VII
VII
WERELEOPARDS OF ARDMARK
BETWEEN mid-afternoon and sundown, Korendir walked the breadth and length of the settlement of Mel’s Bye. He encountered doorways that had been clawed to wreckage, and the mangled bones of livestock. He saw graves. He listened to tales of assault and tales of loss, standing in the dooryards of weed-grown farmsteads, while those inhabitants bold enough to accompany him clustered at his heels and started in terror at shadows. No safety lay in numbers where the wereleopard prowled. The Master of Whitestorm had been told as much. Still, he strode the roads and fields with no other precaution than a hand left half-curled on his sword hilt.
At this Emmon Hillgate’s son shouted derision. The mercenary the town had hired was certainly a fool; or else he had no concept of the speed a wereleopard could charge. The rest of the farmers held their opinion. With winter closing in, they had no choice. The optimistic among them read the mercenary’s attitude as an expression of extreme confidence; the keenly perceptive saw differently: the man seemed fearless primarily because life mattered little to him.
As one who had arranged the loans for the mercenary’s fee, the chief councilman might have raised outcry over this, except that Korendir’s indifference did not extend to his job. When the party stumbled across a freshly slaughtered deerhound, the mercenary’s concentration was daunting to witness. He knelt in the spattered dirt and explored the still-warm corpse with bare hands. He measured the depth of the fang bites with his dagger, examined the ground for signs of struggle, and of course found none. The wereleopard was a creature of grace, lightfooted as wind itself; its venom worked with terrible speed. The torn grass, the claw marks in the sod, all had been carved by the hound’s own death throes.
The wereleopard proved to be finicky; it gorged on the choicer entrails and left what remained for the crows. Korendir straightened with a disturbed frown. He cleaned his dagger and sheathed the blade with hands still bloodied from the dog. Then, as the townsmen nervously inclined toward departure, he lingered to study the pad marks left by the cat-form demon. He marked off the sixteen paces of the beast’s closing spring, and its satiated stride as it departed. At the end, the onlookers who expected comment were disappointed. In absolute silence, Korendir vaulted a stile and strode back toward the town tavern.
Day was fading. Shadows striped the lanes with purple and the western sky blazed red. Korendir set a brisk pace, and the short-legged chief councilman had to strain to keep up. After a time it became more than plain that no information would be offered. Gathering his nerve, the plump official ventured inquiry. “What will you do?”
“Kill wereleopards.” As if unwilling to be bothered, the mercenary’s stride increased.
Frustrated as much by his brevity, the chief councilman broke into a trot. Unaccustomed exertion caused his tunic to ruck above the belt; his belly jiggled, and his face turned redder. He would not yield to indignity, but gasped between puffs to Korendir, “How will you do this? Wereleopards have outrun the postrider’s horses. One snapped the spine of a bullock in a single bite.”
The Master of Whitestorm glanced aside, that moment aware of the councilman’s discomfort. He slowed at once. “Tomorrow, when I’ve explored the river in the hills, I’ll tell you.”
The chief councilman frowned, absorbed by the need to tug his tunic straight. This answer was far from satisfactory, not when every man in Mel’s Bye had pledged his next harvest to borrow gold. If the mercenary hired with the sum failed to rout the wereleopard, there would be no crops, and no hands left to sow seed. The farmers and their families would be ruined. Breathless, sweating, and badly in need of reassurance, the chief councilman surrendered to rumpled dignity with a sigh. He regarded the taciturn man at his side, and something indefinable warned him against pressing with further questions.
An adventurer who had singlehandedly lifted the Blight of Torresdyr, then freed the cliffs of Whitestorm from a weather elemental could not be expected to welcome the chore of justifying his intentions with talk.
* * *
Night fell over the settlement of Mel’s Bye. Townsmen and farmers crowded the taproom in the tavern until chairs and stools ran short. Latecomers perched upon trestles. When every available space had been taken, others stood or leaned against the walls, some of them mothers with infants in their arms, others commandeering floor space for toddlers asleep in blankets. Every cranny in between became filled with boisterous children. A few elderly denizens drank themselves senseless to escape the pandemonium. The young men chose other options. Emmon Hillgate’s son climbed a joist and lounged in the roof beams, which were smoke-stained and dusty, but broad enough to accommodate even his muscled bulk. From there he surveyed the scene with dark, mad eyes, and observed the one place in the tavern that was not jammed with townsfolk.
The corner where Korendir of Whitestorm sat was empty for a yard on either side.
