The sun was setting as they finished up their dinner of thrakel-spiced oatmeal and jerky. Aryth already rode high in the sky, orange-red face round and radiant.
“That was just about the worst meal I’ve ever had the displeasure of eating,” Greddark said with a grimace as he finished his last bite of dried meat and washed it down with several gulps of water. “And I’ve eaten a lot of bad meals. Dwarves aren’t very good cooks.”
“Apparently shifters aren’t either,” Andri said, giving Irulan a rueful grin.
She scowled at him. “You’re welcome to do the cooking yourself from now on. I’d just as soon eat my food raw and still squirming.” Not entirely true, but she enjoyed his grimace of distaste.
Greddark grunted. “Just what you’d expect from someone whose grandmother slept with a werewolf. Or was it your mother?”
They’d agreed that some insults would have to be thrown to make any sort of argument believable. They hadn’t discussed the potency of those slurs. The dwarf had gone straight for the jugular. Any other time, she might have been impressed. Now, she just wanted to claw the smirk off his face.
She rose from her place by the fire, her hand going to the hilt of her sword.
“How dare you?”
Greddark and Andri rose, the dwarf reaching for his own sword, while the paladin tried to placate her.
“I’m sure he was only joking, Irulan. He didn’t mean anything by-”
“Take it back,” she said coldly, precisely.
Greddark’s grin just widened. “Ah. Mother, then.”
Irulan lunged. Greddark’s short sword was out in an instant, and the clang of metal on metal rang off the rocks and through the barren trees.
“You sure you want to do this, shifter? I don’t have any qualms about hitting women.”
Irulan replied by lashing out with her foot, kicking the dwarf square in the stomach. The force of the blow sent Greddark stumbling backward, and Irulan pressed her attack. She pulled her sword in and spun, bringing her other foot around in a high arc. Her heel connected solidly with his jaw, and the dwarf went down. She reversed her hold on her hilt, and raised her sword, meaning to plunge it into the dwarf’s side as he lay sprawled in the dirt.
A strong hand on her arm swung her around, and she was face to face with Andri.
“Stop this,” he said, his brown eyes stern and compelling. As he held her gaze, she calmed a bit, remembering that this was supposed to be just an act. “Greddark’s not your enemy.”
Irulan took a few deep breaths to slow her racing heart as she stared into his eyes. This close to the handsome paladin, she could detect a hint of lavender clinging to his hair and skin. Leave it to Andri to still smell clean after a week on the road. She licked dry lips and his gaze darkened, his grip tightening on her arm. She felt her pulse begin to speed up again, though this time for a far different reason. The nature of the tension between them changed, becoming at once more powerful and more dangerous.
“I’m not your enemy,” Andri said softly. She lowered her sword, taking a small step closer to him.
“No,” she agreed, her own gaze flicking to his lips, then back up to the dark wells of his eyes. She had only a moment to register their shock before she felt a sharp agony blossom in her back.
She looked down in surprise at the sword tip protruding from her stomach.
Greddark had run her through.
They left her there, lying curled around her stomach beside a dying fire, though it was clear Andri didn’t want to abandon her. It wasn’t until she hissed at him to go that he’d allowed Greddark to drag him and the horses away. The torment in his eyes as he was leaving almost made up for the pain in her gut.
Almost.
Her canteen-filled with one of Greddark’s healing potions-was within arm’s reach, but she didn’t have the strength to reach it. Greddark’s thrust had been truer than he intended, and she was fairly certain he’d at least nicked something inside that ought not to have been cut. She was bleeding far more profusely than she should be, and though she was close to the fire, she was beginning to feel cold.
“Let me help you, little daughter.”
She struggled to turn her head. An old shifter stood beside her, his dark fur shot through with gray. He held her canteen in one clawed hand.
No, not a shifter. A werewolf, in hybrid form-standing upright on two feet like a man, but with the face of a wolf, down to his long snout and fangs.
Quillion.
She wondered if she hadn’t heard him because he’d teleported, or because the blood rushing in her ears was just too loud.
“Please …” she said weakly.
Quillion knelt beside her, raising her head gently and pouring a little of the canteen’s contents in her mouth.
Irulan felt warmth spread instantly down her throat and into her belly, but she wondered if it was too little, too late. She didn’t immediately realize that Quillion was talking, and had been the entire time.
“… who wields silver cannot be trusted,” the old werewolf was saying, “So says Pater, so says the pack. That’s why the farsighted one hides them, deep in the forest that burned, so they will be safe from silver flames and silver swords and silver tongues.”
What was he rambling about? Who was Pater? And what pack? Of werewolves? One lycanthrope in Thrane was unusual enough, but a pack of them? Impossible! Forest that burned? The Greensward? Farsighted one? Not … Ostra? And was that about silver tongues …?
Silver.
The werewolf that murdered Zoden had been stabbed in the thigh with the bard’s silver cloak pin. If Quillion bore such a wound, they had their killer.
“Please, old one … more water?” she asked, interrupting his bizarre litany against silver, which had grown to include circles, chains, and forks.
The werewolf complied, lifting her head higher as he trickled more of the warm liquid down her throat. From her vantage point, she could see most of both thighs. They were uninjured.
Quillion was not the killer.
Some noise in the distance caught the werewolf’s attention, and he lowered her head gently to the ground before standing to peer out into the growing darkness. As he did, Irulan saw something on his hand glinting in the moonlight. She thought at first it must be the teleportation ring Ostra had talked about. Then she realized it was one of his claws, tipped in silver.
Like her own.
As strength returned to her, she gulped down the remains of the healing potion, feeling skin and muscle knit back together. With Quillion distracted by whatever he’d heard out in the night, she slowly climbed to her feet, watching him all the while. She spied the ring on his other hand, and just as he was turning back toward her, she leapt. As her hand closed tightly on his and she felt the cold touch of metal, Irulan looked toward the copse where Andri and Greddark were hiding and willed herself to be there with them. There was an instant of dizzying disorientation, and then she and Quillion were amongst the blackened trees. But apparently her will had been too strong. They appeared directly in front of Andri, who brought his sword forward in a bright silver arc, not realizing who it was that faced him.
Before Irulan could do more than flinch, Quillion twisted out of her grasp and threw himself in front of her, intercepting Andri’s blade as it swept down. Unable to check his blow, the paladin could only gape in horror as his silver sword cleaved through the werewolf’s neck and chest.
As the old werewolf collapsed onto the ground, he began to change. Bones and muscles moved beneath his skin like something fluid and alive, accompanied by the wet snap of gristle popping into place. His face shifted, compressing like clay in the hands of an angry and ungentle god. His snout retracted, his forehead flattened out, and he was no longer a creature out of legend, but simply an old shifter with tired eyes.