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

  ‘The moon’s monsters can be made to serve us,’ the Hunter said. ‘I bent the greatest of them to my will a millennium ago, and these dumb beasts are more easily swayed.’

  Cwen studied the creature, which looked far less fearsome saddled and under harness than its brothers had wild in the woods. She reached out a hand and its forked tongue flicked out to lick it, just like her father’s hounds when in her loneliness she’d sometimes crawled to their kennels to sleep among the warm, stinking press of their bodies.

  ‘What’s his name?’ she asked the Jorlith boy.

  ‘He doesn’t have one.’

  ‘We do not name the things we mean to kill,’ the Hunter said.

  ‘But …’ Cwen stared at the beast, which stared back, its red eye more soft than fierce in the twilight.

  ‘When all their brethren are gone, they too must die. How else will the world be rid of the moon’s curse?’

  Cwen watched in silence as the hawks made camp, laying out blankets beneath the wooden roof and building a fire whose smoke rose to fill its rafters. The sun set out of sight behind the trees and the sky darkened through purple to a pinpricked black. There was a lot of laughter as the hawks worked, but she couldn’t see what any of them had to be happy about.

  Blankets were provided for her, and a place close to the fire. She supposed it was a kind gesture. All the hawks had unmasked now and several tried to speak to her, but she shrugged off their questions and pulled her blankets to the furthest corner of the room. Their eyes followed her beneath frowns but no one moved to stop her and no one spoke to her again.

  It was easier to sleep than she’d expected. The surge of fear she’d felt earlier had washed away to leave behind exhaustion and she’d barely closed her eyes before blackness came.

  She woke with the same abruptness to find the Hunter leaning over her. It wasn’t a sound that had woken her, she was sure; the goddess’s presence alone had been enough. The fire had burned down to embers and in the near darkness Cwen could see that her new mistress glowed with a faint golden light of her own. It outlined her curls like the promise of sunrise.

  ‘Come,’ the Hunter said.

  Cwen thought of refusing. She hesitated for a long moment while those bright eyes gazed down at her and the generous mouth remained silent. It was the silence that defeated her in the end, as it had beaten her down her whole life. She rose to her feet with a sigh and followed as the Hunter strode to the boundary of the camp.

  The scars on the goddess’s face were softened by night into four long shadows. They shifted like serpents as the Hunter spoke. ‘I dreamed of the new moon last night,’ she said.

  Moon dreams were ill-luck, everyone said so. Cwen had never imagined that a goddess might be haunted by them.

  ‘Something I thought long banished has been born again,’ the Hunter said. ‘And on the same day you came to me, the youngest of my hawks. There must be purpose in this, but …’ She frowned, studying Cwen’s face in a darkness her eyes could perhaps penetrate. ‘You are angry, and your anger is not with the moon.’

  Cwen couldn’t find a safe reply, but the Hunter nodded as if she’d given one anyway.

  ‘Your skin is very dark,’ the goddess said. ‘As dark as an Ashane’s. Do you know why?’

  ‘Yes,’ Cwen said, her voice vibrating with anger. ‘Griotgard told me. My mother fucked one of your Wanderers, and I was what came of it. She could have lain with anyone, he said. Women do it all the time. But she had to go and choose a half-foreign mongrel so everyone would know I wasn’t my father’s.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, that is the truth.’ The Hunter reached out and rested her fingers against Cwen’s cheek.

  Cwen froze, more shocked than when the moon beasts had ambushed her in the forest. No one had ever touched her that way. No one had ever touched her at all. The goddess’s skin was smooth against hers, far different from the coarse hair of her father’s hounds, and burning hot. Or perhaps fiercely cold – the sensation was so strong and strange she couldn’t tell. She wanted to flinch away from it and to hold the Hunter’s hand against her so she could never let go.

  ‘Do you know what this is?’ the Hunter asked, tracing the outline on Cwen’s cheek with her fingertip.

  ‘It’s the hawk mark,’ Cwen whispered.

  ‘No, only the ignorant call it that because of its shape and because it singles out my hawks from the common flock. It is a rune, my rune. Do you know why it was put on you?’

  Cwen shook her head. It made those fingertips brush across her cheek and she shivered.

