EXILED: Lord of Cragsclaw

by Bill Fawcett

  The female was at the door. Cwinyd reached for her arm and said, “Wait.” His deep brown eyes looked into hers. “I want you to do one thing more. Then you may go. It will not be pleasant for you, but it will be far less pleasant for him.” He smiled and brushed the hair from her face. “Keep him hard,” he commanded, “for a just a few more minutes.”

  She frowned, reluctant to approach the highlander. But the pale mrem placed his hand on her forehead and after a dozen heartbeats she obeyed. Walking over to Crethok, she knelt at his feet and ran her hands along his legs, touching her body to his as sensuously as she could. Already hard, Crethok began to twitch.

  “Now to business,” Cwinyd said. “This is the King of Ar’s territory, Crethok, and you’ve been here for almost three weeks. I want you out, moving east, and I want you out now.

  “Why?” Crethok stammered, the female’s hands now circling his loins.

  “I have my reasons,” came the reply. Cwinyd was not about to tell Crethok of his plans for Cragsclaw, nor that he wanted him to start getting Lord Sleisher’s attention. Sleisher was holed up in Cragsclaw, and the fortress was impregnable as long as all his forces were there. None of this, of course, was Crethok’s business. Crethok was in his service, and that was all that mattered.

  “But I am gaining what I—Damn it, Cwinyd, can’t she stop? I can hardly think—” Her mouth was on him now, and his speech was faltering.

  “You don’t have to think. You need only obey. Stay out of these valleys, and get as close to Cragsclaw as you can.”

  Crethok’s legs twitched and he could hardly focus on the sand-colored mrem. The female had stopped now, fully intent on returning some of her captor’s torture, and all Crethok could see was her partly opened mouth inches away from him.

  “Sleisher will kill me,” was all he could say.

  “No,” Cwinyd replied. “You are too strong for that. But I want him to notice you, and I want you to raid where he must defend.” He paused. “This will help you against Arklier, of course. He is doing no fighting whatsoever, content to talk and to make promises. You are showing strength, and what better way to show it than against your clan’s longtime enemy? Is that not true?”

  The woman’s hands were again on the move. “Yes,” Crethok blurted out. “Yes. Yes. Yes.” He was ready, of course, to say anything, ready to do whatever Cwinyd wanted, ready to forget about being ClanMrem, ready to let Cwinyd take his army, ready to do anything, anything, anything, as long as he could—

  “Stop!” ordered Cwinyd. The female stood up. “Now stand back and watch.

  “Guard!” the sand-colored mrem shouted, and a tall, stocky, olive-caped mrem appeared, a sword in his left hand and a whip in his right.

  “Relieve him,” Cwinyd said, and the guard leered. “Then escort the female back to her people.”

  He turned and left the hut. A second later the magician heard the crack of the whip, and then he heard Crethok’s scream, a curious mixture of utter pain and utter relief.

  That maimed member wouldn’t confuse his puppet any more. If it could function at all.

  •

  All day they had passed among the trees, and the way had been filled with the scent of autumn. But now the night approached, and Talwe realized they would be forced to camp in the forest depths. Already the dusk was gray, and already his mind was fearful.

  Always the forest had frightened him, and since his night among the songomores that fear had grown much stronger. He was born in the open, and he understood the open, and he did not like the sounds and the closeness that came with the forest at night. There were too many trees, too many noises, and there was never enough room.

  When the wagons stopped, he shuddered.

  “It’s cold,” said a voice. Talwe turned. He looked into the eyes of the young white Dancer. This was the first time she had spoken to him.

  “Yes,” he replied, unsure of himself. “And it is dark.”

  She nodded, her face suddenly vulnerable. “I’m not fond of the forest,” she said quietly. “I am from the city.”

  He smiled inside to hear of her dislike. “Which city?” he asked, trying to sound as if it mattered.

  “Ar,” she said.

