Read Online Ladyhawke by Joan D. Vinge - Free Book Online Page B

asleep. Or more likely—maybe I’m asleep and dreaming I’m awake and wondering if I’m dreaming . . .”
    The shining woman’s voice floated softly through the doorway. “You are dreaming.”
    Phillipe slapped himself hard in the face and leaped to his feet. He ran across the barn, flung himself up the rickety ladder into the loft. Scrambling through the hay to the star-filled rectangle of the loft opening, he lay flat on his stomach, looking out and down.
    Below, in the silver wash of moonlight, he saw the woman move slowly out into the yard. The cloak billowed behind her in the breeze that stirred the leaves. Pitou’s body lay still at the far edge of the clearing, by a lean-to woven out of sticks and branches. The wolf watched from a distance as the woman went to the body and stood gazing down at it. Phillipe could not tell what her expression was. She leaned over and covered the dead man with his cloak. Then she turned to look at the wolf, her eyes filled with anger and grief that Phillipe somehow knew had nothing to do with Pitou, or what the wolf had done to him.
    The wolf was a huge one; Phillipe guessed that it must weigh over a hundred pounds. Its thick, coal-black fur was limned with silver, like the woman’s hooded figure. It began to drift in her direction as she stood waiting serenely in the moonlight. Phillipe clenched his fist, bit down on it.
    The wolf circled the woman warily, drawing closer, edging away, its fur ruffling, its wild amber eyes never seeming to leave her face. The woman smiled, the way she might smile at a beloved friend. She put out her hand, beckoning the animal to her. The wolf approached cautiously, sniffing. Its dark-stained jaws opened; Phillipe stopped breathing.
    The wolf took the woman’s arm in its jaws. But the glistening fangs drew no blood. The jaws closed ever so slightly, in what was almost a caress, then let her go. She knelt down, her arm gently circling the animal’s neck. The wolf shuddered under her touch, then hung its head in docile acceptance of her affection.
    Phillipe pushed himself away from the opening, unable to bear what he saw any longer. He sat in the straw, trembling again, harder than before. Looking up into the darkness, he whispered, “I have not seen what I have seen, Lord. And I do not believe what I believe.” He had heard endless stories of magic and witchcraft, but he had never seen it happen with his own eyes. Fear of the known was terrible enough—“These are magical, unexplainable matters, and I beg you not to make me part of them . . .” But even as he prayed for deliverance, he knew that it was already far too late.

C H A P T E R

Seven
    M arquet had ridden through the day and the night without rest, running three horses into the ground, barely stopping long enough to get a fresh mount at the guard posts along the road. At last, early in the morning of the new day, he saw the walls and towers of Aquila rise ahead of him on the plain, still miles away. He lashed his sweating horse with his quirt and galloped on.
    Navarre was back —news more important than even Phillipe Gaston’s neck or his own. Marquet rode grimly toward the city gates, clattered across the bridge and into Aquila at last, nearly riding down the guardsmen on duty. He galloped on through the streets without stopping, entered the sunken passageway that gave private access to Aquila Castle. Navarre was back, looking for vengeance—and the only man who had more to fear from Navarre than Marquet himself was the Bishop of Aquila.
    Back in the hills, Phillipe and Navarre rode together through the new morning at a considerably slower pace. Phillipe watched silently as the hawk fluttered up through the trees, gaining speed as she soared into the open air. Ever since dawn, when Navarre’s gauntleted hand had roused him, Phillipe had been trying to find the courage to tell the other man what he had seen in the night. A part of his mind wanted simply to believe it had never