Rebellion

CHAPTER 108

“Tali! Holm!” yelled Rix, galloping up. “Come on. It’s Tobry.”

“What’s happened?”

“Shifter madness. Worse than I’ve ever seen it.”

He wheeled his horse and galloped to the rear. Tali followed as fast as she dared. Though she had done a lot of riding lately, she was never sure that her seat was secure at full gallop.

She could hear the howling from two hundred yards away. Tobry had partly shifted, he was more caitsthe than man, and it was taking six soldiers to hold him. He was making incoherent howling noises, punctuated by shrieks and savage growls. Slimy foam hung in festoons from his gaping mouth, where the teeth of a caitsthe gruesomely distended his man-shaped lower jaw. He snarled, slashed with claw-tipped fingers, lunged and tried to tear the throat out of one of the men holding him, with his teeth.

Rix leapt off his horse while it was still running.

“Should I knock him out, Lord?” said another soldier, who held a makeshift club.

“Stand aside,” said Holm. He dismounted, drew a little brown sachet from his pocket, walked up to Tobry and, as the shifter tried to tear his face off, tossed the sachet into his open mouth.

It must have passed straight down his throat for Tobry gave no sign that he had noticed. He kept lunging and shrieking for another minute or two, then folded up, deeply unconscious.

“Chain him,” said Rix. “Double manacles — wrists and ankles. Bind his mouth and blindfold him so he can’t see to bite anyone, then put him in one of the wagons. Four men on guard at all times. I’ll take the first watch.”

He came across to Tali’s stirrup. “I’m sorry you had to see that. It — it signals the end is close.”

“How close?” said Tali.

“Days.”

“Will he shift back at all?”

“Probably not.”

Tali watched as they put the manacles on Tobry and fixed them to the bed of the wagon. It was the saddest moment of her life. The kind and gentle man she had once loved with all her heart was now reduced to a chained, mindless beast.