Earlier, while the mercenary sharpened his sword, the reach of the blade had forced would-be bystanders to a distance. Now finished with his steel, his whetstone laid aside, the space around him remained. In solitary, Korendir settled before the trencher brought to him by the tavernmaid. Nobody else intruded on his presence. He ate his meal without inviting conversation. Even Lain, who had shared his company on the road for six weeks, hesitated to renew the acquaintanceship.
The evening progressed. Carralin cleared away the crockery, and closed the tap for the night. Despite her bulky frame and square jaw, her kindly endowed figure and honest manner had attracted a string of suitors who outdid each other to win her attentions. But tonight, as she made her rounds with bucket and cloth, it was the mercenary’s table she lingered over.
Her brother noticed, and frowned from his perch in the rafters.
When finally the beer mugs stood emptied, the talk among the townsmen faltered. The silence and the darkness beyond the inn’s shuttered windows seemed to weigh upon everyone; except Korendir, who sat at the trestle pushing breadcrumbs into patterns with his thumb.
“He’s considering strategy,” ventured someone, but at a whisper that the mercenary would not hear.
Emmon Hillgate’s son held no such restraint. He called loudly from the eaves, and asked how a wereleopard could be intimidated by the arrangement of a banquet suited for mice. The nearer of the townsfolk shifted in embarrassment, but the insult failed to provoke a response.
Korendir raised eyes like northern ocean and announced his intention to retire.
Carralin showed him to his chamber, the inn’s best, situated at the end of a gabled corridor on the second floor. The furnishings included hand-sewn rugs, chests fashioned of cedar, and a bedstead tasseled in scarlet, green, and turquoise, more tailored to the tastes of Southengard merchants than to the comfort of a hired sword. Korendir tossed the pillows against the footboard without compunction. He followed by reversing the blankets and quilted coverlet.
Carralin watched his movements with huge eyes as she lit the candle on the nightstand. Diffident, almost wistful, she gathered her courage and asked, “Would my lord like his boots removed? The lad downstairs could oil and polish them.”
“Thank you, no.” The Master of Whitestorm lifted the candle from under her chapped hands and moved to the window. There he became engrossed in the study of catches, latches, and hinges. Carralin lingered, absorbed by a longing quite at odds with her brother’s provocations. Aware of her worshipful presence, Korendir said pointedly, “Your inn has seen to my needs well enough.”
“Then I bid you goodnight, my lord.” Carralin retreated quietly; and because she turned down her wick to save oil, her disappointment was lost in the shadows.
While her step faded down the stair, Korendir left the window. He snuffed the candle and settled against the footboard with his boots still on. The tasteless dangle of the tassels never influenced his decision; he had simply selected the position that offered the only clear view through the casement. That left him vulnerable through the door at his back, but the folk at the inn were no threat. Danger in Mel’s Bye came from wereleopards changed to man-form at nightfall, and well able to climb mortared stone, or cross the sloping shingles shared in common with the inn yard stables.
Poised between vigilance and sleep, Korendir reflected upon the deerhound’s corpse lying disembowelled by one long swipe of claws. The animal had known no chance to turn, fight, or flee. The carnage had happened faster than reflex, swifter even than thought. One glance had confirmed to Korendir how pitifully inadequate mortal resource would be against the golden killers from Ardmark. Yet if the prospect of ridding Mel’s Bye of their predations daunted him, he fretted not at all. He rested motionless, thinking, his hand settled loosely on his sword. Sometime after midnight, he dozed. A half moon rose in the east and glazed the mullioned windowpanes in light.
Sound roused him, a furtive scrape followed by the creak of a floorboard. Korendir’s fingers clenched to his weapon the same instant he opened his eyes.
A shadow eclipsed one square of the casements. Driven by explosive reflex, Korendir shot from repose.
Barely had his feet struck the carpet when sword steel sang from his sheath and flashed, point first, to kill.
Yet his adversary was no wereleopard, nor even a thief come for plunder. Draft from the opened door wafted an odor of perfume, a cheap scent similar to ones worn by women who traded their favors for coin. Korendir registered this at the last second. He recoiled in midlunge and turned his blade, just barely. The flat, not the edge, grazed the importunate female across the throat. Momentum was never so easily bridled. His followthrough hammered one quillon against her collarbone and jarred her back on her heels.
Korendir caught her left-handed as she tottered. He spun his own body with the last of his control, and managed to cushion her fall. The hard edge of a clothes chest bashed his ribs and his sword pommel clanged on the basin which rested on top. Wash water flooded in a sheet over his shoulders, soaking his dark tunic, and the hair of the doxie, which was silky, long, and sweetened with the smell of cherry blossoms.
