“If the, uh, werewolf can’t help it, then this local one must be a stranger, not so? A native would have been plaguing the district for years.”
“Nay. Methinks as yon crofter said, belike the creature is one o’ theirs. For a thin taint o’ warg blood micht go unnoticed, unknown, through a lifetime, not being strong enough to reveal itself. ’Tis only o’ late, when the witchcraft forces ha’ grown so, that the sleeping demon was wakened. I make no doubt the werewolf himself is horror-struck. God help him if e’er the folk learn who he be.”
“God help any un you fear-haggard yokels may decide on for the warg,” grunted Hugi.
Holger scowled as he rode on to the gate. It made sense, of the weird sort that prevailed in this universe. Werewolfery... what was the word?... oh, yes, lycanthropy was probably inherited as a set of recessive genes. If you had the entire set, you were a lycanthrope always and everywhere—and would most likely be killed the first time your father found a wolf cub in his baby’s cradle. With an incomplete inheritance, the tendency to change was weaker. It must have been entirely latent and unsuspected in the poor devil of a peasant who bore the curse hereabouts: until the redoubled sorcery in the Middle World blew over the mountains and reinforced whatever body chemistry was involved.
He peered through the gloaming. The village was surrounded by a heavy stockade, with a walkway on which Sir Yve would make his rounds tonight. Inside were jammed narrow wooden houses of two or three stories. The streets that wound among there were mere lanes, stinking from the muck of animals packed in each night. The one on which he entered was a little broader and straighter, but not much. A number of women in long dresses and wimples, shock-haired children, and aproned artisans gaped at him as he passed the gate. Most carried torches that flared and sputtered under the deep-purple sky. Their voices chattered respectfully low as they trailed him.
He stopped near a street leading to one side, a tunnel of blackness walled by the surrounding houses and roofed by their overhanging galleries. Silhouetted above the ridge poles, he could just see the top of a square tower which doubtless belonged to Sir Yve’s hall. He leaned toward a husky man, who tugged his forelock and said, “Odo the blacksmith, sir, at your service.”
Holger pointed down the alley. “Is this the way to your lord’s house?”
“Aye, sir. You, Frodoart, is master at home yet?”
A young man in faded scarlet hose, wearing a sword, nodded. “I did but now leave him, armed cap-a-pie, having a stoup of ale ere he mounts the walls. I am his esquire, Sir Knight. I’ll guide you thither. This place is indeed a maze.”
Holger removed his helmet, for his hair was dank with sweat after being iron-clad the whole day and the dusk breeze was cool if smelly. He couldn’t expect anything lavish at the hall, he realized. Sir Yve de Lourville was obviously not rich—a boondocks knight with a handful of retainers, guarding these environs against bandits and administering a rough justice. Raoul had been filled with civic pride at the daughter’s betrothal to a younger son of a minor noble, west in the Empire.
Oh, well , he thought, something to eat and a place to sleep is all I could make use of anyhow.
The esquire lifted a torch ahead of him. He patted Papillon for encouragement and started down the lane.
A woman shrieked.
Holger had slapped his helmet back on and drawn his sword before her cry ended. Papillon whirled about. The people drew close to each other; voices rose. The guttering torchlight threw unrestful shadows on the houses across the main street; their upper stories were lost in blackness. Every window was shuttered and door closed, Holger saw. The woman screamed again, behind one of those walls.
A shutter, fastened with an iron bolt, splintered. The shape that sprang forth was long and shaggy, gray as steel in the thick red-shot gloom. It had butted its way out. As it dropped to the street, the muzzle lifted off the chest. Gripped between the jaws there squirmed a naked infant.
“The wolf!” choked the blacksmith. “Holy Mary, we’ve locked the wolf in with us!”
The child’s mother appeared at the window. “It burst in from the rear,” she howled witlessly. She stretched her arms toward the beast and them all. “It burst in and snatched Lusiane! There she is, there she is, God strike you down, you men, get my Lusiane back!”
Papillon sped forward. The wolf grinned around the baby.
Blood was smeared on her pink skin, but she still cried thinly and struggled. Holger -hewed. The wolf wasn’t there. Uncannily swift, it had darted between Papillon’s legs and was off along the street.
Frodoart the esquire plunged to intercept it. The wolf didn’t even break stride as it sprang over him. Ahead was another alley mouth. Holger whirled Papillon around and galloped in pursuit. Too late, though, he thought, too late. Once into that warren of lightless byways, the wolf could devour its prey and turn human again long before any search could—
White wings whirred. Alianora the swan struck with her beak at the warg’s eyes. It laid its ears back, twisted aside, and streaked toward the next exit. She swooped in front of it. Like a snowstorm full of buffetings, she halted the runner.
Then Holger had arrived. This far from the torches he was nearly blind, but he could see the great shadowy shape. His sword whistled. He felt the edge cleave meat. Lupine eyes flared at him, cold green and hating. He raised his sword, the blade caught what light there was and he saw it unbloodied. Iron had no power to wound.
Papillon struck with his hoofs, knocked the loup-garou to earth and hammered it. The hairy form rolled free, still unhurt. It vanished down the alley. But the child it had dropped lay screaming.
By the time the villagers pounded up, Alianora was human again. She held the girl-baby, smeared with blood and muck, against her. “Och, poor darling, poor lassie, there, there, there. ’Tis over wi’ this now. Ye’re no too mickle hurt, nobbut a wee bit slashed. Och, ’tis scared ye be. Think how ye can tell your ain children, the best knicht in the world saved ye. There, my love, croodle-doo—” A black-bearded man who must be the father snatched the infant from her, stared a moment, and fell to his knees, shaken with unpracticed weeping.
Holger applied the bulk of Papillon and the flat of his sword to drive the crowd back. “Take it easy,” he shouted. “Let’s have some order. The kid’s all right. You, you, you, come here. I want some torchbearers. Don’t stand jabbering. We’ve got to catch that wolf.”
Several men turned green, crossed themselves, and edged away. Odo the blacksmith shook a fist at the alley mouth and said, “How? This mud holds no tracks, nor the paving elsewhere. The fiend will reach his own house unfollowed, and turn back into one of us.”
Frodoart regarded the faces which bobbed in and out of moving shadows. “We know he’s none of us here,” said the esquire above the babble, “nor any of the herders at the gate. That’s some help. Let each man remember who stands nigh him. “
Hugi tugged Holger’s sleeve. “We can track him if ye wish,” he said. “Ma nase hairs be atwitch wi’ his stink.”
Holger wrinkled his own nose. “All I smell is dung and garbage.”
“Ah, but ye’re no a woods dwarf. Quick, lad, set me doon and let me follow the spoor. But mind ye stay close!”
Holger lifted Alianora back onto his saddle—the child’s father kissed her mired feet—and followed Hugi’s brown form. Frodoart and Odo walked on either side, torches aloft. Some score of men pressed behind the boldest villagers, armed with knives and staves and spears. If they caught the lycanthrope, Holger thought, it should be possible to hold him by main strength till ropes could be tied on. Then... but he didn’t like to think of what would follow.