Through Wolf's Eyes (75 page)

Blind Seer howled softly in agreement and this gave
the archer warning of Firekeeper's coming. He was well placed on a
platform jury-rigged across two thick boughs and traded bow for knife
as Firekeeper's hand emerged from the leaves, casting as if searching
for a firm hold to continue the ascent.

A human would have died without seeing the hidden
archer's face, but Firekeeper was not a human in such things. Though
the archer had moved with stealth, she had heard the soft tap as the
bow was set down, the slight scrape as knife left sheath. The questing
hand had been a feint to draw his attack.

Her Fang was ready in her free hand, her feet
securely braced on a lower limb. When the archer's knife flashed to
where her arm should be, her Fang met his own arm right at the shoulder
joint.

Though the archer wore armor, it did him no good. The
Fang pierced the light leather in the interstices between the heavier
sections, drawing both blood and a cry of pain. Yet the archer kept
both his balance and his blade. Stumbling back onto the platform, he
seized his quiver. When Firekeeper leapt onto the branch, he hurled it
at her. She parried with one hand, keeping the Fang ready to bite again
in the other.

They faced each other then and Firekeeper knew the
man. This man had taken care to be unobtrusive in his comings and
goings about the Hawk Haven camp, but she had taken equal care to know
something about the entourage of each noble.

"Rook!" she exclaimed, startled, for what was Prince Newell's manservant doing here, attacking his master's commander?

Rook's reply was to lunge forward, perhaps hoping to take advantage of her momentary surprise. Firekeeper's defenses,
though,
were as automatic as breathing—they needed to be, for in the wilds she
would not have breathed long if she needed to think about defense. She
dodged the blow and counterstruck. Already she knew that she did not
want to kill Rook—alive he could talk—but he had no such consideration
for her.

Rook was larger and had better footing. He might be
stronger, though Firekeeper was discovering that she was stronger than
most humans she encountered. However, stronger or not, Rook outmassed
her, not a trivial consideration in a duel where one could win merely
by making the other fall. But Firekeeper was at home in the trees,
almost as much at ease as she would be on the ground, especially in a
spreading, broad-branched old tree like this maple. Reluctant to leave
the sure footing of his platform, Rook was greatly handicapped.

Below, Blind Seer leapt into the air, snapping his
jaws loudly. He could not reach the upper branches where the two humans
tussled, but Firekeeper saw how his growls and snarls unnerved her
opponent.

"Surrender," she suggested, nicking Rook's forearm on
the underside so that the blood ran from between the lacings. "You
cannot run. Blind Seer will wait for you, even if you defeat me.
Surrender and I swear you will live to speak with the king."

Rook considered and even glanced out at the
battlefield as if expecting to see King Tedric there. Unwilling to risk
killing him, Firekeeper did not press beyond nicking Rook again, this
time along the back of his neck where his helmet and collar did not
quite meet.

Perhaps it was this, perhaps it was a foreboding that
surrender or not he would eventually become her prisoner, but Rook
snarled:

"I surrender! Do you promise you or that beast will not kill me until I have seen the king?"

"Seen and spoken with," Firekeeper agreed, "if King Tedric wishes to speak with you. And if you surrender faithfully."

"I will," Rook said, laying down his long knife.

Not trusting him overmuch, Firekeeper bound Rook with his own bowstring there in the treetops.

"This can be your prison," she said, "until the battle is done."

"Seal his mouth!"
Blind Seer called, leaping and snapping still for the pleasure of it.
"He may call for help otherwise."

Firekeeper agreed. As she bound Rook's mouth with
cloth torn from his shirt, she thought she saw dismay as well as anger
in the man's eyes.

"A good reminder,"
she said to the wolf as she dropped down beside him and rubbed his head.
"I wonder if his master knows of his treachery?"

She looked out over the still raging battlefield,
hunting for Prince Newell and his rust-red steed. Duke Allister, she
noted in passing, was back in command, framed by four soldiers who must
be very brave because they intended to intercept any arrow meant for
their commander—with their own bodies more likely than not. Sir Dirkin
Eastbranch was one of these four, doubtless participating in today's
battle at his king's express command.

