Chapter 25. The Human Alert Horn: A Personal Welcome

Chapter 25: 25. The Human Alert Horn: A Personal Welcome

She walked ahead, and I watched her go with the strong suspicion that Elsbeth Evershade did not have a sense of humor but that she had learned from me how to fake one very... very badly.

The pass opened up at the top, and I forgot about the pain in my side.

I’d been picturing Elarune as a handful of huts hidden in the woods... like some kind of a refugee camp with a very ambitious name.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Below us lay a vast, green valley, tucked between two shoulders of mountain like something in a snow globe. I can see a wide river wound along the floor of it, and on either side of the water spread a real city.

There were stone walls, long and thick, with towers set at regular intervals along them. A hundred chimneys sent thin white threads of smoke into the morning air.

Rope bridges swayed between the cliffs on the far side, and the tallest tower flew a cluster of banners, a wolf, a fox, a great cat, a stag, a bull, and several symbols I didn’t recognize.

In the distance I could see terraced fields, cut into the slopes in neat green steps, and at least one huge, domed building whose roof seemed to be made of polished copper.

"Holy... fucking... shit," I whispered. "It’s real... It’s actually a place... like heaven... REAL heaven!"

"What? Like you expected a cave?" Elsbeth asked.

"I expected like... three tents and a very moody bonfire."

"Elarune has been here for nine hundred years."

I didn’t know what to say to that. Nine hundred years and still standing?!

That’s fucking insane.

For the first time in days, I didn’t have a joke ready, and I just stood at the top of the trail with my mouth slightly open, looking at the biggest... most beautiful, and most unlikely city I’d ever seen.

It struck me that every time I thought I understood this world... it turned out to be twice as big.

At the base of the trail, the walls opened into a gate, a great arch of dark stone. It looked newer than the rest of the wall, and I noticed that the blocks around it were a different color, a slightly paler gray, as if they had been replaced in a hurry.

Heavy iron bands crossed the doors, and a fresh coat of red paint gleamed on the frame.

It was the Red Gate... I swear I could still see the shape of one huge fist-sized dent in the stone beside it, carefully preserved.

"Do not stare at it," Elsbeth said quietly.

"I’m not staring..."

"You are staring directly at the dent."

"It’s a good dent... as if I’m looking at the legend itself."

The guards at the gate recognized Magnara from a quarter mile away.

By the time we reached the arch, a dozen of them had formed two neat lines on either side of the road, with their spears held upright in a salute. There were wolf ears and cat ears and a pair of enormous antlers, and every one of them stood a little straighter as she walked past.

That... lasted until they saw me.

Yeah... this is where I get ’that’ kind of treatment.

Racism.

I watched it happen in slow motion. A young wolf guard glanced past Magnara, noticed the fever-flushed man leaning on a stick at the back of the column, and did a double take so violent that his helmet slipped.

His mouth opened.

His hand went to his hip.

An older guard beside him turned, froze, and then, very calmly, raised a long brass horn to his lips.

HOOOONKKKKKKKKKKK~!

The sound it made was a low, ugly, howling note that rolled across the valley and bounced back from the cliffs.

Every head within a hundred yards turned toward us. Especially their eyes were locked dead straight at me like I’m some kind of prey.

"Oh shit... that’s not good," I said. "And here I thought I got a one percent chance, but it’s actually zero."

"No," Elsbeth agreed.

"That’s the ’human alert’ horn, isn’t it...?"

"I believe it is."

Magnara had already stopped walking. She turned around, rested the butt of her axe on the ground, and addressed the guards in a voice that carried across the whole gate without seeming to try.

"Halt! This man travels under my protection," she said. "I answer for him! Let no one touch him!"

Oh... thank god... Magnara actually saved my ass, even though she acted all ignorant towards me earlier.

A tall, lean woman with a snow leopard’s pale spotted ears pushed through the line of guards. She wore a long gray coat with silver braid on the shoulders and carried no visible weapon, but the other guards parted for her like water.

"Magnara," she said. "What’s the meaning of all this?! You have brought a lowly human into Elarune!"

"I have."

"Don’t you forget about the law?! This lowly human could tell the others about Elarune’s location!!!"

"I still remember it clearly... I also know what he did and what he will do after this."

The leopard woman glanced at the freed prisoners huddled behind Magnara, the ragged, thin, limping line of them, and I saw something shift in her expression.

