The Domination

Chapter Nine

HOTEL MIRABELLE, NANTES

LOIRE DISTRICT, TOURAINE PROVINCE

DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA

APRIL 4, 1973

God that thing’s ugly, Marya thought, looking at the ghouloon. The transgene animal was big, for one thing, about three times her brother’s weight. Basically a giant dog-headed baboon, four-footed most of the time but able to walk or sprint on its hind legs. The thumbs on feet and hands were fully opposable, and the forehead was high and rounded. The biocontrollers of Virunga had started with Simien mountain baboons, then added something from leopard and gorilla and the jag hond . . . but there was more than an animal’s intelligence behind those eyes. Human genes as well, a mind that knew itself to be aware and could think in words. It wore a belt, and a long knife and pouch.

They were in one of the dining courtyards of the hotel, out under the mild midmorning sun; little fleecy clouds went by overhead, like something out of a Fragonard painting. Her brother and her and the Draka they had met: Alexandra Clearmount, a woman in her thirties, nearly their own age—a geneticist. The ghouloon was of the first “production batch.” It had attracted a good deal of attention, although Draka considered it ill-bred to stare; the serfs were frankly terrified of it.

“. . . mass production,” she was saying. “So costs ought to come down pretty steadily. The War and Security Directorates’ve got large orders in already.”

“They can be used in combat?” Fred sounded politely skeptical. A waitress brought their platter of shrimp and crudités.

“Fo’ some things. Not much technical aptitude, not intelligent enough, but they’ll make killer infantry. Eh, Wofor?” She laughed and tossed a shrimp.

The ghouloon caught it out of the air with one hand, holding it between finger and thumb, sniffing curiously. Then he ate it, exposing intimidating fangs, and a long pink tongue washed the black muzzle.

“Wofor good fighter,” he said. The voice was blurred but understandable. “Wofor brave. Wofor smart.” He slapped at his chest with his hands, a drumlike sound.

For a moment Marya’s eyes met the bronze-gold slit-pupilled gaze of the transgene; she could see the lids blink and the wet black nose ruffle slightly to take her scent. Abomination, she thought. That was what the Church taught, and for once she agreed wholeheartedly. The Draka woman was talking to Fred again, leaning forward with interest.

Lucky, Marya thought. Lucky that they had stumbled on someone heading for the Sologne Forest Preserve. The Conservancy Directorate usually rented out the hunting rights to the smaller preserves to groups of neighboring Landholders, in return for maintenance work. Very economical, but it made it difficult for an outsider to get a permit, and Draka law and custom were not easy on poachers. This Clearmount had connections with the local planters—She might even be a relative, Marya thought ironically—and could get them into a hunting party. Even more lucky that she’s interested in Fred and not his sister. Not that she wasn’t prepared to make the supreme sacrifice, but . . . Better him than me.

Citizen sexual mores were a tricky subject. Their instructors had gone into detail, tracing it back to child-rearing patterns . . . One thing Draka had never been was puritanical: sadomasochistic hedonists, that was the term the psychs used. The boys had concubines from puberty on, or casual sex with any serf woman they wanted; that was a tradition dating back to their Caribbean origins and beyond. Not many pious middle-class Protestants in the bloodlines of this nation. Citizen women had been legally barred from any contact with serf males until quite recently, though, and it was still socially unacceptable. Given the sex-segregated boarding schools, the Draka neoclassicism and the near-total lack of erotic inhibition otherwise, she supposed a tradition of homoeroticism was natural enough. For that matter, young women generally wanted more romance in the mixture; that didn’t seem to hit men until true adulthood. So young Draka women faced a perpetual shortage of interested men. Marya’s mouth quirked, remembering her own teenage years.

I always suspected courtship was something adolescent males put up with because it was the only way to get laid, she thought. This more or less confirms it.

Draka teenage boys got all they wanted, and tended to be profoundly indifferent to females of their own caste, who could say no. So girls were thrown back on each other; they were supposed to grow out of it in their early twenties, theoretically. Most did, to the extent of marrying and bearing children; granted, there was really strong social pressure to do that, as well. The agent grinned to herself. The Draka woman’s come-on to Fred had been disconcertingly blunt. That’s logical, too. In the Alliance countries sex was something that women had and men wanted, and men had to conform to the indirect approaches women preferred. Here, precisely the opposite.

I wonder what hunting boar with a spear is like? she thought meditatively.

