Mikhail nodded. Wiktor stripped off his robe and removed his sandals, and Nikita did the same. The two men stood naked, their breath coming out in misty plumes. Nikita began to change first, the black hair twining over his flesh like strange vines. Wiktor’s eyes glinted in the low light as he stared at Renati. “Listen to me,” he said. “If for any reason … we don’t come back after three days, you’ll be in charge of the pack.”
“A woman?” Franco yelped. “In charge of me?”
“In charge of the pack,” Wiktor repeated. A gray tide of wolf hair was sliding over his shoulders and streaking down his arms. His flesh looked slick and oily, and sweat glistened on his forehead as his eyebrows merged. Steam wafted around his body. “Do you have any objection to that?” His voice was getting hoarse, and his facial bones were shifting. Fangs pushed out between his lips.
“No,” Franco answered quickly. “No objection.”
“Wish us luck.” The voice was a guttural rasp. Wiktor’s flesh shivered, growing its thick, gray-haired hide. Most of Nikita’s head and face had already changed, the snout spewing a blast of steam as it lengthened with popping sounds that Mikhail had once thought hideous. Now the sounds of transformation were as beautiful as music played on exotic instruments. The two bodies contorted, flesh giving way to wolf hair, fingers and toes to claws, teeth to fangs, noses to long black muzzles; all accompanied by the music of bones, sinews, and muscles changing shape, rearranging themselves into canine form, and an occasional grunt from either Wiktor or Nikita. And then Wiktor gave a harsh whuff and he loped out of the chamber toward the stairway, with Nikita a few strides behind. Within seconds, the two wolves were gone.
“My ankle is swollen!” Franco showed Renati again. “See? I couldn’t get very far on it, could I?”
She ignored him. “We’ll need some fresh water, I think.” She picked up a clay bowl that had been left by the monks; the water, filmed with dirty ice, was almost gone. “Mikhail, will you and Alekza get us some more snow, please?” She handed the bowl to Mikhail. All they would have to do was climb the stairs and scoop up snow that was blowing in the windows. “Franco, will you take the first watch, or shall I?”
“You’re in charge,” he said. “Do as you please.”
“All right. You take the first watch. I’ll relieve you when it’s time.” Renati sat down before the fire, newly regal.
Franco muttered a curse under his breath; it wouldn’t be pleasant to go up into the tower, with all those glassless windows and the cold whirling in, but keeping watch was an important duty that everyone shared. He stalked away, Mikhail and Alekza went to scoop up a bowlful of snow, and Renati rested her chin on her hand to worry about the man she loved.
5
SOMETIME DURING THE NIGHT, the storm snapped. It passed on, leaving the forest covered with drifts eight feet high, the trees bent under arctic ice. A bone-throbbing cold followed the blizzard, and the day dawned white, the sun hidden behind clouds the color of wet cotton.
It was breakfast time. “God, it’s cold!” Franco said as he and Mikhail struggled across a white desert where green thicket used to be. Mikhail didn’t answer; it used up too much energy to speak, and his jaws felt frozen. He glanced back, about fifty yards, at the white palace; it was almost invisible against the blankness. “I curse this place!” Franco said. “Damn the whole country! Damn Wiktor, and damn Nikita, damn Alekza, and damn that damned Renati. Who does she think she is, ordering me around like a servant boy?”
“We’ll never find anything,” Mikhail told him quietly, “if you make all that noise.”
“Hell, there’s nothing alive out here! How are we supposed to find food? Create it? I’m not God, that’s for sure!” He stopped, sniffing the air; his nose stung with cold, and his ability to smell was hampered. “If Renati’s in charge, why doesn’t she find us food? Answer me that!”
There was no need to answer. They had drawn lots—the shortest twigs from the fire—for the task of finding breakfast. Actually Mikhail had drawn the shortest twig, and Franco the next shortest. “Anything alive out here,” Franco went on, “is buried in its hole, keeping warm. Like we ought to be doing. Smell the air. You see? Nothing.”
As if to prove Franco wrong, a hare with gray-tipped fur suddenly shot across the snow in front of them, heading for a stand of half-buried trees. “There!” Mikhail said. “Look!”
“My eyes are freezing.”
