In its pool of torchlight down at the end of the corridor, the Fox put its ears flat back and crouched, its lips retracting still farther from those glinting fangs.
Hob squinted as Jack passed again into shadow. The next time he emerged he seemed to trip; he pitched forward, arms outstretched, falling through the band of gray light that stretched from the window slit across the floor to the inner wall, and disappearing into the gloom beyond.
When again he came out into the light Hob gasped. Jack’s form had darkened with a thick pelt of black fur, and increased tremendously. Across his back the fur had a silvery sheen, and his skull seemed misshapen: it rose to a bony crest, so that it seemed he wore a casque helmet beneath the coarse black hairs. His legs had become bowed and short and immensely thick; his long arms were as burly as a strong man’s thighs, with huge wrists and swollen elbow joints and powerful forearms; and he moved on all fours, his hands balled into fists, the knuckles pounding along the floor, serving as feet. His speed increased, and then he was bounding down the hallway in a rapid rocking charge, flicking in and out of the shafts of moonlight. From his throat came a bellowing roar that Hob could feel in the planks beneath the soles of his feet, and if the snarl of the Fox had made Hob shiver, the roar of this new Beast destroyed all thought, and left Hob unable to move while it persisted.
The speed of the Beast’s charge was astonishing, given its bulk. It was like the white king bull: much of its mass was muscle, which carries itself. The broad stiff back rocked from side to side, and the Beast flew down the hallway. The Fox sank into a crouch, and then leaped, forward and to the side, so that the Beast went partway past it. The Fox flashed in from the side, fangs glinting, but the whirl of the Beast as it changed direction took its side away from the jaws; they whipped by, and tore a small slit along the bulge of the Beast’s shoulder.
Roaring, snarling, the combatants spun about one another, probing for an avenue of attack, feinting, striking, leaping back. The floorboards shuddered; the impact of the giant beasts as they struck heavily against the corridor walls, maneuvering frantically in the narrow space, could be felt down at Hob’s end of the gallery. To Hob came the odor of wild things: musk, salt—the pungent scent of two great animals in extreme exertion.
The Fox went up on two legs as it had in the hall, seeking to strike down at the back of the Beast’s neck, but the thing that had been Jack stood up itself, jaws wide and lips retracted from its huge teeth, its paws slapping and grabbing at the Fox’s head, seeking a handhold, seeking to hold the Fox still that it might bite. For a moment Hob thought that the struggle looked like a battle of snakes: the Fox’s head weaving from side to side, the Beast’s arms—for it was so manlike that Hob must think in terms of arms and legs—held high, seeking to seize the Fox’s head or throat. Whenever a hand sought to close upon its throat, the Fox snapped at it and drove it back.
The Beast dropped down again to three limbs; its right arm flashed up and it struck the Fox such a tremendous blow in the belly that the giant canid was driven back several feet along the polished wooden floor.
The Fox slid backward, scrabbling at the floorboards for traction, and its back leg struck the two bodies lying there. The corpses were dashed back against the wall, fetching up with a thump. It was as though they had no more substance than the straw dolls that little girls had played with in Hob’s old village; he had a sudden sense of the bodily weight, the appalling power, of the two beings who strove there at the corridor’s end.
The Fox bunched its hindquarters under it and leaped at its foe. Its back paws ripped deep scratches in the planks of the floor, splinters spraying behind it. Its head turned to one side as it ran past the Beast, the long, long canines catching the torchlight for an instant. But the Beast was as brute-quick as the Fox, and turned just enough to avoid being disemboweled, and the Fox succeeded only in ripping a long score along the ribs, that began to drip carmine at once.
Even as it turned to avoid the slashing fangs, the Beast threw a curving fist at its tormentor; the Fox was thrown again against the wall, and was as quickly up on its feet again, and again hurled itself at the thing that had been Jack. There followed a whirl of chaos that Hob could barely grasp, his eye running so far ahead of his comprehension of what he saw, his mind numbed with the deafening roars, pierced by the malevolent snarls of the Fox, a sound of distilled bestial hatred.
The constriction of the corridor forced the antagonists into surges toward and away from Molly’s group. Hob and Nemain moved back as far as they were able. Only Molly stood immobile, as the mayhem advanced and retreated like the tides.
