The War Of The Lance (22 page)

Una stood quietly, her eyes on the fire, the flames and the embers. “If you kill the wolf,
what will happen to Thorne?”

It was Roulant - silent till then - who answered.

“The curse will be over. He'll begin to age, grow old again, like the rest of us. Thorne
hasn't got any elven blood, Una, though everyone thinks so. It's the curse that's held him
in time.”

“Guarinn,” she said softly. “Why haven't you killed the wolf in all these thirty years?”

“You'd think it would be easy, aye? Take the first shot as he was changing and end the
matter. It isn't so easy. Once before, binding him slowed the change, and we tried that
again tonight. But sometimes ...” The dwarf shuddered. "Sometimes he's changed between one
breath and the next. Sometimes faster than that, and the wolf is gone before either one of
us can pick up a weapon. He doesn't just LOOK like a wolf. He IS one! He'll tear at you,
running, and he's too canny to stay around fighting losing battles.

“So,” she said. “You have to go out and hunt the wolf?”

Neither answered. A glance passed between them and Roulant got to his feet. He took her
hand, his own very cold as he led her into the shadow of a low broken wall.

“Una,” he said. "We can kill the wolf if we can find it -

"

“That won't be hard tonight. You could track him by the blood.”

“We could. Except ...” His face shone white in the moonlight, his eyes dark with dread.
“Except that we dare not set foot out there!”

She frowned, leaned on the wall to look out. All she saw was night and stars and the moons
hanging over the clearing. She heard night noise, owls wondering and hares scampering, a
stream laughing over stones.

“I know,” Roulant said. “I see everything that you see, just as you see it. When I'm
standing here.” He turned his back on the forest. "When I set foot outside the ruin - even
hold my hand out beyond the wall . . . It's terrible out

there. The Spoiler laid a curse on us too, one we've never found a way past. In here,
we're safe. Out there . . . they'll kill us."

Una heard this, but she was staring out at the forest and the night, thinking about what
he'd said about things being very different beyond the wall. She looked down and saw her
loosely clasped hands just beyond the wall. Unlike the others, she neither saw nor felt
any curse in

the forest or the night. Una turned away from the wall and walked past Roulant and

Guarinn without a word. She picked up Roulant's bow and quiver on the way. She'd not
gotten but a few yards when she heard Roulant shout something, heard Guarinn scrambling to
his feet, echoing the warning

cry. Una ran, heeding no warning. She vaulted the wall where the wolf had fled.

As she bounded down the hill, Una hoped that whatever kept Roulant and Guarinn helpless in
the ruin would not affect her. It was frightening enough to go hunting a wounded wolf in
the night, and her

only a middling shot with a bow. Still, the beast was wounded, and if she could once get a
good aim, she'd be able to kill it.

*****

Roulant jumped the wall, chased heedlessly after Una. And he thought: Idiot girl! Guarinn
was a long reach behind. He prayed that Roulant would be able to snatch her back to safety
in time, that he wouldn't have to follow.

Una was too fast. She vanished into the shadows at the foot of the hill. Roulant stood
where he'd landed.

Guarinn eyed the darkness, and Roulant standing outside the wall, straining like a leashed
hound. The night would spring alive at any moment, suddenly boiling with horror. The wall
would be on them.

Guarinn nervously fingered the haft of his axe. “Roulant, what do you think?”

“I'm going to fetch Una back, that's what I think!”

Guarinn heard Roulant's answer only faintly, for the young man was

already at the foot of the hill. Alone in the ruin, Guarinn shifted from foot to foot,
indecisively. “This is insane,” he muttered. “I KNOW what's going to happen to me if I
leave here ...”

He took a breath, fueling courage and a suddenly rising hope. Maybe nothing would happen.

Roulant can chase after his girl if that's what he wants to do, Guarinn thought. But I
still have my axe and good strong arm, and I'm going for the wolf.

Guarinn hopped the wall. But when his feet hit the ground he found

himself on the wrong side of the border between reason and nightmare, caught in the trap
the Spoiler had laid for any wolfhunter who ventured

out of the ruin.

*****

The wall walked. And the dead with him.