Mikhail stopped and turned toward Franco. “Aren’t you going to change? You can catch it if you change.”
“To hell with it!” Franco’s cheeks had grown red splotches. “It’s too cold to change. My balls would freeze off, if they haven’t already.” He reached down and checked himself.
“If you don’t change, we won’t catch anything,” Mikhail reminded him. “How hard would it be for you to chase down that rabbit if—”
“Oh, now you’re giving orders, is that it?” Franco scowled at him. “You listen to me, you little shit: you drew the shortest twig. You change and catch us something. It’s about time you pulled your weight around here!”
The question stung Mikhail, because he knew there was truth in it. He walked on ahead, his arms clasped around himself for warmth and his sandals crunching through the ice-crusted snow.
“Well, why don’t you change, then?” Franco jabbed him, sensing blood. He strode after the boy. “Why don’t you change so you can chase down rabbits and howl at the damned moon like a maniac?”
Mikhail didn’t answer; he didn’t know what to say. He looked for the hare, but it had disappeared in the whiteness. He glanced back at the white palace, which seemed to float like a distant mirage between earth and sky, all of them the same hue. Large flakes began to fall again, and if Mikhail hadn’t felt so cold, miserable, and useless, he might have thought they were beautiful.
Franco stopped a few yards away from him and blew into his cupped hands. Snowflakes drifted into his hair and laced his eyelashes. “Maybe Wiktor enjoys this life,” he said grimly, “and maybe Nikita does, too, but what were they to begin with? My father was a rich man, and I was a rich man’s son.” He shook his head, the snowflakes sliding down his ruddy face. “We were on our way by carriage, to visit my grandparents. A storm caught us; a storm very much like the one yesterday. My mother froze to death first. But my father, my little brother, and I found a cabin, not far from here. Well, it’s gone now; the snow broke it down years ago.” Franco looked up, searching for the sun. He couldn’t find it. “My little brother died weeping,” he said. “At the end he couldn’t even open his eyes; the lids were frozen together. My father knew we couldn’t stay there. If we were going to live, we had to find a village. So we started walking. I remember … we both wore our fur-lined coats and our expensive boots. My shirt had a monogram on it. My father wore a cashmere scarf. But none of it kept us warm enough, not with that wind shrieking into our faces. We found a hollow and tried to make a fire, but all the wood was icy.” He looked at Mikhail. “Do you know what we burned? All the money in my father’s wallet. It burned very bright, but it gave off no heat. What we would’ve given for three lumps of coal! My father froze to death, sitting upright. I was a seventeen-year-old orphan, and I knew I was going to die if I didn’t find shelter. So I started walking, wearing two coats. I didn’t get very far before the wolves found me.” He blew into his hands again and worked his knuckles. “One of them bit me, on the arm. I kicked him in the muzzle so hard I knocked three of his teeth out. That bastard—Josef was his name—was never right in the head after that. They tore my father to pieces and ate him. They probably ate my mother and little brother, too. I never asked.” Franco surveyed the blank sky once more and watched the snow falling. “They took me into the pack to be a breeder. The same reason we took you in.”
“A … breeder?”
“To make babies,” Franco explained. “The pack needs cubs, or it’s going to die. But the babies don’t live.” He shrugged. “Maybe God knows what He’s doing, after all.??
? He looked toward the trees, where the snow hare hid. “You listen to Wiktor, and he’ll go on about how noble this life is, and how we ought to be proud of what we are. I don’t find anything noble in having hair on your ass and gnawing on bloody bones. Damn this life.” He gathered saliva in his mouth and spat in the snow. “You change,” he told Mikhail. “You go run on all fours and piss against a tree. I was born a man, by God, and that’s what I am.” He turned away and began trudging the seventy yards or so back to the walls of the white palace.
“Wait!” Mikhail called. “Franco, wait!” But Franco didn’t wait.
He looked back over his shoulder at Mikhail. “Bring us back a nice juicy rabbit,” he said acidly. “Or if you’re lucky, maybe you can dig us up some fat grubs. I’m going back in and try to get wa—”
Franco didn’t finish his sentence, for in the next instant what had appeared to be a mound of snow a few feet to his right burst open, and the huge red wolf lunged out, snapping its jaws shut on Franco’s leg.
