Shifter Planet

by D. B. Reynolds

  She was convinced by now that her attacker didn’t want her dead. He’d pulled his claws when he hit her, and even when he had her down on the ground, he hadn’t bitten her, although there had been plenty of opportunity. Instead of pushing her face into the dirt, he could have severed her spine easily with a single snap of his jaws, or one swipe of those powerful claws. She blinked at the battling cats, one huge and black and the other…just a baby.

  “Don’t kill him,” she shouted. She jumped up and ran toward the combatants, ducking behind a tree at the last minute to avoid being crushed by the tangle of snarling cats. “Don’t kill him, Rhodi!”

  He had the smaller cat at his mercy, bleeding profusely from several deep gashes in his muzzle, and one paw hanging limply as if broken. Her erstwhile attacker was on his back, belly bared, his mouth hanging open and gasping for breath, eyes rolling in fear as Rhodry’s deadly fangs hovered above his throat.

  “Rhodry!” Amanda shouted.

  His massive head swung toward her, and he snarled angrily.

  “Don’t kill him. Please.”

  He stared at her for several heartbeats, then gave a disgusted snort and swiped one huge paw across the smaller cat’s cheek, before flexing his powerful legs and jumping onto the branch just over her head. He stayed there, crouched protectively above her, his muzzle red with the tawny cat’s blood, golden eyes watching every move.

  She didn’t move any closer to the injured cat. She didn’t trust either her attacker’s motives or Rhodry’s patience that far.

  “Go back and tell whoever sent you that we’re coming home,” she said flatly.

  The tawny shifter wasn’t paying any attention to her. He was staring at Rhodry who returned the gaze with fangs bared, a low growl rumbling steadily from within his deep chest. The younger cat finally dared to cut his eyes briefly in her direction, before snapping right back to Rhodry. Finally, with a pained grunt, he ventured a slow roll back to his feet where he immediately huddled into a tight ball, poised to run.

  “Go on.” The young cat seemed frozen by terror, and she blew an impatient breath. “If you’ve the brains of a houseplant,” she snapped, “you’ll leave while you can. He won’t touch you as long as you leave us alone.”

  The attacker stood on shaky legs, his attention never leaving the huge black shifter hulking overhead. Muscles bunched suddenly, and then he shot away, racing to the nearest tree only to howl in pain when he tried to climb it with his torn paw. Falling back to the ground, he slunk instead into the underbrush and disappeared from sight. Most likely, he’d stay on the ground until he felt safe, then shift a couple of times until he was healed enough to take to the trees again.

  One thing was certain. When he got back to the Guild Hall, his masters would know that Amanda was on her way back, and that Rhodry de Mendoza was alive and well, and on his way home along with her.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Rhodry shifted in midair, dropping from the tree to crouch naked behind her. “Why the hell didn’t you let me kill him?” he demanded.

  He was obviously still pumping adrenaline from the fight—his chest heaving, body slick with sweat and streaked with the young cat’s blood.

  “I’m fine, thank you for asking,” she said pointedly, standing with a grimace of pain.

  He stalked over and began brushing the dirt and moss off her face and out of her hair with a gentleness that belied his temper, clucking in sympathy when he saw she’d bitten her tongue.

  “Did he hurt you?” His strong hands ran carefully over her face and shoulders, down her body, pausing when she cried out. He lifted her shirt and turned her around, cursing when he saw the angry, dark bruise already blossoming over her kidney. “You should have let me kill the bastard,” he snarled. “What happened?”

  “I got careless. I thought it was you—” She fought back a hiccup of hysterical laughter at his look of offended outrage. “I didn’t see him. He came from behind me. I heard him in the trees and thought it was you.” She patted his chest with a shaky hand. “Once I got a look at his puny self, I knew it couldn’t be you. By then, it was too late.”

