Honor and Blood

by James Galloway

  What happened after that was probably going to get him into a great deal of trouble with Fae-da'Nar. The Were-wolves reached him and immediately attacked. Tarrin, who was already annoyed and still had the fresh memories of his tangle with the Were-boar in mind, wasn't in the mood to show neither mercy nor quarter. The Were-wolves showed no fear of a solitary Were-cat--until, of course, their numbers began bursting into flames at the wave of a paw from the Were-cat. Tarrin wasn't stupid enough to fight fifteen Were-wolves claw to fang, so he chastised them mightily with his magic. So mightily, in fact, that only three managed to live long enough to get out of the meadow.

  Tarrin grew a dim opinion of his Were cousins at that point. If all Were didn't like the Were-cats, that was fine. But if they were going to attack him, they were going to pay the price for their stupidity.

  Nobaka. The Sha'Kar word for fool.

  Outside of those two little adventures, the passage through the Frontier had been uneventful, and a little blurred. He was running almost twenty hours a day now, just like a Selani, moving with a desparate urgency to reach Suld in time. Thoughts of that and daydreams of visiting Aldreth had occupied his mind and allowed him to run freely, making the time just fly by. It seemed like it was only a couple of days ago that he entered the Frontier. Then again, it did get a little unpleasant when the rains started. Tarrin tried to ignore it at first, but it was just too cold and too unpleasant. So he Conjured up a cloak that was waterproof. That helped, but it had been a while since his feet and trousers had been dry, and that cold, clammy feeling made the cool air that much more unpleasant.

  The weather wasn't the only thing that had changed. The brown skin of his tan had steadily faded with the days under the forest canopy, away from the sun. He didn't look like an Arakite anymore, but he did still have a dark tan that made him look slightly bronzed, like an Arkisian with a light complexion.

  The time in the Frontier hadn't been totally alone. Keritanima had been contacting him daily, and she kept to her new pattern of calling to him around noon every day to talk. Allia had also started doing that, but her calls came near sunset. It was good to keep in communication with his sisters, but there wasn't much that they could say through the amulets, because of the risks involved. It was usually little more than smalltalk, though Keritanima did pass on information through Jenna, letting his sister talk to him in that place that only the two of them could enter. More and more of her troops had arrived, and Keritanima had managed to convince the Council and most of the city that they were there to defend Suld against the possibility of an attack, not outright preparing for an attack they knew was coming. This was a logical conclusion, given that Dal armies were laying siege to Ultern, and were only ten days' march from the walls of Suld. The Wikuni and Vendari had done a good job to make what looked like general preparations, nothing extreme or specific, while doing their real preparing in the darkness of night. Tarrin had worried slightly that the Vendari honesty would ruin the subterfuge, but Vendari were warriors. They knew when to keep their mouths shut. They understood that surprise was a key to battle, and surprise could not be achieved if the enemy knew what to expect. They simply said nothing, and allowed their Wikuni comrades to do the lying for them.

  He had also seen Jenna three times, taking time to join with the Weave and meet with her in the Heart. It was there that he learned what was really going on, for Keritanima told Jenna, and Jenna told him. Jenna hadn't managed to regain her powers yet, but he had already begun teaching her the broad generalities involved with using Weavespinner magic, and had also given her some instruction on how to use High Sorcery. He didn't like having to pause to do that, but Jenna's instruction was nearly as important as his reaching Suld. If he couldn't make it in time, Jenna's power may be the only thing standing between the ki'zadun and the Goddess. He wasn't going to let her enter a battle like that without preparing her for it. It was a great deal to ask of a fourteen year old--fifteen next month--but he had every confidence that Jenna would do the Goddess proud.

  Jenna would be ready. She'd have her powers back in time. He was certain of it.

  Tarrin looked up the road, then down the road, then up the road again. It seemed...travelled. Too travelled. The road usually didn't see a traveller a ride, but the muddy road had wagon ruts, hoofprints, and bootprints churned into its surface. Some of those bootprints were too large to be human. So it was true; Aldreth was under occupation. That made him a bit wary and fearful, and he was worried at what he might find there.

