The Wolf Age (4 page)

Two of the raiders armed with pikes looked over at Morlock and moved toward him, shouting in a language Morlock did not understand. Since all hope of concealment was over, Morlock stood and drew his sword Tyrfing, holding it at an angle meant to warn rather than threaten.

The two pikemen stopped moving toward him and stared at the dark crystal of the blade, woven with veins of paler crystal, glittering in the red light of the eastering sun.

The wolf who had spotted him first yowled a warning to the whole raiding group. All the raiders stopped and looked at him. Things were going from bad to worse.

Morlock backed away one deliberate step, paused, then took another step back. He growled slightly. From what he knew of wolves, he thought this might show that he was not prepared to attack, but would fight if he must.

The two pikemen and the wolf who commanded them took two steps forward, the pikemen shouting something and the wolf barking furiously. Oddly, he understood the wolf better than the pikemen. The wolf seemed to be saying that Morlock should hide his teeth or he would be bacon by morning.

Morlock suggested, in the same snarling language, the werewolf perform an act made possible by lupine agility. It was one of the few insults he knew for a wolf, and it was gratifyingly effective. The two wolf-shadowed pikemen were rocked back on their heels; the man-shadowed wolf charged forth with fiery eyes, silent now, eager to kill.

Morlock waited. When the wolf poised himself to leap, Morlock dodged forward and brought Tyrfing down on the werewolf's shoulder, shattering the bone.

Tyrfing was a focus of power as well as a weapon; to kill with it was an act of grim consequence, tantamount to enduring death itself. But the werewolf, of course, was not dead, merely wounded, and Morlock found he could shake off the shock of its suffering relatively quickly. He hoped the wolf would not heal soon; he had other trouble at hand.

The two pikemen were bearing down on him. Their weapons were excellent for keeping a party of unarmed prisoners in line, less effective against a skilled swordsman. Morlock ran to meet them and was past the range of their pikeheads before they could stab at him. He wounded the nearer pikeman on the arm with Tyrfing, and reached past him with his free hand to break the neck of the one beyond. The dying one fell like a stone, gasping his last breaths out uselessly; the other staggered backward, yammering, and strove to stab at Morlock with his pike.

Morlock spun aside and rolled over the nearby wall. He made as if to back away; the wounded pikeman lunged at him recklessly. Morlock evaded the pike's hooked blade, waited until the pikeman was fully extended, and then struck down with Tyrfing. The glittering edge hit the pikeman's arm lying across the surface of the wall and severed it at the elbow like a butcher's cleaver cutting through a joint of meat. The pikeman shrieked words of fear and hate, staggered backward, and fell out of sight groaning behind the low wall.

Morlock shook off the horror of the pikeman's suffering. A werewolf he might be, but he was as mortal in human form as Morlock was, and it was unlikely he would survive two such terrible wounds. But Morlock had many deaths on his conscience already; adding the death of a slave-taker or two did not bother him much.

The others were coming for him now. Since there was nothing he could do to stop it, he encouraged it. He made clucking noises he hoped they would find insulting. He croaked out some abuse he had learned from crows. He tapped the edge of his sword on the bloodstained surface of the wall and waggled his free hand at them. Soon many of the raiders, manlike and lupine, were running toward him. At the moment he judged right, he turned and ran south along the stone wall.

He heard some of the raiders scrambling or leaping over the wall. Others were running along the eastern side of the wall. That was all right with him: his enemies had effectively halved their own forces.

His bad leg was troubling him, but he kept running as fast as he could until he heard the grating gasp of a wolf's breathing just behind him. He spun and braced his feet in a fighter's crouch, his sword at full extension. The wolf at his heels was impaled on the blade before he knew what was happening; the frightened howl had an unpleasantly human quality. Morlock repressed the horror of the other's suffering and shook him off his sword. He kicked the moaning wolf out of his way and lunged at the next one leaping at him. This one didn't howl; Tyrfing had passed through her throat, nearly severing her neck. She, too, was out of the fight until she healed. Morlock leaped past to meet the next raider.

Neither men nor wolves run all at the same rate. A disciplined military force learns to move as a group, applying a maximum of power at the expense of moving a little more slowly. These raiders weren't that disciplined, and Morlock planned to take advantage of it. During his sprint his pursuers had strung behind him in a long line, and what had been an unwinnable battle of one against many was now just a string of single combats in which Morlock had, at least briefly, the advantage of surprise.

His next opponent was a wide-eyed man armed only with a long pole. He was already skittering to a halt as Morlock came up to him. While he was still off balance, Morlock struck off his weapon-bearing hand with Tyrfing and punched him in the throat. The man fell gagging to his knees. Morlock kicked him in the face as he passed, and the man went down to the ground.

By then Morlock was facing another antagonist: a lean woman with roancolored hair and a long pointed sword. Morlock fenced with her for a few grim moments, then struck home with a thrust through her upper right chest. He wrenched the sword from her grip with his free hand and she fell, spouting blood from her lips, into the dust of the stubbly field.

The woman's sword was rusty, bent, unbalanced, notched along both edges-inferior to Tyrfing in every way but one: he could use it to kill with impunity. He ran on to fight his next antagonist.

After a few more single combats, Morlock looked about to see wolves and men gathering in a group to attack him. He turned and, leaping back over the wall, ran southward. His would-be attackers followed. Glancing back, he saw that their pursuit had broken up into smaller groups again, some on each side of the wall. He leaped back to the west side and ran north to attack again.

He was running out of breath by now, but he strove not to show it: they would be more likely to break off the battle if they thought him tireless. And, in a strange way, the grim prophecies of the cards buoyed him up: if he was doomed to die by drowning, he needn't worry about being ripped open by werewolves in an empty field.

