War of the Werelords (10 page)

Whitley heard a snort at her back, turning quickly to find a great warhorse standing over her, breathing down her neck. It was larger than any stallion she had ever seen, and it needed to be, considering the giant who sat astride it. Duke Brand, his pride bruised but eyes firing with refound purpose, extended a huge shovel-like hand down toward her. Whitley smiled as he spoke.

“Do you still have room for a foolish old Bull among your number, my lady?”

THE LINES ARE DRAWN

D
RIED
O
UT

“GIRL TIRED. REST.”

Gretchen sucked her teeth and wiped her brow. For a change, it wasn't Kholka suggesting she take a breather. He had given up trying to persuade the girl to ease up, the glares and growls she had thrown his way being warning enough. Not so long ago, Gretchen would have seized the opportunity to stop and recover, possibly even send for a pitcher of chilled water, but that woman might as well be dead. The Werefox of Hedgemoor was a reformed character, and there were few tasks or challenges she would shirk these days.

“Worry about yourself, Shoma,” she replied haughtily, bracing herself before leaping over the stream to the opposite bank.

She landed with a wet thump in the loose mud, snatching the bulrushes to steady herself and keep from tumbling back. The Marshman called Shoma glowered at her before turning and continuing on through the reeds. He stalked past Kholka, who stood leaning on his spear, a broad smile spread across his thin lips. It seemed the entire hunting party, made up of men, was put out by the idea of a woman joining them. All except Kholka. Her friend had been quite insistent at the village meeting that she should come. That had meant a lot to Gretchen. She nodded as she caught up with him.

“Thank you,” she said under her breath, the two falling in step beside one another.

“Is good,” said Kholka. “Shoma tired like old woman. Him needs rest.”

Gretchen laughed out loud, causing those Marshmen who were walking ahead of them to look back angrily. She clapped a hand over her mouth.

“Sorry,” she whispered, feeling every inch the admonished child. “They're very serious, aren't they?”

“Hunting,” replied Kholka quietly. “Serious work.”

The previous weeks had seen Gretchen first accepted into the Marshman's family and then gradually introduced to his wider community. Kholka's wife, Shilmin, though unable to speak the common tongue, had taken Gretchen to her heart since the girl from the Dalelands made herself useful. Whether she was peeling vegetables for the pot or playing with little Khilik, Gretchen provided an extra pair of hands to Shilmin. She'd proved particularly popular with Khilik, the child giggling whenever he saw her and constantly trying to snatch handfuls of her fascinating red hair. Kholka had hesitantly introduced her to the rest of the village and, though wary of the stranger, the Marshmen had reluctantly accepted her presence.

Like Kholka, Shoma was one of the village elders, and appeared to be the leader of the hunting party. The Marshmen, or
phibians
as Kholka referred to them, shared the same long-legged gait as Gretchen's friend, as well as the squat necks and broad shoulders. Gretchen's beautiful boots were viewed with suspicion, barefoot being the preferred option when it came to footwear. Indeed, all the Foxlady's clothes had been treated as outlandish by the river people, leading her to don the skins they wore in order to blend in as best she could. Her boots were her only indulgence, and she made no apologies. You could take the girl out of Hedgemoor and make her survive in the wilds, but at the end of the day she remained a princess.

There were seven in the hunting party, including the Foxlady, two of the men carrying nets over their shoulders that held their catch. Those eels and fish that still lived wriggled and writhed inside the mesh, rolling over one another as they gasped hopelessly in the air. Shoma led the way, glancing back occasionally to cast his sneering gaze over Gretchen.

“He doesn't like me, does he?” said Gretchen.

“Shoma not like drylanders.”

“Not all drylanders are bad, Kholka.”

“All drylanders Shoma meet bad,” said the fellow with a shrug. “Drylanders not like phibians.”

He wasn't wrong. Gretchen had dismissed the Marshmen as myth throughout her childhood, bogeymen of the Redwine that were used to keep children away from the water. Those who said they actually existed had sworn that they were monsters, not to be trusted. Some claimed to have killed them upon encountering them, believing the Marshmen were flesh-eating villains like the Wyldermen of the Dyrewood. Gretchen now realized nothing was further from the truth.

“Drylanders fear anything that doesn't fit in our world,” sighed Gretchen. “Your people look peculiar compared to the folk of the Dalelands and Westland.”

“Drylanders look pee-cool-yar to phibians,” said Kholka, struggling to get his mouth around the word.

“We're scared of that which we don't understand. Marshmen would fit into that category. We tend to attack that which we fear.”

“Kholka scare girl?”

Gretchen paused for a moment, afraid that she might offend him. “The first time I saw you outside your home, I'll admit I was scared. You did throw a net over me, though.”

“Kholka careful. Girl was crazy.”

“The girl was scared,” corrected Gretchen. “Being scared can make people do crazy things.”

Kholka shrugged again. “Not first time girl see Kholka.”

Gretchen still struggled to understand half the things her friend said, his pidgin-common tricky to follow.

“Outside your hut, Kholka,” she said again, trying to be clearer so as not to further confuse him. “That was where we first met, remember?”

“First time Kholka see girl in river. Kholka hide in water. Girl fight with boy.”

His words were confused, but he said them with such conviction that Gretchen began to doubt herself. That was where they had met, when she had first risen from her sickly stupor in his home. They had not met by the river. And the only boy she fought with recently was . . .

“This boy,” she said. “What color was his hair?”

Kholka hooked his thumb and gestured skyward without looking. “Sun.”

Trent
. Gretchen cast her mind back, slowly recalling bickering on the riverbank after ambushing the Lionguard in the Dalelands. Gretchen had been taking a moment, her toes dangling into the chill waters of the Redwine, her mind running away with itself. Looking up, she had glanced at something in the water. She had thought it a rock until it blinked, and then it was gone, disappearing beneath the surface.

