by Susan Dexter
His Clan had died upon swords such as this. And he had survived one, and now went among others. And would sleep in the same room as this one.
But not sleep well.
Druyan took the sword along when next she carried warnings, for there was no sense she could see in riding unarmed into trouble, even in little villages like Penre, which she could not believe the raiders were troubling over, no matter what the bowl showed at Kellis’ command. A barrel of salted fish was the most booty Penrc could offer a thief.
Penre was probably someone’s mistake, but it was fought over, regardless. Two Riders and a dozen fishermen, about even odds with the fierce men who’d thought to find themselves riches there. They’d beached their shallow-draft vessel, and one of the fishermen had managed to fire it Thus trapped, the raiders fought to the last man, vicious as cornered rats.
Penre’s womenfolk and their children had crowded into the stoutest of the houses, huddling there like chickens in a coop. The raiders began going to ground anywhere they could, and the stoutest walls looked best to them. One or two forced a way in, like foxes. Some of the women came out at once, into danger and confusion. Still others were trapped within. Penre’s outraged men laid siege to the building, and Robart and another Rider showed up to join the fighting. Druyan ducked out of her brother’s sight, knowing she couldn’t keep that up for long—Penre was too small, and Valadan too recognizable.
She rode escort for the women and half a dozen children of varying sizes, guiding the little group out past the edges of the village—they could hide themselves better in the moorland where no raider was apt to venture. Night would fall soon, adding protection.
Druyan wondered how many folk were still trapped among the buildings. Shifting her sword in her hand, she tried to decide what the best grip for the weapon she had not yet needed to use might be, as she rode back to the village. Valadan trotted down a muddy backstreet, every sense alert. He sidestepped something, and Druyan’s breath caught in her throat—she’d thought for an instant ’twas a body, lying in the road. Every shadow, every shape she could not instantly identify became a peril, a threat. The blade in her hand weighed heavier than she’d expected, making her whole arm strain and ache, her entire body twitch with nerves. She might have to use it, and that frightened her. Robart was right, she had no business there, none at all. She’d given the warning, and she should go, flee home to safety.
But if she did that, retired and retreated as was seemly, who would shepherd Penre’s women while their homes were fought over? Druyan heard a scream and headed Valadan for the noise, glad to act rather than fret, finding it easier.
When it came, Druyan had no leisure to debate the morality of wielding her sword against living flesh. A desperate raider ran yelling at her from her right, waving a short-handled axe at Valadan, and Druyan defended the stallion without thought, even as she tried to turn him to safety. Swinging her blade in a tight sunward circle, she caught the man just as the sword’s tip was moving forward and up. The blade’s direction of travel matched Valadan’s. His speed thereby lent weight to Druyan’s sword-stroke, then carried them past their attacker.
He fell, Druyan thought, trying to turn in her saddle, struggling to pull Valadan up, to turn him, to see what had happened.
The stallion ignored the bit. He could see as well behind him as ahead, and had no need to turn. He is dead.
“What have I done?” Druyan whispered. Her hands and feet went cold. She began to shiver.
What you must, Valadan assured her, warm and steady beneath her.
She still held the sword, ready for another blow, though she had drawn her arm back toward her. There was something dark upon its tip, a splash of blood across the back of her sleeve. Blood. Druyan felt sick. Her cold hands shook, her limp legs could hardly grip Valadan’s sides.
Not your blood, the stallion reminded her. Which of course is the point. . .
Druyan thought she saw that darting shadow underfoot again as they turned, a distraction to be seized with alacrity, though Valadan did not shy at it this time, only swerved smoothly.
It couldn’t be a wolf. That had been at Falkerry. Maybe the raiders used battle dogs. She would have to remember to ask Kellis when she got home, Druyan thought. When she was herself again, if ever she could be.
The wolf leapt at the sea raider, but the man was dead as he fell, the sword-stroke having cut his throat. The wolf’s bloody lips lifted. No need to waste time over this one. He loped on down the narrow street, behind the stallion. There were not many raiders left living—he had torn the throats out of two, the woman had done for another, and the horsemen were harrying the remainder of the longship’s crew through the streets with good success. Only these raiders could not escape, because their ship was ashes, and no prey is half so dangerous as a cornered predator. So he hastened to get the woman in sight again, for she might not appreciate the increased danger. . .
