Korendir threw himself flat. He rolled headlong down the slope, heedless of the lantern which bounced and bruised against his side. The shutters clanged back, and sparks winnowed and danced through a flying whirl of damp leaves. Korendir rolled faster with the increased pitch of the slope. His wrist cracked painfully into rock as he held his naked blade from his body. He gave the discomfort no thought, but looked back over his shoulder. Through a tumbling whirl of light, he gained a first glimpse of his attacker.
The wereleopard bounded down slope after him, its eyes slitted with lust, and its fanged, triangular jaws dripping venom. Tufted ears lay flattened back against a skull uncannily human. Clawed, five-fingered hands extended from lightly furred arms that even now reached to rend and slash. The speed of the creature's rush was uncanny. It saw with precision in the dark.
Korendir fetched up against a fir tree. Dry needles showered his head. Some fell into the opened lantern; a flare of pitchy flame showed the wereleopard gathered for a leap that must end with deadly, venomed jaws tearing flesh.
Hopelessly outmatched, Korendir raised his sword arm. He tossed, the cumbersome lantern into the trunk that pressed like a fence at his back. The casing struck with a crash. Bronze shutters clanged open, and thrown sparks touched needles and dry resin and ignited.
Flame blossomed. The river bed flared with sudden light that outlined the wereleopard with all the clarity of a nightmare.
Korendir braced to fight.
That same moment the beast hurtled in a bound from shadow into fiery brillance. Slit pupils contracted to compensate; and the sudden shift in illumination catalyzed startling transformation. The wereleopard's clawlike hands blurred, shortened, and abruptly reshaped into paws. The savagery of its rush continued, but in a form gone eerily fluid. The facial structure altered, became wholly that of a beast. Weight, bone, and muscle redistributed into cat-form, and during the immediacy of the moment, the creature's reflexes were slowed. Unbalanced, almost clumsy, the wereleopard crashed short of its prey.
Korendir reacted without pause to analyze. He lunged away from the fir trunk. His blade thrust deep into spotted hide, even as venom-wet teeth snapped closed, and claws raked out to rend.
The steel pierced the wereleopard through the heart. Even then death came with difficulty. The creature spun with a hair-raising, coughing yowl that rang throughout the forest. Its claws plowed furrows in the earth and its tail lashed up dead leaves. Over and over the fey thing thrashed in the throes of its dying.
Korendir felt his sword twisted violently from his hand. He jumped clear, barely ahead of disaster. Fanged jaws clashed where his calf had been only an instant before. Droplets spattered his legging, a fresh threat; wereleopard venom was poisonous enough that contact with the skin could be fatal. Korendir backed off instantly. He cut away the tainted cloth and tossed the smoking fabric in the coals. Then, wary of his dying enemy, he hooked the lantern ring with his sword and dragged it clear of the brushfire. He set it upright upon the ground, arranged his cloak to protect his hand from burns, and readjusted the wick.
The wereleopard shuddered at last into stillness. Even dead, it was a sight to inspire dread. The venom-flecked muzzle was drawn back to reveal five-inch fangs, and incisors aligned like razors. The eyes were jewel green, banefully opened wide. The pelt, sleek, golden, and mottled in diamonds of black, might have been the delight of a royal lady; jolted from reaction, Korendir recalled the piteous terror that haunted Carralin. Foolish he may have been, to linger where a wereleopard's dying might draw others in to retaliate. But as if his promise to the girl was the driving motive of his life, the mercenary drew his dagger. He knelt in the unguarded open to skin his kill by lanternlight.
The creature's flesh was unnaturally hot and the blood, when Korendir cut, almost scalded. He worked without flinching and wondered if wereleopards were connected with the alter-reality of Alhaerie, that otherworld existence that White Circle enchanters tapped to power spells. Not all wizards had benevolent intentions, and the creation of shape-changing killers might stem from a conjured curse.
Korendir peeled the pelt from the forepaws, cautious of the razor talons. The tendons ran like cables from flat sheets of muscle to bone, every sinew knitted with an artistry designed for death. As the hunter dressed out his pelt, he kept his ears tuned to the forest. The brushfire had burned to embers at his back, and frightened by the heat into silence, the crickets no longer sang their measure of assurance. A wereleopard attacking now might find easy prey if a man grew inured to his danger.