With the girl’s soft breasts against his chest, Korendir leaned forward to ease his bruised side. The slight shift of weight exposed her square jaw to the moonlight.
Recognition caused him to drop his steel as if burned. “Carralin!”
She twisted against his neck, hoarsely gasping for air.
Korendir pushed aside her collar and explored her throat. He felt no cuts, no smashed cartilage, only inflamed skin. She would show a bruise by the morning, a small enough penalty. Neth alone knew how close she had come to being skewered. Korendir expelled a quivering breath.
“Why did you come here?”
The words came out harshly. Carralin collapsed against his shoulder, weeping. Convulsed by the aftermath of shock and fear, she could not answer. Kneeling with her young body pressed to his chest and flank, Korendir was aware how scantily she was clothed. Draft from the doorway chilled her flesh, and her small, hardened nipples thrust against the thin muslin of her shift. Even the abundance of perfume could not mask the healthy, female attraction of her.
Korendir moved as if goaded. He gathered his scattered composure, adjusted his legs, and rose with the girl cradled in his arms. Two steps saw him across the floor. Then, as if her flesh might scald him, he shed her clinging weight onto the coverlet of his bed.
Carralin snuggled into the still warm hollow left by his body. Her weeping eased slightly and she reached for him, plain in her need for comfort. But lightly as shadow, Korendir evaded her. Moonlight revealed him; across the room, he bent and recovered his sword from the floor. Then, with barely a creak of floorboards, he returned and sat upon the mattress by the tavern girl’s knee. The sword, gripped in too-white knuckles, rested point downward against the scrubbed boards of the floor.
“You shouldn’t have come here, Carralin.”
His tone was hoarse, as if he had been running and fought to control his breathing. Carralin extended her hand, but the dark of his tunic lay just beyond reach of her fingertips. Frustration, and the memory of the blade that had attacked out of nowhere crumbled her fragile composure. She fought her voice steady. “Lord, I wanted comfort. I wanted to give comfort. My father, my younger brother, my sister, my mother-all are dead. Emmon is the last of my family that were leopards haven’t slaughtered, and he is mad with grief. Now you’ll go out, and also be killed—”
Korendir stopped her words with a curt shake of his head. “That isn’t what your councilmen are paying me for. Not to come here and die.”
Carralin did not argue, but gulped in a spasm that rocked her body. “My lord, you must listen! They are murderous and fey, those creatures. The dark is their time of terror, and I can’t sleep for the nightmares.”
Korendir sucked in a ragged breath. He rose and trod briskly to the casement; for a long time he stood staring out over fields where the wheat lay rotting like mudflats sheared by a storm tide. “Fey they may be, but the wereleopards aren’t invincible. They can be made to bleed and die like any man.”
“How?” Carralin’s voice showed more hysteria than belief. “How will you kill a thing that moves faster than a man, and carries a poisoned bite?”
Korendir turned with a vicious smile. “When I find out, I’ll skin the pelts of the slain for your hearth rug.”
Carralin sat up, shocked. The coverlet crumpled under her hips as she swung her long legs to the floor. Moonlight touched her shift like smoke, and the ripe, rounded body underneath. “You have no plan,” she accused.
Korendir said nothing. Backlight from the window masked his expression, as though he deliberately hid something.
“You have no plan,” Carralin repeated, frightened. She fingered her shift with hands that in shadow no longer seemed chapped. Her thread of composure broke. She hurled herself across the chamber, painfully in need of male contact to bolster her failed reassurance.
Korendir’s hands caught her shoulders, not gently. Unprepared for the roughness of him, Carralin cried out. Her discomfort softened nothing, but seemed only to sting him to further harshness. She glimpsed his face as he twisted: impervious to pity as sleet-smoothed granite. Then he spilled her gracelessly onto the windowseat, and retreated to the darkest corner of the room.
Disheveled, disturbed beyond tears, Carralin listened to the rasp of his breath. With a shock of intuition, she interpreted his distress as avoidance. Surprise supplanted her terror. She blunted her edges of uncertainty with husky, female command. “My Lord of Whitestorm, how long since you shared your bed with a woman?”
He did not answer. Painfully still, Carralin waited while he recovered a control that chilled the heart to contemplate. When his breathing steadied, and still, he did not speak, she tossed back long hair and shamelessly stepped forward so the moon would highlight her body. “How long, my lord?”
Korendir shifted slightly in the darkness. Carralin could not see him to know that his eyes were closed, his jaw clenched hard against words. His hands stayed clamped to his face, as if the feminine beauty of her called up some private hell that seared his sanity to envision. Only one thing held meaning for him in this world. Like a litany, he locked his mind upon memory of Whitestorm’s windy heights; the dream of the holdfast begun there seemed to steady him.