  ‘I only mark those whose parents pray for it,’ the goddess told her. ‘Your mother did not want you. Your father did not want you. They prayed for me to take you as my own.’

  Cwen jerked back from the words and the Hunter’s touch. ‘That isn’t true! Of course she wanted me – it was you that took me away from her!’

  ‘No. I would never steal a child from a parent who loved her. Your mother could not love you, because of what you were – because the day your growth showed in her belly was the day your father knew that she had betrayed him.’

  Cwen felt a sensation so strong, she couldn’t tell if it was rage or grief. Perhaps it was both. ‘You’re lying! You’re lying to me!’

  ‘I will never lie to you. It was your mother who deceived you, because she could not bear her own guilt.’

  ‘She didn’t want me?’

  ‘Never. But I want you. And do you know who I am?’

  ‘You’re the Hunter.’

  ‘So your people call me. The Hunter, the Lion of the Forest, the Sun’s Right Hand and the Moon’s Bane. All these words and none of them my name, as if they fear that merely speaking it might pollute their tongues.’

  She paused a while and Cwen knew what she was supposed to ask. Eventually she did. ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Bachur, which is eldest in the eldest tongue.’ She cupped Cwen’s cheek, and this time Cwen leaned into the hot-cold caress, into the comfort of it. ‘This rune’s true meaning is “beloved of the eldest”. Bachur is a name only my hawks know, my beloved, just as only I see your bare faces. When you die in my service, your mask will be sent back to your family to hang above their hearth. But in the clearing in which we plant your body, we will carve a statue of your true face, because only we truly see it. Do you understand?’

  ‘My mother asked you to take me away before I was even born?’

  ‘I wanted you, Cwen. You belong with me.’

  It was the first time the Hunter had spoken her name. It sounded more musical on her tongue than it ever had on any villager’s. Cwen nodded and was shocked to feel the splash of tears. She clenched her fists, angry with herself for the weakness, but Bachur took her hands and gently loosened her fingers.

  Cwen gasped, half a sob, and the goddess put her arms round her and pulled her against the gold-chased armour on her chest. Cwen’s cheek pressed awkwardly against the junction of the armour with her neck so that it was half against leather and half against bare skin.

  ‘The moon is rising,’ Bachur said. ‘Will you fight him for me, Cwen? He cannot be allowed to live.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Cwen promised, her voice muffled against flesh. ‘I’ll kill him for you.’

  PART I

  Betrayal

  1

  Here and there, embers still glowed in the ruin of Smiler’s Fair. The corpses were everywhere, pitiful black twiglike bones grasping through the wreckage for a rescue that never came. And worse, far worse, the meaty red mess of those the fire hadn’t entirely consumed.

  The heat and his exertion bathed Sang Ki in sweat and soot coated him, turning his fair hair as black as the dye his fellow Seonu used. He would have done much to avoid this task. He’d seldom had to heave his great bulk so far, or over such difficult footing. He wished he could have left his men to the search, but he didn’t trust them to do it properly.

  King Nayan’s son had been here, of that he was quite sure. Did the boy’s corpse now l
ie as fire-flayed as the poor unfortunate to his left, trapped beneath an ash-black sculpture of the Smiler himself? That remained to be seen. Close questioning of the fair’s survivors had revealed that a boy who was almost certainly Sang Ki’s quarry had been wearing manacles on his wrists, a legacy of his brief imprisonment by Gurjot. His body, if it lay here, should be easy to identify.

  One more day, Sang Ki had promised himself, and if neither his scattered scouts nor his own search uncovered the prince, he would return to Ashanesland and declare the job done, confident that Krishanjit would never return to contradict him.

  Alas, he wasn’t entirely alone for the hunt. The carrion bird strutted beside him, its head bobbing above his. Its feathers were only a shade greyer with ash and its stink was sadly in keeping with its surroundings. Gurjot had never returned from Smiler’s Fair, but his mount had flown to safety and landed at Sang Ki’s feet while her old master was no doubt still aflame. The lack of loyalty in the creature was disappointing, her new attachment to Sang Ki even more so. The bird refused to be parted from him.

  ‘Well, Laali,’ he said, ‘what do you think that might be?’