He had struck down a few more men and wolves, and was thinking of a new retreat when horns and wolf calls sounded to the north. His antagonists fled northward to answer them. When he was sure they were leaving, he slumped gasping against the wall and watched them run.

There was some sort of fight going on back at the main body of the raiding party. In the failing light it wasn't at first clear to Morlock what was happening. Then he realized: encouraged by the absence of so many raiders, the captives had seized the opportunity to fight back.

Their chances didn't look good.

Morlock, of course, could improve them.

He shook his head, wearily. It was not his fight; he was already tired. This was his chance to flee south and escape the raiders.

On the other hand, the field was dry. Absent a sudden downpour, he was unlikely to drown.

He stood pondering alternatives and getting his wind back. He saw a raider lift the struggling body of a child, impaled on a spear point. As the raider brandished the spear, shouting in triumph or threat, the body grew slack.

Morlock found himself running forward then in long irregular strides. The slave-takers, intent on their rebellious captives, didn't notice his approach until he was almost upon them. Then he lashed out with both swords, torn by the sudden rage from within and the talic shocks from Tyrfing. He struck and struck. He was bleeding now, and his fire-laden blood lit smoldering fires in the stubbly fields. The werewolves, manlike and wolfformed, seemed more dismayed by this than anything. Now many of the former captives had seized weapons from raiders that had been killed or wounded. The raiders still had greater numbers, but seemed to lack stomach for fighting. Soon they fled, north and east, away from the bitter low wall and the bodies of the slain and wounded and the harsh vengeful cries of their former captives.

Morlock stepped aside and sat down on the low wall, ripping strips from his cloak to bandage his wounds. He kept an eye on the former captives as he did so. It was possible they would resent him as much as the werewolves. He knew nothing of these people, not even a word of their language.

He saw one woman with iron gray hair struggling with a long spear gripped in the hands of a dead raider. She was sobbing quietly. He kept a cautious eye on her; it was possible that some of the captives were quislings or traitors, and perhaps she was one. Otherwise why weep over the dead raider? Then he saw what was on the end of the spear: the child's body he had seen raised up as a rebuke or a threat to the captives. She was struggling to remove the spear point from the body without doing it further damage.

He got up from the wall and walked over to her. He brushed her hands away from the shaft of the spear, and she let him. The blade of the spear was barbed and had caught in the child's body. The child was dead, of course; it had been a girl, perhaps ten years old. Morlock put one foot on the corpse and tore the spear loose from the body.

The old woman screamed and struck at his face with weak fists. He ignored it. He broke the spear shaft with his hands and cast the pieces aside. Then he opened his hands and looked her in the eye.

She stopped hitting him. She stood back, still sobbing from exhaustion, fear, grief-or all three. The sobbing slowed to a halt.

Silence surrounded them.

"Kree-laow," said one of the former captives, pointing at Morlock.

"Venbe Land kree-laow," said another.

An argument broke forth. One of the issues seemed to be whether Morlock was or was not kree-laow-whatever or whoever that might be.

Many of the captives lay dead on the field. If they had been Morlock's kith he would have felt the impulse to bury them. But circumstances were obviously unsuitable for a funeral, no matter how hasty. The sun had now set, and the blue eyes of the minor moons, Horseman and Trumpeter, were opening in the gray sky of gloaming. In the shadows along the low bitter wall, darker shadows were lurking, wounded werewolves licking their wounds audibly, healing probably, readying for a new attack almost certainly.

Morlock knelt down by the dead girl. The old woman jumped at him, croaking angry words. He held up his hand. Then he tore another strip from his ragged cloak and bound up the dead girl's left hand.

"My people," he said to the old woman, without any hope she would understand, "the people who raised me: they taught me to do this for those I would honor, but could not bury." He tore another strip of cloth and bound the girl's other hand.

The old woman knelt down by the dead girl on the other side. She tore a strip from her own ragged clothing and put it across the dead girl's face. She met his eye and nodded grimly. They both stood.

"Kree-laow!" said one of the former captives decisively, and this time no one argued. The survivors set about hastily honoring their fallen dead. Morlock patrolled back and forth as they did so, watching the wolf-eyed shadows that were gathering in the dark.

Then the others were done. Some of them tugged at Morlock's arm and shoulder; they said words he didn't understand. Their expressions were hard to read in the ice-pale moonlight, but they seemed to want him to come with them. They kept pointing north: perhaps they had a refuge there, or simply planned to join another band of refugees.

He considered it. On the one hand, not too far to the north lay the Bitter Water, an inlet from the western ocean. If he were truly destined to die by drowning, that would be a likely scene for it. On the other hand, if he walked southward alone, the werewolves would likely follow him. He knew from experience how relentless werewolves could be in the pursuit of a single prey, even one who had given them less cause to be angry than Morlock now had. And he had no silver nor wolfbane in his nearly empty pack.

He touched his chest and pointed north. "I'll go with you," he said.

They understood; their faces creased with relief and a kind of happiness. He thought it odd.

They went northward as quickly as they could, stumbling through the empty fields in the moonlit shadows. Eyes followed them in the dark-never too near, nor ever very far away.

It was the last bright call*
of Cymbals, the first month of winter. The air on the northern plains should have been pitilessly cold, the land covered with many layers of snow. The wind that rose at their backs was chilly and many of the refugees shivered as they walked, but it was more like early autumn than the beginning of winter. Morlock had never known weather like this, but it was true that he didn't know the northern plains as well as other parts of Laent. He'd have liked to ask the refugees (the other refugees, he supposed he should call them: he was one of them now) about the weather, but he couldn't understand a word they said, and none of them could understand any of the languages he spoke to them.