The Witch War Cycle

Chapter seven

Chapter seven

Of the absence of blood and furNo other man in two worlds could have done it. Of that I am perfectly sure.

Seg’s bow snugged in his hand, where he had been polishing up the shaft as we talked. Now the bow snapped up, the arrow slashed from the quiver, the shaft was nocked, the bow bent, all in so smooth and wondrous a fashion as to amaze any young coy newly recruited into an archer regiment — as to amaze me, by Vox!

Seg loosed.

The werewolf, clearly visible by the fuzzy pink moonlight of The Maiden with the Many Smiles, leaped for the corner. The girl dangling from his jaws flopped about as the ganchark bounded on. The lethal gray form, spikey with menace, angular in motion and yet flowing with evil grace, rounded the corner and vanished.

Seg said: “I don’t believe it.”

Nath started to say something, stopped, cleared his throat, and then turned back. He went over to the table and poured himself a glass of red wine. His hand did not shake; I had the feeling that had it done so I would not have been surprised.

Seg shook his head.

“I hit him.”

He turned to me, and his handsome face was cast in as serious a mold as I’d ever seen it. “Dray — you know I do not boast over shooting, for that is folly. But when I hit, I know I hit. I hit that beast.”

“I believe you, Seg. Let us go down and find out.”

“The shaft should have taken him just below his forequarters, straight through. It would have pierced his heart.”

Nath said: “There is no reliable evidence to prove that gancharks have hearts.”

“Then he would have been hit sore. He would not have bounded on so fleetly—”

“Let’s go down,” I said, again.

The thing was unnerving. Seg knew when he hit. When a mortal being was struck by a clothyard shaft, fetched with the rosy feathers of the Zim-Korf of Valka, tipped by hardened steel, that being was struck through. And if Seg said he’d hit so as to pierce the heart, that mortal being was dead.

Dead.

The other answer to that equation rang evilly in my old vosk-skull of a head.

The jurukkers of the guard knew what they were about and the guardsmen fanned out past the gateway, covering the cross street as well as the one along which we now hurried. The Twins, eternally orbiting each other and throwing down their mingled light, joined the Maiden with the Many Smiles to drown the alleyway in pink radiance.

Two guards sprinted back toward us, and because they were of the Emperor’s Sword Watch their equipment did not jingle and jangle. The leader, a kampeon, saw me and yelled.

“Majister! The shaft!”

He reached us, slapped to a halt and held out Seg’s arrow. I took it.

“Thank you, Diarmin. There was no blood?”

“Not a drop, as Vikatu is my witness.”

I handed the shaft to its owner.

“Well?”

Seg Segutorio is a man of parts. He took the shaft between his powerful fingers, twirled it, checked the flights, and then he lifted the bright steel head to his nose and sniffed.

“Oiled steel,” he said. “Nothing else.”

The youngster paired off with the old sweat Diarmin and being instructed by him in soldierly virtues, had that clean-cut, pink, shining face that is so heartbreakingly vulnerable beneath the harsh iron brim of the helmet.

Now he swallowed down with a gulp, and said: “I think — majister — I thought—”

Diarmin had served with me for a long time and knew my ways, and what he could get away with. He bellowed: “Spit it out, jurukker! Do not keep the emperor waiting!”

“It was me who found the arrow, majister. When I picked it up I thought — that is—”

“Untangle your tongue, jurukker!” fairly foamed Diarmin, crimson that he was thus being shown up in front of his emperor.

“Yes, Deldar Diarmin — There was a tiny scrap of gray fur on the arrowhead—”

“Fur! Fur! Well, young Nairvon, where is it now?”

“I — I don’t know—”

“Dropped it, did you! Lost valuable evidence! That’s a charge for you, my lad. You’ll jump in the morning when the Hikdar sinks his teeth into you!”

“Yes, Deldar.”

“Now just a minute,” put in Seg. He waggled his arrow. “You’re positive there was a scrap of fur, Nairvon?”