He skidded around the blind corner, into the open, intent on his pursuit.
No! was all he had time to think.
Not all the dangers came from acknowledged enemies. Not for the likes of him.
The last raider had been rooted out of his hidey-hole and dispatched on a post rider’s sword. Druyan slid out of her saddle, reckoning nightfall as protection enough from Robart’s disapproving eye. She’d stand a moment on her own legs and allow Valadan the rest he did not seem to require, before heading out for Splaine Garth. She wanted to see the village folk returning to their homes, rejoining as families. She wanted to know that what she’d done had at least had a good result, that she had not done murder in vain.
All at once Druyan saw him, staggering toward her as she stood beside Valadan, through the smoking wreckage of Penre. Her mouth dropped open. Kellis was the last person she expected to see in that place. He hadn’t a stitch of clothing on him, and he was barefoot, but there was no mistaking that silver hair, not in all the world. Without further thought, Druyan snatched up a cloak from a sea raider who wouldn’t require it any longer, ran, and threw the tom wool about his muddy shoulders.
“Lady?” His eyes tried hard to focus on her, but couldn’t manage it. He blinked as if he couldn’t see. There was dark blood all over his face, mostly around his mouth. “Are you well?” he asked her anxiously.
Druyan was well—in the way Kellis probably meant—if speechless. Not that her answer mattered. As she nodded woodenly, his knees buckled, and Kellis would not have heard any answer she managed to make, much less her own urgent questions.
Shape-shifter
“ ’S all right,” Kellis insisted faintly, lying prone in the sandy dirt while Druyan knelt by him, wide-eyed and distressed. “Always lightheaded after a shift, getting thrown out of form is just worse. Got dizzy, that’s all—”
“Out of form?” Druyan bent closer, not sure she was hearing correctly. “What are you talking about?” How ever had he gotten himself to Penre? Had he followed her? Afoot? No, that wasn’t possible—but what was? There was blood on him, but she had yet to discover a wound, and most of his skin was under her eye.
“Stupid,” Kellis went rambling on, a little louder, obviously not answering her, maybe not even hearing her questions. He frowned, lifting a hand to his head as if to bmsh an insect away. “Got too close to that horse, knew I was. Couldn’t get clear. Didn’t see him in time. He didn’t catch me solid, but of course he was shod. Iron shoes are no better than iron swords—”
Druyan’s search for an actual injury was finally rewarded. Most of the blood on his face had no obvious source, but she found a nasty scrape just above Kellis’ left ear, raw where the hair had evidently been tom out by its roots. She’d seen kick marks like that on pastured horses. The spot leaked blood sluggishly. “You’re lucky that horse didn’t kick you into the afterlife!” she exclaimed wonderingly. The flesh was puffing like rising bread, and she thought the blow had been solid enough, whatever Kellis judged. “He came close. How—”
“Not his fault,”
Kellis said generously. “Horses will kick at wolves, it’s their nature. Nothing to be done about it.”
A wolf? Was that what she’d seen and taken for a big dog? A wolf, loose in Penre? Of course, it was hard to put much stock in anything a man told you, when you knew he’d just been kicked in the head by a horse. A shod horse, no less! Druyan frowned. An odd distinction for Kellis to make. Had he been close when the horse struck at the wolf and gotten himself kicked?
Kicked him clean out of his clothes, did it? Valadan put his muzzle close and sniffed curiously. Even I cannot do that.
Druyan had to agree with the horse.
Kellis began making an effort to sit up. Druyan thought to restrain him, then took pity and helped him instead. As he came more upright he seemed to grow dizzy again, and drooped heavily against her, his left hand pressed to the side of his head. His skin was cold under her fingers, though not bumped with it, clammy, grayish as if all the blood Kellis had were splashed on the outside of him. Druyan was prepared for him to be sick, but she felt him draw in three deep breaths, one after another, and in a moment he was able to sit unsupported, though he slumped and looked extremely unwell. Too unwell, Druyan judged, to go on lying to her.
