by Janny Wurts
The wereleopard proved to be finicky; it gorged on the choicer entrails and left what remained for the crows. Korendir straightened with a disturbed frown. He cleaned his dagger and sheathed the blade with hands still bloodied from the dog. Then, as the townsmen nervously inclined toward departure, he lingered to study the pad marks left by the cat-form demon. He marked off the sixteen paces of the beast's closing spring, and its satiated stride as it departed. At the end, the onlookers who expected comment were disappointed. In absolute silence, Korendir vaulted a stile and strode back toward the town tavern.
Day was fading. Shadows striped the lanes with purple and the western sky blazed red. Korendir set a brisk pace, and the short-legged chief councilman had to strain to keep up. After a time it became more than plain that no information would be offered. Gathering his nerve, the plump official ventured inquiry. "What will you do?"
"Kill wereleopards." As if unwilling to be bothered, the mercenary's stride increased.
Frustrated as much by his brevity, the chief councilman broke into a trot. Unaccustomed exertion caused his tunic to ruck above the belt; his belly jiggled, and his face turned redder. He would not yield to indignity, but gasped between puffs to Korendir, "How will you do this? Wereleopards have outrun the postrider's horses. One snapped the spine of a bullock in a single bite."
The Master of Whitestorm glanced aside, that moment aware of the councilman's discomfort. He slowed at once. "Tomorrow, when I've explored the river in the hills, I'll tell you."
The chief councilman frowned, absorbed by the need to tug his tunic straight. This answer was far from satisfactory, not when every man in Mel's Bye had pledged his next harvest to borrow gold. If the mercenary hired with the sum failed to rout the wereleopard, there would be no crops, and no hands left to sow seed. The farmers and their families would be ruined. Breathless, sweating, and badly in need of reassurance, the chief councilman surrendered to rumpled dignity with a sigh. He regarded the taciturn man at his side, and something indefinable warned him against pressing with further questions.
An adventurer who had singlehandedly lifted the Blight of Torresdyr, then freed the cliffs of Whitestorm from a weather elemental could not be expected to welcome the chore of justifying his intentions with talk.
Night fell over the settlement of Mel's Bye. Townsmen and farmers crowded the taproom in the tavern until chairs and stools ran short. Latecomers perched upon trestles. When every available space had been taken, others stood or leaned against the walls, some of them mothers with infants in their arms, others commandeering floor space for toddlers asleep in blankets. Every cranny in between became filled with boisterous children. A few elderly denizens drank themselves senseless to escape the pandemonium. The young men chose other options. Emmon Hillgate's son climbed a joist and lounged in the roof beams, which were smoke-stained and dusty, but broad enough to accommodate even his muscled bulk. From there he surveyed the scene with dark, mad eyes, and observed the one place in the tavern that was not jammed with townsfolk.
The corner where Korendir of Whitestorm sat was empty for a yard on either side.
Earlier, while the mercenary sharpened his sword, the reach of the blade had forced would-be bystanders to a distance. Now finished with his steel, his whetstone laid aside, the space around him remained. In solitary, Korendir settled before the trencher brought to him by the tavernmaid. Nobody else intruded on his presence. He ate his meal without inviting conversation. Even Lain, who had shared his company on the road for six weeks, hesitated to renew the acquaintanceship.
The evening progressed. Carralin cleared away the crockery, and closed the tap for the night. Despite her bulky frame and square jaw, her kindly endowed figure and honest manner had attracted a string of suitors who outdid each other to win her attentions. But tonight, as she made her rounds with bucket and cloth, it was the mercenary's table she lingered over.
Her brother noticed, and frowned from his perch in the rafters.
When finally the beer mugs stood emptied, the talk among the townsmen faltered. The silence and the darkness beyond the inn's shuttered windows seemed to weigh upon everyone; except Korendir, who sat at the trestle pushing breadcrumbs into patterns with his thumb.
"He's considering strategy," ventured someone, but at a whisper that the mercenary would not hear.
Emmon Hillgate's son held no such restraint. He called loudly from the eaves, and asked how a wereleopard could be intimidated by the arrangement of a banquet suited for mice. The nearer of the townsfolk shifted in embarrassment, but the insult failed to provoke a response.
