James Galloway - The Tower of Sorcery

"You know the dog-faces pretty well," she said clinically.

He nodded. "It's best to understand some of your more unpleasant neighbors," he told her.

"Smart boy," she complemented.

"Thank you, ma'am," he said politely, tearing off another chunk of chicken with his sharp teeth.

"Sounds like you have a good plan there," she told him.

"I hope so," he replied. "We'll find out soon."

"I reckon you will at that."

They ate in silence for a while. "How long have you been here?" Tarrin asked. "If you don't mind my asking."

"I've been here all my life," she said with a dreamy smile. "I was born on this farm, in this house, eighty years ago. And I'll die here."

"Home is the best place to be," Tarrin agreed calmly.

"It is indeed."

Tarrin looked down at the plate, and was surprised that it was clean. The bones were all stripped totally bare, and he'd even found the time to eat the carrots, although he honestly couldn't remember doing it. "Well, that's about that," he said, looking at his plate. "I'd best be moving on. I don't want to upset your house any more than I already have."

"Not quite yet," she said. "Since I'm an old woman and it won't make any difference, why don't you tell me why you're really running?" she said with a mischievious smile.

Tarrin grimaced ruefully. "I thought I was a better liar than that," he said.

"You're a good liar, boy," she admitted with a grin. "The problem is, I'm better at seeing the truth than you are at lying. You wouldn't lie to a decrepid old woman, would you?"

"I thought I already did," he said.

She cackled loudly, slapping her hand on her knee several times. "I like you, boy," she repeated. "Now then, out with it. Who are you, and what's got you running so hard you don't have time to take a bath?"

"My name is Tarrin," he told her honestly. "I am running from Dargu. And Trolls, and Waern, and Bruga, and whoever else has decided to chase me today. I have no idea why they're chasing me, though. I came down into the human lands because they won't follow me. There are too many humans for them to hide." He put the plate down. "I'm supposed to be a student at the Tower of Sorcery. If I can ever get there, that is," he sighed.

She pursed her lips. "Alot of bother for one boy, Sorcerer or no," she said.

"I know," he said. "That's why I don't understand it. What do they want me for, anyway?"

"That I can't answer, my boy," she said in her gravelly voice. "But you were right. It is time for you to move on. If you have that many people chasing you, Suld is the only place you'll be safe. Run for the Tower, boy. They'll protect you well enough."

"I'm already working on it, ma'am," he assured her with a smile. "How far am I from Suld, anyway?"

"It's two days from when you reach the High road," she told him. "You should steal a horse and just run for it."

" Steal ?" he gasped.

"What, you've never heard of it? Well, you find someone with a horse, hit him over the head, and take his horse," she told him with a blunt grin. "You may as well take his money and his clothes, while you're at it."

"I know what it is, but I don't like to steal," Tarrin said. "If I did, I'd have stolen food off this farm."

"Boy, beggars can't be choosers," she said bluntly. "If it comes down to you living or dying, better someone loses his horse than you losing your life."

Tarrin nodded. That was just pure wisdom, and it would be foolish to ignore it. Mother Wynn may be old, but Tarrin saw that her mind was sharp, and she had the wisdom of experience. "I'll think about it," he promised, "but I don't like horses all that much. It's too hard to hide when you have a horse." Tarrin stood up and approached Mother Wynn, then knelt beside her and took her hand in his paw. "I appreciate your talk, Mother Wynn," he told her honestly. "You're a wise woman, and you made me feel much better."

"Glad someone around here appreciates an old woman's chatter," she said with a totally fake look of suffering. Tarrin had no doubt that everyone in the house hinged on her every word.

"Some of us can see past how someone looks," he said pointedly.

She harumphed, then shook her hand free of his gentle grip. "You'd best get on with yourself, boy," she ordered. "You're not getting any closer to Suld standing here, you know. Now scoot."

"Yes ma'am," he said with a smile. "Thank you, Mother Wynn."

"No need, boy," she told him. "Now scat."

"Yes ma'am," he said. Then he left the old woman sitting on the porch, rocking gently in the darkening evening with a plate of chicken on her lap and a faraway look in her clear brown eyes.

It was the feeling that he was too close for anything to go wrong that lulled him into a false sense of security, and he paid for it. It came in the form of something hitting him in the back of the head as he loped down the High Road towards Suld, well into the middle of the night. Tarrin saw nothing but stars and dropped to the ground like a felled ox, rolling several times before coming to a stop against a tree by the side of the road. Tarrin swam in a gray haze, as he hovered right on the edge of consciousness, not yet able to move but vaguely aware of what his ears were telling him. He could literally feel his skull start to mend the fracture created by whatever it was that hit him.

"Don't get too close," Tarrin heard one voice through the haze. "I wonder what it is."

"I don't ask questions," the other one said. "That man in the inn said anything that even remotely looks Wikuni, and this one is close enough for me. I just don't want to carry the body back. It looks heavy."

"Is it dead?"

"It will be in a minute," came the ominous response.

The haze parted like a curtain, but Tarrin didn't immediately move. He reached out with his keen senses, feeling the air, smelling it, noticing the shifts in air against his skin and fur. There were two of them, and they were right over him. Tarrin felt the air brush along the side of his long tail, and he used that as a guide to slowly slither his tail between the feet of one of them. Once it was in position, he slashed with it as hard as he could.

Tarrin's tail wasn't anywhere near as strong as the rest of his body. It was more for balance than for work, but the muscles in his tail had the same proportionate strength as the rest of his body, and that gave the slender limb formidable strength. That strength swiped the feet out from under one of the two men, who crashed to the ground in a heavy grunt. Tarrin rolled up on himself and slipped away from the other, springing up to face a smallish, dark-haired man with a narrow jaw and rotting teeth, who was holding a long dagger in his hand and a sling in the other. The other man was a shade smaller than this man, but maybe a bit heavier. Both of them wore common peasant clothing. The standing man gaped at him, and barely had time to gasp before Tarrin was on him. Tarrin's huge paw closed around his neck in a crushing grip, and Tarrin picked the smallish man off the ground by his neck and held him out at arm's length.

"The next time you hit a man in the head with a sling," Tarrin growled at him evilly, his eyes glowing from within with an unholy greenish radiance, "make sure he's dead before you get this close." Then he closed his grip around the man's neck, crushing it. The man gurgled once, then his head flopped limply to the side as the bones in his neck shattered.

The other man screamed in terror and scrambled to his feet as Tarrin threw the dead body aside. That sound snapped Tarrin out of his sudden desire for blood, and he hesitated as the other attacker turned tail and ran, blubbering and whimpering in abject terror. Tarrin let him go; it had been this man that had tried to kill him, and the fear would be punishment enough for the other. Tarrin was worried more at how easily he had killed the man, how he had done it without a second thought. Granted, he argued to himself, the man did try to kill him. But Tarrin had killed him out of retribution, not out of defense of his own life. And what scared him was that he had absolutely no remorse.