Suddenly the Fox broke free and ran toward Molly’s end of the corridor; Hob’s heart seemed to freeze as it bore down on them, huge and implacable. But it only sought a space to spin about, set itself, and charge with blinding speed at the manlike Beast. It raced a few paces, gathered itself, and sprang on that which had been Jack.
The Beast threw up a great arm, punching the doglike chest, checking the Fox’s leap in midair, and the gleaming teeth clacked shut on emptiness. A moment later, so quickly that Hob could not see the movement, one huge hand closed about the blood-drenched muzzle, and the other about its foreleg. Hob could hear small bones in the leg breaking under the pressure of that monstrous hand, a sound like a bunch of twigs crackling in a campfire.
There was a yelping shriek, and the Fox sought frantically to back away with its three good legs, but the Beast had it fast, by leg and snout, and it could neither bite nor flee. The power in all toothed killers is in closing the jaws; to open them requires no great strength and the muscles that do so are small. The grip of that black-furred leathery hand was easily sufficient to muzzle the Fox and then, slowly, to bend its head upward, exposing the bib of white fur on its chest. All the while the Beast backed the Fox up against the stone of the corridor’s outside wall, and all the while the Fox’s claws were rasping and slipping on the wide planking as it sought to resist.
What had been Jack now dipped its head, hampered somewhat by the stiff muscularity of its short neck, and drove at the Fox’s underthroat. The Beast’s mouth opened in a parody of a human yawn; indeed its yellow teeth, though huge, seemed much like those of a man, except for the four great fangs, inches long, two above and two below, that now clenched themselves in the Fox’s throat, and locked tight.
There followed a period of near-stasis, a strangled wheezing from the Fox; then a frantic scrabbling and clawing; but the Beast was inexorable. Blood poured from the Fox’s torn throat, and the clamp of the Beast’s jaws cut off breath; slowly the Fox’s life drained away. Its forelimbs straightened and stretched out before it, quivered, and went still. The Beast released its hold, and the body of the Fox slid to the floor.
The Beast, on all fours, contemplated its fallen enemy with tilted head. After a moment it reached out a huge hand—it looked to Hob as though the thing wore black leather gloves, with hair on the back—and prodded the Fox. There was no movement. The Beast sat back on its haunches, turned its head to one side, and slapped itself on the breast a few times with alternating hands, not very hard, producing a series of hollow popping sounds. Then it rocked forward, seized one of the Fox’s forelimbs by the paw, and prepared to bite into the shoulder, but something about the Fox repelled it. It dropped the lifeless paw—Hob could hear the claws rattle as they hit the floor—and, to Hob’s horror, turned its attention to the dead women lying where they had been flung against the wall.
The Beast was pawing at the corpses, plainly preparing to eat of them, and Molly was stirring beside Hob, reaching for the flagon that Hob held, to reassert control over Jack the Beast, when they heard a sharp hiss of indrawn breath behind them.
Framed in the doorway, holding aside the heavy tapestry, stood Doctor Vytautas, gazing in anguish at the dead Fox. In a moment or two, rage had replaced mourning, and he stepped through into the corridor, letting the thick cloth fall to behind him. He began to stalk toward their little group.
V
ytautas had lost his fussy gait. Now he paced forward like a cat mousing, surefooted and ominous. Hob watched him, aghast. How could he ever have thought this man kindly; how could he have thought him weak? The once-benevolent eyes were half-hidden beneath lowering brows, ridges of muscle bracketed a down-turned cruel mouth, and his tall frame seemed to be filled with a sinewy power beneath the fine robe. His attention was all for the Beast at the end of the corridor, and he passed Hob as though the lad were not there.
Vytautas spoke, his voice a harsh grumble, his brow dark as a thundercloud, his upraised hand twisted into a complex clawlike symbol. Hob could not understand a word, but the voice seemed to echo from the walls and each echo seemed further to dim the torchlight. The macabre droning set up a throbbing in Hob’s bones, and a sickening weakness seeped through his flesh.
Hob felt he had to do something: the Lietuvan was chanting them to their deaths. He put the flagon down against the wall; as he straightened the corridor seemed to whirl about him, and then steady again. He shook his head to clear it, with limited success.