Korendir raised eyes like northern ocean and announced his intention to retire.
Carralin showed him to his chamber, the inn's best, situated at the end of a gabled corridor on the second floor. The furnishings included hand-sewn rugs, chests fashioned of cedar, and a bedstead tasseled in scarlet, green, and turquoise, more tailored to the tastes of Southengard merchants than to the comfort of a hired sword. Korendir tossed the pillows against the footboard without compunction. He followed by reversing the blankets and quilted coverlet.
Carralin watched his movements with huge eyes as she lit the candle on the nightstand. Diffident, almost wistful, she gathered her courage and asked, "Would my lord like his boots removed? The lad downstairs could oil and polish them."
"Thank you, no." The Master of Whitestorm lifted the candle from under her chapped hands and moved to the window. There he became engrossed in the study of catches, latches, and hinges. Carralin lingered, absorbed by a longing quite at odds with her brother's provocations. Aware of her worshipful presence, Korendir said pointedly, "Your inn has seen to my needs well enough."
"Then I bid you goodnight, my lord." Carralin retreated quietly; and because she turned down her wick to save oil, her disappointment was lost in the shadows.
While her step faded down the stair, Korendir left the window. He snuffed the candle and settled against the footboard with his boots still on. The tasteless dangle of the tassels never influenced his decision; he had simply selected the position that offered the only clear view through the casement. That left him vulnerable through the door at his back, but the folk at the inn were no threat. Danger in Mel's Bye came from wereleopards changed to man-form at nightfall, and well able to climb mortared stone, or cross the sloping shingles shared in common with the innyard stables.
Poised between vigilance and sleep, Korendir reflected upon the deerhound's corpse lying disembowelled by one long swipe of claws. The animal had known no chance to turn, fight, or flee. The carnage had happened faster than reflex, swifter even than thought. One glance had confirmed to Korendir how pitifully inadequate mortal resource would be against the golden killers from Ardmark. Yet if the prospect of ridding Mel's Bye of their predations daunted him, he fretted not at all. He rested motionless, thinking, his hand settled loosely on his sword. Sometime after midnight, he dozed. A half moon rose in the east and glazed the mullioned windowpanes in light.
Sound roused him, a furtive scrape followed by the creak of a floorboard. Korendir's fingers clenched to his weapon the same instant he opened his eyes.
A shadow eclipsed one square of the casements.
Driven by explosive reflex, Korendir shot from repose. Barely had his feet struck the carpet when sword steel sang from his sheath and flashed, point first, to kill.
Yet his adversary was no wereleopard, nor even a thief come for plunder. Draft from the opened door wafted an odor of perfume, a cheap scent similar to ones worn by women who traded their favors for coin. Korendir registered this at the last second. He recoiled in mid-lunge and turned his blade, just barely. The flat, not the edge, grazed the importunate female across the throat. Momentum was never so easily bridled. His follow-through hammered one quillon against her collarbone and jarred her back on her heels.
Korendir caught her left-handed as she tottered. He spun his own body with the last of his control, and managed to cushion her fall. The hard edge of a cl
othes chest bashed his ribs and his sword pommel clanged on the basin which rested on top. Wash water flooded in a sheet over his shoulders, soaking his dark tunic, and the hair of the doxie, which was silky, long, and sweetened with the smell of cherry blossoms.
With the girl's soft breasts against his chest, Korendir leaned forward to ease his bruised side. The slight shift of weight exposed her square jaw to the moonlight.
Recognition caused him to drop his steel as if burned. "Carralin!"
She twisted against his neck, hoarsely gasping for air. Korendir pushed aside her collar and explored her throat. He felt no cuts, no smashed cartilage, only inflamed skin. She would show a bruise by the morning, a small enough penalty. Neth alone knew how close she had come to being skewered. Korendir expelled a quivering breath.
"Why did you come here?"
The words came out harshly. Carralin collapsed against his shoulder, weeping. Convulsed by the aftermath of shock and fear, she could not answer. Kneeling with her young body pressed to his chest and flank, Korendir was aware how scantily she was clothed. Draft from the doorway chilled her flesh, and her small, hardened nipples thrust against the thin muslin of her shift. Even the abundance of perfume could not mask the healthy, female attraction of her.
