Werenight

by Turtledove, Harry

  Priscos was a man of few words, most of them about horses. “You don’t see many Shanda beasts hereabouts,” he remarked. “Where did you come by this one?”

  “What’s the name of that town in the mountains, Gerin?” Van asked.

  “Cassat.”

  “Aye. That’s where I picked him up. Cheap, too—the clod of a horse-trader didn’t know what he had. He’s been a rare worker.”

  “They’re ornery, I hear,” Priscos said. He went on, more to himself than Gerin or Van, “Reckon I can handle that, though.” Gerin was sure he could. Priscos had an air of quiet competence he liked.

  As the sun sank, they camped by what had been the border station between Ricolf’s land and Bevon’s. Now the square wooden building which had housed Ricolf’s guardsmen was only charred ruins. One more debt to pay, the baron thought, among so many.

  The ghosts were strange that night. Their keenings and wailings were more intense, and also more nearly understandable, than the Fox had ever heard. One in particular flitted round him as if drawn like moth to flame. For all its efforts, he could neither make sense of what it would tell him nor recognize its pallid form in the flickering firelight.

  “That is an uncanny thing,” Rihwin said, watching the wraith’s frantic but vain efforts to communicate.

  “Likely it’s like a Shanda spirit, seeking to lure you away from the light so it can drink your blood,” Van said.

  Gerin shook his head. “I feel no harm in it, even if I can’t understand what it would say. Besides, Van, every ghost in the north country must have had a glut of blood by now.”

  To that the outlander had no reply but a grave nod.

  Remembering the fraternal strife tearing Bevon’s barony even before the Trokmoi invaded, Gerin wanted to cross it in a single day if he could. He did not want to camp inside it: if he could expect night marauders anywhere, Bevon’s tortured land would be the place.

  And tortured it was. The Fox’s band passed two battlefields before the sun was high in the southeast. The woodsrunners had plundered both fields, but all the bloated, naked corpses seemed to be Elabonians. Here brother had fought brother, and fought with a hate greater than they turned against the Trokmoi.

  As he surveyed the second meadow filled with bodies, Gerin’s face was stony and full of bitterness. “Poor fools,” he said. He wondered if his words were not an epitaph for all the northland.

  Whichever brother had won the war, he had not enjoyed victory long. A lot of the keeps still standing were held by small bands of Trokmoi. They hooted in derision as they saw Gerin’s force go by, but did not move against it. “They think us beneath contempt,” the Fox said to Van, “and perhaps we are.”

  “Honh! The next time I care what a woodsrunner thinks will be the first.”

  A bit more than halfway through Bevon’s barony, they passed a roadside holding destroyed in a way Gerin had never imagined before. The timbers of one whole wall of the palisade lay like jackstraws in the bailey, as if kicked in by a monster boot. The stone keep itself was a pile of broken rubble.

  Something white stuck out from under one limestone slab. As the baron drew closer, he saw it was the skeleton of a human hand and arm, picked clean of flesh by scavengers. No one, Elabonian or Trokmê, garrisoned this keep.

  “This is the work of your Balamung?” Rihwin asked.

  “He’s not mine. I wish with all my heart I’d never heard of him,” Gerin said, but he had to nod as he spoke. His warriors eyed the shattered keep with awe, fear, and wonder. Hand-to-hand fighting against the Trokmoi was all very well, but how could they hope to hold against sorcery like this? Even Nordric was grim and quiet.

  “I wonder why such powerful wizardry has not been used further south,” Rihwin said. “Few castles could stand against it, yet here, so close to the Niffet, is the first sign we’ve had of anything more than a simple barbarian invasion.”

  “What difference does it make?” Gerin said bleakly, staring once more at the blasted holding.

  “Maybe none, maybe a great deal. One explanation I can think of is that your northern mage may have so much trouble trying to lay low one particular keep—I name no names, mind you—that he has had little leisure to help his men elsewhere.”

  Gerin gave him a grateful look. The line of hope the southerner had cast him was thin, but he was all but drowning in despair. Anything that buoyed his spirits was welcome.

