WOLFWEIR Read online

  **

  They cross another deep mountain pass, going above the treeline into a stark and glacial cold that turns Lucia's lips blue, and there is a brief snowstorm that threatens to bury the intrepid pair -- then they are out of the black clouds again and on a downhill run that Lucia takes with brio, glissing through the snow so fast that she creates her own mini-blizzard.

  Alphonse follows, flailing his sticks, squinting against Lucia's snow-dust. The sword cane, tied by a length of string he'd found in one of his coat pockets, clicking on his pinewood shoulders.

  This little wolf girl with the golden hair whips along as if she knows exactly where she's going. Maybe she knows more about everything than Alphonse thinks.

  **

  They'd left the glacier and ski-ed down through the pines in soft snow and chattering birdsong. Abruptly, Lucia stopped and bent to take off her skis. Alphonse stopped behind her, breathing hard, in a cloud of snow dust. He snapped off his skis also. There was a meadow below them, dazzling green and in it were many small blue flowers the color of Lucia di Fermonti's eyes.

  They left the skis leaning against a pine and walked down through the meadow, Lucia peeling off her scarf. It was getting hot. Alphonse wished he'd brought the Bavarian hurdy gurdy. He took out his tin whistle to toot as they hiked down the mountain toward a great valley filled with haze -- but then, realizing he didn't have the breath in his puppet body to make a note, put it back.

  **

  It took them all day to reach the valley. They stopped to rest at a pyramid-like cairn of stones. Lucia was sweating but happy. She did a little turning dance and laughed at the quizzical look on Alphonse's fire-smudged face.

  The sun was setting. They walked to the banks of a clear, broad fast running river and Lucia crouched and drank and splashed water on her face and arms. Then they crossed the river into a deep, clean, quiet woods.

  It was a forest, rich and soil-fragrant.

  Alphonse had never seen such a forest. The tree trunks were as big around as circus drums. Fat black mushrooms sprouted everywhere under the leafy shade. Hidden frogs and crickets were singing. Vines entangled creepers. Leaves of all sizes and shapes blotted out the darkening sky.

  This is my Kingdom, said Lucia. This is Wolfweir. You are welcome here, brave puppet boy.

  The Black Iron Gate

  They marched through the forest, the puppet boy and the golden haired girl, and sometimes the golden-haired girl broke the silence with a burst of clear singing. She sang in Italian.

  Alphonse shut his eyes when she started singing. He wanted to let it sink into him like fresh rain.

  Maybe he loved this girl, he thought. But who wouldn't?

  **

  They stepped at last out of the dark eaves of the forest into moonlight. Alphonse glanced at Lucia to see if she might change into something but the moon was only half full, and waning.

  Look, Alphonse, she said, pulling his wrist.

  He looked up at where she was pointing. It was a magnificent, sprawling black castle profiled against the moonlit sky.

  "Wolfweir Castle. My father's," said Lucia. "Strike a match, please."

  Alphonse shook a match out of the box he plucked from his shirt pocket. He struck it. It sizzled and burst into clear flame.

  "Hold it up high," she said.

  He did. He held it until the flame burned close to his wooden fingers. Then she shook it out and dropped the charred matchstick.

  "Wait," she said.

  The darkness seemed darker, and deeper. He could hear the hum of the forest creatures behind him. The castle remained stark, lonely, and silent. There were no lights in it, or at least none he could see -- the Norman style stone ramparts were silvery with moonlight.

  "Ah! There!"

  She'd seized Alphonse's wrist again. He stared without blinking at the monumental black castle.

  He saw some kind of movement. A door in the ramparts lifting. He could hear the groaning creak of metal and wood. Then the jingle of harnesses, and a group of horses emerged all at once from the yawning mouth -- with riders.

  If he'd still been a boy, the hair would have lifted on his neck. For, as the horses galloped down the curving, dusty road toward the forest, Alphonse saw that they were men wearing some kind of black leather and silver mesh chain-mail, and identical peaked steel helmets (stamped with some kind of insignia or seal) flashing in the moonlight.

