Chapter 3

I spent about two months in the village ruled by Urlus, but I felt a strong compulsion to move on. Life in the village was pleasant enough, but I found that I yearned for excitement, and none of that was to be found in the village. Even hunting had fallen into a boring routine, and I only hunted to eat.

I left on a cheerful note with many wishes for my safe return, but I knew that I would never come back unless there was some great danger that I had to fight. I had the strongest feeling that such a danger was forming in the East, and I needed to look into it. The beginning of winter was not a good time to travel, but I simply could not resist the urge.

As soon as I was out of sight of the village, I transformed into my wolf shape and settled into a steady, fast paced trot. I was moving about six or seven miles per hour, so I was eating up ground at a rapid rate. Late the third afternoon, I came to a very wide river, one that I did not want to swim across if I could find another way. I could see rafts floating by, so I decided to try to find a raft or a boat that I could use to cross, but to do that, I would have to look human.

I changed back to human form and started walking along the river bank. I don't know what it was that pushed me to that particular choice, but I had a strong urge to walk upstream. I had gone about a mile when I saw a disturbing act being performed on the river bank. A woman was being raped by three men while another was tied up and lying to one side, apparently waiting her turn. I knew that it was rape and not a consensual party because the victim was being held by two men while the third man was penetrating her. She was fighting and screaming, but it was doing her no good.

Once I recognized what was going on, I switched back to wolf form and attacked. I ran as fast as I could at the rapist and leaped. As I leaped passed him, I ripped out his throat. I landed at almost full speed and turned to attack the man holding the woman's hands. He was at the wrong position for me to attack his throat, so I ripped through his guts. He released the woman and screamed in pain as he tried to push his intestines back into place.

The man with the open belly was not a pressing problem for me, so I concentrated my attention on the man holding the woman's legs. Or, I should say, formerly holding the woman's legs. He jumped up and tried to run to where their weapons were lying, but I reached him before he could take two steps. I clamped my jaws down on his leg at the knee and crushed it to a nearly unrecognizable mess.

As the man fell, he was able to reach a sword that had been set aside for later use. I had to admire the man's courage and toughness, for, despite a crushed knee, he continued to fight. He swung the sword at me, and that was when I had my first experience with a weapon made of iron.

I was going after his other knee, since I did not know how how much I should have feared the sword. Just as I clamped down on his other knee and crushed it, he hit me in the side with the cutting edge of the sword. It was something that I had never experienced before! The iron blade had no more trouble entering my body than it would have against an ordinary wolf. I felt an excruciating pain, something like a hot stave, running through my side where the sword had cut me.

I gave forth a wolf-like howl of pain and fell back. Fortunately, the wound began to heal itself immediately, but the pain lasted until the last vestige of the wound had disappeared. When the man saw my wound, he laughed in triumph, but he quailed in fright as the wound began to heal so fast. The wound was completely healed within 15 seconds, and I started to consider my options.

So that was what it was like to experience being wounded by an iron weapon. Smilšu māte, what a terrible feeling! The mother of death was staring me in the face, but she blinked. Well, now I knew what to avoid, and I certainly intended to avoid iron weapons whenever I could.

I had to be careful, for the man was still swinging that accursed sword at me, and I had to break through its arc of pain and death. I danced around, watching for my chance. At one point, the man raised his arm holding the sword too high, giving me room to duck under it. I leaped at his arm and caught his forearm in my powerful jaws. I crunched down as hard as I could and felt the bones shatter under my teeth. The sword went flying as he jumped and writhed in even more pain.

With the three men no further problem, I ran to a place where neither woman could see me and transformed back to the form of a man. I ran to cut loose the woman who was tied, but otherwise unharmed. The other woman was beginning to recover from her ordeal, but she was crying, just as one would expect. I checked both women and found that neither one was physically wounded, though the rape victim certainly had been subjected to violent attack.

Two of the rapist were still alive, and I wanted to be sure to kill both of them before they could be changed by whatever it was in my bite that could turn people into werewolves. As I was examining the rape victim, the other woman picked up the iron sword and hacked off the heads of the two still living men. I say "hacked" because it took her three or four blows to get the job done completely. I appreciated her saving me the trouble, and I know it helped her feelings, no end.

After the two women calmed down a bit, they stayed practically glued to me. Neither one would walk more than a few steps away from me, and they found innumerable opportunities to touch me. We stayed together for some time, and neither one would even relieve herself out of my sight. I was not quite sure what to do with this devotion, but I made no effort to drive the women away from me.

We were able to converse in the common trade language, but I rapidly learned their native language. It must have been another of the gifts from the wolf, but I was able to learn a new language almost as fast as I heard it. It was not long before we were talking to each other in their language.

They had both seen the wolf, so they wanted to know where my "pet" had disappeared to. I didn't see that any harm would be done by it, so I told them my story of being bitten by a wolf and what had happened to me as a result. I demonstrated by shifting back and forth, and they were fascinated. They both asked if a child that I fathered would have this ability. I said I doubted it, but I did not know for sure. That prompted them both to test the theory every night, hoping that one or both of the sisters would quickly become pregnant by me.

I asked how they had happened to be attacked. Ingla, the elder sister, said that they lived nearby in the same hut. Her husband had recently died of some sickness, so she was living alone. Her sister, Ashur, had also recently lost her husband and had moved in with Ingla as that offered the best chance for both of them to survive. They both wanted new husbands, so they were on their way to the nearest town, three day's travel on the other side of the river. They had come to the river and had just finished the construction of a raft to get them over the river when they had been attacked by the three rapists. She reiterated how much the two sisters appreciated me saving them.

We used the raft that they had built to cross the river, and we set out for the town as soon as we got across. We had not packed much food with us, so I set out to find us a couple of rabbits or something similar for our supper. While I was gone, the two sisters had talked over what to them was a serious subject. In a little over an hour, I returned with two rabbits and a large bird for our supper.

That evening, when we finished supper, Ingla presented a proposal: the two sisters wanted to marry me and have me father their children. I think that they hoped, in part, to have children gifted like me, even though I told them that it would not happen.