* * *

SOLOGNE FOREST PRESERVE

PROVINCE OF TOURAINE

DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA

APRIL 10, 1973: 1030 HOURS

“Shit!” Myfwany said, reining in her horse. “What a complete cockup!”

Yolande nodded agreement, switching her reins to the spear hand and wiping her hair back from her forehead with the other. The rain had given way to a steady drizzle, just enough to keep them soaked and replenish the low mist drifting through the trees. They had halted in a clearing, a hectare or so of knee-high purple heather amid old-growth oak; the chill cut to the bone beneath the leather and wool of their hunting clothes. Discomfort could be ignored; they were also lost, which was rather more frustrating. She reached for her hunting horn and blew, a dull rooo-woo-rooo sound through the endless patter of rain on leaf. The air was raw and full of the smell of marsh, vegetable decay, and wet horse.

“Hear that?” she asked, standing in the stirrups and cupping a hand to an ear. Their mounts stamped and blew, shaking their heads in a jingle of bridle and bit. Far away came the belling of hounds.

“Sa,” Myfwany said, her head coming up. “Think they caught the scent again?”

“We can hope. C’mon, this way.” The Sologne was a half-million hectares of wilderness, but the keepers tended to the paths at least.

SOLOGNE FOREST PRESERVE

CHATEAU MOULIN

PROVINCE OF TOURAINE

DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA

APRIL 4, 1973: 1000 HOURS

“Out!” the Security Tetrarch said. The serf flinched back from the deadly quiet of the tone. “You brainless slut, you supposed to keep track of him!”

Mei-ling swallowed and straightened. “Mistis, Mastah Dave doan’ like it, when we keeps him too close. We supposed to make him happy, aren’t we? Anyways, Bernadette with him.”

The green-coated secret police agent looked down at her control board and keyed a sequence. “Then why isn’t she carryin’ her transponder? Oh, hell.” Another touch on the board. “Decurion, turn out the ghouloons, let’s see them earn their keep. No alarms, our little electronics wizard don’t like the bars of the cage showin’.” She stood, shrugging into a waterproof jacket. “Come on, wench. Show me where they might have gone.”

“Where the hell have you been?” Mandy asked, as Yolande and Myfwany reined in. John looked up from overseeing the serf huntsmen who were rigging the nets between the big beech trees, waved, went back to work.

“Where have we been?” Myfwany grinned and waved at the surrounding forest. “Y’all were supposed to keep everyone in sight or hearin’ of the dogs. Fo’ that matter, where the hell are we now?”

A faint shout came from the woods ahead. The trees were tall here, thirty meters or more, but widely enough spaced that patches of underbrush flourished, spiny thorn and witch hazel. They all swung down, dropping their reins. Yolande swallowed and took a firmer grip on her boar spear; it was a head taller than she, with an oval point as broad as her hand and a steel crossbar beneath to prevent a tusker from driving itself up the shaft to gore a hunter. The nets made a deep funnel, with them at the apex . . . it was a slightly disconsolate feeling, as the servants led the mounts away to safety.

Damn, but I’m still light for this, she thought. No more than a hundred fifty tall; strong for her weight, but wild pig had heft. “Shut up, you crybaby,” she whispered to herself under her breath, inaudibly. Aloud: “Where are those city-bred, the ones Alexandra picked up?” There was a slightly patronizing note to her voice; the pair had seemed nice enough, but she thought her cousin could do better . . . and had been a little undiscriminating, since her divorce. Oh, well, not everybody can find the right one, she thought charitably, sparing a quick glance for Myfwany. They all faced the gap in the net, spreading out to twice arm’s length, just close enough to give support. A horn blew ahead of them, and John came trotting back toward them.

“Don’t know,” Mandy said with a shrug. John stopped to give her a brief hug before taking center position; Yolande noted how they were almost of a height, now. Mandy’s really filled out, she thought, with a slight envy. I’m always going to be like a sylph beside her. And it looked as if she might be a sister-in-law . . .

“Alexandra lost track of them herself, an’ said she was goin’ lookin’.”

“Shit. Oh, well, could be worse. Could be rainin’.”

The wind picked up, blowing into their faces, and the cold drops came more thickly.

Myfwany laughed. “You had to say it, eh, sweetlin’?”

“Sign!” John said sharply.

