Wolf Captured (92 page)

Rahniseeta hefted her club, inching closer to the opening as the hatchet widened it to permit questing fingers. She stayed out of direct line of sight, knowing how limited the scope would be. Whoever looked through might glimpse a little motion from over by the window, but probably not even that if he was accustomed to light other than the dim greenfiltered sunlight.

As she had expected, a hand—Shelby’s most certainly, she was all too well acquainted with his hands—came through, feeling for the bolt. Rahniseeta took a deep breath and swung her table leg, aiming carefully for the fingers.

She hit, and felt an atavistic thrill of pride as she heard Shelby howl in pain.

She heard Tedgewinn laugh very unkindly.

“I guess the lady doesn’t want to be rescued,” he said. “At least not by you, Shel.”

No one had taught Rahniseeta the string of Pellish words with which Shelby responded, but Rahniseeta didn’t need a translator to know they were profane. She grinned to herself, and readied the table leg for another strike.

From overhead there came a dull thumping and bits of dirt rained down. Worried, she spared a glance for Questioner and Sky. The human face with its wolfish ears gave her an encouraging smile, and Sky looked up from watching Hope make her descent and pointed with his beak toward the ceiling.

Rahniseeta looked where he had pointed and saw that the beams above were reassuringly solid. She also understood the maimalodalum’s silence. Best that Shelby and those with him didn’t realize she wasn’t alone.

But although they were in no danger from the roof caving in on them, the man above—Wiatt, so it proved—offered another danger. They heard him give an excited yell, which was followed almost immediately by a wolf’s howl from without. Before the wolf’s howl stopped vibrating in the afternoon heat, Wiatt’s voice shouted excitedly.

“I saw one of them! I saw one of the bastards! I got off an arrow! Don’t know if I hit anyone, but I think I might. Did you hear the bastard yell?”

Questioner dropped to all fours—he’d been leaning with his upper body on the windowsill helping Sky lower Hope—and padded over.

“No one was hit,” he said very softly to Rahniseeta, “but we’re going to have to wait to lower anyone else. We’d just be trapped at the base.”

“Hope?”

“She’s skirting the base under the vines and should get away. The northerners won’t have it all their own way. Firekeeper will do something.”

Questioner spoke with almost parental pride, and Rahniseeta wondered with a trace of jealousy at the relationship that had grown with such apparent speed between the maimalodalum and the wolf-woman. Not long ago Firekeeper hadn’t even known them as legends. Now, apparently, she was their general.

But Rahniseeta fought back this unkind thought. Firekeeper had come to Misheemnekuru very quickly—probably as soon as she had learned of Rahniseeta’s message. That meant that Derian and probably Harjeedian were near, too.

Rahniseeta felt very strange as she realized that she had not so much as thought of any of them for what seemed like a lifetime. Her universe had collapsed into a sphere in which the only realities had been herself, her captors, and now the maimalodalum. It was almost as if she had not dared think of those she had left behind, of the messages she had left, for fear that somehow what she had done would be discovered and undermined.

Now, though, she thought of it, and felt a thrill of relief. She and the maimalodalum need only hold out and rescue would come. She shifted her table leg in her hand and watched for motion coming through the hole in the door, determined to do her part.

There had been lots of shouting in response to Wiatt’s announcement, much pounding up and down the stairs. Apparently, Rahniseeta had been forgotten in the greater excitement, but she did not believe for a moment that they would continue to forget. Shelby would want revenge for what she’d done to his hand, and if he was in no condition to get it, Rarby would take great delight in roughing her up on his brother’s behalf.

She waited, listening intently, but glancing from time to time over at Questioner, for she’d already learned the maimalodalu would hear anything significant long before she did.

Still, the sound of renewed footsteps into the room came to all of them at once. They were heavy, as if weighted down, and when the door vibrated in its frame, Rahniseeta understood.

From somewhere they’d scavenged something to make a ram. She stepped back nearer to the window, knowing this was not a threat she could stop with a blow to the fingers.

“Got it, Elwyn?” she heard Tedgewinn say. “On three. You can count it off.”

“I got it!” Elwyn replied brightly, happy as always to be part of the team. “One, two, three!”

The old door shuddered beneath the first several blows, each hit prefaced by Elwyn’s cheerful count. Inevitably, the old wood shattered into splinters and the two men came barreling through.

Momentum carried them into the middle of the room at a hard, stamping run. Their weight, combined with that of the heavy chunk of wood they had used for a ram, was too great for the damaged beams supporting the floor. With a shriek and a sound of tearing, several of the old support beams sagged, then snapped. Without them to rest upon, the floor gave out, planks breaking and twisting as they tore free. Elwyn and Tedgewinn fell with the rest of the litter.

Around the falling bodies, tile fell like hard rain.

XXXVIII

“I DON’T KNOW WHAT GOOD my sitting here does,” Firekeeper said. “Waln is secure in his lair, and so we have rushed here for nothing.”

Truth looked at the wolf-woman from those unsettling orange-gold eyes. The jaguar was clearly struggling not to be dragged back into the depths from which Firekeeper had dragged her, and the battle had not improved her temper.

“Are you now a swimmer in Time’s rivers to tell me this with such confidence?”

“No,” Firekeeper said. She struggled not to sound like a sulky child. “But I have done nothing but say a few words to Waln and he do nothing.”

“You mean,” Blind Seer said before Truth could frame a suitably caustic reply, “that he did not do what you desired. Why does this surprise you?”

“It does not,” Firekeeper admitted, “but when Truth say we must run hard and fast to get here or all chance of stopping them would be gone … . I thought more would happen.”

Truth met Firekeeper’s gaze and the wolf-woman noted uneasily that the jaguar was struggling to keep her in focus.

