Ignoring all else, Jedit again dropped to all fours. Snuffling a wide circle, eyes closed, Jedit sifted a thousand scents, old and new in his mind, and concentrated to find the smell he'd known in weeks of crossing the desert. Whiskers to the ground, dust tweaking his nostrils, Jedit smelled dogs, elephants, cats, rats, goats, and people, hundreds of them.
There. The snake-dry musky tang of Johan leaped into his nostrils, fresh and strong.
Eyes closed, still on all fours, Jedit charged.
Palmyrans screamed and scattered as the tiger careened into the crowd like a raging bull. People newly arrived to the marketplace were bowled over by slung blankets and saddles, or else they turned to run and careened into more arrivals coming to see the ruckus. Havoc hit the marketplace as Jedit Ojanen plowed a furrow like a tornado with his nose glued to the ground.
Behind Jedit clattered Simone and Wilemina, one dark, the other fair, both panting.
Wilemina gasped, "I never saw Jaeger bull past citizens before!"
"I'm not sure that is Jaeger!" rasped Simone. "Does he look bigger? And more orange?"
"Orange?" asked the archer and promptly tripped over a watermelon for not watching her feet.
On the tiger pressed, now in five- and eight-foot bounds like a wolf spider that bowled aside people and wares. The marketplace only got thicker, more crowded, more frenzied as people rushed in every direction. In seconds, Jedit had covered fifty feet of the marketplace, sifting and discarding a thousand smells to follow Johan's. Palmyrans jabbered and hurled insults and questions as the tiger raised his head from the invisible trail in the dirt. He sneezed hard enough to snap a man's neck.
"Can you sniff him out?" asked Simone. She and Wilemina had caught up. The tiger gave off heat in palpable waves. As the sun topped buildings, the two pirates scanned the marketplace.
Jedit's eyes were slits of amber-green. Ignoring yells and curses, scampering livestock and spilled fruit, he growled, "His scent is close, yet I don't see him! Is this more human witchery?"
"With Johan, damned likely," agreed Simone.
"He must be disguised!" chirped Wilemina. "He's notorious for that!"
"Disguised?" Yes, Jedit had forgotten in the heat of the chase. Diving once more, snuffling a circle with quivering whiskers, Jedit suddenly bunched his legs to pounce. People shrilled and split like a covey of quail.
All but one.
Directly before Jedit stooped an old woman in once-red robes. Unkempt white hair straggled over her hunched back, her rheumy brown eyes were buried in wrinkles, and her lips crawled over toothless gums. She carried a frayed basket woven of palm leaves. Despite her foreknowledge, Sister Wilemina shrieked for the crone to move or be killed. Simone the Siren, however, ripped her cutlass from its scabbard.
Roaring like a windstorm, the tiger-man leaped full-length and soared through the air. Like a great striped bird, near a thousand pounds of destruction hurtled at the crone. Claws flicked from massive paws to tear the woman to shreds. Jedit never even noticed that he burst two poles supporting an awning, or that his whipping tail upset a stack of dried gourds, or that a small cart of watermelons collapsed as one foot brushed it like a hammer blow. The tiger saw only his enemy, and he clawed the air to do or die.
At the same time, the old woman seemed to melt like a candle, blurring as if seen through water. Her form flowed upward like volcanic smoke issuing from a fissure. The basket fell to earth and rolled away. White hair blew away like dandelion fluff. Faded red robes flushed a vivid plum-purple. The crone's mottled brown skin turned ruddy red and was immediately covered with black stripes like a tiger's pelt. Tall reared the figure, no longer ascetic and bony like some desert hermit but lean and dangerous as a bloodied knife blade.
In Palmyra's marketplace stood the real Johan, Tyrant of Tirras, Emperor of the Northern Realms, foremost wizard of all Jamuraa. A travesty of a human, he was twisted by the marks of arcane sorcery: red skin, black tattoo stripes, a dark V between hairless brows, and living horns jutting from his chin and downtuming from his temples. He was clad in a slithery robe of iridescent purple like the skin of some giant lizard.
