by Dave Gross
The Sczarni waited where we’d left them, beside a stand of trees not far from a brook west of the village. I was torn between relief that I wouldn’t have to help build a camp from scratch and mild disappointment that they hadn’t wandered off. I was still conflicted about the Prince of Wolves situation. The feeling that it would somehow end badly for me kept gnawing at my imagination. In the meantime, the benefits were all right. I could get used to being served first, and I didn’t mind the attention Malena was showing me, even if she were nothing more than a ruthless conniver. Maybe tonight she’d dance, if Dragos could be persuaded to play a lively tune.
As it turned out, Dragos couldn’t be persuaded. He sat with Cezar, in sight but out of hearing of the rest of the camp. They were having an argument that included a lot of pushing and arm waving. I’d find out what it was about and which way it had gone soon enough, I figured, but I kept an eye on them. This was the part of being prince that was going to cost me sleep.
After supper, Azra set up the boss in the wagon, and he used another of his riffle scrolls to set a flameless light above the tinker’s desk to study the restored journal in detail. With his hound at his feet and Azra nearby, I decided to risk a short stroll around the camp. Dragos and Cezar had returned to the fire and had their bowls to their faces.
I hadn’t finished my first circuit of the perimeter before Malena approached. She greeted me with that welcoming smile I’d first figured meant she was angling for my purse. Maybe she still wanted that, but she’d also set her sights higher. No matter what there’d been between her and Vili before, she hadn’t wasted any time mourning for him. And after I held Dragos’s life in my hand, there was a new leader of the pack to cozy up to. I had no illusions that she fancied me for myself, but there was only so much harm in letting her let me think otherwise. I had it all figured out.
Without a word, she slipped her arm through mine and walked beside me. She slouched to reduce our height difference, but that didn’t matter to me. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve liked climbing the tall trees. I started looking for a place where we could enjoy some privacy without losing sight of the camp. She found one first and pulled me down onto the cool evening grass.
Her lips were soft as petals, leading me in while letting me feel I was the one choosing the path. She untied my jacket and peeled it off before I felt what she was doing. She guided my hands to the strings of her blouse and found the tongue of my belt before I’d finished untying her sash. Impatient, she pulled off her blouse and had grasped the belt of her skirt when the first blow struck my head.
“Dammit, Dragos,” I growled while rising. But it was not Vili’s father who’d kicked me in the head. I looked up to see Azra, and then her foot as it struck my cheek. Off balance, I fell backward with my pants around my knees.
Beside me, Malena scrambled away, heedless of her fallen blouse. I admired the view for half a second before a fine coat of fur emerged from her pale skin, her breasts shrinking as her chest stretched wide and lean. The shape of her face had barely changed, but her teeth jutted from her jaw, altering her voice as she growled. “Get away, witch, or you’ll lose more than your tongue.”
Azra’s eyes lit up with anger. She snapped her wrists as I’d seen her do once before, and I winced as Malena flinched away from a white spark upon her cheek. I knew how much that stung.
“Take it easy,” I suggested to both of them.
“What we do is none of your concern,” spat Malena, raising a furred hand that had grown long claws.
Azra answered with another spark, this time stinging Malena’s menacing hand.
“Knock it off, both of you,” I said. But when they both turned blazing eyes on me, I shut up.
“He is our prince, not yours,” said Malena. “You would not even know what to do with a man, if you could find one who could endure your ugly face.”
Azra’s cheeks colored as though she had just been slapped.
“And even if you had a tongue,” Malena continued, “you would only use it to drive him away with your scolding.”
Azra opened her mouth, screeching as she flung more sparks at Malena. One broke a few strands of her hair, while another snapped the golden loop out of the werewolf’s ear. Malena shrieked this time, turning away to cover her face. A second later, she turned her furious countenance back to Azra, wolf eyes peering over a snout full of sharp teeth.