“Let me tell you things that would have happened had we not been here,” Truth purred. “First, a young wolf of your acquaintance, one Dark Death, would have seen the man you name Rarby walking patrol around the tower. Thinking to impress you, Dark Death would have seized Rarby and killed him.

“In one deep current, Dark Death succeeds, but in some way Rarby’s death makes the others fight more fiercely. In another deep current, Rarby kills Dark Death before—usually—dying himself. Dark Death’s dying, witnessed by his pack members, moves them to fury. They attack the humans and many on both sides are slain including—I may add—one who must be taken from here alive if we are to claim victory.”

Firekeeper did not doubt that those unfocused eyes saw realities that had not happened. She tried to ignore her own pleased embarrassment that Dark Death would think her worth impressing.

“And my being here stopped this?” she asked.

“Yes. Dark Death saw that you did not wish the humans slaughtered, so his thought to impress you in that fashion died before he could act on it. Had we taken more time getting here … .”

Firekeeper nodded.

“I stand humbled, Truth.”

“You have done more than stand,” Truth said, and to Firekeeper’s relief her gaze flickered to follow a butterfly dancing on a flower head. “You have been a good teacher.”

“Me?”

“Don’t you recall how the first thing you did upon arriving here was warn all the yarimaimalom that the humans carried crossbows?”

“But they knew that!”

“But they did not know just how deadly those bows are, or how far they can strike. You—and Blind Seer—made this clear.”

Blind Seer laughed softly.

“Bows and the danger they pose were among the first things I studied when I resolved to stay with my Firekeeper.”

“Although we have lived close to humans,” Truth said, “only those of us who delight in hunting in company—such as wolves—have seen bows in use. The Water Folk know something of harpoons, for humans cannot tell Wise from Simple when they are hunting and the humans here rely much on oil taken from whales and their kin.”

Normally, Firekeeper would have asked questions about the Water Folk, but nothing could distract her from the matter at hand.

“Do you yet see how long we wait?” she asked, trying to sound humble rather than impatient.

Truth licked her front paw, worrying at the sheath of a claw.

“Not too much longer,” she said. “Listen to the ravens!”

Firekeeper did and heard reported how the humans were moving about the tower, then the warning that they had reached high enough that those waiting on the forest’s edge might not be so well hidden as before.

Firekeeper howled reply, pleased to be a One in this matter of hunting humans. It was a minor promotion, one that would not last beyond the hunt, but it was new to her and thrilled her blood.

She listened as Bitter reported the bird-woman maimalodalu, Hope, safely down, and the resolution of the others to remain inside until the humans could be distracted from their watching over the tower’s edge.

“I do not like that we have our own in there,” Firekeeper admitted. “Waln knows this taking of hostages. I do not wish them to be taken so.”

“You might find yourself wishing otherwise,” Truth said enigmatically, “in not too long.”

Before Firekeeper could make herself ask the arrogant cat to clarify her comment, a rhythmic thudding came from the tower. Firekeeper surged to her feet, waiting to hear the raven’s report. Her bow stave was in her hand, and she held it ready to bend and string.

When the horrible cracking noise came, confusedly, Firekeeper thought her bow had broken as she bent it to fit the string, but the stave remained in her hand, the string loose. Then she realized that the cracking noise was only one of many.

Oddly, impossibly, the tower of Magic was shaking, the stonework seeming to ripple as did the scales on a snake when the snake was hurried. Mortar showered loose and stones fell. The flat side of the half-moon suddenly showed gaping holes where patches had been ripped loose. More stone fell and what glass remained in the windows broke, scattering rainbows as it fell.

Firekeeper ran to close the distance, the difference between enemies and friends vanished in the face of this larger disaster. The raven Lovable swept out of the sky and winged alongside her.

“The beams holding the third floor above those below were weak and broke when weight was put upon them,” Lovable reported. “The force of that breaking has weakened still more. For now parts still stand, but I do not know how much longer.”

“And those within?”

“Some are blood upon stone,” Lovable said, “but some still live. The two maimalodalum and the human woman with them were near the side, and still cling. Bitter is checking the rest. We need not fear crossbows now.”

This last was said matter-of-factly, but with a certain relief as well. Firekeeper realized how unsettling it must have been for these Wise Winged Folk to face being shot at when in Liglim humans held their arrows lest they injure a divine messenger.

“Lead us,” Firekeeper said, “to where Rahniseeta and the maimalodalum wait. Tell your kin to find where others may need rescue.”

Lovable gave the necessary guidance, then caught an updraft and sailed off, her hoarse voice shouting Firekeeper’s orders even as her beating wings carried her higher.

Firekeeper felt no pride of leadership now, only the fearful awareness that except possibly for a few of the maimalodalum, she alone could help those stranded above.

“I understand now what Truth meant,” Blind Seer said, “when she spoke of wishing differently. I could accept the tiresome necessity of a siege as an alternative to this.”

Firekeeper grunted agreement, letting her feet slow as she closed with the dangerous zone near the tower. Loose stones fell only occasionally, but there was a sense that the entirety of the structure was unstable.

“Find Derian,” she said, “and Harjeedian. Bring them here. This is a time for human hands and human voices—and the maimalodalum will frighten Waln and his people, if any are still alive.”

“Several yet live,” said the raven, Bitter, landing near Firekeeper. “They were close to a stair and the old humans built well. Much of the stair still clings to the wall. Others had reached a higher section and as the beams there were sounder, some still hold. They will not for long, not with the wall that holds them threatening to fall.”

Firekeeper nodded her thanks.

She threw her head back, wishing for wings so she might see the situation as the ravens did, but when she considered the consequences of wishes, she resolved to stop wasting time and focus instead on what she might do.