The Demon Lord (15 page)

That at least was the theory. In practice it proved rather different. The only corpse in sight was one of the Drusalan hounds, lying dreadfully torn amid the bulging coils of its own entrails. Of the other dog, and of the wolf, there was no sign.

Stooping, Aldric lifted something from the spattered grass. It was his arrow—smeared with gore, but then little in the area was not—and it bore no mark of teeth to show how it had been withdrawn. Silently the Alban wiped it on the turf and returned it to his quiver, then carefully chose another—one with a silver head.

The spoor was plain enough: wet red spots dappled the grass in a line leading away from the direction in which they had come. Evthan’s eyes read more detail: how the grass-blades were bent by a dragging leg, the distance between each drop which indicated speed, their size which revealed the volume of flow—even, despite the swiftly fading light, how the colour of the blood betrayed the nature of the wound. But he needed no such woodcraft to discern the most important fact.

The Beast was running straight for Valden. And once there… If it got inside the palisade the wolf would slaughter like a fox loose in a hen-house.

With such a picture vivid in his mind, Aldric too was running when something barely glimpsed made him flinch aside. He heard a hollow rat-trap clack as teeth met on the spot where his left leg had been, and then his balance went and the ground rose up to meet him. His bow went flying. He rolled hard, knowing what had almost happened, and slammed one knee into the turf to lever himself half-upright, looking around for Evthan and the bow. There was no trace of the Jouvaine hunter.

But straddling the weapon was the grey bulk of the Beast.

He could hear its rumbling growl from where he knelt, could see a ragged gleam of fangs—and could taste the copper sourness of fear on the walls of his mouth. He cursed himself for not bringing his sword, staring at the wolf as if his unwinking gaze alone might force it to retreat, knowing how desperate the Beast must be to break its own unwritten rule and attack men…

Aldric wrenched his
tsepan
from its scabbard. Before the dirk was halfway drawn he went crashing back as the wolf—its weight equal to his own—hit him square in the chest, its jaws gaping wide above his throat. They remained gaping in the rictus of death as Evthan pulled the Beast of the Jevaiden aside and twisted his arrow from his skull. The animal had died in mid-leap; and as that fact sank in the hunter squatted by its corpse and ran disbelieving hands through the glossy fur, not even noticing when Aldric scrambled shakily to his feet. Then Evthan noticed something which made him beckon the Alban closer.

“Look here,” he said softly, one finger tracing the pale hairs which marked the line of an old scar. “When this was new he couldn’t catch his proper prey, and found our women and children easier game. He’s our Beast after all.”

“Yours, anyway.” Aldric looked sidelong at him, then full at the scar. It was such an insignificant little thing that he wondered… “Clever,” he murmured in that same ambiguous tone. “Very clever.” Lifting the wolfs head by its thick-furred scruff, he stared for a long time into the glazing yellow eyes. A pink tongue lolled from the slack jaws. Was this the unseen presence which had watched and stalked him in the Deepwood? As big a wolf as he had ever seen.

Evthan glanced at his companion; the Alban seemed to be waiting for… something, but at last he lowered the Beast’s head back to the grass with what might have been a small sigh of relief. “But just an ordinary wolf for all that.” Aldric tipped back his own head and drew a long breath of the evening air. High above him a star blinked through a tear in the fabric of the overcast, cold and clear and immeasurably distant in the dusk. There was no sign of the moon. Yet… His mind returned to closer matters. “Evthan?” The hunter glanced up from an already half-flayed kill. “One dog is dead. Where’s the other?”

“I haven’t a notion.” Evthan’s voice was carefree; the Beast was dead and he had killed it—that was all that mattered. Then he set aside his knife and looked directly at Aldric. “How long will you stay here now?”

There was an odd edge to his voice which the Alban did not recognise, although he thought he did and shaped his reply accordingly. “Tomorrow morning, probably no later. There’s no reason to remain longer any more.” He saw relief in Evthan’s eyes and smiled inwardly; the man was already jealous of his new-found status as Saviour of the Jevaiden, and did not want to share it with anyone— least of all
hlensyarlen
. “I had,” Aldric concluded, picking his words with care, “little to do with the success of this hunt anyway.”