Korendir moved as if goaded. He gathered his scattered composure, adjusted his legs, and rose with the girl cradled in his arms. Two steps saw him across the floor. Then, as if her flesh might scald him, he shed her clinging weight onto the coverlet of his bed.
Carralin snuggled into the still warm hollow left by his body. Her weeping eased slightly and she reached for him, plain in her need for comfort. But lightly as shadow, Korendir evaded her. Moonlight revealed him; across the room, he bent and recovered his sword from the floor. Then, with barely a creak of floorboards, he returned and sat upon the mattress by the tavern girl's knee. The sword, gripped in too-white knuckles, rested point downward against the scrubbed boards of the floor.
"You shouldn't have come here, Carralin."
His tone was hoarse, as if he had been running and fought to control his breathing. Carralin extended her hand, but the dark of his tunic lay just beyond reach of her fingertips. Frustration, and the memory of the blade that had attacked out of nowhere crumbled her fragile composure. She fought her voice steady. "Lord, I wanted comfort. I wanted to give comfort. My father, my younger brother, my sister, my mother—all are dead. Emmon is the last of my family that wereleopards haven't slaughtered, and he is mad with grief. Now you'll go out, and also be killed—"
Korendir stopped her words with a curt shake of his head. "That isn't what your councilmen are paying me for. Not to come here and die."
Carralin did not argue, but gulped in a spasm that rocked her body. "My lord, you must listen! They are murderous and fey, those creatures. The dark is their time of terror, and I can't sleep for the nightmares."
Korendir sucked in a ragged breath. He rose and trod briskly to the casement; for a long time he stood staring out over fields where the wheat lay rotting like mudflats sheared by a storm tide. "Fey they may be, but the wereleopards aren't invincible. They can be made to bleed and die like any man."
"How?" Carralin's voice showed more hysteria than belief. "How will you kill a thing that moves faster than a man, and carries a poisoned bite?"
Korendir turned with a vicious smile. "When I find out, I'll skin the pelts of the slain for your hearth rug."
Carralin sat up, shocked. The coverlet crumpled under her hips as she swung her long legs to the floor. Moonlight touched her shift like smoke, and the ripe, rounded body underneath. "You have no plan," she accused.
Korendir said nothing. Backlight from the window masked his expression, as though he deliberately hid something.
"You have no plan," Carralin repeated, frightened. She fingered her shift with hands that in shadow no longer seemed chapped. Her thread of composure broke. She hurled herself across the chamber, painfully in need of male contact to bolster her failed reassurance.
Korendir's hands caught her shoulders, not gently. Unprepared for the roughness of him, Carralin cried out. Her discomfort softened nothing, but seemed only to sting him to further harshness. She glimpsed his face as he twisted: impervious to pity as sleet-smoothed granite.
Then he spilled her gracelessly onto the windowseat, and retreated to the darkest corner of the room.
Disheveled, disturbed beyond tears, Carralin listened to the rasp of his breath. With a shock of intuition, she interpreted his distress as avoidance. Surprise supplanted her terror. She blunted her edges of uncertainty with husky, female command. "My Lord of Whitestorm, how long since you shared your bed with a woman?"
He did not answer. Painfully still, Carralin waited while he recovered a control that chilled the heart to contemplate. When his breathing steadied, and still, he did not speak, she tossed back long hair and shamelessly stepped forward so the moon would highlight her body. "How long, my lord?"
Korendir shifted slightly in the darkness. Carralin could not see him to know that his eyes were closed, his jaw clenched hard against words. His hands stayed clamped to his face, as if the feminine beauty of her called up some private hell that seared his sanity to envision. Only one thing held meaning for him in this world. Like a litany, he locked his mind upon memory of Whitestorm's windy heights; the dream of the holdfast begun there seemed to steady him.
His throat unlocked. Most of the sweat dried from his brow, and he framed the best words he could manage. "Lady, there is only one comfort a man like me can offer." Taut as the hair-trigger latch on a crossbow, he snatched his sword from the bedstead. On through the opened door he hastened, and never once looked back.
