The Shadows of Night (11 page)

Another wolf dashed toward them.
 
Katara’s growling rose in pitch, and she bounded forward, formidable teeth exposed.
 
A single blow of her paw ripped across his muzzle, barely missing his eye.
 
He tucked his tail between his legs, turned, and melted into the shadows.
 
The other Fang Kindred followed.
 
Even the huge silvery wolf staggered to his feet and limped away, leaving a dark trail of blood behind him.

Breathing hard, Hart and Katara stood listening, but the noise of the wolves’ padded feet, the sound of their panting, receded into the forest.
 
Hart tilted his head, then decided it was safe, and shifted into human form.
 

“Is that the same pack that attacked you?” he asked.

She shifted as well, standing naked before him in the moonlight.
 
She looked like a goddess, too starkly beautiful to be flesh and blood.
 
“I believe so.
 
I recognize the alpha, the large gray male.
 
And I recall the black bitch as well.”

Hart became aware that he was trembling.
 
She must have noticed too, because she suddenly looked at him, concerned.
 
“Are you all right?”

“I am… fine,” he said in a hoarse voice.

She stepped forward, placed a hand on his shoulder.
 
“You are shaking.
 
I forget.
 
Your people do not fight as we do.”

“It is not that,” he said.
 
“It is…”
 
He hesitated for a long moment, feeling the shudders rack his body.
 
“When I was young, barely more than a fawn, my brother and I were caught in the woods by a roving pack of young Claw.
 
They had Prong on the ground—he didn’t even have antlers--”

She lifted her head, stared into his eyes with understanding.
 
“No wonder you fear my people.”

“No.
 
It is not your people that I fear.”

“I don’t understand.”

He swallowed.
 
“I had to protect my brother.
 
His hide was still spotted.
 
He was young.
 
Defenseless.
 
But I had antlers, though they were small.
 
A panther had Prong pinned, was about to rip his throat out.
 
And I… defended him.”

“Just as you defended me tonight.”

“Yes.”
 
Hart shut his eyes, feeling the horror of it as if it had happened yesterday.
 
“But unlike the wolf, the Claw was young.
 
Small.
 
And the blow from my antlers… killed him.”

Her fingers squeezed his shoulder in a reassuring gesture.
 
“But they attacked a defenseless fawn.
 
Such a thing is frowned on by my people, even those that consider it acceptable to attack grown Antler.
 
Our code of honor forbids us to attack the small and weak.
 
That panther deserved to die.”

“The Claw
were
all young and foolish.
 
Perhaps it was but a game to them.
 
At any rate...”
 
Hart swallowed against the bile in his throat, remembering the thud of the body against his antlers, remembering how it had flown through the air and crashed against a tree trunk to collapse lifeless and bleeding to the ground.
 
The way the other Claw had fled from him as if he had suddenly become the predator.
 
“My people do not kill.
 
Ever.”

“Not even in the defense of those you love?”
 
She lifted her hand to his cheek and gazed into his eyes.
 
“You had no choice, Hart.
 
Just as you had no choice today.
 
You did the right thing both times.”

He let out a shuddering breath.
 
“Of course you would think so.
 
You are a Claw.”

“You disagree?
 
Would you rather have seen your brother dead?
 
Or watched me be torn apart by the wolf pack?”

“No,” he admitted in a whisper.
 
“I could not let either of those things happen.”

“Then you had no choice, Antler.
 
Don’t blame yourself.
 
My people do not hesitate to fight to protect themselves and the ones they love.
 
I may have been almost killed by the wolf pack, but do not think that I failed to defend myself.
 
More than one of them felt my claws before they overwhelmed me.”

“But they must have taken you by surprise.”

She nodded.
 
“I never smelled them until they were on me.
 
They used the scent of
masala
bushes to mask their odor, just as they did tonight.
 
But it didn’t work as well tonight.
 
The wind must have shifted unexpectedly.”

“Either that, or they wanted us to know who was attacking our people.”

“We already knew that.”

“But perhaps they wanted to make it obvious.
 
Like a declaration of war.”

“They fight well,” Katara admitted grudgingly.
 
“Because they attack in packs, whereas both our peoples tend to travel alone, they might have a chance in a guerrilla-style war.
 
But in a declared war?
 
I think it unlikely they could defeat us.
 
Even your people, cowards though they are, can fight well when you must.”

Hart thought about that last sentence and finally decided it was intended as a compliment.
 
More or less.
 
“Perhaps they have something else in mind.”

“Perhaps they do.”
 
Her eyebrows drew together in a frown.
 
“There was something odd about the way the wolves attacked tonight.
 
One at a time, rather than in a pack.
 
Had they attacked me that way, I might have been able to defeat them.”

“Why do you think they changed their method of attack?”

“I am not certain.
 
But this encounter may help us locate their village.”
 
She crossed the clearing, knelt, and studied the dark spill of blood staining the leaves.
 
“Yes, this will be easy to follow.”

“Perhaps that is what they intend.
 
