The Wolf's Hour (Page 4)
again the dream awakened him, and he lay in the dark while the gusts bellowed at the windows and an errant shutter flapped. He had dreamed he was a wolf who dreamed he was a man who dreamed he was a wolf who dreamed. and in that maze of dreams there had been bits and pieces of memory, flying like the fragments of an exploded jigsaw puzzle: the sepia-toned faces of his father, mother, and older sister, faces as if from a burned-edge photograph; a palace of broken white stones, surrounded by thick, primeval forest where the howls of wolves spoke to the moon; a passing steam train, headlight blazing, and a young boy racing along the tracks beside it, faster and faster, toward the entrance of the tunnel that lay ahead.
and from the puzzle of memory, an old, leathery, white-bearded face, the lips opening to whisper: Live free.
He sat up on his haunches and realized then that he had been lying not in his bed but on the cold stone floor before the fireplace. a few embers drowsed in the darkness, waiting to be stirred. He stood up, his body naked and muscular, and walked to the high bay windows that overlooked the wild hills of northern Wales. The March wind was raging beyond the glass, and scattershots of rain and sleet struck the windows before his face. He stared from darkness into darkness, and he knew they were coming.
Mikhail Gallatinov's motherland.
But he was Michael Gallatin now, and he lived in a different land. He spoke English, thought in Russian, and contemplated in a language more ancient than either of those human tongues.
They needed him.
Live free, he thought, and his mouth curled with the hint of a smile. There was some bitterness in it. Freedom was an illusion, in the shelter of his own house on this stormy land, where the nearest village, Endore's Rill, lay more than fifteen miles to the south. For him, a great part of freedom was isolation, and he had come to realize more and more, as he monitored the shortwave broadcasts between London and the Continent, listening to the voices speak in codes through the blizzards of static, that the bonds of humanity had chained him.
Well, there was no keeping them away from his door. He could lock the gate, way up at the end of the road, but they would find a way over it, or cut the barbed-wire fence and walk in. The British had a lot of experience in snipping barbed-wire. So it was best just to leave the gate unlocked, and wait for them. It might be tomorrow, or the day after that, or next week. Whenever; he would still be here.
Michael listened to the song of the wild for a moment, his head cocked slightly to one side. Then he returned to the flagstone floor in front of the fireplace, lay down and curled his arms around his knees, and tried to rest.