Korendir arose and wrapped the bloody skin into a bundle. Sword resting against his thigh, he used a bit of sinew to lash the pelt to his waist. Then he wiped the knife on his leggings and reached down to pick up the lantern. He stopped with the gesture half complete. A wereleopard watched from the dark, its eyes glaring ovals of green just at the edge of the flamelight. It hissed as Korendir saw it. Clawed fingers twitched in agitation, yet it hesitated, strangely reluctant to attack.
Korendir lifted his sword. In the process he knocked the dangling tail of the pelt into motion; and the man-formed thing in the shadows shied back.
Fired by a leap of intuition, the mercenary divined why he had not been slaughtered outright. The wereleopard seemed intimidated by the fate of its fellow. As if the fur of the slain were a talisman, Korendir feinted then followed with a throw of his skinning knife.
His aim went true and the dagger struck. A terrible cry split the night. With a rattle and a crashing of brush, the creature spun and fled into darkness.
Korendir shouted in exultation. Lamplight showed a spatter of blood on the leaves, steaming in the chilly air. His fingers clamped tight to his first pelt, the mercenary pushed forward to track.
* * *
Daybreak saw the Master of Whitestorm returned to the square in Mel's Bye. The lantern dangled cold from his belt loop; one sleeve of his shirt was shredded, the wrist beneath furrowed where a near-pass with a wereleopard had shallowly gashed his hand. The blood which spattered his boots did not issue from any wound, but drained in clotting strings from the raw, diamond-spotted pelts strapped three deep at his belt. Towed through the dust at his heels by a tawny crown of hair, the man-shaped corpse of a fourth horror dragged in loose-limbed death. This one his sword had slain before sunlight could catalyze the shift into cat form.
The inn's stout door remained barred as Korendir reached the entry. Unfazed, he dropped the wereleopard corpse with a thump on the wooden stoop. Then he settled his shoulder against the signpost, and with a rub rag, began cleaning his sticky blades.
Chain rattled a minute later, followed by the grinding slide of bolts being drawn. The door opened. Without looking up from the work in his hands, Korendir said, "Someone tell Carralin I've brought her a present."
Silence.
Korendir glanced up. He found the innkeeper, the chief councilman, and all the folk of the town crowded in a pack past the threshold. Their eyes were flat with unfriendliness, and though four dead wereleopards offered cause enough to celebrate, not a man stepped forward to congratulate the mercenary who had accomplished the feat.
With a thin ring of sound, Korendir set sword and knife into their sheaths; his manner changed from hard to unremittingly grim. "Maybe you should tell me what's happened," he suggested.
No one answered.
Korendir's regard shifted from one hostile face to the next, and only after exhaustive search uncovered the fact that Carralin was not present.
Always, since the moment of his arrival, she had tagged his presence like a shadow.
Without speaking again, the mercenary slipped the thong which bound the pelts at his waist. Bloody furs unfurled in a heap around his ankles as, still without words, he stepped clear. The wooden stair boomed hollowly under his tread. The wereleopard corpse might as well not have been there for all the notice he gave as he strode into the press beyond the door.
Folk melted away to let him pass. But though he crossed the taproom
unimpeded, mutters arose sullenly at his back. The air smelled close—a mix of sweat, and raw anger, and a staleness of lingering pipe smoke. Korendir shed his cloak and added the reek of burnt pitch and blood. He threaded through trestles and benches, passed the stools by the bar with a stride that seemed unhurried. But folk who were brazen enough to follow discovered they must hasten to keep up.
Korendir took the stairs beyond, first two, and then three at a time. He crossed the darkened landing, ducked down the corridor, and wrenched open the door to his chambers.
Just five hours earlier, he had left a young girl weeping safely on his bed.
Now, the room was close with the scent of cheap perfume, and another smell more cloying. Daylight from the window lit carnage. The whitewashed walls, the floors, the tassels adorning the bedstead wore ropy garlands of blood. Carralin lay with her head thrown back.