They fell quiet, leveling their weapons in a two-handed grip. The boarhound pack was in full cry not two hundred meters ahead, and then there was an enraged squealing sound. The dogs stopped. No fools they, Yolande thought, as the squeal sounded again, closer. No way of telling which way the boar would go, either. Wild pigs were omnivores, like people; much more likely to go looking for trouble than a meat eater like wolf or lion. She stamped the rough-soled boots deeper into the slippery leaf mold and emptied her mind, letting her vision flow. The tips of the bushes quivered against the wind.

“He’s breakin’,” she called.

“Got him,” John said, grin white against his tan.

He moved slightly forward from the line. The bushes tossed again, and the pig came out. He stood motionless, three-quarters on, watching them with tiny red eyes. The massive head was held close to the ground, and the curved tusks stood up like daggers of wet ivory. Bulky and bristling, the shoulders moved behind as weight shifted from one cloven hoof to another. The pink snout wrinkled as the animal tried to take their scent; an organic battering ram twice the weight of a heavy man, knife-armed, faster than a horse and many times as intelligent. The dogs bayed again, nearer; the shouts of the huntsmen ran beneath that harsh music, and the sound of their horns racketed from the trees. John leveled his spear and moved forward, dancer-light.

“Come on, you ugly son-of-a-bitch,” he crooned. “Get past me and you home free. Come on.”

The boar seemed to sink lower against the wet grass and heather of the forest edge. Then it moved, springing forward as if shot from a catapult, stumpy legs churning the leaf mold, and nose down to present nothing but weapon and heavy bone. Yolande’s breath caught as her brother took two swift strides forward, poised the spear, thrust. Another squeal, louder, full of pain and rage, blood bright under the wan sun and John was pushed back two bodylengths before he could brace the iron butt of the boar spear against the ground. The animal stumbled, and she could see its mouth wide open in a spray of blood and saliva; then it went to its knees for a second, but the hind legs were still pumping it forward. Mandy closed in to the side. Her spear lifted, body and weapon a perfect X across raised arms, braced legs. Yolande saw the point dip, then vanish into the boar’s ribs with a precise snapping thrust.

“Hola!” Yolande cried, and saw her friend’s rapt smile as she and the man pushed the beast backward, still fighting. Words formed in her mind; half-consciously she began to work them into form. Arms together/blood and love—

“ ’Ware!” Myfwany shouted.

Another boar had followed in the footsteps of the first; it broke cover, grunted uncertainly at the scent of blood, then angled around the struggle. Myfwany sidled off, and Yolande moved away from her, closing the beast’s escape route. She could see its eyes roll from one of them to the other, and a hoof pawed at the ground. Is it a little smaller than the other one? she thought. Maybe. Wotan, I hope so. Myfwany was beside her; unthinkable to flinch. Yolande could feel the coiled vitality of it, like raw flame. Then it was coming at her, bouncing off tensed hindquarters, and there was no time for thought of anything.

Keep low. From above a boar was all bone and leather and gristle armor over its vitals. She stooped, crouching, spear held underhand. The ashwood shaft was smooth on the sharkskin palms of her gloves, and the broad point seemed to follow a scribed curve to the juncture of neck and shoulder.

“Haaa!” she hawk-screamed, and the point bit. Then the weight of it struck her through the leverage of the spear, and it was like running into a wall at speed, like trying to stop a steamcar. “Ufff!” she grunted, and found herself scrambling backward. Then she went over on her tailbone, white pain flowing warm-chill across the small of her back. The spearhead was half-buried in the tough muscle and blood welled around it, but the beast was pushing her backward with her backside dragging, squealing ear-hurting shrill and hooking savagely at her feet as they dangled within striking distance of the tusks.

“Hold him, hold him!” Myfwany shouted, racing alongside and trying to find a target for a lunge.

“You fuckin’ try it!” Yolande was half-conscious of screaming.

The spearshaft wrenched her from side to side as the boar lunged and twisted, it was as if she was on the end of a ruler somebody was pounding against trees and dirt with negligent flicks of the wrist. With a supreme effort she threw her weight down on it, using the impetus to draw her feet back and up; the tusk clipped her heel, sending her body sprawling sideways. At the same instant the butt of the spear dug into the turf, caught in the crook of a root. The boar staggered, squealed again as its own momentum drove the razor-edged steel deeper into its body. Instinct brought its head around, as it tried to gore this thing that bit it. She could smell it, heavy and rank.

