“How came you here?”
At least he should be able to answer that, unless his wits were so disordered that even recent events were lost to him.
“I have always been—” His voice trailed away as he continued to regard her with a kind of eager curiosity. In his clear eyes she could detect nothing of a sleeping mind but rather eager intelligence.
Her sword point touched the pounded earth of the floor. In spite of his foul clothing, wild appearance, he had such a quiet air of certainty that he could be one wearing a disguise.
His hands had gone now to his belt where he ran fingers back and forth across the sleek fur as one might caress a beloved animal—or reassure himself that a treasure long denied, long lost, had been safely returned.
“Always been?” Doggedly she kept to her point.
He nodded. An errant lock of hair fell across his face and he brushed it aside. Not soon enough. Thra held her breath for an instant. Just so—her eyes flickered to the door of the armorie and away again. No—this was no refugee from her own land. He was—she moved her shoulders along the wall, setting more of a distance between them.
“What are you?” Her voice was a whisper. Still, among the wild thoughts now churning in her mind, there was no fear—rather wonder. This surely—grown somewhat older—was the youth of the carving—the one who had fled the hunters.
“Why do you ask that?” It was his voice which rang loud and sharp. “When you already know—if you allow yourself to face the truth.” His head inclined the slightest toward the open armorie door.
Thra moistened lips with tongue tip. “I have seen that,” she, too, indicated the door. “You are like the hunted one. But—”
He raised hands from his belt, flexed his fingers full in the subdued glow of the fire. Those were claws with wet earth clinging to them, not overlong human nails.
“You have heard of my kind?”
Thra could not answer at once. What were old legends compared with this? Though the forest had such an ill name her mind refused to connect such tales with this slender young man. Legend suggested that such as he were a dark menace of sorcery, yet in her there was no shrinking. She had met many of her own kind who carried with them a far greater stench of pure evil.
His lips drew back so those fang-sharp teeth showed clearly as he stood there straight and tall, as one facing an enemy about to make an assault on a poorly defended last redoubt.
“I am were.” He might have been shouting a battle slogan against all the world which she represented.
Silence, one so deep that she heard a leaf flutter across the floor inward from the open door. Once more his tongue swept across his lips. He looked almost sly—dangerous. Still in her she felt no menace and she held his gaze locked to hers.
“Do you not understand, Lady Thra? Or are our kind not known in the south for the dreaded thrice-damned stock we are? Do you lack cursed forests there?”
Her sword point scratched a half-remembered protective pattern on the well-packed earth. But what had such to do with turning aside the possible wrath of one who claimed his blood?
“You put your trust in steel?” Those slanting brows near vanished beneath the fringe of rough hair. “Ah, but steel, no matter how cunningly forged, cannot harm us. Though hounds may chase to pull us down, yet no true arrow nor spear can kill. We can feel pain but not death—save by silver. Silver or,” his hands quivered, “fire.”
“Yet you warm yourself by that,” Thra returned. “Is this not your home? Yet you bring your enemy fire into it.”
His wide mouth stretched in a wry smile.
“You see me in a guise wherein fire is servant not master. Ah, Grimclaw,” he addressed the cat, “who have you summoned here? A lady who shows no fear, does not tremble nor look upon me as if I differed from those of her own kind, one who walks—”
“Two-legged?” Thra interrupted. “How is it that you greet me by my name, stranger? I am new come into these lands, only this day into your forest.” She still held the thought that he might be one who had lost his wits from some battle injury.
“This is my talent—” Even as the cat had before him, he projected his unspoken answer into her mind.
That her thoughts could be so invaded was, to her, a kind of ravishment, such a blow as she had never taken before. She stiffened against showing outwardly her repugnance but rage rose icily within her.
He no longer even looked in her direction, instead he moved a little closer to the armorie, gazing intently at the sword still hanging there. But, if that weapon was his as the belt seemed to be, he made no attempt to arm himself with it. Perhaps he had run four-legged so long that he clung to fangs and claws as his proper weapons.
“I have to thank you.” Though he spoke aloud this time she thought that was a concession on his part. “I have been long afield and there are those to whom I am welcome prey. That you have brought me this much freedom,” his fingers once more sought the circlet of fur about him, “is almost more than I had dared hope for. Perhaps there is some meaning in this. We are only the playthings of strange forces. And you chose a poor refuge here, why, my lady?”
Need he ask when he could read her mind and she could not shut him out? Thra longed to turn her sword on him—to banish so this—this thing who could know her in a way so unnatural. Was her every thought and feeling open to him now?
“I cannot enter where you hate—” His voice was low. “It was when I skulked outside and must know who or what waited here that I did that. We have our own oaths which we do not break!” There was high pride in him, such pride as matched her own, and she felt herself responding when she did not want to yield. “Do you wish such an oath from me, lady?”
What did he awaken in her—feelings and beliefs she thought long slain? She shook her head, instead accepting this self-confessed forest monster as she would one of her own rank in the old days.
“So—what brought you here?” He returned to his first question.
