Master of Whitestorm (14 page)

Silence.

Korendir glanced up. He found the innkeeper, the chief councilman, and all the folk of the town crowded in a pack past the threshold. Their eyes were flat with unfriendliness, and though four dead wereleopards offered cause enough to celebrate, not a man stepped forward to congratulate the mercenary who had accomplished the feat.

With a thin ring of sound, Korendir set sword and knife into their sheaths; his manner changed from hard to unremittingly grim. “Maybe you should tell me what’s happened,” he suggested.

No one answered.

Korendir’s regard shifted from one hostile face to the next, and only after exhaustive search uncovered the fact that Carralin was not present.

Always, since the moment of his arrival, she had tagged his presence like a shadow.

Without speaking again, the mercenary slipped the thong which bound the pelts at his waist. Bloody furs unfurled in a heap around his ankles as, still without words, he stepped clear. The wooden stair boomed hollowly under his tread. The wereleopard corpse might as well not have been there for all the notice he gave as he strode into the press beyond the door.

Folk melted away to let him pass. But though he crossed the taproom unimpeded, mutters arose sullenly at his back. The air smelled close-a mix of sweat, and raw anger, and a staleness of lingering pipe smoke. Korendir shed his cloak and added the reek of burnt pitch and blood. He threaded through trestles and benches, passed the stools by the bar with a stride that seemed unhurried. But folk who were brazen enough to follow discovered they must hasten to keep up.

Korendir took the stairs beyond, first two, and then three at a time. He crossed the darkened landing, ducked down the corridor, and wrenched open the door to his chambers.

Just five hours earlier, he had left a young girl weeping safely on his bed.

Now, the room was close with the scent of cheap perfume, and another smell more cloying. Daylight from the window lit carnage. The whitewashed walls, the floors, the tassels adorning the bedstead wore ropy garlands of blood. Carralin lay with her head thrown back.

Her throat was torn out; the mangled bones of her spine showed white through a mess of slashed gristle. One chapped hand trailed from the bedclothes, huge and limp and forever finished with pouring ale for thirsty patrons.

Korendir stopped as if kicked.

He took one breath, then another, and his eyes flicked from the dead woman to the sill. Bloody marks remained where the killer had made its exit. The casement hung open. Latches had been torn from their settings by claws and ruthless strength. No one had bothered to close out the draft; the mullioned frame swung creaking in the wind off the fields.

Korendir started forward to remedy the lapse when a heavy footfall dogged his track. A hand reached out to restrain him.

He spun very fast. Emmon Hillgate’s hulking son missed his hold and grasped only empty air. For a moment both men locked eyes, one still and waiting, the other shivering with anger and grief and a wild, untenable madness.

Emmon’s fists bunched. “Man, you took your pleasure and then abandoned her to die!”

Townsfolk gathered in the hallway; out of fairness to the mercenary, one man strove to restore temperance. “Emmon, leave be! The lord went hunting wereleopards, and by the look of things, bagged four.”

But Emmon Hillgate’s son was lost to all things beyond the girl lying slaughtered on the bed. Huge, threatening, he advanced upon his slighter adversary. “You might have done your hunting right here, then. For your cheap toss in the sheets, my sister deserved a defender.”

Korendir denied none of the accusations. His face showed no feeling, and his movement no shred of hesitation as he stepped past Emmon’s bulk and smoothly shut the casement. Returned without pause to the bedside, he raised hands that did not shake and veiled the corpse like a bride in her bloodied sheets. He smoothed the last strands of hair from view with fingers stained still from his wereleopard kills. Then he raised his eyes.

Anger burned there, electrically intense, and deep beyond rational understanding.

Emmon misinterpreted. He took leave of his senses with a scream of rage and lunged to strike, to mangle, to pulp the wretch who had abandoned his sister to an unthinkably, horrible death.

Korendir spun calmly. His attacker towered a full head taller, and at least half again his weight. He deflected the first punch with his forearm, ducked the blow of the second. Light on his feet as a dancer, he snapped his sheathed sword from his belt, then kicked a footstool into Emmon’s shins. The larger man blundered through with a clatter of splitting rungs. Korendir stepped aside and hammered the pommel of his weapon on the back of the giant man’s neck.

Emmon buckled at the knees, then collapsed across splinters of furniture. Korendir picked his way past. Whatever emotion had moved him was gone; the dumbstruck knot of villagers saw nothing except eyes gone silver with cold.