Lord Tench's corpse lay on the ground to one side,
still facedown, though the arrow had been broken off, probably in a
desperate attempt to stanch the blood and save his life.

"I don't see Prince Newell,"
Firekeeper said, puzzled.
"Nor is his war mount among the dumb brutes lying dead on the field. Where could he have gone?"

"Perhaps he has retreated wounded to the hospital,"
Blind Seer suggested.

Firekeeper turned the long-glass in that direction,
but saw no sign of the rust-red horse or its rider. Troubled now, she
cast wider and finally, at the very rear of the line, she located the
horse. Prince Newell's shield hung from the saddle harness, confirming
that she had not been mistaken.

"Newell is with King Tedric,"
she said.
"Perhaps he reports on the progress of the fighting."

But something troubled her even as she offered this
explanation. She remembered how Rook had scanned the battlefield before
surrendering. Recalled how he had insisted on speaking with "the king,"
not with "King Tedric."

Little things,
she thought,
but a strong bird's nest can be built with nothing but slim twigs and rabbit fluff.

Beginning to run, she called to Blind Seer,
"Come away with me, sweet hunter. Suddenly, I am very afraid."

No one but a few frightened horses seemed to notice
when woman and wolf came running down the hillside and went darting
through the rear lines toward the scarlet pavilion pitched as a command
center for the aged king.

As Firekeeper closed with that pavilion, however, she
noticed a strange thing. The guards who should stand flanking the door
to the pavilion or pace a patrol outside of it were standing a good
number of feet from the structure. Standing there as well were some of
those who had been acting as messengers for King Tedric: nobles and
castle staff alike.

Lady Zorana raised her bow when Firekeeper would cross the perimeter around the pavilion, her expression grim.

"No one may interrupt the king, not even you, Lady Blysse. He is in deep and confidential conference."

"No!" Firekeeper swallowed a snarl of frustration. "Not with Prince Newell?"

"That's right." Lady Zorana looked slightly puzzled, but her bow and that deadly arrow remained steady.

Other of the guards were drawing weapons as well.
Realizing that even she and Blind Seer could not take out so
many—especially when she wished these people no harm— Firekeeper
decided to risk the arrow. Feinting left, then ducking in the other
direction, she dashed for the pavilion. She hadn't reckoned on the
skill of the daughter of Purcel Archer.

Lady Zorana corrected her aim while Firekeeper was
still pounding across the open ground. The wolf-woman heard the
bowstring sing out and leapt up, but Zorana's aim was true. Only the
fact that Zorana had not wished—despite, or perhaps because of, her
political rivalry with the king's presumed heir—to kill Firekeeper
preserved the young woman's life. The arrow plowed across the flesh on
the outside of Firekeeper's left thigh, cutting a deep furrow through
skin and muscle.

Ox's courage when she had seen him wounded sprang to mind, balancing but not diminishing the searing pain. Firekeeper
had
been hurt many times before, but most of those injuries had been of the
pummeling variety. When she had been cut, it had rarely been deep.
Nothing in her experience had prepared her for the sensation of muscle
being neatly sliced and of control vanishing.

Yet she leapt forward on her strong leg, relying on
her arms as she had when a pup. Carried by momentum, she pitched
through the pavilion's door. Blind Seer bounded beside her, alert,
though whimpering his concern.

Firekeeper nearly surrendered to the pain when she
saw what awaited her within. Prince Newell bent over the high-backed
chair from which King Tedric had commanded his forces. The king's form
was still upright; his hands still grasped the carved arms of the
chair, but his eyes were shut. There was a pallor to the king's face
that Firekeeper did not like at all and he did not seem to be breathing.

Prince Newell straightened when he saw her.

"Lady Blysse," he said, his tone for a moment as
casual as it had been when they met at the ball. Then it altered,
filling with concern and shock. "You've been wounded!"

"The king," she said. "What have you done to the king!"

"Nothing," he responded. "I was telling him about the
attempt to assassinate Duke Allister when His Majesty collapsed. I fear
the news was more than his heart could take. I was attempting to revive
him."

