Part 6 (1/2)

He put a hand over his heart, and took the topic to the pleasant inconsequentiality of the season's fine weather, but her gaze strayed to him time and again and she wondered what else he had heard, that she had not said.

Alistair Thomas greeted them with her mother's pelt in hand.

Society had rules of engagement, meaningless twitter of words like so much hurried birdsong; Marketa knew she must be partic.i.p.ating in that, because there would be a resounding, deadly silence if she were not. She did not admire the pelt; that much she was certain of, because Thomas's pleasure in displaying it faltered. Radcliffe was reserved, allowing precisely what Thomas had insisted on: that it was a new fur, recently taken, and so there had indeed been wolves on England's sh.o.r.es more recently than he'd known. Marketa had no idea what she herself said, nor how she could say it with any degree of calm.

The fur's scent was so long gone it might never have been, but even without scent, without life, it could be no one other than her mother. The darker grey streaks above once-yellow eyes had made her fierce, and stripes of white on her muzzle had given her canines extra length to threaten both prey and ill-behaved pups with. She had been mother to the pack, and to see her reduced to a flopping length of skin turned Marketa's insides cold and hard.

”Did you join this hunt?” She barely knew her own voice, dissonance ringing through it. Worse than dissonance: she could hear the wolf in her voice, even if the men couldn't. It wanted to howl, and only stringent human decorum kept her from letting it loose.

Disappointment flashed over Thomas's face. ”My father wouldn't have it. I was a poorer shot than I might have been, and he wouldn't risk me or the hunt on it. Three men died that day even so.”

”And how many wolves?”

”Nine.” Another man's voice, deeper and richer than Alistair's, broke in, and was accompanied by a clatter of footsteps on marbled stairs. Marketa startled, knowing it to be a violent reaction, but there had been nothing to her beyond her mother's fur in Alistair's hands. Only lately did she look upward, take in the echoing length of hall they'd been ushered into, its walls mounted with animal heads and its ceiling painted with scenes of the hunt. And this a town house, she thought; the country estates would be exhausting in their attention to murderous detail.

The man on the stairs was as unlike his son in form as could be, an oak to a sapling. He carried no extra weight, just size, and his chiding was good-natured. ”Al, you can't intend to leave our guests in the foyer all afternoon. Forgive my son, madam, master. His enthusiasm at times overwhelms his sense. I'm Alan Thomas, Lord Thomas if you must, though too much ceremony is tedious. And you must be Miss Alvarez. Master Radcliffe. My home is yours, won't you come in?”

Radcliffe guided her forward when her own feet wouldn't take her. Her breath was lodged in her throat, stuck there by tar and blackness as Alan Thomas's scent rolled down the stairs with him. She had thought him a black devil, not fair and jovial, but the taste of blood and death clung to him without remorse. She managed a curtsy so stiff it hurt her knees, but Lord Thomas took no offense. Instead he looked her over, then threw a tobacco-stained smile toward his son.

”This is the young lady with the interest in the hunt? You could hardly have found better, Alistair. Look at her coloring, those eyes, she could be a wolf herself. Oh, Lord forgive me, I'm as rude as he is. I'm a man who speaks my thoughts, Miss Alvarez. Perhaps you won't hold it against me.”

”Do you favor women who speak theirs, my lord?” Her voice was strangled in her throat, and Radcliffe, unexpectedly, put his hand at her spine, a show of-not lending strength, she thought. Of solidarity, as her mother had once stood by the pack leader.

Lord Thomas's eyes narrowed, making him suddenly wolfish himself. Not so convivial after all, for all that his gaze was the ice blue of a cub and not gold like an adult. ”Would you think it fair, Miss Alvarez, if I said I'd met few women who voiced their thoughts? Whether they have none or whether society has trained restraint into them, I cannot say, but a woman of reason and consequence is a rare thing, in my view.”

Her vision was not good: she saw few colors, and her focus was that of a hunter's, honing in on a single individual. But it worsened now, until Thomas stood out against a blurred background, prey for the hunting. ”Then I will endeavor to impress upon you that a few of us, at least, are as capable of matching wits as any man, my lord.”

”I look forward to it. So you have an interest in the hunt. Do you ride, Miss Alvarez? Can you shoot?” Lord Thomas escorted them into sitting rooms so opulent Marketa might otherwise have laughed. Crystal turned sunlight to shards of light glittering across parquet floors, and overstuffed chairs were gathered to make different sitting areas. One was by the unlit fire, but they were guided to seats overlooking the gardens. A wolf's pelt, older than her mother's, lay across one of the sofas, and Alistair tossed her mother's there with as little regard.