  Something glittered in the rubble, beautifully ornate where the fire hadn’t softened and deformed it. He used Laali’s knobbly leg to steady himself as he knelt beside it. He’d always enjoyed pretty things, and had already pried several jewelled treasures from corpses with no further need of them.

  This, he realised, had once been a strongbox, but its melted lock sprang open at his touch. The coins inside looked worthless until he wiped one clean with a finger and saw the sparkle of gold beneath the soot. His cloak served to polish the rest and he was soon back on his feet, cradling a sizable collection in his shirt. The coins weren’t wheels – they were no currency he recognised. The face on their reverse was a woman’s. Queen Kaur’s perhaps, but no: the Iron Queen had never smiled so freely.

  He was pondering how he might determine their provenance when he heard the voice, pitifully weak and calling for help in Ashane. The cry came again and he saw a small heap of rubble shift. A hand emerged, fingers wiggling feebly.

  Sang Ki hesitated. He’d grown used to the mutilated corpses but he’d yet to reconcile himself to ending the torment of those still clinging to life. And this was a woman’s voice; he could be sure that the lost prince didn’t lie trapped here. There was no need to dig this time and she’d die without his assistance soon enough.

  The cry came again, a little stronger this time, as if the woman sensed his presence. Perhaps she’d heard his footfalls. Another whimper, and he could stand it no longer. His knees creaked as he lowered himself to the ground once again and pulled the half-burnt planks and shattered tiles away.

  The body he revealed was far smaller than he’d expected. It seemed incredible that she’d survived, buried, for three days. She was hideously burnt, of course. The skin of her face and arms had crackled like mammoth fat. Her hair was mostly scorched away and her breasts were an obscenity. But she was breathing and her eyes were open, though clouded with pain.

  If she’d survived this long, it seemed feasible that the attention of a physician could save her. Sang Ki slipped one arm beneath her body, resting her weight against the folds of his belly and bracing himself before he attempted to rise. Her clothing was almost entirely burned away and she whimpered as he touched her ravaged skin. Only her thick leather belt had survived the fire, and the knife suspended from it.

  No, not a knife. It hooked and held his eyes as he froze with her body cradled in his arms. It was a sword in miniature, tarnished by the fire yet clearly finely made. When he wiped it clean, he felt the sharp facets of jewels beneath his fingers and then saw their glitter. And along the golden hilt itself there was script, worked in platinum. Some of it had melted in the intense heat but it didn’t matter. He knew what was written there. He’d seen it a dozen times hanging at the waist of the woman who’d murdered his father and then fled Winter’s Hammer. This knife belonged to Nethmi, who’d once been known as Little Blade.

  By a fluke of wind and the will of the gods, one small segment of the fair had survived the inferno unscathed. Its residents hadn’t wanted to remain latched on to the ruin of their home like maggots on a rotting body, so had taken what few beasts of burden remained, disassembled their houses and moved them to a hillock some thousand paces away, where they’d reconstructed a sad echo of the once mighty fair.

  Sooty children and drooping whores turned to watch as he led Laali through their streets with Nethmi resting on the bird’s back. He’d heard there was an Eom healer here. It seemed quixotic, he knew, to bring a woman to be healed whom he soon meant to see hanged, but he wanted her conscious and in her right mind when she paid for her crime.

  The healer’s rooms weren’t difficult to find; Sang Ki followed the sounds of screams through the mud-choked passages to a small, ill-made house. After staring for a second at the walls, one brightly painted with pictures of grape and grain and the other with a huge portrait of Lord Lust, his member swollen angrily red, Sang Ki concluded that it had been cobbled together from the wreckage of two or more different dwellings.

  The physician looked as patchwork as his home. The man’s hair was long and purple, caught in no topknot but instead allowed to fall to his hips. He’d painted his face the precise shade of orange best designed to clash with his hair and his hands were red, though whether from blood or dye, Sang Ki couldn’t tell.

  The Eom seldom left their lands. They were somewhat like the Seonu in that, although unlike the Seonu they had never spent centuries wandering lost and separate from the other tribes at the start of the great exile. They’d simply found a place that suited them and stayed within its borders, doing whatever it was they did when no one else was watching. They’d last emerged in any numbers more than seventy years ago when they’d decided to broker the peace that ended the Five Tribes War. No one knew why they’d come then nor why they’d returned to their home after.

