Bloody Rose

by Nicholas Eames

  “I am your son!” The shaman was livid.

  “Come, then!” his father goaded. “Show me!”

  Brune was already running, roaring at the top of his lungs.

  Shadrach bellowed, triumphant, and charged to meet him.

  He’d wanted this, Tam knew. He’d kindled Brune’s anger, adding fuel until it burned white-hot. Rage was something the Clawmaster could predict—something he could channel, and therefore control.

  The whorls on Brune’s back began to swell as the shaman’s body grew. His limbs bulged, fur bristled through the paint on his arms, splashed in the same glaring colours.

  The Clawmaster burst his seams the way a firebomb exploded from a clay pot, doubling in size, tripling, towering over Brune as he stampeded down the ramp.

  Fury cracked between them like a peal of thunder, a sound so deeply primal Tam nearly pissed the pants she wasn’t wearing. Yet she couldn’t look away: not as the two bears crashed into one another with the force of rockslides tumbling down opposite slopes.

  Their impact shook the cavern, drawing cries of savage glee from its occupants. The two monsters grappled, huge on their hind legs, straining against one another as their claws raked and their jaws snapped, and then Shadrach had Brune by the scruff and threw him to the ground.

  Fable’s shaman halved in size as he landed. He’d barely righted himself before the bloodred bear was on him, scoring his flanks with talons like scimitar blades. Brune made a weak lunge for his father’s throat, but Shadrach skewed away. His teeth clamped onto Brune’s shoulder and the Clawmaster twisted, hurling his son halfway across the arena floor.

  Brune hit the ground hard, tumbling over stone and scree, and then vanished.

  “What?” Tam heard herself cry.

  “He’s in the water,” Cura muttered.

  Fable’s shaman had rolled into one of the cavern’s pools. Tam could see ripples of white phosphorescence as the shaman’s paint bled away. He emerged as a man, coughing and gasping, near invisible now that his colouring was gone. He hauled himself onto the stone and lay there panting.

  The Clawmaster’s exultant roar became a husky laugh as he relinquished his animal form. “You’re more fool than I thought, boy. Are you really that naive? Or are you so eager to usurp me that you would deny your true nature?”

  Though his words were barbed, Shadrach’s manner of speaking was elegant in contrast to his fellow vargyr. Tam recalled what Freecloud had said about animals being easy to manipulate, and wondered if the druin’s supposition was true. Did the Clawmaster demand that his subjects spend more time as beasts than they did as men and women? Was he deliberately dulling their minds to make them more pliant to his commands?

  To do so would be evil, of course. Unforgivably cruel. But Brune’s father, from what little Tam knew of him, seemed like exactly the sort of asshole to try it.

  “You want to know what you really are?” the Clawmaster asked his son. “You’re not mine,” he snarled. “You’re hers.”

  He pointed to one of the skeletons suspended from the cavern roof. It looked to Tam like a dog, except it was longer, leaner, with a narrow snout and sharper canines …

  “Oh, Brune, no,” she heard Rose whisper. “Don’t look up. Please, don’t look up.”

  But Brune did, and after a stunned silence he murmured hoarsely, “Is that …?”

  “She came back for you,” the Clawmaster said. His tone was lighter now, almost conversational. As though he wasn’t eviscerating his son with words. “This was three, maybe four years ago. She was furious when I told her I’d cast you out. She was always big on loyalty, your mother. The ‘pack’ meant everything to her. It was why she left you and me in the first place,” he said. “To be with her real family.”

  Brune was on his knees in a puddle of oily light. “You …”

  “She called me a tyrant,” Shadrach said, chuckling darkly. “And a few nastier things, besides. She dared to challenge my right to lead.” He craned his huge neck. “You see how well that worked out for her.”

  His grandstanding earned an ovation of yips and growls, but it was Brune who growled loudest. Tam could barely make him out against the steam rising from the paint-lit pool behind him, but she could see his shoulders quaking, his hands trembling as they curled into claws. A sound escaped him that was part moan, part anguished wail.

  Tam felt the hairs on her neck rise.