Marketa sat there so she would at least not have to look at the furs. Alistair Thomas sat beside her, casting a subtle glance of victory toward Radcliffe, who gave no signs of noticing as he settled into a chair across from them. Lord Thomas dropped into another armchair, but leaned forward, gaze avid as he awaited Marketa's answer.

”I'm afraid I'm a poor rider, my lord. Horses do not like me. And the sound of a rifle hurts my ears.”

Polite doubt crawled into his expression. ”How then can you be enamored of the hunt?”

”I can track.” Again, Marketa barely knew her own voice. She had spent so long training the snarls and yips out of it, so long working away the growl so all that was left was a pleasant alto. But she bit off the words as though her teeth were long and sharp, and no man who called himself a hunter could mistake the challenge behind them. ”What I track, I can kill. What else is there to the hunt, my lord Thomas?”

His lips peeled back from his teeth in what might have been a smile. ”No one can always kill what they track, Miss Alvarez. Not even I, and I have many more years experience than you.”

”Almost always,” Marketa whispered, ”is often enough.”

Alistair s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably on the seat beside her. ”Surely this isn't an appropriate discussion to hold with a young lady, Father.”

”Oh, on the contrary.” Wicked delight gleamed in Radcliffe's eyes. ”I think it most fascinating. Perhaps a wager, if Miss Alvarez is willing. You have extensive gardens here, Lord Thomas. Dare you pit your tracking skills against the lady's?”

Curiosity burgeoned in Marketa's breast, distracting her from the reminders of her family's death. Lord Thomas could hardly refuse such a wager without a degree of humiliation, which Radcliffe surely knew. She knew her own reasons, certainly, for needling at Thomas, but it had not struck her that Radcliffe might have his own. Nor was there a discrete way to ask, but if they had a common goal she could at least apply more pressure to the suggestion Radcliffe had laid down.

Her smile was brief, but genuine. ”A challenge,” she said lightly. ”How delightful. I accept.”

Emotion flew across Thomas's face: chagrin and pride and a willing-ness to humor the poorer folk. ”I cannot refuse, if our guest is so certain of herself. You must promise to forgive me if I should come out ahead in this wager, Miss Alvarez. It's ungentlemanly, but I hate to lose. I cannot make allowances for your s.e.x.”

”I wouldn't want you to, my lord. And if I should win, I trust you will be as forgiving. What shall our quarry be?”

”I've seeded wild boar on the estate.” Thomas watched her carefully, and Marketa made no effort to hide the lifting of her eyebrows.

”Boar is an animal harried by packs, even packs of men, my lord. Would you dare the kill, all alone?” She would not; she was not, even in the face of vengeance, that great a fool. It had been decades and more since boar had roamed Britain freely, just as it had been so long since wolves had. Pack memory told of stolen piglets, delicious to eat, but also told of the size and speed and rage of a full-grown boar. Marketa's people were larger by some significant part than their single-aspected brethren, but boar met them weight for weight, and sometimes better than. One wolf against a boar was madness.

But one man, unarmed, was dead.

”I have a horse, a gun, and no fear of the creatures. Are you so bold, Miss Alvarez?” Thomas's smile was the wolf's again, though no wolf had such a streak of cruelty in it. That was a human trait.

”I had thought a deer, or even a game of hide and seek,” Radcliffe said, dryly enough to almost hide the note of concern in his voice. ”Miss Alvarez has made no pretense of tracking differently than you, my lord. She would have no horse, no gun. Surely you wouldn't pit her against a monster capable of killing a man with a single blow?”

”No,” Marketa said. ”Thank you for the concern, Master Radcliffe, but I believe I accept. I should like to prove to Lord Thomas that the hunt can be carried out in more than one way.” This time her smile was as false as firelight was to the sun. ”And prove, perhaps, that a woman can be equal to a man in many ways.”

Thomas stood with a clap of his hands. ”I'll have my men harry a boar from the wood, then.”

”Oh, no, sir.” Marketa came to her feet as well, as full of wide-eyed innocence as she could be. ”Not on my behalf. I shall enter the wood myself and find my own boar. Perhaps he who returns with the kill first will be declared the winner?”