Hearing a rustle of bracken from lower down the slope, where he had almost fallen over, he peered cautiously over the edge—at that point it was sheer—and saw Gueynor forcing a way through the tangled brambles. A mixture of emotions tugged at the Alban’s mouth as he backed out of sight.

“Who’s that?” Evthan had a vile-looking inside-out wolfskin over his shoulder when he walked across to follow the line of Aldric’s stare. Colour drained from his face with shocking suddenness as he recognised his niece. “No, Gueynor,” he whispered. “I told you not to follow me—I told you to stay inside—I
told
you to avoid the woods tonight…”

“Why tonight?” snapped Aldric, suspicions welling up inside him again. He stopped, his grey-green eyes becoming guarded at what they saw. “Evthan, what happened to your face…” At the edge of his vision a shadow drifted from behind a tree. “Look
out
!” he yelled as the shadow coalesced into the second Drusalan hound. Evthan twisted as it leapt straight for him, misled maybe by the smells of blood and wolf which hung about him. He teetered for an instant on the brink, and then toppled backwards into the gloom-filled valley just as the hound came thudding down on to the spot where he had stood.

Crouching low, the dog seemed undecided whether to follow its prey into the bracken-noisy darkness; then it turned to glare at Aldric through crazy red eyes and he knew that it had made its choice. Lips curled back from sharp white teeth as the creature began a monstrous snarl—and in that second of delay the Alban loosed a heavy broadhead point-blank through its chest. At such close range the arrow punched nock-deep: fletching, shaft, crest and all ploughing home to stagger the dog backwards with its impact. The wild eyes dulled like wax-choked candles and it was dead even before its legs gave way.

Aldric rubbed a hand across his clammy forehead and listened to the hammer of his heart, wondering dully why the hound had gone for Evthan rather than himself, the stranger.

There was no longer any movement among the brambles, and that puzzled him; he knew it was not so overgrown down there that it could hold two adults fast, and with a slight frown creasing his brows he walked past the dead dog and knelt carefully. Perhaps someone had been hurt in Evthan’s clumsy fall… Above his head the full moon slid free of cloud to cast a pale, cold gleam across the forest, and Aldric shivered without knowing why. There was a whimpering below him and an indrawn breath which might have been a sob. “Gueynor… ?” he asked, uneasy at having to speak. “What’s wrong?”

The howl erupted from the ground almost at his feet and he flung himself backwards without knowing how, only the frantic speed with which he selected and nocked another arrow saving the reaction from being entirely fearful. The silver barb glinted like a shard of sharpened ice.

A face appeared above the valley rim, its jaw transmuting to a tapered muzzle even as he watched through shock-dilated eyes. The skull flattened; the ears became triangular, tufted and twitching; dark fur spread like ink across the pallid skin; fangs glimmered moistly as they sprouted from pink gums.

Why doesn’t it run
? screamed a voice that was no voice in Aldric’s brain.
Why won’t it hide? Why is it letting me witness this
? He had never dreamed, even in his darkest nightmare, how intimate and how obscene the lycanthropic metamorphosis could be…

The transformation had almost run its course now—but for just a moment the blue, blue eyes remained unchanged, staring at him with a horrible and almost tearful pity. Pity… The implications of that look made his guts turn over; then the intelligence was overwhelmed by another, more feral impulse.

Hunger… The eyes shone green now, phosphorescent jewels in the moonlight.

As the brute sprang on to level ground, Aldric could see that all of its humanity was gone and only beast remained. Black pelt frosted by the moon, it was all lithe, swift wolf as it stalked clear of the hazard of the drop; only a slight, a ghastly uncertainty of the forelegs betrayed a memory of walking upright. It raised its shaggy head, howling bale-fully towards the glowing sky.

And Aldric shot his silver arrow deep into its throat.

The werewolf lurched but did not fall. Instead it stared at him, an impossible saw-fanged grin stretching the corners of its mouth as the arrow trembled, withdrew of its own accord and dropped to the grass. No blood stained the silver barb—and there was no wound.

The second howl was made, more eerie still by an undertone of laughter thrumming through it, and Aldric forgot his peril sufficiently to lower the useless bow, gaping in disbelief. What he had just seen was contrary to everything…

Then realisation chilled him with the fear of his own death.