Flinging one hand above her head, Azra produced a starknife and hurled the blade at Malena’s feet. It sunk deep into the earth, two blades protruding less than an inch from Malena’s toes as faint white sparks coruscated along the surface of the steel.
Malena froze in place, and a moment later her wolfish features retreated. A tiny rivulet of blood ran down her cheek from one of Azra’s stings, and her eyes flicked nervously between the knife and Azra. She considered her options, tensing to fight or flee. In a moment she made her decision. She snatched up her blouse and ran into the nearby trees, out of sight.
“What—?” I said, but Azra turned her back on me and walked back to camp, brushing past the boss, who had run up to investigate the commotion. When he saw the starknife in the ground nearby, his lips trembled in a war between laughter and restraint.
“What?” I demanded again, but at the sight of me with my pants down, he lost all composure and set to laughing into the crook of his elbow. It was too much to smother, and he let it go and howled to the sky. I couldn’t think of a time when I’d seen him so violently amused, and knowing I was the object of his mirth made it difficult for me to share it. I put my clothes back in order while he got control of himself.
“You see,” he began, but he wasn’t ready yet, and his explanation dissolved into tears and laughter. I began to stomp back to camp, but he called out, “No, it’s important.” I waited for the explanation.
“When two Varisian women of similar social status compete over a man,” he said, “there is a protocol—” The laughter took him again.
“Dammit, boss,” I said. “I saw what happened. What does it mean?”
He wiped his eyes with his handkerchief before looking me in the face and saying, “Radovan, my dear fellow, you are engaged to be married.”
The boss was the only one who found the situation amusing, but he lost his good humor when he saw that Azra had retreated to her wagon, shutting herself in with all of the books he’d hoped to continue studying. Watching him stand beside the door debating whether to intrude was small comfort as I sat near the campfire. Eventually he returned to the fire and stood beside me, looking down at Azra’s starknife on the carpet beside me.
The way the boss explained it, if I returned the knife to Azra, I was saying I accepted her claim over me. If I gave it to Malena instead, then they would fight over me, although not usually to the death, he explained. While that thought evoked a certain naughty pleasure, I didn’t want to see either of them hurt.
The third option was that I keep the starknife, and at the next full moon, I was a free man. In the meantime, unless I made a decision, I wasn’t allowed to lie with any woman. Despite the lack of available women—Tatiana wasn’t half bad, but I was pretty sure she had her eye on Fane or Sandu—I found that situation downright unacceptable.
In the meantime, all the Sczarni stared at me, as if expecting me to make a decision at any moment. That wasn’t going to happen, but their constant attention was making me nervous. Their tent was closed tight, and I saw everyone else outside, so I knew Malena had to be hiding in there.
“If you damned Sczarni are just going to stare at me all night,” I told them, “I’m going to sleep.”
“Not yet,” said Dragos, standing up. Beside him, Baba turned her face away from him. On his other side, Cezar nodded grimly. Both obviously knew what Dragos was about to say.
“I challenge you for leadership,” he said.
“You can’t,” I told him. “You have to wait for the next moon.” It occurred to me that I didn’t remember whether that meant the next full moon or
the next new moon.
“Not you,” said Dragos. He pointed at the boss. “You.”
I realized then what he was after. I’d deferred to the boss so often in front of the Sczarni that it was only natural they couldn’t all accept me as a leader. More importantly, Dragos had to be reckoning that if he beat the boss, I’d have to answer to him instead. Not that there was any chance of that.
“Forget it,” I told him. “As your prince, I forbid it.”
“You cannot forbid it,” Dragos said. “It is our law.”
I looked to Baba for confirmation, and she nodded at me. Somebody was going to have to show me a list of these laws before I got into any more trouble. “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’m his bodyguard, so the minute you make a run at him, I’ll put you down. Again,” I added for emphasis.
“If you interfere, then you are no true prince, and we shall all taste of your flesh.”
I turned to consult the boss quietly. “What do you think?”
“It is a conundrum,” he said.
“You aren’t helping.”
“It is not always easy to be the master,” he said.