“Somebody stay with him,” the mercenary said in regard to Emmon, who sprawled on the blood-spattered floor. Stiffly he added, “When the great oaf stirs, tell him I’ll guard while he buries his sister.”

Then, steel still in hand, the Master of Whitestorm advanced in the direction of the stairway. Even in outrage over Carralin’s fate, not a man from the town dared prevent him.

In the taproom Korendir chose a trestle and set his dusty boot on one corner. He leaned on his knee and gave the taproom crowd a harsh scrutiny. “I’ll need a dozen men who are unafraid to bear weapons, and six more skilled with a bow. The wereleopards enter Southengard through the caves of the Ellgol, and there, with Neth’s grace, we can stop them. Choose your twelve. Tell them to rest, for I’ll need them wakeful at dusk.”

Korendir paused, his hands too still where they rested on the blade across his thigh. “I also want the boots each man will wear, and the services of your cobbler for today.”

He added nothing more; no excuse for his desertion of Carralin, no boastful account of his kills. He did not ask the healer to attend the scratch on his forearm, but instead disappeared through the outside door. The townsfolk stood rooted in surprise, and even their garrulous chief councilman struggled at a loss for words.

VIII

THE CAVES OF THE ELLGOL

THE PARTY
gathered in the common room at twilight, twelve men packing torches and rucksacks that bulged with weapons and supplies, and six more with filled quivers and bows. The boots of each, from Sethon the miller’s son, to the sinewy bulk of the village blacksmith were newly topped with wereleopard pelt, scraped, but of necessity uncured. Korendir had insisted that the cobbler treat his own footgear the same. When the squeamish craftsman raised objection with words concerning trophies and vanity, the mercenary gave him short shrift. The company from Mel’s Bye relied upon one fact: living wereleopards faltered in their attack if they scented the hide of their slain. That split second of hesitation was all the edge a hunter might get. In that instant a quick man could escape being massacred and make his kill.

Consequently, at sundown the entire party donned their stinking footgear without complaint. They checked their weapons, adjusted pack straps and sword belts, and bemoaned the lack of beer with the bluster men use to bolster each other’s nerves. Korendir sat unconcerned upon a trestle, rebinding his wounded forearm with strips torn from a linen napkin. He finished the knot with his teeth, then tucked the trailing ends into his cuff.

“Are we ready?” he said to his company. He slipped from his perch on the table and made for the door. The innkeeper slipped the bar to let him out. As the panel swung wide, Korendir stepped into gathering night without a glance to see who followed.

The master smith broke the general air of reticence. “Well, lads, can’t leave him to claim all the sport by himself.”

“Oh, easily,” quipped a farmer who wore shovels strapped to his backpack. “I’ll keep my burnt stew and
nagging wife, and leave fey beasts to those who hafta prove they got parts to fill their britches.”

Someone else shouted out from the rear. “Now didn’t I hear your woman singing a different tune, words on the matter of closing yer points with her needle, since what dangled inside seemed lazy as the rest o’ you?”

A shout of laughter answered, while the farmer howled and turned red. “Sheesh, now, who listens to a woman what’s got a mouth so big and bitter you could cure a ham inside?” He trooped down the stair, and almost collided with Korendir, stopped still without warning and all but invisible in his dark clothes. The farmer recoiled into his fellows as the mercenary spoke out in clipped threat.

“You cannot come to the caves.”

Stung, the farmer drew breath to protest; then his vision adjusted to the gloom and he realized the outburst had not pertained to him at all. A hulking shadow blocked Korendir’s path; Emmon Hillgate’s son, with his great thick fists clutched to a pole weapon salvaged from his father’s attic. Failing light touched his mad eyes, and the newly sharpened halberd that gleamed in a crescent-edge of silver above his shoulder.

“I’m going,” said Emmon.

His demand would be argued. Korendir’s tight stance forewarned as much. Moved to boldness by a flood of fear and resentment, the nearest of the farmers said sharply, “He deserves the right, I think.”

Others behind called agreement. Carralin had filled their mugs since she was tall enough to heft a pitcher. Her large-boned, diffident presence was missed at the tap, and in the dark, about to risk themselves against wereleopards, the men of Mel’s Bye readily gave way to disgruntlement. Korendir might deliver their town from danger, but he would be remembered as a man who had pressed his advantage on a girl in a time of misfortune.

