Page 135 of Dragon Slayer

“Vladimir, I had no idea,” she whispered, voice breaking. “I didn’t know that he–”

He waved her to silence. A lump was rising in his throat, and he couldn’t do this now, here, in the daylight, when there were things to learn and men to command. “It’s been done for a long time. Now, we have to fight.” The next question had him shrinking down into his own collar, terrified of the answer. “Mother…what of the wolves?”

~*~

Helga led him down. She knew the way well. Down the long hallway past the kitchens, and the storerooms, through the heavy door that marked a staircase that spiraled down, down, down beneath the palace, the way marked with sputtering torches. She carried a lantern, its meager light reaching out in tentative fingers to probe at the gloom – unable to penetrate it.

Vlad could see well enough, the rough shape of things, the edges of shadows left untouched by the crackling torches. And his nose alone could have guided him: it smelled of wolf down here. Angry, tired, miserable wolf.

They reached the dungeon, and Helga paused, pulling the lantern in tight to her chest, drawing in a shaky breath. “I…” she started.

Vlad laid a hand on her shoulder, and she turned to him. “It’s alright,” he told her, as gently as possible. “I’ll turn them loose.” He took the keys – taken off a dead guard – from her unresisting hand, and stalked forward between the rows of empty cells.

They were kept together, at the very back of the cold stone room, chained by both hands a good ten feet apart.

“To hell with you,” Fenrir spoke first, and Vlad heard the sound of someone spitting on the ground. They both smelled frightened, but defiant. “You bas…” He trailed off.

Vlad was close enough that the he could see the shapes of the two wolves, the lines of their faces: thin, sallow, but stern. Their arms up above their heads, the lines of the chains.

Close enough to scent one another.

“Gods,” Fenrir breathed.

And then Cicero: “Your…your grace?”

Vlad couldn’t speak, his throat aching. He rushed to them in turn, opening their cells, and then their cuffs. Fenrir first, and then Cicero. He fell to his knees in front of Cicero, his father’s most loyal Familiar. The wolf was far too thin, dirty, and he was missing an eye, his arms heavily scarred.

Cicero bowed his head, shaking. “Your grace. Oh, heaven bless us, you’ve returned. Prince Vlad.”

Vlad pressed his forehead to his, skin-to-skin, close enough to scent without barriers.

Vlad felt tears sting his eyes, and closed them tight.

Cicero sobbed. “Your grace.”

“I’m here, I’m here.”

It was a long moment before he could stand and lead them up to the light.

~*~

Vlad had a boyhood memory – he’d been five, maybe six – of playing with a set of hand-carved wooden animals on the rug in his father’s study, light from the hearth flickering over his hands, and the carefully-wrought horses, and cows, and the more exotic creatures. An elephant; a bear; a giraffe. And a set of wolves, more detailed than the others, their tails streaming behind them, legs extended in a graceful lope, jaws open, tiny teeth sharp to his fingertips. The eyes had been painted: rings of gold and blue set in deep black.

Father had stood at his desk, sighing, rubbing at his temples, talking over treaties with his wolf captains.

Among the household wolves, Fenrir was notoriously upbeat. The massive, jolly uncle figure always up for a game of tag or hide-and-seek, endlessly affectionate with his masters and the young princes alike.

By contrast, Father’s wolves were stern. And in the case of Cicero, alpha of his small pack, severe, even.

But that day, with Mircea at a lesson and Val napping, Vlad had been the only child in attendance, out of the way and silent, playing quite contentedly by himself.

Someone had knelt down across from him, suddenly, with a creak of tall boots and a rustle of a cloak, a sudden rush of comforting wolf-scent. Cicero. He extended one hand, its wrist laced up tight in a leather bracer, sword-calluses marking his skin. But on his palm, a freshly-carved wooden animal. A fantasy creature: a sinuous dragon, painted green and red, with fiery eyes. His face, strangely gentle.

“Here, your grace,” he’d said, softly. “To go with the others.”

Vlad wondered, now, if that dragon, so precise and clever in its design, still lurked at the bottom of the hope chest in his old room, hidden away in a velvet pouch alongside other useless childhood treasures: toys, a striated pebble, a bright red feather.

The man – the werewolf – who’d made the dragon looked half-made himself, now, hunched over a steaming bowl of stew at the long plank table in the palace kitchen. Vlad tried and failed to tear his gaze from the ruined eye. The lid was closed, and sunken; the eye itself was obviously gone. But the blood had been allowed to run down his face and dry. No one had attempted any sort of medicinal arts to help with pain, or cleanliness. Vlad suspected that it was only a wolf’s healing abilities that had kept him alive and free of infection.

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