by Barb Hendee
He murmured something and rolled away from her. The wineskin lay empty beside him.
“You drunken sot,” she said in frustration.
Another raging cry echoed low through the trees, and this time she knew it was Chap. She hesitated for a moment as she considered whether or not she should leave Leesil alone. Then she charged into the forest toward the sound.
Something had spooked the dog so badly that he’d attacked without orders or even bothering to wake the camp. Visions of Stravinan wolf packs tearing him apart pushed Magiere to move faster. She smashed through low-hanging branches and underbrush, the sound of the river growing stronger ahead.
He wasn’t even her dog, but he’d thrown his own body between hers and danger enough times that the thought of him being hurt bothered her more than she expected. The strange wailing snarl she’d heard earlier mingled with Chap’s usual growling bark, but the closer she got to the river, the more the gurgling rush of water made it difficult to get a bearing on the dog’s location.
Magiere called out as she ran, “Chap, where are you?”
She had no torch, but the nearly full moon gave just enough light to distinguish some passage through the forest. Twice she tripped, catching herself with her free hand while gripping the falchion tightly with the other. The earlier bungled fight with Leesil had left her muscles sore. She cursed the overzealous hound, from both frustration and concern. Through the trees she caught the glitter of moonlight on rippling water.
“Chap!” she called again, rushing forward.
A flicker of white passed through the left corner of her vision and she stopped. From the same direction came the sound of Chap’s chopped barks. Magiere ran toward the sound, only to have it move off to the right, again toward the river. The forest broke into a small clearing upon the river’s shore. What she saw caused her legs to freeze. Even from behind Chap, she could see the dark stains around his neck and shoulders. She moved wide to his left, not wanting to startle him.
His muzzle was smeared and dripping, and though it was too dark to tell the color, she knew it was blood. Whatever fur on his body wasn’t matted and wet stood straight out, making him look even larger than usual. The lips of his muzzle were pulled back, showing teeth in a shuddering snarl. Magiere’s head turned slightly toward the dog’s quarry, trapped against the river’s edge.
Man-shaped, it crouched in the mud and gravel, hands placed flat on the ground as if it could move on all fours if it so wished. Shreds of a shirt hung from its torso where Chap had torn at it. Trickles of blood ran from wounds down the arms and chest of this moon-colored man. The dark hair hanging to his shoulders appeared out of place, as if he’d been carved from pale wood with blackened corn silk placed on his head as an afterthought. The stringy hair shadowed his face, but his eyes shone as if reflecting a nonexistent light. He lifted one emaciated hand to stare at the gashes of teeth marks ringing his wrist. Small gnarled nails, like misbegotten claws, extended from each fingertip.
“Not possible . . . just dog . . . but its touch burns.” The man’s voice was filled with surprise. “Filthy mongrel . . .” he hissed in anger, “could not hurt Parko, not like this.”
Glowing eyes turned away from his wounds as he became aware of Magiere’s presence. The man’s head began to tilt to one side, then farther and farther still, until it nearly rested upon his shoulder like an owl as he stared at Magiere. Hair fell away from his long face, and she tightened her grip on the falchion.
Sunken cheeks and eye sockets made dark pockets in skin as white as a cave grub’s. Some illness had wasted him away to thin muscle and bone.
“Hunter?” he said with a sharp intake of breath, voice sweet and tonal. His head tilted farther sideways, then crow-chatter laughter erupted from his throat. “Hunter!”
Magiere felt cold and fearful at that word. The man knew of her, or at least knew why she’d come to this place, yet she had never seen him before.
He dodged left, springing from all fours.
“Chap, stay back,” Magiere ordered, but not quickly enough.
Chap mirrored the man’s movement, but before he landed, the white figure reversed direction in a forward leap to the right. Chap’s front legs gave in the loose gravel as he tried to twist back. He toppled, skidding in a clatter on the river’s rocky beach. Magiere saw the man’s movement, right then left, then her eyes flicked toward Chap as the dog fell. She blinked.
