“What do they want?” one of the young ones asked an elder. For answer, he only got a shake of the head. The knights began to throw themselves against their bonds.
“Let us loose,” Loisan demanded hoarsely. The male hesitated. “Hurry! We would defend ourselves. Would you deny us that?”
The male took a knife out of his belt and flung it. It landed point down in the dirt beside Loisan. The burly lieutenant lost no time in cutting himself free. He sprang up and hurried to Lar Romini. Romini pulled a skewer out of the fire to use as a makeshift sword. As his fellow scholars were unbound, they went for whatever they could find for weapons, their eyes constantly returning to the descending fiends.
Inbecca strained frantically against her bonds, but these were no courtesy knots. The dark wings swirled down toward them, blotting out the moon. The three thraiks screamed, tearing the air with the sound. Inbecca cowered down. She had never seen them so near before. No wonder Tildi was terrified of them. The werewolves and the growing pack of freed knights went on guard.
The winged beasts had dark, greasy scales that picked up the firelight. Their featherless wings were like those of bats, but horrible, with claws like scythes at the end of each joint. Their long tails whipped around their legs as they dropped to mere yards over the campsite. The leader, bigger than the other two, let out another horrifying shriek. He dropped like an eagle, talons first, toward Sharhava. The abbess was agape with terror.
“Aunt!” Inbecca screamed.
Almost before the word left her lips, a form flew past her like a ball shot from a cannon. The black-furred male sprang in between Sharhava and the descending thraik. He set the haft of the spear against his chest and snarled a challenge.
The thraik arrested its stoop and fluttered upward, surprised. It took little time to rethink its attack. Hissing, it wheeled around, wings spread, looking for an opening. The male tracked it with the point of the spear. By this time the slower-moving humans had joined in the defense. Loisan, clutching a burning branch, brandished it at the enemy.
“Come here, foul creature, I dare you!” he bellowed.
He was knocked sprawling from behind. The other two thraiks descended upon the crowd of defenders. They lashed out with spread talons. Loisan picked himself up and retrieved his torch. He thrust it into the face of the thraik behind him. Brouse, hurrying to his side, smashed upward with a piece of wood as thick as his arm, knocking away the spread talons of the attacker. It shrieked and closed its jaws on his forearm. Brouse let out a yell of pain. The wood went flying. More knights came to Loisan’s aid. The werewolves moved in to aid the knights, battering at the creature with their spears until it lifted clear. Lar Pedros fell back, clutching his eyes. Blood streamed from under his hands. Lar Rachine put an arm around him and guided him away from the fray. The thraiks revolved like whirlwinds, tearing and clawing. A werewolf male dropped his spear and fell, his chest spouting blood. His fellows clambered over his body to get to his assailant. They plunged their weapons into the legs and tail of the beast. Lar Romini pushed in beside them, flailing the iron bar at the creature’s side. It screamed in agony and anger, and snapped at them. Dark ichor rolled down and dripped off its claws. The ground was rendered slippery under the defenders’ feet. They drove the pair of hovering thraiks back. The flying monsters were fast, but their speed was matched by the werewolves. The humans’ faces turned red with effort as they kept pace with their temporary allies, striking out with whatever came to hand. The two thraiks bobbed up and down, irritatingly just out of reach, screaming their defiance at the knights. Some of the bigger werewolves sprang into the air with their powerful legs. The large black-furred male managed to pierce the foot of the beast that had attacked Brouse.
“Good hit!” the almoner growled. The thraiks keened with pain and dropped slightly in the sky. The humans and werewolves leaped at it, hoping to drag it down and finish it off. Its companion swooped above them, slashing at heads and arms. The defenders were forced to duck, giving the wounded thraik a chance to retreat farther away in the clearing. The humans followed, shouting hoarsely to one another. The werewolves swarmed behind them.
The leader, however, had not forgotten his intended prey. As soon as the others had drawn most of the fighters away, it wheeled around and dropped down before Sharhava. It wrapped one set of talons around her body and pulled.
“Knights! Knights, to me!” she shouted.