Hob was a few paces behind Vytautas and a pace to the side, and now he drew his belt knife and stepped forward, intending to plant it in the middle of the wizard’s back: anything to stop that hideous travesty of prayer.
But his first step wobbled and he could not take a second and he seemed unable to feel where his fingers were on the hilt. The knife slipped from his hand to plunge itself into the wooden floor, where it stuck, upright and vibrating softly.
And now the corridor rang with sound, the reverberations overlapping, the air pulsing with a ghastly energy. Down the hall the Beast that was Jack had halted, uncertain. Through watering eyes Hob saw that Nemain had doubled over; she held with one hand to the lip of the deep-set window.
Only Molly seemed unaffected. Suddenly her bell-deep voice rang out in Irish, something repeated thrice, and she stepped briskly to Vytautas’s side and slapped him across the mouth.
At once his drone ceased. He stood with that one hand stretched out toward Jack, and his mouth open, but his voice had failed, locked within him. He struggled to make a sound, his face empurpling, his eyes bulging, but only a thin croak came from his throat. Molly stepped back away from him.
Hob, released from the incantation’s fell power, dropped to hands and knees, his stomach heaving, his ears filled with a sound as of a rushing stream. His tear-blurred vision was narrowed to the wide planks between his hands, and the thin stream of drool that came from his mouth, and the butt of his knife hilt, still shivering in the wood. After a moment that seemed to last forever, his vision expanded, sounds resumed, and he became aware that the floorboards beneath his palms were jumping to a slow rhythm. He raised his head. The Beast had renewed its advance toward Vytautas, its heavy limbs making the planks of the floor tremble with each step.
It began to gallop along, and again gave voice to that blaring bass outcry, and Hob felt his bones turn to water, although surely, he thought, surely, Jack would not harm his own, no matter how deeply he had been submerged in the Beast. He snatched up the flagon again and pressed himself against the inner wall; the lid rattled on the flagon and he clapped his palm on it to keep it secure.
Vytautas plainly could not even turn his head. He stood immobile as the statue of a prophet, while his doom roared down upon him. At the last moment he rolled his eyes toward Molly, a frantic glance, in which hatred and despair mingled in equal parts. His lips trembled, his teeth shone through his beard in a bright grin. Hob felt that Vytautas strove to curse Molly; but her spell held, and all the sinister doctor could manage was a thin throttled whine.
The Beast came bounding down the corridor, flashing in and out of the bars of moonlight, its speed and size and roar enough to paralyze any man, even without Molly’s binding cantrip. It was upon them in two breaths. Its last galloping leap ended with a looping overhand blow from the giant fist, and Vytautas crumpled, hammered down like a sheep in a shambles.
There was the briefest of pauses, and then the Beast seized the corpse by its head and arm and bent swiftly toward the doctor’s neck. The huge canines tore out Vytautas’s throat in one appalling wrench. Hob turned hastily away, but still, still, he could hear the grunts, the obscure moist smacking sounds, a grinding of tooth upon bone, rapid gulps, snarling.
Molly came slowly toward the Beast, where it crouched over the broken husk of the Lietuvan. She began singing, with something of the rhythm of a chant but more douce and delicate, and yet not quite full song. In her right hand was the amulet pouch on its leather thong. As she passed Hob she reached out toward him for the widemouthed flagon; he uncovered it and gave it to her. She took it by one handle, holding it in her left hand. He swung about, much against his will, to see what would come.
He saw the Beast that was Jack look up from its awful business. Hob’s eyes skittered away from the thing on the floor. He watched as Molly drew nearer. The Beast reached down. There was a terrible wet rending noise, and it brandished aloft the long bone from one of Vytautas’s thighs, meat and gristle still adhering to the knobby terminus. The Beast came forward a pace or so on three limbs, the left fist knuckle-down on the blood-soaked planks. It glared at Molly and raised the thighbone; from the broad hairless chest came a bass rumble so menacing that, dazed as he was, Hob must take a quick step backward. The Beast smote the floor once, twice, four times with the scarlet-stained baton, the floorboards thundering like a war drum, and all the while the red eyes staring into Molly’s face. Speech could not have been plainer: See what blows I will give you, if you come nigh.