  The light from the pool disappeared, lost behind the shadow of something suddenly huge, and Brune’s wail of sorrow became a blood-chilling howl. It echoed back and forth across the Faingrove, bouncing from water and stone until the mournful cry of a hundred wolves surrounded them.

  “Now you see,” his father said. “This is what you really are. I should have—”

  Brune barrelled into him, a snarling void amidst the riot of garish colours. The Clawmaster sailed backward, crashing through the skeleton of a boar whose glowing gold tusks were as long as Tam’s bow. Shadrach rose in a rage, shamming in an instant into the great red beast he’d been before. When the wolf lunged next, he was ready.

  At least he’d thought he was ready.

  Shadrach’s claws swiped at nothing. His teeth snapped shut on empty air. Brune juked, diving low, snagging the Clawmaster’s heel in his jaws and dragging at it. Tam heard the tear of sinew, the grisly pop of sheared tendons, and the bear roared in agony.

  “Get ready,” said Rose.

  Tam stiffened. Ready for what?

  Shadrach collapsed onto all fours, twisted, lashed out with an arm the size of a tree trunk—which might have levelled Brune were he not airborne, springing with a speed and grace he had never possessed as a bear. Fable’s shaman landed directly on top of his enemy. His fangs found purchase in the muscle around Shadrach’s throat, and he leapt again, flinging himself over his father’s head, writhing in the air so that he landed on all fours.

  The Clawmaster couldn’t manage to right himself. Brune had him by the collar and was wrenching him from side to side, dragging him to the ground whenever Shadrach made to rise. His father tried clawing at him, but the wolf was too fast, ducking away before the bear’s talons could reach him.

  Shadrach roared again, a shuddering cry that—from anyone else—might have implied that surrender was imminent. Except the vargyr lord was too prideful for that, too insufferably arrogant. And he’d been grooming his adherents for exactly this moment.

  Shamming, the Clawmaster slipped from Brune’s jaws. He scrambled away, clutching his throat.

  “Now,” Rose hissed.

  “Kill him!” bawled Shadrach. “Kill the traitor! Do it now! Your master commands you!”

  And then, chaos.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Shadow of the Wolf

  Sorcha leapt and was a lynx before she landed, powering down the ramp and lunging at the black shadow that was Brune. Several others joined her—dropping from bluffs or splashing across pools to heed the Clawmaster’s call—but not all of them.

  Not yet, anyway.

  “ABRAXAS!” Cura called forth the inking she’d summoned in Highpool: a metalwork stallion that kicked free of her arm. The jointed struts of its wings snapped open, crackling with violet light as it rushed to intercept Brune’s assailants.

  Freecloud sprinted toward the scattered bones of the boar, while Rose turned and—

  “Sorry,” she said, then shoved Tam hard with both hands.

  The bard plunged into the pool behind her, and because she’d been in the midst of asking, “Sorry for what?” she gulped down a mouthful of hot water. She heard muffled screaming, saw clouds of green and gold swirl above her—and then Rose was dragging her from the pool, squeezing her to force the water from her lungs.

  For an absurd moment, all Tam could think about was the fact that she was wet and Rose was warm and neither of them were wearing anything but paint.

  Well, Rose is wearing paint, she thought. I’m just naked.

  “Why?” she spluttered.

&nb
sp; “Because I need you invisible,” Rose told her. “Or near enough.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “My gauntlets. I need you to get over there and grab them for me.” Rose pointed at the Clawmaster’s throne. She was trembling, Tam noticed, her whole body begging for a dose of Lion’s Leaf.

  A scrawny, redheaded woman was creeping toward them. When Tam caught her eye, the girl bared her teeth and shammed into a mangy-looking fox.

  “Go,” Rose ordered. She pushed Tam away and turned to face the vargyr. As she did, Freecloud returned bearing a glowing gold tusk in either hand. He heaved one at Rose as the fox pounced. She caught it two-handed and clubbed the beast from the air.

  Tam took off running. Tiers of stone climbed like colossal steps on her right, and she stayed near the wall to avoid the battle raging in the middle of the cavern.

  Cura’s static stallion was circling the grotto floor, discouraging those who hadn’t yet joined the fray from doing so. It trampled, kicked, and thrashed wildly, skewering foes with the spikes cresting its head.

