Wolf's Blood (77 page)

She remembered then, and she used the despair that touched her heart to make her arms pull harder on the rope. Her pull was so violent that Virim stumbled into a run and the lynx nearly went flying off his back.

The spell the Old World sorcerers used involved killing a beast to take its form. Before they knew of the Royal Beasts, the Wise Beasts, the Beasts who were as intelligent as any human, they took the risk of losing their human intelligence in the merging with the animal. The risk was greater the longer they maintained the transformation. Could this have happened to Virim? Might I have caused it by forcing his mind into this one form, a form that could not hold his intelligence?

The more Firekeeper considered this, the more she felt dread that this might have been what had happened. Surely Virim, with all his longing to preserve the New World for the Beasts who were its natural inhabitants would not have used a Royal Beast as a partner in his transformation. That said. then he must have used a Cousin, and even the most clever of Cousin-kind mountain sheep could not come close to holding the complexities of a human mind.

Firekeeper was giving way to despair when a glint of light from Virim’s diamond horns reminded her that for all she was becoming accustomed to the creature, this was no normal mountain sheep. Virim had altered his vessel. but was the alternation an illusion, such as they had encountered in his fortress, or was it something more permanent? Would he have altered the body and left the mind untouched?

“And,”
said a sardonically familiar voice within her head,
“most importantly, what are you going to do about it? I will tell you one thing. You’re right about part of your guess. Several of them, even. If you were going to pick a part of Virim to grab, this was the right one. And, you’re right, Virim acquired this alternate form through a version of the same spell that would create the maimalodalum. However, in his kindness toward the creature he was using, Virim could not make himself destroy its mind completely. It remains, a thin shell that most of the time merely operates the body, but you rather surprised Virim. He took refuge beneath the mountain sheep’s mind, and now he cannot—or will not—come out. You wanted him afraid, and he’s very afraid—so afraid he even fears trying to save his own life.”

Firekeeper wanted to know how the Meddler knew all this, what price he would charge for his help, but there was no time for one of their leisurely debates. Screams were coming from the shoreline. The Nexans had not been the only ones with bows, and already a few of Wort’s small command were injured or dead.

“I cannot reason with a sheep,” she replied bluntly. “And I need this Virim’s fear where I can reason with it. You are a spirit. He is spirit in hiding. Can you herd him out to where he must face what is going to happen?”

The Meddler’s reply did not come immediately. In the distance, Firekeeper heard wolves howling and knew that the small pack that had joined the defenders elsewhere across the island was now racing in to meet the landing crafts. She hoped the humans would be intimidated enough to stay on their boats, that they would have shot all their arrows.

“If there was ever a time for you to meddle,” Firekeeper cried to the continuing silence within her mind, “surely this is that time.”

She had continued to drag the mountain sheep forward, and now they had come to a twisted pine heavy enough to anchor the rope. She wrapped the rope tightly around the tree trunk, then knotted it firm.

“Go,” she said to the lynx. “Virim goes no further, and you are not equipped to fight this type of battle.”

“I will go,” the lynx said. “And climb a tree. If these soldiers think they will walk safely when darkness falls, they are much mistaken.”

Firekeeper felt oddly encouraged by this parting promise. She strung her bow. As she set arrow to string, she listened for Blind Seer’s voice among the chorus. It was not there, and again she took encouragement. If the efforts of the spellcasters had failed, then surely he would have joined the fight.

Wort’s company had succeeded in slowing the landing craft, and now the chancy currents that made even the more open beaches insecure landing points were doing their part to unsettle an orderly debarking. Even so, there were knots of fighting here and there where a boat had made it to shore and the marines had jumped onto the beach, ready to meet the defenders.

Firekeeper sent an arrow into one marine, trying not to feel too bad about killing for something other than food or in immediate danger of her life. As she had said to Derian, the more abstract killing involved in war was hard for her to accept. Still, she was quick-witted enough to know that those who she did not kill from a distance she would face sooner or later.

