by Ted Striker
When he caught up, she was already bent over the prone form of the old man, unsheathing her long dagger. Bryan caught her arm just as she began her killing slash. So strong was Branna’s stroke that the dagger still made a nasty gash just above the man’s collar bone. She turned on Bryan, snarling, her dagger swaying menacingly before his chest. “Stop,” he said quietly. Branna backed up slightly, but the dagger still threatened. It looked like his irresistibility was beginning to wane. He made no move to shield himself from the needle-sharp tip, just put his hands on his hips and looked at her.
“You said you would help me revenge myself!” she grated.
“And using this man to get information will help us to do that,” he reasoned. “He didn’t hurt you by himself. There were others. If you want to stop them, we need to know more than we do now.”
“HE PUT A COLLAR ON ME!” screamed Branna.
“I know,” said Bryan. He backed up, gestured to the prone man, whose eyes were open now, wide with fear. “And I have no right to tell you how to feel or how to act. You were the one they violated. You should decide what happens to them.”
The old man opened his mouth, but Bryan gave him such a hard glare that he closed it again without speaking. Bryan guessed that his silence as he looked up at his captors was one of the things that saved his life. Branna looked back and forth between Afixio and Bryan, then threw the dagger down and collapsed sobbing into Bryan’s arms. Tamoth galloped up with Jwilla on his back. Jwilla glared at Bryan and he glared back, remembering Branna’s “mate” comment. After a moment, he decided that he couldn’t help what women did. He took a Zen calming breath and said, “It seems we have a prisoner,”
Chapter 14
“I was a priest of Offet,” said the old magician softly. He kept his eyes lowered, looking into the fire or at his empty plate. He had been famished, and, as soon as he realized that they weren’t going to kill him, he begged for some food. Bryan insisted over Branna’s objections that he be fed, and he had cleaned three plates of food and downed twice that many cups of wine before he was finished. Now he told his story almost reflectively, as if talking to himself, as he nursed a seventh cup of wine. “The king then was Harald, a good man if too trusting. When Porvir came to the castle as an Imperial Liaison, Harald took him at his word and let him enter. He even hosted a feast to welcome them.”
Afixio’s voice grew hoarse with emotion. “Porvir’s men waited until after the feast to cut down Harald’s men-at-arms. Porvir raped the Queen and the princesses, then cut their throats before Harald’s own eyes. Before my eyes!” Afixio’s gray beard bristled fiercely. “He became king when he took the castle, of course. Custom requires the chief priest to become the King’s magician and counselor, and I thought that I surely must defend the people as best I could from the new king’s brutality. Dead, I could do nothing, but alive, I could perhaps make Porvir’s reign more tolerable until he should be challenged and defeated. So I stayed at North Keep as the Court Magician.” He passed his wrinkled hand down his face as if to wipe away the memories.
“The temple of Offet had been in charge of the Rites of Spring and of the harvest until Porvir took the rite and polluted it. It gave him special pleasure to rub our noses in the new rite, which involved the rape and murder of a virgin, both things offensive to Offet.”
{Sucello,} informed Mebd. Neither name meant anything to Bryan. With exasperation, Mebd explained, {God of the harvest.}
“Porvir, of course,” continued Afixio scornfully, “was the main officiator in the new rites.”
“So how does this lead to Branna?” prompted Bryan. Branna growled. She had not changed into Wolf-form, but she kept her eyes locked on Afixio.
Her near-silent scrutiny was unnerving to the old man; he spoke defiantly to cover his nervousness. “That was one of the few good things Porvir did, cleaning up banditry along the Road. Word came to us by way of a traveler that a group of Wyrgs was ravaging the countryside to the north; in fact, the traveler told us exactly where to ambush them. We attacked and wiped out a fair number of the beasts. Later, the traveler returned to tell us that the mate of the Wyrg leader we had killed was stalking here, in order to wreak vengeance on Porvir. He helped us to track her, and told me the manner of creating the collar that would bind her to human form and render her helpless.”