  It was hard to see how Fable’s shaman was faring. He was swarmed by lesser beasts: a wolverine, a weasel, and Sorcha, whose spotted claws moved so fast they blurred. Two more cats—an orange cougar and a sleek purple panther—were bounding toward them. Brune was bigger—much bigger—than any of them, and fuelled by manic rage, but his enemies were ferocious. The wolverine and the weasel were clinging to his hide, spitting and clawing, while the lynx attacked him head-on. Tam saw the shadow of Brune’s head swoop beneath Sorcha’s swiping paws, snag her belly, and rip it open. Offal splattered the stone floor beneath her, but Sorcha fought on, heedless of how grievous her injury was.

  Tam, now just a slender shadow in a cave full of colour, ran as fast as she could, staying well clear of Brune’s vicious struggle and keeping an eye out for Cura’s stallion. She skirted the edge of another hot spring and pulled herself onto the lowest shelf ringing the cavern floor.

  Someone—a vargyr—dropped down in front of her. Tam registered a pair of bright green stripes, but it was the smell that told her who it was. The skunk-woman didn’t notice her until the two of them collided. She squealed in surprise, and Tam saw black-and-white-fur sprout from the woman’s face.

  How do you stop someone from shamming? she wondered. She tried a straight jab to the throat first, and was delighted when it did the trick. The vargyr gurgled something before toppling off the ledge and into a pool below. Tam hurried on.

  Rose and Freecloud were back to back, wielding the boar’s tusks like dull swords to bludgeon whoever came close. They’d barely bought themselves a reprieve when the twin badgers sprang at them. Rose went down beneath one, but managed to lodge her bone in the crook of its jaw. The other attacked the druin, attempting to butt him with its head and knock him prone. Freecloud evaded it, but his concern for Rose kept him from pressing the advantage.

  Something gold-bellied and white-faced went soaring past Tam and hit the rock wall on her right. Brune had flung the weasel away, and now it crouched, dazed, on the path before her. Tam brained him with a heel to the head and ran on.

  She sought frantically for Shadrach, and found him below, lying on his side with both hands pressed to his ravaged neck.

  Is he dying? she wondered, and was so preoccupied by the Clawmaster that she almost ran headlong into a wall of bristling, bright pink spikes. Instead, she skidded onto her bare ass, wincing as the skin was scraped raw.

  What the fuck is this? The hedge of spines advanced on her, and it took the bard a moment to realize what she was facing. A bloody porcupine! Tam scrambled to her feet and tried edging around it, but the foul thing chittered at her and swung its rump like a spiked flail.

  “Fuck,” she swore, frustrated. When one of the pink quills stuck into her arm, she swore again—in pain, this time.

  The thing was backing her up, costing her precious seconds. The drop on her left was too far to fall safely, and the shelf on her right too high to reach. She could jump, but the nearest pool was full of flailing skunk, and there was a weasel stirring groggily on the path behind her.

  A tingling sensation warned her that Cura’s inkling was coming before it arrived. Shadrach dived from its path as it stampeded past. Tam thought about calling for help, but Abraxas was already rearing. Its wings fanned open—filaments of electricity arcing between the barbed metal struts—and then swept forward, pinching like the legs of a spider into electrifying spears. They impaled the porcupine, wreathed it in a net of blue-white energy, and hoisted it skyward.

  Tam bolted underneath it. She didn’t look to see what became of the creature, but she could smell it frying from the inside out, and heard shooting quills clatter against the stone all around her.

  Glancing left, she saw the wolverine’s body flopping in the air, trapped between Brune’s shadow-jaws. The lynx was still after him, but Fable’s shaman was dancing in circles, and Sorcha’s wound was tiring her quickly.

  Freecloud had dispatched one of the badger brothers—its body was floating in the pool behind him—and as she watched, he brought his tusk down across the back of the one attacking Rose.

  Tam leapt from her precipice onto the ramp. She pounded up it, bare soles slapping on the damp stone. She found Rose’s gauntlets on the ground near Shadrach’s throne. Scooping them up, she turned, and—

  A huge hand seized her throat. The bard felt her stomach drop; she kicked frantically as her feet left the ground.

  No air.