  "Hooray!" cried Lucia happily, clapping her hands.

  The riders approached riding four abreast, dust whirling up into the pale moonlight behind them. There were eight in all, clinking and jangling. The horses were massive and black, and so well-trained that they moved fluidly in perfect unison, chuffing and snorting only a little. Alphonse had never seen such great, perfect, frightening horses, nor such awe-inspiring riders.

  He'd been worried, as they rode down, that they would be Man Wolves, but they were just grim, hard looking men -- men with the mien and bearing of sinewey black wolves about them, astride those fearsome clattering animals.

  One of them -- clearly the leader, not just because of his dignified bearing but because of the silver disc representing a full moon mounted on his helmet -- shouted a growling command and they drew up before Lucia and Alphonse, the horses stamping.

  In the silence, Lucia shouted out their names one after another in her clear, reedy, musical voice.

  She knew them all.

  The man who'd issued the order seemed to be dumbstruck with surprise to see Lucia there on the road to the castle and hear that pure child's voice again. Then his rough warrior's face, with its lower jaw jutting, broke into a lopsided, wolf-like grin.

  He slung himself down from the horse, landing in an easy bowlegged crouch, and seized Lucia by the shoulders, shaking her a little. He embraced the child hard and kissed both her cheeks. Alphonse saw the brief gleam of his tears.

  Then they were speaking fast in Italian. Alphonse could not understand it well. He knew only that Lucia was telling her story. She pointed to him, Alphonse, and the wolfman's eyes went even wider. And wilder.

  All the warriors were looking at Alphonse Didier-Stein. He felt horribly small and shameful. He was a puppet. If only they could see him as he was, not as he looked in this gaudy circus-boy body clad in ragpicker clothes.

  The wolfish man bowed so low to Alphonse his helmet almost touched the dust. Then he stepped back, spoke quickly in that growling Italian dialect and raised his hand and made a few quick signs, and two of the black-clad horsemen wheeled and broke into a gallop up the steep curving road to the castle.

  My sweet Alphonse," Lucia said solemnly. "These are some of the 47 Knights of Wolfweir Castle. They are aware that you saved my life many times and wish to welcome you with proper ceremony. This man is my uncle, Malvic. You will ride his horse back to the castle, as he walks ahead. I will ride his shoulders. These other knights will follow as a solemn and silent honor guard holding their naked sabers aloft. Bonfires will be lit on the ramparts. As we enter there will be volley of cannons. And once inside the Black Iron Gate you will meet my father, the great High King Gar Fith. Are you ready?"

  Alphonse gave a quick bow, clicking his heels together, and snapped to rigid attention as he always had at the fencing school. He heard surprised, and quickly stifled, mirth from some of the mailed warriors.

  It didn't matter. Puppets can't blush.

  **

  So our A.D.S. rides a great stomping black stallion, high in the saddle like a conquering hero, the bared swords of the Knights glistening behind him, Malvic holding the reins with Lucia di Fermonti perched laughing and clapping on his massive shoulders, up the dusty moonbright road and through a massive black iron gate into Wolfweir Castle.

  Bonfires flare up on the ramparts as they approach, jangling and creaking and stamping. The upraised sabers suddenly glow blood red.

  As they enter the Castle there is a shocking mingled blast of at least twenty cannons from all sides of the ramparts. The night seems to
turn upside down and dissolve into a lion's roar of pure sound.

  Alphonse reflexively covers his face with his arms. His stallion's ears twitch rapidly, that's all. Lucia only laughs louder into the stained and ringing silence, as gunpowder-stench fills the night air.

  The High King

  They are at last now in the castle's great courtyard. Gar Fith, the High King, emerges with a blast of trumpets from the Inner Keep, wearing red velvet robes and an age-blackened silver crown and around his neck a chain of heavy ornately worked silver with a thick glass phial dangling from it.