Her throat was torn out; the mangled bones of her spine showed white through a mess of slashed gristle. One chapped hand trailed from the bedclothes, huge and limp and forever finished with pouring ale for thirsty patrons.
Korendir stopped as if kicked.
He took one breath, then another, and his eyes flicked from the dead woman to the sill. Bloody marks remained where the killer had made its exit. The casement hung open. Latches had been torn from their settings by claws and ruthless strength. No one had bothered to close out the draft; the mullioned frame swung creaking in the wind off the fields.
Korendir started forward to remedy the lapse when a heavy footfall dogged his track. A hand reached out to restrain him.
He spun very fast. Emmon Hillgate's hulking son missed his hold and grasped only empty air. For a moment both men locked eyes, one still and waiting, the other shivering with anger and grief and a wild, untenable madness.
Emmon's fists bunched. "Man, you took your pleasure and then abandoned her to die!"
Townsfolk gathered in the hallway; out of fairness to the mercenary, one man strove to restore temperance. "Emmon, leave be! The lord went hunting wereleopards, and by the look of things, bagged four."
But Emmon Hillgate's son was lost to all things beyond the girl lying slaughtered on the bed. Huge, threatening, he advanced upon his slighter adversary. "You might have done your hunting right here, then. For your cheap toss in the sheets, my sister deserved a defender."
Korendir denied none of the accusations. His face showed no feeling, and his movement no shred of hesitation as he stepped past Emmon's bulk and smoothly shut the casement. Returned without pause to the bedside, he raised hands that did not shake and veiled the corpse like a bride in her bloodied sheets. He smoothed the last strands of hair from view with fingers stained still from his wereleopard kills. Then he raised his eyes.
Anger burned there, electrically intense, and deep beyond rational understanding.
Emmon misinterpreted. He took leave of his senses with a scream of rage and lunged to strike, to mangle, to pulp the wretch who had abandoned his sister to an unthinkably, horrible death.
Korendir spun calmly. His attacker towered a full head taller, and at least half again his weight. He deflected the first punch with his forearm, ducked the blow of the second. Light on his feet as a dancer, he snapped his sheathed sword from his belt, then kicked a footstool into Emmon's shins. The larger man blundered through with a clatter of splitting rungs. Korendir stepped aside and hammered the pommel of his weapon on the back of the giant man's neck.
Emmon buckled at the knees, then collapsed across splinters of furniture. Korendir picked his way past. Whatever emotion had moved him was gone; the dumbstruck knot of villagers saw nothing except eyes gone silver with cold.
"Somebody stay with him," the mercenary said in regard to Emmon, who sprawled on the blood-spattered floor. Stiffly he added, "When the great oaf stirs, tell him I'll guard while he buries his sister."
Then, steel still in hand, the Master of Whitestorm advanced in the direction of the stairway. Even in outrage over Carralin's fate, not a man from the town dared prevent him.
In the taproom Korendir chose a trestle and set his dusty boot on one corner. He leaned on his knee and gave the taproom crowd a harsh scrutiny. "I'll need a dozen men who are unafraid to bear weapons, and six more skilled with a bow. The wereleopards enter Southengard through the caves of the Ellgol, and there, with Neth's grace, we can stop them. Choose your twelve. Tell them to rest, for I'll need them wakeful at dusk."
Korendir paused, his hands too still where they rested on the blade across his thigh. "I also want the boots each man will wear, and the services of your cobbler for today."
He added nothing more; no excuse for his desertion of Carralin, no boastful account of his kills. He did not ask the healer to attend the scratch on his forearm, but instead disappeared through the outside door. The townsfolk stood rooted in surprise, and even their garrulous chief councilman struggled at a loss for words.