The bones broke like pistol shots as the berserker wrenched Franco off his feet, and its fangs tore the flesh into crimson ribbons. Franco opened his mouth to scream, but only a choke came out. Mikhail stood stunned, his brain reeling. The berserker had either been lying in wait under the snow, just its nostrils lifted up to catch air, or else it had burrowed beneath the drifts to ambush them. There was no time to wonder what had happened to Wiktor and Nikita; there was only the reality of the berserker ripping Franco’s leg apart, and blood steaming in the snow.
Mikhail started to shout for help, but by the time Renati and Alekza got here—if they even heard him—Franco would be dead. The berserker released Franco’s tattered leg, and closed its jaws on his shoulder as Franco desperately fought to keep the fangs away from his throat. Franco’s face had gone death white, his eyes bulging with terror.
Mikhail looked up. A tree branch, coated with ice, was about three feet over his head. He leaped up for it, grasped the branch, and it cracked off in his hands. The berserker paid him no attention, its teeth deep in the muscle of Franco’s shoulder. And then Mikhail sprang forward, dug his heels into the snow, and drove the stick’s sharp end into one of the berserker’s gray eyeballs.
The stick gouged the berserker’s eye out, and the wolf released Franco’s shoulder with a roar of pain and rage. As the berserker staggered back and shook its head to clear the agony, Franco tried to crawl away. He got about six feet before he shuddered and passed out, his leg and shoulder mangled. The berserker snapped wantonly at the air, and its remaining eye found Mikhail Gallatinov.
Something passed between them: Mikhail could feel it, as strongly as the pounding of his heart and the blood rushing through his veins. Maybe it was a communion of hatred, or a primal recognition of impending violence; whatever it was, Mikhail understood it fully, and he gripped the sharp stick like a spear as the berserker hurtled toward him across the snow.
The red wolf’s jaws gaped open for him, its powerful legs preparing to leap. Mikhail stood his ground, his nerves tingling, every human instinct urging him to run but the wolf inside him waiting with cold judgment. The berserker made a feinting move to the left that Mikhail instantly saw was false, and then it left the ground and came at him.
Mikhail fell to his knees, under the big body and the flailing claws, and he drove the stick upward. It pierced the berserker’s white-haired stomach as the beast went over him; the stick cracked in two, its point deep in the berserker’s belly, and the wolf contorted in midair, one of its forelegs slamming across Mikhail’s back and two talons ripping through the deerskin cloak. Mikhail felt as if a hammer had struck him; he was knocked onto his face in the snow, and he heard the berserker grunt as it landed on its stomach a few yards away. Mikhail twisted his body, his lungs seizing cold air, and he faced the berserker before it could leap onto his back. The one-eyed beast was on its feet, the spear driven so deep in its gut that it had almost disappeared. Mikhail stood up, his chest heaving, and he felt hot blood trickling down his back. The berserker danced to the right, positioning himself between Mikhail and the white palace. The stick clenched in Mikhail’s right fist was about seven inches long, the length of a kitchen knife. The berserker snorted steam, feinted in and then out again, blocking Mikhail from fleeing home. “Help us!” he shouted toward the white palace. His voice was muffled by the snowfall. “Renati! Help—”
The beast lunged forward, and Mikhail stabbed at its other eye with the stick. But the berserker stopped and whirled aside, spraying snow up from under its paws, and the stick jabbed empty air. The berserker twisted its body, darting around to Mikhail’s unprotected side, and it leaped at him before he could stab with the stick again.
The berserker hit him. Mikhail had the image of the freight train, one eye blazing, as it roared on the downhill tracks. He was knocked off his feet like a rag doll, and would have broken his back if not for the snow. His breath whooshed out of him, and his brain was stunned by the impact. He smelled blood and animal saliva. A brutal weight crushed down on his shoulder, pinning his hand and the stick. He blinked, and in the haze of pain saw the berserker’s maw above him, its fangs opening to seize his face and strip it away from the skull like flimsy cloth. His shoulder was trapped, the bones about to burst from their sockets. The berserker leaned forward, the muscles bunching along its flanks, and Mikhail smelled Franco’s blood on its breath. The jaws stretched open to crush his skull.
