Read Wolfbreed for Free Online

disassembled the original, retrimmed the pieces, and created a satchel that he could probably trade in Johannisburg’s open market for a few months’ worth of venison—if his mother would let him.
    Uldolf
, she had told him,
what then would you have to show people your skills?
    Even with it, Uldolf had not found many people who believed that a one-armed peasant could be a competent leather worker. Certainly not the foreign tradesmen in Johannisburg, who saw everyone of Prûsan blood—baptized or not—as little more than heathen savages. At times, Uldolf thought they were surprised he could speak.
    Instead, Uldolf bartered his services to the Prûsan farmers around the area—people who’d known his adoptive parents since before Johannisburg was a province of Christendom. Uldolf suspected it all had started as a sympathetic gesture to his parents, who had the ill luck to have half a son and a sickly daughter. Or maybe it was out of respect for Uldolf’s heritage. His first father had been the last chieftain of Mejdân, before the village fell to the Christians.
    He felt a small measure of pride in the fact that what might have started as sympathy had, over the past two years, evolved into an appreciation of his skill. There wasn’t a farm within a day’swalk that didn’t now have a saddle, or a bridle, or a harness that bore his mark somewhere on it.
    But his skills couldn’t make the winters easier. Those who traded happily for his workmanship suffered the same hardships his own family did when the cold fell, and what was in the larder had to last through the first fruit of spring.
    So he was happy for the hare he had managed to catch. With it, and some barley, his mother would be able to make a stew that would last a week. Harsh as the winter had been, the last snows were mostly melted except for the deepest parts of the forest, and by midday the ground would stop crunching with frost under his feet. They would be able to start planting soon, and afterward he could peddle his services again. Maybe this year he could find a merchant to apprentice with and be able to work year-round.
    “And maybe this year my arm will grow back,” he muttered to scold himself. He reached over to his shoulder and rubbed it, although he couldn’t touch the ache he felt in the long-absent limb.
    Even if he had two arms, he was too old for an apprenticeship now. The years he could have spent learning a trade he had stayed with his parents, working hard to keep the farm going.
    In the distance, he heard the church bell in Johannisburg sounding for Prime. He stood and looked up. The dawn glow had lightened to full daylight, and above him the sky was sharp cloudless blue. He shouldered his pack and tried not to think of what he felt in the arm he didn’t have.
    He had some meat, and it was time to return home.
    His route through the woods was an extended loop that avoided obvious game trails and the few established paths. He followed the bottoms of ravines that gave him cover from anyone who had more legitimate business traveling through the Order’s land. He had now reached the point where he was as close as he ever wished to come to the castle and the Johannisburg city wall.
    Uldolf was glad to be out of sight of the keep as he followed thecreek bed at the bottom of this ravine. Not just because it helped him remain unobserved, but because he always found the sight disturbing. Something about the outline of the man-made hill it rested on, the way the fortifications squatted on top like an evil stone toad on a pile of refuse. Just thinking about it made his absent arm ache worse.
    Something in him was thankful for the fever that had stolen the memory of the injury and most of the year preceding it. As painful as it was when he thought of his childhood with his parents, now eight years dead, it would be intolerably worse if he remembered their deaths.
    He stood quietly for a moment, uncomfortable with where his thoughts were going. He