  Shadrach’s face loomed before her: red skin, black beard, the same gap-toothed grin as his son, except malicious. Hateful. Merciless.

  No. Air.

  Shouldn’t he be saying something? Making a threat? Telling her how weak she was? How pitiful? Where was the fun in just wringing someone’s neck!?

  No.

  Should she kick him in the groin? That always worked in stories.

  Air.

  She heard one of the gauntlets clang on the stone below her. Her grip on the other was loosening, so she slid it on. Couldn’t lose both. Rose would kill her.

  Like Shadrach was killing her.

  Something hit her palm, and Tam’s fingers closed instinctively around it. It was metallic. Cold. Like catching a fish you couldn’t see with your bare hand. Her vision was dimming, but she lifted her hand to see. The runes on the gauntlet were glowing green.

  And so was the sword in her hand.

  She wondered briefly whether she or Shadrach was more surprised to see it there, before she drove it, with every ounce of her strength, into the wound on his neck.

  It didn’t kill him (because every ounce of strength didn’t count for much when you were a skinny seventeen-year-old girl) but it obviously hurt, since the Clawmaster wailed and let her go. Tam landed in a crouch, snatched up the other gauntlet, and ran like the fucking wind down the ramp.

  One of the huge cats—the cougar—looked her way. Light glazed its eyes as it tracked her in the dark. It prepared to lunge at her, but Cura’s inkling barrelled into it, trampling the beast beneath thunderstruck hooves.

  “Tam!” Rose was running at her. “Behind you!”

  She didn’t look. Didn’t need to look. She could hear the heavy thud of Shadrach’s feet as he closed on her.

  She was running too fast to pull Thistle’s gauntlet off, so she lobbed Thorn’s at Rose and then prayed to the Summer Lord’s flea-ridden beard that Shadrach slipped, or tripped, or decided to pick on someone his own size.

  Rose caught it—of course she caught it—and slammed it on. Thorn answered her call, shining blue as it streaked like an arrow to her open hand.

  “Down!” she screamed.

  Tam dove, rolling over grit and stone as Rose hurled the scimitar sidearm. The bard watched, breathless, as it whipped overhead, spinning like the moon struck loose from the sky. It went clean through the Clawmaster’s side. He stumbled, balancing on one leg to keep from slewing sideways, and Rose threw herself shoulder-first into his knee.
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  It snapped, and Shadrach barely started screaming before his face hit the ground with a sickening crunch.

  Her mother’s voice notwithstanding, Tam had never heard a sweeter sound in all the days of her life.

  Brune’s father remained where he was, motionless. Nearby, Cura’s inkling fizzled and disappeared. The summoner was leaning heavily on Freecloud, who had gone to watch over her.

  Rose offered Tam a hand up. “Nice throw,” she said.

  “You too,” Tam replied.

  The fight was over. Or ending, in any case. There were still many dozens of vargyr watching from the outskirts of the cavern, but if they hadn’t attacked at the Clawmaster’s command she doubted they would do so now.

  Shadrach had controlled them through fear, and although fear bred subservience, it did not beget loyalty. Tam wondered who it was that told her that. Her father, probably. It was too wise to have come from her uncle Bran.

  The panther was dead. The wolverine was lying in halves. One of the badgers was whimpering piteously, soon to expire. Sorcha, somehow, was still on her feet, but giving up ground, hissing defiantly as the wolf advanced on her. At last she relinquished her fain and fell to her knees, baring her throat in a gesture of submission.

  A groan from Shadrach drew Brune’s attention. He stalked over, lips peeled back from sabre-length fangs. His growl shredded the air, and Tam was nearly overcome by the urge to run.

  Except she could see Brune’s eyes in the ruddy red aura emanating from Shadrach’s paint. There was pain there, and grief, and so much anger. But no rage. No mindless fury. They weren’t the eyes of a beast, she thought—only a heartbroken son on the cusp of killing his father.

  Freecloud lowered the tusk in his hand. “Brune,” he said softly. “Come back to us.”

  The shaman’s head swivelled toward the druin. The two of them regarded one another for a long moment before the wolf conceded, and Brune’s shadow shrank into that of a man. He dragged blood-matted hair from his eyes as he gazed down at Shadrach.