bent over the archer’s body and clumsily removed its clothes. The river had already diluted the blood, until all that was left were unremarkable stains on the already mottled brown tunic. He tossed the dead man’s possessions—belt, tunic, breeches, boots—up onto the shore, until the corpse was as naked as he was. After that, he pushed the body to the deep center of the river to let the current take it where it wished.
    Darien watched it go and had the last twinge of doubt about what he would do next. He could return to the woods now …
    But somewhere beyond these woods were more men—men who deserved to lose what he had lost. Feel what he had felt. Darien knew, now that the rage in him had awakened, that there would be no release from it except in a tide of human fear.
    He dressed himself in a dead man’s clothes and started walking toward the world of men.

PART TWO
    Anno Domini 1353

IX
    A fter two days’ travel, Rycerz Telek Rydz herbu Bojcza and a trio of his best men rode into Warsaw. The city was imposing after their ride through the countryside. It could easily fit a dozen copies of Gród Narew within the embrace of its walls. As he entered the city, he thought that his uncle Bolesław would be relieved that no sign of war was abroad. The people did their business, men ran their shops, and farmers tended their fields. If they chose to glance at the approaching knight bearing the Bojcza standard, it was only with respect and mild curiosity, not the fear that tainted the common man’s face in wartime.
    Telek was relieved as well. As tense as dealings with the Teutonic State were, the tension was preferable to open conflict. There had been plenty of that over the years, and Telek prayed that the latest treaty with the Polish Kingdom was to