The man was in the air coming down upon her.
Magiere ducked and rolled forward along the ground, passing under the airborne arc of the man. There was no time to ponder how he moved so fast or leaped so far. She spun and came up with her back to the river in time to see her assailant twist in the air, already facing her again. His feet barely touched the ground before he lunged at her.
Magiere swung the falchion in a fast, short slash between herself and her attacker. It was a feeble attack, but she hadn’t intended it to strike home. All she wanted was to scare him off. It would do no good to kill a local villager now, after she’d successfully worked her way out of Leesil’s little impromptu performance.
The white man ducked and hopped to the side, avoiding the blade. She took advantage and shifted the opposite way to get her back away from the river. The man’s disturbing laugh echoed off the surrounding trees.
“Poor hunter,” he moaned playfully, raising fingers with stained nails and straightening from his crouch.
Magiere took a step back. “I just want the dog. I don’t want to hurt you.”
He laughed again, eyes half closed until their glow resembled sparkling slashes in his face.
“Of course, you don’t,” the man said, his voice as hollow as his cheeks.
Then he sprang.
It was the same dream, but this time wine-soaked slumber couldn’t wash it away.
Leesil, only twelve years old, squatted on the floor of the dark room beneath his parents’ home, listening to his father’s lesson.
“Here—” his father pointed to the base of the human skull in his hand—“is where thin straight blades can be applied while the individual is distracted. This will cause instant and silent death in most large-skulled humanoids.”
Father rolled the skull over to expose the opening where the spine would have been attached.
“It is a most difficult stroke. If you fail to execute it correctly”—he scowled briefly at Leesil—“a hard side stroke on withdrawal may save you before the target can make any sound. Always use the stiletto or similar thin strong blades for this—never a dagger or knife. Wide blades will jam in the base of the skull, or be deflected by the top vertebrae.”
The man stared at his son. A thick, peppered beard hid the lower half of his thin angular face. He held out the skull. Young Leesil looked at it, but mostly noticed how slender and almost delicate his father’s hands were, so graceful in everything they did, no matter how vicious.
“Do you understand?” his father asked.
Leesil looked up, the stiletto in his own hand a little too large for a boy. In waking hours, he remembered nodding silently in answer to his father’s question, but the dream was always different than memory. He was about to take the bone skull, but hesitated.
“No, Father,” young Leesil answered, “I don’t understand.”
Out of the shadows rose a second figure, seeming to sprout from the dark ground in the corner of the room. She was tall, slightly more so than his father, and delicately slender, with skin the honey-brown of Leesil’s own, though smooth and more perfect than any person’s he had ever seen. Long hair and narrow, feathery eyebrows glistened pale gold like threads of a sunlit spiderweb. The points of her ears rarely showed from beneath those polished tresses. Her large amber-brown eyes slanted up at the sides, matching the angle of her brows.
“The proper answer is yes, Leesil,” she said in her sweet voice, a loving mother’s admonishment for misbehavior.
Her eyes looked calmly down at him and made him ache inside for want of
pleasing her, even when it made him sick inside to do what she asked.
“Yes, Mother . . . yes, Father,” he whispered. “I understand.”
Leesil rolled over in his sleep and moaned, pulled suddenly awake, but uncertain what had interrupted his slumber. For a moment, he was grateful for whatever had roused him. His head hurt from exhaustion and too much wine. He’d drunk too little to block out the dream on this night, yet barely enough to achieve slumber. With his vision blurred, it took several moments for him to realize the camp around him lay empty.
“Magiere?” he called. “Chap?”
There was no answer. Fear began to clear the alcohol daze from his thoughts.
From a distance came a wailing he couldn’t call human or animal. Leesil pulled himself to his feet, shoved two stilettos up his sleeves into wrist sheathes, and staggered through the forest toward the sound.
