The Raven Warrior Read Online Free PDF Page B

wolf, my guardian and protector, doesn’t come, I will die.”
    Black Leg felt a sharp pang of guilt. “Maybe . . . I am the wolf,” he said quietly. “I don’t know. I started off thinking there was something I had to do . . . and . . .”
    “You half-wit,” the thing in the water snapped. “You turn me down and you’re gonna pick him up? What’s with you? You don’t like girls, I can see that. But taking up with this rickety old wreck. What is in your empty head?”
    “You don’t look like any girl I ever saw,” Black Leg snapped.
    “Oh, shit! I forgot!” she said, then sank back into the water, vanishing without a ripple. A second later, she reemerged.
    Black Leg goggled at her. She was beautiful in a very strange sort of way. Tall, slender, blond, with deep-blue eyes, long arms and probably legs. He couldn’t tell because she was dressed in a gown that seemed made of small green and burgundy lily pads dotted with tiny white flowers. They fitted her, forming a drape over one shoulder and clinging to breast, hip, and thigh. She radiated a delicate beauty; her straight nose and curving, sensuous lips were parted in a half smile and the rising sun made a golden aureole of her fine, fair hair.
    “What do you think,” she said, turning sideways to give him a sultry glance and a good look at her jutting, pointed breasts.
    “I’m a shape-strong, too,” she said, batting her eyelashes at him.
    “So I see,” he said. He began wading out into the water toward her.
    “No! No!” the old man moaned. “Don’t be fooled . . . don’t be drawn. See her pale face, white skin, her clinging dress, part of the lake itself? She cannot hide her true nature. Her grace is that of the swimming serpent. See the length of arms, legs, waist . . . a serpent is what she is and she will lap you in her coils, crush your bones in her embrace, empty the air from your lungs with her lethal caress, and carry you away to drown.”
    Black Leg studied her carefully. “You do look sort of snakeish. . . .”
    “Snakeish! You—shitass—snakeish—I’ll give you snakeish!”
    The glob of mud, slime, and any other unpleasant things she could find on such short notice landed—plop—in the middle of Black Leg’s face. Another double handful of filth landed on the old man’s head. He promptly ran screaming into the forest.
    Black Leg backed away, clearing his eyes, and was relieved when he looked out over the still, misty water and realized she was gone. He went wolf, found a clean, shallow stream, and washed.
    Kyra had been strict about washing when he was a cub, so he tended to be even more hygienic than the average human. True, he had rebelled often, but Maeniel (who, by the way, took a bath only when he wanted to) gave him scant sympathy and even held him down for Kyra to complete a scrubbing. Mother ignored his discomfort and said, “Kyra is pack. When you share a life with someone, you had best humor their crotchets.”
    And after a time, Black Leg became resigned to cleanliness, and though he would never have admitted it, even began to like it.
    When he was finished, he shook himself dry and went hunting. He got a young hare and, putting aside his own hunger, went to find the old man. He located him sleeping on a bed of bracken in a hollow near the stream.
    Black Leg dropped the hare near his hand and went to look for a stick he could use as a fire drill. When he returned, he found the old man had awakened, eaten the hare—raw—and then gone back to sleep.
    Black Leg sighed, settled down, and managed with a great deal of effort to get a fire going. He wanted fire, because truth to tell, he was frightened of whatever was living in that lake. Then he went wolf again, curled up, nose covered by his tail, and went to sleep.
    Something woke him, a wolf sense, not part of his humanity. The stars told him it was late, the night sliding into the deep trough of silence when all things sleep—even the predators replete with full