Myfwany moved up beside her, throwing herself forward. The wet metal gleam of her spearhead met the taut curve of the animal’s neck. The Draka went to her knees as jugular blood spurted down over the bar of the weapon and along the shaft, and the boar seemed to grow lighter. Yolande panted with a sudden joint-loosening rush of unacknowledged terror as the beast’s death tremor shuddered up the spear. It sprawled, toppled over on its side; the little savage eyes grew misted. She rose, feeling exhaustion and bruises for the first time, braced her foot on the animal’s body and tugged the spear free. There was blood speckled on her lips.

“Wuff.” Yolande leaned on the spear and hugged Myfwany one-armed. “Woof!” Her friend returned the embrace.

“You had me frightened for a moment, there, Yolande-sweet,” she said.

“I had me frightened,” Yolande replied, laughing with relief. Suddenly she broke free with a whoop and tossed the spear up into the air, then rammed it point-first in the earth and kissed the other heartily. “Makes you feel alive, don’t it?” she asked, when they broke free. She looked over to her brother. “Shouldn’t we be about findin’ the others? I could use a nice long soak an’ dinner in front of the fire.”

Frederick Lefarge swung a hand behind himself, palm down. Stop. Marya halted, then eased forward to follow the pointing muzzle of his assault rifle.

Ah, she thought. Barely perceptible at waist-height, a line of light. Laser light, only showing because of the mist; modern systems were selective enough to take that and not trip until interrupted by something more substantial. And beyond that at ankle height a camouflaged sensor clipped to a tree, capacitor detector. She went to one knee and swung her backpack around before her; it had been her responsibility to come ahead and cache their equipment. Not difficult to “lose” themselves in the woods, not when everyone else was following the sound of the dogs.

This would be the difficult part. She stripped off her gloves and flexed her fingers to limber them before assembling the apparatus. A light-metal frame to hold the clamps, so. Close the circles of wire around the beams, so. Her finger hesitated on the switch, then pressed. A modest green light flashed once on the black-box governor. Marya exhaled shakily, letting her palms rest on the cold damp leaves. She looked up, and the cold drizzle was grateful on her cheeks.

Her brother slapped her once on the shoulder, and they nodded. Marya caught up her rifle and followed as he hurdled the gap in the sensor chain she had created.

The two OSS agents froze in unison at the hoarse cries from the path ahead. Then voices, a man and a woman’s, laughing. These woods were more open than those outside the guarded perimeter; they had had to halt half a dozen times to identify and disarm sensors. Marya slowly drew a map from a pocket on the side of her leather hunting trousers and glanced at it, nodded to the other American. They were right on target . . . if the information they had received from the underground was correct. If not, there might be nothing waiting for them but a Security Directorate capture team.

Frederick Lefarge stepped through the last screen of brush. The rain had stopped, but there were puddles on the flagstones of the pathway; beyond it he could see banks of flowers, and then a screen of hedge marking a pavilion. It was obvious enough what the pair had been at; the woman had mud on her knees and was still adjusting her underwear, the man fastening his belt. For a moment Lefarge felt a surge of panic—this did not look like David Ekstein. Too thin, too tanned, the complexion too clear . . . then the bone structure showed through. The other man’s face was liquid with surprise as he stared at the two figures in hunting leathers.

“Hey,” he said, drawing himself up. “This is my place!” A neutral Californian accent. Then, as if remembering a lesson: “Uh, Service to the State, Citizens.”

Lefarge felt himself smile, and saw the other man flinch.

“Glory to the Race,” he said, and the smile grew into a grin.

The serf girl nodded to the two agents, then stepped back. He stepped up to Ekstein, pushed the muzzle of the rifle into the defector’s stomach and fired twice. Recoil hammered the weapon into his hand, augmented by the gases cushioned in flesh. Ekstein catapulted backward, jack-knifing, the leather of his jacket smoldering. Back and spine fountained out in a spray of bone, blood, and internal organs; the air stank of burned flesh and excrement. The body fell to the earth and twitched, was still.

So simple, he thought. Always a surprise. So different from the viewer, rarely any dramatic thrashing around, no last-gasp curses, not with a wound like this. The body fell down and died, and it was over. A whole universe within a human skull, and then nothing. Jesus, I hate this job. It was done. Now they must escape; the easy way, if they could get back to the hunting party, or the hard way, switching identities and oozing out through the underground net.

“Merci.” That was the serf woman. “Et moi aussi.”

