Half stunned, half dazzled, I heard something strange in that voice, something more than its slight burr. But then for the first time one of my pursuers spoke, and I could imagine no stranger voice than that. Gargling, growling, grating like feet on frosty gravel, it ran ice in my blood to hear it, wholly, horribly inhuman. ‘Grudge the Wolves their honest meat, does thee? Hie thee back to thine own bounds, bitch, and mind what’s thine!’
Bitch?
A rich untroubled laugh answered him. As my eyes adjusted I gaped at the newcomer. A belt of gold plates sparkled over tight black jerkin and breeches, much like Jyp’s, and a long sword swung from it. But for all their tightness it still took me a moment to realize this was a woman, and quite an attractive one at that. Her face clouded with anger as she stared down at me, and it rang in her voice. ‘So ye’re snapping after strangers, now, are ye? Off, away, back aboard that hulk of a Chorazin else I leather a lesson on your hides! That’s no fit meat for puppies!’
They stood fast above me, and their laughter was ghastly. ‘Then come thee, vixen! An’ take it from ’em!’
Before the words were done she swung up her scabbard and with a sharp hiss of metal she drew on them. Animal-swift they responded, snarling, shifting to a fighting stance – and forgot me. Their feet lifted from my arms. ‘Up, boy!’ yelled the woman. ‘Up, and t’heels! Run!’ And with that she charged straight at them.
Run again. Run as I’d been told to, and leave someone else in the lurch; a woman, at that, who’d saved my neck without even knowing who I was. And perhaps it was being called boy …
‘Like hell!’ I said, and flung myself at the ankles of the nearest Wolf. It was like butting a lamppost, but I’d played rugby at school; he yelped with surprise and went crashing down on the stones of the wharf. His sword skittered across the paving. I meant to jump on him, but then the woman and the other Wolves collided in a clash of steel. One Wolf staggered back from the impact, but the other plunged in, his great cutlass of a sword flung high, and brought it cleaving down. It looked unstoppable, but the woman’s own blade caught it; and hers was longer, and hardly any narrower, a huge straight sabre of a thing. Its hilt enclosed her hand in an intricate basket of gold-work; against that the Wolf’s blade jangled and was caught. A sudden slash drove it back against him, skipped free – slid upward – and straight into his throat. The Wolf reeled, staggered, dark blood welling between his scrabbling fingers; he collapsed, kicking, she spun about to face the other –
A boot glanced off my temple and sent me sprawling, head ringing, eyes unfocusing. Rolling over, trying to clear my head, I saw the woman and the second Wolf cross blades in a flickering sequence of thrust and parry. Her guard sagged, the Wolf lunged – and shot right by her as she danced lightly aside, and ran the sabre with ruthless ease right into his unguarded armpit. But the third Wolf, mine, had had time to retrieve his sword, and even as the woman’s sword sank deep into his fellow’s side he aimed a violent slash at her.
Or tried to; because, staggering up, I’d wrapped both arms around his swordarm, and hung on. He was almost strong enough to carry me along with him, but it made nothing of his cut. Then the air sang above me, like the beat of a great wing, and I felt the shock down my arms. The body jerked and bowed like a cornstalk in a reaper and I let go hastily as the head flew up on a dark fountain. I shut my eyes, and heard two distinct splashes from the water below.
When I looked up, the woman was swiftly rifling the pockets of the other two bodies, stuffing the proceeds down her cleavage. She grinned. ‘Whole, are ye? That was rudely well done, for a man unarmed. How’d ye set those hyaenas on your traces?’
‘Jyp –’ I croaked, and she stopped.
‘Jyp, ye say?’ she barked. ‘What of him? And where?’
‘At the warehouse – got to help him –’ Her hand caught me under the arm, hauled me up like a kid.
‘Follow then! Fast!’
I only stopped to scoop up one of the fallen cutlasses, but even so she left me well behind. Sword still in hand, she was almost at the corner, her soft-topped boots slapping the stones. But I caught her up as she reached the forecourt, and together, no word spoken, we charged against the door. Nobody had locked it; it flew wide, till it juddered against another body – another Wolf, not Jyp – and the dim light flooded across the roof. From the back somewhere came the clang of metal, and a shout. The woman plunged that way, I after her, and down a long aisle between stacks of packing cases. Acrosss the far end a shadow dodged, and after him others, taller, brandishing swords and what looked like fish-spears, vicious tridents; some stopped, saw us and turned, menacing.
She didn’t stop. Straight into the midst of them she ploughed. Her sword slashed this way and that with a noise like wind in phone lines, and there was a horrible croaking scream; one Wolf fell kicking, another crossed blades with her, but another yet ducked under her arm. He was coming for me! The cutlass felt like a ton of iron in my hand, but I stuck it out in the best imitation of her lunge I could manage. The Wolf, still straightening up, ran on the point; but I was too far away. He jumped back with a shrill curse, and hacked at me; I tried to parry, but the sheer force of the impact smashed the hilt right out of my fingers and toppled me back against a packing case. The blow smashed right into it and through, and sliced my neck hairs before the splintering wood stopped it. The Wolf snarled, ripped it free – and was felled where he stood by a slash through the back of his neck.
He slumped like a coat off a hanger. The woman swung back and stabbed at the one scrabbling on the floor, then seized me by the arm and dragged me after her, shaking my stinging fingers. Together we sped down another aisle, past another twitching body, and around again. Ahead loomed a stack of planking, the air heavy with the sweet sappiness of cut wood. A minor riot was developing round its base, with Wolves hopping up and jabbing their weapons viciously at something I couldn’t see. One was clambering up like a gross spider, almost at the top, but the last board he hung on tilted suddenly, swung out and tipped him and a minor avalanche of planks right down onto the heads of his fellows.
Into the midst of the melee, blonde hair flying, the woman charged with a carolling war-cry. The Wolves swung to meet her with a chorus of ghastly snarls and the narrow aisle erupted in a tumult of bangs, crashes, splintering wood and shrieks. This way and that they fought her, but in the narrow way no more than two or three could reach her at once, and among the scattered planking she was far more agile then they. I saw one flung back and sag down, another run through, double up and drop, another –
Why I went after her, unarmed idiot that I was, I don’t and didn’t know; maybe her sheer fury swept me up, maybe I was too scared to be left alone. I leapt up on a plank, only to fall off with a yell as a Mohawk-crested Wolf sprang up at the other end. I hadn’t expected their eyes to gleam green that way in the near-dark; it damn near threw me. He lunged at me with his trident, I dropped and it hit the stack behind me and stuck, quivering. A long hand snaked out and seized me by the throat, held me pinned while he struggled to work it loose; I lashed out with my foot. He howled shrilly. He was human enough there, anyhow, but it didn’t put him off one whit. Snarling seventy kinds of murder, he left the trident, plucked a massive cutlass from the folds of his coat – then dropped it and collapsed as a plank came whistling down edgewise on his skull. After it, with a wild rebel yell, flew Jyp, flinging himself down from the pile onto the remaining Wolves. Caught off-balance between him and the woman, they wavered – and she struck. One, two, it was like an explosion hurling them back, and they sprawled twitching where they fell; another folded violently as Jyp’s sword slammed into his stomach, but the tall Wolf behind him seized that chance to slide past and run at the woman. Only he saw me first …