  His renewed optimism and his hope of crossing Bevon’s lands in one day both collapsed not long after noon. His band came to the top of a low rise. There they stopped in horror and dismay. For the next three or four miles, the Elabon Way and most of the surrounding landscape had been brutally wiped out of existence. All that was left was a ruined expanse of raw-edged muddy craters, some a hundred feet across and twenty deep. They overlapped one another in the mangled earth, as if the same giant who had pulverized the keep had then amused himself by pelting the ground with thousands of huge boulders. But there were no boulders, no visible explanation of how the devastation had been committed.

  Chariots were not built to cross such terrain. Twice Gerin and his band had to stop to mend wheels battered by half-buried fragments of roadbed and tree-trunk, and once more to fix the axle of Nordric’s car when it broke.

  Van repaired it with bronze nails, leather lashings, and a large measure of hope. He said, “It may hold, and then again it may not. All we need now is for a horse to break a leg in this mess.”

  Gerin’s fingers moved in a protective sign. “May the ears of the gods be closed to you.”

  They barely managed to escape the ruined land before the sun set. All four moons were low in the east, slow-moving Nothos being most nearly full and Tiwaz still closest to first quarter.

  That night the ghosts were louder and more insistent than Gerin had over known them. Again, one in particular tried to deliver some message to him; again, he did not understand. Although he failed, something in him responded to the ghost, as if it was the shade of someone he had once known well. Irked by the riddle he could not solve, he pored over Rihwin’s grimoires until sleep overtook him.

  He and his men came on another band of desolation not far into the lands of Palin the Eagle. This was worse than the one before: the ravaged area held several streams and ponds. Their water made the trek a nightmare of slimy, clinging mud.

  In some places, chariots sank axle-deep in the muck. The warriors had to get out and slog through it on foot to lighten the load enough to let the horses move the cars at all. Men and beasts alike were filthy and exhausted when at last they reached flat, solid ground. To his disgust, Gerin found several fat leeches clinging to his legs.

  Though some daylight was still left, the Fox decided to camp when he came to an unfouled creek in which to wash. Most of his men, spent by the day’s exertions, collapsed into slumber almost at once.

  Only Rihwin kept any semblance of good cheer. That surprised Gerin. He had expected the southern dandy to be dismayed at his present unkempt state.

  “Oh, I am, my fellow Fox, I am,” he said with a grin when Gerin asked, “but what, pray, can I do about my plight save laugh? Moreover, I truly begin to think Balamung has wreaked all this havoc for no other purpose than sealing aid away from your lands. Did you not tell me a mage was warding your keep?”

  “Aye, or so I hope, at any rate: Siglorel Shelofas’ son. He’s southern-trained, true, but I don’t know how long he can stand against one such as Balamung. For one thing, he drinks too much.”

  “By your reckoning, so do I, yet did it keep you from bringing me along on this mad jaunt? Also, never forget that while crisis makes cravens of some, in others it burns away the dross and leaves only their best.”

  “From your mouth to Dyaus’ ear,” Gerin said, touched again by Rihwin’s efforts to reassure him. What the southerner was saying held just enough sense to keep him thoughtful, too: maybe Balamung did have some unknown reason to fear him. And maybe, he told himself, I’ll do as Van says and flap my ar
ms and fly to Fomor. Neither was likely.

  Despite the gift of fowls’ blood, the ghosts were a torrent of half-seen motion, a clamorous murmur of incomprehensible voices. The spirit which had visited Gerin on the two previous nights returned once more. He coud see its ill-defined features writhing in frustration as it failed again to impart its tidings.

  “You know, captain,” Van said, “I may be daft, but I think the poor wraith even looks a bit like you.” Gerin shrugged. For one thing, though the ghosts were extraordinarily immanent of late, they remained cloudy and indistinct. For another, the Fox, like most folk in the Empire and the lands it knew, had only a vague idea of his features. Mirrors of polished bronze or silver were uncommon and expensive; even the best gave images of poor quality. He probably had not seen his own reflection more than a dozen times since taking over his father’s barony.

  The holding of Raff the Ready, Palin’s vassal who had guested Gerin and Van on their way south, was only a burnt-out shell. The little pond beside it was rubble-choked and fouled with the bodies of men and beasts. Gerin viewed the ruins with sadness, but little surprise. Too many years of peace had led Raff to neglect his walls. He could not have put up much of a fight, not in his dilapidated keep.

