Page 42 of Wolf’s Return (The Wolves of Langeais #4)

It was a half day’s ride to the keep. If they pushed their horses hard, they could cut that time down, but the horses had already done the journey once. Riding them beyond exhaustion would not get them there any faster. His wolf could.

They reached the gate as the keep guard returned, mounted and in force, with their horses in tow. Gaharet handed him a set of reins.

Ulrik nudged him. “As much as riding with Lothair is unappealing, shifting now would not be wise.”

The keep guard gathered around them, their horses agitated.

D’Artagnon grunted. Was he so easy to read? His wolf screamed at him to shed his armor and slip into his animal form, but Ulrik was right.

Gaharet took up his reins. “Remi, give your horse to the Comte and take his.” He turned to Lothair. “Best you keep your men and their horses at a distance. They do not like our presence.”

Lothair accepted the reins and mounted up. “I did wonder how you managed that.”

D’Artagnon swung into the saddle and spurred his horse into a canter. Lothair could keep up or fall behind. He did not care. All that mattered was he get back to the keep and stop Lance. He prayed they were not already too late.

* * * *

Lance landed in the dirt with a thud, his body screaming with the pain of a thousand stab wounds.

The witch’s spell had sent him through space, but not with effortless ease.

Not as it did when one used an amulet. It was as though the spell had forced his body through a rent in the fabric of the cosmos, its jagged edges ripping and tearing at his flesh and his soul.

He would hate to think what it had been like for Godfrey—when he had spelled him through time and space.

He coughed and spluttered, spitting out dirt, saliva and blood. He must have bitten his tongue. Lance grunted and pushed himself to his feet. He was a werewolf, not some weak human.

He stilled. Moonlight glinted in the many eyes staring at him. Villagers, pitchforks and scythes in their hands, watched him, some rising to their feet and advancing. On the hill, looming like a sentient being, the d’Louncrais keep mocked him. Above it, the almost full moon was high in the sky.

Merde. How could this be?

It was barely dusk when he had left the pleasure house. Had the spell sucked away time as it had pulled him through? Had Gaharet returned already?

He eyed the villagers firming a circle around him. No. The villagers would not be on guard if he had. As if they could pit themselves against me? A werewolf.

Old man Tumas approached him, his pitchfork held in front of him. “Seigneur Vautour?”

“What eve is this?” he snarled at the old man.

Tumas narrowed his eyes, but did not answer him.

“Has Gaharet returned to the keep, old man?” Lance called his wolf close to the surface and put power behind his words.

Some of the villagers shrunk back. Not Old Tumas, but no human could resist a command from a wolf, not one like him who was alpha enough to rule the pack. Who should be leading the pack.

“No. Seigneur Gaharet left the keep this morn and has yet to return.”

Lance stared at the moon, tracking high in the night sky.

Stupid witch. She had not said her spell was inaccurate, that it ate up time.

And it had spat him out, not inside the keep, behind the lowered portcullis and beyond the reach of Gaharet’s men lining the ramparts, but in the wretched village.

He glanced at the road leaving the village, weaving its way to Langeais. If Gaharet pushed his horses hard…

“ Merde. Merde. ”

An evil grin twisted Tumas’ craggy face. “By yer cursin’, Seigneur Gaharet is soon to return. Perhaps we will wait right here until he does.”

The circle of villagers thrust their tools at him, stepping forward and tightening their ring around him.

He snarled, raised his sword and sliced his hand.

Once again, he chanted the spell. The angry voices of the villagers faded as pain pierced him, as the cosmos push-pulled him once more, and it damn well better take him exactly where he wanted, or Cordelia would feel his wrath.

* * * *

Didier pressed himself against the wall of the blacksmith’s hut, peering around the corner at the confused villagers.

It was not every day a man disappeared in front of your eyes.

It was no surprise to Didier. He had witnessed such things many times.

His mother did it all the time. The spell Lance had used came from her.

He glanced up at the d’Louncrais keep. That was where Lance would have gone—the chevalier’s hatred of the d’Louncrais matched only by Didier’s mother’s.

It did not take long for the villagers to come to the same conclusion.

Armed with farming implements, they stormed up the road to the keep gate.

Drawing the hood of his cape over his head, Didier followed them.

He had a mind to get a closer look at the woman who he had spied going to the farmer’s cottage.

She had returned that morn, in the company of the white-haired chevalier.

No sign of the black wolf. There was something about her.

She reminded him of someone. Someone he used to know.

When the guards raised the portcullis to let the villagers in, Didier slipped through the gates along with them.