The Hunter's Kind: Book II of The Hollow Gods Read online

  Contents

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Prologue

  Part 1: Betrayal

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Part 2: Loyalty

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Rebecca Levene is an experienced author of fiction and non-fiction and has written scripts for TV and video games, including one voiced by Mickey Rourke. She began her career writing media tie-ins for properties ranging from Doctor Who to the Final Destination movies. More recently, she has published two original supernatural thrillers and a short story which the Guardian said ‘combines thwarted ambition and a gallery of fascinating secondary characters to wonderfully readable effect’. In addition to her writing, she is also working on the storyline and scripts for the hit app Zombies, Run! You can follow her on Twitter @BexLevene.

  The Hollow Gods

  Smiler’s Fair

  The Hunter’s Kind

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2015 by

  Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Rebecca Levene 2015

  The right of Rebecca Levene to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 444 75376 9

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.hodder.co.uk

  For Fiona Singh,

  who remembers our childhood for both of us

  Prologue

  For as long as she’d understood what a birthfeast was, Cwen had dreaded her twelfth. She woke up on the morning it finally came, turned her face to the wall and kept her eyes tightly shut, as if she might be permitted to sleep it away and never suffer its consequences.

  She heard Griotgard approaching her bed, but he wouldn’t be able to shake her awake. Everything she touched must be washed before a warrior could handle it, and any food she left was thrown into the forest, too defiled even for the pigs. She rolled over and looked up at him.

  ‘Hawk day for you, girl,’ he said. His face was very red and very square, without any softness in it.

  ‘They told me I’d have a feast before I go.’ She dropped from her bed to the wooden floor of the longhall. ‘And you’re not invited.’

  Last night she’d laid out the clothes she was to wear today. Her father had provided them, looking to the left of her head as he set them out one by one on the bed: woollen trousers and shirt, hide boots and belt, a linen jacket and a hooded cloak in forest green. The jacket had been embroidered with a portrait of the Hunter, smiling and golden. Cwen hated it. It was the Hunter who’d put the hawk mark on her cheek while she was still inside her mother’s belly, and singled her out for this fate.

  The other Jorlith were rising too. She’d crossed practice swords with some of the youngest in her training and they smiled at her now, but it was with pity. Her pride wouldn’t allow that and so she straightened her back and nodded gravely back, like a thegn acknowledging the village churls. She was a thegn, whatever else the mark on her cheek made her.

  Her mother was waiting outside the longhall. She stared for a long moment at the birthfeast finery she’d embroidered with her own hand, and then her face tipped upward to cast a beady eye over Cwen’s wildly curling orange hair, which she’d forgotten to comb. Cwen was startled to realise she was the taller by a head. Her mother was, as always, perfectly neat: hair plaited, an embroidered scarf draped round her neck and a silver acorn brooch clasping her gown tight across the plump breasts at which Cwen had never been permitted to suckle.

  ‘My darling,’ her mother said finally. ‘So beautiful.’

  ‘Who cares about beautiful? I’m the strongest my age. I beat Osbeorn at staves yesterday, and he’s near to being a warrior full.’

  ‘Yes. That’s good. I wouldn’t … Cwen, if there was any way – if I could have stopped this, kept you for myself …’ Her mother looked away, seeming to war with some strong emotion, and when she looked back her face was calm. ‘Come then. The food grows cold and the sun’s already risen.’

  The guard owls swivelled their golden eyes to watch as they walked across the swaying platform that led between the Jorlith longhall and the village square. The great moon pines’ trunks stretched into the sky above and far down to the forest floor below, where the thegns would never walk and the churls grubbed in the dirt of their farms. The wind was light today and scented by wild rose.

  Westleigh housed 122 bodies, nearly the most the Hunter permitted, and it seemed as if every one of them had come from their homes to stare at Cwen as she passed. Only the thegns had been invited to the feast, but the churls would be given the meal’s scraps and besides, she’d always been a curiosity. Other villages had three hawks or half a dozen; sometimes every child in one family bore the mark. She’d waited and waited for another hawk to be born into Westleigh, but she was the only one.

  Her training had suffered for it; she had been unable to touch any of those she sparred with. Unable to touch anyone. She’d sometimes stroked her own arms, wondering what it would be to feel another’s skin against them, but that was childishness. Today she needed to put all such weakness aside.

  Her parents’ manor sat in the crook of the largest branch of the largest ice oak for miles in any direction. No one had ever been allowed to doubt their wealth. The thatch was fresh and the plaster bright white between the supporting beams. Inside, the tables were already laden with meats. The smell was as thick as gravy and she kneed aside two hounds who had been drawn by it to loiter in the doorway.

