trailing from their helmets, lance-tips glinting in the morning sun.
"Mangoli Khan!” the leader cried. "Praise be to such gods as perhaps there are! We had not thought to see thee. The Old Man of the Mountain sent thy four companions’ heads to us; thee we thought he had surely slain, also.”
The she-wolf turned under Gaussin’s hand, freeing her shoulder from his clutch. She made a sound half whine, half moan, and would have turned into the brush, but Gaussin dropped upon his knees beside her.
"Nay, Lady Wolf, good, sweet wolfkin, I will not have it so!” he denied. By all the blessed saints in Paradise, I swear I love thee, dearest beast!” And with his arms about her furry neck he kissed her full upon the hairy mouth.
He thought it was delusion, or return of his delirium, for instead of the rough, wiry pelt of the she-wolf he felt a mass of soft black tresses, perfumed with the spice of Araby, across his cheek; instead of the wolf’s hairy muzzle a pair of lips as soft as rose leaves pressed against his mouth. She was clinging to him. He could feel her heart beat. Her hair was fragrant on his cheek. No she-wolf, this, but a sweet, softly-molded woman. His Sylvanette!
He said her name slowly, wonderingly. Then, as in the foothills of the Lebanons:
"Sylvette ma drue! Sylvette ma mie!
En vous ma mort, en vous ma mie!"
Came her answer, low and tender-sweet:
"Bel ami, ainsi, va de nous!
Ne vous sans moi, ni mot sans vous!"
The stolid Tartars of the guard showed small astonishment at seeing a woman where there had been a she-wolf. On the steppes of Muscovy where they were weaned the vrykolakas—man-wolf—was almost as common as the house-dog, and those who chose to shift their shapes did so, nor was it any concern of their neighbors. Methodically they made two litters of sheepskin coats stretched over lances and bore the fainting Mangoli Khan and his wolf-lady back to camp.
HOW the armies of the Kha Khan laid siege to the fortress of the Old Man of the Mountain and plucked it apart stone by stone as children break a house of blocks; how the Grand Master of the Assassins went in chains to the blue-tiled court of the Great Khan at Karakorum and was never seen again is another story. Our concern is with Gaussin and Sylvanette.
Not until they had been wed did they hear each other’s odysseys.
They lay upon their couch of skins with rugs of sables and lynx fur over them, and through the tent’s thick walls of black felt came the muted thunder of the kettledrums.
He stroked the hair that tangled round her neck, and at his touch the small pulse in her throat quickened. For a long time they lay thus; then she raised herself to draw the heavy coils of her hair from beneath her shoulders. Her lips touched his. Touched, and clung. "O my beloved,” she murmured, "’twas thy kiss that set me free from wolfshead.”
"What say’st thou?” he answered sleepily.
"I said thou gavest me freedom from my wolfish shape with thy kiss. For this was the condition which La Crainte made when she ensorcelled me: 'Take and retain the form of a she-wolf until some noble lord shall kiss thy hairy beast’s-lips and declare his love for thee.'"