“If Emmon is left, I stay also,” said the miller’s son.

His closest companions stood with him, their voices overloud in agreement.

Korendir turned his shoulder toward Emmon. As if the pike did not tremble in hands that yearned to take satisfaction for a sister’s dishonor and death, the mercenary regarded the villagers one by one. Silence fell, stubborn as old rock; Korendir understood its temper.

“There will be death and sorrow if Emmon goes,” he cautioned. “Not of my making; no more can I promise than that.” And quickly, he passed on his way.

Left braced for a challenge that never happened, the villagers reacted belatedly. They shifted packs and tools and swords, and uncomfortably moved to follow. None looked at Emmon; yet when the big man joined the rear of the party, nobody prevented him. They started across the market, while the door boomed closed behind them. Nailed to the oaken panels was the hide of the manformed wereleopard Korendir had slain the previous night, as talisman to augment the safety of the wives, children, and craftsmen left behind.

Full night had fallen. Korendir led through the town, past the stake he had left with the skull of a wereleopard kill as sentinel over empty houses. The farmers at his heels gave the trophy wide berth, except Emmon, who paused to spit in the blood-dried pits of each eye socket. “So will I treat the one who killed Carralin,” he muttered viciously. Those who overheard could not tell which he referred to—the murdering cat-form, or the mercenary.

* * *

The trek from the outlying farmsteads proceeded without talk. Many of the farmers had not crossed their fields since spring sowing, and the rankness of weeds where crops should stand high at harvest weighed sorely upon their hearts. Late-singing mockingbirds called, but corn did not rustle, and the pastures were thick with grass that in better years was grazed short.

Past such evident ill fortune, the unchanged woods seemed a haven. The air under the trees hung thick with the scent of pine. No wind blew, but the footsteps of men who were unskilled at hunting frightened the crickets to silence. Other nocturnal wildlife that might have forewarned of an ambush took flight before the disturbance. The early-rising moon ducked often behind banked clouds; during such intervals the dark beneath the trees became total. Men blundered cursing into branches and roots; except Korendir, who assessed the obstacles as the light dimmed, then paused between steps until his eyes adjusted. Rather than stop and lecture on woodsmanship there and then on the path, the mercenary ordered torches lit. Shortly every other man carried a brand, the unencumbered left to wield weapons.

The party paced onward through oily fumes thrown off by the cressets. If wereleopards lurked close, they stayed concealed in the shadows. The men pressed ahead more confidently. In
time they crossed the blackened swath of ash where Korendir had accomplished his first kill. Now not a trace remained of the flayed corpse; the ground lay tracklessly smooth, and even the scratch-marks of carrion crows did not mar the scorched soil of the site. More sinister still, the burned tree stump where Korendir made his stand had been uprooted and clawed to white splinters.

The discovery was sobering, that wereleopards held regard for their dead. Men felt their mortality more keenly after that, and Korendir, grimly silent, questioned whether the hide bands stitched to each man’s boots held power to inspire anything but rage from the creatures they marched to eradicate. The torches burned just as brightly, but the heady, close air of late summer seemed to drag at the flames, shortening the circle of light. Korendir looked back to take stock of his men and realized that two lagged behind. Emmon and the miller’s son lingered in the swath seared by last night’s fire.

“I see no sign of a wereleopard killed here,” Emmon said loudly.

“You will, and very quickly, if you don’t close ranks and keep moving!” Korendir strode past the column, his intent to assume rear guard where he could keep better watch over stragglers.

Emmon’s chin lifted mulishly. “Look, Sethon, we’re getting a babysitter.”

That moment the wereleopard charged.

Mate of the one slain at that site the night before, she had been stalking in the brush. The scraps of pelt had first deterred her, but now, she sensed dissent among the prey who blundered through the trees. She pressed her advantage and sprang, a bolt of molten gold in the torchlight.

Barely a leaf rustled warning. The men from Mel’s Bye watched to see how Korendir would handle Emmon’s provocation; for only a moment they neglected to remember the forest which hemmed their backs. The crash of a torchbearer and a cry caused them all to spin round in horror. Two bodies rolled in the leaves, one tawny yellow and spotted, the other clothed and struggling.

Korendir dodged past a man too stunned to react, and another one yelling in fear. “Steady those torches!” he shouted. He freed his dagger and completed a whipping throw.