“Kellis?” She felt faint herself.
He looked at her sidelong, someone else’s blood all about his mouth, for his own lips weren’t cut. There was blood dried between his teeth. Sharp teeth, Druyan suddenly noticed. Sharp as a wolf’s.
“Lady?”
“Is there something you forgot to tell me?” Druyan asked bravely, pursuing a conclusion she could hardly have named. Kellis saw it in her face, whatever was dawning, and understood it well enough.
“Some of my people are shape-shifters,” he said hesitantly. “It seemed . . . unwise . . . to mention it before, with the rest.”
The confession was unexpected. Druyan had no idea what she had expected. And it was true. She knew it in her bones, as sure as she knew that she’d taken that raider’s life with her sword, not merely crippled or maimed him.
“That wolf was you?” She accepted it calmly, because nothing else made even nearly as much sense.
Kellis nodded, then hastily put his hand back to the side of his head, supporting it as if his neck hurt him, too.
Something nagged for Druyan’s informed attention. “Not the first time, was it?”
Kellis rubbed at his scalp. “No. When you rode out—I couldn’t let you go alone, unprotected. I followed you, or tracked you-if I could.” His breath hissed, and he stopped rubbing. He looked across her, at Valadan. “That horse is too fast for me. Sometimes you’d be coming home before I ever got to where you’d been . . .” His explanation trailed off.
“And you were a wreck when I got back, of course. Enna thought you’d been into the cider.”
That coaxed a lopsided smile. “I wish I had been, Lady—that headache’s easier to sleep off.”
“Where are your clothes?” A wolf had no use for garments, of course. They’d only be a hindrance, so he must have taken them off.
“Buried under a rock in your sheep pasture.”
Druyan rolled her eyes. “And I wondered why they seemed to be going to rags so fast! Meddy probably chews them full of holes while you’re out of them.” She heard voices, and remembered that they were neither alone nor at Splaine Garth. “Think you can sit behind me on Valadan?”
“I will shift form again and go back the same way I came,” Kellis argued. He set his mouth. “Just let me get my legs under me—”
“A wolf traveling out of here now might expect worse treatment than having his hair parted with a horseshoe.” Druyan was brooking no dissent. “You’re coming with me, and no more fuss.”
Kellis seemed set on protesting further, but he changed his mind when he was on his feet once more—Valadan was his chief support, and the hand he tangled into the stallion’s mane went white-knuckled with the desperation of his grip. It was a long moment before his legs were doing anything to hold him up, and it took heroic efforts on all their parts before Kellis was seated on Valadan’s back.
“Gods above and gods below!” The horseman’s voice cut like a well-honed sword, from high above. “Would you care to explain this?”
No, Robarrt, I would not, Druyan thought, leaning against Valadan’s shoulder with her eyes tight shut, feeling as weak as Kellis must. I have just this day hit a living man with a sword and probably made him a dead man, and now I discover that I have been living all these months with another man who can shape-shift himself into a wolf when he chooses. No, somehow I don’t think I want to try to explain that to you. She said nothing, but her brother did not notice.
“Kernan said his horse took a kick at the biggest dog he’d ever seen in these parts—and when he looked back at it, he saw no dog, but a man’s body. A naked man’s. And evidently nowhere near so dead as Kernan thought, when he asked me whether the raiders might have sorcerors with them!”
Druyan could feel Kellis’ leg trembling beside her shoulder. She’d have sworn he was growling, only she heard no sound, just felt the vibration.
“This is Kellis,” she said matter-of-factly, as if they’d met one another at a market fair. “He’s a shape-shifter.” Offhandedly, as if ’twas scarcely worth the mentioning. Maybe Robart wouldn’t notice, she thought, hoping vainly. She wished she was ahorse, not afoot and feeling at such a disadvantage.