Firekeeper knew nothing of medicine's deeper
mysteries, but it did not seem to her that Newell had been reviving the
king. Why then was the king's wig knocked to one side? Why was there
none of the sharp stink of stimulants that she recalled from her visits
to the king's chambers? Why were the king's pale lips slowly shaping
one word?

"Help . . ." Tedric hissed.

"He lives!"
she said to Blind Seer.
"Quickly! Get Doc!"

"But Prince Newell!"
the wolf growled in protest.
"He reeks of treachery!"

"Go!"
Firekeeper repeated.
"You must not be here when I deal with him."
And the great grey wolf slipped beneath the edge of the pavilion's
scarlet fabric and was gone. From without Firekeeper heard cries of
alarm, but she could not
attend to them. Her
argument with Blind Seer had taken half the time it would have in human
words but still she had wasted too much time.

"I think," Newell was saying, already drawing his
sword and lunging at her, "the shock of your death, little Blysse, will
finish my job for me."

Firekeeper leapt back, knowing that she could hope
for no assistance, even if those outside overcame their reluctance to
disobey the prince's orders. They would see her as the attacker and
Newell as the bold defender. Yet she could not abandon the king,
unarmed and lightly armored though she was, not after the proud old
Eagle had asked her for help.

She leapt back, stumbling on her wounded leg.
Normally she could have gotten clean away, but slowed as she was the
sword's sharp point deeply scored the leather armor across her belly.
Silently Firekeeper thanked Derian, who had insisted that she wear the
stifling stuff, even if she was not to be in combat.

Drawing her Fang from its Mouth, Firekeeper dropped
low, coming within the compass of Prince Newell's arm, too close for
him to bring the sword to bear. He was more heavily armored than she
was, but she jabbed the blade between two metal plates and through the
leather. It grated against a rib, then slid in.

Her reward was a grunt from Prince Newell and a kiss
of warm blood on her fingers. The prince jerked back before she could
pull the blade free, leaving her unarmed, her only weapon damming the
wound in his side.

Not only weapon,
she reminded herself.
Have I not called myself a wolf?

More cautious now, Prince Newell held his sword as
much to guard as to attack. He must indeed regret the shield he had
left hanging from the rust-red charger's harness.

Blood loss was making Firekeeper light-headed, but
she remained enough herself to know that she could not charge again.
Instead she lifted a small table. The papers that had covered it
fluttered to the ground and began sopping up her blood from where it
puddled on the rugs.

Throwing the table, then a footstool, Firekeeper took advantage
of
Prince Newell's dodging to close a few more steps. Her leg didn't even
hurt now; the pain was as much a constant as her unwavering desire to
protect the old man in his high-backed chair.

In the background she heard the sound of someone
entering the tent. From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed one of the
King's Own Guard. Knowing that in any moment she might have another
enemy, Firekeeper grabbed a medicine bottle, a carafe half-filled with
red wine, a tray, and hurled them one by one with the pinpoint accuracy
of one who had lived by that skill.

Prince Newell was wholly on the defensive now,
unable— or perhaps merely unwilling—to close as long as she had
ammunition. An angry red mark spread on one cheek where a heavy pottery
goblet had broken against the bone. His lower lip was bleeding.

There was the sound of more people entering the
pavilion, but thus far no one interfered. Firekeeper's vision was
beginning to blur now: fading in and out so that she had moments of
great clarity and others where she could hardly see the man whom she no
longer recalled by name, recalling only that he was her prey and that
this was the most important hunt of her life.

On the periphery of her attention, Firekeeper heard
shouts and screams. Considered that they might be important, dismissed
the thought as a distraction from her task.

Relentlessly, she dragged herself after her prey,
throwing whatever came to hand: scraps of pottery, bits of blood-soaked
paper, a solid metal box. Then, suddenly, the tips of her fingers
scrabbled vainly in the plush of the rugs. For the first time, she
realized that she was on the floor, her weight resting on the knee of
her sound right leg and on her right arm. Her left hand quested blindly
after something to throw.