LITMIR.BIZ

       C H A P T E R 1

      The first time the horn sounded on the hill, Wolf mistook it for a sheep bleating or a bird crying, and thought no more of it. He had other things to worry about.

      There were no proper paths up here. He hadn’t known it would take so long to climb out of the valley. He’d expected to be miles away by now, dropping into the shelter of the woods — not still forcing his way up through waist-high heather towards the long, saw-blade ridge of Devil’s Edge. But there were no proper paths up here. Wolf cursed the boggy sheep tracks that never lasted more than a few yards before twisting the wrong way.

      He was picking his way across a brook when he heard it: a faint, mournful wailing, more like a stain on the wind than a real sound. He checked mid-stream to listen, teetered on a wobbly stone, whirled his arms, jumped for the next and missed, and landed on his hands and knees in the brawling water.

      “Hell’s bones!”

      He waded over slimy pebbles to the bank. By then the sound had faded, and who cared, anyway? A bird, he told himself in disgust. Or an old sheep crying. He was soaked from the knees down, and his long sleeves flapped like wet washing.

      Shivering, wringing the water out of his black robes, he looked back. West, into Wales, the hills were half sponged out by rainclouds. In the valley, the river looped like a scrawl of silver ink. And he could still see the dark lead roof of the Abbey of Christ and Saint Ethelbert at Wenford where, just about now, the monks would be lighting the candles and filing into chapel to sing the evening prayers. Without him.

      Good!

      But his mind flew back there, swift as a bird.

      He heard again the biting drawl of Brother Thomas, master of the boys: “You — Wolfstan. Take that smile off your face. I heard you singing in the cloister this morning. Singing like a veritable nightingale! A holy song, no doubt. A psalm, no doubt! Strange that I did not recognise it. What psalm were you singing, Wolfstan?”

      Wolf gritted his teeth. It hadn’t been a psalm, and the skinny old devil knew it.

      “It was a French song!” Brother Thomas made the words sound like ‘a dead rat’. “About love and springtime and women!” He’d seized the back of Wolf’s neck. “Blasphemous boy!” he hissed. “‘Timor Domini initium sapienti est.’ Do you know what that means, you villain? ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’ And if you will not learn from fear of the Lord, you will learn from fear of me. Pass me the rod. Strip off your robe.”

      “I hate you!” Wolf screamed down the hillside.

      He

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