Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay Page A

feeling.
    Had he been a different man he might have addressed some of this. Ned Marriner has, after all, come to the edges of the tale, and he might even be an instrument.
    But that is all he can be. You didn’t confide in tools or comfort them. You made use of what lay to hand. He stands up, drops a few coins on the table. The boy lifts his head to look at him.
    “I don’t know if you said anything I need. It is too long to tell, and I’m disinclined to do so. You are better off not knowing, though it may not seem that way to you. You will have to forgive me—or not, as you like.”
    Then he adds (perhaps a mistake, it occurs to him, even as he speaks), “I wouldn’t go up to Entremont on the eve of Beltaine, though.”
    The youthful gaze is sharp, suddenly.
    “That was it, wasn’t it?” Ned Marriner says. He doesn’t look any more as if he might cry. “What Kate said? About that place?”
    The man doesn’t respond. He really isn’t accustomed to answering questions. Never has been, if truth were told, even from when he entered the tale himself a little west of here, having come across the sea.
    Everyone here has come from somewhere else.
    He’d said that to her, once. He remembers her reply. He remembers everything she has ever said to him, it sometimes feels.
    He walks to the café door and out into the late-April afternoon.
    The dogs have been waiting, scuffling around the market nearby. They attack as soon as he reaches the street.

    Ned heard a woman scream. There were shouts and—unbelievably—the snarling of animals in the middle of the city.
    At the two tables outside people were scrambling to their feet, backing desperately away from something. Ned leaped up. He wasn’t really thinking. Thought took too long, sometimes. He ran towards the door. On the way, he grabbed one of the café chairs.
    It may have saved his life.
    The wolfhound sprang just as he cleared the door. Purely by reflex, adrenalin surging, Ned swung the chair up. He cracked the animal on the head with all the power fear had given him. The impact knocked Ned into one of the outdoor tables and he fell over it, hitting his shoulder hard. The dog cartwheeled in mid-air, landed on the street. It lay on one side, didn’t move.
    Ned got up quickly. The lean man was surrounded by three other animals, all of them big, dark grey,feral. These weren’t anyone’s pets off leash, Ned thought.
    People were still screaming from farther along the street and in the market square, but no one came to help. He did see someone on a cellphone. Calling the police?
    He hoped. Again, without really thinking, he stepped forward. He shouted, trying to get the animals’ attention. One of them turned immediately, teeth bared. Wonderful , Ned thought. When you got what you wanted, you really needed to be sure you’d wanted it.
    But the man in the leather jacket moved then, swift and unnervingly graceful. He slashed at the distracted dog with his knife. The blade came out red, the animal went down. Ned moved forward, wielding the awkward chair, feinting with it like some ridiculous lion-tamer, facing one of the last two dogs.
    He really didn’t know what he was doing. He was a distraction, no more, but that was enough. He saw the bald-headed man leave his feet in a sudden, lethal movement and the reddened knife took another animal. The man landed, rolled on the road, and was back on his feet.
    These were more like wolves than dogs, Ned realized. There was nothing in his experience of life to fit the idea of wolves—or wolfhounds—attacking people in a city street.
    But there was only one left.
    Then none, as the last animal showed its teeth in a white-flecked snarl and fled through the market squareas people backed away in panic. It tore diagonally across, down a street on the far side, and was gone.
    Ned was breathing hard. He put a hand to his cheek and checked: no blood. He looked at the man beside him. He saw him wipe the bloodied knife on a blue