Serpent's Quest

Chapter Sixteen: The Butchering Serpent

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE BUTCHERING SERPENT

Malthus struck the ground again with his hoe, driving it in, heaving up grassy clods of earth, breaking up more clods, and then repeating in a nearly unendurable monotony. Ros and Lyrri sat beside the row of ground, shaking the bits of grass loose, and making piles of them to the side. Once finished, the girls would feed the gathered grass to the goats. Tomorrow they would put in the seed and the seedlings from the community mudroom.

"Ah, hells, I hate this," Malthus muttered.

Sweat glistened on his smooth chest, gilding the flare of his wide, bronze shoulders. His cotton, drawstring trousers – the lightest weight garment he owned, which he had purchased in the deep south – felt heavy with moisture, and had slipped from his narrow waist to hang around his well-formed hips.

The lawgiver had informed him that now that his house was up, he had to have a private vegetable garden like the others. Those in the central sheelings had to work in the communal garden or help with the building and other camp chores. The ultimate goal, according to Nikko, had been independence, so that everyone became less of a drain on the resources of the camp and the donations of the larger lycan community. He hated keeping up this pretense of being part of the community. At least his house was at the farthest edge out of sight of the others. He still spent the first half of each day working at something the lycans considered normal, except when he went hunting. Hunting. If the lycans knew what he did when he went hunting they would not sleep so soundly in their beds.

Beth had been missing for a week, and no one had bothered to go look for her. Everyone assumed she had run off with someone, or moved on to a village where her reputation was not known. Clodagh, the young lycan who had taken over the day-to-day handling of the camp, refused to stay there after dark. That had limited his opportunities to add Clodagh to his collection of tools.

Malthus had wanted to watch Beth rited. It had been years since he had witnessed the kind of artistry that Egidius brought to the rites, but had not wanted to risk being discovered away from camp on the same night she vanished. There had been no further sign of Sergei, but he didn't want to leave the girls alone on the chance that the vampire was lurking about, and someone would have known he was away if he left them with a sitter. Kandaishee was turning out to have an extremely susceptible and pliant mind. Eventually he would have her watching them whenever he needed to be away, and covering for his absences.

The sound of rushing footsteps on packed earth, and a swish of skirts and petticoats, alerted Malthus of Merissa's approach. She was one of the few lycans who dressed like the ladies of the queen's court, with a form-fitting bodice and a wealth of under garments. Most of her people preferred clothing that would not hamper the change to wolf or hybrid.

Seeing her run along the path toward him, Malthus quit working. He walked to his house and leaned the hoe against it. "Go feed the goats and don't come back for a while," he told his nieces. They ran off obediently.

"Oh, Malthus! It's terrible!"

He could tell she had been crying. Malthus opened his arms to Merissa and she threw herself into them. "What's happened?"

"It's Beth. She's dead."

"Oh, gods, no." Malthus' voice caught. "What happened?"

"You remember the day she ran off, crying?"

"Yes, of course. How can I forget it? It was the day I told her I could never see her again." Malthus set Merissa back a bit to look in her eyes and noticed someone moving in the trees, watching them. Nikko. Every time he turned around that gods-forsaken lawgiver was spying on him. Sooner or later, he'd catch that young idiot alone and that would be the end of him.