His silver arrowheads were useless! He had made them from Drusalan florins that he was aware had lost then-value, but had not considered why until this instant. The Imperial economy was rotten and its coinage utterly debased. He knew now what that meant: silver coins—with no real silver in them!

With a snarl like rending metal the wolf sprang and slammed him to the ground, jaws snapping for the great veins in his neck. Then it uttered an appalling shriek of anguish and leapt away, shaking its head like a dog singed at the fire.

Aldric guessed the cause at once. Like all high-clan Albans he wore a crest-collar, and his torque was solid silver. Now if it had been twisted gold, like some he had seen… He shuddered and pushed the thought aside, rolled to his feet and drew his
tsepan
dirk. It was no fighting weapon— the blade was delicate, meant only for the single stab of formal suicide—but its blade did not concern turn.

His clan colours were blue and white, his personal colour black: so the
tsepan’s
three-edged blade was smoke-blue steel, its sheath and grip of rare lacquered ebony. And its pommel was of unalloyed silver.

The werewolf lunged again, low now for the belly. More prepared this time, Aldric drove his mailed left arm between its jaws with a thud that jarred him to the spine. Huge carnassials crushed down on the steel beneath his sleeve, but the plates of the vambrace held despite the awesome pressure and when the Alban twisted, lithe and savage as any wolf, he felt at least one of the great conical canine teeth snap off.

Unable to bite, barely capable of breathing and panicked by this turning of the tables, the beast whined nasally and tried to break away. With his knees clamped round its narrow ribcage and his trapped arm trapping it in turn,

Aldric smashed his
tsepan’s
pommel down between the werewolf’s ears.

Its thick skull shattered like an eggshell and the creature kicked just once. Then it relaxed without a sound. Aldric crouched above it, trembling all over, and only when his limbs had steadied did he inch out his arm past the vicious fangs. He knew what a werewolf’s bite would do… and only one knew better. That one lay at his feet with a caved-in head.

As the processes of life ran down, the outstretched corpse began a gradual change. Aldric backed away and averted his eyes; right now he felt neither physically nor mentally capable of experiencing the slow revelation of whoever he had killed. Too many memories were jumbled in his mind; words and images were taking on a terrible significance when recalled with hindsight: strange, half-glimpsed expressions; odd behaviour; a peculiar choice of phrase…

If he suffered the curse of changing, would he know? the Alban wondered. And if he knew—his eyes went to the
tsepan
still clutched tightly in one clotted hand—would he have the courage to do what had to be done?

Aldric did not know the answer. He had stared into the eyes of the werewolf and had seen there a reflection of himself. They were kindred spirits: killers both. The thought frightened him. He was aware that he had not killed every beast in the Jevaiden woods, but at least had come to terms with one: the Beast asleep within himself which slew men with a sword. He hoped that understanding it would be enough. And in the knowledge of that understanding he turned, already sure who he would see.

Evthan of Valden lay on the moonlit grass, face-downwards in a puddle of his own blood. When Aldric very gently rolled him over, he saw that the hunter’s face displayed no pain—nor indeed any mark from Aldric’s steel-tipped arrow; that had been completely healed before the change had come upon him, and had not gone unnoticed though little good had come from the Alban’s observation of it. There was only peace and the merest shadow of a tiny, grateful smile…

Aldric saw it and felt a wave of sadness sweep over him.

“This was your intention all along,” he murmured sobrely. “To find another hunter… who would do what you could not. And while the Beast lived you were hidden. Who would have dreamed of two wolves in one forest, both eating men but one real and one… Poor man! Did you ever dare to wonder which of them took your wife and daughter… ?”

A shadow fell across him and his head jerked up. Gueynor’s face was lost in darkness, but he could feel her gaze bore through him. Feeling awkward, he stood up and waved a hand at Evthan’s body. “I… I’m sorry.” Oh God, how insincere that sounded… “Your uncle was—”

“I know. I saw. But he still remains my mother’s elder brother.” There was no emotion in her voice as she held out a kerchief. “Clean your hands and help me move him. No one else must know.” They shifted the corpse to lie in accordance with the story Aldric prepared for the elders of Valden: that Evthan had saved him by shooting the Beast but that, in its final throes, the wolf had flung him against the root which had dashed out his brains. The tale was hastily contrived, but better at least than the truth.