Perhaps it is a trap.”

“Mayhap it is.
 
In fact, it seems likely.
 
But we cannot turn tail and flee.”
 
She shifted into her leopard form, lowered her head and sniffed at the ground, then headed off into the woods in a graceful leap.

Hart sighed, then shifted into his stag form and bounded after her.

*****

They raced through the thick woods, side by side.
 
Katara was impressed by the Antler’s fleetness, although she really shouldn’t have been surprised.
 
Naturally his Kindred had to be fast, or they’d wind up as someone’s dinner.

The trail of blood grew ever fresher, indicating that they were gaining on their quarry.
 
Doubtless the pack was moving slowly because of its injured members.
 
When the blood grew almost fresh, she slowed to a walk and proceeded more cautiously, aware that they’d crossed into Pack lands.
 
They were now trespassing, and the wolves would consider themselves entirely justified in killing trespassers.

They paused at a clearing, seeing broad cultivated fields spread out before them, smelling the scents of plowed dirt,
woodsmoke
, and domesticated animals.
 
Katara blinked in surprise at the houses.
 
She had never ventured into Pack territory, since to do so was tantamount to suicide.
 
As a result, she hadn’t realized that the Fang lived thus.
 
Their houses didn’t have the advanced appearance of the Antler Kindred’s dwellings, but they weren’t primitive longhouses like the Claw Kindred built, either.
 
And it appeared the Fang farmed the land, unlike either of the other Kindred.

“They are almost as civilized as we are,” Hart said from beside her.

She turned her head and realized he’d shifted.
 
Irritated, she quickly changed to her human form.

“I wish you would cease using that word,” she grumbled.
 
“My people are not barbarians.
 
We simply choose to live close to the forest.
 
To value our animal forms as much as our human ones.”

“Not to mention the fact that your people have no notion how to build better houses.”

She growled deep in her throat.
 
“I would rather be uncivilized than a coward who has forgotten how to commune with nature.”

He shrugged the insult off, returning his attention to the dwellings.
 
“Strange,” he said.
 
“It is quiet and dark.
 
Perhaps the village is uninhabited?”

“I smell smoke, and the reek of animals. More likely they are simply sleeping.
 
We know the Fang tend to go abroad in daylight and sleep at night, like your Kindred.”

“But there are at least ten who must be awake,” he pointed out.
 
“Yet they have not yet approached us, not even to drive us from their land.”

“They hope to lure us closer, perhaps.
 
So that they can attack us with the strength of the full pack.
 
Let us go forth and spring the trap.
 
We sent them yelping into the night once.
 
We can do it again.”

“We sent but ten wolves fleeing from us.
 
We cannot fight an entire Pack.”
 

“True enough,” she admitted grudgingly.
 
“But perhaps there is no need for us to do so.
 
Let me go forth covertly and see if I can determine the nature of the trap.”

Hart hesitated.
 
“Something about this does not feel right.”

She spoke impatiently.
 
“It is an easy matter for me to go closer.
 
My coat camouflages me to a certain extent in the tall grass that they grow.”

She shifted back into cat form, dropped low to the ground, and began to slink through the cultivated grass, toward the houses, leaving Hart on the edge of the forest.
 
She was the best for this sort of work, anyway.
 
He was too big, and in the moonlit field he would stand out like an enormous oak in his animal form.
 
She, on the other hand, blended into the tall wheat rather well.
 
She was more or less invisible from the town.

At least she thought she was.
 
But she had only made it halfway to the houses when she heard a peculiar whooshing sound, and instantly a pain slashed through her shoulder, cutting into her like a blow from an unsheathed claw.
 
Bowled onto her side, she roared in pain and
startlement
.

Instantly Hart rippled into his stag form and leapt for her, reaching her in four great bounds.
 
He shifted instantly to his human form, slung her leopard body over his shoulders, and ran for the trees.
 
Another
whoosh
sounded in the darkness, but no pain cut through her this time.

Inside the shelter of the trees, he dropped to his knees, panting, and laid her down on the leaves.
 
Lifting her head, Katara saw a strange feathered shaft protruding from her shoulder, blood oozing around it.

Hart cursed and reached for the shaft.
 
He pulled at it gently, but it seemed to be imbedded in her flesh somehow.
 
He yanked a little harder, and Katara gave an involuntary growl of pain.

“I cannot remove it,” he said.
 
“You need to shift.”

Any foreign object in her body would be expelled when she changed form.
 
But it was easier said than done in her condition.
 
Under pain and stress, her body didn’t want to give up its natural defenses.
 
She concentrated, doing her best to ignore the fiery pain in her shoulder, and managed to shift into human form.
 
The shaft dropped onto the ground, but the wound remained.
 
She reached for the wound on her shoulder, and her fingers came away wet with blood.

“They bit me,” she said in blank surprise.
 
“How did they do that?”

Even in the dappled shadows of the forest, she could see his lips press together with anger as he studied her wound.
 
“It is said that our Ancestors could bite and claw one another from a distance.”