They crawled, and shambled, and dragged themselves staggering through a foul and freezing
fog, each trying desperately to reach Guarinn as the damned would grasp at one last hope.
He could not move,

stood rooted like an oak in the ice-toothed mist, helpless as decaying hands plucked at
him, clung to him, shoulder and wrist and arm. And

this was no silent place, this nightmare-realm. It was filled up with the mad shrieking
and frenzied grieving of people he'd known in life, and some he'd never seen until they
were dead.

A hunter who'd died to feed the wolf's hunger.

An old peddler night-caught in the forest, hardly recognizable as human when he'd been
found.

A child, a little boy screaming now as it had when, three years ago,

the wolf had torn him from his bed. Or was that Guarinn's own voice screaming, his own
throat torn with the violence of terror as the child's

had been by the wolf's fangs?

Then came a howling, a long, aching sound of abandonment. The wolf. Or a friend forsaken.
Or an innocent dying.

GUARINN, YOU'VE FAILED ME, FAILED THEM ALL! Hands clawed at his face, dug and tore at his
throat, leaving bits of their own flesh and grave-mold behind to foul his beard and hair.

FAITHLESS FRIEND! YOU STINK OF THEIR BLOOD, GUARINN HAMMERFELL!

Guarinn cried out in terror, couldn't tell his own voice from theirs, no longer knew who
accused - they or him. The ice-mist filled up his lungs, stopped his breath, suffocating
him.

MURDERER! GUARINN CHILD-KILLER! GUARINN - *****

“Guarinn! Breathe! Come on, breathe!”

Roulant shook his friend till his teeth rattled, shook him harder still, but to no effect.
Roulant'd heard but one choking gasp of terror, just as he was entering the forest, and
he'd known that whatever chance-found charm was keeping him safe and sane outside the ruin
wasn't working for Guarinn. The dwarf was trapped, unable to move, even to breathe, while
mind and soul were adrift in the cold country of nightmare.

“Guarinn,” Roulant shouted, fearful. Perhaps Una was safe because the Spoiler's trap was
meant to harm no one but those who bound by the curse. Perhaps Roulant was safe because he
left the ruin to find Una, not to end the curse. But Guarinn must have left the ruin with
plans to kill the wolf. That's what sprung the Spoiler's trap, Roulant thought.

“Guarinn!” he cried again, gathering his friend close, holding him. “We've got to find
Una! I need you to help me. Please, Guarinn! Come back and help me . . .”

A breath, just a small one. “Guarinn - help me find Una. We must find Una!” The dwarf drew
another breath, no steadier, but

deeper. Roulant held him hard, forced him to look nowhere but into his eyes. “Listen -
LISTEN! Don't think about anything else but this: We have to find Una. Don't even think
about why. We're here for no reason but to find Una. Do you understand?”

Guarinn swallowed hard. “DO YOU UNDERSTAND?” “Yes,” Guarinn said hoarsely. “What next?”
Roulant thought as he helped his friend to his feet.

*****

The wolf woke to pain and hunger. He was not frightened by the pain, knowing he could
transcend it. He was afraid of hunger. Wolves worship only one god, and the god's name is
Hunger.

He'd found shelter quickly after he'd fled his attackers, a soft nest of old leaves
beneath a rock outcropping. There, downwind of his enemies so he could smell them if they
pursued, he'd licked clean the shallow cuts on his belly and legs, the deeper one on his
shoulder. He'd gnawed off the trailing end of the rope, for that frightened him nearly as
much as hunger. It had more than once snagged in bushes to choke him as he'd fled. He'd
gotten most of it, wearing only the noose now, a foul-smelling collar. Free and safe, he'd
curled tight against the cold - sleeping lightly, dreaming of thirst and hunger as a thin
veil of clouds came from the east to hide the stars.

Now the shadows had softer edges and the darkness was deeper. The wind told him that water
was no great distance away - clean and cold by the smell; by the sound, no more than a
streamlet. It would be enough to provide thirst's ease. And there was another scent, not
close yet, only faintly woven into night, but the wolf knew it - human-scent, burnt meat
and smoke and old skins; sweat and the light, sweet odor of flesh; running beneath that,
the warm smell of blood; over it all, the tang of fear, sharp and enticing on the cold
night air. He'd seen this young female not long ago, and he had the mark of her steel fang
on him. Hers was the least of his wounds, for she'd been distracted by fear and not very
strong.

With his lean god for company, the wolf rose stiffly from his warm nest.