  The babble died away as the guests noted her presence. Some looked like they felt they should speak, but what could they say to her on this of all days? Nothing.
She felt as if she’d lived her whole life in that silence.

  She whistled as she walked to the head of the table, tuneless and loud. Her mother drew away from her, embarrassed, but her father watched stern-faced until she sat at his right side. She leaned away from him and tried not to let his disdain spoil her appetite. A bullock and two lambs had died for this meal, and she didn’t know when she’d have such plenty again. Everyone gobbled their food, the sound of the chewing and slurping like a kennel. If she’d let the dogs inside their manners could barely have been worse.

  The sun was climbing and she must be gone before it reached the top of its daily hill. When the feast ended, the thegns formed a corridor down the length of the great hall for her to walk. She watched her boots take each stride and tried not to shake. Why should she be afraid? She’d been trained for this since the moment she could walk.

  Outside, the rest of the village had gathered. Someone had laid a knife and a spear on the wooden platform and she picked them up. Her mask would be last of all; she turned to see her mother holding it. The wooden face was placid, a sharp-beaked bird with round eyes and scarlet cheeks. Her mother’s face was equally calm, but Cwen could see the turmoil in her eyes and longed to reach out to her.

  She didn’t. She wanted her mother to be left with a good, strong memory of her and so she put on the mask, her fingers fumbling to tie the leather cords at the back. Suddenly she was crying, her eyes hot with tears. But it didn’t matter: the mask hid them.

  It was an awkward climb, with a spear in one hand and the knife clenched into her armpit because she’d forgotten to hang it at her waist. At the bottom, she couldn’t stop herself taking one last glance at her home in the treetops high above. Only one figure remained in sight, leaning forward to watch her descent. It might have been her mother but she was too far away to be sure.

  The trees clutched darkness around them. Cwen knew better than most what it held. Leaf mulch squelched beneath her boots, its decayed stench banishing the memory of her feast. The whole thing already felt very distant. Fifty paces on and the village did too, lost to sight in the treetops.

  The path was broad enough that the sun would strike it at noon and keep it safe from the worm men and the moon beasts, but now everything was in shadow and nowhere felt safe. She’d never seen one of the monsters but she’d seen pictures. Griotgard had shown her the bestiary when she was four and she’d wept at what was painted there. He’d told her these were to be her prey when she joined the Hunt. It seemed more likely she’d be theirs.

  The forest was filled with noise. In the village there had been other sounds to drown out the bird calls and insect skritches and rustle of unseen things, but here they seemed far too loud. She jumped at the snap of a twig to her left, scolded herself for behaving like a child – and then jumped again at a howl to her right.

  She’d soon drained her leather flask dry and her throat was parched. She could hear the maddening gurgle of a stream to her left. It must be the Briarburn, which wound through the farmland to the west of the village and then headed down towards the distant plains, where the savage tribespeople lived. To be so loud it must be close.

  She peered between the oaks, but the undergrowth was tangled and wild and hid what lay beyond. She took one step from the path and paused, shaking, but no attack came. Of course it didn’t. The moon monsters slept during the day; that was what everyone said. And what kind of warrior was she, afraid of a few trees?

  The ground was thick with brambles; they caught at her trousers and scratched her hand. She took out her knife and sawed vainly at the knotty stems until the sap set her cuts stinging and she abandoned the attempt. She wasn’t sure at first if the flecks of light were tricks of her eyes or true sunlight, but as she moved they kept their shape and gained in brightness until she was sure that what she saw was daylight dappled through leaves.

  A tension she hadn’t been aware of loosened in all her limbs and her spine. She flung her head back and yelled in triumphant relief.

  Something, very close, called back. It was a high-pitched scream, almost human. But there was a strange quality to it, a tone both high and low that could never have emerged from any person’s throat. A moment passed and a second cry came from her other side, and then another from behind. They had surrounded her, and the undergrowth was too thick to wield her spear.

  ‘You’ve got a head full of shit and air, Cwen,’ she hissed to herself and drew her knife. It looked too small in her hand, its blade not even as long as her forearm.

  The screams came again, closer, and she caught her first glimpse of what pursued her as it shook the branches far above her head. Its own was lost in shadow but an eye flashed green and huge and then was gone.

  She backed up until the trunk of a moon pine braced her upright. She needed its support. Her knees had weakened with fear and she gritted her teeth and locked the joints. The beasts would hardly care how she died, but she imagined Griotgard laughing at her cowardice and it stiffened her resolve.