  But showing up like this was not the smart thing to do. Absently, Tarrin shifted into his human form, sending his clothes and his sword into the elsewhere, then reached within and Conjured forth suitable plain, nondescript clothing for his human body, in the style common in Aldreth. The itch of holding the human shape had already started, but it wasn't anything that would become a problem any time soon. It would be best to drift in looking like a nearby farmer. Pulling the hood of his cloak over his head, feeling a bit weird that it wasn't pressing down on cat ears, Tarrin turned northwest, towards the village that had been his home for seventeen years.

  The rain fizzled out as he turned a slight bend and found himself looking at the village he considered to be home, the village of Aldreth. A strange tumult of emotions rose up in him, seeing the familiar buildings and houses of his home village, but he did see changes. Some of the buildings were new, having been built on the foundations of old homes, but two houses that had once been there were gone, with only bare patches of soggy, muddy earth to mark their locations. One of them was the herbalist's shop and home, the other was the home of Darl Millen and his family, the village wheelright. The Road's End Inn still stood at the foot of the bridge over Cold Water Creek, but what worried Tarrin was the new, rather large log building that had been built beside it, a building who flew the flag of Daltochan.

  It was a barracks. Two men stood flanking that door, wrapped in wet cloaks and looking miserable. Both men were unshaven and slovenly, and their pikes were in bad condition. Aside from those two men, there was nobody else to be seen, anywhere. It was almost eerie.

  Tarrin came over the bridge and approached the Road's End Inn. The door was closed, but there was smoke wafting from the chimney to show him that it was indeed open. He opened the door and stepped inside, looking into the place and seeing that it had not changed in the slightest since the last time he'd seen it. It was still an open, bright room with a hearth and fire crackling, and candles hanging from an iron chandelier hanging from the ceiling. There were six tables spread on the floor of the common room, and a low bar with casks of ale and wine behind it on the far wall, beside the door to the kitchen. Most of those tables were occupied by burly, unkempt men with black hair and bristling beards, wearing rusty chain jacks and splotched tunics under them. They had the look of Karn Rocksplitter; they were all Dal soldiers. About twelve of them, and they all looked hung over and unfriendly.

  Wylan Ren was standing behind the bar, a slightly annoyed look on his face. He looked much thinner than Tarrin remembered, with dark circles under his eyes, and a very pinched mouth that looked out of place on the usually friendly, jovial fellow. Tarrin couldn't suppress a smile when he saw the man, who had been a friend to the Kael family for as long as Tarrin could remember, and he quickly made his way through the drinking soldiers to come stand in front of the bar.

  "Can I help you, goodman?" Wylan asked in a hollow tone. Had the occupation taken that much out of the energetic man?

  "I'm sure you could," Tarrin said to him, and that made Wylan's eyes pick up immediately. Though Tarrin looked more mature than Wylan probably remembered, Tarrin's voice hadn't changed.

  "Tarrin?" he asked in a strangled, low tone. "Tarrin, is that you?"

  "I'm afraid so," Tarrin grinned at him.

  Wylan grasped his hand strongly and warmly, then reached over the bar and clapped the taller man on the back. "It's good to see you, my boy!" he said exuberantly, but still in a low tone. "But--" he looked around
. "But I heard that you were, well, different looking."

  Tarrin smiled ruefully. Father's letters, he had little doubt. Father had told the villagers some of what had happened. "It's true, Wylan," he admitted. "But I have a few tricks that let me move around without attracting much attention."

  "Regardless of that, it's just so good to see you!" he said happily, motioning for Tarrin to sit at a stool by the bar. Wylan pulled up a tankard and filled it with ale, then set it in front of him before pulling up the stool he kept behind the bar and sitting down across from him. "How are your parents?"

  "They're fine, and so is my sister," he replied. "But what is all this? What's happened here, Wylan?"

  "What you see, I'm afraid," he sighed. "We don't have an army, my boy, so when the Dals came, we simply accepted it. Darl Millen and Lars the herbalist were killed during a nasty confrontation after they took over, and the Goblinoids burned down the houses of the Yeats, the Mikels, and the Longbranches. Jak is hiding in the forest now because he killed a Dal soldier after they burned down his house, and they retaliated by killing the rest of the family."