*****

Una knelt to examine the dark blot marking the faded earth of the deer trail, and by the
thin light of the moons

saw that it was no more than shadow. Cold wind blew steadily from the east, carried the
smell of a morning snow. Una shivered and got to her feet. She'd not seen a blood-mark or
the imprints of the wolf's limping passage for some time now, but the last real sign had
been along this game-trail, a path no more than a faint, wandering line to show where deer
passed between high-reaching trees in their foraging. Lacking a better choice, Una
continued along the path.

The wolf had not proven as easy to track as she'd thought, and now she wondered whether
she'd ever find him. She wondered, too, whether it would turn out that the beast found
her, or was even now stalking behind. She tried not to think about that. All she needed
was a clear shot. She'd put plenty of arrows through the straw-butt, she could put an
arrow through a wolf. She could free Thorne. She could free them all. But she had little
confidence ruling her thoughts, and so, her attention was focused behind her rather than
in front when the deer trail ended abruptly at the muddy verge of a shallow stream.

Una and the wolf saw each other at the same moment, and she knew - as prey knows in its
bones - that she might have time to nock an arrow to string, but she wasn't going to have
time to let the bolt fly.

*****

Guarinn tried to maintain a narrow focus, to shut down all thinking and track like an
animal, using only sight and scent and hearing. He measured his success by the nearness of
dead voices. At best, the haunting dead were never wholly gone, only banished to a
distance he could endure. The protection Roulant had shown him was working, but only just.
How fast would the Spoiler's trap catch them if they came upon the wolf?

Soft - a whisper shivering across the night - Guarinn heard the rattle of brush. He
stopped, keeping his hands fisted and well away from the axe in his belt while he waited
to hear the sound again.

“The wind,” Roulant said, low.

Guarinn didn't think so. That one soft rattle had been a discordant note. When the sound
came again, Guarinn knew it wasn't wind-crafted. Nor was it soft now.

Something was running through the brush. “It's Una!” Roulant cried and bolted past
Guarinn. She wasn't alone. Like a dark echo, something else

came crashing through the brush behind her. Fleet, eyes huge as a hunted doe's, Una burst
through

the brush, frantically trying to nock arrow to bow as she ran. She was having little luck,
and even at a distance Guarinn saw her hands shaking, fumbling uselessly at shaft and
string.

“Una,” Roulant shouted. “Here!”

Seeing them for the first time, she redoubled her speed. Relief and joy and - last - panic
marked her face when her foot turned on a stone and she fell hard to the ground, the
breath blasted from her, and the bow flung from her hand.

Guarinn saw the wolf first. The sight of it - eyes redly blazing, fangs gleaming -
triggered instinct. In the very moment the wolf leaped, the dwarf snatched his throwing
axe from his belt - and tumbled over the edge of nightmare.

*****

The wolf smelled fear and loved it - the scent of easy prey. He sensed no threat in the
smaller male, standing motionless; nor was the young female - struggling for breath,
fighting to rise from the ground - any danger. These he could ignore for now. But the
third, the bigger male . . . from him came the fiery scent of a pack- defender. He was the
danger and the threat.

*****

The wolf hurtled past Una. Choking on the sudden, cold rush of air, she heard the impact
of bodies - the wolf snarling and Roulant's grunt of shock and pain.

And she saw Guarinn standing still as stone, his throwing axe gripped in a nerveless hand.

“Guarinn!” she cried, clawing at the ground in desperate search of the bow. “Help him!”

Guarinn never moved . . . and she found the bow, string-broken, useless. Roulant screamed,
a raging curse turned to pain as the wolf's fangs tore at his shoulder. The

cry of pain became a chant - her name, gasped over and over in the staggering rhythm of
his ragged breathing as he struggled with the beast.

Una gained her feet, running. She flung herself at the wolf's back, dagger in hand.
Clinging to the writhing beast's neck, choking on the smell of blood, she struck wildly.
Poorly. Hurting, but not killing.

The wolf heaved up. “Guarinn! Help me! The wolf is killing him!” The beast twisted
sharply, and threw her off. Its fangs

dripped frothy red, and behind it, Roulant lurched to his feet, gasping his terrible
chant. The wolf turned, leaped at him. Una didn't know which of them screamed, man or
wolf. The sound of it tore through the night, a wild howling.