  Ar! To Talwe, Ar had once meant golden towers, the riches of kings, and a wealth of song and of dance and of things he did not know. But it had also been portrayed as the center of all that was base in a mrem, its streets filled with killing, and theft, a place where no one slept soundly or had their own land. One trader had painted a picture that ended with the bleak description that so many mrem were crowded together, talking day and night, that the noise never stopped.

  Lately, though, to Talwe, Ar meant magic.

  “I, too, dislike the forest,” he said. “It has been unkind to me.”

  She smirked. Damn! he thought. Whatever ice had been broken, his words had frozen again.

  “They’re just trees,” she replied, the smirk dying. “The frightening things are what live among them.” He saw her look around, as if she had heard something.

  “Perhaps,” he said, “but for my people the trees have wills of their own.”

  She put a finger to his chin, furrowed her brow, and said, “That, Talwe, is why your people will always live in the wilds. That is why they will not build cities. To live in a city, you must understand that trees, like rocks and like rivers, are things to be used.”

  It was an insult, he knew, but he did not feel offended. Instead, he felt sorry for her. To lose the gods was not something he was willing to do.

  A short time later he was given permission to leave and was soon asleep.

  The attack came swiftly, just before dawn when only Crellna, on guard, was awake. The guard’s voice shouted, “Attack!” and Talwe was on his feet in seconds, his sword in his hand and his eyes seeking out the Dancer and the whitefur. Whatever was happening, they must be protected.

  Out of the shadows of the forest poured a host of mrem, knives and swords glittering in the light of the moon. Their fur was dark, but some were many-colored, and most wore mismatched leather armor over their legs and their chests. One raced toward Talwe, and the hunter raised his sword, prepared to fight. Their curved blades arced together and stopped. With his free hand Talwe slashed at his opponent’s eyes, claws bared. The mrem danced back, startled, and lost sight of Talwe’s sword. Within seconds, this attacker lay dead.

  Talwe turned and slashed his way toward the Dancer. His sword bit into a neck, then into a chest where it grated on bone. He spun as a shiver warned him, but he missed as a short mrem dived under the blow. After this attacker had rolled away and was lost into the darkness, Talwe felt a trickle of blood starting from his right leg. A shiver warned him once more and, whirling on his good leg, he swung with the full strength of his shoulders. This time the head of his assailant fell from its body.

  He saw the Dancer then. She was standing behind Strace, a short sword in her hand, and beside her stood the whitefur, the fur on her back raised high and glinting in the firelight. She was holding only a dagger. To their left one male guard lay fallen and three mrem were advancing on them. To their right one of the female guards was trying to hold off four attackers. Nearby lay the bodies of two musicians, and he could see no other guards standing. More leather-covered mrem burst suddenly from the trees.

  It was only, thought Talwe, a matter of time before they killed the Dancer.

  Hissing a challenge, he charged at those facing the whitefur. He slashed through the neck of one mrem, then thrust his sword under the tunic of another. Blood flowed freely over his hand now, and the forest stank of death. He was winning his way through, and the Song of the Hunt rang through his brain.

  And then the Dancer fell. Strace lay dead at her feet, and the point of a sword showed through her back. The whitefur stood alone now, and her knife looked useless against the six mrem who faced her.
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  “Sruss!” he cried, and then his mind tore free. He wheeled and saw a sword flash toward his eyes. Diving forward, he caught the hilt on the side of his head, and when he fell to the ground a heavy foot kicked him again and again.

  The blows became muffled and distant. Soon Talwe’s night grew blacker still.

  “I’M TIRED OF this,” Jremm said aloud. His fur was listless and he itched where it had been scraped against too many rough walls. The streets of Ar were far from unpopulated, even though the dawn was only a few hours off, and Jremm half-walked, half-staggered along them on his way home. One more night without sleep, he thought, and he’d be unable to track an uxan in a pottery shop.

  Not that he was a bad shadow. For the past few weeks he had done nothing but track Draldren and his contacts, following them to discover what he could of their movements. He wasn’t quite sure what Lorleen wanted with the information, but he found it impossible to say no. Lorleen was, without a doubt, the most persuasive mrem he’d ever known.

