the novices, carefully supervised, were allowed to shapechange and feel what a beast’s body was like. “Herewiss!” Segnbora said, turning to him in alarm.
He put his head up to the wind, gazing eastward as she had, but saw nothing.
“ You just did a wreaking,” she said. “You may still be overloaded. Taste it!”
Herewiss closed his eyes and reached out his undersenses. Segnbora did too, standing swaying in the long grass, and caught the impression again, stronger this time. Now there was something even more unnerving added to the flash of skewed viewpoint: thought, stunted and twisted and bizarre, but thought. And it was all of hate.
The mind she touched bounded above the whipping grass for a moment. It saw forms on the horizon, the source of a maddening stench.
She heard a cough, opened her eyes to see Herewiss choking as he tried to speak. His empathy must have been more profound than hers, for the remembered shape of the runner’s throat was keeping the words from getting out. “Fyrd!” he croaked at last, and pushed away from Blackmane, hurriedly unsheathing Khávrinen.
Segnbora’s eyes widened. “But that was thinking! Fyrd are Shadow-twisted, but they’re just beasts. They don’t think!”
“ My move’s been anticipated,” Herewiss said bitterly. He swung Khávrinen sideways, whipping a great brilliance of Fire angrily down the blade. “Our enemy’s a step ahead of me. And mocking us!”
Segnbora understood. At Bluepeak, long ago, the Shadow had driven that first terrible breed of thinking Fyrd down from the mountain country into the Kingdoms. Far more dangerous than the first noxious things It had twisted out of the beasts of ancient days, these Fyrd had the cunning of warriors. It had taken the Transformation, in which Earn and Healhra burned away their very forms and their mortality, to exterminate that breed. And now, for Herewiss’s sake, here they were again—
Steel scraped out of sheaths all around as movement became visible in the high grass to the east. Segnbora’s under-senses brought her more and more clearly the experience of their hungry rage. The hunters knew their quarry was human, and hated them for it. They were coming to do murder.
“ Dammit,” Herewiss muttered, “Sunspark, where are you when I need you?!” But no answering thought came, and Herewiss hefted Khávrinen grimly. Only two days forged, and already the sword would be tasting blood
There was little time to prepare. One moment the dark backs were jolting closer and closer through the tall grass; the next, with a wave of grunts and screeches, the Fyrd were upon them. Segnbora found herself holding her blade too high to guard against a maw that was suddenly springing at her throat. She threw herself sideways. Jaws went snick! the air above where she had been. She hit the ground, rolled, found her footing, sprang up again. The maw hit the turf where she’d rolled. For a moment it tore the ground with teeth and talons, its hunched back to her. That was all she needed. Choosing her spot Segnbora swung Charriselm up, sliced down through thick flesh to the shock of bone. The maw writhed and screamed once, its half-severed head flopping into the grass. She paid it no more heed, simply whipped the blood off Charriselm and swung around to find another foe. There were certain to be plenty—
— More maws, five or six of them, broad and round with piggish, wicked eyes; several keplian, horse-looking things with carnivores’ teeth and three razory toes on each forefoot; other shapes less identifiable. The standard Fyrd varieties had been twisted yet further away from the animals they had anciently been. Segnbora forgot about specifics and dove away from the spring of one maw, took another one across the chest with a two-handed stroke and was knocked down by its momentum. Move, move, as long as you’re moving you’re safe! she could hear her old sword-instructor Shíhan shouting at her as she scrambled back to