Sharhava punched at its bulging eyes and prominent nostrils, trying to strike vulnerable points. The thraik’s snakelike neck whipped back and forth as it tore at her bonds with its fangs.
Without hesitation, the rest of the defenders abandoned their battle with the other two. They rushed back, slashing and hitting at the thraik. It had chewed through the ropes holding her. Drawing her close to its body, it spread its great wings and gathered its haunches. Inbecca gasped. It must not be allowed to take off with her!
“Help!” Inbecca called.
Four of the werewolves including Patha and the serving girl bounded the short distance back to Sharhava and beat at the thraik leader’s back and wings. It twisted its ugly head on its long neck over its shoulder and snapped at them. Patha howled an order. Her people spread out and glided in from several directions, making the thraik leader have to snake its head about constantly. The knights filled in the circle, beating at the creature even as its underlings tore at the knights at the rear.
“Let her go, beast!” Loisan demanded, trying to force himself in under the creature’s greasy arms to save his abbess. It kicked him backward into the arms of a dozen other knights.
Sharhava fought like a wild cat, striking with every limb, including her wounded hand, trying to break free of the thraik’s grip. It held tight to her. Its flexible spine allowed it to keep her close to its chest while kicking and biting at the defenders. Inbecca clawed at her own ropes, vainly trying to free herself. She might be the thraik’s next victim.
It raised its head over the heads of the others, and she could see its mudbrown eyes. It seemed to have runes for pupils, gold ones like those that had until lately been written on everything and everyone within the book’s range. Inbecca felt a thrill of fear, not for herself, but for her aunt. The rumors were true: the flying monsters only sought people who had made contact with the Great Book. Sharhava had touched it. The thraik must think she had it. Inbecca was in no danger, but she feared for her aunt.
“Strike it! Kill it!” Lar Follet shouted.
Sharhava shoved her feet hard against the ground, bringing her head up underneath the chin of her captor. Its head snapped back in surprise. She wrapped her arms around its throat and tried to bear the long neck down to the ground with her.
“Now, scholars! Strike!”
Together, a host of humans and werewolves surged in upon the thraik leader. It writhed and twisted, throwing them off. As many as were flung away, twice that number came in again. They scored upon its flesh. The weapons came away drenched in dark ichor. To her relief, Inbecca saw two werewolves, their tunics torn, drag Sharhava out of the melee. They pulled her arms over their shoulders and started to help her across the campground.
The leader sprang free of its attackers with a powerful leap and hung hovering over the crowd. It screamed defiance at them. With a hard flap of its wings, it pursued Sharhava and her rescuers. It landed on the defenders, one foot on each back, and seized Sharhava in its arms.
The werewolves sprang up in a heartbeat. The larger of the two wrapped itself around Sharhava’s waist and pulled. The smaller one seized her spear off the ground where it had fallen and plunged it to its hilt into the thraik’s side, pinning the sail of its wing. The creature let out an ear-tearing ululation that echoed over the clearing and tossed its head in pain. Its muddy eyes seemed to clear for a moment, and the ugly head darted for the girl’s throat. She dodged it. The thraik lifted its head and prepared to strike again.
She tugged at the spear, but it was stuck between the creature’s ribs. She
would have to rely upon her own gifts. She grabbed for the creature’s flailing wing tip and plunged her fangs into it. The thraik howled. It bent and sank its own teeth into the back of her neck. Inbecca was grateful she could no longer see the girl’s face as the werewolf sank limply to her knees and fell on the ground.
By that moment all the other defenders had surrounded the leader. They struck and stabbed at it with all their strength. It fought back, but it was weakening. The girl’s spear had done its job. The thraik was dying. The rune left its eyes, leaving them dull. Lar Auric brought a long tent pole down on its head. It collapsed beside its last victim. The ground shook under its weight.
The last thraik let out a panicked cry and sprang into the sky. A black gash seemed to open up beside the moon, and the winged monster disappeared into it. Inbecca let out the breath she had been holding.