  That made Tarrin wince. The Longbranches were good people. Myra and Stef Longbranch, the parents, were good-hearted people, and Lili Longbranch was a very cute little girl with a love of butterflies. Jak was one of Tarrin's few friends, and it hurt him that his friend had had to suffer through the deaths of his family members. "I'm sorry to hear that, Wylan," Tarrin said sincerely. "The Longbranches were good people."

  "I know. Well, they had a large garrison here, but after the Goblinoids started to die off, they moved them out and left about twenty or so men here to enforce their law. I think the Forest Folk in the Frontier didn't like the beasts so close to their homes, so they came out and killed them off."

  "Probably," Tarrin agreed. "The Forest Folk really hate Goblinoids."

  "Outside of that, things have been pretty calm," he continued. "We don't give the soldiers much reason to do anything, and they leave us alone." He leaned in and whispered. "I suggest you don't raise too much attention. You look like a villager, but if these men realize you came from somewhere else, they'll arrest you."

  "They'll try," Tarrin said in a grim tone that made Wylan's eyebrow raise. "I'm debating what to do about those soldiers before I leave."

  "Just don't cause a scene, lad!" Wylan whispered. "Any you kill will just be replaced by others, and we'll be the ones to pay for it!"

  "I wouldn't put you in danger, Wylan," Tarrin said calmly.

  "Barkeep! More ale!" one of the Dal soldiers burst out.

  Wylan gave Tarrin a roll of his eyes, then poured a tankard of ale and scurried out to the Dal soldier and handed it to him. The man took a drink of it, then spat half of it out onto the table. "This is swill!" the man said harshly to Wylan.

  "It's all I have left," Wylan said flintily. "If you men would pay for what you drink, I'd have the money to buy better ale to replace what's gone." Wylan crossed his arms. "And when that's gone, I'll have to close the inn. I'll have nothing left."

  "Stinking backwater," the soldier snorted. "Why don't they garrison us in Torrian? They have lots of ale there."

  "Let's just confiscate the goods to run down to Torrian and buy it ourselves," one of the other soldiers suggested with an evil glint in his eye.

  "We get nothing but local slop since the army moved the supply lines from here to moving through Torrian," another soldier complained. "I'm getting tired of wearing boots with holes in them."

  Tarrin picked up at that. Moved the supply lines? Not getting anything? It sounded like the Dals had written off Aldreth as another conquered village, and its remoteness had caused them to more or less forget about it. That was something he very much liked to know. He could very well kill off the Dals and leave Aldreth free, without worrying about them suffering reprisals.

  "If you hadn't have threatened the cobbler, he wouldn't have run off with his family into the forest, Kag," one man told the complainer sourly. "Then we'd all have new boots."

  Garyth the cobbler, hiding in the forest? He was the village mayor!

  A plan formed in Tarrin's mind. Right here, in this room, he had a large block of the Dal occupying force. If he killed them off, it would be a simple matter to finish off the remainders without too much danger to the village. Aldreth's remote location had caused the Dals to more or less forget about it, and that would give Tarrin enough time to ensure that they couldn't retake the village, no matter how meny men they had.

  Wylan returned behind the bar and sat back down across from Tarrin. "I'm surprised you came here first, Tarrin," he said in a low tone. "Why, we all thought you'd have gone home first, and seen your wife."

  "Wife?" Tarrin said with a scoff. "Wylan, I doubt I'm ever going to get married."

  "Well, who's that woman that lives out on your old farm, then?" he asked curiously. "Garyth used to talk to her all the time before he started hiding. He said that you and her were--well, you were married."

  "Wylan, I seriously doubt that any woman would marry me," Tarrin said with a chuckle.

  "She's--well, she looks alot more like you than you do at the moment," he said delicately, looking at the Dal soldiers again.

  Tarrin's eyes bored into Wylan. "What do you mean?"

  Giving the soldiers a furtive look, Wylan put his hands on either side of his head and raised two fingers in a crude imitation of cat's ears.