  Late that afternoon, the Fox passed from Palin’s land and entered his own once more. The roadside guardhouses on either side of the border were deserted, but had not been burnt. The borderstone itself had been uprooted by the Trokmoi. Gerin cursed when he saw its moss-covered runes effaced by fylfots chipped into the rock, as if Balamung was claiming the land for his own.

  So, perhaps, he was. Gerin and his band had not gone far before they tripped some sorcerous alarm the wizard had planted. A misty image of the black-robed sorcerer appeared in the road before them. “Back, are you, Fox, in spite of it all? Well, you’ll have no joy of it. My lads will see to that, and soon.” With a scornful laugh, the projection vanished.

  “The spell your enemy placed here was plainly set to react to you and no one else,” Rihwin said. “In which case—”

  Gerin finished for him: “—there’s sure to be another charm in action now not far away, telling a few hundred woodsrunners to come down and make an end of me. Well, what can I do but go on? Balamung has thrown away the advantage of surprise in his vainglory, for whatever that’s worth.”

  Arms at the ready, they moved ahead as the sun sank low in the west. As they passed a tiny crossroads, a whoop from behind some brush told them they had been seen. Archers nocked arrows; spearmen tightened grips on their weapons.

  They did not have long to wait. Chariots and infantry together, a veritable army thundered down the cross road toward them. At its head was Wolfar of the Axe. His hairy features split in a bloodthirsty grin when he recognized the Fox. “What luck! It’s the wench-stealing sodomite himself!” he roared to his men. Then, to Gerin: “I’ll make a capon of you, to keep you from having such thoughts again!”

  Had Wolfar’s rancor against the Fox driven him into the arms of the Trokmoi? Gerin would not have thought that even of his western neighbor, yet here he was.

  There was scant time for such thought. Gerin shot at Wolfar but missed. His arrow tumbled one of the men behind Wolfar out of his chariot. Rihwin and the other bowmen let fly too, dropping a couple of other men and sending a chariot down in crashing ruin as one of its horses was hit. But to stand and fight was madness, for Wolfar had easily ten times Gerin’s force.

  “North!” the Fox shouted to his followers. “We’ll outrun the footsoldiers, at least, and meet him on more even terms.”

  North they fled in the gathering dusk. Wolfar howled hatred close behind. Arrows flew up. Almost all went wide—the jouncing chariots made poor shooting platforms.

  “Captain,” Van shouted in Gerin’s ear, “what in the five hells is that up ahead?”

  Only his will kept the baron from hysterical laughter. Whatever else Wolfar was, he was shown to be no traitor. “What does it look like? It’s the wizard’s bully-boys, come to finish us off. We’re on the horns of a dilemma, sure enough, but maybe, just maybe, they’ll gore each other instead of us.”

  The leader of the Trokmoi was an immensely tall, immensely fat blond barbarian who filled most of a three-man chariot by himself. He stared in dismayed amazement at the force of chariotry bearing down on him. Instead of the small band he’d expected, this looked like the leading detachment of an army as large as his own.

  He frantically reined in, shouting, “Deploy, you spalpeens! Don’t be letting ’em get by you, now!” The Trokmoi shook themselves out into a wide line of battle, some afoot, others still in their cars.

  But Gerin did not intend to take evasive action. He and his men stormed toward the center of the Trokmê line, hoping to slash through and then let the northerners and Wolfar’s men slaughter each other to their hearts’ content. But the Trokmoi were too many and too quick to be broken through so easily. They swarmed round the Fox’s chariots, slowing the momentum of his charge and stalling him in their midst.

  Their huge leader left his car to swing a great bludgeon with deadly effect. He crushed the skull of Rihwin’s chariot-mate, then lashed out at Priscos. Gerin’s driver took the blow on his shield. It all but knocked him from the chariot. The baron chopped at the Trokmê with an axe. The barbarian, quicker than his girth would have suggested, ducked the stroke.

  A horse shrieked as a woodsrunner drove a dagger into its belly.

  For a moment, Rihwin was close by Gerin. “We’ve got to get out of here!” he cried.