The knights hastily pulled Sharhava free of the monster’s dead embrace. She allowed them to set her on her feet, but waved away any other help.
“Let me go, please,” Inbecca begged. “Let me go to my aunt.”
Patha herself came to cut the bonds holding her in place. Inbecca ran to Sharhava’s side.
The abbess showed no expression of fear or pain, but when Inbecca put her arms around her, she found her aunt was quivering.
“Come and sit down,” she pleaded, guiding her to the logs surrounding the fire. “Water, someone.”
Lar Rachine ran to the water butts and filled a bowl. She brought it to the abbess. Sharhava nodded her thanks and took a drink, holding the bowl unsteadily between her hands. Even the good one was trembling. Inbecca pulled her small cloth from inside her habit, dampened a corner, and cleaned the dirt and ichor from her aunt’s face. Anxiously, she searched the stiff countenance. Sharhava stared away from her, seemingly at nothing.
“No scratches, thank the Mother,” Inbecca said. “Are you injured anywhere?”
“No,” Sharhava said, but her voice was hoarse. “See to the others. Go.”
Against her better judgment, Inbecca left her sitting alone next to the fire and went to help. Werewolf healers had already begun to tend to the injured, of which there were many, of both races. Inbecca, having no training in healing herself, held a bowl as Dunnusk, a werewolf male with russetbrown fur, pressed cotton lint into Lar Mey’s shoulder to stanch the blood seeping from a gash made by a thraik’s rear claw. The healer glanced under the pad to make sure the flow had stopped, then swabbed the gash clean. The young man had his teeth clenched, whether from pain or discomfort at being treated by a werewolf Inbecca could not guess.
“I will try to heal this all at once, but it is deep. I fear it will leave a scar,” Dunnusk said with a yellow eye fixed on Mey. The young man nodded, still not speaking. “Very well.”
The neat and orderly camp had become a field hospital. Inbecca lost track of how many people, both human and lycanthrope, passed under the healer’s hands. Most of them were saved by the skilled use of magic and medicine, but a couple were beyond his help. She followed him from patient to patient. Colruba, the Scholardom’s healer, had her hands full taking care of minor injuries. Their captors supplied her with salve and bandages. The Pearl had sunk to the treetops, so lanterns had to be sent for. The place smelled of blood, fear, lamp oil, and the greasy stink of the thraik corpses. No one wanted to touch them yet, so they lay where they had fallen. Inbecca couldn’t help but look back at them over and over again. She had heard of thraik attacks, including the one that had befallen Tildi’s kinsmen, but had never seen one. Please the Mother and Father, she never would again.
She found herself sitting alone. Dunnusk and a male helped up his latest patient, a dark-furred female heavy with kits, who had been smacked in the side of the head by a thraik’s tail, and escorted her to a tent on the far side of the encampment. She had no open wounds, but her speech was garbled. Inbecca found herself sitting alone, too tired to think for herself. She looked up when a shadow fell across her. Patha looked down on her, a grim expression on her face.
“Will you help to bear the dead?” she asked. “Our lost one was about your age. We would honor her with her peers before taking her to be buried.”
“I will,” Inbecca said, rising.
She fell in behind Patha. Three young werewolves joined them. Patha led them to the thraik corpses, and kicked aside one of the greasy paws that had fallen across the werewolf girl.
“There she is. Please bring her to the circle.”
Inbecca and the others carefully turned the girl’s body over. Inbecca let out a low moan of despair. She recognized the girl who had served her and her aunt only an hour earlier. She looked up at Patha.
“You have my deepest sympathies,” she said. “Those monsters! But she fought so bravely. I never knew her name.”
“Then will you mourn with us?” Patha asked.
“Gladly.”
They placed the girl’s body gently on a blanket and folded her arms across her chest.
Once the living were tended to, the knights were herded together again and held under guard by a few of the largest werewolves. The guards held hunting spears on them, but it was unlikely anyone had the strength left to cause trouble or attempt to escape in the cold early hours. Dawn could not be far away, Inbecca realized.