“And Porvir did to her what he has done to other helpless women and girls,” concluded Bryan. “Look at her, man! Does she look as if she deserves the treatment you helped to give her?” He grabbed Afixio by the hair and twisted his head so that the old man was forced to look at Branna.
“She is merely a Wyrg!” protested Afixio. “A vicious animal!”
“Animal!” Bryan stood up suddenly, jerking the old man to his feet by the hair. “She’s not the one who lied her way into a kingdom, raped and killed, instituted rape as a religious practice, and terrorized her own subjects!” he said hotly. “I don’t see an animal when I look at her. Porvir, now; he’s the animal. Putting him down would be a pleasure.” He looked down into Afixio’s frightened eyes. “As for you, I don’t know what I see. A terrified old man, maybe, a coward who talked himself out of defending defenseless women,” he spat. “You may not be as evil as Porvir, but you have let him commit atrocities for a long time.”
The accusation kicked the priest out of his fear and into anger. Afixio’s eyes blazed. His beard bristled like a hedgehog. “I had to make choices, damn you! I had to be a cushion between my people and Porvir’s heel! If a thousand Wolf women unknown to me were tortured and slain, I would support it to save my people!”
“And how have you done that, priest? Your people are still being brutalized and killed. You just don’t get it, do you? In order to defeat evil, you have to resist it. If you had stood up to Porvir, perhaps your people would have as well, and he would not be your king.” Bryan threw him to the ground before Branna. “He’s all yours,” he grated.
Branna snarled and opened her tunic, already trembling in preparation for her Change.
Jwilla interrupted right on cue. “If you kill the priest, Branna, you will have your vengeance. But Porvir will remain king and this mysterious stranger who betrayed your people will remain a mystery. Alive, this wizard can be of use to us. Priest,” she commanded Afixio, “tell us; what did this stranger look like?”
Branna took visible control of herself, breathing as deeply as if she had just run a marathon. Tamoth leaned over to Bryan and said, under his breath, “Jwilla’s good at taking charge.” Bryan nodded without speaking; he, Jwilla and Branna had made up this little theater the night before. Jwilla had kept the centaur out of the loop, knowing that Tamoth was a terrible actor.
Hope snaked its tendrils in beside the fear in the priest’s eyes as he looked from Branna to Jwilla to Bryan and back again. The Wyrg kept her eyes fixed on her prey, visibly gnashing her teeth with their longer-than-human canines. Afixio swallowed and turned back to Jwilla, the words tumbling out of his mouth. “He was a tall man, very dark hair, almost blue, it was so black. He had large mustachios, well oiled. . .” His voice trailed off as Branna growled deep in her chest.
Bryan stepped past Afixio and took her arm, leading her a few paces away. “Are you well?” he asked, meaning, “Are you about to rip our prisoner to shreds?”
Branna’s eyes were dilated, her breath coming faster and faster. Bryan could feel the pulse in her arm racing. She looked into his eyes and whispered hoarsely, “I know who that person is.”
Chapter 15
“We’re being followed,” said Branna two days later. They had changed their course, angling further to the north, headed for a small town called Balstow. “A group of Men and Erych, camped about a league away. They scout us from that bluff to the east.” She growled. “I scented the Erych, although they have been trying to stay upwind. Then, when I realized that the man scent was mixed with that of the Erych, I became suspicious. Erych are friend to no other races; for Men to be with them, either they are prisoners
or very evil Men, as bad as or worse than Porvir and his ilk.”
“It would not surprise me to learn of a link between Erych and Porvir,” Afixio said sourly. “But I have never seen evidence of it.”
“I do not believe that these are with Porvir,” said Jwilla. “Our own mission to find Bryan was compromised. Our enemy tried to thwart us on the other side, and they may have been watching for our return. That Lord Perkunas is not with us will have puzzled them, but they will wonder about you, Bryan. So we must try to deceive them.”
“It means that we must part ways in order to throw the enemy off our trail.” said Tamoth.
Jwilla nodded. “Tamoth and I will continue our journey, laying a false trail for our pursuers. You need to disappear, so you might as well go to Balstow with Branna to help her with her quest, and take the priest with you. Once you are finished helping Branna, then head south yourself. When we are sure that the Erych are no longer following us, we will rejoin you on the River Road.”