But this is not the answer,
Firekeeper thought desperately.
There are only so many arrows, only so many perfect shots. In the end, I might as well have killed none of them for all this will save the Nexans. And our resisting might well make the situation worse. Humans are terrible when they believe they have earned the right for revenge.

Yet for all her despairing thoughts. Firekeeper kept fitting arrow to bowstring and finding targets. Her participation in the battle did not go unnoticed. The soldiers from the landing boats began to look around nervously for the source of the deadly arrows. Taking advantage of this distraction, several of Wort’s soldiers managed to drive their opponents back so that they were fighting ankle deep in the dragging surf.

Firekeeper did not notice the strange war machine taking aim at her until after the huge arrow it fired sliced through the edge of the heavy sleeve protecting her upper arm. The arrow sliced flesh as well, carrying on until it anchored its quivering length in the tree to which she had tied Virim.

Automatically, Firekeeper dropped to the ground, trying to avoid any further fire. The archer, absorbed with reloading the machine, and cranking back the firing mechanism, had no attention for her.

Blood ran from Firekeeper’s upper arm, coursing down the limb and spreading hot and wet between her fingers. The arrow had sliced cleanly, the sensation more like surprise than pain. That, though, would come.

Clapping her hand to the bleeding wound, Firekeeper rolled so that a rise in the ground was between her and the sight of those below. Her bow fell beside her, the string snapping, lashing against her face as if in reprimand for her carelessness.

Freely flowing blood from cuts to face and arm spattered the area with gore. Firekeeper probed the wounds, trying to evaluate the extent of the damage.

The diamond-horned mountain sheep, which to that moment had alternated staring dully with thudding its head against the trunk of the tree to which Firekeeper had bound it, now turned and stared at her with the first thing like intelligent regard she had seen in its eyes since they had come to the Nexus Islands.

“What did you expect?” she said to him. “To fight without bleeding?”

As Firekeeper spoke, her hands were busy, splashing water from her canteen onto the wound on her arm; if she lived, stitches would be a good idea. She smeared a liberal amount of an ointment made from blood briar on the cut. The ointment would slow infection and keep the skin from tightening, but most importantly it would numb the wound and the area surrounding it, enabling her to use her bow again almost immediately.

As Firekeeper bound a strip of clean cloth around the wound, she noticed that Virim was pulling at the rope, straining to sniff at a patch where her blood had soaked the surrounding earth. It was an unnatural reaction for an herbivore, and Firekeeper shivered involuntarily as she recalled what a spellcaster could do with fresh blood.

Could Virim work a spell, bound as he was with iron and half insane with terror? She couldn’t spare the energy to worry about that. The large bow in the boat had not shot at her since she had fallen, but that would not last if they realized they had not taken her out of the tight.

She was in the process of retrieving her bow, and seeing if she could resting it without drawing attention to herself when she realized that Virim was talking to himself. He was using the speech of the Beasts, but although the sounds, scents, and gestures remained within the body of one creature, almost immediately she realized that there were two speakers.

Not pausing in her own labors. Firekeeper. spared some attention for this peculiar exchange.

“Let me loose! Stop pushing me!”

“So the scent of blood was what it took to bring you back to the surface, huh? Think you can do anything to change what’s about to happen?”

“Going to die here. Here. On this lousy scrap of rock.”

“Gotta happen somewhere. Let me tell you, it doesn’t matter where it happens. I died in a temple. Didn’t change a thing. Well, now that I think about it, it probably did, but I’m sure you know what I mean.”

“I don’t want to die! Too much depends on me! I’m essential to the safety of the world.”

“So we all like to think. I certainly did.”

Initially, Firekeeper had thought that Virim was talking to himself again. With the mention of the temple, she began to wonder, and within a few more exchanges she was certain. The Meddler had not abandoned her when she had challenged him to help bring Virim back from wherever fear had driven him. Apparently, he had embraced the challenge, but it seemed that more had been needed to entice Virim to face the predicament he faced.

