Jerdren’s excited voice rose above the clamor of fighting. “That’s got ’em, men! One more of ’em bleeding and—sure enough, there they go! No, stay put!” he ordered sharply. “No point in giving ’em cause to turn in the dark out there and come against us. We’ll clean up, wait for daybreak, and move out. Willow, where’d that brute of a cat come from?”
Light flared from Mead’s outstretched hands, illuminating the oak and its occupant: A tawny, cream and black cat at least as long as Eddis was tall spat and snarled in fury from its perch.
“It should run from light,” she whispered. Why isn’t it running? Why, for that matter, had it attacked a lighted camp?
The beast vaulted onto a higher branch and edged out over the mage, ears slowly going flat. Mead fell back a pace and began another muttered spell. M’Baddah thrust one of his fresh-made torches into the fire and handed the spluttering branch to Eddis. When he started across open ground toward the oak with another, Willow held up a hand.
“Stay where you are! It has already killed one man, and you cannot reach it with that anyway.”
“It’s not showing proper fear of fire or light,” Blorys said. “It just pounced, caught that man by the throat, shook him, and started dragging him into the tree. That’s not natural!”
“Arrow!” one of the Keep men called out. Eddis ducked down as an arrow sang over her head and buried itself deep in the branch just in front of the massive cat. The beast snarled and snapped it with a slap of one massive paw, but stayed where it was.
“Don’t flush it down here!” Jerdren ordered sharply. “It’s already killed once! If we can scare it off—!”
“And how do you plan on that?” Eddis demanded.
M’Baddah handed his torch to one of the spearmen, strung his bow, and fished out one of his arrows with a thickness just behind the point. He held that in the fire until it caught, took careful aim, and fired, just as sparks exploded upward from Mead’s outstretched hands. The arrow just missed the cat, but Mead’s spell didn’t. Eddis smelled burned hair. The cat screamed, half-spun on its branch, and leaped for the ground. It was a long blur of gold and black, flying across the clearing, then it was gone. They heard it squalling, well to the north, then nothing.
6
Eddis’ legs folded under her. Her skin went chill and damp. M’Baddah dropped down next to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“Everything is fine now, my Eddis,” he murmured. “The beast is gone and so are the orcs—the two who were able to flee.”
Behind them, someone was building up the fire, and she could hear Jerdren calling out sharp orders.
“We’ll search those brutes before we drag the bodies out of camp. Any gold or gems they might have on ’em—well, I’d say we’ve earned those, all of us. Eddis?”
“I’m here!” she called back, and for a wonder her voice was steady.
“Just checking! M’Baddah, we need some of that salve of yours over here. Got a couple nasty cuts.”
“I will tend the wounded,” Mead said as he came back into the light. “Orc blades are sometimes poisoned.” He murmured something to Willow, who set an arrow to his string and stayed by the oak, gazing out northward. The mage hesitated as M’Baddah helped Eddis to her feet.
“Are you all right, Eddis?” he asked. “You look pale.”
“I feel pale,” she said and licked her lips. “I hate lions. I really hate them. They eat people! I came out here to fight bandits, not to get eaten!”
Mead smiled briefly and squeezed Eddis’ fingers.
“I had forgotten that about you.” The smile was gone as he glanced back toward the tree. “But there are worse ways to die. That man—he never knew what struck him.”
She merely nodded, and the mage went on to deal with the wounded. Four men down, Eddis thought, and their provisioner was limping.
Get control of yourself, she thought. Jerdren would find it amusing, and she wouldn’t enjoy being the butt of his heavy-handed humor.
Sure enough, there he was when she turned around, grinning across the fire at her.
“Buck up, Eddis,” he said cheerfully. “We held our own against orcs, and the big cat ran off, didn’t it?”
She glared at him.
“It may not have run as far as we would like,” Mead said as he knelt to pour water over bloody fingers.
“It can’t run as far as I would like,” Eddis muttered. Jerdren didn’t seem to hear her.
“Ah look, Mead. The animal wasn’t sick, was it? Stubborn, maybe, or just simply hungry, but it did finally run!”
Mead shook his head. “It is not sick. It was startled, but only when fire actually touched it. The one who controls it may send it back against us. If I am right about why I was not aware of it until it killed, why it came into the firelight, and why it did not flee the noise or my light spell…”
He shrugged and fell silent.
Jerdren laughed. “Control? Someone out here in the midst of this gods-forsaken wilderness controls a mountain lion?” He held up a hand, forestalling comment. “Look, we have plenty to do between now and daybreak. If there’s no immediate threat, tell us about this control later, when we re on the move.”
“I cannot tell, any more than I could sense the cat earlier,” Mead said. “What I felt earlier was the sense of cold, human purpose in the beast. That is gone now, but I am no longer sure that I will even be able to detect that much, if it should return. The spell is human, I think, but turned. Evil.”
“A black sorcerer?” M’Whan asked.
“Perhaps,” the mage replied. “But I think the man is not so much evil as mad.”
Jerdren stared at the elf in visible disbelief.
“Uh, mage?” One of the Keep men came forward. “It’s said there’s a madman out here in the wilds. Some have it that he was one of the old Lord’s priests, and others that it’s only a tale. No one’s ever seen him, or if they did, they didn’t survive it. But I know men who’ve come hunting out here, and they’ve heard wild laughter.”
“You didn’t tell us that!” Jerdren said. He sounded exasperated. “I asked for any information that any of you might have, and here you hold out on me… ?”
“It’s fable,” one of the spearmen said defensively. “Just another of those tales that everyone hears but only children believe.”
Mead shook his head. “The cat was real, and so is the spell.”
“Well, never mind,” Jerdren said finally. Another of their guards brought over two heavy leather purses that clinked when he handed them over. Jerdren poured the contents into his hand and grinned.
“There’s something like—seventeen gold pieces and two red stones in all.” He slid the whole into one bag, tossed the other aside, and snugged down the ties. “I’ll hold this, but we’ll share equally.”
Eddis stowed her arrows and knelt to roll up her blankets as two of the Keep men went to deal with the body of the man the cat had killed. In the end, there wasn’t much they could do but cover him with fallen oak leaves and take his spear and daggers.
“Look, Jerdren,” Eddis started, “I see no point in staying here until daylight. Especially after what Mead’s told us. I say we break camp now and move south again.”
“What if there’s more orcs out there?” he asked.
“We fight them, what else?”
“I agree with Eddis,” Blorys said, one hand coming down hard on his brother’s shoulder. “With a mountain lion prowling around here, you can wager there’s no robbers’ camp. Especially if the cat’s under someone’s control. Don’t look at me like that, Jers. We’ve done what you wanted, which was to eliminate this part of the forest first. No one’s going to get any more sleep, and it’s nearly dawn anyway.”