ULREM WIPED HIS blade on Athos’ golden cloak. The night was still around him, and cool, promising rains before long. The moon was a gleaming silver coin slung up among shimmering stars, and there was plenty of light to see by. The caged man’s howling faded, and the drunken fool who had distracted Athos was gone. That left the night as naked and vulnerable as a babe.
The men he’d killed were no mere soldiers. He knew it by the way they fought. Practiced and together, as a unit. They fought as brothers, and died as brothers. As a young man, cutting his way to a victory against such odds would have thrilled him.
Now, it wearied him. Not the killing; that was in his blood. But the pointless butchery of it.
Athos left him no choice. His arrogance was as widely known as his loyalty to the king. Cradle-brothers, Epsanius Athos was a prince in all but name, and blindly loyal to the King of Corvairia. Ulrem held no measure of surprise that the captain had pursued him so far. But it was not loyalty that pulled Athos so furiously after him; loyalty was the excuse.
The moon had looked much the same from the queen’s balcony. Her flesh was warm, her bed soft. The king had his harem of girls and painted boys to mind him, but Queen Tialiah had craved a man of her own.
That was why Athos had hunted Ulrem. Because Tialiah had chosen Ulrem, not the captain of the Black Guard. Athos was no stranger to her bed, of course; but to be passed over for another man? His pride would only allow the king that honor, though he seldom chose it.
Now he, and all his men, lay dead. They might as well have fallen on their swords to sate his vanity.
Ulrem glanced north, though he could not see the Neine from here. Its dark banks would be busy, no doubt, with patrolling soldiers. After the clamor of the dogs, and the rumor-fire of the fight in Kirtin’s Inn, time was pressing close like a blade at his throat.
Tonight he had to cross the river. But first…
Ulrem stepped over the captain’s body and looked into the cart. A man sat on the floor of the cage, filthy and ragged. His eyes were flat, but they caught and held the moonlight. Beyond the stink of an unwashed, frightened man, Ulrem caught the scent of the mountains, of wolves and blood.
His ankle bore deep cuts in the flesh around the bone.
“Who are you?”
The captive merely stared at him.
A noise in the brush beyond the cart made Ulrem look up. Two wolves slunk out of the dark trees, a white and a black. They stalked with their heads low, fangs caging low, deadly snarls. They moved together toward the cart.
He knew wolves. They were like ghosts, ever at the edge of vision. Rare, and usually starving, was the wolf who confronted a man so openly. And here were two of them. Ulrem sensed something strange in the air, not magic, but old.
His knuckles popped as he squeezed the hilt of his sword. The ring on his finger grew warm, eager for another fight. The Corvairians had hardly warmed his blood.
“No,” said the man in the cage. “My brothers.” The wolves halted their advance. Their growling trickled through the night, low and furious.
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“I am Ulrem, of the Oron,” he told the captive.
“Culrann,” the man said in kind, touching his chest. He looked at the wolves over his shoulder. “My brothers. Their names are… not as simple.”
Ulrem’s eyes narrowed. “You are a two-blood,” he said. The man hissed but did not deny it. “I have killed your kind before.” His rough voice became thoughtful. Twice before he’d crossed paths with such a creature. The others were feral, wild. They had no reason or language; they lived as wolves in the skins of man. But this Culrann was different. He could smell it. “You speak like a man. Where did you learn that?”
Culrann’s answer was slow, as if he had to reach for every word. “My father taught me men’s speech. Before Grays called me. Before I heard the wolfsong.” He glimpsed something far away, on the horizon of memory. “I… do not often converse with men.”
“Then you’re better for it,” Ulrem said. “Can you speak to them?”
“I sing to them, and they follow,” answered Culrann. “How is it you came to have stars in your eyes? Are you a man?” He leaned forward, studying Ulrem’s face.
The giant grunted. “I was.”
“You smell different,” Culrann said. “Not of a man. Of…” He hesitated, and then said, “of a dream. Of an old dream of hunting. Of hot blood…I do not have the words.”
Ulrem sheathed his sword. It hung on his back, a comfortable weight, secure against a night full of strangeness. He moved around the cart and inspected the door. The cage was made of fired wood nearly as hard as iron and fitted together by clever hands.
The wolves lay down to watch him, but they did not lower their guard. Ears forward and eyes alert and bright, they missed not a beat.
“I am crossing the border tonight, Culrann, into Nuadon,” Ulrem said, grasping the bars firmly. The golden ring on his forefinger gleamed in the moonlight. It caught Culrann’s attention, but only for a moment. “Can you fight?”
Culrann’s gray eyes sought his wolves. He nodded.
“Where I am going, I will need men. Fighters,” said Ulrem.
“I will fight for you.” There was no hesitation in the two-blood’s ragged voice. Only the steady stillness of a wolf at bay.
“Good,” Ulrem said with a fanged grin. There would be more bloodshed before the night was through. “But you cannot walk on that injured leg. Can you ride?”
“Yes.”
“Then we make for the bridge. Let them stop a dozen Corvairian warhorses in full charge!” Ulrem laughed then, a thunderous sound, and with a mighty shift of his shoulders hauled at the cage’s door. The lock shattered under his strength. The wolves danced back, whining.
Culrann could not mask his pain as he climbed down out of the cart. He took Ulrem’s offered arm and searched the giant’s eyes. “What is over the border?”
“War,” answered the giant grimly. “And my crown.”
When they were gone, a shadow detached itself from the side of the inn. The commotion had masked his approach, and by guile he crouched in the shadow of a chimney stack, watching. The big man and the strange, gaunt savage stalked past with two wolves in tow. A moment later, he heard the killer’s encouraging cry, and the whole string of the Corvairian’s broad-chested horses barreled off up the street, kicking up a spray of dust and stones.
Ludin crept across the ground, throwing furtive glances back and forth. The soldiers were long delayed in coming, he thought. Perhaps they knew well enough to stay back.
But Ludin knew death. He was no to gutting fish when the need arose. The stink of blood made him wary, not frightened.
The fear had passed when Ulrem had left. Even in Nourim, that name was known. Ulrem the Slayer. The Lionborn. He had other names, but none of them bode well. And look what the man had done, the trouble he’d caused, Ludin thought.
Well, it could be turned to profit yet. Even ash has its value.
Ludin’s sandaled feet made not a whisper as he scuttled across the packed dirt of the yard behind Kirtin’s place. The dark pools would remain for a few solemn days as a testament to the murder done here. But he knew not their names and did not care. He wanted only Athos, who lay by the cart.
He pursed his lips and summoned his courage. Ludin prodded at the man’s face, half-expecting a hateful snarl, but the captain’s eyes were glassy. High as he stood in life, the man was just as low and anonymous in death as any other fish tossed on the banks.
Still, best not to waste time.
“Sorry,” Ludin said as he unfastened the knot that bound the jeweled sheath to the captain’s hip. It was quick work; Ludin’s hands were deft and clever. They had to be, for opportunity and chance moved swift as the Neine, and clumsy hands made for empty bellies.
He heard a great shout and clamor, and the distant roar of a madman. Trouble at the bridge, he marked. A bleating note of a soldier’s horn rose and was cut short.
War, Ludin thought, hearing the big man’s words again. He grinned fiercely. War meant men. And for him, that meant plenty of fish. Perhaps he’d cross the bridge, too.
Nourim was, after all, a very small pond.