Brotherhood of the Wolf (20 page)

Thus she was distracted at the single most important moment of her life. For just at dusk, the green woman plummeted like a comet from a cloudless sky.

Averan heard a wordless shout—a piercing wail—and looked up.

The sky above was the perfect blue of a robin's egg.

And a green woman fell.

Averan spotted her two hundred yards off. The woman tumbled head over heels, naked as a newborn babe. She was tall, thin of build, her ribs showing plainly beneath her small breasts. The hair of her head and the dark V between her legs was the color of pine needles, while her skin was a more muted shade, almost flesh in tone.

Averan could make out few other details.

She glanced skyward, to see if the woman could have fallen from some vehicle. Flameweavers sometimes rode in hot-air balloons, and it was said that the Sky Lords traveled in ships of cloud, though Averan had never seen one.

Neither cloud nor balloon was above her, or anywhere near.

In that moment, Averan felt the cold wind numbing her hands, blowing through cracks in her robe and on her face. She could see clearly. Could hear the woman's cry.

Something in Averan broke.

She'd seen her mother fall from a chair and dash her head on the paving stones at the foot of a fireplace. She'd seen her five-year-old playmate Kylis tumble from the landing of the aerie, drop to the cliff base far below.

She could not idly watch another person fall to her death.

Without a thought of her mission to carry a message to Duke Paldane at Carris, she leaned back, clasped Leatherneck tightly with her legs, and cried, “Down! Fast!”

The graak folded his wings in close, shot after the green woman like a hawk diving for a mouse.

For a moment, the woman stared up at Averan, hands outstretched, pleading for aid. Her mouth was a round O of horror, fangs bared, her long green fingernails extended like claws.

Not human, Averan realized. This woman was not human. It did not matter. She seemed close to human, though it was hard to tell. In seconds she plummeted into the clouds, and was lost from sight.

Averan followed her into the mist. Drops of moisture beaded on her skin.

Leatherneck flapped his wings and slowed, refused to dive blindly into the fog. From below came the snapping sound of cracking wood, and the green woman's shriek was stilled.

When the great reptile emerged beneath a low ceiling of cloud, Averan saw the green woman at once.

She'd dropped into an orchard, among a trio of crabapple
trees. One tree had snapped under the impact, a slash of white where its uppermost branches had ripped away.

The graak glided over the orchard. Averan's mind seemed to go numb as she urged Leatherneck to the ground. The great reptile flapped his wings, and Averan leapt to the ground almost before the beast touched down.

In seconds she was at the green woman's side.

The woman lay slightly askew, her right hand over her head, her legs spread. She'd impacted so hard onto the moist ground that her body now rested in a mild depression.

Averan could see no overt sign of broken bones. Nothing poked through the green woman's flesh. Yet she saw blood, so dark green and oily it was almost black, smeared across the woman's left breast.

Averan had seldom seen a naked woman—had never seen one like this. The green woman was not merely handsome; she was beautiful, unearthly, like some fine Runelord's lady, gifted with so many endowments of glamour that a common woman could only look at such a creature and despair.

Yet even with the perfect features of her face, her flawless skin, the green woman was obviously not human. Her long fingers ended in claws that looked as sharp as fishhooks. Her mouth, faintly open, dribbled green blood and showed canines longer than those on a bear. Her ears were … somehow wrong. They were dainty and graceful, yet tilted forward a bit, like the ears of a doe.

The green woman was not breathing.

Averan put her head to the woman's chest, listened for a heartbeat. She heard it, beating softly, deeply, as if the green woman rested in slumber.

Averan felt the green woman's arms and legs, searching for wounds. She wiped away some green blood near the woman's neck, found what looked like a puncture wound from the woman's own nails. Wiping away the blood from the woman's lips, she checked in her mouth.

She'd bitten her tongue in the fall, and it was bleeding badly. Averan twisted the woman's head to the side, afraid
that the blood flowing freely into her throat might choke her.

The green woman growled, low in her throat, like a dog disturbed by dreams of the hunt.

Averan suddenly leapt back, afraid for the first time that this woman might be some animal. Feral. Deadly.

A dog began baying.

Averan looked up.

She was at the edge of a farm. A cottage stood not far off, a hut made of fieldstones and covered with a roof of thatch. A fierce wolfhound barked by the edge of the rail fence, but dared not approach the graak. For its part, the graak merely studied the dog hungrily, as if it hoped the hound would lunge.

The green woman opened her eyes to slits, and grasped Averan's throat.

Averan fought to scream.

9
THE RESCUE

Roland and Baron Poll had been riding hard all day, having traveled a pace that would kill a normal horse, when they heard the snarling and yelping of a hound, accompanied by a child's scream.

They had just rounded past a village near the base of the Brace Mountains and Roland's horse had slowed, winded. The sky was overcast, and with the hills so close, the night's shadows were already beginning to thicken.

When Roland heard the shriek, he was nearing a small farm with an orchard of woodpear and crabapple trees behind it.

A quick glance showed him a graak in the orchard, lunging and snapping at a huge wolfhound, while under the
shade of a tree, a girl was shrieking in terror.

“By the Powers, it's a wild graak!” Baron Poll shouted, spurring his charger. Wild graaks often attacked peasants' animals out here, so close to the mountains. Yet it was rarer for them to eat humans.