  It was her eyes, he decided as he walked. Narrower than most, their corners curled up slightly higher than most. Those eyes spoke to him every bit as clearly as her voice. Or, rather, they commanded. Persuasive didn’t quite describe her accurately.

  Or maybe she used magic. After talking to the likes of Berrilund, and after watching Draldren all these weeks, he was beginning to realize that anything—even magic to help with the daily routine—was more than possible.

  But now Jremm was tired, and all he wanted was his bed. Day after day he woke to the voice of Errlo calling him to his work, and day after day he poured, formed, and baked an increasingly inept batch of bricks. He shook his head as he thought of his work, wondering why Errlo kept him on. Never much good at his craft, he was too exhausted lately to do anything of any use at all.

  He had found out nothing all night. Draldren had been at Arbunda’s Rest, but the mrem he had met had gone within minutes, north into the darkness. Uncertain whether to follow them or stay with Draldren, Jremm had decided to stay. He told himself that a truly important meeting would have lasted longer. The truth was he was hesitant to follow into that part of Ar. As it turned out, the decision had been the wrong one; Draldren left the Rest shortly afterward, and the only place Jremm had tracked him to was his house.

  Helpless and furious with himself, he had roamed the streets of Ar for two full hours afterward, hoping to chance against the mrem Draldren had met. Finally he returned to Draldren’s house and waited. For a long time nothing happened, but finally the door opened and a figure emerged into the moonlight.

  That figure, he knew at once, was Rennilan.

  Jremm started toward her, then stopped and shook his head. Lorleen had ordered him to watch Draldren, not his daughter. But as Rennilan disappeared into the darkness of the upper street, he could hold himself no longer. Draldren be damned, he muttered to himself. Tonight I’ll worry only about her.

  She walked quickly. Jremm followed several strides behind, keeping in the shadows of the widely separated buildings and abundant trees found in this prosperous district. Within seconds, his concern turned to alarm as Draldren’s daughter ventured into a more dimly lit neighborhood, for he suddenly realized Rennilan’s destination. She was headed to the area of the city north of Arbunda’s Rest, that part of Ar where the night was most dangerous. In all his nightly assignments, that was the only section he had never found the courage to lurk in.

  And now Rennilan was in it, and she was alone. He hurried to keep her in sight.

  No torches lined the walls of these buildings, and no young guides offered to help you find your way. Here the city even looked raw, with buildings made only of unbaked bricks, patched with cakes of mud, and roofs that often gaped open to the stars. The streets themselves, and many of the houses, were physically clean, but behind the cleanliness—which was, after all, an easily upheld law—lay a deeper filth that few in Ar could even begin to imagine. This was the stain not of poverty—the city had its share of that—but of hatred and of murder. This was a place the gods were slowly forsaking. A place where, rumors held, liskash could be seen in the night.

  Jremm shuddered. He knew the tales of the liskash were untrue; they would be scented and hunted by the guard. But he wondered if they would always remain so. The growth of the north section was one of Andelemarian’s few great failings as king. Once the king had made attempts to clear it; now that he was old he was beginning to lose interest. With the stories of the clansmrem raids to the north, and of the rising power of the Na-mrem, the king could no longer look to comparatively petty concerns inside the city.

  In some ways, this disturbed Jremm more than anything else. He knew vaguely of the threats to Ar, and that the knowledge was beginning to spread throughout the city, but nobody seemed to be doing anything about it. From his conversations with Mithmid—and lately with Lorleen—he knew as well that his own undercover work had something to do with countering the threats and some mysterious enemy from the east. Here too he felt that nothing real was being done. Whatever Draldren might have done, whatever the noble’s contact with Reswen and the others might mean, Draldren simply could not be the city’s major problem. Jremm was beginning to feel keenly that he was wasting time.

  Wasting time, he knew, was precisely what he was doing now. To all except him, Rennilan meant nothing.