Yet Molly’s song, so pleasant, did not falter, nor was there the merest quiver in her deep sweet contralto, though she had halted her advance for a moment when the first blows were struck. Now she moved forward singing, as one sings a lullaby to a tiny-fisted newborn, and she came up to the Beast that was Jack, and she dropped the loop of thong about the short neck where it met the huge back, and she dipped her right hand in the flagon and smeared a bit of the liquid on the fearsome bloodstained jaws. The thing’s tongue came out and licked it up, and Molly, still singing, held the flagon to the Beast’s lips, and Jack the Beast drank, gulping noisily, and then sank back against the wall beneath a deep narrow window recess where the moonlight slanted in through the arrow slits, and thrust bowed short legs of astounding girth out before him, and sighed.
Molly knelt quickly beside Jack the Beast, gathered a handful of fabric from her skirt and began to wipe the brutal face. In between her ministrations she gave him more sips from the flagon. The torches nearest them sputtered, casting a fitful light on Jack, making shadows move across his face, making his features hard to discern clearly.
Hob blinked. Already Jack’s face had assumed subtly different proportions, and—did he seem smaller as well? Hob decided that he did; then thought he did not. All at once he was sure that the great body was smaller, and less hirsute.
Jack lost substance, but slowly, slowly. Hob remembered lying awake in the wagon, watching the moon move through the topmost branches in the forest, a motion just perceptible every so many breaths: at just such a speed did Jack become smaller, become more Jack.
His head lolled back again and rolled weakly against the stone wall. Pale naked skin shone here and there through the pelt upon his shoulders; the black leathery breast began to lighten and soften. Jack made a visible attempt to focus his eyes. His head rolled to the side again and again, as though there was no strength in his neck. But he kept turning back to Molly’s face, looking at her as though trying to read a sign, an uncertain but growing comprehension glimmering in his eye, like a newlit candlewick that sputters and flickers before the wax that nourishes it begins to melt, and the flame begins to steady.
Sooner than Hob would have expected, Jack Brown appeared completely human—his powerful frame, bleeding here and there from cuts and bites inflicted by the Fox, seemed almost boyish against Hob’s memory of what he had been as a Beast—but his features were still slack. And now he
gazed with desperate attention at Molly’s face, and did not look away again, and at last his eyes sharpened, and awareness came into his features, like a drowsy man suddenly coming fully awake, or a drunken man suddenly sobering, and he knew her.
“Maygh,” said the dark man. Maeve.
“Mo mhíle stór,” she said, stroking the hair back from his forehead, her face very close to his face, her eyes smiling into his eyes, as she called him “my thousand treasures” in the language she used for her inmost thoughts.
CHAPTER 22
ALONG THE CORRIDOR A KIND of numb peace reigned for perhaps a dozen heartbeats. Four lived; four were dead. At the far end, the corpses of the women were hidden by the bulk of the dead Fox; at this end, the body of Vytautas lay in ruin just beyond Jack and his three attendants.
Molly stroked Jack’s face a short while. She roused herself with an effort and said to Hob, “Run and fetch some men—we’ll be needing to carry him down; then go tell Sir Balthasar that we have triumphed.” Hob turned, stiff as an old man, and went through the curtain to the turret stair, looking at Vytautas as little as possible.
But in the event he had not descended more than a level and a half before he met Sir Balthasar with a squad of men, one of them Roger, on the hunt for any of the Lietuvans who might remain. Hob led them back to the bloody corridor.
The soldiers bunched in a little knot just inside the curtain, transfixed at first by the huge russet carcass of the Fox blocking the far end of the corridor. Then: “Precious Christ!” cried Sir Balthasar, looking down at what had been Doctor Vytautas. “Has he been torn by demons?”
“He sought to do that to you and yours. Let him be,” said Molly. “The dead to the soil, the living to the loaf: my man here needs aid, and he cannot walk to his bed.”
Sir Balthasar knelt by Jack a moment, then gave orders that the curtain should be torn down and fastened to pikestaffs to make a litter for the wounded man. While this was being done he walked cautiously down the corridor with a few others of the squad to the wreck of the giant canid. The bodies of the two women were discovered, to cries of dismay. Sir Balthasar told off another detail, and the two corpses were quickly and carefully borne off by four soldiers.
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