Oh, well, he thought, something to eat and a place to sleep is all I could make use of anyhow.
The esquire lifted a torch ahead of him. He patted Papillon for encouragement and started down the lane.
A woman shrieked.
Holger had slapped his helmet back on and drawn his sword before her cry ended. Papillon whirled about. The people drew close to each other; voices rose. The guttering torchlight threw unrestful shadows on the houses across the main street; their upper stories were lost in blackness. Every window was shuttered and door closed, Holger saw. The woman screamed again, behind one of those walls.
A shutter, fastened with an iron bolt, splintered. The shape that sprang forth was long and shaggy, gray as steel in the thick red-shot gloom. It had butted its way out. As it dropped to the street, the muzzle lifted off the chest. Gripped between the jaws there squirmed a naked infant.
“The wolf!” choked the blacksmith. “Holy Mary, we’ve locked the wolf in with us!”
The child’s mother appeared at the window. “It burst in from the rear,” she howled witlessly. She stretched her arms toward the beast and them all. “It burst in and snatched Lusiane! There she is, there she is, God strike you down, you men, get my Lusiane back!”
Papillon sped forward. The wolf grinned around the baby.
Blood was smeared on her pink skin, but she still cried thinly and struggled. Holger -hewed. The wolf wasn’t there. Uncannily swift, it had darted between Papillon’s legs and was off along the street.
Frodoart the esquire plunged to intercept it. The wolf didn’t even break stride as it sprang over him. Ahead was another alley mouth. Holger whirled Papillon around and galloped in pursuit. Too late, though, he thought, too late. Once into that warren of lightless byways, the wolf could devour its prey and turn human again long before any search could—
White wings whirred. Alianora the swan struck with her beak at the warg’s eyes. It laid its ears back, twisted aside, and streaked toward the next exit. She swooped in front of it. Like a snowstorm full of buffetings, she halted the runner.
Then Holger had arrived. This far from the torches he was nearly blind, but he could see the great shadowy shape. His sword whistled. He felt the edge cleave meat. Lupine eyes flared at him, cold green and hating. He raised his sword, the blade caught what light there was and he saw it unbloodied. Iron had no power to wound.
Papillon struck with his hoofs, knocked the loup-garou to earth and hammered it. The hairy form rolled free, still unhurt. It vanished down the alley. But the child it had dropped lay screaming.
By the time the villagers pounded up, Alianora was human again. She held the girl-baby, smeared with blood and muck, against her. “Och, poor darling, poor lassie, there, there, there. ’Tis over wi’ this now. Ye’re no too mickle hurt, nobbut a wee bit slashed. Och, ’tis scared ye be. Think how ye can tell your ain children, the best knicht in the world saved ye. There, my love, croodle-doo—” A black-bearded man who must be the father snatched the infant from her, stared a moment, and fell to his knees, shaken with unpracticed weeping.
Holger applied the bulk of Papillon and the flat of his sword to drive the crowd back. “Take it easy,” he shouted. “Let’s have some order. The kid’s all right. You, you, you, come here. I want some torchbearers. Don’t stand jabbering. We’ve got to catch that wolf.”
Several men turned green, crossed themselves, and edged away. Odo the blacksmith shook a fist at the alley mouth and said, “How? This mud holds no tracks, nor the paving elsewhere. The fiend will reach his own house unfollowed, and turn back into one of us.”
Frodoart regarded the faces which bobbed in and out of moving shadows. “We know he’s none of us here,” said the esquire above the babble, “nor any of the herders at the gate. That’s some help. Let each man remember who stands nigh him. “
Hugi tugged Holger’s sleeve. “We can track him if ye wish,” he said. “Ma nase hairs be atwitch wi’ his stink.”
Holger wrinkled his own nose. “All I smell is dung and garbage.”
“Ah, but ye’re no a woods dwarf. Quick, lad, set me doon and let me follow the spoor. But mind ye stay close!”
Holger lifted Alianora back onto his saddle—the child’s father kissed her mired feet—and followed Hugi’s brown form. Frodoart and Odo walked on either side, torches aloft. Some score of men pressed behind the boldest villagers, armed with knives and staves and spears. If they caught the lycanthrope, Holger thought, it should be possible to hold him by main strength till ropes could be tied on. Then... but he didn’t like to think of what would follow.