She handed him a small scroll. “I’ve prepared a list of people you can ask for who will help you if you need it, and a letter that will let you get help along the way without too many questions being asked. Right now we need to prepare a few things for the journey.”
The preparation consisted of three days of hauling clay from a nearby creek bed. On the morning of the fourth day, Bryan started to come out of his tent, when saw himself sitting by the fire. The odd thing about the seated figure was that although everything in its body language said, “Bryan,” where the features should have been was a blank lump. Jwilla signaled urgently for Bryan to stop, and then sent the faceless Bryan inside. She snorted a laugh at his wide-eyed stare as the featureless thing brushed by him.
“Now you can come out,” she said.
“What is that thing?” he asked.
“It’s a golem,” she said.
“Golems,” said Bryan faintly. “Now we have golems.” He felt a little dizzy. Take it a day at a time, he told himself. Be open and accepting.
“Of course we have golems!” snapped Jwilla. “And lucky to have them. How else would we fool the watchers?”
“Right. And if we had a troupe of flying monkeys, we could start a circus.”
Tamoth rumbled, “Bryan, that would be impossible.”
The relief he felt was almost palpable. “Finally, something is impossible!”
“Absolutely. Flying monkeys are only found far to the south. They could never survive the winters here.”
Bryan’s mood crashed. Then he saw the glint of humor in the Centaur’s brown eyes. “Tamoth, are you making a joke?”
“Heh. Do you think I can’t make a joke?”
Jwilla said, “And that’s gentle for him. Usually his jokes involve falling and horse shit.”
“You should have seen your face,” said Tamoth. “It was great!” He aped Bryan’s blank stare, then laughed. Turning serious, he said, “The golem shocked you, eh? Well, magic takes a different form here than in your world. There, the magic comes out of a wall socket or appears on a computer screen. It carries people through the air. You have made it universal with your gadgets. Everyone uses it. Here, magic is more organic and individualized. There are sorcerers who have mastered the magic arts, there are people with different gifts and abilities like the shape-shifting Laignach. Jwilla has a gift for animating golems. Think of them as clay robots. She worked through the night to craft your golem, planted your story inside it as its programming, and brought it to life in her tent so that it would be ready to take your place today.”
“I was just a little surprised, is all.”
“Right.” Tamoth laughed again. “Too bad no one here has seen the need to create a camera. I would have taken your picture.”
Jwilla grinned. “You jumped a foot when you saw it. But as my friend was saying, tonight is the night. You and the – and Branna and Afixio will sneak off to Balstow. Branna knows the path you need to follow to be sure you don’t encounter the Erych. We will follow our routine and lead the Erych on a path that makes it seem we are headed for Lakewoods. There is a temple to the Defender there, so it would be a reasonable destination. As soon as you can, head south toward Answar, just as we discussed. We will catch up to you.”
“Got it,” Bryan said. “We sneak out tonight, you lead the enemy away using magic robots, and we go south after a while. No problem.”
Mebd spoke inside his head, {You really are taking all this well, my son. But that is not surprising, for you are the scion of two pantheons.}
Chapter 16
Phelan prowled possessively through the village of Balstow. He could tell that the villagers were afraid of him, and it brought a grim glow of satisfaction to his heart. They and the neighboring villages for miles around were under his protection, under his thumb, and they were afraid. That was good. The torn bodies of the robbers who had murdered a farmer and his family before stealing their stock now hung from the trees lining the road into the village, a stark message to other predators and to these sheep about who was in charge here.
“Lainn,” he called out, turning into the Golden Corn Tavern. “A cup of the Gold, if you would!”
Lainn brought the tankard of whiskey to Phelan’s table. As he put it down, his shaking hand spilled a few drops out of the full cup. Phelan growled in annoyance, and the innkeeper jumped back. Only Phelan’s lightning reflexes saved the cup of whiskey from crashing to the floor, and a good bit more sloshed over the rim onto his fingers. “You clumsy oaf!” he snarled. “you should be beaten for that!”
