Brotherhood of the Wolf Part 44

Averan had nowhere to go and nothing to do. She held the green woman and sang a lullaby. Averan's mother used to sing lullabies when Averan was young, so Averan now sang: "The wind blows wild tonight, sweet and wild tonight.

It shakes the trees, but don't let it shake your knees.

It's only the wind, my child, good night."

The green woman didn't go to sleep. Averan felt more hungry than tired herself, so she talked to the green woman long into the night, telling her stories and the names for things, trying to teach the green woman to speak, while keeping her calm and distracted.

Near dawn, the green woman slapped her hand over Averan's mouth, as if warning her to shut up.

Every muscle in the green woman's body tensed, and she climbed to one knee and sniffed the air. "Blood, yes," she whispered longingly.

Averan's heart began thumping.

Raj Ahten's men are outside, Averan thought. The green woman smells Invincibles.

Averan looked all around the building. It was huge and empty. It offered nowhere to hide, only shelter from the wind.

But the building's support posts were made of thick oak, and heavy beams crisscrossed the posts every few feet. The beams formed a sort of ladder that led up to the rafters where the pigeons roosted.

If a ferrin can climb those beams in the dark, Averan thought I can, too.

She went to the wall, put her hands on the nearest beam, which was chest high, and climbed on top of it, then continued up to the next and the next.

She was surprised at how hard it was to climb, without her endowment of brawn. It was dangerous work. Muddauber wasps had built nests on some of the beams, and cobwebs were everywhere. The rough-hewn beams had big splinters in them.

Averan worried that she might get stung by a wasp, or bitten by a spider, or cut her hand.

Worse yet, she could lose her grip and fall.

In less than a minute she scurried thirty feet up the wall to the juncture of the rafters.

Here, no starlight made its way into the building at all. She felt secure in such total darkness, though she had to find the rafters and climb onto them by feel alone.

"Spring," Averan whispered, "come up here."

The green woman remained crouched on the floor, like a cat ready to spring. If she understood Averan's plea, she did not show it. She looked instead as if she would hunt, and this frightened Averan.

How strong could the green woman possibly be? Averan wondered. The green woman had fallen thousands of feet from the sky without getting killed or badly hurt--but she did bleed.

If she met one of Raj Ahten's Invincibles, would she stand a chance against him? What if she met a whole bunch of them?

The green woman might be as strong as an Invincible, but she was not a trained warrior with endowments of metabolism.

Against a faster opponent, she'd be killed in seconds.

"Please, Spring!" Averan whispered. "Come and hide."

But Spring remained wary. "Blood, yes," she growled fiercely.

The green woman's hunger made Averan's mouth water: She'd wanted the taste of blood yesterday morning, when she'd looked at the a.s.sa.s.sin's corpse on the hillside. Now, though carrots and parsnips partly filled Averan's belly, Averan thought longingly of the a.s.sa.s.sin, and hoped that the green woman would kill someone.

No, I don't hope that, Averan told herself. I don't want blood.

"Spring, get up here right now!" Averan whispered. But immediately Averan heard a sound that made her blood chill. Outside the building a hissing erupted, a dry buzz deeper in tone than that of a rattlesnake, a sound she'd heard only once before--the sound a reaver makes as air rattles through the chitinous flaps under its abdomen. At Keep Haberd, Averan had flown low over the reavers. She had heard tens of thousands of them making that rattling all at once.

Now she heard only one, exhaling slowly, just outside the door.

It must have followed me from Keep Haberd! Averan thought wildly. Then, more reasonably, she reminded herself that it couldn't possibly be true. I rode most of the way on old Leatherneck, she told herself. Even reavers couldn't have trailed me. No, this has to be some sort of scout.

Averan had heard that reavers often sent out scouts. She also knew that reavers preferred to hunt on warm, sultry nights, when the weather most closely mimicked the conditions of their lairs in the Underworld. Tonight it was moist and cool, not reaver weather at all.

She'd also heard that reavers hunted by sound, scent, and motion. If she stayed here in the rafters and did not speak or move, she might be safe.

She yearned to yell a warning to the green woman below, but dared not so much as whisper.