“That was
you
, Kholka? In the river? Watching me?”

“Kholka's river,” he replied defensively. “Kholka fishing.”

He wasn't lying—the Redwine was his as much as any man's. In the past weeks, she had seen him at work, stalking through the swamps with his hunting javelin, spearing the smaller fish in the shallows where marsh became lagoon. She had followed him as far as she could before he left her behind, diving into the water and disappearing from view. Gretchen would then head back to his hut, to Shilmin and Khilik. Kholka would return much later, dripping with water, bigger, meatier fish skewered on his spear, captured in the most dangerous depths of the Redwine. She had not wondered how he had been able to swim and hunt so successfully. Until now.

“How do you get to be such an expert hunter, Kholka? How do you catch the big fish, swimming underwater with a spear? Could you teach me?”

He shook his head, the possibility out of the question. “Phibians live by river. On river. In river.”

It wasn't much of an explanation, but it was all Gretchen was going to get from him. She walked on a while longer without saying anything, the sun beating down overhead, turning mud to dried-out clay. Birds chirped, taking flight when Shoma led the hunters through their territory, nesting waders making haste on their long, spindly legs. The substantial splash of water-bound mammals sounded on occasion, as they escaped toward deeper water. The phibians might have been fishermen, but they wouldn't turn down the opportunity to snare an otter or beaver. The meat was tasty enough, but the pelts were even more valuable. Summer wouldn't last forever.

“Where are we heading?” asked Gretchen eventually. It felt like they were moving to higher ground, away from the water.

“Shoma's father,” replied Kholka. “Lives marsh's edge, alone.”

“Kind of like an outpost?” She couldn't imagine a lonelier life, eking out a solitary existence in a swamp. “He's expecting us?”

“No.”

“You know, whenever you're ready you can let me go on my way. You can see I'm better now.”

She walked with a limp now thanks to the wound she had taken in the leg, but she felt as fit as she'd ever been. Caused by the claws of one of Lucas's Wyld Wolves, the injury was as stubborn as one delivered by silver. However, a few weeks outdoors with the Marshmen, grafting, hunting, helping where she could, had been good for her. And all Drew's speeches about aiding the weak, the hopeless, the helpless, the have-nots: they made perfect sense to her now.

“Not safe,” said Kholka. “Leave when safe.”

She grabbed him by the forearm, his leathery flesh cold to the touch. “You don't understand, Kholka. It will
never
be safe. There's a war out there. I'm needed, I can help.”

She stopped speaking as she watched his smooth brow rise high and he looked down at her hand on his arm. She released her grip and those big, bulging eyes leveled on her.

“You could help,” she said. “All of you. Everyone has a part to play.”

“Not phibian. Not our world, your world.”

“This is
our
Lyssia, Kholka. Not just the Werelords and the townspeople—the drylanders, as you'd call them. Phibians, therians, and drylanders—we
all
share this world. We should fight for it, together.”

It was the sort of speech she'd heard Drew make countless times, the kind of talk that got her heart racing, the blood pumping, the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end. But coming from Gretchen, or delivered to this audience, it didn't have quite the same impact. Kholka turned away and continued walking.

Gretchen snapped the reeds around her as she reluctantly trudged after the Marshmen. Were they simply scared of what was out there? Did they fear further persecution? She was about to ask when a terrible wailing ahead pulled her from her thoughts. Kholka was already running, pushing past the phibians in front of her as he burst through the bulrushes into the clearing ahead.

Shoma's wailing continued unabated as the rest of the hunting party staggered into his father's plot of land, his sobbing joined by the cawing of a crow. The hut was built on drier land than Kholka's home. Gretchen figured they were still a good many leagues from the Dymling Road where it skirted the Dalelands. Still far from civilization—but close enough, apparently.

The hut was a burned-out shell, the grass roof long gone and its blackened walls crumbled. Two wooden stakes had been driven into the ground at right angles to one another, crossing to make a large
X
. The body that hung from the frame might have once been human, but looking at the desiccated, misshapen form, it was hard to imagine it. She looked away in disgust, her eyes finding a discarded shield on the floor. Even covered in mud and blood, the roaring lion head was clearly visible.

As a child growing up in Hedgemoor, she had once seen a toad pinned out in the grass, shriveled in the sun, by the cook's sadistic young son. She bent, picking up the shield, and brought her eyes back to the corpse on the frame. Drained of fluid, its limbs were freakishly long, and its hands and feet had been lashed to the timbers. The large, sloping head slumped forward, a constantly shifting swarm of flies buzzing around it. A lone black crow sat upon the back of the head, pecking away at the threadbare flesh.

Shoma stumbled forward, wailing, shaking his spear at the bird until it took flight, squawking. The other horrified Marshmen stood staring at the body of their leader's father, disbelieving. Kholka turned to Gretchen as his distraught friend dropped to the baked earth, curling into a fetal position. He took the battered Lionguard shield from her hand.

Gretchen saw Kholka's throat suddenly balloon, heard his chest cracking and popping as it shifted shape. That low-sunk head dropped a little lower, stubby neck vanishing altogether as body and skull seemed to merge into one. His eyes grew bigger, his mouth wider, his flesh rippling, toughening, turning from pasty gray to a murky mottled green. Before she had had time to think he was two feet taller, the thighs atop his powerful legs the thickness of her torso. He tossed the helmet to the ground and stamped on it with a huge, webbed foot, buckling it in an instant.

“Now,” said the Werefrog, his voice a low croak and dripping with anger. “Phibians fight.”