A few of them gave her suspicious glances as she helped carry the girl’s body to the edge of the newly stoked bonfire. She schooled her face into a diplomatic expression: a courteous smile to show camaraderie on her lips, and a furrowed brow for concern. Neither was untrue. How could she not feel compassion for someone so young who had given her life so selflessly.
“Raluftin was her name,” Patha said as her people gathered. “Twentytwo years of age. A fine, honest girl, always willing and helpful. My children will miss her. Wadu will miss her, as I believe the two of them were coming to an arrangement.”
A pale silver youth across the circle from Inbecca nodded miserably, not raising his eyes.
“We sing you rest, Raluftin,” Patha said. She drew her nose upward to the sky, and began to keen. It was not like the war howls Inbecca had heard from them before, rather an ineffably sad sound. Wadu joined in, followed by a brown-furred couple she guessed might have been the girl’s parents. The rest raised their noses in turn. Their ritual was so different from the measured and somber funeral rituals of Levrenn. Some humans might have said that a crafted elegy might have been a more fitting memorial to the lost, but Inbecca couldn’t stanch the tears rolling down her face. She found it hard to choke out much of a sound, but she looked up at the sky and added her wail of mourning.
Low-pitched chanting was added to the full-throated musical cries, a rhythmic drumroll under the hornlike ululations. Inbecca looked around in surprise to see that several of the knights, led by her aunt, were reciting the Scholardom’s death rites. The werewolves didn’t miss a note. A few, touched and encouraged by the humans’ participation, redoubled their howls, until the trees rang.
Gradually the sorrowful noise fell away, leaving the glen silent. Patha nodded to Wadu and the other young people. Inbecca bent with them to lift her corner of the blanket. Wadu and his friend who carried the feet led the way into the forest, uphill from the river, until they came to a small clearing.
The burial did not take long. A few threads of silver light struck the trees around them, but it was not enough to let her see more than moving shadows. Werewolves saw much better in the dark than humans. Inbecca waited until the sounds stopped and someone touched her on the arm. She followed them back to camp.
She heard the voices long before she reached the firelight. An argument had broken out, not between the werewolves this time, but among the Scholardom. Sharhava and Romini were at the center of it. The others, by force of their confinement by the werewolf guards, had no choice but to observe, but they clearly did not want to be a part of the dressing down underway. Inbecca could not blame them.
“Lar, would you be relieved of your vows?” Sharhava asked, glaring
at the young man.
“No, of course not, Abbess,” he said. “But . . .”
“No excuses. You are under my orders, or you are not. Make your choice! Will you be a guardian of the Great Book, or find another profession, where you can defy your master at will?”
“Abbess!”
“Well?” Sharhava demanded, taking another step toward Romini. Involuntarily, he took a pace backward. He stopped when his back touched one of his companions.
“I will obey,” Romini said sulkily.
“Good. Then apologize to the chieftess.”
With ill grace, Romini turned to Patha, whom Inbecca had not seen standing outside the crowd of scholars.
“I apologize,” he said, though the words seemed to be chipped from stone. “I regret not mourning for your dead.”
Patha bowed slightly. “I accept your apology. It was not necessary,” she said to Sharhava.
The abbess bowed back. Her cheeks were red, and it was not merely from the heat of the fire.
“It was. I would surely not be alive if that girl—Raluftin was her name?—had not thrown herself at that thraik. All of you,” she said, gathering the assembled werewolves with her gaze, “came forward without hesitation when we were beset. You bought our lives back from the monsters, and not without cost to you. I am grateful. You have my respect. If our positions had been reversed I would not have done the same for you.”
“I know,” Patha said. “But you were helpless, and any decent person would come to your defense. She who gives birth and He who makes the stars to turn know that all we have done is what any creature of charity would do. You require protection now?”
Involuntarily, Sharhava glanced at the sky. “Yes. The warding spell which one of our . . . which one traveling with us had cast is gone. We are not wizards, and without the Great Book we cannot remake the wards. Those creatures will certainly come back. It will be difficult to resist them, but we will fight.”
A Forthcoming Wizard Page 24
