David Farland - Brotherhood of the Wolf

Averan had seldom seen a naked woman—had never seen one like this. The green woman was not merely handsome; she was beautiful, unearthly, like some fine Runelord’s lady, gifted with so many endowments of glamour that a common woman could only look at such a creature and despair.

Yet even with the perfect features of her face, her flawless skin, the green woman was obviously not human. Her long fingers ended in claws that looked as sharp as fishhooks. Her mouth, faintly open, dribbled green blood and showed canines longer than those on a bear. Her ears were...somehow wrong. They were dainty and graceful, yet tilted forward a bit, like the ears of a doe.

The green woman was not breathing.

Averan put her head to the woman’s chest, listened for a heartbeat. She heard it, beating softly, deeply, as if the green woman rested in slumber.

Averan felt the green woman’s arms and legs, searching for wounds. She wiped away some green blood near the woman’s neck, found what looked like a puncture wound from the woman’s own nails. Wiping away the blood from the woman’s lips, she checked in her mouth.

She’d bitten her tongue in the fall, and it was bleeding badly. Averan twisted the woman’s head to the side, afraid that the blood flowing freely into her throat might choke her.

The green woman growled, low in her throat, like a dog disturbed by dreams of the hunt.

Averan suddenly leapt back, afraid for the first time that this woman might be some animal. Feral. Deadly.

A dog began baying.

Averan looked up.

She was at the edge of a farm. A cottage stood not far off, a hut made of fieldstones and covered with a roof of thatch. A fierce wolfhound barked by the edge of the rail fence, but dared not approach the graak. For its part, the graak merely studied the dog hungrily, as if it hoped the hound would lunge.

The green woman opened her eyes to slits, and grasped Averan’s throat.

Averan fought to scream.

Roland and Baron Poll had been riding hard all day, having traveled a pace that would kill a normal horse, when they heard the snarling and yelping of a hound, accompanied by a child’s scream.

They had just rounded past a village near the base of the Brace Mountains and Roland’s horse had slowed, winded. The sky was overcast, and with the hills so close, the night’s shadows were already beginning to thicken.

When Roland heard the shriek, he was nearing a small farm with an orchard of woodpear and crabapple trees behind it.

A quick glance showed him a graak in the orchard, lunging and snapping at a huge wolfhound, while under the shade of a tree, a girl was shrieking in terror.

“By the Powers, it’s a wild graak!” Baron Poll shouted, spurring his charger. Wild graaks often attacked peasants’ animals out here, so close to the mountains. Yet it was rarer for them to eat humans.

Roland’s heart raced.

Baron Poll reached behind him, drew his horseman’s axe, and spurred his mount past the cottage, frightening some nervous ducklings that milled about by the front door. Then his horse jumped the rail fence. The hound, emboldened by Baron Poll’s presence, leapt after him and charged toward the graak.

Roland’s horse suddenly leapt over the fence, and Roland realized that he too had charged the graak without thought. He reached into his tunic for his half-sword, though it would do little good against such a large lizard.

The whole world seemed to narrow to that moment. Roland could hear the child shrieking farther back in the orchard, could see the great beast rise up and spread its wings. Baron Poll’s charger reared back and pawed the air.

It was an old lizard, by the look of it, huge. Teeth like daggers, its golden eyes blazing.

The hound leapt in at it, and the graak snapped down, catching the hound in its long jaws. It gave the dog a vicious shake, snapping its bones.

At that moment, while the lizard was distracted, Baron Poll raised the axe in both hands and hurled with all his might, catching the reptile cleanly between the eyes.

“Hah, take that, foul creature!” the Baron shouted as if in parody of some great hero.

The graak jerked back its head, as if stricken by surprise. Blood welled from the horrible blow that Baron Poll had dealt. The graak batted its wings once, then pitched to the side and collapsed.

Roland sat in his saddle for half a second, feeling exuberantly victorious, stupidly clutching his own sword.

Still, the child screamed.

As the body of the graak settled to the ground, Roland saw the child better, for she’d been momentarily hidden behind its wings—a girl of seven or eight years kneeling beside the trees. The girl had half turned toward him. Piercing green eyes and wavy hair, the same red as Roland’s.

She wore a hooded cloak of midnight-blue with the king’s coat of arms on it—the image, of the green man, a face circled by oak leaves. Above it a graak was sewn in red.

A skyrider. The blood drained from Roland’s face. We’ve killed a mount for the King’s messenger, he realized. All the gold he had would never repay the new King.

The child screamed again, and Roland realized something else. The crabapple tree that the child sat beneath was broken, as if struck by a bolt of lightning. And in the tall brown grass beneath the tree was something green.

One of its claws was hooked in the skyrider’s cloak.

The child had not been attacked by a graak at all. Something else had her in its grip.

“Helllp!” the child wailed.

Roland rushed forward a few paces for a better look, suddenly cautious, until he had a full view of the green woman lying there in a pool of blood of the deepest green.

He had never seen anything like this monster. The green woman was beautiful and strange beyond anything that Roland had imagined. She held the child’s robe firmly in her claws, merely held it, staring at the sigil emblazoned on the girl’s chest. Mesmerized, she moved the girl this way and that, gazing at the colored threads that made up the image of the green man.

Roland felt confused. “Get away from that thing, child,” he whispered. “Stop screaming, and let the beast have your robe.”

The girl turned to him, her face an ashen white. She quit screaming but began to whimper as she shrugged out of, the robe, tried to disentangle herself.

Meanwhile, Baron Poll had dismounted, and came huffing toward them, having recovered his axe.

Roland leapt from his own horse, sword at the ready.

The green woman almost did not notice the two men, until the girl tried to move back. Then it lashed out and grasped her forearm, studied her from eyes as dark green as her own blood.

“Let her go!” Roland shouted, stepping forward, brandishing the halfsword. Baron Poll stepped up beside him.

The green woman turned on them, stared at Roland and through him. She tossed the child aside like a rag doll, then rose to a crouch, sniffing the air like some animal, her small breasts swaying as she shifted from side to side. She caught a scent, peered fixedly at Baron Poll.

Roland’s heart was pounding in fear.

“That’s right,” Baron Poll said. “I’m the one you’re after. I’m the one you want. You smell blood? You want some? Come and get it.”

The green woman leapt at Poll, covered sixty feet in three bounds. Roland prepared for her charge. He set his feet, raised his sword, and timed his swing so that it would lop off the green woman’s head.

With a mighty shout he whirled the blade, just as the green woman reached Baron Poll.

Roland threw his full weight into the blow, brought the sword down on the green woman’s neck, and felt as if he’d struck the blade against stone. The blade clanged into her, bounced off her neck and slapped Roland’s left wrist.