Eric Flint: The Shadow of the Lion

Marco's chest had a tiny, V-shaped cut on it?not a fingernail deep. Kat seized his wrists. She was shaking too badly to feel for a pulse. She pressed her ear to his chest. After a terrible instant of fear?silence!?then she heard his heart beating. Beating steadily.

Suddenly, Marco breathed deeply and put his arms around her. She clung to him like a drowning woman.

"I can never leave here, you know," he said softly. "He said so. I have to stay, or he can't protect Venice."

She burrowed against his chest, not giving a damn who he was. "I will never leave here then, either."

It was Benito who found them, nearly an hour later. He walked in and stared at the two of them.

"Thank God Claudia knew where this place was. Otherwise you two lovebirds might still have been here tomorrow. Tore the shirt off him, eh, Kat?" He was grinning broadly. "I must get Maria to have a little talk with you, girl. Tearing the breeches off him is much more satisfying for everyone."

"Benito!" roared Marco.

It was a real roar. The windows rattled.

Benito started at the sound, but the grin stayed on his face even if it became a little less broad.

But as he looked around, studying the room, the grin faded away. The bodies. The paraphernalia.

"So I didn't imagine the Lion," he said quietly. "I think you two had better get out of here, before someone else finds you. I've got news for the two of you; besides that, Dorma and Montescue are both searching frantically for you."

They got up. "Tell, Benito," said Kat. "What's happened?"

Benito managed another grin. "Well, lots of stuff. The Doge has stopped slipping into a coma, but he's really weak. He's offered his resignation, as he says the city needs a strong Doge in these times. I reckon Petro will be chosen, even as young as he is. A boat's just come in from Chioggia. Grandfather Dell'este and the Knights of the Holy Trinity and the boys in the Polestine forts made my father and his army head back to Milan." His good cheer faded. "But it looks as if Caesare Aldanto managed to escape."

"What?!" They both exclaimed simultaneously. "Damn him," added Kat, snarling.

Benito walked toward the nearest window, still covered with heavy drapes. "Let's get some light in here, what say?" He shrugged. "Nothing's ever perfect. Aldanto had a galley ready?in case things went wrong, I guess. That'd be just like him. When the fog cleared and the Lion's Shadow spooked them, he took advantage of it. Just in time, too. Petro Dorma is spitting mad about it. And he's looking for you pair of lovebirds." He looked quizzically at them. "So what are you going to do now?"

Marco took Kat's hands. "Kat. You realize that this doesn't change anything? I made my promises. I'm still married to Angelina."

Kat smiled. "Marco. I'll be your mistress if you want me. I'll be your friend if you don't. But I won't leave you again."

The shaman raced frantically through the water, trailing blood from several gashes. Behind him, their jaws leaving their own red trace, came the vengeful undines.

Insofar as the shaman could think at all in his state of panic, he was sure he could elude his pursuers. He was well into the open waters of the gulf now, beyond the lagoon, and he was a better swimmer than the undines.

The thought was not especially comforting. Undines were not the only menace he faced. The shadow of the Lion, sweeping across the lagoon, had not only cast terror into the minds and hearts of Venice's enemies. It had also emboldened Venice?and its friends.

Among those friends, often enough, the tritons of the gulf and the open sea could be counted. And those, more fishlike than the undines, he could not outswim.

For that matter, the blood he was trailing might draw sharks as well. And if the sharks were no friends of Venice, they were no friends of his either.

Again and again, he cried out in his mind for the master to rescue him. Open the passageway! Open the passageway!

There was no answer. No passageway.

When he sensed the disturbance in the water, quite some distance away, the shaman veered aside. That was the sound of a ship breaking up and men spilling into the water. No threat to him, in itself?but it might draw tritons. Occasionally?not often?the sea creatures rescued drowning sailors.

But his master's voice, finally appearing, commanded otherwise.

Find the ship and its sailors. Seize the strongest one and bring him to me.

The shaman did not even think to protest the order. Partly, because he was too glad to finally hear his master's voice. Mostly, because he had never heard that voice groan with such a terrible agony. As if the master himself were trailing his own spoor of blood.

The shaman was indifferent to the master's pain. But not to the rage that pain had so obviously brought with it.

When the shaman found the sundering vessel, he had no difficulty selecting the strongest man of its crew. He was the only one who had not drowned yet; and was already sinking below the surface himself, gasping with exhaustion. Fortunately, his golden hair made him easy to find.

The shaman seized the collar of his tunic in his sharp teeth. He hoped the master would open the passageway soon. The drowning man was larger than the shaman in his fishform. He did not think he could tow him any great distance?certainly not while keeping the man's mouth above water. The shaman was nearing exhaustion himself.

But the master was apparently alert. A moment later the passageway formed. Gratefully, the shaman plunged into it, bringing his golden-haired burden with him.

Dripping water, but no blood now that the shape-change had closed his wounds, the shaman lay sprawled on the floor of the grand duke's private chamber. Gasping for breath and feeling as if he could not move at all. Next to him, the golden-haired sailor gasped also. His eyes fluttered for a moment, blue gleaming through the lids, as the man began to return to consciousness.

The shaman sensed the huge form of his master looming over them. When he looked up, half-dazed, he was paralyzed still further by the sight. The grand duke's forehead gaped open; his face was coated with blood. The shaman could see his master's brains through the terrible wound.

The shaman had long since understood that his master was not really human any longer. Had he any doubts, that wound would have resolved them. No human being could have possibly survived such an injury, much less have been able to move and talk.

"I must have food," hissed the grand duke, in a voice almost hoarse from screaming. "Now."

Glancing toward the great stove against the wall of his master's private room, the shaman could see that the fire was already burning in its belly. Drops of blood spilled from his master's head wound were sizzling on the side of the huge fry pan. The cleavers and flensing knives were ready on the butcher's table nearby.

The grand duke seized the half-drowned sailor by his golden hair and lifted him up, as easily as he might an infant. But then, seeing the man's face for the first time, he paused.

"Him," he muttered. Despite his fear and exhaustion, the shaman was fascinated to see the way the grand duke's forehead wound was beginning to close up. Much more slowly than one of his own wounds would heal during a shape-change, of course. And the shaman could only imagine the agony the grand duke was suffering. No wonder that the master craved his… special food. It would speed the healing immensely, and alleviate the pain.

The shaman was so fascinated by the sight that he didn't pay attention to his master's odd hesitation. It wasn't until the grand duke lowered the golden-haired head back to the floor that the shaman tore his gaze from the wound and looked at the eyes below.