Tension flushed Lord Thomas's face, but he nodded. ”And tomorrow we'll dine on the fruits of-our,” he conceded graciously. ”Our labor. If you would be so good as to remain with us overnight, Miss Alvarez? Master Radcliffe? I a.s.sure you, the estate can absorb you with no thought.”

”It will be our pleasure.” Marketa spoke for Radcliffe, thoughtlessly, but he chuckled and made a murmur of agreement. Smiling, she bobbed a curtsy. ”Shall we hunt, then, my lord?”

Boars grunted and squealed, distressed by the scent of a half-forgotten predator. They were complacent, unaccustomed to being hara.s.sed by any but men on horseback, and therefore less inclined to fight than to trot heavily through the wood, grumbling without being genuinely afraid. It helped that she only wanted to direct them; one wolf was not enough to hunt a boar, but with canny foresight and enough speed, she could herd a pack.

The numbers mattered: there was the king and his mate, and a handful of half-grown piglets old enough to be both delicious and dangerous. An armed man might succeed against any one of them, but anger the lot and weapons would do little good. That was why hunters, human or otherwise, separated one from its pack.

That was why Marketa did her best to drive them all into Thomas's arms. Not just for vengeance, though that was key, but because it was good to run, to hunt and harry, to leap from one side of the offended herd to another, snapping her teeth and catching wild scents. She hadn't stretched her legs so well in months, and playing at a whole pack of wolves was work enough to keep her thoughts honed and focused wholly on the moment.

Even she was shocked when Thomas came out of the brush. He had used the wind well, staying upwards of it, while it had been to her advantage to keep the pigs downward, where their cras.h.i.+ng and snorting might carry as well as their scent. She had been at the boars' heels, far enough back to not anger them; far enough, now, to meld into the low undergrowth and watch as panic struck hundreds of pounds of pig flesh.

The piglets broke in every direction but hers, one rus.h.i.+ng for Thomas's horse. Its mother struck out after it, too late; hooves flashed and the smaller beast's skull collapsed. It rolled forward, dying body tangling in the horse's legs, and Thomas fired his gun as the mother boar charged at him. A single shot, and he made it count; few men might have struck the pig's eye, though her momentum carried her forward and brought the horse and rider down even as she fell.

Thomas leapt clear, the blood that spattered belonging to the horse, not himself: it was done for, belly split open by the female's bite as she died. The male, screaming fury, rushed Thomas, who flung his gun away and drew a long knife, his pigsticker spear broken by the horse's fall. There was no fear in his scent, nor could there be, should he hope to survive.

A snarl rose up in Marketa's throat. She turned it to the sky in a howl, sharp sound of warning and loss, and trotted out of the brush to let the hunter see her.

For a deadly instant surprise took him, and in that moment, so did the boar.

She had never seen one throw a man. It caught his gut easily, and turned its weight against him, flinging him a distance only aborted by the presence of an oak tree. Thomas. .h.i.t it with bone-cracking force and slid down, blood turning his s.h.i.+rt and hands to crimson. The boar snorted, charged again, then veered away into the broken underbrush, chasing after its offspring.

The horse lay on its side, thras.h.i.+ng. Marketa darted around its dangerous legs, scampered back from bared teeth broader and stronger than her own. There were other predators better suited to this kill than wolves; her jaws were strong, but she had seen how big cats could strangle their prey in mere seconds. Wolves tore and shredded at haunches, only taking the throat last, when the beast was already weakened, and the horse was still too strong with fear to be called weak. Still, it deserved better than the death coming to it, and she lunged in when silence took it for a moment.

It took a long time, blood hot and sweet on her tongue. As its gasps died, she heard Thomas's increasing, and rolled her eyes, desperate to see but unwilling to release the horse and extend its death any longer. The gun was gone: Thomas had flung it well away, and was bleeding too heavily to search for it. But he was strong, and mercy shown to the horse could count against her own life.

It finally shuddered and died, strength gone from its great muscles. Marketa backed off, head lowered as she swung toward Thomas.

He was white-faced, drained of blood but not emotion; rage etched deep lines in his skin.

”What is man but a pack animal?” The words came from Marketa's throat distorted, harsh, angry; a wolf was not meant to form human speech. She changed again, staying where she was, lithe on all fours, horse blood drooling down her chin. She had abandoned her clothes before taking lupine form; they would not change with her, and she knew now she looked a wild thing, monstrous human bathed in blood.