  Feeling a sudden need to be closer to him, she moved in and snugged both arms around his waist. He wasn’t the only one coming down from an adrenaline high. She was trembling, and not all of it was adrenaline. She’d been scared. His arms came up to hold her, one big, warm hand stroking gently up and down her back in a soothing motion.

  “He wasn’t trying to kill me,” she insisted, having to fight to keep her voice even. “I’m not sure he even meant to hurt me. He just didn’t know his own strength. He was so young. You must have noticed that.”

  Rhodry brushed his lips against her hair. “He wasn’t that young. He should know better than to attack a norm, any norm. The bigger question is who the hell sent him out here? And why?”

  “Someone who didn’t expect you to be here, that’s for sure. It was probably just a prank. Send the kid out to scout the incoming trails and if you spot the candidate, give her some grief. Like they haven’t doled out enough already.”

  “I’ll show them some grief,” he growled. “And, damn it, now they’ll know about me as soon as that idiot reports back. It might take them a while to figure out exactly who I am. I didn’t recognize the boy, although he might know me. Either way, Serna and Daly will hear about it and they’ll know that it has to be me.”

  “I know,” she sighed softly. “The good times are over, I guess.”

  He laughed at the suggestion that their journey thus far had been good times. “We’ll make better times in the future. We’ve just got to get home alive first.”

  “Hard to argue with that,” she said, leaning back to admire his handsome face. “So, what’s the plan?”

  “You were right when you said shifters think in the treetops. They’ll assume I’ll be up there, even though they know you have to travel on the ground. They’ll also expect us to stick to daylight, because you can’t see in the dark. So we travel at night and on the ground. You’ll just have to stay close to me.”

  She smiled. “Not a hardship. How long before the kid gets back to the Guild Hall?” she asked.

  “Two, three days at best. He’ll need to heal first, and he’s rattled. And we’ll be traveling at the same time he is, which means we’ll also be closer to the city by the time he reports in. That’s good in that there’s at least some safety in the Guild Hall, and Cristobal wouldn’t tolerate open warfare in the city. It’s bad because our enemies will want to stop us from reaching that safety, and it won’t take them as long to find us.”

  He kissed her forehead and stepped away. “I’m going to do a quick scout of the area to make sure our young visitor didn’t bring any friends. I’ll stay close. You keep going, and I’ll join you before dark.”

  He shifted on the run, his sleek, black form vanishing into the shadows long before he was gone.

  Three nights later, Amanda was following Rhodry’s broad silhouette through the brush and not needing even her small flashlight to see. The forest around them was bright, and curiously monochrome, all color leeched out of the verdant growth by the overwhelming cool, blue glow of Fodla, the largest of Harp’s three moons. It hung huge and full in the sky, appearing almost larger than the planet itself. Fodla showed her full face only once every seven months. Most of her uneven orbit around Harp was spent far away from the sun, and she seemed to bask in this brief reflection of warmth after her cold and solitary journey.

  Back in the city, there would be celebrations. Families and friends would gather, starting with quiet, candlelit dinners and spilling out into the streets to dance under the blue moon. She thought about the parties now going on in the city, and knew she wouldn’t have traded an invitation to any of them for the sight of Rhodry’s strong back ahead of her in the moon-bright shadows of the Green.

  By now, their teenage prankster had probably reached the city with his news. They were traveling fast, following the most direct route possible along
the congested forest floor, trying to get back to the city before Serna and his allies could set out to stop them. Rhodry hadn’t uttered a word of complaint, even though she knew it had to be torture for him, crawling over the ground with her. Alone, he could have taken to the trees and been at Guild Hall long ago, could even have outpaced the young shifter and reached the city before his enemies got word of his return.

  She’d encouraged him to go ahead without her, had reminded him, for the umpteenth time, that this was her trial, that in point of fact she was supposed to be out here alone.

