Wolf's Cross Read Online Free Page A

Lithuanians.
    The survivors looked to be either knights of the Order or probationary members. The tabards were all white and black, and if Telek remembered his German heraldry correctly, the men who wore an incomplete cross were probationary monks who hadn’t taken their final vows. What he didn’t recognize was the wolf’s head that marked the upper left quadrant of Brother Heinrich’s tabard.
    Telek guessed it was some obscure signifier of the monk’s rank in the Order. Either that, or the Order had given up the one thing it shared with the Poles: a distaste for the chaos of personal devices that seemed to plague the German nobility. A black cross on a white field was good enough for all the members of the Order, just as the triple cross was good for all the families of clan Bojcza.
    When his men had retrieved all the swords and crossbows, Telek raised his arm and gestured a circle above his head. The watch up on the fortress wall would let his uncle know that things had concluded peacefully. He turned to one of his men and said, “Ride back. Send down stable hands to take charge of these horses and a party to help tend to the wounded here, with a cart to carry them back up the hill.” He glanced up and saw one of the servingwomen from the fortress standing on the hillside, watching them. He pointed to her. “You, woman: come down and assist us with the wounded.”

    N egotiating the transfer of fourteen knights from the riverside up into the fortress consumed the bulk of the morning hours. Telek supervised every detail, from the washing and binding of wounds, to walking the Germans’ horses into a walled pasture, to loading the wounded into a hay cart.
    By the time his uncle’s guardsmen led the last of the knights back to Gród Narew, he was left by the river with sixteen swords, a half dozen crossbows, and a pile of random armor—damaged, gore-stained, and already attracting a host of flies.
    He also had two corpses, men who had died in the Order’s retreat from—
    “From what?” Telek said.
    “Sir?” one of his men said from behind him. Telek turned around and saw that the man had just finished loading the Order’s weapons into another cart.
    “What were those men fighting?” Telek asked.
    “I don’t care to know, sir. Deadly evil business it is.” The man spat and gestured to ward off the evil the Order’s men had brought with them.
    “They’ll only bare their souls to a bishop.” Telek looked back at the bodies and the damaged armor. “Perhaps they rode through Hell itself.”
    “Sir, should you jest about that?”
    Telek laughed. “Son, you sound like one of those monks.”
    “But their wounds. They’re more like bites, claw marks …”
    “They likely ran afoul of a mountain cat.” Telek thought of the odd addition to Brother Heinrich’s tabard. “Or a pack of wolves.”
    “Have you looked at these weapons?”
    Telek shook his head and walked up to the back of the cart. With the swords and crossbows were a pile of daggers. He pickedone up and drew it from its scabbard. The sunlight glinted from a wicked blade, ornately engraved with German script that Telek could barely read. He snorted. “A little ostentatious for someone who’s taken a vow of poverty.”
    “Look at the metal, sir.”
    Telek squinted at it and frowned. “Silver?”
    “And this.” The man held up a quarrel for one of the crossbows. Telek sheathed the dagger and took the quarrel, looking at the head of the weapon.
    It was silver as well.
    “Is the Order so wealthy that they tip their bolts with precious metal?” He placed the quarrel and the sheathed dagger down in the bed of the cart and picked up one of the knights’ long swords. He gripped the scabbard tightly and paused before taking the handle, suddenly feeling some of the apprehension that his man was showing.
    He slowly drew the blade clear of the scabbard—only a handsbreadth, but enough to see. Apparently the Order wasn’t wealthy enough to