No True Way (28 page)

Then she sat with her back up against the warm stone of the right leg of the fireplace, cushioned by another thick fur, and sipped a cup of Matya's famous chamomile-and-bee-bait tea. The Herald went supine again as soon as he had finished eating, and she didn't blame him. That had to hurt, even with her nostrum in him.

“Terribly unheroic of me, I fear,” he said, his eyes closed. “Did 'Fandes talk to you?”

“She told me a plank gave way under you on a footbridge,” Vixen replied, as Matya settled down on one of the benches with some mending. “Your timing was good, anyway.”

“What the young fool isn't telling you is that he did it in Ostcroft,” Matya said, “Then got his boot off and rode all the way back here a-purpose to catch you.”

That earned him a raised eyebrow from Vixen. Ostcroft . . . it would have taken her three days to get from here to there on Brownie. But then again, Companions were supposed to be ridiculously fast, and if he'd waited in Ostcroft for her, it could have been a week or more before she got there. “I hope you gave them a piece of your mind,” she said, dryly. “It could have been a child . . . and it could have been a broken neck, if it's the bridge I'm thinking of.”

Vanyel opened one eye, and she noted with a start that his eyes were silver. “No scolding for not paying attention to where I was going? Am I not going to feel the edge of the famous Vixen tongue?”

She snorted. “Not unless you tell me it was because you weren't paying attention to where you were going,” she replied as Matya cackled. “Regardless of what you've heard, I don't generally assume the worst of someone unless I already know he's an idiot.”

That got a wan chuckle out of him. “I'm relieved,” he said, closing his eye again. “I was quaking with dread. Your reputation is formidable.”

“She doesn't suffer fools gladly,” Matya put in, her strong hands making neat little stitches as she applied a patch to—whatever it was she was fixing. It was hard to tell, just seeing the fabric resting in her lap.

“I don't suffer fools
at all,”
Vixen corrected. “But an honest accident is just bad luck.”

“To make up for the good luck of finding Jensen's boy before he ran into something vicious,” Vanyel sighed. “On the other hand, if the bad luck had to go to someone, I'd rather it was me.”

Vixen rolled her eyes. “Well, maybe bad luck doesn't have to go to anyone,” she pointed out. “Why aren't you sleeping yet?”

Vanyel managed a slight laugh. “Because I'm not sleepy. The ankle isn't hurting now, and I admit I'm more than a bit dizzy, but painkillers rarely put me to sleep, Healer. I'm odd that way.”

She snorted. “I've never heard of a Herald I'd classify as
normal,”
she pointed out. Vanyel seemed to find this very funny. Then again, it might have been the tea she had given him; it made some people giddy rather than sleepy.

And so things might have stayed, the Herald slowly succumbing to sleep, Matya and Vixen exchanging a little gossip before going to their respective beds.

That, however, was not to be.

Vanyel was just opening his mouth to say something when the night air was split by a sound that raised every hair on the back of Vixen's neck.

It was something like a roar, and something like the sound made by tearing heavy canvas, and it sounded as if it was coming from the point where the road entered the village. In a flash, Matya was up and making sure the shutters over the windows were barred and blowing out all the lights. Vixen raced up the ladder to the loft and took a quick look out of the tiny window up there to see if she could spot anything.

The window had an excellent view of the road, and the full moon had just risen over the tops of the trees, pouring light down onto the village. The hideous sound ripped through the silence a second time, and . . . something lurched into a pool of moonlight.

Vixen could only say, “something,” because it wasn't like any creature she had ever seen before. It was definitely bigger than two Brownie-sized horses put together. It had four legs, each ending in terrifying talons.

The head was blunt, with a mouth full of sharp, pointed teeth; in fact, it looked like a lizard, if a lizard happened to be covered in short, shaggy hair. As she watched, it made that terrible sound again. She closed the shutter over the window, barred it, and scuttled down the ladder again.

“Did you see it?” Matya whispered, as the three of them huddled close to the fire. Vixen nodded, and described it to them. Vanyel shook his head.

