Harry Turtledove - Wisdom of the Fox

"Meat!" he snarled. "Rrraw meat!" The backs of his hands grew hairier by the heartbeat.

"Your pardon," Fabors Fabur's son said, his voice rising to a frightened squeak as he slid down the bench away from his friend. Aragis' eyes were wide and staring. Van started to draw his sword, then slammed it back into its sheath. Gerin understood that; he'd stopped his own hand halfway to the hilt of his blade. Unless struck with silver, werebeasts knit as fast as they were cut. He'd seen that, to his horror and dismay, during the werenight.

"Rrrraw meat!" Marlanz said again, and growled deep in his throat. His voice was hardly a voice at all—more like an angry howl.

"Give him what he wants," Gerin called quickly to the frightened-looking cooks. "Raw meat, and lots of it."

The men used that as an excuse to flee the great hall. Gerin hoped one of them, at least, would be brave enough to come back with meat. If not, Marlanz was going to try getting it from the warriors and women with whom he'd sat down to supper.

A cook, staggering under the weight of the haunch he carried on a platter, came slowly out of the kitchens. He did not bring the meat out to Marlanz, but set it down between the hearth and Dyaus' altar and then retreated much faster than he'd advanced. Gerin found himself unable to complain. That the fellow had come back at all was enough.

The Fox rose and edged past Marlanz, whose tongue lolled from jaws that had stretched remarkably to accommodate the improved cutlery they now contained. "Good wolf," Gerin said in a friendly way, as if he were talking to one of the keep's dogs. He looked around for those dogs, and did not see them—they'd all run outside as Marlanz began to change. They wanted no part of him. Gerin didn't, either, but he had less choice.

Grunting, he picked up the platter and carried it over to Marlanz. He bowed over it as if he were an innkeeper serving up an elaborate repast at some splendid hostelry in the City of Elabon. Indeed, his concern for his client's satisfaction was even more pressing than such an innkeeper's: none of their guests was likely to devour them if displeased with his proffered supper.

Marlanz looked from the dripping haunch to Gerin and back again. He bent low over the meat and sniffed it, as if to make certain no flame had ever touched it. Then, not bothering with the knife that lay on the table by the platter, he began to feed. That was the only word that seemed appropriate to Gerin—Marlanz tore off bite after bite with his teeth, worked his jaws briefly, and gulped down the barely chewed chunks. Meat vanished from the bone at an astonishing rate.

Gerin hurried back to the kitchens. "That haunch may not be enough," he warned. "What else have you?"

A cook pointed. "There's but half a pig's carcass, lord prince, that we were going to—"

"Never mind what you were going to do with it," Gerin snapped. Some of the doctors down in the City of Elabon reckoned eating raw pork unhealthy. That, as far as the Fox was concerned, was Marlanz's lookout. He grabbed the split carcass by the legs and lugged it out into the great hall.

As he came up to Marlanz, he realized that the offal from the carcass would have served just as well in the noble's present condition. He did not, however, have the temerity to haul the meat back from the kitchens. Instead, he set it on the table in front of Marlanz, who began destroying it with the same wolfish single-mindedness he'd shown on the chunk of beef.

"He can't eat all that," Van said as Gerin cautiously sat back down.

"You have my leave to tell him as much," Gerin said. "Go right ahead." Van sat where he was; he was as bold as any man ever born, but a long way from a fool. Fand set a hand on his arm, as if to congratulate him for his good sense. That surprised Gerin, who would have expected her to urge the outlander into any fight that came along.

"I'd have tried fighting him, lord prince," Aragis said, his eyes shifting back and forth from Gerin to Marlanz. "Your way is better, though. You're sorry to lose so much meat, no doubt, but you'd be sorrier losing men hurt or killed against a werebeast that can't be slain—and one who's a good vassal when in his proper shape."

"That last weighed heaviest on my mind," Gerin said.

"For which I am in your debt," Aragis said, "and Marlanz will be when he comes back to himself."

Marlanz wasn't quite in full beast shape, as he would have been during the werenight of five years before; he seemed rather a man heavily overlain with wolf. That made Gerin wonder if he possessed the full invulnerability werebeasts had enjoyed then. Some experiments, he'd found, were more interesting to think about than to try. And, as Aragis had said, Marlanz was a good fellow—and certainly looked to be a good warrior—when fully human.

The Fox wondered if he was going to have to get more meat still to set before Marlanz. As a werebeast, he ate like a wolf. Little by little, though, Marlanz slowed. He glared around at the unchanged men and women watching him, then picked up what was left of the pig carcass with mouth and pawlike hands and carried it over to a dark corner of the great hall. There he set it down while he heaped up rushes beside it into a sort of nest. He lay down in that nest, turned himself around a couple of times to accommodate its shape to his, and fell asleep.

"I hope he sleeps well," Gerin said sincerely. "Come sunrise tomorrow, he'll be a man again."

Selatre giggled. "And wondering mightily, too, how he happened to end up on the floor beside half—no, less than that now—a dead pig."

"Maybe we'll call him Marlanz Pork-Ribs," Rihwin said blithely.

Fabors Fabur's son sent him a serious look. "Van of the Strong Arm might possibly do that and have it taken in good part. For anyone less imposing, such chaffing is liable to be unwise."

"I think you're likely to be right," Gerin said. He too gave Rihwin a severe look. Sometimes Rihwin paid attention to such signals, sometimes he didn't. Gerin hoped this was one of the times he did, because he might end up very sorry if he got Marlanz angry at him.

"I hope that will be our only excitement for the night," Selatre said. Even Van, an incurable adventurer, nodded; the horrors of the werenight must have burned themselves into his memory for good.

Gerin said, "I'll check and see how Widin is doing." He went down to the door of the cellar, rapped on it, and asked, "Are you all right in there, Widin?"

"Aye, and still in my own shape, too," his young vassal answered. "May I come out now?"

"I don't see why not," Gerin answered. "Marlanz Raw-Meat's long since gone were; if the fit hasn't hit you by now, I don't expect it will tonight." He unbarred the door and released Widin.

"What sort of beast is he?" Widin asked.

"Wolf, like most northern werecreatures," the Fox said. "Actually, he's about half wolf and half man right now. He's gone to sleep in the rushes, guarding some meat like a hound. Come upstairs to the great hall, and you can see him for yourself."

He led Widin upstairs. Widin gave the sleeping Marlanz a wide berth, and did not turn his back on him even for a moment. That struck the Fox as eminently practical. A trooper who'd drawn palisade duty came to the entrance to the great hall and said, "Lord prince, a warrior of Aragis' wants us to let down the gate so he can have speech with you."

"Is he in his own proper shape, with no beasts with him?" Gerin asked after a moment's thought.

"Aye, lord, he is," the sentry answered. "The moons are so bright, nothing could hide, neither."

"We'll let him in, then," Gerin decided. He walked out to the gate and told that to the men who worked the drawbridge, adding, "but we'll raise the bridge again as soon as he's across it into the courtyard here." That would mean more work for the men, but he did not want to leave the keep open and vulnerable to whatever lurked under two full moons and the other two nearly full.