The Silver Wolf by Alice Borchardt Read Free Book Online Page A

the world. She also understood why Silve and Hugo drank the noxious mixture of wine and drugs—they stilled the pangs of hunger. She was tempted by what remained in Silve’s jug, but resolutely resisted the temptation. The stuff was poison and, sooner or later—probably sooner—it would kill them.
    Silve continued scratching vigorously.
    “Silve,” Regeane snapped. “Are you taken with a plague of bugs?”
    “No,” Silve said. “It’s the poppy gum. The stuff takes you that way sometimes.”
    Regeane glanced around uneasily. The sky seemed to have grown even darker.
    “Shit,” Silve said thickly. “It will rain all night. I’ve a good mind to find a warm taverna and spread my legs in the back room. Come one! Come all! A copper apiece! At least I’ll get to sleep half the night. The tavern keeper will want part of my take, but he’ll give me plenty of wine, and I won’t have that damn Hugo rubbing me raw while he sweats the drink out of his carcass. The bastard can get it up while he’s drunk, but the nasty little cocksucker can’t get it down.”
    “Why don’t you leave him then?” Regeane asked.
    Silve laughed. “Because, of the nearest two, I owe money to the owner of the first. The barmaid of the second told me if I took away any late night business from her, she’d cut my face.”
    “Awkward,” Regeane said commiseratingly.
    “Whatever,” Silve replied.
    The Appian Way gleamed in the fading light like a narrow black ribbon. As Regeane watched, a few lights appeared in farmhouse windows along the road.
    “We have to go,” Regeane said, some alarm in her voice. “It won’t be safe here after dark. As it is, I’ll be locked up and you’ll probably get a beating.”
    “Noooooo,” Silve moaned. “It’s dry here. Waaaaarm. I want to stay,” she sniveled.
    Again, Regeane felt the sensation of being watched. She glanced at Silve and saw a wasp crawling over her face. The insect was black, an iridescent blue-black. The tiny carapace shone like a dark rainbow. She looked more closely and saw the whole right side of Silve’s body was covered with them crawling everywhere. Dark antennae quivered on their heads; feet feeling, exploring. Their bulbous abdomens armed with the vicious stingers wavered above Silve’s skin.
    Regeane reached out, snatched Silve’s dress at the shoulder, and pulled her out of the tomb. Silve saw the wasps. She screamed and began waving her arms, beating at them with her hands.
    To Regeane’s momentary surprise, the wasps didn’t stingSilve. They drew away and hovered near the entrance to the tomb like an evil black cloud. Silve, still half drunk, staggered. She was searching her face and body for possible lumps.
    Regeane looked down the Appian Way and saw it coming.
    “No,” she whispered. Then screamed, “Run, Silve! Run!”
    “Run?” Silve said looking around. “Run where?”
    The thing was approaching faster and faster, moving like the first rocks of an avalanche, but headed up the road toward Regeane. It gabbled and gibbered with a thousand voices, somehow one in madness and agony. It stank of burning cloth, burning wood, burning bone, burning flesh. Then, as it drew closer, of decomposition and death.
    She could hear its voice, howling and shouting at her. “Where is she? You saw her. You can bring me to her.”
    Then it was all around Regeane, and the anguish in the voice was almost beyond endurance. “They said I killed her—her and the child. I never—I never—” The thing moaned.
    Regeane threw her mantle over her face, trying to escape the stinking cloud surrounding the apparition. She found herself alone in the dark with it. Its existence flowed with sorrow.
    “I couldn’t feed them.” The desolation in the voice was pain compassed by the hoop of eternity. “I couldn’t stand to see their faces as they starved.” Sorrow, so heartwrenching it seemed to drown the whole world in grief. “I was mad with pain.”
    “No,” Regeane heard