Hugi wound down the lanes for several minutes. He emerged in the marketplace, which was cobbled and showed a little lighter under the stars. “Aye, clear as mustard, the scent,” he called. “Naught i’ the world has a stench like a werebeast in his animal shape.” Holger wondered if glandular secretions were responsible. The stones rang hollow under Papillon’s shoes.
The street they took off the market square was also more or less paved, and comparatively wide. Here and there were lighted houses, but Hugi ignored the people inside. Straight he ran, until a cry went up at Holger’s back.
“No!” groaned Frodoart. “Not my master’s hall!”
14
THE KNIGHT’S DWELLING stood on a plaza of its own, opposite the church and otherwise hemmed in with houses. Kitchen and stables were separate buildings. The hall was unimpressive, a thatched wooden affair not much larger than the average bungalow in Holger’s world. It was T-shaped, with the left branch of the cross-arm rising in the tower he had noticed before. The front was at the end of the T’s upright, and closed. Light gleamed from shuttered windows; dogs clamored in the stables.
Hugi approached the iron-studded door. “Straight in here the warg fled,” he declared.
“With my master’s family alone!” Frodoart tried the latch. “Barred. Sir Yve! Can you hear me? Are you well?”
“Odo, cover the rear,” snapped Holger. “Alianora, get aloft and report anything unusual.” He rode up to the door and knocked with the pommel of his sword. The blacksmith gathered several men and ran around in back. Hugi followed. More people streamed into the square. By fugitive yellow torch gleams, Holger recognized some of the herders among them. Raoul the peasant pushed through the crowd to join him, spear in hand.
The knocking boomed hollow. “Are they dead in there?” sobbed Frodoart. “Burst this down! Are you men or dogs, standing idle when your lord needs you?”
“Are there any back doors?” Holger asked. The blood thudded in his temples. He had no fear of the werewolf, nor even any sense of strangeness. This was right: the work for which he had been born.
Hugi threaded a way among legs and rattled his stirrup for attention. “No other door, but windows eneugh, each locked tighter nor the last,” the dwarf reported. “Yet the warg ha’ no left this bigging. I snuffed everywhere aboot. E’en had he jumped from yon tower, I’d ha’ covered the ground where he maun land. Noo all ways oot are blockaded. We ha’ him trapped.”
Holger glanced around. The villagers had stopped milling; they surrounded the hall, packed and very still. Torchlight fluttered across a woman’s frightened pale face, a man’s sweating hairiness, a startling gleam of eyeballs in shadow. Weapons bristled above, spears, axes, bills, scythes, flails. “What about servants?” he asked Frodoart.
“None in there, sir,” said the esquire. “The house servants are townsfolk, who go home after dark, leaving only old Nicholas to do for the family. I see him yonder, as well as the stablehands... Get us inside!”
“I’m about to, if you’ll give me some room.”
Frodoart and Raoul cleared a space with well-meant if brutal efficiency. Holger stroked Papillon’s mane and murmured, “Okay, boy, let’s see what we’re good for.” He reared the horse. The forefeet smashed against the panels. Once, twice, thrice, then the bolt tore loose and the door sprang open.
Holger rode into a single long room. The dirt floor was s
trewn with rushes. Above the built-in benches along the walls hung weapons and hunting trophies. Dusty battle banners stirred among the rafters. Sconced candles lit the place fairly well, showing it empty down to a doorway at the end. Beyond must lie the crossbar of the T, private apartments of Sir Yve and his family. A yell rose from the men who crowded behind Holger. For that doorway was blocked by a form shining steely in the candleglow.
“Who are you?” The man waved a sword above his shield. “What is this outrage?”
“Sir Yve!” exclaimed Frodoart. “The wolf has not harmed you?”
“What wolf? What the devil are you up to? You, sirrah, what excuse have you for forcing your way in? Are you a blood-enemy of mine? If not, by God’s death, I can soon make you one!”
Holger dismounted and walked close. Sir Yve de Lourville was a tall, rather thin man with a melancholy horse face and drooping gray mustaches. He wore more elaborate armor than the Dane, a visored casque, corselet, brassards, elbow-pieces, cuisses, greaves, plus chain-mail. His shield bore a wolf’s head erased, sable on barry of six, gules and argent, which Holger found eerily suggestive. If some distant ancestor had been a full-fledged loup-garou, the fact might be hushed up by later generations, but could linger as a traditional coat of arms...