Magiere shifted away again, holding her assailant at bay with short swipes of her blade, which wouldn’t break her guard. Her breath was coming harder now from exhaustion, but all her feints and maneuvers hadn’t discouraged her opponent. He ducked and dodged each swing, grinning one moment, or letting out a short, cackling laugh as he hopped and danced. Her foot brushed something low to the ground, a bush or a downed branch, and she realized he’d maneuvered her back toward the trees.
Panic rose in her throat. She’d barely managed to keep him at bay, not taking her eyes from him for fear he’d make another leap that she couldn’t stop. If she had to concentrate on not losing her footing in the forest, she’d either stumble and fall or, worse, get distracted and lose her guard.
“Hunter, hunter,” the white man sang as he leaped to her right, landing in a crouch, all fours poised together. “Come catch your prey!”
Panic became tinged with anger.
Playing his game was a losing battle, and she began to suspect that this fever-maddened villager somehow knew more of her occupation than he should. Still, she preferred to avoid killing him if at all possible. A madman babbling about a charlatan hunter of the dead would be a questionable accuser. A dead body cut down with a sword on the night she’d passed by would raise many questions, perhaps enough for the villagers to insist that the local lord hunt her down. Magiere settled herself, waiting for him to move again and looking for an opening to bludgeon him unconscious with the flat of her blade.
A whining growl came from the riverside, and she remembered Chap tumbling hard to the ground. Reflexively, both Magiere and the man glanced to the side, then back quickly enough to see the other’s mistake. He lunged, hooked fingers aimed for her throat. Magiere had no time to think and acted on instinct. She brought the falchion down in a sharp slash.
The claw-hand missed its mark, slamming into her chest. The sword blade smacked against his collarbone. Fingernails scraped across leather armor. Sharp steel slit away tattered cloth and bit into white flesh.
Magiere felt the ground jerked from under her feet as she was knocked backward. Her head and back slammed against a tree trunk, and she tumbled dizzily to the side, landing hard on the ground. Her heart pounded one beat as she waited for the weight of her opponent to land upon her, but it didn’t come. Magiere looked up, trying to will her vision to clear.
The white man stood over her. His wide eyes stared down at the shallow wound running across his chest as if the thought of the blade harming him had never entered his thoughts until that moment. Sickly humor vanished as his face twisted into a mask of anger.
“Not possible . . .” he murmured.
There was no more hope for not killing the man. Magiere tightened her grip and tried to lift the falchion to protect herself. Before she could finish, the man jerked from his stupor and fell upon her. One bony hand grabbed her throat, pinning her neck to the ground. She tried to swing the falchion at his head, but he caught her wrist and smashed it down as well.
“You cannot do this to me,” he snarled at her. “Not possible!”
Magiere’s vision blurred again as his hand squeezed tighter around her throat.
“You cannot hurt Parko.” It was a denial more than anything else.
She could feel the dizziness growing from lack of air. With the spinning of the forest came the sensation of cold seeping into her flesh. The fingers around her throat seemed to squeeze the heat from her body.
Magiere struck out with her free hand, at the oval haze of the man’s head. Her fist stopped on impact, and the blow sent a jarring shock through her arm that made her shoulder ache. His head barely moved. She wrapped her hand across the blurred face and pushed as hard as she could.
His flesh felt as unyielding as the bone across which it was stretched, and a cold sensation seeped into her again through her hand.
Terror rose in Magiere as the white face faded completely from view and she knew she was not far from unconsciousness. The cold burrowed deeper until she felt it in her chest, until even her fear wavered and was smothered in the sensation. The chill seeped in from her throat as well, and the wrist of her pinned sword arm.
A twinge inside her answered the growing cold.
It didn’t come from the life fading from her body, but instead wormed out of some hidden place inside her, moving through her restlessly. It stirred a rising fever that slipped from bone to muscle to nerve, leaving tingling heat behind wherever it passed. Finally settling in her stomach, heat turned into a knot of growing ache even the cold couldn’t blot out, then spread up her throat. A hollow opened inside of her, waiting to be filled.