“What?” he said sharply in French, looking up. She was young, barely in her late teens; cool brunette good looks, face unreadable as she looked down into Ekstein’s final expression of bewilderment.

“Now me,” she said, looking up at him. “Surely you were told, monsieur? If you do not I must contrive it, and they will suspect everyone if I suicide. Most are blameless—I am the underground contact here—but that will not spare them interrogation, and I know too much.”

He felt his mouth open and the muzzle of the rifle drooped. “Merde! Nobody said a word about that to us!”

She swallowed, and he saw a slight tremor in the hands that smoothed back her disordered hair. “Please, quickly.” She turned her back, looked up into the wet sky with fists clenched by her side. “There is not much time before he is missed.”

“I—” Lefarge felt himself lock. There was white noise in his mind, caught between must and cannot. Marya stepped past him with a soft touch on his arm.

“As you wish,” she said to the serf girl, an infinite tenderness in her voice. “As you wish.”

“I wish we hadn’t had to drop the rifles,” Marya said. The rain was lifting, finally this time by the rifts in the clouds. Their horses had been waiting where they were left, damp and restless and turning large brown eyes full of reproach on the humans.

Frederick Lefarge shrugged, guiding the big animal with the pressure of his knees; Draka used a pad-saddle and an almost token bit. It would be like carrying a “guilty” sign to have the weapons when the police came around. Not that either of them could stand a close questioning, but if they could slip back into the hunting party . . . They walked the mounts out into the open, out of the continual patter of moisture from the wet canopy above, but the air was colder where the wind could play. Six cars, parked along the verge. Two big steam trucks for the horses and dogs, two vans for the huntsmen, two tilt-rotor dual-purpose jobs for the people . . . Draka, he told himself. Don’t get too much in character.

The tall fair young woman was leaning against the open door of one aircar: Mandy, the just-graduated pilot. And his Draka persona’s lady love, Alexandra, supervising the loading of two dead boar; her ghouloon attendant lifted one under each arm and slung them casually into the bed of the truck. The van jounced on its springs under the impact, and the American felt a slight crawling sensation across his shoulders and down the spine. That thing’s as strong as a gorilla, he reminded himself. Rather stronger, in fact, and much faster. It snuffled at its hands, licking away the blood and turned to its owner; standing erect it was easily two meters tall.

“Eat?” it said, in that blurred gravelly tone. “Eat?”

Alexandra laughed and slapped it on one massive shoulder. The sound was like a palm hitting oak wood. “Later,” she said, and the transgene bobbed its head in obedience, tongue lolling and eyes turning longingly toward the meat; drops of rain spilled from the coarse black fur of its lionlike mane.

He turned a grimace into a smile as she looked up at him and waved.

It would not do to appear unenthusiastic. Actually, it had been interesting, at least the sex had. That was like coupling with a demented anaconda. The smile turned into a rueful chuckle; it was also the first time he had been called “charmingly shy” in bed.

“Hiyo!” he called, as he and Marya handed their boar spears down to the servants. “Sorry we got separated.”

“Whole damn party did, Tony,” Alexandra said. “John’s out gatherin’ them all up, with Yolande and her girlfriend. Ah’m gettin’ hungry as Wofor.”

“Wofor eat,” the ghouloon said.

“I—” Mandy began, and was interrupted by a chiming note. She leaned in to take the microphone of the aircar’s com unit. “Wonder what the headhunters’re sayin’?” she said curiously.

The American felt a sensation like an ice drill boring through the bottom of his stomach. That was the Security override alarm. Casually, he whistled the first bar of “Dixie,” the code signal. Marya swung down from her horse and turned toward the aircar; he slid the pistol from his gunbelt and checked it. A late-model Tolgren, 5mm prefragmented bullets, caseless ammunition and a thirty-round horizontal cassette magazine above the barrel. He slipped the selector to three rounds and set the positions of the Draka in his mind: the youngster leaning into the lead aircar; Alexandra ten meters back, by the steam truck. The serfs could be ignored, they would hit the ground at the first sign of violence and stay there.

“Not bushman trouble ’round here?” he said, with a skeptical tone.

“Gods, no,” Alexandra replied. Her hand had gone to the butt of her sidearm automatically, but it dropped away again as she twisted around to look toward Mandy. “I’s born not a hundred clicks from here”—news to me, the American thought—“and the last incident was the year I was born.”

Time went rubbery, stretching. His body felt light, almost like zero-G, every movement achingly precise, the outlines of things cut in crystal.