Two human hands, streaked with brown hair, caught the berserker’s jaws. Franco had roused himself and leaped atop the red beast. His brown-stubbled face a rictus of pain, Franco gasped, “Run,” as he twisted the berserker’s head with all his strength.
The berserker thrashed against him, but Franco held tight. The jaws snapped together, and teeth pierced Franco’s palms. The weight was off Mikhail’s shoulder; he lifted his arm, the bones throbbing, and drove the sharp stick up into the berserker’s throat. It plunged in three inches before it met an obstruction and broke again. The berserker howled and shivered with agony, snorting a crimson mist, and Mikhail pushed himself out from under the wolf as it reared up and tried to throw Franco off its back. “Run!” Franco shouted, hanging on by his bloody fingernails.
Mikhail got up, snow all over him. He began running, the last few inches of the broken stick falling from his hand. Snowflakes whirled around him, like dancing angels. His shoulder throbbed, the muscles deeply bruised. He looked back, saw the berserker shake itself in a violent frenzy. Franco lost his grip and was flung off. The berserker tensed to leap on Franco’s body and finish him, but Mikhail stopped. “Hey!” he shouted, and the berserker’s head angled toward him, its single eye blazing.
Something blazed within Mikhail as well. He felt it, like a fire that had opened at his center, and to save Franco’s life—and his own—he would have to reach into those white-hot flames, and grasp what had been forged.
I want it, he thought, and he fixed on the image of his hand twisting into a claw, the picture of it radiant in his mind. He thought he heard an inner wail, like wild winds unleashed. Pinpricks of pain swept up his spine. I want it. Steam drifted from his pores. He shivered, pressure squeezing his organs. His heart pounded. He felt pain in the muscles of his arms and legs, a terrible clenching pain around his skull. Something cracked in his jaw, and he heard himself moan.
The berserker watched him, transfixed by the sight, its jaws still open and ready to break Franco’s neck.
Mikhail lifted his right hand. It was covered with sleek black hair, and the fingers had retracted into white claws. I want it. The black hair raced up his arm. His left hand was changing. His head felt as if it were caught in an iron vise, and his jaw was lengthening with brittle cracking sounds. I want it. There was no turning back now, no denying the change. Mikhail threw his deerskin cloak off, and it slithered to the snow. He fumbled with his sandals, barely got them off before his feet began to contort. He fell, off balance, and went down on his rump.
The berserker sniffed
the air. It made a grunting noise, and watched the thing take shape.
Black hair scurried over Mikhail’s chest and shoulders. It entwined his throat and covered his face. His jaw and nose were lengthening into a muzzle, and his fangs burst free with such force they slashed the inside of his mouth and made blood and saliva drool. His backbone bent, with stunning pain. His legs and arms shortened, grew thick with muscle. Sinews and cartilage popped and cracked. Mikhail shuddered, his body thrashing as if getting rid of the last human elements. His tail, slick with fluids, had thrust from the dark growth at the base of his spine, and now it twitched in the air as Mikhail got on all fours. His muscles continued to quiver like harp strings, his nerves aflame. Musky-smelling fluids oozed over his pelt. His testicles had drawn up like hard stones, and were covered with coarse hair. His right ear rippled with hair and began to change into a triangular cup, but the left ear malfunctioned; it simply remained the ear of a human boy. The pain intensified, bordering on the edge of pleasure, and then rapidly subsided. Mikhail started to call to Franco, to tell him to crawl away; he opened his mouth, and the high yip that came out scared him.
He thanked God he couldn’t see himself, but the shock in the berserker’s eye told him enough. He had willed the change, and it was on him.
Mikhail’s bladder let go, streaking yellow across the white. He saw the berserker dismiss him, and start to lean over Franco again. Franco had passed out, was unable to defend himself. Mikhail bounded forward, got his forelegs and hind legs tangled up, and he went down on his belly. He got up once more, shaky as a newborn. He shouted at the berserker; it emerged as a thin growl that didn’t even snag the red wolf’s attention. Mikhail leaped clumsily over the snow, lost his footing, and fell again, but then he was right beside the wolf and he did it without thinking: he opened his jaws, and sank his fangs into the berserker’s ear. As the animal roared and twisted away, Mikhail tore the ear off to its fleshy roots.