Outside the building, the reaver hissed.

The green woman raised her head and shouted in delight; then she leapt up and raced to meet it.

The reaver charged to the huge open doors.

It stood some twenty feet at the shoulder, so that even though Averan hid in the rafters above it, she could have leapt on its back without getting hurt.

Its huge leathery head was as big as the bed of a large wagon, and rows and rows of crystalline teeth filled its mouth. Reavers had no eyes or ears or nose, but along the back of its head, feelers fanned out like snakes. Runes of power were tattooed onto its head, on its forehead and in columns near its leathery upper lips. The runes shone silver in the darkness, glowing with their own ghostlight.

The reaver's four long legs were dark and thin and gleamed like bone. Its huge forearms had three-toed hands with great claws, each claw curved like an a.s.sa.s.sin's khivar and just as long.

The reaver bore a weapon in its foreclaws, an enormous blade with a hilt of crystal, as if carved from reaver bone. The sword's thick blade was slightly curved and three times the length of a man.

The reaver hissed and swung the blade overhead in a great arc, as if to bring it crashing down upon the green woman, but the blade bit deep into a rafter beam just a few yards from Averan, then stuck, hanging over the green woman's head.

The green woman shouted in glee and raced toward the reaver.

Involuntarily, Averan shouted, "Spring, stop!"

But the green woman did not stop. She merely drew a rune in the air, a couple of quick movements of the hand, and then raced forward.

When she slapped the reaver's jaw, the effect was astonishing: there was a clap like thunder, and shards of crystalline bone exploded through the reaver's flesh.

Averan gasped. Nothing should do that, she told herself. No warhammer or maul--even if it were wielded by a warrior with twenty endowments of brawn--could have dealt a reaver such a fearsome blow.

But Averan had seen it clearly in the starlight.

The reaver hissed in pain and tried to lurch backward, but could hardly move.

The green woman leapt at it, and, slapped the reaver's face again, to the same effect. The sound of the blow echoed from the rafters.

This time the reaver shuddered and dropped lifeless to the ground.

The green woman climbed atop it, stuck a slender arm deep into the reaver's leathery head, and pulled out a handful of its brains.

Ichor streamed from the reaver's wounds.

It was said that a reaver had no scent of its own, but only tried to mimic the scents of those things around it Yet as Averan stood clinging to the rafters in terror, she realized that the green woman had smelled the reaver.

In the closed room, the stench of the reaver's ichor was overwhelming, and now Averan could smell it, rich and sweet. She had not eaten much for days. Even the food she'd tried had not satisfied her, and she'd thought she craved a nice juicy steak.

Now her mouth watered as if she were a starving thing who had seldom seen a crust of bread.

She knew what she needed, what she craved.

Averan scrambled down the support beams of the huge shed, too excited to sit still. She wanted to wet herself in terror, for the scent of reaver blood was so alluring that she knew she could not resist, not now, not ever again.

Reavers. She needed to eat reavers. But unlike the green woman, Averan had no way to kill her own.

She raced to the corpse.

"Foul Deliverer, Fair Destroyer," the green woman had called herself. Now Averan knew what she had been created to destroy.

And dimly Averan understood a bit more of her own destiny. The green woman's blood now flowed through Averan's veins, and somehow they had become one in nature. Averan could not resist the impulse to climb atop the reaver, thrust in her own hands and eat greedily from the sweet meat that rested warm and juicy inside the reaver's crystalline skull.

"Mmm...mmm," the green woman crooned as she fed. "Blood, yes."

"Blood, yes," Averan agreed as she shoved meat into her mouth.

She knew some lore about reavers. Averan knew that when a reaver died, its kinsmen consumed it. As they did, they took upon themselves the reaver's lore of magic, and its strength, so that the oldest reavers, those that had fed most on their younger kin, became the greatest: the most powerful sorcerers, the most valiant warriors.

Finally Averan had found a food that satisfied, that sent the blood quickening through her veins. Even as Averan sated herself with the sweet meat of her first reaver, she felt herself responding to it.

