Pathfinder Tales: Skinwalkers

by Wendy N. Wagner

  "Not badly. Come on!" She pushed herself into a run, skewering a woman on the edge of the advancing Kalvamen. The man behind her leaped forward, fur flickering over his face.

  Animal sounds filled the air: roars, growls, snarls, shrieks. Goose bumps rose on the back on Jendara's neck. A half-man, half-coyote thing lunged at her. Tam slammed the pommel of his sword down on its head.

  Jendara stepped over the unconscious coyote man and pressed forward. She had to get to Kalira.

  A woman with a bear's snout and ears growled at her. Jendara headbutted her, then sliced through her throat. She pushed onward. Kalira. Had to get to Kalira.

  But the big white horse with its white-robed rider was already in front of her. Kalira's face stared down at her beneath the horrible headdress. Her eyes were barely visible slits ringed in kohl.

  "You can't hurt me, Jenny."

  Jendara felt the weight of her sword double in her hand. She set her teeth and tried to raise it. She might as well be lifting the Milady.

  "No!" she shouted. Her sword fell to the ground. She reached for her belt axe, but her fingers wouldn't move. Her whole body had gone stiff.

  You won't hurt me, Kalira commanded. Her lips didn't move: the words simply reverberated inside Jendara's skull, rumbling through her whole body. Her legs went out from under her.

  Kalira wheeled her horse. "Attack the meetinghouse!" she called.

  Jendara managed to lift her head. She lay in a sea of beasts. Kalira shrieked, the high sound of an angry crow, and cougars and wolves and bears raced toward the meeting hall. A coyote with a woman's face leaped over Jendara's legs.

  "No," Jendara whispered.

  A small round stone fell just beside her hand. She lifted herself on elbow to look for where it came from.

  "Ow!" Kalira clutched her face. Something had struck her in the mouth, splitting her lip.

  The projectile landed close enough that Jendara could see its smooth polished gleam. It was no stone. It was a wooden marble. One she'd seen before. Jendara's blood went cold.

  "Kran," she breathed. She sat up, her head suddenly clear. Kalira slid down from her horse, her attention focused on something on the far side of now-empty street. She walked toward the small figure with calm, purposeful steps.

  Jendara snatched up her sword. The pain in her right hand had halved. Maybe it was because Kalira was distracted, or because she was moving away from Jendara. Or maybe it was simply the power of a mother protecting her son. Whatever caused it, Jendara would use it to her own advantage.

  She used both hands and threw the sword as hard as she could.

  It sliced through the air, catching Kalira on the side of the thigh. She stumbled and fell.

  "Kran!"

  Jendara leaped over her fallen sister, aches and pains forgotten. Her son, her ridiculous son, lowered his sling. She grabbed his elbow and dragged him along.

  "We've got to get to the meeting hall!"

  There was no time for questions, no time for remonstrations. She would tan his hide when they got out of here.

  Behind them, a crow shrieked.

  Beasts and men battled in the area just in front of the meeting hall, but the front steps were clear. Jendara yanked Kran up them and hammered on the door. "Help!" she bellowed.

  The door flew inward. Vorrin caught her as she tripped over the threshold. He caught sight of Kran and his face darkened. "How did you—"

  But Gerda cut him off. "Bar the door! Merciful Desna, look at you."

  Jendara sank to the floor. "It's not as bad as it looks." She glared at Kran. "What were you doing out there?"

  "That's likely my fault," Tam said. He was propped in a corner with his sword across his lap, but his left arm was bound to his chest. "I got bit pretty bad and they brought me in here. I was telling Vorrin—"

  "That you went out there hurt, like some crazy woman," Vorrin interjected.

  "And Kran must have snuck out when the next of the wounded came in." Gerda's mouth settled into a grim line. She took Jendara's arm and sliced open the sleeve. "This is bad."

  The black stain had spread to the elbow, and gray tendrils ran up toward Jendara's shoulder. A smell rose off the flesh, like sticky tar and spoiled meat. Jendara turned her head away.

  "Can you do anything?"

  Gerda was already wrapping a bandage around Jendara's bicep. "We need to cut off the movement of the poison." She tucked a few sprigs of herbs into the linen. "These will stimulate your body to fight off the evil. Other than that, all I can do is pray."