Mandy was speaking again.

“Oh, moo. Some sort of escape or somethin’ from a headhunter facility. Everyone’s to stay put an’ report movement until further notice. Erg, mo’ waitin’ in the rain.”

“Damn,” the American said. “And I’s real anxious to get out of here.”

Wofor gave a growl, and Alexandra began to turn back, a casual movement that turned blinding-fast as her peripheral vision caught the muzzle of his Tolgren. Even then, it cleared the holster before the flat brak of his weapon stitched a line of fist-sized craters from breastbone to throat. Falling, she was falling away in a mist of blood and roar; the ghouloon leapt from the rear of the steam truck, its great hands outstretched and jaws opened to nearly ninety degrees. Flying toward him, the huge white-and-red gape, and two pistols fired in the background and he was levering himself backward off the horse. Inertia fought him like water in the simulator tank, back at the Academy. Then he was toppling, kicking his foot free of the stirrup.

The horse shied violently at the ghouloon’s roar and the crack of the firearms, enough to throw him a dozen paces further as he fell.

Damp gravel pounded into his back, jarring, but he scarcely noticed. Not when the transgene struck the horse at the end of its flight; the big gelding went over with a scream of fear, and for a moment the two animals were a thrashing pile on the surface of the road. Just long enough to flick the selector on his pistol to full-automatic and brace it with both hands. Wofor rose over the prostrate body of the horse, looming like a black mountain of muscle and fur, yellow eyes and bone-spike teeth.

Even with a muzzle brake, the Tolgren was difficult to control on full-automatic. The American solved the problem by starting low enough that the first round shattered a knee, letting the torque empty the magazine upward into the transgene’s center of mass. Wofor’s own weight slewed him around when the knee buckled, and the massive animal slammed into the ground at full tilt, a diagonal line across his torso sawn open by the shrapnel effect of the prefragmented bullets. The earth shook with the impact. Lefarge yelled relief as the pistol emptied itself, screamed again as the ghouloon’s one good hand clamped on his ankle. Dying, it still gripped like a pneumatic press, crushing the bone beneath the boot leather and dragging his leg toward the open jaws. The human twisted, raised his other leg and hacked down on the transgene’s thumb with the metal-shod heel of the boot; once, twice and then there was a crackling sound. He rolled, pulled free, came to his feet with a stab of pain up the injured limb.

Boot will hold it, he thought with savage concentration, as his hands slapped another cassette into the weapon.

Marya was running down the line of cars; the blond Draka lay on the ground, her hands to her belly. Lefarge hobbled forward, felt a stab of concern at the spreading red stain on the side of his sister’s jacket.

“Just a graze, first car in the row, go, go, go!” she shouted. At each car she paused just long enough to pump three rounds into the communicator; even so, she was in time to help him into the first as he hop-stepped to safety.

“Let’s go,” he snarled, wrenching at the controls as she tumbled through the entrance on the other side. The turbines shrieked and the aircar rose on fan thrust, just high enough to clear the treetops before he rammed the throttles forward. The SD would not shoot down a planter’s car, not until they got confirmation, and Marya had delayed that a vital fifteen minutes. At worst, a clean death when a heatseeker blew their craft out of the sky; at best, they would make it.

“We did it,” he breathed. Something slackened in the center of his body, and pain shot up the leg from the savaged ankle.

“We—did,” Marya replied. She was fumbling in the first aid box. “We . . . did.”

“I didn’t know that,” Yolande said, looking down at the body of her cousin.

The eyes stared empty upwards into the rain, and the steady silver fall washed the blood pale-pink out of the sodden cloth. The ambulance took off with a scream of fans; Mandy would be in that, and John riding beside her. Myfwany put an arm about her shoulders.

“You couldn’t, sweet,” she said. “If’n Alexandra couldn’t tell, how could you? Y’hardly met them.”

“Oh?” Yolande shook her head, and indicated the ghouloon; Wofor was not quite dead, though far beyond help. He had crawled the ten yards from the broken-backed horse with one good arm and one leg, trailing the shattered limbs and most of his blood. Now he lay with his head at Alexandra’s feet, and Yolande crouched to shelter his head from the rain.

“Not that,” she said softly, as the last trickle of sound escaped the fanged mouth and the labored breathing stopped. Her hand indicated the ghouloon, touched its muzzle. A bubble of blood burst at the back of its throat. “I didn’t know these could cry, is all.”