  He hadn’t argued with her, he’d just listened and kept going. It was like talking to a rock. A big, black, sometimes furry rock. They slept for a few hours every day, taking turns so that one of them was always awake and on guard. In the evening and through the night, they traveled, moving in silence—no joking, no conversation, not even a whisper—listening for that one sound, or absence of sound, that would give away the presence of an enemy—an enemy whose attack grew more likely with every passing hour.

  And it wasn’t just the night around them that they listened to. As she and Rhodry slid through the forest with its shades of gray, the hum of the trees was a constant in her head, more of a mood than a flow of information. Occasionally something would catch her attention and she’d dip deeper into the stream to listen more carefully.

  When the threat finally came, it came without warning. The forest grew completely still—the trees, every living creature, seeming to freeze all at once, waiting, listening.

  She automatically sank deep into the communal awareness, searching for the source of the danger. Nearly blind to the outside world, she didn’t notice that Rhodry had stopped until she nearly ran into him, catching herself just in time. He raised his head, searching, then turned in a slow half circle, his nostrils flaring as he tasted the night air. Amanda didn’t say a word, just watched him and waited. His senses were far keener than hers.

  His head snapped around suddenly, and he seemed almost to be quivering with the force of his concentration. Then he dropped their backpack and began yanking off his boots. “You told me once you could climb,” he said softly. “Did you mean it?”

  “Yes, of course. What—”

  His hand came up in warning and he said, “Listen.”

  She listened. And she heard…nothing. Absolute, dead silence. And then a high chittering noise, faint at first with distance, growing louder by the second. And she understood. “Dolans,” she breathed in horror.

  Rhodry was stripping off the rest of his clothes, shoving all of it haphazardly into the backpack while she stood and stared into the moonlit night, as if she could already see them coming. She gave a little yelp of surprise when he grabbed her arm and dragged her to the nearest canopy tree. “Climb. Now. I’ll wait—”

  “You don’t need to wait, just give me the pack,” she said instead, sitting down to remove her own boots.

  “To hell with the pack, just climb.”

  She shoved her boots inside on top of his. “I’ve done this a million times,” she said calmly, and took the time to buckle everything tightly before securing the backpack over her shoulders and turning toward the tree. She started to climb, then stopped when she saw he still hadn’t moved.

  “Rhodry?”

  “I’ll wait until you’re up, I want to be—”

  “The hell with that. What’re you—”

  “—ready to catch you just in case. I can shift and climb much faster than—”

  “So shift, then.”

  “Damn it!” He strode over and took both her arms in his strong hands. “I can’t help you once I shift, and I need to know you’re safe. So, please, Amanda. Just this once. Do as I ask and climb the fucking tree.”

  She gave him an angry glare, then spun around and began climbing, jamming her fingers and toes into the narrow runnels and grooves in the rough bark. “I swear,” she muttered as she climbed, “if you allow one dolan to take a single bite from your smallest toe, I will rip you a new one.”

  “That would be somewhat counterproductive.”

  “Don’t try to humor me, shifter, it won’t—” She was forced to stop her harangue and pay attention to the climb, aware of the ever louder chittering coming closer, and now audible beneath it, the low thunder of ten thousand pairs of tiny feet crashing through the underbrush, destroying everything in their way. A tormented shriek filled the air as some poor forest dweller crossed paths with the swarm, and discovered the peril of not paying attention. She climbed faster.

  As she climbed, she remembered what she’d read about dolans—tiny and four-legged, more insect than mammal despite their rodent-like appearance. They nested in large hive-like groups with a single matriarch at the center whose only job was adding to the hive. Fortunately, they were also highly competitive and cannibalistic which meant they were constantly fighting amongst themselves and eating the losers. It was certain death to step into a dolan nest. The good news was that they rarely stirred out of their home territory, unless something upset them enough to trigger a swarm. And when that happened, the first nest stirred up the next and the next until you had a veritable flood of ravenous dolans eating everything they could, and destroying what they couldn’t. Even shifters could find themselves among the edible if they didn’t move fast enough to keep from being overwhelmed by the swarm.