  ‘She may live,’ the Eom said with a quick glance at Nethmi, held awkwardly in Sang Ki’s arms. ‘Leave her on that bed and go.’

  ‘I’d rather stay,’ Sang Ki replied.

  ‘Does it seem likely I care for your wants?’

  There were six beds in the cramped room, five home to victims of the fire. Sang Ki placed Nethmi on the sixth and turned back to the physician. With some reluctance, he drew out a handful of the gold hoard he’d found earlier. ‘Perhaps this will increase your interest in my desires.’

  ‘Am I to eat gold? Someone burned down the only market in a hundred miles. You’d have done better to bring me food. Are you an Asheneman or a tribesman? The worst of both, it seems to me: sure that gold will solve every problem and too ignorant to know that those are Kardosi sovereigns. You’d have to cross the wide ocean and a thousand years to find a country where you could spend them.’

  ‘I …’ Sang Ki said, and found no further words. He watched in silence as the Eom knelt by Nethmi’s bedside. His touch was far gentler than his words as he held her chin between his fingers to turn her head and inspect the damage. Nethmi groaned in agony all the same.

  ‘If you must stay, bring me water,’ the physician said as he continued his inspection. ‘That’s the worst loss fire brings, worse than the pain, though I’m sure she doesn’t think it now.’

  There was a barrel in one corner of the room. Sang Ki was sorely tempted to drink himself, but at the Eom’s glare he ladled some into a goblet and brought it to Nethmi.

  She choked on the first mouthful and then screamed in pain as trickles leaked from her mouth over her raw skin.

  ‘Carefully!’ the Eom snapped.

  Sang Ki slowed the flow of water to drips and watched as Nethmi’s swollen tongue darted out to lick them from her lips. The Eom used her distraction to begin spreading a pungent lotion over the worst of her burns, frowning at her whimpers. Within seconds some of the raw redness had leached out of them, and Sang Ki opened his mouth to ask the composition of th
e unguent and then snapped it shut again.

  ‘Your lover?’ the Eom asked as he set aside her belt and pulled off her few remaining rags of clothing.

  ‘The woman who murdered my father.’

  ‘You’re a generous man. When you bring me coin I can spend, my work on her will cost you dear. Did you dislike your father?’

  ‘He was the best man there could be. She’ll hang for her crime when she’s well enough to look me in the eye as I kick away the stall.’

  The Eom stopped his ministrations and turned to stare at Sang Ki. His eyes looked almost black against the orange of his skin. ‘You’re Ashane, aren’t you? Mixed blood, but you have the accent. And this woman is Ashane too.’

  ‘I am Seonu Sang Ki, son and heir to Lord Thilak of Winter’s Hammer. This woman is Nethmi, formerly of Whitewood and wife to my father.’

  ‘Definitely Ashane then, and so you certainly can’t hang her.’

  Sang Ki felt the first stirrings of anger. ‘I think you’ll find that I can.’

  ‘Not according to your own laws. This woman is pregnant.’

  Sang Ki brought both Nethmi and the reluctant Eom physician to his own encampment. It was meticulously neat, as anything in his mother’s charge must be, but worryingly small. Only a bare two hundred of his men had survived the immolation of Smiler’s Fair and, though their numbers had been swollen by the remains of Gurjot’s troops, it was still a much diminished force. They’d dug a ditch around their tents and seeded it with bitterthorn caltrops, but there was insufficient wood for a palisade. The sooner they departed this place, the safer he’d feel.

  His mother was slow to answer his summons and frowned as she entered the tent. The frown deepened when she saw the mutilated woman he’d laid out on his own cot.

  ‘Look at her knife,’ Sang Ki said. He’d placed it beside her on the bed.

  His mother stared at the weapon, her expression hardening into something grim. ‘Nethmi.’

  ‘Indeed. And this fellow here—’

  ‘Eom Min Soo. And you are Seonu Hana – an honour, elder mother.’ The physician bowed with far more courtesy than he’d ever shown Sang Ki. But then, his mother had a way of commanding it.