“I've never heard of anything like it,” he breathed. “It must be some sort of Change-Creature out of the Pelagiris.” He acted as if he was going to try and get up, and both Matya and Vixen both held him down.

“Where do you think you're going?” Vixen hissed. “You can't stand, and believe me, if you're a Herald-Mage, you
really
don't want to try any magic in your condition!”

“But—”

“Shut up and be quiet!”
Matya and Vixen both said at the same time. They exchanged a look over the young man's head.

“I'm going back up to the window,” Vixen whispered. “I'm going to see if it's got a mind I can read.”

“Wait!” Vanyel interjected. “How—”

“Shhh!”
Matya and Vixen hissed, and Vixen scrambled up the ladder again.

The creature was still down there, but now it was sniffing at the door of the cottage across the road. Vixen closed her eyes and let her mind go blank and lowered her shields.

She quickly picked up the nervous mutterings of the chickens in their coop, the frozen terror of the rabbits in their shed. Brownie was petrified, and so were the three cows, but the Companion was keeping them all quiet.

Whatever this thing was . . . it didn't have a mind like anything Vixen had ever encountered before.

Well . . . it looked like a lizard . . .

It was hard to describe what she did next, though the closest she could have gotten was to say she was “listening harder.” Straining, trying to catch “notes” that were “lower” than she could usually hear, perhaps. Sometimes it worked.

This time, it did.

It wasn't words so much as feelings. Hunger. Anger that the things it could sense were walled away inside stone dens. But what alarmed her most was that she sensed this creature was
not
going to leave until it had dug out every last warm-blooded thing here and eaten it. So far as this beast was concerned, this was a storehouse of food, and it was going to find a way to get at that food. There was nothing there to reason with, as she sometimes could with predators; the creature was mostly instinct and recognized only its own needs. She also got some very chilling images from the thing's mind, memories of hunting humans. Armed humans. It had done spectacularly well against them; in those memories it was frighteningly fast.

She went back down the ladder and rejoined the Herald and Matya. “There's nothing I can ‘talk' to,” she reported grimly. “It's hungry, and it intends to eat us, and that's all there is to it.”

She looked from Vanyel to Matya. “I don't think your hunters can kill it. It's fast, and it's strong, and it's
huge.
The only chance they might have is if they can fill it full of arrows for a long while—that might weaken it enough that a concerted attack by everyone in the village on it might succeed. But from what I picked up, that might take a long while. How well stocked are people for food and water?”

“I'm fine, I could hold out for a fortnight, and I have the pump to my well right here in the kitchen,” Matya said after a moment of thought. “But the Corsons, the Lentoffs and the Derlys rely on the village well for water. And then there's the animals. More than a day and a night without food and water, and I'm going to lose some, maybe all of them. I'm not alone, there are other horses, donkeys, goats . . .”

“I get the idea,” Vixen said.

Vanyel's brows furrowed, and his jaw clenched. He squeezed his eyes shut and was obviously trying to do . . . something. But after a moment, he let out his breath in a disgusted sigh and opened his eyes again. “How long does this potion of yours last?” he asked Vixen.

“Six, eight candlemarks—” She bit her lip. “It's not merely interfering a bit with your magic, is it?”

“I can't hold the power,” he confirmed. “It's as if I'm trying to hold water in my hands. Until it wears off, the best I could do would be to shoot at the damned thing. And it's mucking up Mindspeech, too. I can barely talk to 'Fandes.” But then, his eyes widened a little. “I can't
reach anyone with Mindspeech who would be near enough to do us any good. But
you
can!”

Vixen stared at him. “I don't Mindspeak to—”

“Animal Mindspeech. The Hawkbrothers aren't that far from here, and a lot of them fly owls. Just send out a general call for help! If a bird gets it, he'll pass it on to his bondmate!”

Well, it wasn't the craziest idea she had ever heard.