“Yes, Kov Seg — well, almost certain.”

Deldar Diarmin opened his mouth and Seg got in first — just—

“But you didn’t drop it, did you?”

“No, jen, no. It was evidence.”

I said, “Deldar Diarmin, why don’t you and the jurukker go back up the alleyway with torches and look?”

“Quidang!” Diarmin’s voice boomed and rattled against the gray walls. “Jurukker Nairvon — bratch!”

The two guardsmen started off and Seg shouted after them: “Get some more of your comrades on the job.”

Nath na Kochwold had remained silent during this interchange. Now he drew a breath.

“I do not like to disbelieve in the word of young Nairvon. If Seg shot a wolf, and there was fur clipped off, then Nairvon dropped the evidence.”

Seg said, “But?”

“Ah, yes. If it was a werewolf then you might have clipped a considerable quantity of fur. But it would not be found.”

“And no blood.”

“Quite.”

The incongruousness of this military protocol, the Deldar bellowing, the youngster stammering, the feel of routine and orders and a settled way of life, when viewed against the eerie happenings, the breath of occult horror, struck me shrewdly. I did not think this damned werewolf was going to be dealt with in Standing Orders.

With that old intemperate rasp in my voice, I said, “Let’s get back and finish this business with Strom Volgo.”

My comrades agreed, and Nath said quietly: “I don’t think they’ll find any fur.”

“And I hit the beast, of that I am sure.”

“So that, Seg, as you hit what you shoot at, and the beast was not slain and did not drop blood...”

Nath shook his head. “This is going to be a bad business.”

“We must find out who that poor girl was.” I could still see that pathetic figure with dangling arms and legs, the white dress like a moth’s wing, clamped in the jaws of the wolf.

“And,” said Seg with a most ugly note in his voice, “what the hell she was doing out alone.”

When we returned to the upstairs room of The Piebald Zorca, Strom Volgo had donned his black iron mask.

No doubt, I thought, and my comrades must also have reasoned, he had decided this was none of his business.

The order of importance, as I saw it, of what lay ahead of us was: Firstly, to reinforce Turko and hold the front, and conjointly with this to ascertain the situation of Inch. Secondly, to deal with this werewolf; and, thirdly, to do what could be done for Natyzha Famphreon and her son Nath.

This I explained to Strom Volgo.

“I must accept the needle in this, majister. For I see your position. I rest content that you have given your word.”

Seg pulled his chin at this, but the deed had been done and there was no gainsaying it.

“Strom Volgo,” I said, halting him as he took his leave. “Allow me to send a half-squadron to see you safely out of Vondium.”

He hesitated. Then — “As you wish, majister. And my thanks.”

A sensible fellow, then...

In pursuance of the decision on precedence I had a perfect instrument to carry out the first task with me now in the shape of Nath na Kochwold. We went off back to the palace with the guard trotting along after, and I was half-amused to see they rode with bared weapons. If Seg shot the damn thing and it didn’t drop dead, then these fine lads wouldn’t do much better...

“Nath,” I said. “About Turko—”

“Ha! You want me to—”

“I want you to finish off training the Fifth Phalanx.”

He glowered at me.

“Very well. As you know, there is only one thing I like better than training a phalanx, and that is leading it in battle.”

“You’re a bloodthirsty villain, all right, Nath.”

“Oh, aye, sometimes.”

We’d rearranged the distribution of the various Phalanxes — or, rather, they had been rearranged when I’d been away from Vallia. The half-phalanx, or wing, we seldom thought of in those terms, that is, of being a half — rather, we thought of the wing as the Kerchuri, a unit in its own right, two of which formed a single Phalanx. The whole phalanx corps was thus organized.

I told Nath na Kochwold what I intended.

“I shall take the Sixth Kerchuri with me up to Turko. Vondium will be safe with the Ninth and Tenth.”

The Third Phalanx had a special place in our affections. The Sixth Kerchuri of the Third had been the unit to move into line and plug the gap when the savage clansmen astride their voves had almost broken through at the Battle of Kochwold. From that battle Nath took his name.