This shouldn't happen, Averan told herself. People don't get strong from eating reavers. People don't get anything but sick from eating reavers. I'm not a reaver.

Yet she glutted herself and thanked the earth powers for this gift.

CHAPTER 36.

TARGETS IN THE DARK.

As the watchman blew the horns calling for Gaborn's troops to prepare to mount up, Myrrima felt restless. She felt eager to ride to Carris. The midnight ride would be stimulating, and she was glad she would have to carry only two pups with her now, rather than four.

So she saddled her mount, then began doing the same to Iome's. Her pups played in the stable as she worked, running about, sniffing at each horse's stall, chasing one another's tails.

She had just bridled and blanketed Iome's mount when Jureem entered the stables. "Do not bother," he said in his thick Taifan accent. "Her Majesty pleases not to ride tonight, but instead will wait for tomorrow."

"Dawn?" Myrrima asked. That would waste six hours.

"Later," Jureem answered. "At dawn she plans to eat, then take endowments from her pups. She will not want to carry dogs with her into battle, and her horse is fast enough so that it can overtake the main body of the army."

Myrrima and Iome had claimed their pups at the same time. If Iome was right, Myrrima might also take endowments from her last two pups by dawn. It would be better to take those endowments before traveling. Iome couldn't, very well ride into Fleeds with four pups in her saddlebags, lest everyone in Rofehavan mark her as a Wolf Lord.

Myrrima hated the idea of waiting. It had, very nearly cost her life to wait for Iome yesterday.

Yet she couldn't very well leave without Iome. The Queen needed a woman to escort her, and Iome thought of Myrrima as her Maid of Honor, though Myrrima hoped to be more than that.

"Very well," Myrrima said, vowing that she would not waste the night. At least she could take her bow and practice some more.

She untied the bow from its sheath, grabbed her pups under one arm, and headed toward the stable door, just as Gaborn entered.

She smelled him before she saw him, and what she smelled was death most foul, a stench that made her want to howl in fear and to vomit.

It seemed to stretch from one wall to the other, a vast specter of death that groped toward her. Her vision went black, and her senses reeled.

Myrrima dropped her bow and puppies. She cried out in shock, "Back! Get back! "

The pups yelped in terror and ran into an empty stall where they began to bark and howl mournfully.

Myrrima cowered on the floor, crouched in a fetal position, and wrapped her hands over her head. Every muscle of her body seemed to spasm in pain.

"Back, my master!" she cried. "Please, go back!"

Yet Gaborn stood in the doorway not forty paces off, wearing an expression of alarm. "What?" he asked. "What have I done? Are you ill?"

"Please!" Myrrima cried, looking about for some. means of escape. But this stable was no ordinary stable. Force horses were kept here, and they needed protection. The only entrance was the front door, and guards who held the portcullis secured that. "Stay back! You bring the scent of death with you."

Gaborn stared hard at her for a long moment, then smiled. "You're a wolf lord now?"

Myrrima nodded mutely, heart pounding, unable to speak.

Gaborn reached into his pocket, pulled out a single dark green spade shaped leaf. "It's dogbane you smell, nothing more. I found it growing down the street."

The smell came fifty times stronger now that he held the horror in his hand, and the terror that it inspired in Myrrima was like a hot branding iron burning into her guts. She cried out and turned her face against a wall, shaking.

"Please, milord," she begged. "Please..." She could see the leaf, and she knew that Gaborn's powers as Earth King caused him to magnify its normal properties. She knew that the single leaf was the source of this horrible dread that a.s.sailed her.

Yet now that she'd taken an endowment of scent from a dog, knowledge meant nothing. The unspeakable terror that the scent inspired to a dog's nose could not be rationalized away.

Gaborn backed off, retraced his steps. As soon as he had left the stable, Myrrima grabbed the squirming pups, bolted out the door.

She saw Gaborn at the far side of the street, where he was setting the horrible leaf on the ground.

"I hoped it would help drive off Raj Ahten and his a.s.sa.s.sins," he said. "I'm sorry it did not occur to me to consider how it might affect you or Duke Groverman."

"I fear it will protect you from me now--and from your wife."