It made her . . . hungry.
Magiere felt starved. A desire built on mounting rage sought a way to end the hunger. Crushing the life from her attacker would end that hunger.
She pushed against the man’s head. This time, it gave just a little.
Hunger spread out from her stomach, worming its way through her limbs until it seared away fatigue and fear, consuming the chill from the man’s touch. She tried to lift her weapon arm and felt her wrist slowly leave the ground against the pressure of the white man’s grip. In her darkness, she heard a frenzied hiss escape her assailant’s lips as he released her throat to pull at her grip on his face. Magiere gasped in air, filling her lungs.
“No . . . no . . . no!” he screeched. “You are no match for Parko.”
Straining against his grip, she could neither swing the blade, nor force her other hand back to his head. His body began to jerk forward, accompanied by a strange snapping sound. As her vision began to return, she made out the blurred oval of his head surging toward her face—click—then back and in again—crack—straining against her own pushing force. The sound was an animal’s jaws snapping closed.
She realized what he was doing. With their grips meshed, he was desperately trying the only thing left to break the deadlock. He was trying to bite her.
Magiere arched her back, pushing her face up and away out of reach, then shoved hard with both arms. A vicious snarl came from her left, and her body was suddenly dragged along the ground for half a foot. The white man let out a wail of anger as his grip on her wrists faltered, and Magiere lost her concentration in trying to understand what had just happened.
She caught sight of Chap flying in from her left, striking the man and rebounding away. The man’s body jerked hard to the right, and again Magiere felt herself dragged across the ground with him. The snarling blur came again, and Chap struck the white man in the side. Both dog and man tumbled off Magiere and across the ground into the darker night shadows of the trees, their snarls and growls indistinguishable one from the other.
Magiere hurried to get off the ground and between the two of them, worried that Chap was no match for this opponent. She stumbled, catching herself against the limbless trunk of a tree. The strange hunger gnawing in her belly was still there, but had grown weaker. Lightheaded and dizzy, she found her footing unsteady as she stepped toward the scuffle, trying to distinguish man from dog.
The white man spun toward her, but he was still out of her reach. Chap l
unged at the man’s leg, and the man swung his hand back at the animal. The dog was too quick, and a squeal of pain stabbed Magiere’s ears as Chap bit down on the man’s wrist.
In that moment, sound and feeling and sight flickered from Magiere’s mind. Dog and man seemed far away, too great a distance for her to reach. Her throat still felt half constricted and her breath came hard.
The squeal of pain had barely ended when she gripped the falchion with both hands and slashed out sideways, throwing her whole body behind the blow. She aimed high but blindly, unsure of her target but knowing the man would likely rise up to pull his arm out of Chap’s jaws. The swing overbalanced her and forest shadows blurred together, spinning.
Magiere’s head thumped off the soft mulch of the forest floor when she fell. All the hunger washed out of her in a sudden flood. Trying in panic to find which way was up, she rolled before the man could descend again to finish her. But he didn’t come.
She gave up and lay still, unable yet to sit up, let alone stand. As the spinning night settled into a heavy pain inside her skull, she heard the sounds around her. There was the gurgle of the river moving across its rocky bed, and the light chatter of tree branches in the breeze. She heard the rasp of her own desperate breathing, and the crackle of fallen pine needles and leaves beneath her as she shifted her body, trying again to get up.
And that was all. All the tiny sounds, the night sounds, slipped from her attention and between them was only silence. When the shadows above her started to focus again, changing from muted blurs into branches and stars in the sky just above the treetops, she rolled heavily to her side.
Two glistening eyes stared at her.
Breath caught in her throat until she made out the shape of the stained muzzle and canine ears. Chap looked at her expectantly.
On the ground at his feet lay a tumbled form of white flesh and tattered clothes. Chap looked down at it, and his jowls wrinkled with a low growl that ended in a whine of discomfort. He hung his head, panting.
