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Part I Lelio Rising

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In the winter of my twenty-first year, I went out alone on horseback to kill a pack of wolves

This was on ne in France, and these were the last decades before the French Revolution

It was the worst winter that I could re the sheep froh the streets of the village

These were bitter years for me My father was the Marquis, and I was the seventh son and the youngest of the three who had lived to manhood I had no claim to the title or the land, and no prospects Even in a rich faer boy, but our wealth had been used up long ago My eldest brother, Augustin, as the rightful heir to all we possessed, had spent his wife’s small dowry as soon as he married her

My father’s castle, his estate, and the village nearby were my entire universe And I’d been born restless -- the dreary one, the complainer I wouldn’t sit by the fire and talk of old wars and the days of the Sun King History had nofor me

But in this diht in the pheasant, the venison, and the trout froot -- to feed the family It had become my life by this tiood thing that I’d taken it up, because there were years e ht have actually starved to death

Of course this was a noble occupation, hunting one’s ancestral lands, and we alone had the right to do it The richest of the bourgeois couldn’t lift his gun in un He had money

Two times in ht back with s broken But I’ll tellabout the snow all over those ers and stealingin France in those days, that if you lived in the province of Auvergne you could get no farther from Paris

Understand that since I was the lord and the only lord anyun, it was natural that the villagers should co me to hunt them It was my duty

I wasn’t the least afraid of the wolves either Never ina man And I would have poisoned them, if I could, but meat was simply too scarce to lace with poison

So early on a very coldin January, I armed uns and an excellent flintlock rifle, and these I took with me as well asthe castle, I added to this little arsenal one or two ancient weapons that I’d never bothered with before

Our castle was full of old arht in countless noble wars since the ti on the walls above all this clattering junk were a good many lances, battleaxes, flails, and e mace -- -that is, a spiked club -- that I took with ood-sized flail: an iron ball attached to a chain that could be sith immense force at an attacker

Now rehteenth century, the tih-heeled satin slippers, pinched snuff, and dabbed at their noses with e out to hunt in rawhide boots and buckskin coat, with these ancient weapons tied to the saddle, and est mastiffs beside me in their spiked collars

That was es And I knew enough of the fancy-dressed travelers on the post road to feel it rather keenly The nobles in the capital called us country lords "harecatchers" Of course we could sneer at the and queen Our castle had stood for a thousand years, and not even the great Cardinal Richelieu in his war on our kind had ed to pull down our ancient towers But as I said before, I didn’t pay much attention to history

I was unhappy and ferocious as I rode up the ood battle with the wolves There were five in the pack according to the villagers, and I hadthey could snap a wolf’s spine in an instant

Well, I rode for an hour up the slopes Then I cah that no snowfall could disguise it And as I started across the broad e

Within seconds there had co and then another, and now the chorus was in such harmony that I couldn’t tell the nunaling to each other to coether, which was just what I had hoped they would do

I don’t think I felt the slightest fear then But I felt so, and it caused the hair to rise on the backs of my arms The countryside for all its vastness sees to stop their growling and follow et out of the open field and into the woods and hurry

My dogs gave their deep baying alarlanced over my shoulder and saw the wolves hundreds of yards behind iant gray wolves they were, co on in a line

I broke into a run for the forest

It seemed I would make it easily before the three reached me, but wolves are extremely clever animals, and as I rode hard for the trees I saw the rest of the pack, so out ahead of me to my left It was an ambush, and I could never ht wolves, not five as the villagers had told h to be afraid I didn’t ponder the obvious fact that these anie Their natural reticence with ot ready for battle I stuck the flail ins and the pack attacked each other

They couldn’t get s by the neck on account of the spiked collars And in this first skirht down one of the wolves in their powerful jaws iht down a second

But the pack had surrounded the dogs As I fired again and again, reloading as quickly as I could and trying to aio doith its hind legs broken Blood strea stood off the pack as it tried to devour the dying animal, but within two ’s belly and killed it

Now these were powerful beasts, as I said, these mastiffs I’d bred thehed upwards of two hundred pounds I always hunted with thes now, they were known only by their names to me then, and when I saw them die, I knew for the first tiht happen

But all this had occurred in minutes

Four wolves lay dead Another was crippled fatally But that left three, one of whos to fix its slanted eyes on me

I fired the rifle, missed, fired the musket, and my horse reared as the wolf shot towards s, the other wolves turned, leaving the fresh kill And jerking the reins hard, I let ht for the cover of the forest