The Shadows of Night (14 page)

The respect in her heart grew warmer, like a flame gaining strength as it fed on tinder.
 
“Surely your people will easily be able to counter the threat,” she said.
 
“You have the magic walls.”

“The force fields?”
 
He shrugged.
 
“The royal family and the courtiers will be safe enough in the keep, and each house has force fields on the windows, but we will not be able to venture out of doors, not even into the streets, without the fear of attack.
 
That is no way for a people to live.”

She thought of how she’d felt, confined in the tower of the keep, and nodded.
 
Some other solution would be needed in the long term.
 
“I will come with you,” she said.

“Good.
 
Strangely enough, I find that I do not wish to part from you.”

An involuntary smile curved her lips.
 
“That is peculiar, since a mere two days ago you seemed to find me irritating.
 
I distinctly recall that you asked me how the men of my Kindred managed to avoid killing the women.”

He gave a wry smile.
 
Then his body and face elongated as he shifted into stag form, and she assumed her leopard body.
 
Shoulder to shoulder, they turned toward the Antler domain.

Just then a roar of agonized pain rumbled from the direction of the Pride’s longhouse.
 
And another.
 
And another.

No words were necessary.
 
They exchanged glances, then spun and ran at top speed for the longhouse.

A grim sight greeted their eyes as they approached the bark-walled dwelling.
 
The cats that had surrounded Katara’s mother lay in the clearing, paws outstretched, feathered shafts protruding from their sides, all quite clearly dead.
 

Hart felt a moment of horror at the fangs that could kill so cleanly and from such a distance.
 
His people, who were not carnivorous, did not believe in killing anyway.
 
But to kill in such a cowardly manner, to slaughter from a distance—it shocked him clear down to his hooves.

Rather than leaping recklessly out into the clearing, he lifted his head, scenting the breeze, trying to determine if the danger had passed.
 
Katara attempted to press past him, fear and distress clear in her wide green-gold eyes, but he shouldered her back.
 
Enough
Claw
had died already.

She snarled with mindless fury, lifting her paw and raking her extended claws across his shoulder.
 
He threw up his head in pain, but didn’t try to defend himself.
 
He would never use the wickedly sharp prongs of his antlers on her.
 
At any rate, he could only imagine how much this sight hurt her.
 
The thought of being exiled from his people, sent away by his own father, had cut into his soul.
 
But seeing one’s own people slaughtered from a distance was enough to drive anyone mad.
 

Of course, being Claw, she wanted to charge into the clearing and avenge her people.
 
But it wasn’t a fair fight.
 
The Fang were hidden in the trees, probably still armed, and if she showed herself, all that would be accomplished was her death.

In a moment, she seemed to calm down.
 
He kept a wary eye on her and was surprised when she shifted.
 
They might need to flee at a moment’s notice.
 
In his opinion, this was no time to take their human forms.

“My mother and father,” she said in a voice that was barely audible, even to his acute animal hearing.
 
“They are not on the ground.”

Startled, Hart turned back and observed more closely.
 
She was correct.
 
There were only four felines on the ground.
 
The lioness who was the leader was missing, and so was the black-maned lion,
whom
he inferred was Katara’s father.

Unable to speak in his current form, he nodded toward the longhouse.

“I don’t think they’re inside,” she said softly, placing a hand on his shoulders, presumably to comfort
herself
.
 
Her hand landed just above the rents her claws had slashed into his fur.
 
Had he been in his human form, he would have winced.
 
“They wouldn’t hide behind walls while their people were slaughtered.
 
It is not our way.”

Based on everything he knew of Katara, he could well imagine that was true.
 
He turned his head, looking in the trees around the clearing.
 
The lions were either hunting their assailants, or they’d been abducted, though he had difficulty imagining the hot-tempered lioness allowing
herself
to be captured.

Moments slid by, and nothing happened.
 
Hart raised his head, testing the wind, and decided that the thick, rank smell of wolf was receding.
 
He shifted to human form, Katara’s hand still on his shoulder.

“I think they’ve gone,” he said, ignoring the blood that seeped from the claw marks on his shoulder blade.
 
Despite her mindless anger, she had not hurt him badly.
 
The marks were little deeper than bramble scratches.
 
“You’re right… they are cowards.
 
They struck from a distance and then fled.”

She looked up at him, her eyes huge.
 
“What about my parents?”

“They may be in pursuit of the wolves, or they might have been abducted,” he said.
 
Or they may well be lying dead in the woods.
 
He left the thought unspoken.
 
He didn’t want to distress Katara any more than he needed to.
 
Emotional distress led to costly mistakes.
 
He needed her alert, and as calm as possible.

She swallowed and lifted her chin.
 
“Let us find out.”

They shifted back to animal form, and she slid carefully along the border of the clearing, keeping to the trees.
 
Hart followed.
 
Eventually she paused, sniffing carefully at a patch of bent underbrush.
 
Hart drew in a breath tainted with the thick scent of wolf.
 
Even in human form they stank, he thought with distaste.

The trail led away from the clearing.
 
