Chase the Morning

The sword did not fall; and I felt the feet that pinned me stiffen. Piercing yellow light fell across us like a net, and froze all movement. Someone had answered, a sharp voice from seaward, clear and challenging. Wood boomed hollowly, like a menacing gong. I twisted my head around and blinked. Down the lowered gangplank of one of the nearby ships another figure came bounding, tall and lithe. A shaggy mane of hair, golden in the light of the deck lantern, swung over broad shoulders and bare arms, long and muscular. ‘Well, cubbies?’ came the voice again, cheerful and insolent. ‘What’re ye nipping at tonight? Drop it, and back to your kennels! Or must I whip ye there myself? I’ll have no mongrels pissing around this wharf!’

Half stunned, half dazzled, I heard something strange in that voice, something more than its slight burr. But then for the first time one of my pursuers spoke, and I could imagine no stranger voice than that. Gargling, growling, grating like feet on frosty gravel, it ran ice in my blood to hear it, wholly, horribly inhuman. ‘Grudge the Wolves their honest meat, does thee? Hie thee back to thine own bounds, bitch, and mind what’s thine!’

Bitch?

A rich untroubled laugh answered him. As my eyes adjusted I gaped at the newcomer. A belt of gold plates sparkled over tight black jerkin and breeches, much like Jyp’s, and a long sword swung from it. But for all their tightness it still took me a moment to realize this was a woman, and quite an attractive one at that. Her face clouded with anger as she stared down at me, and it rang in her voice. ‘So ye’re snapping after strangers, now, are ye? Off, away, back aboard that hulk of a Chorazin else I leather a lesson on your hides! That’s no fit meat for puppies!’

They stood fast above me, and their laughter was ghastly. ‘Then come thee, vixen! An’ take it from ’em!’

Before the words were done she swung up her scabbard and with a sharp hiss of metal she drew on them. Animal-swift they responded, snarling, shifting to a fighting stance – and forgot me. Their feet lifted from my arms. ‘Up, boy!’ yelled the woman. ‘Up, and t’heels! Run!’ And with that she charged straight at them.

Run again. Run as I’d been told to, and leave someone else in the lurch; a woman, at that, who’d saved my neck without even knowing who I was. And perhaps it was being called boy …

‘Like hell!’ I said, and flung myself at the ankles of the nearest Wolf. It was like butting a lamppost, but I’d played rugby at school; he yelped with surprise and went crashing down on the stones of the wharf. His sword skittered across the paving. I meant to jump on him, but then the woman and the other Wolves collided in a clash of steel. One Wolf staggered back from the impact, but the other plunged in, his great cutlass of a sword flung high, and brought it cleaving down. It looked unstoppable, but the woman’s own blade caught it; and hers was longer, and hardly any narrower, a huge straight sabre of a thing. Its hilt enclosed her hand in an intricate basket of gold-work; against that the Wolf’s blade jangled and was caught. A sudden slash drove it back against him, skipped free – slid upward – and straight into his throat. The Wolf reeled, staggered, dark blood welling between his scrabbling fingers; he collapsed, kicking, she spun about to face the other –

A boot glanced off my temple and sent me sprawling, head ringing, eyes unfocusing. Rolling over, trying to clear my head, I saw the woman and the second Wolf cross blades in a flickering sequence of thrust and parry. Her guard sagged, the Wolf lunged – and shot right by her as she danced lightly aside, and ran the sabre with ruthless ease right into his unguarded armpit. But the third Wolf, mine, had had time to retrieve his sword, and even as the woman’s sword sank deep into his fellow’s side he aimed a violent slash at her.

Or tried to; because, staggering up, I’d wrapped both arms around his swordarm, and hung on. He was almost strong enough to carry me along with him, but it made nothing of his cut. Then the air sang above me, like the beat of a great wing, and I felt the shock down my arms. The body jerked and bowed like a cornstalk in a reaper and I let go hastily as the head flew up on a dark fountain. I shut my eyes, and heard two distinct splashes from the water below.

When I looked up, the woman was swiftly rifling the pockets of the other two bodies, stuffing the proceeds down her cleavage. She grinned. ‘Whole, are ye? That was rudely well done, for a man unarmed. How’d ye set those hyaenas on your traces?’

‘Jyp –’ I croaked, and she stopped.

‘Jyp, ye say?’ she barked. ‘What of him? And where?’

‘At the warehouse – got to help him –’ Her hand caught me under the arm, hauled me up like a kid.

‘Follow then! Fast!’