  Gerda began to chant, her voice low and intense. Her eyes rolled up in her head, revealing only the whites.

  Jendara flexed her fingers. In the soft glow of the whale oil lamps, they looked dark, almost black. But they could move again without burning. She wasn't sure if it was the affect of being away from Kalira, or having her wound bandaged. "It feels better," she admitted.

  The door shuddered. Tam caught Jendara's eye. "The battering ram. They're turning it on the door now."

  "We've got to get these people out," Jendara said. "Where's Leyla?"

  The ram hit again. The door's hinges shrieked.

  "We don't have much time," Vorrin shouted, dragging Jendara to her feet. "Hurry!"

  "Let's go! Let's go! Faster!" Leyla called from the far end of the hall. She must have opened the escape tunnel when she heard the first thud of the battering ram. "Pregnant women and little ones first," she reminded them.

  People packed into the little space, making way for the younger children. Someone fell. A baby wailed.

  Jendara reached out for Kran's fingers and squeezed them. He squeezed hers back.

  The door burst open behind them.

  Jendara swung around, her belt axe in hand. But there would be no repeat of her attack at the gate—the ram and its bearers had already pulled back. A wolf slipped in, meeting Vorrin's blade snout-first.

  "Head for the escape tunnel," he commanded.

  "I'm not leaving without you," Jendara growled. She kicked a second wolf in the teeth and then stabbed it fast.

  "To hell with that!" he shouted. He brought down two snarling coyotes with a slash of his sword.

  Kran tugged on Jendara's elbow. A faint thudding noise sounded at the southern wall, and a bit of plaster rained down. Kalira's battering ram was already hard at work.

  "We've got to get out of here," Jendara shouted. Vorrin was bringing down the creatures as fast as they could squeeze through the front door, but if the southern wall fell, they'd be inundated with skinwalkers.

  The huge figure of a grizzly filled the doorway. Vorrin slashed at it, but the bear slid under the attack, lashing out with its claws. And then something golden bounded over its back, leaping impossibly high over Jendara's head, its fangs flashing in the light.

  "Behind you!" Tam yelled.

  Jendara spun around, but the cougar was already closing its teeth on Kran's shoulder. "Kran!"

  Vorrin spun toward the boy.

  The grizzly slapped him aside and he flew through the air, hitting the wall with a terrible crunch.

  Jendara launched her axe at the cougar, but the weapon missed by an inch. The cougar leaped back toward the door, dragging Kran behind it.

  The grizzly bounded forward, putting its massive bulk between Jendara and her son. She reached for her sword, but she must have dropped it someplace. She fumbled for her belt knife. The beast swiped at her.

  Tam rolled under the grizzly's limbs and jabbed upward with his sword, spearing the tender spot beneath the bear's jaw, skewering its brain. The beast twitched and fell backward.

  But the cougar, and Kran, was already gone.

  Jendara stood frozen a moment. Kran. That thing had Kran.

  She turned to Gerda. "Don't let Vorrin die," she warned.

  "I'll do my best," Gerda answered. She tossed Jendara the sword she'd dropped while Gerda tended her arm. "Go get your boy."

  "I'll do my best," Jendara growled. Then she raced out of the broken door
and into the night.

  Out in the fog, she ran alone. She had expected a chaos of battle, but with the exceptions of a few knots of fighters, the night had gone quiet. No snarls echoed off the walls. No screams filled the streets. Jendara slowed a little, listening.

  No, the only sounds were soft calls from down on the waterfront. Jendara almost stumbled. The waterfront. Kalira's people were headed for the docks, and that could only mean one thing: they were leaving.

  She burst forward, ignoring the pain in her arms and head. Kalira might be injured, but Jendara hadn't killed her, and she knew her sister wouldn't leave without getting what she came for. There had been a reason behind this attack. Hadn't Fambra warned her, back on the boat? Hazan knew what Jendara most treasured. He must have told Kalira and Brynorm. That cougar hadn't taken Kran by accident.

  Jendara skidded down the harbor ramp. Here, it wasn't quiet at all. Waves splashed as bears and wolves leaped into the water, swimming for the approaching longships. Flames crackled as a few human-shaped Kalvamen lobbed brands into the bottoms of Sorinder boats. Jendara sent a terrified look at the Milady, but the brig looked unharmed, sitting out on the longest pier. But flames already crawled up the masts of a half-dozen boats. None of the others would be safe.

