by Barb Hendee
The man was in the air coming down upon her.
Magiere ducked and rolled forward along the ground, passing under the airborne arc of the man. There was no time to ponder how he moved so fast or leaped so far. She spun and came up with her back to the river in time to see her assailant twist in the air, already facing her again. His feet barely touched the ground before he lunged at her.
Magiere swung the falchion in a fast, short slash between herself and her attacker. It was a feeble attack, but she hadn't intended it to strike home. All she wanted was to scare him off. It would do no good to kill a local villager now, after she'd successfully worked her way out of Leesil's little impromptu performance.
The white man ducked and hopped to the side, avoiding the blade. She took advantage and shifted the opposite way to get her back away from the river. The man's disturbing laugh echoed off the surrounding trees.
"Poor hunter," he moaned playfully, raising fingers with stained nails and straightening from his crouch.
Magiere took a step back. "I just want the dog. I don't want to hurt you."
He laughed again, eyes half closed until their glow resembled sparkling slashes in his face.
"Of course, you don't," the man said, his voice as hollow as his cheeks.
Then he sprang.
It was the same dream, but this time wine-soaked slumber couldn't wash it away.
Leesil, only twelve years old, squatted on the floor of the dark room beneath his parents' home, listening to his father's lesson.
"Here-" his father pointed to the base of the human skull in his hand-"is where thin straight blades can be applied while the individual is distracted. This will cause instant and silent death in most large-skulled humanoids."
Father rolled the skull over to expose the opening where the spine would have been attached.
"It is a most difficult stroke. If you fail to execute it correctly"-he scowled briefly at Leesil-"a hard side stroke on withdrawal may save you before the target can make any sound. Always use the stiletto or similar thin strong blades for this-never a dagger or knife. Wide blades will jam in the base of the skull, or be deflected by the top vertebrae."
The man stared at his son. A thick, peppered beard hid the lower half of his thin angular face. He held out the skull. Young Leesil looked at it, but mostly noticed how slender and almost delicate his father's hands were, so graceful in everything they did, no matter how vicious.
"Do you understand?" his father asked.
Leesil looked up, the stiletto in his own hand a little too large for a boy. In waking hours, he remembered nodding silently in answer to his father's question, but the dream was always different than memory. He was about to take the bone skull, but hesitated.
"No, Father," young Leesil answered, "I don't understand."
Out of the shadows rose a second figure, seeming to sprout from the dark ground in the corner of the room. She was tall, slightly more so than his father, and delicately slender, with skin the honey-brown of Leesil's own, though smooth and more perfect than any person's he had ever seen. Long hair and narrow, feathery eyebrows glistened pale gold like threads of a sunlit spiderweb. The points of her ears rarely showed from beneath those polished tresses. Her large amber-brown eyes slanted up at the sides, matching the angle of her brows.
"The proper answer is yes, Leesil," she said in her sweet voice, a loving mother's admonishment for misbehavior.
Her eyes looked calmly down at him and made him ache inside for want of pleasing her, even when it made him sick inside to do what she asked.
"Yes, Mother… yes, Father," he whispered. "I understand."
Leesil rolled over in his sleep and moaned, pulled suddenly awake, but uncertain what had interrupted his slumber. For a moment, he was grateful for whatever had roused him. His head hurt from exhaustion and too much wine. He'd drunk too little to block out the dream on this night, yet barely enough to achieve slumber. With his vision blurred, it took several moments for him to realize the camp around him lay empty.
"Magiere?" he called. "Chap?"
There was no answer. Fear began to clear the alcohol daze from his thoughts.
From a distance came a wailing he couldn't call human or animal. Leesil pulled himself to his feet, shoved two stilettos up his sleeves into wrist sheathes, and staggered through the forest toward the sound.