“A beast pack which marches under the banner of a running hound—” she spat forth the words and thumped the point of her sword into the earth. “My freedom was hard bought—the last of my liegemen hangs from a tree in the valley. Your lords hunt to ill deaths.”
His eyes glowed flame bright for an instant.
“A running hound—aye!” Once more his lips shaped a snarl which was feral. “Roth is abroad then or—” he scowled, “since time moves different here within the wood and years sometimes speed without noting—one of his get. They live with fear as their armor and their weapons, but lately they have not tried the forest ways. Perhaps now the hounds will course again—on your trail, lady!”
He showed no sign of uneasiness, rather spoke eagerly as if he looked forward to some contest.
“It might be so.” She did not enlarge upon that, wondering if she would also be considered prey by some of the forest dwellers.
“This is a place of fear,” he continued. “My brothern lair here, and yet even we do not know all the dark dangers which pad the trails.” He weighed her with a bold and fierce gaze but she was not to be eyed down so. Instead she returned her sword to its sheath, showing him hands as bare as his own.
“Devils and dangers I have seen amany and the worst of them are two-legged and name themselves men.” She laughed harshly. “You have made free with my name, how then are you called?”
“I am Farne—and there is another name, only that your throat cannot voice. Grimclaw here is my marshal, the holder of my castle. I have not recently been resident in this part of my domain. Lady Thra, I offer you guest right.”
He stooped to catch the lower end of one of the smaller branches half-consumed by the fire, holding it aloft so that flame sprouted from its tip as it might from a wax taper.
“I light you to your chamber,” he began formally and then laughed. “I fear you shall have to take us as we are, which is in ill condition. But at least—” Still holding his improvised taper he passed her to the door, to re
turn a moment later swinging by their feet a brace of wood fowl.
“Even Roth might relish these—”
“Roth?” That was the second time he had mentioned that name. “His badge is the running hound? Roth of—” She waited.
“Farne,” he had settled on his heels before the fire drawing from a break between stones a knife with which he set about cleaning the fowl. “What is a name? It can be given to a thing, a place, a woman, a man. Those with the old knowledge claim that a name has power—that it can be used for or against that which bears it. But who truly knows?”
There was so much more she wanted to learn. What of the tale carved on the armorie of the babe abandoned in the wilds, the youth later hunted. Was it his story which was thus portrayed?
“The sword—” She pointed to that which hung in the cupboard. “Is that also of Farne?”
His head turned so suddenly she blinked and dropped hand to knife hilt. Then he voiced a throaty sound like a growl, while the cat hissed.
“What have you heard of Farne?”
“Nothing save your own words,” she replied. “I saw the raiders at their work and lost a good friend to them. But yonder does hang a sword and its pommel is a head which is strange. While on two sides of that armorie is carven a tale clearly enough. Therefore I ask—does that blade fit your hand?”
“My heritage? Perhaps, lady, when the time is right. For now I wear that which is closer to me.” He touched the furred belt. “That,” he nodded to the sword, “has a purpose which will come.” He arose from where he had set quarters of the fowls on improvised spits and went to the armorie.
“A purpose into which Farne enters?” Thra prodded him.
His shoulders tensed. She had a momentary feeling that this was all a dream. Then he caught at the door and with a sharp push sent it shut.
“Let it hang! I will not have it yet—perhaps never. There are traps and traps, and those who are hunted learn to sniff them out—or die.”
Their meal was sizzling and he divided it fairly, laying it in the bowls from the shelf. Thra licked fingers scorched by hot grease before she began to chew the meat avidly from the bones.
Night had come fully but Farne made no move to close the door. Also he paused now and then as if to listen. Perhaps his ears were better attuned to the normal forest sounds so he could detect the unusual. Thra heard the squalling cry of some furred hunter that had missed its prey, the hooting of an owl. And always there was the drip of moisture and the rustle of branch.
When he had finished Farne went to that crude tree-trunk box against the far wall, pawing through its contents to select an armload of fresh clothing. Saying nothing he went out into the night.
Thra licked her fingers well and fed wood to the fire. She was tired and this was shelter. She looked to that bunk she had filled with bedding. The cat was washing its face, though now and then its ears twitched as it picked up some sound.
There would soon be need for more wood if the fire was to burn through the night, but there was no use seeking that in the soaked outer world. Farne—a part of Thra wondered at her own calm acceptance of him. There were the old tales—she had heard more of them as she and Rinard had prowled closer to the forest.
They had been seeking more knowledge of this very wood as well as supplies when they had been trapped in the raided village. Thra had believed Rinard close on her heels, but the poor fool had stood his ground, apparently believing that he served her so, as she had discovered too late. Rinard—forcibly she put him out of her mind now. Had the raiders sighted her, tracked her later?
“Hunters—” Thra was not even aware she said that aloud until the cat answered her.
“Not yet. But a hunt comes, yes. Those others seek always for him!”
“Often?” she pressed.
“Often enough. Until he chooses—” But there were no more mind words added to that. Thra felt that in another place a door had closed—firmly. She would learn no more—at least for now.