  Then the first of the beasts pushed through the undergrowth into plain view and she couldn’t stop a whimper of fear. The teeth were the length of her hand; the eyes shone with their own internal flame, brighter than the scarce daylight; and when it lifted one clawed foot she saw the glint of scales. It looked like no natural animal, but like a stitched-together thing made of the worst parts of all the rest.

  The monster sank to its front knees until its head was only a few feet above hers. There was intelligence in its eyes, as much cunning as she’d ever seen in Griotgard’s. Its lips peeled back, as if to show her the full length of its fangs. It was mocking her, she was sure of it.

  She raised her spear and snarled back at it. ‘I’ve a fang too!’

  It howled, reared back to strike – and then screamed again. She braced for the blow, frozen, and only slowly realised that its scream had changed into a desperate sound. A dark stain spread from its open jaws down to its chest. Blood: all that the creature had or at least more than it could spare. It fell back to its knees and then on to its side, crushing bushes and plants beneath it, and the smell of its gore mixed with a sudden puff of wild garlic.

  There were more screams and other cries: human sounds, and these ones were triumphant. There was a great creaking and cracking and snapping of branches all around her as the smell of blood grew thicker. The beasts were dying. They were being slaughtered.

  Before the screams stopped she knew who’d come to her aid and her face burned beneath its mask. It would have been easier to die an idiot than live to see her idiocy witnessed by the Hunt.

  The beasts had crushed so many trees and bushes in their death throes that the sun was blazing down on her unchecked when the first of the hawks emerged. Their expressions were hidden behind masks, wide-eyed blanks. The nearest tilted its head sideways, so exactly like the bird its mask resembled that Cwen giggled helplessly and couldn’t stop. And then the final figure emerged from the trees and the laughter dried out in her throat as all sound died in the forest, birdsong quieting and insects stilling, as if the whole world held its breath where this figure walked.

  She’d seen a hundred paintings of the Hunter, a score of tapestries. She’d hated that face from the moment she knew who owned it. Now the hatred melted under the strength of that calm regard and left something formless behind.

  ‘Cwen,’ the Hunter said. ‘Youngest of my hawks.’

  Cwen knew she should bow. She didn’t.

  Some of the gathered hawks hissed behind their masks and the two wolves that flanked the goddess raised their hackles and growled. The Hunter neither frowned nor smiled. Beneath the golden curls of her hair, her face was terribly scarred. None of the paintings showed that and Cwen felt a stab of terror as she imagined a beast so powerful it could wound a god. ‘We looked to find you miles from here, child,’ the Hunter said. ‘You wandered from the path.’

  ‘I was thirsty. No one said how far I had to go. No one told me anything.’

  ‘The
y warned you, I am sure, of the dangers in the dark.’

  Cwen looked down, abashed. ‘Yes.’

  The Hunter said nothing further, but when she turned and strode away, Cwen felt compelled to follow, trotting on the heels of the Hunter’s wolves.

  When the sun began to set, they turned aside from the path into a clearing three hundred paces across. Cwen was shocked to see a building in its centre, rooted to the ground like a tree. Her steps faltered but the other hawks walked towards it and she couldn’t bring herself to seem a coward in their eyes as well as a fool.

  Closer to, she could see that the building was open on one side, its peaked, wood-tiled roof overhanging a large open space full of shadows as dark as those beneath the trees.

  ‘The monsters will not come here,’ the Hunter said. ‘The ground is safe from them.’

  For the first time, one of the other hawks turned to speak to Cwen. He pulled off his mask to show the face of a boy little older than herself with the fair hair of the Jorlith. ‘Our bodies keep it safe,’ he said. He gestured at the sharp-featured statue of a man that stood in the hall’s entrance. ‘That was Wulfsin, one of us. He died nearby and we buried him here. His body has the Hunter’s magic in it – it keeps the beasts away.’

  He grinned but she wasn’t sure what message he wanted her to take from his words: that she was safe, or that she too would one day die to make a haven for the rest. The statue’s face was young. That day of death wouldn’t be far off, if she only lasted as long as him.

  There were fewer hawks than she’d first realised, only two dozen or so. This couldn’t be the whole Hunt, but she had no idea where the rest were and too much pride to ask. She watched as they led their mounts into the enclosure and gaped as the nearest turned its beaked head towards her, blinking beneath its shaggy golden mane. It was every bit as monstrous as the beasts the Hunt had saved her from.

  ‘You’ll have your own too,’ the Jorlith boy said. ‘We all catch one to ride – it’s the first thing you’ll do.’ He smiled again, entirely friendly this time. Maybe he’d meant to be friendly before.