Worst, his eyes glistened coal black, mercilessly prepared to kill. Johan hissed an arcane spell as he whisked together red-black hands to warm a small stone plucked from the ground. Between his palms suddenly crackled a ball of lightning.
"Beware, Jaeger!" shouted Sister Wilemina.
Too late, for the great cat had already leaped in the air. Jedit Ojanen heard a brief snort, the only laugh Johan would allow himself, then the sizzling rock struck him with a blow to cripple an elephant.
Simone and Wilemina had suffered from the same spell earlier, so both flinched as the scorching sphere walloped Jedit in mid-air. Punished by magic, Jedit yelped. Yet the tiger managed to twist in the air faster than a human eye could follow. The crackling sphere smacked Jedit on his striped shoulder. Hair frizzled and caught fire, skin charred and curled. Jedit was seared across his shoulder and down his back, then the glowing miniature sun spanked off his lean hip and burned the tip of his thrashing tail. The sizzling spike sailed on to punch an adobe wall.
At the vicious stroke, enough power to kill a dozen men, Jedit Ojanen was blown from the sky. Knocked spinning, the tiger crashed on a heap of rugs. So hot did his fur burn that sparks set fire to red- and blue-patterned rugs that smoked with a dusty odor. Rolling, almost panicked by an animal's instinctive fear of fire, Jedit rolled over and over, smashing into a cart, bowling over a table, crushing baskets in a tangle of split wicker.
Running, Simone and Wilemina both chirped "Jaeger!" Still clutching swords, they plied callused hands to flip baskets and rugs and awnings aside. Revealed were orange-black stripes smeared red with bright blood.
Wilemina wailed, "He must be dead! He took the full force-"
"Get after Johan!" Simone pointed her cutlass at the purple-robed man who again fled. "He mustn't-whoa!"
A roar like a hurricane made the woman recoil. Jedit Ojanen exploded from the wreckage like a phoenix from a funeral pyre. The tiger bled freely from a long hideous slash down his beautiful hide, but he was hale and hearty-and fighting mad.
As the tiger launched past the two pirates, Sister Wilemina bleated, "Lady Caleria protect us all!"
The archer's amazed cry made Johan turn in his flight. Glancing over a shoulder, the ruddy mage glimpsed a vast expanse of snow-white belly and throat, white fangs long as his fingers, and black claws curving like a condor's talons, all not ten feet behind.
Johan gulped. "Impossible! It can't be."
Only a lurch and wild leap saved Johan's life. Claws swept by his scalp and shoulder, ticking his robe and skin and pricking bright drops of blood. A fold of lizard-skin robe was sheared away like lamb's wool by five razor talons. In one stroke, Johan stumbled half-stripped, so his bony red ribs and one arm were exposed to the rising desert sun. The mage actually shuddered, for that blow had come as close as the kiss of death, the closest chance ever of destroying Johan's mortality. Staggering against a shelf of leather purses and vests, Johan fumbled at shreds of clothing, his mind temporarily rattled past all reasoning. The tiger should be dead! Yet the creature raised a fearsome right paw to tear off Johan's horned head -and halted. Johan hardly dared breathe in case some unseen spell had been cast upon the cat. Blind with battle lust, the tiger should have torn Johan apart, for he cowered small and helpless as a blind monkey. Black claws were upraised to slash the mage's red skin from his bones. Yet clearly, Johan could see, some strange sight had frozen Jedit's hand in mid-air. Jungle rage warred with a human's keen mind in the tiger's skull as he stared at Johan's shoulder. – Flustered, the sorcerer glanced down to find his robe in shreds. Amid rags gleamed a round buckle or medallion. Big as a man's palm, the half-circle of twisted white metal formed a double-spiraled emblem like a stylized ram's head and horns.