Andre Norton - Were-Wrath

“Die, devil!”

She was still not at ready and he was about to cut her down when he shrieked aloud and threw up his hands, the wounded man echoing his cry. This pain in her head—she could hardly see. However on hands and knees Thra scrambled away as a heavy body crashed down. To make certain of his helplessness she brought the heavy pommel of the sword on the nape of his neck as his helm loosened and rolled away.

For a moment she simply crouched, sobbing for breath, hardly daring to believe she yet lived. The pain was now no longer a torment; rather a steady fire which strengthened her in a way she could not understand.

Out of a tangle of tall grass came Grimclaw. As he passed the legs of the man before her a paw aimed a quick blow claws out. Thra used the spear to aid her to her feet where those other two still fought with skill and desperation. Thrusting the hunting sword close to hand in the ground she stood with the spear at ready, to hold the lists. Grimclaw stationed himself beside her.

Mastery of steel—Thra knew that she watched two evenly matched fighting men of top skill. And they could almost have been brothers from one birthing. That strange cast of Farne’s features had faded away. He was smiling slightly, yellow eyes alight—only the color of those differing from his enemy.

The blaze from his blade now formed a nebulous glow about his whole body through which the sword moved like a darting tongue. Were they so evenly matched that they might fight forever without giving way? Thra could detect no sign of fatigue, no lighting of the clang of weapons.

She had no more that thought then when the flame-wreathed blade appeared to turn of itself in Farne’s hand. The weapon might command the man not the man the weapon. There was a hard clang of sound and the lord’s sword spun out of his grip to strike against the trunk of the tree where Thra had sheltered. He stood bare handed, with no change of expression, as if he now waited stocially that thrust at throat or breast which would put an end to him.

As the fire blade turned point down Farne caught and held those other chill eyes.

“Blood calls to blood,” he said slowly.

The other’s mouth contorted. He spat and the spittle flecked the trampled leaves by Farne’s boots.

“Beast calls not to true man!” He flung up his head in harsh pride. “Kill if you will but think not that aught between us can ever be altered—runner in the night!”

Farne swung the sword, not towards the other but as if he weighed something in his hand and that weight dragged heavy upon him. He shook his head.

“Run no more,” he said slowly. “The choice has been forced upon me at last. I may well have lost more than I gain—”

“I do not understand you,” broke in the other impatiently. “Kill me—you win nothing, beast—”

Farne, to Thra’s surprise, nodded. “Nothing,” he agreed. “Did you think I challenged your rulership with this?” Again he waved the sword.

That light which had blazed along it was gone. But the strangeness did not return to his face. Now he stepped back and away from the other.

“This much is true. You live, kinsman, by my leave.”

The other scowled and took a step forward as if he wished to drag Farne down by strength alone.

“Also,” once more the forest man shifted his grip on the sword, “I have at last come into my inheritance. No, kinsman, do not fear that you shall be dispossessed of your lands, your ill-ruled people—not yet. But the ‘beast’ you have been pleased to hunt is gone. Try your tricks again at your will, they shall net you naught. Take up your liegemen and get you gone. This forest has an ill name among your kind that was not lightly earned, nor shall it be forgot.”

Deliberately he sheathed the sword and held its belt in one hand. The other he put to the wide buckle of the furred belt.

As Farne’s fingers touched that buckle it burst open. The metal over which the strange colors had played flaked away. Fur loosened from scaling hide and shifted through the air, the hide itself slipped and fell from about his body, to lie in bits upon the ground. Then he fastened the sword belt in its place.

The lord watched through narrowed eyes.

“You have given me quarter—I asked it not, I shall not accept it!” His voice was harsh challenge.

“Accept or not as you wish,” Farne shrugged. “You stand on land which I know and which knows me. I have made my choices—yours shall be yours only, and you shall answer for them.”

He turned his head to look to Thra. What he had just said, she thought, was meant in its latter part as much for her as for the lord.

She swallowed. Life was always choices and somehow she knew she faced a mighty one now. As she settled the sword she had taken into the empty scabbard at her belt she saw on the ground a wisp of dirty fur.

Two belts and a man, there was a meaning she could guess at. But in this forest one need not be surprised at anything. She made her choice.

As Farne moved forward she fell in at his right hand, Grimclaw padding into the shadow of the great trees at his left.