Curiosity burgeoned in Markéta’s breast, distracting her from the reminders of her family’s death. Lord Thomas could hardly refuse such a wager without a degree of humiliation, which Radcliffe surely knew. She knew her own reasons, certainly, for needling at Thomas, but it had not struck her that Radcliffe might have his own. Nor was there a discrete way to ask, but if they had a common goal she could at least apply more pressure to the suggestion Radcliffe had laid down.
Her smile was brief, but genuine. “A challenge,” she said lightly. “How delightful. I accept.”
Emotion flew across Thomas’s face: chagrin and pride and a willing-ness to humor the poorer folk. “I cannot refuse, if our guest is so certain of herself. You must promise to forgive me if I should come out ahead in this wager, Miss Alvarez. It’s ungentlemanly, but I hate to lose. I cannot make allowances for your sex.”
“I wouldn’t want you to, my lord. And if I should win, I trust you will be as forgiving. What shall our quarry be?”
“I’ve seeded wild boar on the estate.” Thomas watched her carefully, and Markéta made no effort to hide the lifting of her eyebrows.
“Boar is an animal harried by packs, even packs of men, my lord. Would you dare the kill, all alone?” She would not; she was not, even in the face of vengeance, that great a fool. It had been decades and more since boar had roamed Britain freely, just as it had been so long since wolves had. Pack memory told of stolen piglets, delicious to eat, but also told of the size and speed and rage of a full-grown boar. Markéta’s people were larger by some significant part than their single-aspected brethren, but boar met them weight for weight, and sometimes better than. One wolf against a boar was madness.
But one man, unarmed, was dead.
“I have a horse, a gun, and no fear of the creatures. Are you so bold, Miss Alvarez?” Thomas’s smile was the wolf’s again, though no wolf had such a streak of cruelty in it. That was a human trait.
“I had thought a deer, or even a game of hide and seek,” Radcliffe said, dryly enough to almost hide the note of concern in his voice. “Miss Alvarez has made no pretense of tracking differently than you, my lord. She would have no horse, no gun. Surely you wouldn’t pit her against a monster capable of killing a man with a single blow?”
“No,” Markéta said. “Thank you for the concern, Master Radcliffe, but I believe I accept. I should like to prove to Lord Thomas that the hunt can be carried out in more than one way.” This time her smile was as false as firelight was to the sun. “And prove, perhaps, that a woman can be equal to a man in many ways.”
Thomas stood with a clap of his hands. “I’ll have my men harry a boar from the wood, then.”
“Oh, no, sir.” Markéta came to her feet as well, as full of wide-eyed innocence as she could be. “Not on my behalf. I shall enter the wood myself and find my own boar. Perhaps he who returns with the kill first will be declared the winner?”
Tension flushed Lord Thomas’s face, but he nodded. “And tomorrow we’ll dine on the fruits of—our,” he conceded graciously. “Our labor. If you would be so good as to remain with us overnight, Miss Alvarez? Master Radcliffe? I assure you, the estate can absorb you with no thought.”
“It will be our pleasure.” Markéta spoke for Radcliffe, thoughtlessly, but he chuckled and made a murmur of agreement. Smiling, she bobbed a curtsy. “Shall we hunt, then, my lord?”
Boars grunted and squealed, distressed by the scent of a half-forgotten predator. They were complacent, unaccustomed to being harassed by any but men on horseback, and therefore less inclined to fight than to trot heavily through the wood, grumbling without being genuinely afraid. It helped that she only wanted to direct them; one wolf was not enough to hunt a boar, but with canny foresight and enough speed, she could herd a pack.
The numbers mattered: there was the king and his mate, and a handful of half-grown piglets old enough to be both delicious and dangerous. An armed man might succeed against any one of them, but anger the lot and weapons would do little good. That was why hunters, human or otherwise, separated one from its pack.
That was why Markéta did her best to drive them all into Thomas’s arms. Not just for vengeance, though that was key, but because it was good to run, to hunt and harry, to leap from one side of the offended herd to another, snapping her teeth and catching wild scents. She hadn’t stretched her legs so well in months, and playing at a whole pack of wolves was work enough to keep her thoughts honed and focused wholly on the moment.