She turned her gaze toward me; it was cool, steady, and utterly inscrutable.

"I am Warden Ysolde," she said. "Captain of the Red Gate... I will hear your account, human."

At least I didn’t call myself a ’lowly’ human now, and so... I opened my mouth, and the crowd arrived before I answered.

The news must have traveled faster than lightning, because within ten minutes the whole square in front of the gate was packed with beastwomen.

They came from every direction. Wolves, foxes, big cats, deer, and even a family of otters with their whiskers twitching.

They stood shoulder to shoulder, packed so tightly that Ysolde’s guards had to link arms to keep them from pressing in on us.

’Yikes... THERE’S TONS OF BEASTMEN!’ No shit! I had to control myself to not drool all over these beastwomen...

But fuck...! They’re all so beautiful, cute, sexy, and UTTERALLY PERFECTIOOONNNN~!

But then... the first sound I heard was a sob.

A middle-aged cat woman had spotted one of the freed prisoners, a thin, hollow-cheeked woman I’d never learned the name of, and she broke through the line of guards and threw her arms around her.

They clung to each other and wept, and a ripple went through the crowd as other people spotted friends and relatives among the rescued.

For a moment... I thought it might be okay. And I can finally get a little trust from there.

But...

Someone pointed at me.

"There! That’s the LOWLY HUMAANNNN!!!"

"A human?! In Elarune...!"

"Kill him!"

The word went through the square like a spark through dry straw.

"Kill him!"

"Throw him out!"

"Humans took my daughter!"

I’m fucked...

But... I was surprised that a big gray-furred wolf woman shoved to the front, tears streaming down her face and her whole body shaking with rage. "They took my little girl...!"

"They put her in chains! And you bring one of them here?!"

A bull-horned woman, shirtless despite the cold, held up an arm that ended in a twisted, scarred hand. "Look at this! Look at what they did to me!"

"You think I’m going to let a human walk free after this?!"

A rock sailed out of the crowd and hit me in the shoulder.

It wasn’t a big rock, but my body was already a collection of bruises and punctures, and the impact made me stagger.

I caught myself on my walking stick and stood there, breathing hard, while a second stone whistled past my ear.

I didn’t raise my hands. I didn’t reach for my sword, which was probably a good thing, because I was way too weak to use it.

I just stood there with my fever and my wound while looking at the faces in the crowd... at all the pain and hatred and loss in them, and I couldn’t make myself feel angry.

They had every right to throw stones...

I’d been that kind of person, honestly...

Maybe not exactly this kind, but close enough that it counted.

Before I’d died, I’d treated women like toys, and I’d treated other people’s feelings like they were stage props...

If someone had thrown a rock at that guy, I’d have understood.

’Fair enough,’ I thought. ’You’ve earned that one, asshole.’

"Do not move," Elsbeth said in a voice like frozen steel.

She had stepped in front of me and caught a women’s wrist as she reached for a club, and she was staring her down with her ears flat and her sword half-drawn. "The next person who touches him will answer to me."

"Stand back!" Magnara roared.

She drove her axe into the ground so hard that the cobblestones cracked, and the shockwave rolled through the crowd like a gust of wind.

For a second the people near the front flinched.

But they were too angry to stay afraid. The shouting rose again, louder than before, and the whole square began to surge forward like a tide.

I saw guards stumbling, weapons coming up, and I understood with a horrible clarity that in about thirty seconds... a lot of beastwomen were going to die, and a good number of them would be the beastwomen who’d just survived.

I opened my mouth to say something, but... I have no idea what, and a hand grabbed my sleeve.

Millie stepped in front of me.

She came out of nowhere, a small, white-haired figure in a patched gray dress and a borrowed shawl, and she planted herself directly between me and the crowd.

Her hands were shaking so badly that she clasped them together, and her ears were pressed flat against her skull. She was breathing in short, shallow gasps, like a rabbit that had just run a mile.

She looked absolutely terrified.

And then she screamed.

It was not a big scream.

It was small and cracked and high, nothing like Magnara’s roar or Elsbeth’s cold voice, but it was loud enough that the nearest people stopped and turned to look.

It was the first time in her whole life she had raised her voice to anyone, and the sound seemed to startle her as much as everyone else.

"STOOOOOOOOP!"

The noise in the square faltered.

"Please..." Millie said, her voice shaking. "Please just listen...!"