XXXVIII

 

 

The Morvan – December, 1191

 

BY THE THIRD day, they could see them. Loping along the treeline, their shaggy heads hung low, they wove in and out of the trees at the forest’s edge, sometimes disappearing from view, sometimes in plain sight, but always keeping pace, their ice-blue eyes fixed on the travellers.

Galfrid watched them nervously as his horse plodded though the deep snow, the wagons creaking and labouring behind them. “What are they doing?” he said. “Why don’t they just attack?”

“They’re not stupid,” said Mélisande.

Gisburne pulled back his hood and squinted at the trees. “They’re waiting for us to die,” he said.

“And if we don’t?” asked Galfrid.

No one answered the squire’s question.

Mélisande had not shrunk from her promise to take them through the Morvan mountains. When her scouts had returned and reported Templars on all the main routes through Burgundy, she had turned the wagons towards the snowy plateau. It was, thought Gisburne, an ideal place for outlaws to hide out. Once someone determined to hide up here, not even an army would root them out. In turn, of course, his hypothetical outlaws would have no passing traffic to rob. This had started in Gisburne’s mind as an abstract thought – a mere fanciful train of thought – but as they progressed it began to trouble him, and he started to keep an eye on the trees. Who knew what was up here?

Very soon they realised their only company went on four legs.

They heard the howls on the very first day. The snow was heavy and untouched, the going painfully slow. None challenged Mélisande’s decision, but she began to look pained and drawn, as if it weighed heavily upon her. Gisburne understood, somewhere within, that those who travelled with her were more than servants and retainers. They were family, just as the wagons and the tents they contained were home.

The wolves brought a new level of anxiety. At first, it was the merely the sound that pulled and shredded their nerves. The long, mournful cries – sporadic that first night, but incessant by the second day – oppressed them. The horses, already unnerved by the deep snow and struggling with the extreme cold, were twitchy and apprehensive. Their fear would also tire them more quickly; Gisburne hoped against hope that the baying would dwindle and fade into the distance when the wolves finally gave up. He had no argument with the beasts; he was happy to leave them be. He hoped they felt the same.

Bit by bit, the howling drew closer. The creatures were tenacious, and were tracking them. By the end of that second day – a day which seemed to last forever – Gisburne knew that some kind of conflict was inevitable.

It was almost a relief when they finally saw them. They were disembodied sounds no longer – not distant, imagined phantoms, but flesh and blood. But that brought new worries. They were real, now; flesh and blood that regarded them as prey.

Gisburne had seen wolves many times, but not like this. These creatures were bigger, leaner, more rangy than anything he had encountered before. The fur that hung about their bony frames was dark and matted, their eyes wild and piercing, each one of them panting in great smoky breaths. He didn’t like the state of their coats. It showed they were malnourished; and that meant they were hungry.

Then one of the horses at the back of the convoy, tethered to the last of the wagons, was attacked. Mélisande’s knights fought them off, but the horse – its throat and back leg ripped – had to be put down where it lay. They left it, in the hope the hunters would be satisfied.

Perhaps it was the taste of fresh blood that emboldened them. Some time around midday, a shout went up from the head of the convoy. Gisburne and Mélisande rode forward, and saw, up ahead, a half-dozen wolves spread out before them in a great arc. Gisburne watched as one – the largest – crept forward of the rest. The leader. The others moved only when he did, never pushing, never challenging, but all the while shifting formation, as if in response to invisible, inaudible signals. The wolves were now spread across the whole of the valley ahead of them like the jaws of a trap, and the convoy was moving into its maw.

Gisburne suddenly had a vivid memory of Hattin. Of the Christian army marching to its doom, into the jaws of Salah al-Din’s trap.

“There’s only one way to end this,” he said.

Mélisande and Galfrid armed themselves with bows and advanced ahead of the convoy several paces behind Gisburne. “Shoot anything that moves,” he said. He had armed himself with a spear. It was meant for just one wolf: the leader. He meant to draw it out. But it would be difficult; the creature was canny to have survived this long in such conditions.

Gisburne stepped forward of the others, vulnerable now. The pack shifted, closed. He spied the leader. Then it dropped flat. He trudged forward, further still from his fellows.

Something dashed out from the right. Galfrid’s arrow flew, but failed to hit home. While they were distracted by the right flank, those on the left suddenly closed in. Mélisande felled one with her bow, and on the other side, Galfrid hit another. It collapsed into the snow and lay whimpering. When Gisburne turned to the front, the leader was just yards away, its body low, its steely eyes on him, teeth curled back, drool dripping from its jaws. It was already imagining him as food.

“Come on, then!” he cried, thrusting the spear forward.

The wolf flew at him. Others would try to join him, support him in the kill – but that was where Mélisande and Galfrid came in. At the edge of his vision, Gisburne was dimly aware of the furred creatures closing in, of arrows flying, of yelps as they made contact. Ahead of him, the lead wolf leapt. Gisburne dropped, raising his spear as he did so, the point driving into the wolf’s chest as it came down on it with all its weight. It made a terrible screech, thrashing as Gisburne fell back into the snow, lifting the animal up and over his head on the end of the spear. He heard it crash down behind him, felt his spear shake loose.

But it was not yet done. Gisburne turned. In a fury, as if its injuries were no more than a wasp sting, it snarled and leapt at him again. As it did so, he had a vision of Mélisande, a look of horror on her face, the arrow on her bow aimed directly at the wolf leader – and at him. He knew she could not – would not – shoot. The beast’s teeth closed around his arm; he wrestled, swung at it, and both fell to the ground.

When he scrambled to his feet, the wolf lay lifeless in a red-stained depression in the snow, his eating knife in its neck. The rest of the pack had stopped. They ducked and padded the ground uncertainly, some whimpering. Gisburne drew out his knife, and advanced toward the nearest of them.

“Go!” he shouted, waving his arms at it. “There’s no meal for you here today...” To his amazement, the creature lowered its head, and backed away. The rest followed, melting away into the trees. There was a cheer from the convoy.

Mélisande ran to him. “Are you all right?” Still panting in great, foggy clouds, he confirmed that he was. She advanced towards the bloody animal. “We should eat it,” she said. It was a moment before Gisburne realised she was not joking. “Our food supplies are running low. We don’t know what game is to be found ahead.” And with that she crouched, and with drawn knife cut the hind legs and haunches off the animal with a practised efficiency Gisburne had seen only on the hunt. She wrapped them about with cloth and tied them tight.

“Don’t you want to make a waistcoat of the skin too?” said Galfrid.

“Grey’s hardly my colour,” she said, as if Galfrid’s suggestion were utterly preposterous, and went back to her horse with the bloody packages, as if eating wolf leg were the most normal thing in the world.