Blood—or, perhaps more truthfully, the power that he sensed dormant in the scent of her freshly shed blood—had given him some incentive to return.

Firekeeper glanced down the slope. Wort’s forces, now augmented by oddly assorted yarimaimalom, seemed to have retained the upper hand—if only just. A few of the landing craft were backing oars. and Firekeeper saw that they held the wounded. That in itself was encouraging. If the invaders were completely confident they would win, they would have left the wounded ashore where they could be more easily treated.

But then,
she thought,
this may have been a test on their part
,
an attempt to see how well prepared we were. Surely, they will regroup and try again. That is what a wolf pack would do. Wear down the herd until enough are wearied that the hunt is a success
.

And then there are the gates
, she thought, her momentary pleasure at Wort’s success fading as she considered the greater complexity of the situation.
They may expect support trought those, and although that is not likely, as long as we must protect not only the landing points on the shore, but the gates as well
…
Yes
.
They are not cowardly to withdraw. They are very wise
.

Anger flared in her, anger at the situation, anger at herself for flailing to do more, anger especially at the mountain sheep who even now continued to blather about his own importance and how he couldn’t be permitted to die.

“So,” she said, turning on Virim, the arrow she had put to string pulled back, and the hand that held the string quivering, not so much from strain, but from a mad desire to let it loose. “So, what will you do to preserve that life that is so important? I am sure the Meddler has told you what we want. Will you do it?”

Virim did not pretend not to understand.

“I cannot … cannot … You don’t understand the complexities of the situation. I once thought things were simple, too. Believe me, a century of watching things go anything but the way I planned, the way I intended, that has taught me to be careful. Very, very careful.”

Firekeeper snarled, as inarticulate as Virim himself had been a short time before.

The Meddler spoke and she heard him both in her head, and through the medium of the mountain sheep.

“Firekeeper! Give me a chance! I don’t think killing him will break querinalo’s hold. I’ve been—can you believe that I have gone into his mind enough to know something of his thoughts?”

“Harder to believe you are not,”
Firekeeper replied, deliberately not vocalizing her reply. She did let up the pull on her bowstring though, and she saw the mountain sheep’s ears relax the slightest bit.

“I think the curse has its own momentum now,” the Meddler continued. “I’m not saying that it can’t ever be stopped, but doing so is not going to be as easy as ending this one pathetic life.”

Firekeeper, who wondered if the Meddler himself might have reasons for wanting Virim kept alive, still had to admit that what he said had sense in it. Querinalo’s range was too vast, its power too comprehensive for her to believe there could be as easy a solution as one death.

Still, no reason for Virim to know this.

“I have no choice.” she said. “The fleet may win today, may come tomorrow. We must have others to fight for us. With querinalo we cannot recruit. Without it … Even then we would be sorely pressed. Humans are not wolves to quickly learn to hunt together, and even the best packs are those that have hunted together for a long time.”

“A compromise, then.” Virim spoke to her with remarkable lack of vacillation. “I will tell you where you can find others to fight for you.”

“What?” Firekeeper said. “Who?”

“The Bound,” Virim replied eagerly. “They have vowed themselves to me and my defense. They could be brought here through the gates.”

“Too late,” Firekeeper retorted.

She saw a marine about to attack Wort from behind and loosed an arrow to stop him. Wort, absorbed with the soldier he had been fighting, didn’t even notice. One of the armed landing craft did, and a quickly aimed arrow shredded leaves from Virim’s tree.

“Stop that!” Virim cried, and fell again to panicked ovine bleating that needed no translation. “You’re putting us in danger!”

As Firekeeper fit another arrow to her bowstring, she heard the mountain sheep utter what had to be a profanity, although she recognized neither it nor the language in which it was spoken. Part of her brain did take idle note that whatever the word was, it could be shaped by a sheep’s mouth.

She took careful aim. and the sailor behind the big bow on the landing craft fell back, bending over his thigh. Distance and the sounds of the sea and other battles drowned out his screams, but Firekeeper had no difficulty imagining them.