Magiere shifted away again, holding her assailant at bay with short swipes of her blade, which wouldn't break her guard. Her breath was coming harder now from exhaustion, but all her feints and maneuvers hadn't discouraged her opponent. He ducked and dodged each swing, grinning one moment, or letting out a short, cackling laugh as he hopped and danced. Her foot brushed something low to the ground, a bush or a downed branch, and she realized he'd maneuvered her back toward the trees.
Panic rose in her throat. She'd barely managed to keep him at bay, not taking her eyes from him for fear he'd make another leap that she couldn't stop. If she had to concentrate on not losing her footing in the forest, she'd either stumble and fall or, worse, get distracted and lose her guard.
"Hunter, hunter," the white man sang as he leaped to her right, landing in a crouch, all fours poised together. "Come catch your prey!"
Panic became tinged with anger.
Playing his game was a losing battle, and she began to suspect that this fever-maddened villager somehow knew more of her occupation than he should. Still, she preferred to avoid killing him if at all possible. A madman babbling about a charlatan hunter of the dead would be a questionable accuser. A dead body cut down with a sword on the night she'd passed by would raise many questions, perhaps enough for the villagers to insist that the local lord hunt her down. Magiere settled herself, waiting for him to move again and looking for an opening to bludgeon him unconscious with the flat of her blade.
A whining growl came from the riverside, and she remembered Chap tumbling hard to the ground. Reflexively, both Magiere and the man glanced to the side, then back quickly enough to see the other's mistake. He lunged, hooked fingers aimed for her throat. Magiere had no time to think and acted on instinct. She brought the falchion down in a sharp slash.
The claw-hand missed its mark, slamming into her chest. The sword blade smacked against his collarbone. Fingernails scraped across leather armor. Sharp steel slit away tattered cloth and bit into white flesh.
Magiere felt the ground jerked from under her feet as she was knocked backward. Her head and back slammed against a tree trunk, and she tumbled dizzily to the side, landing hard on the ground. Her heart pounded one beat as she waited for the weight of her opponent to land upon her, but it didn't come. Magiere looked up, trying to will her vision to clear.
The white man stood over her. His wide eyes stared down at the shallow wound running across his chest as if the thought of the blade harming him had never entered his thoughts until that moment. Sickly humor vanished as his face twisted into a mask of anger.
"Not possible…" he murmured.
There was no more hope for not killing the man. Magiere tightened her grip and tried to lift the falchion to protect herself. Before she could finish, the man jerked from his stupor and fell upon her. One bony hand grabbed her throat, pinning her neck to the ground. She tried to swing the falchion at his head, but he caught her wrist and smashed it down as well.
"You cannot do this to me," he snarled at her. "Not possible!"
Magiere's vision blurred again as his hand squeezed tighter around her throat.
"You cannot hurt Parko." It was a denial more than anything else.
She could feel the dizziness growing from lack of air. With the spinning of the forest came the sensation of cold seeping into her flesh. The fingers around her throat seemed to squeeze the heat from her body.
Magiere struck out with her free hand, at the oval haze of the man's head. Her fist stopped on impact, and the blow sent a jarring shock through her arm that made her shoulder ache. His head barely moved. She wrapped her hand across the blurr
ed face and pushed as hard as she could.
His flesh felt as unyielding as the bone across which it was stretched, and a cold sensation seeped into her again through her hand.
Terror rose in Magiere as the white face faded completely from view and she knew she was not far from unconsciousness. The cold burrowed deeper until she felt it in her chest, until even her fear wavered and was smothered in the sensation. The chill seeped in from her throat as well, and the wrist of her pinned sword arm.
A twinge inside her answered the growing cold.
It didn't come from the life fading from her body, but instead wormed out of some hidden place inside her, moving through her restlessly. It stirred a rising fever that slipped from bone to muscle to nerve, leaving tingling heat behind wherever it passed. Finally settling in her stomach, heat turned into a knot of growing ache even the cold couldn't blot out, then spread up her throat. A hollow opened inside of her, waiting to be filled.