VIII. The Caves of the Ellgol
The party gathered in the common room at twilight, twelve men packing torches and rucksacks that bulged with weapons and supplies, and six more with filled quivers and bows. The boots of each, from Sethon the miller's son, to the sinewy bulk of the village blacksmith were newly topped with wereleopard pelt, scraped, but of necessity uncured. Korendir had insisted that the cobbler treat his own footgear the same. When the squeamish craftsman raised objection with words concerning trophies and vanity, the mercenary gave him short shrift. The company from Mel's Bye relied upon one fact: living wereleopards faltered in their attack if they scented the hide of their slain. That split second of hesitation was all the edge a hunter might get. In that instant a quick man could escape being massacred and make his kill.
Consequently, at sundown the entire party donned their stinking footgear without complaint. They checked their weapons, adjusted pack straps and sword belts, and bemoaned the lack of beer with the bluster men use to bolster each other's nerves. Korendir sat unconcerned upon a trestle, rebinding his wounded forearm with strips torn from a linen napkin. He finished the knot with his teeth, then tucked the trailing ends into his cuff.
"Are we ready?" he said to his company. He slipped from his perch on the table and made for the door. The innkeeper slipped the bar to let him out. As the panel swung wide, Korendir stepped into gathering night without a glance to see who followed.
The master smith broke the general air of reticence. "Well, lads, can't leave him to claim all the sport by himself."
"Oh, easily," quipped a farmer who wore shovels strapped to his backpack. "I'll keep my burnt stew and nagging wife, and leave fey beasts to those who hafta prove they got parts to fill their britches."
Someone else shouted out from the rear. "Now didn't I hear your woman singing a different tune, words on the matter of closing yer points with her needle, since what dangled inside seemed lazy as the rest o' you?"
A shout of laughter answered, while the farmer howled and turned red. "Sheesh, now, who listens to a woman what's got a mouth so big and bitter you could cure a ham inside?" He trooped down the stair, and almost collided with Korendir, stopped still without warning and all but invisible in his dark clothes. The farmer recoiled into his fellows as the mercenary spoke out in clipped threat.
"You cannot come to the caves."
Stung, the farmer drew breath to protest; then his vision adjusted to the gloom and he realized the outburst had not pertained to him at all. A hulking shadow blocked Korendir's path; Emmon Hillgate's son, with his great thick fists clutched to a pole weapon salvaged from his father's attic. Failing light touched his mad eyes, and the newly sharpened halberd that gleamed in a crescent-edge of silver above his shoulder.
"I'm going," said Emmon.
His demand would be argued. Korendir's tight stance forewarned as much. Moved to boldness by a flood of fear and resentment, the nearest of the farmers said sharply, "He deserves the right, I think."
Others behind called agreement. Carralin had filled their mugs since she was tall enough to
heft a pitcher. Her large-boned, diffident presence was missed at the tap, and in the dark, about to risk themselves against wereleopards, the men of Mel's Bye readily gave way to disgruntlement. Korendir might deliver their town from danger, but he would be remembered as a man who had pressed his advantage on a girl in a time of misfortune.
"If Emmon is left, I stay also," said the miller's son. His closest companions stood with him, their voices over-loud in agreement.
Korendir turned his shoulder toward Emmon. As if the pike did not tremble in hands that yearned to take satisfaction for a sister's dishonor and death, the mercenary regarded the villagers one by one. Silence fell, stubborn as old rock; Korendir understood its temper.
"There will be death and sorrow if Emmon goes," he cautioned. "Not of my making; no more can I promise than that." And quickly, he passed on his way.
Left braced for a challenge that never happened, the villagers reacted belatedly. They shifted packs and tools and swords, and uncomfortably moved to follow. None looked at Emmon; yet when the big man joined the rear of the party, nobody prevented him. They started across the market, while the door boomed closed behind them. Nailed to the oaken panels was the hide of the man-formed wereleopard Korendir had slain the previous night, as talisman to augment the safety of the wives, children, and craftsmen left behind.
Full night had fallen. Korendir led through the town, past the stake he had left with the skull of a wereleopard kill as sentinel over empty houses. The farmers at his heels gave the trophy wide berth, except Emmon, who paused to spit in the blood-dried pits of each eye socket. "So will I treat the one who killed Carralin," he muttered viciously. Those who overheard could not tell which he referred to—the murdering cat-form, or the mercenary.