I shot him a dirty look. “This is serious,” I told him. “I beat him, but it was a near thing. He was out of his mind with anger, and I’m not sure how it would have gone otherwise. This time he’s got his wits about him. And boss, you hired me as your bodyguard for a reason. What chance do you stand?”
“You forget that I have an enchanted sword,” he said.
“It lights up around the undead,” I said. “Not werewolves.”
He shrugged, and I saw a gleam in his eye as he walked to the wagon.
“It’s a bad idea,” I said, but he was banging on the door. Azra finally opened up. Ignoring the fury on her face, he mildly requested that she pass him his sword. He paused to take a length of rope from the wagon and tie Arnisant to a lead secured to the wheel. The hound looked at him with suspicion but accepted the leash obediently. Her curiosity piqued, Azra followed the boss back to the camp, where the Sczarni had already pulled away their carpets to leave an open area for the duel. Malena had not emerged from the tent, and Azra avoided my eyes and kept her distance.
The boss discarded his coat and tucked in his shirt before rolling up his sleeves. I made one last attempt to talk some sense into him.
“You know, I’ll have to kill him if he wins.”
“I certainly hope so,” he said. Then, with less jollity he added, “I have always appreciated your loyalty, Radovan.” For a moment he looked like he was going to say something heavier, but instead he said, “Return the sword and Arnisant to Count Galdana, if I cannot.”
“Boss,” I said, but he turned away to face Dragos.
“Wait,” he said, walking around the designated area so that he was not facing the spectators. He indicated the other side for Dragos, putting the fire to his right, the werewolf’s left.
Dragos scoffed at the change in position. “Where you stand will not help you,” he said.
“No,” agreed the boss. “But it may prove less uncomfortable for the others.”
Dragos didn’t understand that remark any more than I did, but he shook it out of his head as he slipped out of his clothes. I regretted letting him live when I held his life in my hand. It’s a hell of a thing to kill a man, or a werewolf as the case may be, and I’ve done it only when it couldn’t be helped. Dragos was helping me come around to a broader perspective.
The boss unsheathed his sword, which reflected the firelight but produced no radiance of its own. He lifted it in a formal salute with a dandyish flourish that might have embarrassed me if the stakes didn’t include his life and—I had to admit it—if I didn’t admire his courage so damned much.
Dragos made a show of rolling his shoulders and opening his mouth to show off the fangs that emerged from his widening jaws. Across from him, the boss pointed his blade at his opponent and assumed a duelist’s stance completely unsuitable for this kind of fight. Just as I was about to call out to tell him so, his left hand came up and pointed at Dragos.
With a slip of his thumb, the boss riffled one of those little scrolls and sent a pea-sized ball of flame shooting toward Dragos. The flame grew as it flew forward, the size of a pumpkin halfway, larger than a man just before it reached Dragos. Caught in mid-transformation, Dragos leaped away from the danger, but he was not quick enough to escape the blast.
The sound of the explosion deafened me, and the rest of the Sczarni covered their ears and threw themselves down. Azra crouched low, and behind us Arnisant unleashed a torrent of barking. The only one who did not recoil was the boss. He sprinted across the grass toward Dragos, who howled and rolled on the ground to extinguish his burning fur. He pressed the point of the sword against Dragos’ throat and set his foot upon his chest.
“Yield,” said the boss.
Still smoldering, Dragos wriggled as much as the sharp blade would allow, shifting back into his human form with much less hair to burn. He’d had recent practice at defeat, so with his next breath he cried, “You have won!”
The boss removed the point of his sword and offered his hand to his defeated foe. Dragos rolled away, hiding his face from his family, who had seen him defeated a second time since I had known him. The flames of the boss’s spell had faded, but I saw a rebellious fire still burned in Dragos’s eyes. I went to him.
As I passed the boss, he slapped me on the shoulder and said, “You see, there was nothing to fear.” I liked the sound of his confidence, even though I could hear the echoes of the fear it masked. He’d been in mortal peril, and the fact was that once again I was the one who’d put him there. Dragos had no reason to challenge him except to regain the status that I had taken away.
