Kady's Vengeance

Small for his age, the lycan cub looked more like nine than eleven-years-old. Not even the heels of his horsemon's boots could add enough height to make Cooley Blackwood seem older. His white at the edge of blond hair hung in a long tail. The only thing that he had inherited from his Waejontori mother was his velvet brown eyes. His knee length doeskin coat with a sheepskin lining concealed the fighting knives he carried strapped to his thighs for an easy draw.

Most cubs his age might own a small belt knife for utilitarian purposes, but only Cooley – in all of the town of Wolffgard – went armed with fighting blades. Lycan fighting knives were among the best of their kind on the continent, with an edge, a curved back edge that ran a third of the way up the blade, and strong quillons. They had evolved over the centuries out of the hunting knives carried by rural folk. They well served the practical lycan nature, which viewed with contempt the human habit of carrying a sword whether they knew how to use it or not.

He and his two closest friends, the Scott cubs, Rory and Hamish, had stolen into the southeastern corner of the winter-clad gardens at Redhand Manor where the family graveyard lay.

Short hedges lined the sides and back. A rose arbor marked the entrance down a path lined with oaks. Rather than the open spaces that most humans preferred as a place of burial, lycans, especially the upper classes, preferred to clutter them up with trees, bushes, hedges, and flowerbeds, arranging their graves in sheltered rows. Until three generations ago, the Redhands had burned their dead, burying the ashes in small urns and planting a shrub over it.

The graves of Suleahan and Sorcha Redhand, parents of the current chieftain, Claw Redhand, lay in the farthest corner to the northeast. The remains of Claw's twin sons, Tarrant and Logan lay buried south of those graves. The Redhands had considered it a kindness that the sa'necari had returned the bodies of their sons for burial after riting them for treason during the Lycan Rebellion. Lord Carneades Iagaris had not meant it as a kindness. He had believed that having to care for their graves would serve as a constant reminder to the chieftain of what it meant to oppose the sa'necari. Instead, Claw had turned the manor into a fortress, tripled his standing army, and according to rumor, booby-trapped the bridge over the Eirlys River.

The fifth grave was only two weeks old. Searlait Redhand, Claw's youngest sister had drowned in the Bonnie Draw River. Cooley had heard it whispered that Searlait's death had been murder and not an accident.

The three cubs had come to keep a promise they had made to Kynyr Maguire. Eight-year-old Hamish acted as lookout, crouched beneath the low hanging branches of an evergreen tree. They did not have permission to be there and never thought to ask for it. Kneeling beside the grave of Tarrant Redhand, they cleared the snow from the headstone, and placed sprigs of rowan and mistletoe along it.

Cooley froze when he heard Hamish sound the alert with three hoots in perfect mimicry of a snowy owl. He and Rory faded back into the shelter of an evergreen, stepping carefully on rocks and clusters of windblown debris so as to leave no tracks.

Malthus walked down the shaded path and gazed at the graves of Claw's sons, then moved to Searlait's grave. "Don't worry, Searlait. They will follow soon."

He opened his pants and urinated on her headstone.

Rory's eyes bugged. "Did you see that?"

Cooley jabbed his finger into Rory's shoulder and shook his head. Normally, Rory was the sneakier of the two, but Malthus' desecration of the grave had shocked him.

As Malthus turned to walk back, he noticed that Tarrant's grave had had another visitation. He frowned and knelt by it.

"Who's doing this? It can't be Maguire. He's dying. What makes Tarrant so important to someone?"

Malthus scanned the winter-clothed cemetery. The rows of hedges lining the place, brown knots of bushes sprinkled with white. The trailing evergreens beyond it. And saw nothing.

Crouched down and tight-lipped, the three cubs watched him leave.

Cooley turned to Rory. "He's creepy. You think he poisoned Kynyr?"

Rory shook his head. "He wouldn't get his hands dirty. He'd get someone else to do it."

"Let's get out of here. He might come back."

They stole out of the manor grounds to a place in the woods where Cooley had two of his horses tied. He had loaned Glorygirl to Rory and mounted his big sorrel, Larkspur. Rory climbed into the saddle and Hamish got up behind him.

GODWAR CENTRAL

Kady's Vengeance