“So sorry, Lord!” sobbed Lainn, falling to his knees in terror. “It was an accident!”
“And a tragic one, like that of your birth, idiot!” Phelan cuffed the groveling man, laying him out with a bloody lip. “Clean yourself up and fetch me the bottle! And I’ll not be paying for this, mind!”
Lainn scuttled off as the hum of talk in the tavern stilled. Then a solitary voice rang out from the back. “From all I’ve heard, you don’t pay for anything!”
“Who dares say such a thing!” roared Phelan, his eyes flashing. He leapt up, turning to see the brash interloper.
Bryan slid down a little on his bench, trying to look cowed. It wasn’t hard; Phelan was trembling the way Branna had just before she Changed to a Wolf. The new pack leader was quite a bit bigger than Branna. His Wolf form probably was bigger, too, and Bryan could imagine very well the carnage a werewolf fight would be in an enclosed area like this one.
The whole idea had been to cruise into town and reconnoiter, get the lay of the land, then make a plan before coming back. “Ready, fire, aim,” he muttered in English. Surprise and wonder lighted his features for a moment as he realized that he had been using another language all this time. Well, damn.
{Is it a wonder that there are different languages here?} teased Mebd.
{No, just that I speak them,} he thought back.
{You are welcome for the gift,} she mocked.
“Thanks,” he said belatedly, then realized that he’d spoken aloud when his bench mate, an old farmer-looking fellow, looked at him strangely and said, “Of course, lad.” Mebd laughed uproariously inside his head.
“Looks like a fight is shaping up,” commented the farmer.
Bryan followed his gaze. Branna was just ten feet from Phelan now, glaring at him, trembling in pre-Change mode herself.
“You have no idea,” said Bryan to the old man. “Is there a back way out? This could get bloody, and people should get to safety if they can.”
“Ha!” snorted the old man. “Let ‘em try to drag me away! Hasn’t been this much excitement around here in months!”
Apparently most of the other patrons felt the same way; no one was making a break for it. Bryan focused once more on Branna and Phelan.
He could see that Phelan was nervous. Not uncommon for betrayers, thought Bryan with satisfaction.
“You have no place here, Branna! Your mate is dead, and you rejected me! You are Outcast!” Phe
lan spoke loudly, as if to an audience. “Our clan law makes that clear!”
“And, dear Phelan,” replied Branna acidly, “What does clan law say about treachery and betrayal?” She took a sideways step closer, much like a wolf stalking a rival. “What does the clan say to one who betrayed his Alpha?”
Phelan snarled, then, a guttural sound that raised Bryan’s hackles. In response to their Lord’s summons, two men stood suddenly and stepped toward Branna. Bryan stuck his scabbarded sword between the legs of the one closest to him, forcing the fellow to trip and fall. He sprang back up, snarling and trembling. Bryan half-drew the Soul Sword, and found his wrist gripped powerfully by the farmer.
“Hold, stranger,” he said cheerfully. “Phelan!” he called out loudly. “Branna! Back down, before you two young fools destroy the clan or worse, the finest tavern in three kingdoms! I, Connor Maccon, call for Clan Council!”
Branna and Phelan both froze in their tracks. The youth who had been on the verge of being skewered stopped, as well. The other youth leaped snarling at Branna’s back as he Changed into a large gray Wolf. Bryan twisted out of Maccon’s steel grip and hit the airborne Wolf hard.
Giant Wolf or not, any mass in the air is vulnerable to one that is grounded. Bryan drove off both feet like a linebacker and put his shoulder into the wolf’s middle, throwing it off course. The new trajectory took the wolf twisting into a table, where its foreleg struck with a crack! of breaking bone. It still turned and snapped at Bryan, who felt Connor Maccon’s callused hand close on his shoulder as he drew his sword.
“You are faithful to your task, lad,” he said approvingly. “But let the Council of the Laignach deal justice today.” He turned to the injured Wolf. “Change back,” he said sternly. “You have broken the peace of the Council!” The wounded Wolf turned into a naked, nervous youth, eyeing Connor like a beau on prom night looks at his date’s shotgun-toting father.