“There be two ways that men take animal shape,” she answered. “One is by magic on a common human, as my own feather garb does for me whene’er I make the wish. The other is more darksome. Certain folk be born with twin natures. They need no spell to change form, and each nicht the desire to turn bear, or wild boar, or wolf, or whate’er the animal may be for the person… each nicht that desire overwhelms them. And then they run mad. Kind and sensible folk they may be when walking as humans, but as animals they canna cease wreaking harm till thee blood thirst is slaked, or till fear o’ discovery makes them go back into our form. Whilst beasts, they’re nigh impossible to kill, sith wounds knit upon the instant. Only silver pains them, and a silver weapon would slay. But from such they can run swifter nor any true flesh and blood.”
“If the, uh, werewolf can’t help it, then this local one must be a stranger, not so? A native would have been plaguing the district for years.”
“Nay. Methinks as yon crofter said, belike the creature is one o’ theirs. For a thin taint o’ warg blood micht go unnoticed, unknown, through a lifetime, not being strong enough to reveal itself. ’Tis only o’ late, when the witchcraft forces ha’ grown so, that the sleeping demon was wakened. I make no doubt the werewolf himself is horror-struck. God help him if e’er the folk learn who he be.”
“God help any un you fear-haggard yokels may decide on for the warg,” grunted Hugi.
Holger scowled as he rode on to the gate. It made sense, of the weird sort that prevailed in this universe. Werewolfery… what was the word?… oh, yes, lycanthropy was probably inherited as a set of recessive genes. If you had the entire set, you were a lycanthrope always and everywhere—and would most likely be killed the first time your father found a wolf cub in his baby’s cradle. With an incomplete inheritance, the tendency to change was weaker. It must have been entirely latent and unsuspected in the poor devil of a peasant who bore the curse hereabouts: until the redoubled sorcery in the Middle World blew over the mountains and reinforced whatever body chemistry was involved.
He peered through the gloaming. The village was surrounded by a heavy stockade, with a walkway on which Sir Yve would make his rounds tonight. Inside were jammed narrow wooden houses of two or three stories. The streets that wound among there were mere lanes, stinking from the muck of animals packed in each night. The one on which he entered was a little broader and straighter, but not much. A number of women in long dresses and wimples, shock-haired children, and aproned artisans gaped at him as he passed the gate. Most carried torches that flared and sputtered under the deep-purple sky. Their voices chattered respectfully low as they trailed him.
He stopped near a street leading to one side, a tunnel of blackness walled by the surrounding houses and roofed by their overhanging galleries. Silhouetted above the ridge poles, he could just see the top of a square tower which doubtless belonged to Sir Yve’s hall. He leaned toward a husky man, who tugged his forelock and said, “Odo the blacksmith, sir, at your service.”
Holger pointed down the alley. “Is this the way to your lord’s house?”
“Aye, sir. You, Frodoart, is master at home yet?”
A young man in faded scarlet hose, wearing a sword, nodded. “I did but now leave him, armed cap-a-pie, having a stoup of ale ere he mounts the walls. I am his esquire, Sir Knight. I’ll guide you thither. This place is indeed a maze.”
Holger removed his helmet, for his hair was dank with sweat after being iron-clad the whole day and the dusk breeze was cool if smelly. He couldn’t expect anything lavish at the hall, he realized. Sir Yve de Lourville was obviously not rich—a boondocks knight with a handful of retainers, guarding these environs against bandits and administering a rough justice. Raoul had been filled with civic pride at the daughter’s betrothal to a younger son of a minor noble, west in the Empire.