This was. He’d never seen one of the urgach, no one in the tribe had, but there were legends enough and night stories to make him very cautious indeed. He remembered the tales very well, from before the bad time, when he’d been only a child in the third tribe, a child like all the others, shivering with pleasurable fear by the fire, dreading his mother’s summons to bed, while the old ones told their stories.
Kneeling over the spoor, Tore’s lean face was grim. This was not Pendaran Wood, where creatures of Darkness were known to walk. An urgach, or more than one in Faelinn Grove, the lucky wood of the third tribe, was serious. It was more than serious: there were two babies fasting tonight.
Moving silently, Tore followed the heavy, almost overpowering spoor and, dismayed, he saw that it led eastward out of the grove. Urgach on the Plain! Dark things were abroad. For the first time, he wondered about the Chieftain’s decision to stay in the northwest this summer. They were alone. Far from Celidon, far from any other tribe that might have joined numbers with them against what evils might be moving here. The Children of Peace, the Dalrei were named, but sometimes peace had been hard won.
Tore had no problems with being alone, he had been so all his adult life. Outcast, the young ones called him, in mockery. The Wolf. Stupid babies: wolves ran in packs. When had he ever? The solitude had made for some bitterness, for he was young yet, and the memory of other times was fresh enough to be a wound. It had also given him a certain dour reflectiveness born of long nights in the dark, and an outsider’s view of what humans did. Another kind of animal. If he lacked tolerance, it was not a surprising flaw.
He had very quick reflexes.
The knife was in his hand, and he was low to the gully and crawling from the trees as soon as he glimpsed the bulky shadow in a brief unsheathing of moonlight. There were clouds, or else he would have seen it earlier. It was very big.
He was downwind, which was good. Moving with honed speed and silence, Tore traversed the open ground towards the figure he’d seen. His bow and sword were on his horse; a stupidity. Can you kill an urgach with a knife, a part of him wondered.
The rest of him was concentrating. He had moved to within ten feet. The creature hadn’t noticed him, but it was obviously angry and it was very large—almost a foot taller than he was, bulking hugely in the shadows of the night.
He decided to wait for moonlight and throw for the head. One didn’t stop to talk with creatures from one’s nightmares. The size of it made his heart race—tearing fangs on a creature that big?
The moon slanted out; he was ready. He drew back his arm to throw: the dark head was clearly outlined against the silvered plain, looking the other way, north.
“Holy Mother!” the urgach said.
Tore’s arm had already begun its descent. With a brutal effort he retained control of the dagger, cutting himself in the process.
Creatures of evil did not invoke the Goddess, not in that voice. Looking again in the bright moonlight, Tore saw that the creature before him was a man; strangely garbed, and very big, but he seemed to be unarmed. Drawing breath, Tore called out in a voice as courteous as the circumstances seemed to permit, “Move slowly and declare yourself.”
At the snarled command, Dave’s heart hit his throat and jack-knifed back into his rib-cage. Who the hell? Rather than pursue this inquiry, however, he elected to move slowly and declare himself.
Turning toward the voice with his hands outspread and bearing only Evidence notes, he said, as levelly as he could, “My name is Martyniuk. Dave Martyniuk. I don’t know where I am, and I’m looking for someone named Loren. He brought me here.”
A moment passed. He felt the wind from the north ruffling his hair. He was, he realized, very frightened.
Then a shadow rose from a hollow he hadn’t even seen, and moved towards him.