The girl on the windowseat stared after him, confused and startled to anger. "Great Neth, you've gone crazy!" She called again, unwilling to believe his tread on the stair. "Go out by dark and you'll be torn to screaming pieces."
Korendir never answered. He did not return. Touched by unassuagable sorrow, Carralin hurled herself onto his empty bed. He had gone, been driven away by the very consolaton she begged to offer and receive in turn. The sheets where his lean, swordsman's body had lain seemed suddenly chill as a grave. Carralin muffled her weeping in his pillow. As her tears soaked the linen beneath her cheek, she exhausted herself finally into sleep.
* * *
The taproom of the inn was not empty when Korendir reached the bottom of the stair. Oil lamps still burned over the trestles; between starred swaths of shadow and light, the master of the tavern sat guarding the door, a pipe of Sithmark clay clenched between stumpy teeth. He turned his head as Korendir crossed the floor. His eyes glinted through a haze of smoke and his dark brows lifted in surprise.
"I thought, when you asked to retire, that you'd put aside your quest until morning." And he grinned, sure indication that he knew of Carralin's excursion up the stair.
Korendir tested the sharpness of the swordblade which rested unsheathed in his hands. "Not anymore." He set the point down, leaned the quillons against his knee, then caught his cloak from the peg in the common room. His wrists moved, once, and cloth settled soundlessly over his shoulders. "Open your door, good man."
The innkeeper jumped up and gestured with the hand that clutched the pipe. "You can't be serious! In the dark, the wereleopards are changed to man-form, and—"
Korendir flashed a glance that killed the man's protest to silence. The lanterns burned steadily as he adjusted his garment to free his sword arm, then lifted his weapon from the floor. "Your townsfolk hired me to kill wereleopards."
The baleful intensity of him daunted; the innkeeper stared at the unnaturally still face, then the poised blade. The angle of the steel was not friendly. Caught at a loss, he stood aside. "We've gone into debt for a suicide," he muttered as Korendir brushed past.
The mercenary set to work upon bolts and bars. Moved by the man's brash courage, the innkeeper reached behind his chair and lifted a heavy, bronze lamp that once had served a freight raft as
storm lantern. "Take this along," he urged. "Merciful Neth, out there you may need a light."
Korendir thrust his wrist through the carrying ring. "Light the wick," he said quietly.
The innkeeper bit his pipe and complied with hands a great deal less steady. Spark snapped from the striker, and flame flared with a hiss and a reek of hot oil. Korendir closed the shutters and set his fingers to the door latch.
As he pushed the panel wide and stepped out, the innkeeper groped for words to wish him luck. Not a sound left his lips. The Master of Whitestorm crossed the board stoop and descended the stair beyond, then his cloak blended indistinguishably with a night pitch black with threat.
The innkeeper's nerve vanished with the mercenary. Overcome by shivering panic, the portly man banged his door shut and dropped the bar with a crash that shook the lintels. Then, bereft of confidence, he scrabbled in the gloom for the tobacco pouch he had laid aside, but could not remember where.
* * *
The moon dropped behind the wooded slopes that flanked the River Ellgol. There the water flowed in a shallow, reed-choked channel, dragged to white snags where the current tumbled over obstructions. Korendir did not walk the banks to trace the river's course, but instead picked his way along the ridge top, where the chuckle and rush of the foam did not fill his ears to distraction. The heavy, shuttered lantern swung on his arm and his sword was poised ready in his hand. He had crossed the bare fields of Mel's Bye without disturbing so much as a shadow, but reassurance did not follow. Only during daylight did wereleopards prowl the open; in man-form, they preferred to lurk under cover. Korendir made his way forward with slow, tentative strides. He waited for the rustle of each footfall to end before starting his following step.
Between times, he listened to the infrequent croak of frogs, the rasped songs of crickets, the sigh of wind through evergreen boughs. For a league or more, the forest night seemed tranquil. His nose burned with the reek of hot oil, and his palm sweated on his sword hilt. He eased himself over a deadfall; his cloak scraped across rotting bark with a soft slither of sound. Abruptly the crickets stopped chirping. Korendir stiffened, took another step, paused. Then, from behind came a staccato snap as a twig broke.