It made her… hungry.
Magiere felt starved. A desire built on mounting rage sought a way to end the hunger. Crushing the life from her attacker would end that hunger.
She pushed against the man's head. This time, it gave just a little.
Hunger spread out from her stomach, worming its way through her limbs until it seared away fatigue and fear, consuming the chill from the man's touch. She tried to lift her weapon arm and felt her wrist slowly leave the ground against the pressure of the white man's grip. In her darkness, she heard a frenzied hiss escape her assailant's lips as he released her throat to pull at her grip on his face. Magiere gasped in air, filling her lungs.
"No… no… no!" he screeched. "You are no match for Parko."
Straining against his grip, she could neither swing the blade, nor force her other hand back to his head. His body began to jerk forward, accompanied by a strange snapping sound. As her vision began to return, she made out the blurred oval of his head surging toward her face-click-then back and in again-crack-straining against her own pushing force. The sound was an animal's jaws snapping closed.
She realized what he was doing. With their grips meshed, he was desperately trying the only thing left to break the deadlock. He was trying to bite her.
Magiere arched her back, pushing her face up and away out of reach, then shoved hard with both arms. A vicious snarl came from her left, and her body was suddenly dragged along the ground for half a foot. The white man let out a wail of anger as his grip on her wrists faltered, and Magiere lost her concentration in trying to understand what had just happened.
She caught sight of Chap flying in from her left, striking the man and rebounding away. The man's body jerked hard to the right, and again Magiere felt herself dragged across the ground with him. The snarling blur came again, and Chap struck the white man in the side. Both dog and man tumbled off Magiere and across the ground into the darker night shadows of the trees, their snarls and growls indistinguishable one from the other.
Magiere hurried to get off the ground and between the two of them, worried that Chap was no match for this opponent. She stumbled, catching herself against the limbless trunk of a tree. The strange hunger gnawing in her belly was still there, but had grown weaker. Lightheaded and dizzy, she found her footing unsteady as she stepped toward the scuffle, trying to distinguish man from dog.
The white man spun toward her, but he was still out of her reach. Chap lunged at the man's leg, and the man swung his hand back at the animal. The dog was too quick, and a squeal of pain stabbed Magiere's ears as Chap bit down on the man's wrist.
In that moment, sound and feeling and sight flickered from Magiere's mind. Dog and man seemed far away, too great a distance for her to reach. Her throat still felt half constricted and her breath came hard.
The squeal of pain had barely ended when she gripped the falchion with both hands and slashed out sideways, throwing her whole body behind the blow. She aimed high but blindly, unsure of her target but knowing the man would likely rise up to pull his arm out of Chap's jaws. The swing overbalanced her and forest shadows blurred together, spinning.
Magiere's head thumped off the soft mulch of the forest floor when she fell. All the hunger washed out of her in a sudden flood. Trying in panic to find which way was up, she rolled before the man could descend again to finish her. But he didn't come.
She gave up and lay still, unable yet to sit up, let alone stand. As the spinning night settled into a heavy pain inside her skull, she heard the sounds around her. There was the gurgle of the river moving across its rocky bed, and the light chatter of tree branches in the breeze. She heard the rasp of her own desperate breathing, and the crackle of fallen pine needles and leaves beneath her as she shifted her body, trying again to get up.
And that was all. All the tiny sounds, the night sounds, slipped from her attention and between them was only silence. When the shadows above her started to focus again, changing from muted blurs into branches and stars in the sky just above the treetops, she rolled heavily to her side.
Two glistening eyes stared at her.
Breath caught in her throat until she made out the shape of the stained muzzle and canine ears. Chap looked at her expectantly.
On the ground at his feet lay a tumbled form of white flesh and tattered clothes. Chap looked down at it, and his jowls wrinkled with a low growl that ended in a whine of discomfort. He hung his head, panting.