  It was useless to try outrunning them—their path was too unpredictable, their shifts too rapid to move safely out of their way on the ground. The only way to avoid them was to climb above the fray and wait for the tide to pass. Dolans could climb, though rarely and not very well. Their primitive minds were incapable of the necessary complexity required for that kind of purposeful change.

  She and Rhodry shouldn’t have been in any danger of a swarm, however. Dolans were definitely not nocturnal, and rarely, if ever, swarmed at night. She reached the first branching on the big tree at about twenty feet, hoisted herself onto the thick arm, and paused to look down at him. “Okay. I’ve proved I can climb. Now shift, damn you.”

  “Keep going,” he insisted. “You need another twenty feet at least.”

  She blew out a frustrated breath, stood up, and slid her fingers along the trunk, searching for the next handhold. She found it and began climbing once again, ignoring the growing weakness in her injured leg, knowing if he saw it, he’d delay his own safety even longer. When she reached the next fork, she turned and said, “Enough, Rhodi. You have to—”

  He was gone.

  “Rhodry?”

  She searched the surrounding trees. He wasn’t there and there was no sign of him on the ground. “Rhodry?” she shouted more loudly. There was no answer. Her brain conjured images of heroic last stands, of Rhodry trying to turn the swarm only to fall victim to a flood of greasy, brown fur and tiny, sharp teeth. Her heart was pounding a thousand beats a minute, tears of both anger and fear turning the moonlight to crystal against the black and white landscape.

  “Climb!”

  Amanda jerked her head to the right at the faint sound of his voice.

  She cursed him soundly under her breath, and kept climbing, not stopping until she was nearly fifty feet above the ground, and the branches around her were so thick and heavy, it was almost like standing on the ground. She dropped the backpack, and the attached bear pelt, into a secure branching of the tree, and made her way along a sturdy limb, scooting away from the trunk and over the forest floor where her view was better. She crawled as far as she dared, scanning the ground and the nearby trees.

  Rhodry sped into sight without warning, whipping through the canopy in his cat form, nearly silent and yet with a speed and precision that took her breath away. It was as though gravity had no power over him. He launched himself at her tree from above, hitting it with enough force that it resonated down the trunk and its branches until she felt the wood beneath her shiver with the impact. Razor-sharp claws dug in and propelled him downward at a pace that made her own progress resemble tree sap on a cold d
ay.

  He stopped halfway down to locate her, then spun around the trunk like a snake, winding through overlapping branches until he was right next to the crevice with the backpack. And there he sat, lifting one paw for an utterly smug swipe with his tongue while eyeing her with reproach.

  “Yeah, right. Kill me for caring,” she muttered, making her slow, tree sap way back to the main trunk. Once there, he butted her carefully with his head, and she couldn’t resist wrapping both arms around his neck for a hug. She didn’t say anything, just held on while he purred comfortingly.

  The chittering noise grew steadily louder as the swarm neared. A slender tree came crashing through the surrounding foliage, missing their own, sturdier haven by mere inches. Amanda surveyed the thick trunk nervously, comforting herself with the knowledge that it was strong enough to withstand the coming assault. As if reading her thoughts, Rhodry licked her face, then ducked away with a grin as she gave him a dirty look and rubbed her face vigorously with one shirtsleeve.

  The wait was only minutes, and seemed to go on forever, until between one breath and the next, the swarm flowed into sight, leaving a gaping hole in the nearly solid wall of forest behind them. It was a heaving tide of bodies, more than twenty feet wide and with no end in sight. Oily fur gleamed wetly in the moon’s cool light, the tiny creatures clawing their way over one another, a rolling wave of fur and teeth and claws, the leading edge constantly tumbled under and crushed as the swarm rolled inexorably forward. Their number seemed endless, and Amanda thought this was surely the largest swarm the forest had ever seen. There had to be hundreds of nests included, tens of thousands of the creatures in a wave more than a hundred yards long.