The War Of The Lance (21 page)

And yet ... how could he bear to look down the long years of a life without her?

Roulant put his back into the last climb and soon left the dark fastness of the forest to
see Thorne and Guarinn waiting in the paler light of the clearing. The moons were rising,
mere suggestions of light above the mountain. Soon they would spill red and silver light
on the bald hill crowned by frost-whitened, shattered walls. Roulant left the forest,
trying to shut out the grim sense that the events of this Night were fated.

From the obscuring dark at the forest's edge, Una watched him join his friends. Once
Roulant and Thorne and Guarinn climbed the hill to the ruin, Una went noiselessly around
the base, up the slope as silently as a shadow, and entered at the opposite side to hide
in the small shelter of blackened beams and piled stone that once had shaped a bridal
chamber.

*****

Thorne stood in the center of the ruin, surrounded by the broken stone, his back to the
rising moons. He lifted his head, sniffed the air. Guarinn tied a slipknot around one end
of the rope he'd carried. Roulant strung his bow and placed three arrows in easy reach on
the flat of a broken stone.

“Time, my friend,” the dwarf said, his forge-scarred

hands shaking a little, though he gripped the rope hard. They'd tried to hold Thorne with
rope before, five years ago. It was Tam who had stood readying bow and bolt then, not
Roulant. Guarinn thought it might be different this time with a younger eye, a steadier
hand to take a well-timed shot at the instant of changing. Thorne closed his eyes, shut
out the sight of the rope that would hold him, of Roulant readying a long, steel-headed
shaft for flight, and nodded to Guarinn.

“Do it, and hurry.”

When the noose passed over his head and settled on his neck, Thorne heard himself panting
hoarsely, like an anxious beast mindlessly straining for release. The rope stank of hemp
and tar and the dark scent of smoke, fire's ghost. In moments, like the return of an
unhealed malady, he'd feel the bonds of humanity fall away from him: compassion replaced
by hunger, an imperative that knew no mercy. Reason and skill changed by fast, fevered
degrees to instinct, which existed only to serve the needs of survival. Even now, his
senses filled with the complex richness of scent only an animal knows. Even now the scents
aroused hunger.

The man knew the fear he smelled on Guarinn as well- justified, not to be scorned. The
wolf would only smell the fear and know instinctively that this was a victim to feed
hunger. Thorne wished that Guarinn would hurry, for very soon Thorne Shape-shifter, once
known for his mastery of this most difficult of the magic arts, would not be able to hold
back the changing.

*****

Crouched in her cold dark shelter, Una stared in amazed alarm to see Guarinn place the
noose round Thorne's neck. Like most people in Dimmin, she felt like an intruder in
Guarinn's company, his glum silences made her a stranger to be kept at arm's length,
mistrusted. But she knew that Roulant loved Guarinn as truly as he loved Thorne and had
loved his own father. Though she'd heard Thorne invite the binding, saw Roulant standing
by in silence, Una watched the dwarf with narrowed eyes.

Each knot he tied was strong, and as he worked, Guarinn's face was like a stark, bleak
landscape, scoured

by sorrow, forsaken of all but the thinnest hope. Yet he did the rough work carefully and,
were it anyone else, Una would have said tenderly. He took great care to cause no hurt,
and watching, unable to find any reason for what she was seeing, Una swallowed hard
against an ache of tears. Tears for Thorne, bound; for Roulant, who stood as still as the
mage, watching. And for Guarinn Hammerfell who, of them all, looked as if he alone hated
what was being done.

And she wondered, what WAS being done? And why? From the forest Una heard the clap of an
owl's wings; hard on that, the faint, dying scream of a small creature caught in
dagger-sharp talons. The wind stirred, cold from behind her as a long, low moaning slid
across the night. An uncanny sound, a grievous pleading.

Trembling, with cold fear, she saw Roulant pick up an arrow, nock it to the bowstring, his
stance the broad one of a man preparing to put an arrow right through a straw-butt at the
bull's-eye. Guarinn moved to the side, moonlight running on the bitter edge of the
throwing axe in his hand.

