"We're already farther west than any of the other teams," Gerin said musingly. "It would mean pushing on a ways further tomorrow, but why not? As you say, the lure is good: might as well be a grub on a fish hook. Aye, we'll try it—but I still want to go and find water."
"And I," Van agreed. His arms were bloody to the elbows.
"We'll be back as soon as we may," Gerin said. "Set your ambush, but remember to know what you're shooting at before you let fly."
He and Van found a creek a couple of furlongs west of where the stag had fallen. Just as they came up to the bank, a kingfisher dove into the water, to emerge a moment later with a minnow in its bill. Something else—a frog or a turtle, Gerin didn't notice which—splashed into the creek from a mossy rock and didn't come out again.
The stag's blood had already started to dry; scrubbing it off wasn't easy. "We need some of the soap they make from fat and ashes south of the High Kirs," Gerin said, scraping one arm more or less clean with the nails of his other hand. "Maybe I'll try cooking a batch myself when we get home to Fox Keep."
"The stuff's too harsh for my liking," Van answered. "It takes off the top layer of your hide along with the dirt." He looked at Gerin. "You have a splash of blood by your nose, Fox. . . . No, on the other side. There, you got it."
"Good." Gerin gave a theatrical shiver. "That water's cold." He glanced westward again. The dirty gray clouds were piled higher there. "And before too long, more than my arms'll get wet. That does look like rain coming. The serfs will be glad of it, but I wish it would have held off till we were under a roof again."
"Weather won't listen, any more'n a woman will," Van said. "Let's head back and see if Raffo's brainstorm came to anything."
"We'd have heard if it did," Gerin answered. But he followed Van back toward the rest of their team. They could hold their ambush till it was time to set up camp for the night, he decided. Turning to his friend, he added, "It occurs to me now—too late, of course—that pile of guts might draw something besides monsters. If a longtooth decides it wants a meal, I hope they have sense enough to let it eat its fill."
"You're right," Van said. "I'm just glad Rihwin's not with us. He's a fine chap, mind you, but he hasn't the sense you need to cart guts to a bear, so why should a longtooth be any different? If you ask me—"
Gerin didn't have the chance to ask Van anything. A racket broke out ahead, the shouts of men and the hideous shriek they'd heard in the night. He jerked his sword out of its sheath, Van pulled the mace from the loop at his belt on which it hung, and the two of them pounded toward the tumult as fast as their legs would carry them.
"It's us!" Gerin yelled as he ran. "Don't shoot—we're not monsters." Whether any of the men was cool-headed enough to note and heed his cry was an open question.
Because he thought that way, the arrow that hissed between him and Van neither surprised nor infuriated him. He had a moment to be glad it had missed them both, then burst through the bushes into the little open space where the stag had died and been butchered.
Several of his men had already emerged from cover, too. "The thing went that way," Raffo exclaimed, pointing south. "We all shot at it, and hit it at least twice, maybe three times." What he'd seen suddenly seemed to sink in. His eyes went wide and staring. "Lord Gerin, forgive me that I ever doubted your words, I pray you. The creature is all you said it was, and more and worse besides."
"Yes, yes," Gerin said impatiently. "Enough jabbering—let's catch it and kill it. Lead on, Raffo, since you know the way."
Looking imperfectly delighted with the privilege he'd been granted, Raffo plunged into the woods. The trail was easy to follow, blood and tracks both. Before long, Gerin could hear the monster crashing through the undergrowth ahead. "The things have weaknesses after all," Van panted. "They aren't woodswise like proper beasts, and they aren't what you'd call fast, either."
"You don't know about that," Gerin answered. "How fast and careful would you be with two or three arrows in you?" Van didn't answer, from which Gerin concluded he'd made his point.
With a roar, the monster sprang out from behind an elm tree. Four men shot arrows at it. Two of those missed; excitement could ruin anybody's aim. The creature screamed when the other two struck. But despite them, and despite the other shafts that pierced it, it rushed at its pursuers.
Its claws scraped against the bronze scales of Gerin's corselet. He could feel the force behind them, even if they did not wound; as he'd guessed, the monster was stronger than a man. He slashed with his sword. The thing screamed again.
Van clouted it with his mace. The blow would have crushed the skull of any man. It knocked the monster to the ground, but it got up again, blood streaming from the dreadful wound to the side of its head. Cursing in half a dozen languages, Van smote it again, even harder than before. This time it fell and did not rise again.
"Father Dyaus above," said a warrior named Parol and called Chickpea after a wart by his nose. Gerin's heart pounded in his chest. He felt as if he'd fought against a Trokmê rather than hunted a beast. The monster's strength, even badly wounded, accounted for some of that. More, though, came from how much the thing resembled a man.
"Will you look at it?" Raffo said in wondering tones. "Take the ugliest scoundrel you've ever seen—old Wolfar, for instance—and make him five times as ugly as he really was, every which way, I mean, and you've just about got this thing here."
"Oh, not quite everything," Parol said. "I wouldn't mind being hung so good, and that's no lie."
That comment aside, Raffo's remark was to the point. Gerin had noted how manlike the monsters were from the moment he set eyes on them. Then, though, he hadn't had the leisure to examine one closely; he'd been more concerned about getting away from Ikos with his life and Van's and the Sibyl's.
Squat, muscular, hairy—the thing did resemble Wolfar, he thought, unkind to his old enemy though he'd killed him five years earlier. But Wolfar, except when he turned werebeast, had not been armed with claws on hands and feet both, and even as a werebeast his teeth had hardly matched the ones filling the monster's long, formidable jaws.
Above those jaws, its features were also a vicious parody of mankind's: a low nose with slit nostrils; large eyes set deep under heavy ridges of bone; thick hair, almost fur, rising to a crest on top of its head and nearly disguising how little forehead it had.
"There it is," Gerin said. "Dyaus above only knows how many of these things are spreading over the northlands."
"Are they all of the same sort as this one?" Raffo asked.
"Some of 'em are likely to be females or bitches or woman monsters or whatever the right name is," Parol put in.
"They're ugly enough so it'd only matter to another monster." Raffo made a gesture of distaste. "What I meant was, is this one pretty much like the others? You'd get a different notion of what people were like from Van's corpse and the one I'd like to make out of that weedy little jeweler who may have run off with Duren."
"Otes." Gerin heard the growl in his own voice as he supplied the name. How could he properly search for his son when catastrophe was overtaking all the northlands? More and more, he feared he'd never again see Duren alive. But Raffo's question raised a serious point. "I haven't had enough experience with them to answer that, though Ricolf's man said some seemed smarter than others," he said. "One way or another, we'll all find out before long."
The warriors trooped back to where they had slain the deer, leaving the monster's body where it lay. "We may as well camp, as Raffo said," Van remarked. "No point in pushing further in the little daylight left."