The blade buried with a thump in the ruffed torso of the predator, which was nakedly female. Korendir kept moving. Even as the wereleopard’s death cry reverberated through the forest, he crouched down, barehandedly grasped the beast’s shoulder and flung her off her prey.

Fangs raked the air; venom drops flew like jewels through torchlight. Despite Korendir’s swift recoil, spatters caught the linen that bandaged his wrist. The material blackened instantly. Korendir slipped the knot, shredded the tainted fabric off, and with no break in motion, grasped the man and dragged him clear of the wereleopard’s death throes.

Blood leaked in trails from the wounded man’s body.

In agony, striving to stifle screams, he flopped wretchedly in the leaves. Boiled leather wrist guards had spared him the wereleopard’s venom, but the elbow savaged by her forecIaws was a mess of mangled bone.

“Merciful Neth,” murmured a bystander. Someone else doubled over and retched in the brush.

“Stay together,” snapped Korendir. His hands, the same hands that had killed on an instant’s notice, now explored the downed man’s body with gentleness and dispatch. Yet even had he owned a surgeon’s skill, no succor would avail. The smell of blood and feces hung heavy on the air and even the squeamish who averted their eyes understood that the injured man’s plight was hopeless. The wereleopard’s spurred toes had raked open his abdomen, then shredded the gut inside.

Even Emmon’s deranged scorn abated at the sight. A man could not die cleanly from such mauling; if luck ran against him his agony might drag on for a fortnight.

The stricken man was aware. “Don’t bring me back to my daughters like this,” he pleaded. “I beg you, don’t.”

Korendir regarded the clustered bystanders. “Does Vwern have kin present?” That he knew the man’s name startled no one at the time; their minds were shocked numb by catastrophe. “Is there one friend brave enough to complete this man’s request?”

Feet shuffled through leaves; hands loosened from the hilts of weapons, and no man would meet any other man’s eyes. Emmon stood with bent head, his great fists sliding up and down the weathered shaft of his pike.

At some point the wereleopard’s thrashing ceased. She lay on her back, her surprisingly human breasts upthrust and gleaming in firelight. No one seemed anxious to approach her, but even less willingly would they contemplate what must be done for their comrade.

“Very well,” said Korendir, his voice like steel against silence. “Sethon, take Emmon’s pike. Bind up the killed beast and sling her on the pole. Then, all of you, move out upstream.”

The men did not have to be reminded to stick together.

Spurred by an embarrassment of relief, they offered their belts and bootlaces and helped Sethon lash the carcass.

Korendir remained kneeling in fir needles. One hand supported the wounded man’s head, while the other eased the collar loose at his neck.

“I am glad it’s to be you,” gasped Vwern, valiantly trying to shed hurt that had nothing to do with torn flesh. “At least you’re a man who knows the best place for the knife.”

Korendir said nothing, but slipped his dark cloak and arranged it over the victim’s chilled flesh. Then he settled on his heels, waiting, while around them the men finished off with the wereleopard. Trembling with nerves, Sethon returned the mercenary’s dagger. Someone had wiped the blade clean. Korendir accepted the obsidian hilt. On the inside of his wrist, where Vwern could not see, he carefully tested the edges. Satisfied that wereleopard bones had left no nicks in the steel, Korendir nodded dismissal to the miller’s son.

The farmers banded together and departed. Torchlight flickered and faded between the trees. Alone under the moon’s fitful gleam, the motionless man and the doomed one each took a breath in preparation.

“Strike now,” urged Vwern. The quick shock of accident was wearing off, and suffering tugged at his voice. “—T’would just compound my mistake, if you got attacked on account of me.”

Korendir’s reply held a gentleness no ears left living had ever heard. “Not yet.” He reached out in darkness and unerringly found the victim’s fingers, then grasped with a grip that was warm, as if death did not hover in the wings. “First tell me the names of your daughters.”

Vwern stifled a sob. “There are three. Nessie, Mallie, and Tesh. She’s youngest, and blond, like her mother, though Mallie, maybe, is prettier. I love them all,” he added, as if the mercenary might not understand; as a father, he had no favorite.

“Nessie, Mallie, and Tesh, who is blond,” Korendir repeated. He made a small movement, then added, “They’ll be safe, Vwern. On my life, I swear they’ll prosper, and marry, and live to raise children in your memory.”