The mage, alone, wearing the light of the moons like a shimmering cloak of red and silver,
sank to his knees. Guarinn took two more quick paces to the side, careful not to get
between the mage and the wall. Roulant stood where he was, and, after he'd marked
Guarinn's position, he never looked away from Thorne.

The night began to shimmer around Thorne, waver like the air above a banked fire. Una,
who'd been still as stock, made a sound then, a whisper of boot-heel against stone as she
crept closer to the opening of her small shelter to see.

Faint though the sound had been, it was heard. Thorne jerked his head up, looked directly
at her. Cold fear skittered along Una's skin, cramped her belly

painfully. She wanted to reach for her dagger, but she could only sit motionless, caught
and stilled by Thorne's eyes - the eyes of an animal lurking beyond the campfire's pale.
And the shape of him, she thought, the shape of him is somehow WRONG. Something about his
face, the length of his arms. But surely that was a trick of moonlight and shimmering air?
And crouching there, he didn't hold himself like a man, on his knees. He had hands and
feet flat to the ground, as an animal would.

Una pressed her hands hard to her mouth, trying to

muffle her cry of horror and pity when she saw Thorne look away, turn all his attention to
a feverish gnawing at the rope that bound him.

The rope wasn't doing a good job of holding him now, for his shape was changing rapidly,
and in some places the coil was slipping away from what had once been a man's wrist or
ankle . . . and were now the smaller joints of an animal, a broad-chested wolf, its gray
pelt silver in the light of two moons, its dripping fangs glistening.

Guarinn cried “Now, Roulant! DO IT!” and instinctively Una shoved herself far back against
the broken wall behind her, flinching as rubble slithered down the hill, the clatter of
stone loud in the night.

The sound did not distract Guarinn, his axe hit the wolf in the shoulder, biting hard,
though not lodging in either muscle or bone. But Roulant hesitated, if only the space of a
heart's beat, and so when the wolf leaped at him, it was well beneath the arrow's flight.
Roaring, the wolf hit him hard, sent him crashing to the stony ground, pinned him there
with its weight.

And then Una bolted out of her shelter, ran across the moon-lighted ruin, her own dagger
in hand, before she knew exactly what she meant to do.

*****

They were upon him, the smaller male and the young female, with daggers that would bite
deeper than his fangs could. The wolf, who knew nothing about rage or vengeance or any
purpose other than survival, heaved up from the one sprawled helpless beneath him,
abandoned the enticing scent of blood and meat for immediate survival.

On the wings of pain, like wings of fire, the wolf won its freedom at the price of another
agonizing bound over the broken wall. It left blood on the stones of the hillside, all
along the path into the forest, and it carried away with it the noose still clinging round
its neck.

*****

Guarinn had made a bright, high campfire in the center of the ruin, but Roulant didn't
think it was doing much to

warm or comfort Una. Nor did it seem to help Una that Roulant held her tightly in his arms
- he wondered if she would ever stop weeping. Somewhere to the north the wolf howled, a
long and lonely cry. Una shuddered, and Roulant held her closer.

“Una,” he said, turning away from the reminder of failure. “Why did you follow me here?”

She sat straighter, her fists clenched on her knees, her eyes still wet but no longer
pouring tears. “I've known for two years that you went out into the forest on the Night.
And I've known . . .”

She looked at Guarinn sitting hunched over the fire. The dwarf turned a little away,
seemingly disinterested in whatever they discussed. Roulant, who knew him, understood that
he was offering privacy.

“You've known what?” he asked, gently.

“That something's come between us. Something - a secret. Roulant, I've been afraid, and I
had to know why you went into the forest on the Night, when no one else - ”

“Someone else,” Guarinn amended. “Thorne and me. And now that you're here, I suppose you
think you should know the secret you've spied out?”

Una bristled, and Roulant shook his head. “Guarinn, she's here and that gives her a right
to know what she saw.”

“Not as far as I'm concerned.”

“Maybe not,” Roulant said. “But she has rights where I'm concerned. I should have honored
them before now.”

Guarinn eyed them both, quietly judging. "All right, then. Listen well, Una, and I'll give
you the answer you've come looking for.

“This ruin you see around us used to be Thorne's house,” he said. “A quiet place and
peaceful. No more though. It's only a pile of stone now, a cairn to mark the place where
three dooms were doled out this night thirty years ago. Three dooms, twined one round the
other to make a single fate.”