  A man pushed past her, nearly sending her into the bay. She recognized the hank of long braids streaming down his back.

  "Hazan," she growled, and followed.

  A longship approached the end of the dock. Jendara watched a man in its bow toss a mooring rope to a huge man standing on the dock. Brynorm.

  Then she saw the woman striding down the dock, a wriggling bundle thrown over her shoulder. Jendara's eyes narrowed. The woman had wrapped her cougar skin tightly around the boy, but Kran wasn't the kind of kid to take being kidnapped meekly.

  Jendara sprinted down the dock and launched herself at the woman. She hit the woman's shoulder and sent them all tumbling off the edge of the dock, falling into a dinghy.

  The woman bellowed, but her hands were full of kicking boy. Jendara's fists pounded at her ears and neck. The woman's head bounced off a lead fishing weight and she went still. Jendara clawed at the pelt binding her boy.

  "Get her!" someone shouted.

  A kick caught her in the shoulder blades and she fell forward, narrowly missing the same weight that had knocked out the other woman. Her arms wrenched backward as a cruel hand gripped them. A man grunted as he lifted her out of the boat.

  "Damn it, Jendara," he growled. She recognized Hazan's voice and kicked at him. Her shoulders screamed. They'd been abused much too recently for this kind of treatment. She felt a moment's relief when he switched to gripping her by the throat. Then her head began to spin. Her arm burned.

  Kalira moved forward, leaning on a man's shoulder, her pale face ashen. She had removed the crow headdress.

  "You tried to kill me," she said.

  Jendara could barely speak. The arm around her throat was squeezing tight. "You would have killed my boy," she managed to grate.

  "You should have stood at my left hand," Kalira said. She drew herself up tall. "You should have led my troops to victory on Battlewall."

  Hope surged in Jendara's chest. Did this mean Kalira hadn't mobilized an attack on Battlewall yet? Could it mean that this was the bulk of her fighting force right here?

  "But instead, I will take your son and raise him as my own." Kalira smiled. "Family should be together, don't you think?"

  Jendara tried to answer, but the words only gurgled in her throat.

  Kalira snapped her fingers. "Kill her, Hazan. The rest of you, get to the ships."

  "Watch out!" a voice shouted. Kalira spun around as the fishing weight soared past her head.

  Jendara's eyes widened. Kran hopped out of the dinghy, holding a fishing spear tight. He raised it, looking from Hazan to Kalira and then back to Jendara.

  "The woman," Jendara choked. Gray spots threatened to blot out her vision of her son. "Kill...her..." Her feet slid out from under her.

  Kran threw the spear.

  Hazan grunted. The spear had struck Hazan's thigh mere inches from Jendara's own leg, and it had pierced the big artery in the leg. Blood seeped out, hot and damp. His arm slipped free of her. Kran's aim had been perfect—for saving his mother.

  "You fool," Kalira laughed. Her sword flashed, snake-fast, the pommel hammering the top of Kran's head. His eyes rolled up and he crumpled to the wet planks.

  "No!" Jendara screamed, and launched herself at Kalira.

  A Kalvaman intercepted her, bringing her to the ground. She kicked and punched, trying to get out from under his weight. The man clawed at her eyes. She batted his hands away. At the end of the pier, Kalira's guard had Kran in his arms and Brynorm was helping Kalira into the longship. Jendara only had a few seconds.

  The man sank his teeth into her wrist. Jendara grunted and twisted, fumbling for her belt knife. Her fingers closed on the hilt and she plunged it into his back.

  She rolled free of her assailant, but it was too late. Rowers had already moved the last longship away from the dock, too far for her to jump aboard. The boats around her were burning.

  Kran was gone.

  She spun around. Hazan lay gasping on the deck, the color draining from his face as his blood left his body.

  "You bastard." She drew back her foot and kicked him as hard as she could. He gasped. She'd hit his broken ribs.

  "You treacherous vermin." She kicked the injured spot again, pleased by the twist of his face. She dropped to her knees. There was a new heat in her hands now, not the burning pain of Kalira's brand but the familiar pleasant warmth of the jolly roger tattoos. Jendara whipped out her knife.