Those stories of the werefolk were awesome. And Farne might be only one of many. She shifted uneasily as the were appeared to materialize out of the dark. He was dressed in fresh leather as sleek as the belt he still wore. Twigs and mud had been brushed out of his hair, the grime washed from his hands and face. He walked with assurance, and with that same air of authority he began to question Thra about the raid upon the village.
“It would seem that Roth, or he who holds the Hound rule, grows overbold,” Farne mused when she had done. “To this shelter—” he gestured with one hand, “you are welcome, rough though it is. But I would advise you not to remain here in the forest.” He added that decisively and Thra knew resentment. There he stood fingering that belt of his and looking at her as if she were a green girl who had never heard an alarm bell.
“The forest—” He hesitated. “Oh, yes, there are those who have sought refuge here but mainly they are the unwary, the ignorant. Tomorrow I shall show you a trail leading westward out of Roth’s way, and so see you free of this land. But tonight I have that which I must do.” He turned on his heel and, with no other farewell, was gone again into the dark, the cat bounding after him.
Thra crouched in a dusk which was hardly thinned by the light of the dying fire. Her body ached with fatigue, her eyelids were heavy, yet in this place dared she yield to sleep? Tonight there was no Rinard to share the watch turn about.
She fed the last of the wood to the fire and laid down close to the hearth, drawing both sword and knife, to place them where her hand could fall easily. Thra closed her eyes knowing that, trust or no trust, she could not continue without rest.
However she dreamed and in that dream she fled, a hunted thing without any defense against the force on her trail. Yet within her rage flared so hot she felt as if her whole body was aflame. There arose before her a dark wall of vines much interwoven and the terror of the chase flung her full at that. The vines writhed and wreathed, reached, clutched her in an unbreakable grip. She fought and tore at that growth, her hands rent in turn by thorns. Now she was held fast as the din of the hunt drew nearer and she heard a triumphant blast of horn.
Blast of horn! Thra opened eyes—not upon a mass of imprisoning greenery, though the dream seemed still real for a second or two and her hands were up and out flailing the air. This was a dim and shadowed room—the only light, wan and limited, came through two narrow slits of windows.
As she pulled herself up, her body slick with sweat beneath her worn garments, she heard it clearly—a horn!
Hunters! On her own trail or merely loose in the forest? She dared not remain where she was lest she be trapped, yet to seek a path through the wood without a guide was also a lost cause.
She stumbled as she stooped for her weapons, and her hand, flung out to balance her, slapped the side of the armorie. For the second time the door swung open.
No furred belt—where was that now—and its wearer? But the sword—Her own blade would be the better for a smith’s sharpening and it was well worn. Since Farne had chosen not to take this then why could she not arm herself the better?
Thra listened. The horn sounded once again and she could not deceive herself—its blatant blast was closer. She must be out and away. Slamming her own weapon into its sheath and kicking her pack towards the door, she reached for the armorie sword.
Her flesh tingled almost as if flames licked at her. But she had set weapon swinging back and forth. Only when she tried to grab for it her hand had no strength, fingers numb, with that numbness spreading up her wrist into her arm. She who had scoffed at tales of sorcery was helpless. Fear pushed her away from the slow swing of that sheathed blade.
A third call of the horn and now it was answered by a clear bay and then a second. Thra shivered. Men she could and had faced when necessity drover her to it, but hounds—with them she would have little chance. She swung around to survey the cabin. One entrance, those narrow slits of windows—it offered defense of a kind save there was no bar for the door and
she had nothing to build a barricade. Only to venture out—with hounds ready to trail—
Knife, sword, she had no other weapons, she pushed aside the pack and shut the door. No bolt—it could be easily forced.
Thra fingered her knife. There was a way of escape if it came to a last desperate moment—by her own hand. To wait to be ravished by hound or huntsman—was that a coward’s choice? How could she—?
A loud baying with a note in that deep belling which startled her. Eagerness, such cry as a hound might give when its prey was in sight. Yet that had not come from just without the cabin as she had expected, rather it was farther away—to the west. It was answered by a chorus of other cries trailing away from her. She hardly dared to believe that the hunt had turned. Now her shoulder grazed the armorie.
She stood before the deep carving of the door. The were who had fled—the hunters who followed. Farne’s trail, had it this morning crossed hers, setting a counter-scent to draw the hounds? She frowned, breathing a little faster as if, though she had not stirred from the cabin, she had indeed run a quarry’s hard pace.
Farne—she did not doubt he had been hunted before. This was his country, he would know every rock, tree, shrub of it—be fully aware of any hole giving refuge. Yes, the sound was lessening—the hunt drew westward—she need only wait until she could hear no more and then head east.
Why had he done this? Had it been by chance? Somehow Thra doubted that as she reached for her pack again. By rights he owed her no favors. True, she had, by chance, opened the armorie and the cat had taken the belt—but was that so great a service—?
So far had her thoughts gone when she was startled by what was no hound’s triumphant bay—rather a deep-throated howl. Not one of pain—rather anger and—fear!
It was drowned out almost instantly by the frenzied yapping of dogs and the shouts of men. Something—Farne?—was at bay. The shouting grew louder but she could not distinguish words. With bared sword in one hand she pulled open the cabin door.