Roland's heart raced.

Baron Poll reached behind him, drew his horseman's axe, and spurred his mount past the cottage, frightening some nervous ducklings that milled about by the front door. Then his horse jumped the rail fence. The hound, emboldened by Baron Poll's presence, leapt after him and charged toward the graak.

Roland's horse suddenly leapt over the fence, and Roland realized that he too had charged the graak without thought. He reached into his tunic for his half-sword, though it would do little good against such a large lizard.

The whole world seemed to narrow to that moment. Roland could hear the child shrieking farther back in the orchard, could see the great beast rise up and spread its wings. Baron Poll's charger reared back and pawed the air.

It was an old lizard, by the look of it, huge. Teeth like daggers, its golden eyes blazing.

The hound leapt in at it, and the graak snapped down, catching the hound in its long jaws. It gave the dog a vicious shake, snapping its bones.

At that moment, while the lizard was distracted, Baron Poll raised the axe in both hands and hurled with all his might, catching the reptile cleanly between the eyes.

“Hah, take that, foul creature!” the Baron shouted as if in parody of some great hero.

The graak jerked back its head, as if stricken by surprise. Blood welled from the horrible blow that Baron Poll had dealt. The graak batted its wings once, then pitched to the side and collapsed.

Roland sat in his saddle for half a second, feeling exuberantly victorious, stupidly clutching his own sword.

Still, the child screamed.

As the body of the graak settled to the ground, Roland
saw the child better, for she'd been momentarily hidden behind its wings—a girl of seven or eight years kneeling beside the trees. The girl had half turned toward him. Piercing green eyes and wavy hair, the same red as Roland's.

She wore a hooded cloak of midnight-blue with the king's coat of arms on it—the image of the green man, a face circled by oak leaves. Above it a graak was sewn in red.

A skyrider. The blood drained from Roland's face. We've killed a mount for the King's messenger, he realized. All the gold he had would never repay the new King.

The child screamed again, and Roland realized something else. The crabapple tree that the child sat beneath was broken, as if struck by a bolt of lightning. And in the tall brown grass beneath the tree was something green.

One of its claws was hooked in the skyrider's cloak.

The child had not been attacked by a graak at all. Something else had her in its grip.

“Helllp!” the child wailed.

Roland rushed forward a few paces for a better look, suddenly cautious, until he had a full view of the green woman lying there in a pool of blood of the deepest green.

He had never seen anything like this monster. The green woman was beautiful and strange beyond anything that Roland had imagined. She held the child's robe firmly in her claws, merely held it, staring at the sigil emblazoned on the girl's chest. Mesmerized, she moved the girl this way and that, gazing at the colored threads that made up the image of the green man.

Roland felt confused. “Get away from that thing, child,” he whispered. “Stop screaming, and let the beast have your robe.”

The girl turned to him, her face an ashen white. She quit screaming but began to whimper as she shrugged out of the robe, tried to disentangle herself.

Meanwhile, Baron Poll had dismounted, and came huffing toward them, having recovered his axe.

Roland leapt from his own horse, sword at the ready.

The green woman almost did not notice the two men, until the girl tried to move back. Then it lashed out and grasped her forearm, studied her from eyes as dark green as her own blood.

“Let her go!” Roland shouted, stepping forward, brandishing the half-sword. Baron Poll stepped up beside him.

The green woman turned on them, stared at Roland and through him. She tossed the child aside like a rag doll, then rose to a crouch, sniffing the air like some animal, her small breasts swaying as she shifted from side to side. She caught a scent, peered fixedly at Baron Poll.

Roland's heart was pounding in fear.

“That's right,” Baron Poll said. “I'm the one you're after. I'm the one you want. You smell blood? You want some? Come and get it.”

The green woman leapt at Poll, covered sixty feet in three bounds. Roland prepared for her charge. He set his feet, raised his sword, and timed his swing so that it would lop off the green woman's head.

With a mighty shout he whirled the blade, just as the green woman reached Baron Poll.

Roland threw his full weight into the blow, brought the sword down on the green woman's neck, and felt as if he'd struck the blade against stone. The blade clanged into her, bounced off her neck and slapped Roland's left wrist.

The pain of it stung him, left his sword arm throbbing.

Then the green woman had Baron Poll. He'd fallen backward, too astonished to swing, and she crouched over him, grasping the handle of his axe.

Baron Poll struggled to move the blade from side to side, but even with his endowments of brawn, he could hardly budge it.

She held the axe, studying it. She sniffed the graak's blood, then with a long sensual tongue, experimentally licked the gore from the blade.

Roland fell back a pace as the monster closed her eyes, relishing the taste of blood.

The girl child was still whimpering. Blood pounded in

Roland's ears and sweat poured down the front of his tunic.

It seemed obvious that the green woman craved blood as a drowning man craves his next breath.

“By the Powers, get her away from me!” Baron Poll said, grunting in terror. He held the axe, tried to tear it away, as the green woman began to lick the blade clean.

Roland had never seen anything like this, had never heard of anything like this green woman. She had to be a summoned being, perhaps some fell monster drawn from the netherworld. Dark green blood flowed from a couple of small wounds. Green, like green flames, he thought.