Penric and the Shaman

I

Five gods, but vultures were huge when seen at this distance.

The bird cocked its pale head on its sinuous neck, peering at Inglis like a nearsighted old man, as if uncertain whether he was its enemy or its… breakfast, judging by the graying of the scudding damp sky overhead. It shuffled back and forth, its pantaloon-feathers stirring on its legs as it raised one talon-tipped foot and contemplated its dilemma. The hooked yellow beak seemed to take aim. Inglis opened his parched mouth and gusted a harsh hiss, like the fire in a blacksmith’s forge when the bellows blew. The bird skipped back a pace, raising vast brown wings, as if it were a villain in a play swirling his cloak just before declaiming his defiance to fate.

Fate, it seemed, had Inglis at bay now. Run to ground. He scratched at that hard ground with a gloved hand, leather cold and stiff, but grubbed up only snow. Not enough light yet to see if there was much blood on it. The steep vale he had climbed out of last night was a shadowed gulf, the ice and the rocks a mosaic of white and black streaks, the scrubby trees vague claws. His head ached abominably. He had thought that a freezing man was supposed to go numb, but his trapped leg continued to throb. One last heave failed to shift anything. Angled downward on the slope, he had no strength left to pull himself upright and try to get some better leverage.

The vulture hopped again. He wasn’t sure what it was waiting for. Reinforcements? They contemplated each other for an unmeasured time.

A dog barked, getting closer. Not mere yaps, but deep woofs, as if sounding from a chest the size of a barrel. A sharper bark joined the first, and another. The vulture flapped and heaved itself into the air, retreating, but only as far as a nearby bare-branched tree, as the dogs rushed up. Surely he was hallucinating—there could be no Great Beast here, but the deep-voiced dog was the size and shape of a wolf, and the wolf in Inglis’s blood seemed to sing out to it. It shuddered in canine ecstasy, licking his face, rolling in the snow and waving its paws in the air only to jump up and lick again, as the other two swirled around him, whining and yipping. Do you imagine I am your god? No gods here…

Voices.

“What is it?”

“Something dead, looks like. Arrow, you idiot beast! Don’t roll in it, you’ll stink up the hut fair fierce—again…”

“Oh. It’s a man.”

“Anyone we know?”

Shadowy shapes moved around him. Someone dragged off the dog, but with a menacing growl it wriggled free, then began nosing him again.

“…No. Traveler.”

“What’s he doing this far off the pass road?”

“Getting his fool self killed, looks like.”

“He took this track, alone in the dark, in this weather? Practically qualifies him for a suicide, I’d say. The Bastard’s bait for sure.”

“Should we haul his carcass down to Whippoorwill? Might be a reward or something.”

A thoughtful pause.

“Eh, nor there might not be, and where’s the point to that? Collect the reward now, save steps. Strip him and let the carrion birds give him a sky burial. It can make no difference to him.”

“Well, it’s about time somebody gave us a god’s-day gift…”

Ah. The vulture’s reinforcements have arrived.

Hands, plucking at his clothes. “Good cloth. Good boots—help me shift these rocks, and I bet we can get both of them.”

“Might have to cut off the smashed one.”

The leg, or the boot? No, they’d want the boot. Maybe the leg…

“Riding boots. So where’s his horse? Think he was thrown?”

“Figure we could find it? It might have a pack, with more goods.”

“He’d have to have been leading it, on this slope. Might have slipped… stupid to try to climb in those boots.” A pause. “I don’t see it down below.”

“It’d be dead meat if it were… get off him, Arrow, you fool dog!”

Hands at his belt. “There’s a purse! …Ah, piss. Not much in it.”

“Fancy knife hilt. Hey, think those’re real jewels?”

A snort. “Martensbridge glass, maybe.”

They pulled at the sheath, trying to tug it free. Inglis’s eyes unglued; he reached deep and found his last reserves, flinging his voice like a javelin: “Don’t touch my knife.”

A mad scramble back. “Bastard’s teeth, he’s still alive!” The lesser dogs went into paroxysms, barking wildly, and had to be beaten off him. The great dog went flat, ears and tail down, whimpering, licking his face and neck with abject servility. But the hands that had been tugging at his knife did not resume their attempted scavenge. Sacrilege. His powers, it seemed, had not wholly deserted him in craven company with his hope, faith, and courage.

“Father and Mother. Now what do we do?”

The very question that had been plaguing him for five hundred miles. Scraping for the last residue of truth left in him, he got out, “Take me home.”

He wept, he thought, but he no longer cared who saw it. Perhaps the gray dawn was false, because the world around him darkened once more.