The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 22: The Princess's Hunt, Part 10

 Carala only stared at him for a long moment, the smell of cooking flesh thick in her nostrils. With a shudder she finally nodded, handing Ammas the blade and shrinking back against the wall, clutching her shoulders.

Gently Ammas retrieved the twinhooks, wiping it and his blade on his robes before tucking them away. Vos and Barthim stared, nonplussed. But Casimir, who perhaps alone understood that it was his name that had driven Carala to do what she had done, hesitantly descended from the carriage, approaching her slowly, touching her shoulder with one small brown hand. With a smile she looked up, taking his hand, squeezing. Ammas breathed again when he saw her eyes were their usual hazel.

Nashal had watched all of this from his hiding place in the tall grass with a terror that was growing into an all-consuming panic. The forest totems had stricken him in a way they had not affected his deceased companions; the horrible words that dripped from the cursewright's mouth even moreso. Even now when he looked at the forest's edge he saw not trees but grasping, brown-limbed and green-crowned monsters, knotholes grown into leering mouths and loathsome eyes, their roots writhing tendrils like terrible wooden serpents eager to strangle and devour. 

And now he had just seen Korl and Syerre -- Syerre, who had been his mate for a time -- slain by these mere humans as if they were nothing but unwanted dogs to be put down, not at all the proud Swiftfoot wolves who would bring the Empire to heel given enough time. That the Princess Carala had been the one to kill Syerre was perhaps the final blow. Their cause was lost, as far as Nashal was concerned. But perhaps he could warn Andreth, warn the others in Gallowsport. They might put a stop to this hateful cursewright before he and his friends did any more damage.

And so, howling in terror because he could not hold it back anymore, he fled, bolting off into the dawn on all fours.

Denisius was still horsed when they saw the last of the three wolves go streaking away on all fours at blazing speed. None of them knew its purpose, but the thought it might be raising an alarm or going off to find allies was intolerable. Without waiting for a word from Ammas, Vos, or even Carala, Lord Marhollow gigged his horse and took off after Nashal at a frenzied gallop.

"Denisius, come back!" Ammas cried. His only response was a growing cloud of dust.

"Oh, Deni, no," Carala moaned.

"He is likely to get himself killed," Barthim remarked, not without respect.

"Let's stop that if we can," Ammas said, and he directed all of them into the carriage, hauling Casimir up by his arms and tossing him into the back. His apprentice didn't seem to mind, however. If anything the look on his face as he saw his master take the reins and cluck for the roans to speed off after their companion was one of awe.

Denisius Gallis was experiencing a level of exhilaration he had never known. The earth flew beneath him. The steed under him and himself seemed united in a way he had rarely known while riding, and never while hunting. The wolf ahead of him never dipped from his view, even when it tried to duck aside into the wheatfields on either side of the road. It never lingered there long, for Denisius never slowed his pursuit, and whatever terror had impelled it to flee only seemed to grow as the hoofbeats thudded closer and closer. In his mind's eye he tried to imagine Lorith chasing a werewolf across the snowy hills of Marhollow and laughed aloud.

His laughter only seemed to terrify the wolf further. A flash of its animal eyes glowered over its shoulder. Denisius responded by drawing his sword, now a blade in each hand. The wolf howled again and tried to pick up its speed, but he was now only yards away from it. The Denisius who had crept alongside Varallo Thray to catch Carala in the act would never have imagined himself doing what he was about to do, but now, in the wake of all that happened -- not just since hearing Othma Sulivar's unflattering assessment of him, but all that had happened since he and Vos had set off for Gallowsport in search of a cursewright, he could not imagine himself doing anything else.

With a triumphant cry Denisius launched himself from the saddle, landing on the wolf with both blades buried in its back, drawing an agonized death-cry from its throat as he and the beast rolled on the dust-choked roadway, wolf's blood drenching him. A flash of fire erupted from the skymetal blade, and he knew no more.

When he awoke, it was to a circle of concerned faces surrounding him, Carala's closest of all, strangely similar looks of wonder on both Ammas's face and Barthim's.

"It was a dream," he muttered.

Carala burst out in relieved laughter, tears spilling down her cheeks as they had not done when she had slain Syerre. Ammas shook his head. Barthim only chuckled and said, "This was no dream, good Denisius. You are being as much a wolf-slayer as any of us here."

"Oh," Denisius said lamely. He realized Ammas was bandaging his hand, and he had a queer sense of doubling, wondering if the cursewright was about to tell him he had contracted the Yellow Death again. "What was that flame?"

"It's a skymetal blade," Ammas replied. "It needs to be wielded by someone who has tamed it with a spirit, or trained with it. Else it can lose control. You're not badly hurt. Just a scalding."

"Oh," Denisius said again with a sigh. "Casimir is trained?"

"More than you are," said Casimir with a smile.

"Are the rates for this less than curing the Yellow Death?"

"No rates," Ammas smiled a little. "Consider this my thanks for service above and beyond the call of duty, Lord Marhollow."

Denisius laughed and lay back. To one side lay the wolf Nashal, bloody and dead. He remembered the furious gleam in Carala's eye when she had slashed Syerre's throat, thinking he understood it better now. When that creature had taken off, every inch of him had wanted nothing but to stop it, stop it from betraying them or harming anyone else, no matter what price had to be paid.

"We need to burn these wolves," Ammas said when he had finished doctoring Denisius's hand. Lord Marhollow sat up, nodding.

"The watchtower ought to make a nice oven for them," Vos suggested. "The Vilains already abandoned it."

Ammas nodded, looking now to Carala. "I think you know where we must go when we are done. Without delay."

Carala took Ammas's hand in her left, and Denisius's uninjured hand in her right, looking from one man to the other, a swell of love and gratitude for both of them suffusing her. The likes of it were something she had never felt in her life, and which she had wondered in her darker moments if a werewolf were even capable of feeling. They were rare enough feelings for any child of Somilius Deyn, even one without the wolf's blood in her veins.

They were both dear to her, but it was to Ammas she spoke. "Let us go to Gallowsport and put an end to this."

Ammas nodded, his gaze fierce and penetrating, his gray eyes shining as they had done when he had first sworn himself to her in a ruined temple in Munazyr.