They followed carefully, their passage making no sound in the underbrush.
 
Barely a leaf stirred as they passed.
 
About twenty yards away from the clearing, Katara suddenly froze, every muscle in her sleek body going taut.
 
Hart lowered his head, scenting the sharp odor of lion.

Lion and wolf had crossed paths here, yet judging from the untouched look of the surrounding vegetation, no struggle had taken place.

He wondered if the wolves had aimed their fangs at the lions and forced them to come along.
 
And yet something about that theory didn’t ring true.
 
Based on what he knew of Katara, the Claw Kindred would never tamely submit to capture.
 
They would die first.
 
Therefore, something else must have happened here.
 
More likely, he thought, the lions were in pursuit.
 

He saw by Katara’s posture that she was relieved to discover her parents were still alive.
 
Yet four of her Kindred would never hunt again.
 
He could see in her eyes that knowledge still weighed on her heavily.

Bending his head, he touched his nose to her ear, trying to tell her without words that it wasn’t her fault.
 
She’d tried to warn her people, but stubborn folk that they were, they hadn’t listened.
 
Not that he expected his own Kindred to listen, either.
 

That thought caused him to wonder if his own people had already been attacked, just as the Claw Kindred had been.
 
The thought of his own Kindred lying dead on the ground, feathered shafts protruding from their chests, sent a stab of dread through him.

That horrible vision led to another thought.
 
Why had Katara’s Pride been attacked so soon after he and Katara had arrived?
 

The answer was obvious—and heartrending.

They’d led the killers to this place.

Pride dwellings weren’t easy to find, scattered as widely as they were.
 
The Fang had doubtless needed help to find this longhouse.
 
They’d trailed him and Katara at a distance in order to locate this place and attack the Claw.

Hart’s people, unlike the Claw, lived in large towns.
 
His own town, where the royal family lived, was the largest, but there were ten other Antler towns scattered across this world’s single continent, all populated by people going about their business, walking the streets, strolling in the forests.
 
People who wouldn’t expect to be suddenly attacked by flying fangs.
 
Unless they stayed in their dwellings at all times, they would be completely defenseless against such an attack, and blood would run in the streets.

He had to warn his people.
 
Not just the people of his own town, but
all
his people.
 
Or this slaughter might happen again, but on a much greater scale.

*****

Katara tried to calm herself, but her leopard soul blazed for revenge.
 
The sight of her Kindred lying on the ground, dead, slaughtered, was burned into her brain for eternity. She wanted to tear the Fang apart, one by one, slowly.
 
She wanted to hear their yelps of agony as her claws slashed into their muscles and ripped their sinews from their bones.

The scent of her parents reassured her, calmed her a bit.
 
Knowing them as well as she did, she could smell rage, but no fear, so she was fairly certain they had come this way voluntarily.
 
She guessed they were in pursuit of the wolves.

There was a very real danger that the wolves would hide themselves and shoot her parents in an ambush.
 
But she doubted such a concern would enter into her parents’ minds.
 
Like her, the feline spirit within them would be hungry for revenge.
 
And neither of them had really had the time to internalize the threat, to understand exactly what the Fang Kindred could do now.
 
They were caught in an old way of thinking.

All of them would have to change their way of thinking now, or they wouldn’t survive their next encounter with the Fang.

Hart trotted along next to her.
 
She wondered how often an Antler and a Claw had journeyed shoulder to shoulder.
 
Never before in the history of the world, she suspected.
 
And yet they’d done it so often over the past days that it had begun to seem natural.
Ordinary.
 
Right
.

A fierce growling came from somewhere ahead, along with a shrill yelping.
 
Katara and Hart exchanged a quick look,
then
shifted into a run.

They slid to a stop at the sight of two
lions,
mouths wide open in snarls, angry growls pulsing from their chests.
 
They loomed over a black wolf.

Katara recognized the wolf.
 
It was the bitch who had participated in both attacks on her.
 
Nearby a wooden object lay on the ground, an object she’d probably been clutching in human
form,
and dropped when she’d shifted to wolf form in a hopeless attempt to defend herself.
 
But a lone wolf had no chance of defending herself against two angry lions.
 
She lay on her back, paws in the air, yelping for mercy.

Judging from the lions’ growling, she wasn’t going to get it.

Hart’s hide rippled, and he transformed into human form as he lunged forward.
 
Naked and unarmed, he threw himself between the lions and the wolf.
 
He knelt there in the dirt, looking up into the lions’ amber eyes.

“We must not kill her,” he said urgently.

The lions stared at him as if he
were
mad, and Katara was inclined to wonder about his sanity herself.
 
She raised her head, scenting the crisp fall air, and smelled no nearby wolves.
 
But they were still an easy target in this clearing.
 
She doubted the wolves would send their fangs through the air when they might accidentally slay one of their own, but at this point she really wasn’t sure what the Fang might do.

Katara’s mother opened her mouth in a snarl and emitted a bloodcurdling growl, obviously warning Hart to get out of the way.
 
Hart didn’t flinch.