Hugi wound down the lanes for several minutes. He emerged in the marketplace, which was cobbled and showed a little lighter under the stars. “Aye, clear as mustard, the scent,” he called. “Naught i’ the world has a stench like a werebeast in his animal shape.” Holger wondered if glandular secretions were responsible. The stones rang hollow under Papillon’s shoes.
The street they took off the market square was also more or less paved, and comparatively wide. Here and there were lighted houses, but Hugi ignored the people inside. Straight he ran, until a cry went up at Holger’s back.
“No!” groaned Frodoart. “Not my master’s hall!”
14
THE KNIGHT’S DWELLING stood on a plaza of its own, opposite the church and otherwise hemmed in with houses. Kitchen and stables were separate buildings. The hall was unimpressive, a thatched wooden affair not much larger than the average bungalow in Holger’s world. It was T-shaped, with the left branch of the cross-arm rising in the tower he had noticed before. The front was at the end of the T’s upright, and closed. Light gleamed from shuttered windows; dogs clamored in the stables.
Hugi approached the iron-studded door. “Straight in here the warg fled,” he declared.
“With my master’s family alone!” Frodoart tried the latch. “Barred. Sir Yve! Can you hear me? Are you well?”
“Odo, cover the rear,” snapped Holger. “Alianora, get aloft and report anything unusual.” He rode up to the door and knocked with the pommel of his sword. The blacksmith gathered several men and ran around in back. Hugi followed. More people streamed into the square. By fugitive yellow torch gleams, Holger recognized some of the herders among them. Raoul the peasant pushed through the crowd to join him, spear in hand.
The knocking boomed hollow. “Are they dead in there?” sobbed Frodoart. “Burst this down! Are you men or dogs, standing idle when your lord needs you?”
“Are there any back doors?” Holger asked. The blood thudded in his temples. He had no fear of the werewolf, nor even any sense of strangeness. This was right: the work for which he had been born.
Hugi threaded a way among legs and rattled his stirrup for attention. “No other door, but windows eneugh, each locked tighter nor the last,” the dwarf reported. “Yet the warg ha’ no left this bigging. I snuffed everywhere aboot. E’en had he jumped from yon tower, I’d ha’ covered the ground where he maun land. Noo all ways oot are blockaded. We ha’ him trapped.”
Holger glanced around. The villagers had stopped milling; they surrounded the hall, packed and very still. Torchlight fluttered across a woman’s frightened pale face, a man’s sweating hairiness, a startling gleam of eyeballs in shadow. Weapons bristled above, spears, axes, bills, scythes, flails. “What about servants?” he asked Frodoart.
“None in there, sir,” said the esquire. “The house servants are townsfolk, who go home after dark, leaving only old Nicholas to do for the family. I see him yonder, as well as the stablehands... Get us inside!”
“I’m about to, if you’ll give me some room.”
Frodoart and Raoul cleared a space with well-meant if brutal efficiency. Holger stroked Papillon’s mane and murmured, “Okay, boy, let’s see what we’re good for.” He reared the horse. The forefeet smashed against the panels. Once, twice, thrice, then the bolt tore loose and the door sprang open.
Holger rode into a single long room. The dirt floor was strewn with rushes. Above the built-in benches along the walls hung weapons and hunting trophies. Dusty battle banners stirred among the rafters. Sconced candles lit the place fairly well, showing it empty down to a doorway at the end. Beyond must lie the crossbar of the T, private apartments of Sir Yve and his family. A yell rose from the men who crowded behind Holger. For that doorway was blocked by a form shining steely in the candleglow.
“Who are you?” The man waved a sword above his shield. “What is this outrage?”
“Sir Yve!” exclaimed Frodoart. “The wolf has not harmed you?”
“What wolf? What the devil are you up to? You, sirrah, what excuse have you for forcing your way in? Are you a blood-enemy of mine? If not, by God’s death, I can soon make you one!”
Holger dismounted and walked close. Sir Yve de Lourville was a tall, rather thin man with a melancholy horse face and drooping gray mustaches. He wore more elaborate armor than the Dane, a visored casque, corselet, brassards, elbow-pieces, cuisses, greaves, plus chain-mail. His shield bore a wolf’s head erased, sable on barry of six, gules and argent, which Holger found eerily suggestive. If some distant ancestor had been a full-fledged loup-garou, the fact might be hushed up by later generations, but could linger as a traditional coat of arms...
“I’m called Holger du Danemark. The werewolf appeared before me as well as many other people. Only by God’s mercy did we rescue the baby it had stolen. Now we’ve tracked it here.”
“Aye,” said Hugi. “The trail runs clear to yersel’.”
A gasp went among the commoners, like the first sigh of wind before a storm.
“You lie, dwarf! I’ve sat here this eventide. No beast entered.” Sir Yve jabbed his sword toward Holger. “None are present but my lady, who’s ill, and my two children. If you claim aught else, you must prove it on my body.”
His voice wobbled. He wasn’t a very good blusterer. Raoul was the first to snarl, “If matters be as you say, Sir Yve, then one of your own must be the fiend.”
“I forgive you this time,” said Sir Yve frantically. “I know you’re overwrought. But the next man who speaks such words will dangle from the gallows.”
Frodoart stood with the tears whipping down his cheeks. “Dwarf, dwarf, how can you be sure?” he groaned.
Sir Yve seized upon the question. “Aye, who would you trust—this misshapen mannikin and this hedge-knight, or your lord who has warded you all these years?”
A boy of fourteen or so appeared behind him, slender and blond. He had put on a helmet, snatched sword and shield, in obvious haste, for otherwise he wore the colorful tunic and hose which was the local equivalent of a white tie. Of course, thought Holger faintly, in an outpost of civilization every aristocrat dressed for dinner.
“Here I am, father,” panted the youth. His green eyes narrowed at Holger. “I am Gui, son of Yve de Lourville, and though not yet knighted I call you false and defy you to battle.” It would have been more impressive if his voice hadn’t developed an adolescent crack, but was nonetheless touching.
Sure, why not? The lycanthrope is a perfectly decent person, except when the skin-turning rage is upon him.
Holger sighed and put away his blade. “I don’t want to fight,” he said. “If your people don’t believe me, I’ll go away.”
The commoners shifted about, stared at the floor, back at Holger and Yve. Frodoart aimed a furtive kick at Hugi, who dodged. Then Odo the smith came in the door and forced a path for Alianora. “The swan-may would speak,” he trumpeted. “The swan-may who saved Lusiane. Be quiet, there, you muttonheads, ere I clobber you.”
A hush fell until they could hear the dogs howl outside. Holger saw Raoul’s knuckles whiten about his spear. A little man in priestly robe went to his knees, crucifix in hand. Gui’s beardless jaw dropped. Sir Yve crouched as if wounded. No eye left Alianora. She stood slender and straight, the candleglow shimmering in the coppery-brown hair, and said:
“Some o’ ye must ken my name, I who dwell by Lake Arroy. I mislike brags, but they’ll tell ye in places closer to my home, like Tarnberg and Cromdhu, how many strayed children I’ve fetched back from the woods and how I got Mab hersel’ to take off the curse she laid on Philip the miller. I ha’ kenned Hugi my whole life, and vouch for him. We’ve none o’ us aught to gain by slander. ’Tis your fortune that the finest knicht who ever lived has come by in time to free ye from the warg ere it takes a human life. Hearken to him, I say!”