Dawnbringer

would have wept at the sight of such injustice.

Lusk was similarly silent until they reached the stones and pounded the earth of the established road.

“Nasty little creatures,” he said, glancing up over his shoulder at the green impassivity of the forest behind him.

Startled by the venom in his words, Lakini stifled a reply. The sight of the butchery in the clearing above them, in woods that were supposed to be sacred, must have upset him more than she thought.

Lusk glanced at her, concern as well as amusement roiling over his striped features.

“I shock you,” he said, baldly.

“A little,” she replied.

“Lakini,” he said, “do you regret destroying the barghest?”

She concentrated on the path and didn’t reply.

“And the werewolves of Wolfhelm, so many years ago,” he continued. “Should we have allowed them to live?”

“Of course not,” she snapped.

“Those lying dead beyond,” he said, pointing at the path behind him, “were thieves. Few halflings aren’t. Why else would they camp so close to the sanctuary without making themselves known? They intended to prey on the pilgrims. They chose their path, and met the consequences of their actions. Like the werewolves. Like the pirates on the Orcsblood.”

Lakini had a sudden, vivid memory of the baffled look of the barghest she’d killed a year ago, staring down at its dead, half-lupine mate, with Lusk’s arrow in her throat. She still felt a primal revulsion at the nature of the goblinoid’s lycanthropy and their need not only to rend their prey but to destroy all hope and joy within them. But now she felt a disconcerting, almost illogical pity.

Pity. The only hope of mortals in a world where divine forces held sway was the pity of the supremely powerful for those who could not oppose them. Pity made the gods protect the mortals who bound themselves to them, and compassion had caused them to create the deva race, souls of angels in fleshly form, sent to protect the innocent and pursue justice.

“Where is the justice in killing them, even if they are thieves?” she whispered.

Lusk’s sharp ears caught her question, and he laughed bitterly. “Tell the good folk of Wolfhelm about justice,” he said. “Those that died before we got there, those whose fathers and sisters and children were eaten. Should we have had mercy on their killers?”

She stopped, and he turned to face her, a mocking look on his face. Shocked at herself, she had to stifle an impulse to slap it off.

This wasn’t what she was supposed to be, or what they were supposed to be.

“That’s not the same thing,” she managed.

“No?” he said. “Explain that to Jonhan Smith. Explain it to his donkey.”

Suddenly she couldn’t look at him. She walked on, faster and faster until she was running, her breathing heavy in her ears as she left Lusk behind her on the path.

That night while she meditated in her rooms, she remembered Wolfhelm, a village in one of the remote Erlkazar baronies, nestled in the foothills between the Thornwood and the Cloven Mountains. Built on the ruins of some ancient town more prominent in its time, it was a pleasant place, trading the lavender from the sun-warmed fields around it to the bigger baronies.

But Wolfhelm, as its name suggested, was founded where lycanthropes once claimed their territory and bayed beneath the moon. And one season, while the lavender ripened and children were sent into the fields to harvest it, the werewolves came back.

Jonhan Smith and his donkey.

She and Lusk had mustered out the inhabitants of the village, arming them with any weapon that could be found and sharpened with Jonhan Smith’s skill. They knew the community’s only hope lay in driving the lycanthropes back, mercilessly, until they had killed them all.

Lakini and Lusk, needing little sleep, were on patrol. For the last two nights the weres had howled unrelentingly, from sunset to dawn, at the very gates of Wolfhelm, and the villagers had huddled awake, unable to rest and without anything tangible to attack. The devas knew the lycanthropes were softening up their victims for the kill.

Lusk held his bow at the ready, an arrow to the string. The village had three gates: north, south, and west, and a tall wall that was unreliably warded by old spells that the local priest of Chauntea did his best to maintain. As they approached the west gate, they spotted a figure, still and pale in the moonlight. Lusk had raised his bow and Lakini had her knife in her hand before they heard the chanting and realized it was the priest, trying to weave the wards back together.

He turned when he saw them and lowered his hands, looking abashed.

“It’s dangerous out here,” said Lusk, gesturing past the gate to the hills visible beyond. “If you’re alone, a were could take you and we would never know.”

“The wards used to be so strong,” said the priest. “But now I haven’t the strength-”

His words were drowned by another howl and the sharp tearing sound of an animal screaming.

The cold silver moonlight bathed the village, making everything light and shadow. Here and there lights flickered on behind shuttered windows. The screaming was coming from the north gate, and Lakini tore the sword from its sheath as she ran, sensing Lusk close at her heels.

Jonhan the blacksmith was there in his nightshirt and bare feet. He clutched the neck of a donkey, trying with all his might to pull it from the grasp of an enormous wolf that had its claws buried deep in the animal’s sides.

The donkey was the one screaming.

The wolf was unnatural, its forelegs like muscular human arms; its head huge. It tugged once, twice, and the donkey brayed desperately as it was pulled half out of the gate. Blood, black in the moonlight, ran in glistening rivulets down its heaving sides. Jonhan lost his grip and fell on his knees in the dirt. The lycanthrope opened its maw and lunged at the animal’s back, about to tear the flesh from its spine.

Lakini moved in fast, taking her sword in an instinctive two-handed grip and swinging it underhand and up. It skimmed the top of the unfortunate donkey’s back, passing under the werewolf’s gaping jaw and through the sinewy neck. The creature’s head arced through the air and landed with a wet thunk between the gateposts-not far, Lakini thought, from the place where its many-times great-granddam’s skull had been staked for all to see. The body remained for a second, poised over the animal’s haunches, claws still flexing in and out of its hide. A gout of blood pulsed from the severed neck, mingling with the donkey’s blood that trickled down its sides. Then the beheaded were slowly slid to the ground. The donkey kicked it as it went down, and it flew like a giant rag doll to lie next to its own head.

Lakini turned to Jonhan, still on his knees before the donkey. He was staring over her shoulder, and his eyes widened in alarm.

The feathers of the shaft of Lusk’s arrow almost brushed her face as it sang past her, over Jonhan’s head and into the chest of the were that had loomed out of the darkness behind the blacksmith. The creature arched backward with a cry somewhere between a growl and a human scream. Jonhan rose and stared at the werewolf as it twitched on the ground behind him.

Blindly, he grasped a halter around the donkey’s neck and pulled it away from the gates and the dismembered werewolf.

“Rosebud gets out sometimes,” he muttered, half to himself and half to Lakini, examining the wounds on the donkey’s sides. Lakini had seen the animal tethered behind the smithy, snatching at some flower boxes. “I woke up and thought she might have wandered, and then I heard that … howling. And she screamed.”

“Were you bitten?” Lakini asked the smith, as he patted Rosebud’s trembling neck.

“No,” he said.

“Think very carefully,” she said. “Are you sure?”

“That one only touched Rosebud,” he said, nodding at the body between the gates. “And then your friend killed the other before it could touch me.”

“Good,” she said, and meant it. She didn’t like the idea of killing the smith, but she and Lusk would have little