  "She is? She's living on the farm?"

  Wylan nodded. "Garyth said she was waiting there for you. She's been living on the farm, raising her baby. The soldiers never go out there, and we villagers keep her a secret to make sure she's not hassled."

  Mist? Could it be Mist? Mist knew where he had lived beforehand. "Why would she come out here?" Tarrin said in confusion, mainly to himself. "She wouldn't bring her son anywhere near a human settlement."

  "Son? Garyth said she had a girl, not a boy."

  "What?" Tarrin asked, his voice rising a bit higher than was good for him. "A girl?" he asked in a hissing tone. "The only woman I know with a child has a boy."

  "She certainly knows you, Tarrin."

  "What does she look like?"

  "She's taller than me, with red hair and white--uh, white hair. She--"

  Tarrin turned away from him so quickly that he nearly fell over. Jesmind! That was Jesmind! And Jesmind had a daughter! Why was she here? What possessed her to go get frisky with another Were-cat and then bring that child onto his farm? His mother would have an absolute fit! And that didn't count how it made him feel!

  A whirlwind of emotions rose up in him, memories of Jesmind, of their fights and their intimacy, the longings and the anger he'd felt towards her after they separated. It all seemed to come crashing down over his head, because now, not three longspans from where he was standing, Jesmind was in his old house, on his old land, raising a baby in a place where it--and she--did not belong. Tarrin clenched a hand into a fist, so hard that his knuckles turned white, as the anger of feeling betrayed by the woman he once loved nearly overwhelmed his sense of logic, logic that told him to go see Jesmind and find out what was going on before flying off the handle.

  He knew that Jesmind was her own woman, and had the right to dally with any male she chose, but how dare she bring that child back to his home! It was an outrage!

  "Here now, the young man here looks a tad miffed," one of the Dal soldiers laughed evilly. "Did your girlfriend throw you out?"

  The gaze Tarrin levelled on that soldier was very nearly inhuman, a look of absolute, utter disregard for the man's life that would have even done Tarrin's Were-cat form proud.

  "It looks like this one has an attitude problem, Gart," another soldier said with an ugly laugh. "Think we should teach him some manners?"

  "Gentlemen, please," Wylan said quickly. Wylan fully understood the incredible danger those men were now in, if his father had written anything about Tarrin's change of personality. "I beg you, not here, not now. Leave the lad be, he's just received some
bad news."

  "Aww, poor little backwater sop," the man that had first spoken to him, a narrow-faced man with pockmarks and a missing front tooth, said with a nasty grin. "What, your chicken just died? Or maybe your woman found out what it was like to get it from a real man, eh?"

  That was one remark too many. With an outraged howl, Tarrin burst through his human clothing as he changed form, returning to his towering, menacing Were-cat body, and then immediately hooked his claws into the offendor before the man could even register that his life was about to end. With a grasping paw and a quick twist, Tarrin literally tore the man's head off, sending a showering geyser of blood flying from the wrenched neck. The other men in the inn began screaming in terror and jumping to their feet, but their shock and surprise spelled the end of their lives as the enraged Were-cat tossed the dead body aside and waded into their midst, claws sending blood, flesh, cloth, bits of armor, even wood from tables and chairs flying as he entered a frenzy of absolute destruction. The terrified screams became wails of the mortally wounded and the dying as Tarrin savaged the entire common room, killing anything he could reach, heading off every man that tried to flee for the door. The few that did manage to draw weapons and feverishly fight for their lives found that they did absolutely nothing to this nightmare before them, that stabbing the monster only made it that much more angry.

  It was over in a surprisingly short time. Tarrin stood in the middle of the destroyed common room, standing in the middle of the destruction he had wrought. He stood on shards of table and chair, on the eviscerated flesh and exposed bone of piles of meat that could no longer be identified as human. The floor and walls, even the ceiling, were covered in spattered blood and the occasional morsel of flesh that had managed to stick to the whitewashed walls or timber-beamed ceiling. Panting heavily to regain control of himself, to ease himself out of the rage, the blood-streaked Were-cat closed bloody paws into fists and forced the Cat back into its place within his mind.