Oswyl came alert first, Pen following his gaze to find Lunet jogging back to them. Her eyes were merry, her cheeks flushed beneath their smattering of freckles. Pen’s breath caught in anticipation.
She fetched up before them and bounced on her toes, all smugness. “Found your fox,” she announced. Even Oswyl was surprised into a smile.
“Ah!” Pen nearly sprang to his aching feet; his spine straightened. “Then it was a fox, we were right! Where?”
Thala handed over a cup of water, which Lunet drained, smacking her lips. “Thanks, needed that. The den’s nearly in the center of this tract, about as deep into the woods as you can go without starting out again. On a steep slope, really tangled. But there’s a hitch. It looks like your demon has gone into a vixen with cubs.”
Pen was taken aback. Somehow, in all his imaginings, he’d pictured a dog-fox, a bachelor ready to travel, although upon reflection that had only ever been half the chance.
“She seemed very distressed,” said Lunet. “It was hard to tell if that was the demon part, the vixen part, or both. I haven’t tried to get too close to her yet. I thought maybe I’d better come get you, first.”
“Did she see you? Or sense you?”
Lunet nodded. “She gave me rather a frantic look, before she shook the cubs off her teats and sped away to hunt. Not the usual time of day for a fox to hunt, but I can see why she had to. Six babies. Oh, Mother and Brother, they were so darling. All fluff and flurry, tumbling over each other and chewing on their siblings’ ears and tails. She barked at them, such a strange sound foxes make, you know, and they retreated inside. I left a brace of rabbits just in front of the den as a peace offering, then I hurried to get you.”
Pen wondered what shortcuts a shaman might undertake to hunt—barehanded!—and if they were anything like the easy devastation he could now wreak, if he chose.
“We should get back soon,” Lunet went on. “She might become afraid and move them.”
Pen pondered this unexpected development. If he’d had trouble imagining the damaged demon’s state of mind before, the puzzle was redoubled. The vixen certainly had her own present obsession, and the demon had been imprinted by at least one sorceress who’d been a mother herself. How were the two fighting it out in the animal’s brain? Or had they achieved some bizarre sort of cooperation? Women did that…
Sometimes, agreed Des, seeming as fascinated as he was. And he was reminded that of her twelve previous riders, six had once borne children themselves, if all before they’d joined with the demon. Of Des’s two centuries of memories, experiences, and disturbing dream-fragments that Pen did not talk about to anyone, those intimacies led the list.
Eight, murmured Des, counting the lioness and the mare.
Ah. Yes. Quite. So, maybe one of them had been through something like this before. Des, help me out, here.
A rather long pause. Then, slowly, as if feeling her way forward herself, Des offered, Perhaps we’d better ask the vixen.
“Huh,” said Pen aloud, and then as much to his human companions as to Des, “We can’t leave her unguarded, out there. Not with all this unexplained fox-slaughter going on.”
There was a general murmur of agreement, and a speeding of the consumption of lunch.
As Pen was chewing down his bread and cheese, Nath lumbered across the yard, the last of their hunting party to report in. He looked his companions over. “Treuch not back yet?” he inquired.
“Did you find him?” asked Oswyl, sitting up.
“I met him in the woods, setting snares. He asked who I was. I said I was a visitor come with his lord, who wanted him to come back to the house. He said he would, as soon as he was done with his task. I drew off and waited till he’d gone, then tripped the snare and followed.”
“Then he should have come in ahead of you,” said Oswyl.
“Did he seem suspicious of you?” asked Inglis. “Accuse you of poaching or anything?”
“No, our exchange was brief. Civil enough, I suppose. Then he limped off.”
“…Limped?” said Penric. “He didn’t have a limp yesterday. Was it a new injury, could you tell?”
Nath waved a thick hand. “Old, I’d say. He walked with a staff. Big fellow, grizzled beard. Well-spoken, though, for the little he said.”
Inglis and Penric looked at each other and blinked. “How old was the man?” asked Penric.
“Maybe the near side of fifty?”
“Not… around forty, dark-haired, lean, about Inglis’s height?” asked Pen.
“No, closer to my size. And shape.” Nath shrugged bearish shoulders.
“That wasn’t Treuch,” said Inglis. “Or… it wasn’t the man who said he was Treuch yesterday.”
“He answered to Treuch, when I called out to him,” said Nath.
“What exactly did you say to him?” asked Oswyl.
“I said, Hello there, are you Baron kin Pikepool’s forester, Treuch? and he said… well, he actually said, What’s it to you?”
“Could be Treuch’s mystery visitor,” said Oswyl.
“Or just some random poacher,” said Kreil, though his ears had pricked with interest.
Really, murmured Des, young Kreil makes me want to throw a stick, just to see what would happen. Pen ignored that one. Nath’s description made him deeply uneasy, but there were, inevitably, any number of benign explanations for the man, as Pen was sure someone senior to himself would point out.
“What was he using to bait his snare?” asked Inglis.
“A very dead fish.”
“Not after rabbits, then,” said Pen. “Or anything else you’d want to eat.”
“I wouldn’t say so, no,” agreed Nath.
Oswyl drummed his fingers on the bench, but, being Oswyl, added no more.
It was decided Kreil would stay at the manor with the Grayjays, in case Treuch or the mystery man returned, to help or run messages as needed. Once they’d secured the demon-fox, Pen wanted to secure the bearded stranger as well, if only to settle his doubts, assuming he could persuade the tired, hot shamans to search the woods a second time. That odd exchange with Nath could have just been a poacher being cleverly evasive. Or, if he’d been an honest man, he might turn up on his own, in which case Oswyl could evaluate him. Oswyl, Pen was sure, would jump to no conclusions.
Pen, Inglis, and Nath followed Thala into the forest once more.
They’d tramped a good three miles off the path, including laboring in and out of one wrong ravine, before Thala put a finger to her lips and slowed, her steps becoming stealthy. Pen tracked her pointing hand to a pile of deadfall and wild grapevines on the gully’s opposite slope, and unfolded his Sight. The fox family was at home, judging by the warm pile of squirming life he could sense below the thin green screen.
And so was their mother, by the unmistakable density and roil of a chaos demon therein. The roil instantly grew tense and dismayed; for once, Sight ran two ways, instead of Pen’s more usual secret spying.
Just as humans were natural enemies of foxes, there was every reason for the demon to presume a Temple sorcerer was an arresting officer come to carry it off to some execution-by-saint, and no savior. That was certainly a grim task both he and Des had carried out before. Des’s density tended to daunt lesser demons, and the fact that she was not ascended was apparently no reassurance. Pen did not see how he was to make up for that by any slathering-on of innocent charm to the demon’s host this time.