“Meanwhile, Matya and I will figure out how to speak to and coordinate everyone in the village,” Vanyel continued. “If you aren't able to reach anyone, well, we can wait until dawn, and maybe we
can
fill the thing full of arrows without risking anyone. By then, your potion will have worn off, and I'll be able to use magic again.”

Vixen gave him a very skeptical look. Personally, she didn't think anyone would be able to use magic with a broken ankle. Everything she had ever heard said that magicians had to have very finely tuned concentration to use their powers, and how did he propose to concentrate when he was a scant breath from screaming with pain?

He apparently read that look and shrugged. “All right.
Maybe
I will be able to use magic again. But I'd rather try every possible approach than sit here and do nothing.”

“Aye, so would I,” Vixen agreed.

*   *   *

It felt as if she had been sitting there forever, trying all the ranges of Mindspeech she had ever tried before. Well, except one—she carefully avoided the one where she had sensed the thoughts of that monster. The last thing she wanted to do was to alert it further, maybe make it home in on Matya's cottage. The problem, of course, was that she had never Mindspoken with a Hawkbrother
Bondbird; she had no idea what their minds were like. Like regular raptors? Probably not.

And then, just as she was about to give up on one range and try a new one, she got a faint but clear response. A beautiful, silvery Mindvoice like nothing she had ever encountered before, and
nothing
like an animal's.
:I hear, Healer! I hear! Hold fast, I am coming!:

“I got an answer!” she exclaimed, her eyes popping open with the shock of how intelligent the responder had sounded.

“What was it?” Vanyel and Matya replied simultaneously. But she could only shake her head.

“I have no idea. But it sounded intelligent, and it said it was coming—” Then she faltered. “—but it was at the very edge of my range. And I have no idea how far that is. I never tested it before.”

Vanyel frowned a little. “Probably not far. Mindspeech doesn't go all that far unless it's boosted by a Companion, so I imagine that Animal Mindspeech is the same. Maybe a league? It will depend on how fast—”

The thing roared again—but this time there was a definite note of anger and challenge in the sound! Vixen raced up the ladder again and looked out the window.

And nearly fainted. Because now, there wasn't a single monster on the road between the houses, there were two. And the second one was a spider as big as the first.

She had no time to think of anything except to pray to whatever gods were listening that the two of them would manage to kill each other, when the spider attacked.

She couldn't have told how long the battle raged. The spider was agile and fast, just as agile and fast as the hairy thing. And it could jump like nothing she had ever
seen before, managing to keep its relatively fragile legs out of the way of talon-swipes by amazing leaps backward. This frustrated the lizard-creature no end, and that, eventually was its undoing.

That was when the spider struck.

It made a tremendous leap and landed for a moment on the lizard-thing's back. Its head bobbed, and two enormous fangs plunged into the lizard's neck on either side of the spine. Then it leaped off again as the lizard screamed in pain, and it paused three wagon-lengths away—

—waiting.

The lizard turned to face it, but it was moving as if it was dizzy or sick. It roared, or tried to, but the sound came out choked. Then it staggered toward the spider, taking only three steps, before it collapsed in the street, spasmed once, and died.

Oh, hellfires. Now we have an even worse problem—

But then, completely out of nowhere, came that silvery voice.
:It is safe to come out, Healer. The thing is dead.:

She gasped—and the first thing that sprang up into her mind, after that burst of total astonishment, was that she had to get out into the street,
fast,
or there was no telling what the people in the other cottages might do to the weird creature that had turned out to be their savior.

She slid down the ladder, ran for the door, threw it open, and pelted out into the street, running past the carcass of the monster—and just in time. Old Taffy had emerged with a face full of fear and a torch and a pitchfork in his hands, and she flung herself between him and the spider, heedless of her own safety.

“Stop! You damn fool!”
she shrilled, and
spread-eagled herself in front of the spider's strange face, right between two of the hairy legs. “This is a friend!”

Taffy's jaw dropped, as did the jaws of the other three men who had come, armed, out of their cottages. And for a long, silent moment, they all stood staring at each other, while the giant spider remained behind Vixen, not moving a muscle.