His comrade had seen nothing but his own drooping eyelids. “What?” he mumbled.
The first sentinel pointed at a gully about thirty yards away. “It went in there,” he said. “It looked like a dog. A big one!”
An argument ensued. Both elves knew there were no dogs in Inath-Wakenti, but the first insisted he had not been mistaken. Whatever it was, he had seen something. The discussion grew heated, but he remained adamant. He went to find the captain of the night watch and report the sighting.
The beast noted the departure of the sentinel. Only one elf remained, and the barrier at that spot was only chest-high, made of loose stones. He couldn’t hope for better odds than that. Belly low to the turf, he crept forward. Soon he was close enough to hear the crackle of bonfires and to smell wood burning. He could smell laddad too. Unlike the pungency of unwashed humans, laddad scent was redolent of dry grass, like a haymow.
Gathering his long legs beneath him, Shobbat sprang.
He hit the laddad sentinel in the back, and the two of them went down in a heap. Shobbat’s jaws locked onto the laddad’s throat. How easy it would be to tear the elf apart. Part of him wanted to taste the hot blood flowing, but enough of his humanity remained to resist that savagery. He held on until the laddad succumbed to lack of air and lost consciousness.
Pressing on, Shobbat kept to the shadows, avoiding bonfires and the packs of alert laddad patrolling the camp. His keen nose detected the aroma of smoked meat. He tracked the tantalizing odor. Once he almost blundered into the path of several mounted warriors. The riders didn’t notice him, but their horses did. The front pair reared and lashed out with their shod hooves. Shobbat withdrew quickly into the deep shadows between two large tents. The riders calmed their mounts and moved on.
Shobbat’s nose led him at last to a round tent with a conical roof. It was guarded by a pair of spear-armed laddad who walked around it in opposite directions. Getting past them was simple He waited until they met and moved on; then he sprinted for the tent. He put his nose under the fabric and shoved himself beneath.
Within, the tent was dark and full of savory smells. Five goat haunches hung above him. Shobbat tore one down and devoured it immediately. When he reared up to drag down a second, he saw there were only three remaining, not four. Instantly wary, he dropped to his belly. Although he watched and listened to the limits of his beastly senses, he detected no one inside the tent. Perhaps he had miscounted the number originally. The flesh was hard and dry, almost wooden, but to Shobbat’s starved stomach, it was ambrosia from the gods. He pulled down a second haunch to eat. He intended to take the last two with him. As he ate, he glanced up.
Only one haunch remained.
That stopped him cold. He might have miscounted by one, but not two. The meat was disappearing even as he stood directly beneath it. Without taking his eyes from the last hanging haunch, he backed away until he came up against the tent wall. The air around the haunch shimmered. Tiny sparks of light darted this way and that. They focused on the goat leg, surrounding it in a faint halo of purple light. The light faded. When it was gone, so was the meat.
The same phenomenon began to swirl around the half-eaten haunch on the ground. Unwilling to let his dinner vanish, Shobbat hurled himself onto the meat. Snatching it up in his jaws, he shook it vigorously. The sparkling aura dissipated, leaving his meal behind. Unfortunately, his noisy movements caught the attention of the guards. They ran in, one of them bearing a torch. Seeing him standing in the middle of the tent, a half-chewed goat haunch in his mouth, they shouted for help. Shobbat galloped between them, knocking them aside.
Outside he immediately ran into a quartet of warriors. Had they been mounted, he would have died beneath their horses’ hooves. As they were on foot, he was able to dart between them and escape.
A hue and cry arose behind him. Belatedly, an arrow hissed by his head. Shobbat laid back his ears and ran for all he was worth. The rumble of horses on his left drove him the opposite direction, into a welter of tents. He threaded his way among them, leaving chaos in his wake and earning swipes from tools in the hands of terrified laddad. One bold youth tried to bar his way with a loaded crossbow. Shobbat, goat haunch still firmly clamped in his jaws, leaped over the youngster’s head, leaving her staring after him in impotent surprise.
He rounded a corner and veered into a broader avenue, choosing it because it was not lit by a bonfire. He quickly discovered his mistake. Several laddad were standing outside a very large, patched tent. Shobbat had blundered into their midst before realizing they were there. It was astonishing enough to find himself facing General Hamaramis, commander of the laddad khan’s army, and Kerianseray, the khan’s warrior-wife, but the identity of the other female in the group was even more amazing: Sa’ida, high priestess of Elir-Sana.
When he’d first become a beast, Shobbat had gone to the Temple of Elir-Sana seeking help to return to his true state. Instead, the high priestess had driven him away. Hunger forgotten, Shobbat dropped the goat haunch, bared his yellow fangs, and snarled at Sa’ida.
Kerianseray and the other warriors drew their swords. Shouts and the sound of running feet told Shobbat the mob that had chased him from the provisions tent was arriving as well.
“Hold!” The voice of Sa’ida carried over the tumult, silencing it. “This is no ordinary beast. He is as foreign here as we are.” She named Shobbat, to universal astonishment.
Fury shook Shobbat. He should kill the worthless woman for having refused him aid, but the forest of naked blades before him and the angry crowd behind argued for a different tack.
“Don’t… kill… me,” he rasped, lowering his head.
Various exclamations of shock came from the laddad, and Sa’ida said, “He bears the curse of a powerful sorcerer.”
“Fay’trus!” Shobbat hissed, head bobbing up and down vigorously. “Kill Fay’trus!”
The laddad in front of him muttered among themselves and two departed, but Kerianseray advanced on him, sword still out, and his attention focused on her. “You’re our enemy,” she told him. “You’ve caused untold suffering with your plots!”
She edged to one side and he shifted to keep her in view. “My country… my crown!”
“Now!” she cried.
The two elves who’d left the group had worked their way around to flank him. They came charging at him from each side. The mob was still behind him. He had no place to go but forward.
He launched himself not at Kerianseray, but at the traitorous priestess. For siding with foreigners against her own prince he’d have her eyes for amulets.
Sa’ida stood calmly, awaiting his attack. At the last moment, she raised her hands and mouthed a single word. Shobbat froze in midleap as if stuck in amber. She flung her hands apart, and he up shot into the sky like a missile from a catapult.
He tumbled nose over tail through the air. When he finally landed in a dry ravine, loose sand softened the blow somewhat, but the impact still drove the breath from his lungs. He lay gasping for several long minutes, grateful to have survived such a fall.
The laddad camp was a distant glow on the southern horizon. The meddlesome Sa’ida had thrown him several miles deeper into the valley. She’d kept the laddad from hacking him to bits but lost him his goat haunch and his way. On a day soon to come, Shobbat would mete out a fitting punishment.
The morning wind brought a new scent to his nose. Faint and fetid, the odor was one he had tasted before, when he was still a man. it belonged to Faeterus. The sorcerer had passed this way.