Werehunter (anthology)

 

Glenda stared into the flames of the campfire, sipping at the warm wine, wrapped in a fur cloak, and held by a drowsy contentment. The wine, the cloak and the campfire were all Harwin’s.

For that was the name of the hunter—Harwin. He had coaxed her into her following him; then, once his camp had been reached, coaxed her into human form again. He had given her no time to be shamed by her nakedness, for he had shrouded her in the cloak almost before the transformation was complete. Then he had built this warming fire from the banked coals of the old, and fed her the first cooked meal she’d had in months, then pressed the wine on her. And all with slow, reassuring movements, as if he was quite well aware how readily she could be startled into transforming back again, and fleeing into the forest. And all without speaking much besides telling her his name; his silence not unfriendly, not in the least, but as if he were waiting with patient courtesy for her to speak first.

She cleared her throat, and tentatively spoke her first words in this alien tongue, her own voice sounding strange in her ears.

“Who—are you? What are you?”

He cocked his head to one side, his eyes narrowing in concentration, as he listened to her halting words.

“You speak the speech of the Dales as one who knows it only indifferently, lady,” he replied, his words mea­ sured, slow, and pronounced with care, as if he guessed she needed slow speech to understand clearly. “Yet you do not have the accent of Arvon—and I do not think you are one of the Old Ones. If I tell you who and what I am, will you do me like courtesy?”

“I—my name is Glenda. I couldn’t do—this—at home. Wherever home is. I—I’m not sure what I am.”

“Then your home is not of this world?”

“There was—” it all seemed so vague, like a dream now, “A city. I—lived there, but not well. I was hun­ted —I found a place—a woman. I thought she was crazy, but—she said something, and I saw this place—and I had to come—”

“A Gate, I think, and a Gate-Keeper,” he nodded, as if to himself. “That explains much. So you found yourself here?”

“In the Waste. Though I didn’t know that was what it was. I met a man—I was tired, starving, and he tried to drive me away. I got mad.”

“The rest I know,” he said. “For Elvath himself told me of how you went were before his eyes. Poor lady—how bewildered you must have been, with no one to tell you what was happening to you! And then?”

Haltingly, with much encouragement, she told him of her life in the forest; her learning to control her changes—and her side of the night’s hunt.

“And the woman won over the beast,” he finished. “And well for you that it did.” His gold eyes were very somber, and he spoke with emphasis heavy in his words. “Had you turned on me, I doubt that you would ever have been able to find your human self again.”

She shuddered. “What am I?” she asked at last, her eyes fixed pleadingly on his. “And where am I? And why has all this been happening to me?”

“I cannot answer the last for you, save only that I think you are here because your spirit never fit truly in that strange world from which you came. As for where—you are in the Dale lands of High Hal­leck, on the edge of the Waste—which tells you nothing, I know. And what you are—like me, you are plainly of some far-off strain of Wereblood. Well, perhaps not quite like me; among my kind the ­females are not known for being able to shape- change, and I myself am of half-blood only. My mother is Kildas of the Dales; my father Harl of the Were­riders. And I—I am Harwin,” he smiled, ruefully, “of no place in particular.”

“Why—why did you hunt me?” she asked. “Why did they want you to hunt me?”

“Because they had no notion of my Wereblood,” he replied frankly. “They only know of my reputation as a hunter—shall I begin at the beginning? Perhaps it will give you some understanding of this world you have fallen into.”

She nodded eagerly.

“Well—you may have learned that in my father’s time the Dales were overrun by the Hounds of Alizon?” At her nod, he continued. “They had strange weapons at their disposal, and came very close to destroying all who opposed them. At that time my father and his brother-kin lived in the Waste, in exile for certain actions in the past from the land of Arvon, which lies to the north of the Waste. They—as I, as you—have the power of shape-change, and other powers as well. It came to the defenders of the Dales that one must battle strangeness with strangeness, and power with power; they made a pact with the Wereriders. In exchange for aid, they would send to