“A shape-shifter! Gods, Druyan!” Robart’s smokereddened eyes, then his soot-marked, outreaching hand, fell on the sword she had forgotten to try to hide. “Where’d you get a sword? That idiot Yvain? What are you even doing here? I told you at Falkerry—you’re to pass the message! You aren’t supposed to be riding in the thick of this mess!”
Druyan’s protest that she’d been useful, that she’d been safe, died in her throat. There was still blood on the sword, like an accusation.
“Tell your men,” Kellis interrupted harshly, “not to do this again.” He waved an arm at the bumed boat, smoking and steaming on the beach sand. “Trap them like rats, they’ll fight to their deaths—or yours.”
Robart ignored him, save for a glare. Druyan was better quarry, or else he simply had not finished with her. “Where’s your husband?”
“Travic is—” Is what? Druyan frantically wondered. Nothing plausible came to mind. She hadn’t a wit left. Home, tending the crops? Too dead to disapprove? “My husband, not yours,” she said to Robart, amazing herself. “Not your business.”
Robart’s blue eyes fairly started from his head, whites showing all around. His horse, responding to his temper, to the hands tightening on his reins, shied back and tried to rear against his rider’s iron grip. At once Valadan’s head snaked out, his teeth bared to fend off the other stallion from his mistress, afoot and imperiled whilst he was burdened with a helpless rider and hard put to protect her. Robart’s horse half reared again to escape him, was pulled back under control ruthlessly, the bit dragging his mouth wide open. His rider’s temper was not improved by the battle.
“He doesn’t ask where you go, when you ride out? Doesn’t question? Travic must be in his dotage! And we’re none of us any better, acting on prophecies from that!” Robart hissed, jerking his chin at Kellis as he dragged the plunging horse back to Druyan’s side. “You know nothing about this creature—except that he took service with sea thieves who’re stealing everything in Esdragon they can carry away!”
“He’s right about the ship,” Druyan said angrily. “You cut off their only escape. Nowhere to run—they have to fight. What else would you expect?”
“I don’t need a lesson in strategy—certainly not from something that’s barely human and probably all traitor!”
“He’s trying to help us,” Druyan protested, her voice gone thin enough to tear, like a cobweb.
“Help us?” Robart laughed mirthlessly. “You mean by guessing where his old friends will strike next? Once he’s won our coniidence, what’s to stop him sending us where he knows they’re not, so the
y can raid undisturbed? Or sending us all into a trap?”
“He hasn’t done that!” No, only begged her, over and over, not to trust him—and all the while hiding what he was, what was inside his human skin.
“Maybe he hasn’t found a way yet. Well, I am for certain not so trusting as your husband! If this shape-shifter of yours makes one false move, he’ll face my sword. You said he can’t abide cold iron? I’ll use it on him. Shift him straight into a corpse.” Robart pointed his weapon at Kellis’ nose for emphasis, but spoke to Druyan. “You hear me? No questions, no trusting, no second chances. He’ll be dead.”
Druyan tried to speak, but there was only silence when her lips parted.
Robart whirled his horse, shouted back at her. “You remember what I said!”
As if she was likely to forget any of it.
Kellis was silent during the ride homeward, and Druyan suspected he might have slipped into a drowse. It was a longish trek over the moors, and she held Valadan to a gentle trot, out of consideration for the double load on the horse’s back and the condition of the second of his passengers. She had ordered Kellis to hold onto her belt, and she could feel one of his hands pressing obediently against her backbone, but she did not think him apt to keep his seat long should Valadan go at his best speed.
All at once he sat up straight, brushing against her, and Druyan realized she had been all but asleep in the saddle herself. She looked about. The sun was coming up mistily. The ground nearby had a familiar look to it. They’d come home, into one of the high, windswept pastures. She heard a sheep bleat, one of the dogs bark sharply thrice.
“Lady, let me down,” Kellis begged her. “I’ll fetch my clothes and come back to the barn.”
Valadan halted without waiting to be reined.
“I can find you other clothes,” Druyan said, her thoughts fuzzy with sleep. “The stuff you left up here is nothing but tatters anyway.” She’d been thinking so each time she saw him, for weeks. She’d just never guessed why. She looked back at him, suddenly uncomfortable.