  “If you have any notion how, I’d love to hear it,” Gerin said.

  A barbarian tried to climb into his chariot. Van hit the man in the face with a chakram-braceleted forearm. He screamed through a torn, blood-filled mouth and fell away.

  Then, suddenly, the pressure of the woodsrunners on Gerin’s beleaguered band slackened as Wolfar hurled himself into the sea of Trokmoi after the man he hated. “He’s mine, you arse-lickers! He’s mine!” he roared.

  The barbarians turned to meet this new and much more dangerous threat. Gerin tried to extricate his men from the now three-cornered battle. It was not easy. The Trokmoi had not forgotten them, and to Wolfar’s men the woodsrunners were only obstacles blocking the way to their real target.

  Unnoticed by anyone in the melee, the sun sank below the horizon. As it set, the four moons rose within seconds of one another, all of them full. The last time that had happened had been close to three centuries before Elabon’s capital was founded.

  Huge tides swamped low-lying coastal areas, drowning small towns and wrecking great ports. Prophets the world around cried doom.

  And in those lands where the taint of wereblood ran through a folk, no moons at quarter or crescent counteracted the pressure to change shape exerted by the light of a full moon’s disk. Those with only the thinnest, most forgotten trace of wereness were now liable, indeed compelled, to take beast form.

  Hills off to the east briefly shielded the battlefield from the rays of the rising moons. Then they topped the low obstacle and washed the fighters in their clear, pale light. Gerin was trading axe-cuts with a scrawny, green-eyed Trokmê who fought without armor when his foe dropped his weapon, bewilderment and alarm on his face.

  The Fox had no idea what was happening to him, but was not one to let any advantage slip. His stroke was true, but the northerner ducked under it with sudden sinuous ease. The Trokmê’s body writhed, twisted … and then the baron was facing no Trokmê, but rather a great wildcat. It spat fury and leaped at him.

  He had no time to wonder if he had lost his mind. Razor-sharp claws tore at the bronze facing of his shield, snarling jaws full of jagged teeth snapped at his arm. He brought his axe crashing down between the mad eyes of the cat, felt its skull splinter under his blow. Hot blood spattered his arm. The carcass lay still a moment, twitching.

  Gerin stared in disbelief. The awful wound he had inflicted healed before his eyes. Bones knit, skin and fur grew together as he gaped. Th
e wildcat’s eyes opened and caught sight of him. It yowled, gathered itself for a second spring—and was bowled over and spun to the ground by an outsized wolf. They rolled away, locked in a snarling, clawing embrace.

  The battlefield was a world gone mad. At first the Fox thought some spell of Balamung’s, intended for his destruction, had gone awry. He soon realized the chaos was far too general for anything of that sort.

  Then, quite by accident, he saw the four full moons. Understanding came, but brought no relief, only terror. Nearly half the fighting men had gone were, in one beast-shape or another. The field was littered with corselets, greaves, and helms they escaped when the change came over them. The were-creatures fought former friends, foes, and fellow beasts with an appalling lack of discrimination.

  A bellow of red rage from beside Gerin made him whip his head around, fearful lest Van too was falling under the influence of the moons. Not so: the outlander, in dispatching one of Wolfar’s men who had remained both human and combative, had taken a cut on his forearm.

  More and more, those who kept their human form left off fighting one another and banded together against the ravening werebeasts. At the baron’s side were three Trokmê foot soldiers, but neither they nor he had any leisure in which to quarrel.

  The werebeasts were so lithe and fast, they found it easy to slip through the quickest human guard and fasten claws or fangs on flesh. Even when they were killed, men gained only momentary respite from their onslaught. Within seconds of taking the most ghastly wounds, they grew whole once more.

  Men caught away from their fellows were for the most part quickly killed. One pair of exceptions was Nordric One-Eye and his driver Amgath. Their chariot had foundered in the middle of the field when Van’s repairs failed at last and the car’s axle broke beneath it.

  The werebeasts made short, dreadful work of their horses, but Nordric was in full berserker rage, and fast and savage as any shape-changer. With one mighty stroke of his sword he cut a leaping werewolf in two, then seized its tail and hurled the spouting hindquarters far away. “Live through that, you backscuttling demons’ get!” he shouted.