Read Online Time of the Wolf by James Wilde - Free Book Online Page A

the aid you gave me, but now I travel alone.” Pausing, he looked to the crimson horizon. “In my dreams, I see the path ahead littered with corpses. I must cross rivers of blood beneath a sky lit by fire. No peace for me, churchman, and peace is all your kind speak of. Our ways lead in different directions. I go to the setting sun, where the dead wait. You face the dawn. Understand?”
    â€œNo man should walk through life alone.”
    Hereward leaned in, his stare unwavering. “Are you listening? Death waits for any who walk by my side. I did not save your life only to see it wasted on some godly whim. I can only offer you hell. Go now, or I will take my sword to you.” He held the monk’s gaze for a moment longer and then turned and marched away without a backward glance.
    Alric took a deep breath to steady himself. God had offered this warrior to him. Saving Hereward was the reason he had been placed upon this earth, he had decided, and he could not allow himself to be deterred so easily. Yet he knew he would not sway the warrior with words alone. He watched him walk away into the twilight and then he followed, keeping close to the houses where the men gossiped away from the worst of the wind and he would not easily be seen. Hereward strode on, pausing every now and then to exchange a few words with passers-by, perhaps asking for directions.
    A small crowd of men and women had gathered outside a metalworker’s hut where the drifting acrid smoke caught the back of the throat. Perched on a pile of logs, a man with only one eye and one hand complained in a loud voice and shook his good right fist in the air. Caught up in the speaker’s passion, the attentive audience shouted words of encouragement. Distracted, Alric heard only snippets, enough to know that the group was unhappy about someone or something. He was watching Hereward, who had stepped aside to avoid five wild-bearded Viking warriors brandishing spears who stormed into the crowd, barking demands that the listeners go home. Clearly afraid, the men and women scattered. By the time the last one had gone, the one-eyed man was nowhere to be seen, and the gruff warriors were roaming among the huts, searching for him. The leader of the group paused to study Alric. A jagged scar ran from above his left eye across his nose to his right cheek. His stare was cold and unwavering, the look of a man who saw enemies everywhere.
    The man moved on.
    The night was coming in hard. Only a sliver of red and gold lay in the western sky. Alric shivered in his woolen habit as the temperature plunged. All around him, men began to vacate their workshops, abandoning their hammers or their looms to make their way back to their hearths for the evening meal of bread, bean stew, and ale. The monk slipped through the steady stream of weary workers until he saw Hereward turn left into a street echoing with the calling of swine, where the smell of rotten apples hung thick in the icy air.
    Near the pen where the fat black and pink pigs were kept, four youths taunted a smaller lad. Tears streaked the boy’s pale cheeks and he lumbered around with a limp, trying to avoid their swipes. Hereward paused to watch. Alric waited too, studying the warrior, wondering what thoughts were passing through his head. The four bigger boys grew rougher, finally knocking the weaker one to the frozen mud. Hereward flinched.
    The monk smiled, a tingle of expectation running down his spine. This was it, he thought, the moment when the warrior revealed his true nature, that deeply buried goodness that Alric had sensed during their long journey. His soul.
    As the four bullies launched sharp kicks at the whimpering lad, Hereward roughly pulled them back, flinging one of them so hard that he fell onto his behind. The monk broke into a grin.
    He lies to himself about who he is, he thought with a nod. My task, then, is to bring him to awareness of the good inside him.
    Hereward hooked his