I knelt beside Dragos and put my hand on his shoulder. He flinched from my touch. “I know how you feel,” I said quietly enough that no one else could hear. “The people must respect their leader.”
“You understand nothing of the Sczarni,” he hissed.
“Not everything, it’s true,” I said. “But I do know that I gave you a gift last time we fought. You have proved unworthy of it, and now I must take it back.”
His eyes poured hatred at me, but what he saw in mine changed that emotion to fear. He understood what I had to do.
I swept my knife from its sheath and drew its silvered blade across his throat. He gripped my arms and pulled me down, claws growing from his fingers to sink deep into my biceps. Its damage done, I dropped the blade and held him tight as his blood sprayed out over us both. The struggle was brief, but he pulled me down before his grip loosened and he surrendered to my embrace. We lay a while together, not speaking but somehow finally communicating through the last long lock of our gazes. As I watched the reflection of life vanish from his eyes, I knew at last we had reached an understanding.
Chapter Nineteen
The Last Crusaders
The mists drew a mourning cloak over our return to the west. Azra posted two pairs of lanterns at the corners of her wagon, although a passing traveler might hear the hiss of their wicks before spotting their light. Even the Sczarni carried torches to guide their steps, or perhaps they bore them to honor their departed.
Before we broke camp that morning, the Sczarni buried Dragos with no ceremony apart from the wailing of their women. Even Azra, whom I had expected to officiate in some manner, had stood apart as they lowered him into his grave. Radovan, however, had taken it upon himself to throw the last handful of earth upon his rival’s grave. It was not, so far as I knew, a custom of Varisians or the Sczarni, but it had provoked no objection from the mourners. In fact, it was Radovan who ordered our journey to resume without as much as a glance toward me for approval. After summoning the phantom steed for him, I climbed aboard the driver’s seat with Azra, for I was no longer in a mood to ride within the wagon, even with Arnisant lying on my feet. It was not a day to spend apart from human company.
Despite the muffled clops of Luminita’s hooves and the
rattle of the wagon, the rich accents of Sczarni voices reached my ears by some queer path that wormed through the surrounding mists. I could not make out their meaning, but their tones were neither angry nor truly mournful, as I would have anticipated. Rather, they seemed to pass debate among the members of their dwindling family. I recognized Cezar’s dark bass and the sweeter strains of Malena’s and Tatiana’s voices, but even young Milosh spoke his mind, although his voice had only begun to descend the broken hill from sharp adolescence to rich manhood. Periodically their discussion ebbed until an affirmative syllable uttered by Baba, the grandmother and acknowledged matriarch, set the tide of conversation in a new direction.
I could not overhear the content of their discussion no matter how I strained to listen. Soon after I surrendered all efforts to read by the dull light of the wagon lanterns and sat upon my magical copy of my late colleague’s journal to protect it from the cold drizzle. There was nothing more to divine from its pages, and I had already exhausted comparisons with the local maps I retained after leaving the rest of my own journal in the grave. I did not regret the gesture, despite its obvious impracticality. Had I been thinking more and feeling less, perhaps I should have trapped its contents with a riffle scroll. In retrospect, I would almost certainly have retrieved it by now in a moment of frustration, and I suspect I would only have regretted cheapening my gesture. We have so few chances in this life, even one so long as mine has been, to offer sincere sacrifices to those who deserve our gratitude, and I have missed so many in past decades that those chances left to me have become all the more precious.
It was in that spirit of lost opportunities that I finally spoke to Azra.
“Where do you spend the winter?” I asked. It would not be many weeks before the roads of Amaans became impassable for a single-donkey wagon.
Here and there, she signed.
“Do you not return to your home village?”
She offered me a look intended to express annoyance, but I detected a shadow of sorrow beneath it. She tilted her head back to indicate the wagon. This is my home.