Even she was shocked when Thomas came out of the brush. He had used the wind well, staying upwards of it, while it had been to her advantage to keep the pigs downward, where their crashing and snorting might carry as well as their scent. She had been at the boars’ heels, far enough back to not anger them; far enough, now, to meld into the low undergrowth and watch as panic struck hundreds of pounds of pig flesh.
The piglets broke in every direction but hers, one rushing for Thomas’s horse. Its mother struck out after it, too late; hooves flashed and the smaller beast’s skull collapsed. It rolled forward, dying body tangling in the horse’s legs, and Thomas fired his gun as the mother boar charged at him. A single shot, and he made it count; few men might have struck the pig’s eye, though her momentum carried her forward and brought the horse and rider down even as she fell.
Thomas leapt clear, the blood that spattered belonging to the horse, not himself: it was done for, belly split open by the female’s bite as she died. The male, screaming fury, rushed Thomas, who flung his gun away and drew a long knife, his pigsticker spear broken by the horse’s fall. There was no fear in his scent, nor could there be, should he hope to survive.
A snarl rose up in Markéta’s throat. She turned it to the sky in a howl, sharp sound of warning and loss, and trotted out of the brush to let the hunter see her.
For a deadly instant surprise took him, and in that moment, so did the boar.
She had never seen one throw a man. It caught his gut easily, and turned its weight against him, flinging him a distance only aborted by the presence of an oak tree. Thomas hit it with bone-cracking force and slid down, blood turning his shirt and hands to crimson. The boar snorted, charged again, then veered away into the broken underbrush, chasing after its offspring.
The horse lay on its side, thrashing. Markéta darted around its dangerous legs, scampered back from bared teeth broader and stronger than her own. There were other predators better suited to this kill than wolves; her jaws were strong, but she had seen how big cats could strangle their prey in mere seconds. Wolves tore and shredded at haunches, only taking the throat last, when the beast was already weakened, and the horse was still too strong with fear to be called weak. Still, it deserved better than the death coming to it, and she lunged in when silence took it for a moment.
It took a long time, blood hot and sweet on her tongue. As its gasps died, she heard Thomas’s increasing, and rolled her eyes, desperate to see but unwilling to release the horse and extend its death any longer. The gun was gone: Thomas had flung it well away, and was bleeding too heavily to search for it. But he was strong, and mercy shown to the horse could count against her own life.
It finally shuddered and died, strength gone from its great muscles. Markéta backed off, head lowered as she swung toward Thomas.
He was white-faced, drained of blood but not emotion; rage etched deep lines in his skin.
“What is man but a pack animal?” The words came from Markéta’s throat distorted, harsh, angry; a wolf was not meant to form human speech. She changed again, staying where she was, lithe on all fours, horse blood drooling down her chin. She had abandoned her clothes before taking lupine form; they would not change with her, and she knew now she looked a wild thing, monstrous human bathed in blood.
“We are only those who chose to heed the wild, so long ago. We learned to stay away from your penned cattle, your easy sheep, your fine horses. We hunted in the wood, and ran as one, while you our brothers constricted yourselves into dull unsensing human form. We did not threaten you, hunt your children, ruin your lives, and yet you came for us. That was my mother!”
She forgot, in springing forward, that she was only a woman, and had no teeth to tear his throat with. Instinct older than thought judged her and made weapons of her hands, curved to dig fingers in where tooth would not do. She might not have bothered; her weight was on his belly, where the boar had seized him, and the man screamed.
It drew her up. Not from mercy, but because to talk, to threaten and to posture, was the human and not the lupine way. A wolf hunted and killed, rather than allowed its prey to linger.
A pity, then, that this man, and others like him, had obliged her live so long in their world. “My mother,” she whispered again. “My family. My pack, dead for sport.”
He smiled, bloody and brief. Drew breath, held it, and spat it: “Dog. Do you think . . . we didn’t know . . . what we hunted? Mongrels. Monsters. Sinners. You are the last . . . in England . . . and my son will carry on the hunt in Europe!”