“Very well. After all, the Fifth is not really a green outfit. Plenty of the men served in the old Fifth.”

“Good.”

“And when you call on us I’ll bash a little more knowledge into ’em when we march up to join you.”

“As to that, Nath, I would hope to clear this problem without calling on you. Drak down in the southwest might call. And up in the northeast past Hawkwa country—”

Seg said gruffly, “We do well up there, Dray.”

“Aye,” confirmed Nath. “It’s mostly light troops to ride to counter raids. There is a case to be made for withdrawal of a Kerchuri.”

I said, “Talk it over with Farris.”

Truth to tell, it was these confounded girls who worried me. No matter how many times I told myself that I was just being plain stupid, I still felt that uncomfortable itch when I saw a Warrior Maiden in action. They looked splendid striding about in their tall black boots, with their long legs limber and lithe, their faces glowing with health, their eyes bright. That was all the facade, the parade, the fancy uniforms, the trumpets pealing, drums hammering and the flags flying.

The reality of action, of blood and death were far removed from the fairy-tale romance of the Jikai Vuvushis.

The palace was alive with lights when we returned. No one intended to be caught by a werewolf in the uncanny shifting shadows.

Garfon the Staff, our respectable and highly efficient majordomo, told me that Deb-Lu-Quienyin was waiting in the reception room outside my private quarters. Delia was not there, and she had left me a note, and Deb-Lu-Quienyin, answering the urgent request to return to Vondium, had had a tiring flight.

We went straight through shouting for wine and throwing off our capes. Deb-Lu smiled when he saw us and ceased from his pacing about the Walfargweave rugs.

“Lahal, Deb-Lu. You’ve heard all about this werewolf?”

“Lahal, majis — aye. A bad business. But there are ways and means.”

“Too right,” said Seg, seizing up a glass and looking around for the nearest bottle.

You will notice the way Deb-Lu and we spoke — no tiresome formalities, no swaths of lahals and majisters and polite inquiries after health. None of that at this fraught moment in Vondium’s history. Yet Deb-Lu and I had not seen each other for a long time — a damn long time, by Krun!

“Now that is what I expected to hear,” I exclaimed, taking the glass from Seg. “Although, San, there is still a chance that this beast is not a werewolf.”

Almost every time I see Deb-Lu-Quienyin in my mind’s eye and recall him with affection and awe, I seem inclined to say that he looked just the same. Well, of course he did, and yet looked changed at certain times. As a famed and feared Wizard of Loh, addressed as San, he was a member of the small band of brothers and sisters clustered about the emperor and empress. I was about to say a respected and valued member; but all the folk in that fellow and sistership were respected and valued.

No. There is still no doubt in my mind that of all the sorcerers on Kregen, the Wizards of Loh rank very very high. As you may be aware, I had only slowly been growing aware of their true powers. Looking at Deb-Lu now and feeling that familiar surge of affection for him, I saw he had taken off his enormous turban. His red Lohvian hair looked disheveled. He was your very figure of a powerful mage, and yet there were no runes embroidered upon his robes, no massive array of skulls and feathers and books. The Wizards of Loh were long past the need for material artifacts to assist in casting a spell.

He did have a staff. It stood propped against a chair. Deb-Lu used to say to me that he really had the staff to assist his weary old bones to hobble about — as you will see he liked to put on the pretense of advancing years in a most unKreganlike way. He must have picked up a deal of his complaining routine from old Hunch...

And that reminds me that there are a whole lot of folk living and working in Vondium who deserve a mention at this time, and yet whom I must for the moment abandon as the unfolding story of the Werewolf of Vondium takes precedence.

What Deb-Lu said was short, succinct — and pretty damn obvious, by Zair, had we listened and used our heads for something else than hanging pretty-feathered hats on.

“Dudinter,” said Deb-Lu-Quienyin. “Dudinter.”