Prince of Dogs

Page 33

They staggered under the press of wind. Not six steps out Wolfhere began shouting at her, though she could scarcely hear him over the roar of the wind. She looked behind. She could not see the stables; night and storm buried them in darkness. Panic gripped her. She could not breathe. Her hands curled tight, so cold so fast she could no longer feel them.
Wind struck. She had to lean, hunched over, in order not to be thrown down by the force of wind and snow and—more than that—a peppering against her skin, stinging and harsh, as if the gale were stripping the mountains themselves of all their earth, scraping soil and rock off them to reveal the bones beneath.
Something brushed her. She screamed. She could not help herself. Some thing, some creature, but like no creature she ever seen or dreamed of. Then it was gone, vanished into the night, but there was another, and a third, streaming past her, borne on the gale. Towers of darkness, they were blacker even than the night itself, like a glimpse of the Abyss, the pit of the Enemy in which the wicked fall endlessly, never reaching bottom. With them, of them, around them swirled the stench of burning iron. Hanna heard their voices like the muttering of bells beneath the tearing wind, wordless and yet sentient.
From out of the blackness she heard a low rumbling roar that surged and swelled to a terrible crashing booming shuddering thunder that went on and on.
The rope at her waist pulled taut as Wolfhere reeled her in and shoved her back toward the stables. “Go!” he cried. “We dare not—”
She stumbled back. Groping, she found the door; shaking, she fumbled with the latch, and at last they got it open and fell inside. The soldier slammed the door shut and latched it behind them. The roar deafened her; it filled the air as if it were itself part of the air. Then, slowly, it sub-sided, faded, until once more the wind was all the sound they heard, the endless tearing wind and the hail of rain and snow and pebbles against the wood walls.
Inside, it was warm and dark. The nervous horses stamped; the stablekeeper spoke in a soothing voice. Hanna heard, also, others of the Lions moving ’round the stable, calming the animals. The guest-master sobbed softly.
“What was that noise?” she asked as the building creaked and groaned and the wind shook the rafters and the low throb of bells numbed her down to her boots. Her hip and shoulder ached. She rubbed her hands to warm them.
“Avalanche,” said the guest-master through his tears. “Ai, Lady, I know that sound well, for I have lived in these mountains twenty years. And close by, it was. I fear me that the cloister—” No farther could he go. He began to weep again.
“What were those creatures?” she asked.
Wolfhere untied her. “Galla,” he said. The word had a hard, foreign, ugly sound, the “g” more of a guttural “gh.”
“What are galla?” she asked.
“Something we should not speak of now, with them walking abroad, for they might hear their name spoken a third time and seek us out who know of them,” he said in such a tone she knew he meant to say no more. “We must wait out the storm.”
It was a long night. She could not sleep, nor did Wolfhere, though perhaps some of the Lions did. That the guest-master did sleep, fitfully, she knew because his weeping slackened at last.
Just as the gale slackened at last. Come dawn, Wolfhere ventured out with Hanna right behind him. It was a cloudless morning, the sky a delicate, washed-out blue. The mountains stood in all their glory, white peaks gleaming in the pale new sun. There was not a breath of wind. But for the debris scattered everywhere, the gate and much of the fence enclosure knocked down, the woodpile torn apart and scattered, shutters torn from hinges, and goats milling in confusion in the middle of the garden, she would never have guessed there had been a storm at all. Oddly, the beehives stood unscathed.
But the infirmary was gone.
There monks and merchants scurried, a swarm of them buzzing round the huge pile of boulders and earth that covered what had once been the infirmary. Built of stone and timber, it was obliterated now, melded with the great bank of mountain that had slid down on top of it.
They hurried over. The monks had managed to pull from the rubble the bodies of their ancient brother and of two Lions. Of the other two soldiers—Hanna recognized these as the two who had been posted outside, along the wall behind the cell that had imprisoned Antonia and Heribert—one had a broken leg and the other lay on the ground, moaning, his skin unbroken but something broken inside him. The Brother Infirmarian knelt beside him, probing his abdomen gently. Tears wet the monk’s face.
“It happened so fast,” the monk said, looking up when Wolfhere knelt beside him. “I ran outside, hearing the noise, and then saw—nay, I did not see it but felt it, felt its power. Then the avalanche came. Lady forgive me, but I ran. Only when I saw it was too late, only when I saw the infirmary would be overwhelmed, did I recall poor Brother Fusulus, who was too weak to save himself.”