“I’m called Holger du Danemark. The werewolf appeared before me as well as many other people. Only by God’s mercy did we rescue the baby it had stolen. Now we’ve tracked it here.”
“Aye,” said Hugi. “The trail runs clear to yersel’.”
A gasp went among the commoners, like the first sigh of wind before a storm.
“You lie, dwarf! I’ve sat here this eventide. No beast entered.” Sir Yve jabbed his sword toward Holger. “None are present but my lady, who’s ill, and my two children. If you claim aught else, you must prove it on my body.”
His voice wobbled. He wasn’t a very good blusterer. Raoul was the first to snarl, “If matters be as you say, Sir Yve, then one of your own must be the fiend.”
“I forgive you this time,” said Sir Yve frantically. “I know you’re overwrought. But the next man who speaks such words will dangle from the gallows.”
Frodoart stood with the tears whipping down his cheeks. “Dwarf, dwarf, how can you be sure?” he groaned.
Sir Yve seized upon the question. “Aye, who would you trust—this misshapen mannikin and this hedge-knight, or your lord who has warded you all these years?”
A boy of fourteen or so appeared behind him, slender and blond. He had put on a helmet, snatched sword and shield, in obvious haste, for otherwise he wore the colorful tunic and hose which was the local equivalent of a white tie. Of course, thought Holger faintly, in an outpost of civilization every aristocrat dressed for dinner.
“Here I am, father,” panted the youth. His green eyes narrowed at Holger. “I am Gui, son of Yve de Lourville, and though not yet knighted I call you false and defy you to battle.” It would have been more impressive if his voice hadn’t developed an adolescent crack, but was nonetheless touching.
Sure, why not? The lycanthrope is a perfectly decent person, except when the skin-turning rage is upon him.
Holger sighed and put away his blade. “I don’t want to fight,” he said. “If your people don’t believe me, I’ll go away.”
The commoners shifted about, stared at the floor, back at Holger and Yve. Frodoart aimed a furtive kick at Hugi, who dodged. Then Odo the smith came in the door and forced a path for Alianora. “The swan-may would speak,” he trumpeted. “The swan-may who saved Lusiane. Be quiet, there, you muttonheads, ere I clobber you.”
A hush fell until they could hear the dogs howl outside. Holger saw Raoul’s knuckles whiten about his spear. A little man in priestly robe went to his knees, crucifix in hand. Gui’s beardless jaw dropped. Sir Yve crouched as if wounded. No eye left Alianora. She stood slender and straight, the candleglow shimmering in the coppery-brown hair, and said:
“Some o’ ye must ken my name, I who dwell by Lake Arroy. I mislike brags, but they’ll tell ye in places closer to my home, like Tarnberg and Cromdhu, how many strayed children I’ve fetched back from the woods and how I got Mab hersel’ to take off the curse she laid on Philip the miller. I ha’ kenned Hugi my whole life, and vouch for him. We’ve none o’ us aught to gain by slander. ’Tis your fortune that the finest knicht who ever lived has come by in time to free ye from the warg ere it takes a human life. Hearken to him, I say!”
An old man tottered forth. He blinked half-blind and said into the stillness, “Mean you this is the Defender?”
“What are you talking about?” asked Holger with some dismay.
“The Defender... he that shall return in our greatest need... the legend my grandsire told me gives not his name, but are you him, Lord Knight, are you him?”
“No—” Holger’s protest was drowned in a rumble like the incoming tide. Raoul sprang forward with spear poised.
“By heaven, he’s no master of mine who snatches children!” the peasant yelled. Frodoart swung at him with his sword, but weakly. The blow was turned by the spearshaft. A moment later four men had pinned the esquire down.
Sir Yve leaped at Holger. The Dane got his weapon out barely in time to parry the blow. He struck back so hard he cracked the other’s shield-rim. Yve staggered. Holger knocked the sword from his grasp. Two peasants caught their overlord’s arms. Gui tried to attack, but a pitchfork pricked his breast and drove him back against the wall.
“Get these people under control, Odo, Raoul!” Holger gasped. “Don’t let them hurt anyone. You, you, you.” He pointed out several big eager-looking youths. “Guard this doorway. Don’t let anybody past. Alianora, Hugi, come with me.”
