Darkwalker on Moonshae - Douglas Niles [24]
Finally, he lay on a straw pallet, but he could not sleep. His body ached, and his mind reeled with confusion. Suddenly, he sat upright, the movement bringing an involuntary groan as his muscles cried out in protest. With a cry, he rolled off the pallet onto the floor.
Trying to get up, he found himself crippled. His legs flailed uselessly at the floor. He tried to grasp a handhold to pull himself up, but his fingers would not work. Howling in anguish, he thrashed across the floor, finally rolling to a stop in a pool of milky moonlight pouring through his single window.
The light seemed to soothe him, yet it beckoned him at the same time. The full moon, a perfect circle of brightness, gazed through the window, and he began to understand his helplessness. The tears of the moon – the glittering chain of bright stars that followed the moon through the sky-blinked cheerily, seeming to mock his plight.
His skin cracked away from his arms and face, but the red wound quickly disappeared beneath a rough coat of brown fur. Sharp, pointed fangs erupted from his gums, and his face distorted in terrible pain. He tried to rub his eyes with his hands, but those appendages had disappeared, to be replaced with padded paws, tipped with sharp, wickedly curving claws.
And as the silvery rays stroked the guard’s twisted and aching body, Erian completed his transformation.
*****
The Pack awakened to the cold, white glare of the full moon. Gray and shaggy forms emerged from a hundred dens, shaking the weariness of a long hibernation from stiffened muscles and sleep-clouded brains.
A large male raised his voice to the moon in a long, ululating howl. Others joined in, first a few, but then hundreds. As one creature, the Pack raised its voice to the heavens, singing the praises of the goddess.
And then a soft breeze carried to the large male the scent of a stag, somewhere not far away in the misty night. Patches of fog drifted among the towering pines, but bright moonlight illuminated the clearings and the high places as the wolf searched for the source of the scent.
Others picked up the spoor, smelling blood, and meat, and fear. The baying of the Pack dropped lower, and took on a deeper tone of menace. Slowly, like gray ghosts, the wolves began to lope through the forest, gaining speed as alertness returned. The stag turned fear-maddened eyes toward its deadly pursuers, and then fled – a flight that could have only one consequence, as the Pack spread out and began to close upon its prey.
Once again, after a century of sleep, the mighty wolves of the Pack sang to their prey. The song was ancient and piercingly beautiful. It was a song of the glory of the goddess, and of the might of her children.
But, above all, it was a song of death.
IV
BLOODLETTING
THE BOAR’S STOCKY head bent forward so that the deadly tusks arrowed straight at Robyn as she knelt by the fungus. With impossible speed, the beast’s stubby legs pounded the ground in a blur of acceleration.
Tristan, his stomach churning in fear, spurred his horse into a swift turn toward the boar. Pawldo, Arlen, and Daryth all whirled toward the attack, but they were farther away than the prince.
The hounds, too, were distant. Canthus had led the pack around the shore of the lake, and though the dogs had turned at the sound of the boar’s charge, they were still far away.
Except Angus.
The old hound, ambling as always at Tristan’s side, sprang toward the boar with fangs bared. Deep snarls rolled from his chest as he leaped between Robyn and the charging beast. The hound’s teeth turned and sank into the boar’s ear. At the same time, those merciless tusks tore through the dog’s flank and deep into its body.
Red blood spurted from the grievous wounds, and the old dog grunted with a hollow, wet sound. His lungs pierced by the tusks, Angus spent his dying strength tearing the ear from the boar’s head.
Robyn sprang to her feet as Angus leaped, desperately seeking escape. A bough from