His throat unlocked. Most of the sweat dried from his brow, and he framed the best words he could manage. “Lady, there is only one comfort a man like me can offer.” Taut as the hair-trigger latch on a crossbow, he snatched his sword from the bedstead. On through the opened door he hastened, and never once looked back.
The girl on the windowseat stared after him, confused and startled to anger. “Great Neth, you’ve gone crazy!” She called again, unwilling to believe his tread on the stair. “Go out by dark and you’ll be torn to screaming pieces.”
Korendir never answered. He did not return. Touched by unassuagable sorrow, Carralin hurled herself onto his empty bed. He had gone, been driven away by the very consolation she begged to offer and receive in turn. The sheets where his lean, swordsman’s body had lain seemed suddenly chill as a grave. Carralin muffled her weeping in his pillow. As her tears soaked the linen beneath her cheek, she exhausted herself finally into sleep.
* * *
The taproom of the inn was not empty when Korendir reached the bottom of the stair. Oil lamps still burned over the trestles; between starred swaths of shadow and light, the master of the tavern sat guarding the door, a pipe of Sithmark clay clenched between stumpy teeth. He turned his head as Korendir crossed the floor. His eyes glinted through a haze of smoke and his dark brows lifted in surprise.
“I thought, when you asked to retire, that you’d put aside your quest until morning.” And he grinned, sure indication that he knew of Carralin’s excursion up the stair.
Korendir tested the sharpness of the swordblade which rested unsheathed in his hands. “Not anymore.” He set the point down, leaned the quillons against his knee, then caught his cloak from the peg in the common room. His wrists moved, once, and cloth settled soundlessly over his shoulders. “Open your door, good man.”
The innkeeper jumped up and gestured with the hand that clutched the pipe. “You can’t be serious! In the dark, the wereleopards are changed to man-form, and—”
Korendir flashed a glance that killed the man’s protest to silence. The lanterns burned steadily as he adjusted his garment to free his sword arm, then lifted his weapon from the floor. “Your townsfolk hired me to kill wereleopards.”
The baleful intensity of him daunted; the innkeeper stared at the unnaturally still face, then the poised blade. The angle of the steel was not friendly. Caught at a loss, he stood aside. “We’ve gone into debt for a suicide,” he muttered as Korendir brushed past.
The mercenary set to work upon bolts and bars. Moved by the man’s brash courage, the innkeeper reached behind his chair and lifted a heavy, bronze lamp that once had served a freight raft as storm lantern. “Take this along,” he urged. “Merciful Neth, out there you may need a light.”
Korendir thrust his wrist through the carrying ring. “Light the wick,” he said quietly.
The innkeeper bit his pipe and complied with hands a great deal less steady. Spark snapped from the striker, and flame flared with a hiss and a reek of hot oil. Korendir closed the shutters and set his fingers to the door latch.
As he pushed the panel wide and stepped out, the innkeeper groped for words to wish him luck. Not a sound left his lips. The Master of Whitestorm crossed the board stoop and descended the stair beyond, then his cloak blended indistinguishably with a night pitch black with threat.
The innkeeper’s nerve vanished with the mercenary. Overcome by shivering panic, the portly man banged his door shut and dropped the bar with a crash that shook the lintels. Then, bereft of confidence, he scrabbled in the gloom for the tobacco pouch he had laid aside, but could not remember where.
* * *
The moon dropped behind the wooded slopes that flanked the River Ellgol. There the water flowed in a shallow, reed-choked channel, dragged to white snags where the current tumbled over obstructions. Korendir did not walk the banks to trace the river’s course, but instead picked his way along the ridge top, where the chuckle and rush of the foam did not fill his ears to distraction. The heavy, shuttered lantern swung on his arm and his sword was poised ready in his hand. He had crossed the bare fields of Mel’s Bye without disturbing so much as a shadow, but reassurance did not follow. Only during daylight did wereleopards prowl the open; in man-form, they preferred to lurk under cover. Korendir made his way forward with slow, tentative strides. He waited for the rustle of each footfall to end before starting his following step.
Between times, he listened to the infrequent croak of frogs, the rasped songs of crickets, the sigh of wind through evergreen boughs. For a league or more, the forest night seemed tranquil. His nose burned with the reek of hot oil, and his palm sweated on his sword hilt. He eased himself over a deadfall; his cloak scraped across rotting bark with a soft slither of sound. Abruptly the crickets stopped chirping. Korendir stiffened, took another step, paused. Then, from behind came a staccato snap as a twig broke.
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.