Magiere crawled across the ground on all fours. Her body felt as though she had run a league without pause. As she drew near the man's body, she lifted the falchion, barely keeping it up in the air, ready to strike. There was no movement from the man.
"Chap, get back," she said, her voice cracked and dry.
She reached out to poke the man with her blade, but still there was no movement. When she crept closer, it became obvious why he hadn't moved.
Where his head should have been was only the stump of his neck. She slumped back, her sword dropping heavily to the ground.
So many villages had come and gone that she couldn't remember them all. But each time there had always seemed to be a rational reason for the villagers' deaths. This village was no different. The man's cold skin and white complexion were obvious signs of illness, and it would not be the first time that was the real reason why mothers and fathers, spouses and siblings gathered by their dead to pray for lost spirits. Illness often brought madness, as it had done in this man. And she had killed him.
The burning hunger was gone. The madman's cold in her flesh was gone. Remembering those alien sensations made her skin quiver and stomach lurch, but there was no time to puzzle over it. She'd killed one of the villagers, and that was as bad as things could get. She slumped, head dropping in exhausted despair, when a small, pale light caught her attention.
To her bewilderment, she looked down and saw her topaz amulet. She thought she'd remembered tucking it away, but there it dangled loose on top of her studded leather vestment. It glowed so softly, it might have gone unnoticed had she not been looking directly at it. She watched until it faded and then wondered if the odd light were merely an illusion-another result of fatigue and lack of air.
She looked at the dog sitting nearby, watching her expectantly. She had to push the words past her constricted throat.
"Come here, Chap."
Chap trotted across the short distance and sat in front of her. It was an effort to lift her hands to inspect him. The dog didn't seem to have any serious injuries, just a few small gashes on his shoulders and sides. The blood matting his throat came from a shallow cut of no serious concern. Relief washed through her. He'd be stiff and sore tomorrow, but she'd expected worse after such a fight.
Rubbing at her neck, it felt as if the bruises were already developing. Chap made a sudden lunge at her, and his tongue shot out to slap wetly across her chin and cheek.
"Stop it," she snapped. "You can save that for your drunken master."
Chap darted away and paced back and forth near the fallen body. He let out a sho
rt, low bark, then darted through the trees toward the river.
Magiere couldn't understand what had set him off again, but looking toward the water did bring her back to the immediate problem. The skyline was growing light. Dawn was approaching. Something had to be done with the body.
There was no time to bury it, and even a hidden grave might be stumbled across before she could get far enough out of the area. She had no idea how far the villagers normally ranged from their homes and fields, foraging for firewood or whatever else the forest yielded. Without a way to carry the body off, the river was her only choice. Magiere began dragging the corpse by the feet down to the shore.
The shirt was too tattered to work with, so she quickly rolled wild grass into rough twine. She used this to tie the pants legs closed and then loaded them with rocks. All the while, she avoided looking too closely at the body. Touching its flesh made her sick inside. It was chill, as if it had been dead longer than the short time that had passed. When finished, she turned to go back to the forest and hunt for the head. A rush of nausea swelled up in her throat at the sight before her.
There was Chap, the dead villager's head swinging from his mouth, its hair gripped in his teeth. He came up to her, dropped his burden at her feet, and sat staring at her, waiting expectantly.
She couldn't decide what revolted her more, the sight of the severed head, eyes open in the last moment of shock, or the dog's calm disposition at handling the grisly object. Nausea faded to another chill through her blood as she remembered how Chap paced by the body and then ran for the river shore. She stared into the dog's silver-blue eyes.
He'd known what to do even before she'd thought of it. But he was only a dog.
Magiere leaned down to take the head, her gaze not leaving Chap until she knelt by the body. There was no time to ponder this uncanny development. With no other method available, she used the long hair to tie the head onto the corpse, knotting it several times around the pants' belt. She dragged the body into the river, wading out thigh deep in the cold current, and pushed it under and out as far as she could.