  His bearing is wolfish. He has the same jutting, angular jaw as Malvic, the same gleaming green-yellow eyes. He moves in a sinewy, loose-limbed way, his knees bent, and he is slightly bowlegged. He even smells like a wolf.

  Alphonse slides quickly down from the saddle, drops to one knee on the flagstones, plucks off his cap and bows with an elegant sweep of his sword arm.

  Lucia is clapping and laughing. Alphonse glances up under his wooden brows to see her in the arms of Gar Fith. The wolf king is in tears. Lucia pets and kisses his face.

  "My golden darling," cries the High King.

  "My dear father," cries Lucia.

  They are both laughing and sobbing like the newly insane.

  And now Lucia says in clear Italian:

  "Voila. Here is my sweet friend, Alphonse Didier-Stein, of Paris. He is a virtuoso with a rapier, and is very kind and brave, but he cannot speak. His boy's soul was locked into this puppet body by the Gypsy necromancer Vesuvio, the same vile swine who kidnapped me and took me to France for a black magic ritual by full moon on an ancient stone altar. Alphonse rescued me from Vesuvio's camp when he and his slave-puppets and a lurid pair of Vampyres were just about to cut out my heart to steal my wolf-soul. Since that night, he has saved my life many times over. I beg you, father, make him feel welcome in our kingdom."

  The High King's eyes gleam wolfishly. He sets Lucia down on her feet. All the Knights have their heads bowed as if in awe at the regal and threatening presence of this King. He seems at once full of rage at Lucia's story, and overcome by confused tenderness toward the puppet boy.

  Stepping forward and putting his big hand on Alphonse's wooden head, he intones with a catch in his throat, in stilted and old sounding French: "Arise, O valiant boy. You are my guest. I owe you an absolute debt which I fear nothing I do can ever repay."

  Lucia says: "Father, we must help Alphonse save his mother and father. His parents are under the Vampyres' power, both plunged in a deep sleep in a Paris hospital. This boy in a puppet's body has vowed to pursue Lord and Lady Blackgore, even to the ends of the earth, and slay them."

  "We will help you, dear Alphonse," says Gar Firth in a rumbling growl. "I swear it by the Blood Amulet I wear about my neck. Lord and Lady Blackgore will die, either by your sword or by mine. So will this ugly brute Vesuvio."

  Alphonse bows so low that his forehead touches a chilled flagstone.

  "Arise, boy," says the High King. "Please. I should bow to you. You've given me back my only darling, since the girl's mother is long gone."

  So Alphonse straightens up with a clicking of wooden limbs and stands proud and erect in the dazzling gleam of torches.

  Lucia, still weeping happily, clutches at his hand. He closes his wooden fingers lightly on her smooth warm wolf-girl fingers. The High King claps his shoulders so hard that Alphonse's knees rattle.

  "Tonight, we feast," he shouts to the assembled Knights. "Tomorrow, we scheme. And the next day, or the day after that, certainly by the next full moon, we strike. Be assured, Alphonse Didier-Stein, that when we attack, we are a black raging whirlwind from the gates of Hell; we never stop until we've made our kill."

  At those rousing words all the Knights of Wolfweir Castle -- the firelit courtyard is now crowded with them, probably all 47-- bare their gleaming sabers with a thick and furious rasping of steel and let out a ghastly, moaning howl.

  Lucia joins them, throwing her head back to growl and cry at the bone-white waning sliver of moon. So does the High King.

  Alphonse has never heard such sounds. His whole body shivers, clattering.

  On the Ramparts

  It was a blur of a royal banquet. Torchlit, costume-dazzled, rafter-shaking.

  Alphonse sat at the right hand of the High King, who drank flagon after flagon of wine and then sang hard songs in his most wolfish howl, to the accompaniment of drums, flutes, and harps. His Knights joined in, pounding the table with their fists.

  Lucia sat smiling and golden on the other side, her hair like finespun light.