The wind blew, tangling the smoke and flame of the small campfire. Roulant wrapped his
arms around Una again and held her close for warmth.

“Girl,” the dwarf said. "Your hiding place tonight was once a bridal chamber. It never saw
the joy it was fitted

out for . . ."

*****

"Thorne asked but two guests to come witness and celebrate his marriage. One of them was
me, and I was glad to stand with him as he pledged his wedding vows. The other was Tam
Potter, and his was a double joy that night, for he was Thorne's friend and the bride's
cousin. She was from away south, and I don't think her closest kin liked the idea of her
wedding a mage. But Tam was fair pleased, and so he was the kinsman who bestowed her hand.

"Mariel, the girl's name; and she was pretty enough, but no rare beauty. Yet that night
she glowed brightly, put the stars to shame; for so girls will do when they are soon to
have what they want and need. She needed Thorne Shape-shifter and had flouted most of her
kin to have him. No less did Thorne need her.

"The first night of autumn, it was, and the bright stars shone down on us as we stood
outside the cottage. Old legends have it that wedding vows taken in the twined light of
the red moon and the silver will make a marriage strong in love and faith. Perhaps those
legends would have been proven that night. Perhaps. We did never learn that, for another
guest came to the wedding - uninvited, unwelcome, and the first we knew of his coming was
when he stood in our midst, dark and cold as death.

"A mage, that uninvited guest, black-robed and with a heart like hoar-frost - and you must
remember that this is no tale of rival suitors, one come in the very nick of time to rapt
away the maiden he loves. This is a tale of two young men, one so poisonously jealous of
the other that he must - for hate - spoil whatever his rival in power had.

"The name of the Spoiler? I will not speak it. Let it never be remembered. This is how
dwarves reward murderers, and I know no other way as good.

"He laid hands on the girl, that dark mage, in a way no man should touch another's wife;
magicked her from sight before any one of us could move to prevent. Aye, but he didn't
take her far, in hatred and arrogance took her only within the cottage. In the very
instant we knew her gone, we heard her voice raised in terror and rage. Close as she

was, the evil mage's wizard ways kept us from coming to her aid until it was too late. The
spell lifted. Thorne found her quickly in the bridal chamber. And he saw the mage defile
her . . . and worse.

"Mariel lay cold and still on the ground, like a fragile pretty doll flung aside and
broken, Thorne's dear love stricken for spite by the Spoiler.

"Seeing her dead, Thorne Shape-shifter showed the Spoiler how he'd earned his name.

"You have seen the wolf, and so you know what the Spoiler saw in the moments before his
death. But you have never heard such screaming as I heard that night: never heard such
piteous pleading, nor heard anyone wail for mercy as the Spoiler did, him torn by the
fangs of the great gray wolf.

“Tam Potter and I could have tried to stop Thorne, but we did not. We stood by, watched
the wolf at his ravening work. We should have granted mercy.”

*****

Despite the hot, high fire, Una sat shivering, her hand a small fist in Roulant's.

“Tam died wishing we'd granted that mercy,” Guarinn said softly. “And I sit here now
wishing no less, for the Spoiler died with a curse on his lips. It was a hard one, as the
curses of dying mages tend to be, and it marked us all with the fate of hunter and hunted.”

Stiff and cold from sitting, Una got to her feet; she did not answer when Roulant called
to her. She needed a place to be private with what she'd learned. The night was crisp and
bright, as lovely as it must have been this time thirty years ago. As she walked, Una
discovered the shape of the ruin, saw that it was very like the little stone house near
the bend of the brook in Dimmin. It lacked only one room to be exactly the same. In the
Dimmin house, Thorne kept only a stark sleeping loft under the eaves.

Una stood for a long time before the dark mouth of the little cave of fire-blacked beam
and broken stone that had sheltered her tonight; all that was left of a fouled bridal
chamber.

She returned to stand by the fire. “Tell me,” she said. "Thorne must surrender his very
self one night each

year and hope that Roulant or I will end the curse by killing the wolf. This,“ Guarinn
said, ”is an inherited obligation."