He sheathed his sword again and hurried through. A corridor paneled in carven wood ran transversely to the main room, a door at either end and one in the middle. Holger tried that one. It swung open on a chamber hung with skins and a moth-eaten tapestry. The light of tapers fell on a woman who lay in the canopied bed. Her graying hair was lank around a handsome flushed face; she snuffled and sneezed into a handkerchief. A bad case of influenza, Holger decided. The girl who had sat next to the bed and now rose was more interesting—only about sixteen, but with a pleasant figure, long yellow tresses, blue eyes, tip-tilted nose and attractive mouth. She wore a simple pullover dress, gathered with a golden-buckled belt.
Holger bowed. “Forgive the intrusion, madame, mademoiselle. Necessity compels.”
“I know,” said the girl unsteadily. “I heard.”
“The Demoiselle Raimberge, are you not?”
“Yes, daughter to Sir Yve. My mother Blancheflor.” The lady in question wiped her nose and looked at Holger with fear blurred by physical misery. Raimberge wrung her small hands. “I cannot believe what you think, sir. That one of us is... is that thing—” She bit back tears; she was a knight’s daughter.
“The scent gaes hither,” said Hugi.
“Could either of you have witnessed the beast’s entry?” asked Holger.
Blancheflor shook her head. Raimberge explained: “We were separate in our chambers, Gui in his and I in mine, readying to sup, my lady mother sleeping here. Our doors were closed. My father was in the main hall. When I heard the tumult, I hastened to comfort my mother.”
“Then Yve himself must be the warg,” Alianora said.
“No, not my father!” Raimberge whispered. Blancheflor covered her face. Holger turned on his heel. “Let’s look about,” he said.
Gui’s room was at the foot of the tower, to whose top a stair led. It was crammed with boyish souvenirs. Raimberge’s was at the opposite end of the corridor, with a chestful of trousseau, a spinning wheel, and whatever else pertained to a young girl of shabby-genteel birth. All three rear rooms had windows, and Hugi couldn’t follow the scent in detail. He said it was everywhere; the wolf had haunted this part of the house night after night. Not that anyone need see the apparition. It could use a window for exit and re-entrance, when everybody else was asleep.
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“One o’ three,” said Alianora. Her voice was unhappy.
“Three?” Hugi lifted his brows. “Why think ye the lady canna be the beast? Would she no ha’ her health as soon’s she turned wolf?”
“Would she? I dinna know. The wargs are no so common that I e’er heard talk o’ wha’ happens when one falls ill... Four, then. One o’ four.”
Holger returned glum to the feasting chamber. Raoul and Odo had established a sort of order. The men stood around the walls, Papillon by the main door. Yve and Gui sat in the high seat, bound hand and foot. Frodoart huddled beneath, disarmed but otherwise unhurt. The priest told his beads.
“Well!” Raoul turned fiercely on the newcomers. “Who’s the cursed one?”
“We dinna know,” said Alianora.
Gui spat toward Holger. “When first I saw you helmetless, I didn’t imagine you a knight,“ the boy taunted. “Now when I see you bursting in on helpless women, I know you’re not.”
Raimberge entered behind Hugi. She went to her father and kissed his cheek. With a glance that swept the hall, she called: “Worse than beasts, you, who turn on your own liege lord!”
Odo shook his head. “No, ma’m’selle,” he said. “The lord who fails his people is none. I got little ones of my own. I’ll no hazard them being eaten alive.”
Raoul struck the wainscot with his spear butt. “Silence, there!” he barked. “The wolf dies this night. Name him, Sir ’Olger. Or her. Name us the wolf.”
“I—” Holger felt suddenly ill. He wet his lips.
“We canna tell,” said Hugi.
“So.” Raoul scowled at the grim rough-clad assembly. “I feared that. Well, will the beast confess himself? I’ll slay him mercifully, with a silver knife in the heart. “
“Iron will do, while he’s human,” said Odo. “Come, now. Speak up. I’d not like to put you to torture.”
Frodoart stirred. “Before you do that,” he said, “you must peel my hands off your throat.” They ignored him.
“If none will confess,” said Raoul, “then best they all die. We’ve the priest here to shrive them.”
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