P. Hodgell - The Sea of Time

Downhill, a glow appeared. Torisen thought at first that it was a pocket of weirding, but it pulsed strangely and an odd, two-noted sound came out of it. As he approached, he recognized the site of the hill fort ruins that lay between Mount Alban and the river. Stepping between fallen blocks, he found himself in a cave of sickly light cut out of the fog. The cavity took the internal shape of the hall it once had been, circular, some forty feet across. Someone sat on a rock on its far side, sharpening iron claws with a whetstone and humming to himself. It was from him that the light emanated. He glanced up at Torisen with feverish blue eyes from under a ragged thatch of white hair.

“Well, sit,” the Gnasher said. “Neither of us wants to spring directly into battle, I suppose, although that will come soon enough.”

Torisen lowered himself onto a block. Mindful that it would soon begin to stiffen but seeing no other recourse, he stretched out his sore leg. Kin-Slayer’s pattern-woven blade rippled in the peculiar light as he grounded its point beside his sound foot.

The man he faced wore dirty homespun probably taken from one of the shepherds whom he had slain near Gothregor. One pant leg had been ripped off above the knee. Below, bent at an unnatural angle, was a wolf’s hind leg, its shattered tibia lancing out through discolored, matted fur. The stench of gangrene emanated from it. Clearly, the wolver king of the Deep Weald could not have run all the way from Gothregor in such a condition.

“You were the rider I saw lagging behind us,” said Torisen.

“Between your vanguard and your growing army, yes. How do you think the latter will feel about having come all this way for nothing? They will probably laugh at you, although to tell the truth I didn’t think the fat man would run away like that. Oh, and there was someone else close on my heels. A genuine postrider, I think. Were you expecting one from Kothifir?”

Torisen was, of course, but he put that out of his mind for the time being.

“So, now what?” he asked.

The Gnasher thoughtfully drew a long, jagged nail across the whetstone.

Rasp, rasp, rasp . . .

“The easiest thing would be for you to give me my daughter—Yce, d’you call her? A pretty name, although it doesn’t do to grow attached. Then we both can go home.”

“No,” said Torisen.

“Is that you speaking, or your father? When we last met, you almost turned to him for help. I could feel your hand on the latch to his prison. That’s his sword, isn’t it?”

Torisen’s hand rested on the pommel. He gently twisted it back and forth so that the blade’s point bit into the old keep’s cracked paving.

“You don’t want to face Kin-Slayer,” he said, “whoever wields it. Nor do you want to confront my father. Remember how the mere sound of his foot on the stair turned you into a cringing pup.”

“And you into a cowering boy.” The Gnasher grinned. His teeth were very sharp. “I have grown since then. Have you? No one becomes a man until he has put his father into the ground or, in my case, into the stew pot. I told you, all those years ago, that you had to kill your sire. But you haven’t. I smell the stink of his blood in you.”

Torisen sensed Ganth’s presence too, waiting, listening.

Scree . . . went Kin-Slayer’s point, uprooting shards of pavement with a spray of dislodged soil. Screee . . .

“Then too,” said the Gnasher meditatively, “I learned my lesson from King Kruin, better than he did himself. Name an heir and someday he will take your place. My offspring are all dead, except for this last one. Her death will give me the strength to heal and to live on.”

“Forever?”

“Perhaps.”

He put aside the stone, stretched, and yawned. Jaws gaped. Hinges cracked. Hands became huge paws as they stretched out to touch the ground. The shepherd’s clothes ripped down the back and fell away. He was as big as ever, the size of a small horse, but gaunt with thickly matted fur, and the light his soul cast flared a sickly yellow.

“You see how an heir’s very existence poisons me. Learn from it. They say that you have named your sister as your successor. That was foolish. She may seem hardly more than a mouthful, but she has unexpected qualities. How long can you keep a step ahead of her, eh? Oh, your father would laugh to see you now. Can’t you hear him?”

What Torisen heard were distant voices calling his name. Would his people find him in this murk? Did he want them to?

The grass behind him rustled. Grimly slipped out of it to his right, Yce to his left, both in their complete furs.

“Ah,” breathed the Gnasher.

“Grimly, take her away,” Torisen said over his shoulder to his friend.

“No.”

They all looked at Yce. None of them had ever heard her speak before.

“My father,” she said, showing white teeth. “My fight.”

“Ah,” said the Gnasher again, with a breath of laughter. “Ah, ha, ha, ha . . .”

Torisen started to rise, but Grimly slipped forward to block him. “Wait.”

The two wolvers of the Deep Weald circled each other within the ring of ancient stones. One was barely half the size of the other, but she moved with fluid grace while he dragged his shattered limb behind him. He lunged at her, jaws agape, and bowled her over. Pinning her with his weight, he snapped at her throat, but missed. She twisted under him. Her teeth closed on his ear and shredded it as he reared back.

“You little bitch!”

Yce grinned.

He came at her again, half-blinded by a mask of blood. She ducked under his charge and snapped sideways at his sound hind leg as he passed. Bones crunched. The Gnasher screamed and dragged himself around to face her with iron fingernails that gouged into the ancient pavement.

“All right,” he panted, raising himself. “Meet your siblings.”

Whorls of light gathered around him, tracing the patterns in his ragged coat. The line of an infant jaw, the curve of a muzzle, blue eyes barely open, small paws, scrabbling . . . How many pups he must have slain and devoured, litter upon litter. They covered him now like a moving coat, their edges limned with a purer light than his own. Milk teeth bared, and bit. The wolver king yelped with surprise and pain as red tears opened in his hide. He was bleeding from a dozen gashes, a hundred, and still those tiny teeth worried into his flesh, laying bare muscle, gnawing at bone.

Yce sat and watched. Once or twice, she licked her black-fringed lips.

The Gnasher writhed on the ground, snapping at himself, doing more harm. With a savage slash, he laid open his own guts, which spilled out onto the ground.

Torisen put his hand on Grimly’s shoulder and levered himself to his feet.

“Enough,” he said.

Thunder boomed closer. The phantom interior of the old hall faded and the mist within it became tinged with a foretaste of rain. Drops splattered into the growing pool of gore, thinning it until it ran deep into the circle’s network of cracks. The Gnasher gathered up his steaming entrails and regarded them with disbelief. He raised what was left of his face.

“Am I going to die?”

“Yes. Hold still.”

Torisen gripped Kin-Slayer with both hands and raised it. As the ring and the hilt touched, lightning raked the sky. Down came the blade, and the ancient circle split in two. Thunder rocked from side to side of the river valley. Almost unnoticed in that rolling cacophony, something bounced away down the slope into the shadows.

Yce stood opposite Torisen by a sundered, smoking stone, her slim, white figure ghostlike in the gloom. Crossing to his side, she slid her arms inside his coat, around his waist. He felt the warmth of her body, the firm pressure of her small breasts against his chest. With one hand, he gingerly held Kin-Slayer clear. With the other he returned her embrace.