  Then the candles burnt out, and the Great Hall of Wolfweir filled with waxy smoke.

  By then most of the Knights had passed out drunk, their heads on the wine-soaked table, in the litter of bones and scraps.

  Even Lucia was softly asleep, in the lap of the High King.

  Gar Fith poured himself a last silver cup of the black wine, drank it, and settled back into his throne-chair and began to snore -- the buzzing of a beehive in his feast-clotted throat.

  **

  As if on cue, Alphonse slid down from his chair and tiptoed out of the Hall.

  He climbed a steep curving stone staircase, click click, and came out on the high battlements where flags hung lank from the poles. Almost dawn.

  The horn moon was setting, honey-colored. Mist rose from bluish earth. He heard throaty growls, yips and cries from the trackless forest -- maybe, he thought, those were actual wolves, not Man-Wolves.

  A low flying bat skimmed Alphonse's cap, and he leapt back, clicking.

  He burned with the longing to stick his rapier into the bloodless hearts of those oh so slick and dapper Vampyres.

  Meantime, his puppet heart ached with love for the golden Lucia. That clear magical child.

  He saw the morning star dazzling in the West -- a diamond the size of a fist.

  If he could weep real tears he would do it now. But would they be of joy, or despair? For he felt both.

  **

  Next day, Alphonse, clad in a red velvet suit with gold chain and pointed shoes presented to him by the grateful wolf-people, strolls with the High King and the prancing Lucia around the great battlements of Wolfweir Castle.

  Mist-speckled, the forest around the castle looms black and wet. There are scraps of blue sky between gray cloud formations. Lucia sticks out her tongue to taste the first quicksilver drops of rain.

  "Ah! Alphonse! It's wonderful!"

  A lightning bolt skitters out of a black cloud to the West. It flares blue and crackles, drumrolls. The flags -- bearing the image of a bristling black Man-wolf holding a sword and shield on a field of crimson -- snap on the poles.

  The High King Gar Fith has been pointing out the landmarks to Alphonse and explaining the history of the Kingdom. Briefly stated:

  In 1565, one of the Man-Wolves of Gar Fith's clan, which originated in the Welsh forests but in the twelth century migrated to Italy because of the Vampyre problem (of which more later) did some service for a Pope, a ravening moonlit assassination, and the result was a Papal land grant here in these godforsaken sub-Alps that became Wolfweir, a refuge and patriotic rally for all lycanthrops. Never before had werewolves officially owned a piece of soil, a river, a valley, their own forest, and an imposing castle. Of course, no sooner was the kingdom granted than the Pope put the records under lock and key, deep in the musty Vatican catacomb reserved for documents relating to the occult, and washed his white papal hands of the whole thing.

  The Knights of Wolfweir fought against the Turks at Aleppo alongside the storming Venetians, and even earlier than that had been involved in the defense of the eastern countries against the Mongols and Turks. That's where they'd drawn the ire of Vampyre Vlad the Impaler, known as Dracula. But all that glory belonged to more virile and warlike age. As the centuries went by, the Man-wolves found it more prudent to keep to their little kingdom and not mix with outsiders. For one thing, the Vampyres, long before Vlad the Impaler
took umbrance at the selfless valor of the Wolf-Knights, had hated and envied all Man-wolves, and Vampyre covens had since then upon many different occasions traduced, maligned, and even openly attacked the Kingdom.

  This latest chapter -- the kidnapping of Lucia the Wolf-child -- was only one more provocation in a brutal and dreary history. One day, the High King predicted, the Vampyre covens would unite and attack Wolfweir in force to wipe it from the earth.

  "Their hearts are black, bloodless crypts of evil," continues Gar Fith, broodingly. "They are the dry rot of the world. Spiteful tomb-trash. Van Helsing had the right idea. Stake their hearts, every last cold bloodsucker. Did you know, my dear Alphonse, that the great world benefactor Van Helsing was part Man-wolf on his mother's side?"