  Through the narrow streets of the north section he trailed her, staying always in the shadows and always out of her sight. More than once he heard a voice from inside one of the squat, ugly houses, but Rennilan never even slowed down. Her pace was brisk, her destination clearly decided.

  She rounded a corner. Jremm followed. This new street was narrower than the other, and the light of lanterns leaked through the holes in the walls of the houses. Some nameless thing scurried across the street in front of her, but she paused barely long enough for Jremm to slow his step.

  Suddenly Jremm realized something he should have known all along. The streets, unbelievably, were deserted. Where were the killers? he wondered. Where were the thieves? Where were the rapists, the mrem who waited for young boys and girls to wander, usually drugged or looking for thrills, out of the safer sections of the city? Had all the stories been lies?

  Or was something else at work? The night was moonless and dark with clouds, and sometimes darkness held magic. Jremm’s tail twitched twice, reflecting his anxiety. Then he forced it still, afraid she would see the movement.

  Rennilan stopped outside a small house. For a moment she hesitated, and Jremm saw her head drop slightly. Slowly and lightly he closed the gap between them, until he was a mere eight strides away. Then he stood motionless in the shadows of an unlighted dwelling.

  She knocked. A moment later, the door opened.

  As she entered, Jremm crept closer. When the door closed he was two steps from it. Waiting for ten heartbeats, he pushed at it gently, and was somewhat surprised to find that it wasn’t locked. The door yielded, and holding his breath he squeezed through.

  •

  He was in a small entry, which opened to his right into a small room. There in the darkness he saw the shadows of two figures, one a tall male and Rennilan the other. Like the eyes of all mrem, his focused quickly in the dark, and within seconds he could make out the small bed in the corner of the room.

  “Welcome,” the male voice said. “You are as beautiful as I was told. But you are also late.”

  Rennilan spoke quietly. “My father said I should wait,” she almost whispered, “until any who might have seen your meeting would have lost all interest. I am late for that reason.”

  Jremm heard an unusual formality in her voice.

  “But our meeting was brief,” the other protested. “We met in the Rest for only a minute or two. Why would anyone have noticed?”

  The Rest? A minute or two? Then this was the mrem he had seen with Draldren. What did Rennilan have to do with him? He fo
und all the answers he could conjure unacceptable.

  “I don’t know,” she muttered, her voice now slightly quavering. “He ordered me to come to you, and he told me when I should leave.”

  “Ordered you?” the mrem’s voice mocked. “Then you would rather not be here?” Jremm winced. He knew she could not safely answer this question.

  “No,” she replied. “I would rather not.” Jremm admired her courage, but he wondered how smart the answer was.

  Silence, then, “Good,” came his reply. “I like my females honest.” At the words “my females,” Jremm barely kept himself from springing into the room.

  So Draldren had sent her. Rennilan’s father had sent her to be with a mrem he had met in Arbunda’s Rest. Indignant and furious, Jremm worked hard not to breathe too hard. His claws extended and he did not bother to sheathe them.

  “Undress,” the mrem’s voice commanded. “Slowly.” Jremm saw her shadows obeying.

  “That’s right, my beautiful Rennilan,” the smooth voice continued. “Cwinyd likes it when his females do as he likes.” And as her last garment fell, Jremm crept silently out of the door.

  Cwinyd, he thought to himself. I’ll remember that. And he turned into the street and ran from his hatred and his fear. Blocks away Jremm slowed and walked boldly through the north district. He kept one hand ready to pull the knife from his shoulder sheath. He found he no longer feared some cutpurse would attack. He wanted one to.

  •

  “Yes. Cwinyd. That is my name. Tell him I have come.”

  The sand-colored mrem grasped the leg of a stool, pulled it toward him, and sat down to wait. A few minutes later, a thick, stocky mrem entered and walked toward him.

  “Welcome,” said the second. His fur was a medium brown, but it was flecked with gold and black and white. Cwinyd smiled. One of his recent females had been exactly that color.