  Hazan's eyes widened.

  She grabbed the front of his shirt and sliced it open, revealing his dirty bandages. She doubted they'd been changed even once. She grabbed the neatly tucked bandage tail and yanked hard, loosening the strip.

  "What are you going to do?" His voice quivered.

  She drew the dirty bandage around the base of his leg and yanked it tight. "I'm going to stop the bleeding from your wound," she said. She grinned wider than she'd ever grinned in her life. "And then I'm going to torture you until you tell me everything I need to know. Or die. I don't care."

  She reached for the spear still stuck in his leg and wrenched it free. He bellowed with pain.

  "Where are they taking him?" she snarled.

  "To her new camp!"

  She dug her fingers into the open wound. He screamed, his back arching. She imagined her father screaming like that when the Kalvamen impaled him.

  She twisted her fingers deeper.

  Tears ran down the traitor's face. "Jendara, I'm sorry," he gasped. "My story was true. They killed Byrni, and they took Marga. That witch said she wouldn't hurt Marga as long as I came back with information. And she put one of those brands on my arm. I had to do what she wanted."

  She slapped his face, leaving streaks of his own blood behind.

  "Look at my arm!" he cried. "You know it's true!"

  She didn't want to look. The grinning thing inside her didn't want any reason to stop its work. But the rest of her knew she had to see the mark on his arm. She needed the full story if she was going to save Kran.

  She ripped open his shirt at the shoulder seam. Black tendrils rose up the side of his neck and strained across the muscles of his chest. A solid black spot sat on top of his heart. The heat began to trickle out of her body. She knew those marks too well.

  "Do you think I really wanted to leave you back on Battlewall? Or that I enjoyed trying to kill you? Do you know what it's like to not be in control of yourself?" He trembled. He was going into shock.

  "I do know," she whispered. She scrambled away from him, horrified by the filth on his face, the blood spreading around his body. She looked at her hands, sticky with blood and gobbets of tissue. "Oh, gods, how I know it."

  She leaned over the side of the dock and retched. She couldn't get the stench of blood
out of her nose or escape the fainter stink of tar and rotten flesh that her arm gave off. She rinsed her mouth and hands with seawater and carried a bit back to Hazan. She rubbed his blood off his cheeks.

  "You're going to be all right," she said. "You might lose your leg, but with that tourniquet, you won't lose any more blood."

  He gave a dry bark of laughter. "I think you overestimate your skills as a healer."

  "But I'll get Gerda. She'll help."

  "I won't make it another five minutes." He swallowed. Sweat stood out on his brow. "Look, Jendara, I don't know where Kalira's headed. I don't know where the new camp is. She didn't trust me. No one did." His eyelids fluttered.

  "Shh," Jendara whispered. "Save your strength."

  He sucked in a stuttery breath. "You'll find Marga for me, won't you?" he gasped. "Don't let those bastards hurt her."

  "Hush," she repeated. "You're going to be fine. Marga is, too." She squeezed his fingers in hers. They were very cold.

  "You're a bad liar." He smiled up at her, his eyes bright. His fingers twitched in her grip and went still.

  Jendara pulled her hand away and closed his eyes. Despair—for Kalira, for her own failure to save Kran, for Hazan and all the other dead—filled her throat, but she choked it down.

  She could cry for her mistakes later. She had a son to save. And she couldn't do it with her arm like this.

  She got to her feet. Each footstep jolted her throbbing head. She was vaguely aware that she was exhausted, that she'd been fighting hard for hours and with no downtime in days. Every muscle screamed as she made her way up to the meeting hall.

  She needed fire. Good clean fire, and someone with healing talents when she was done. She pushed past a bearded man at the broken door. He nodded at her and she nodded back. She should have recognized him, but her exhausted brain could only focus on one thing at a time right now, and fire took up all the space.

  The big central fire pit had been stirred up. The room felt far too hot. Jendara stumbled forward. People kept talking to her, but their voices were only distant thunder. She dropped to her knees beside the fire and saw the perfect chunk of wood. Her fingers closed on its unburnt end.

  "Jendara!" Morul bellowed, and his voice echoed and reechoed as she brought the flames down on her stained right hand.