The Hunter's Kind: Book II of The Hollow Gods Page 5

  ‘I can see you don’t agree,’ her husband said, better at reading her expressions than she was at interpreting his. ‘Maybe when you got more past to think about, there’s more point thinking it.’

  But that seemed wrong to her as well. Her oroboros stretched back many decades, as unchanging as the Perfect Law. Individual days blurred into a ceaseless cycle of devotion to Mizhara. She realised it wasn’t so for him or any in the dark lands. How would it feel to have each day different from the last, and the events of the next undecided? But she was sure this was a thought she oughtn’t to think.

  ‘Or maybe you don’t want to think about what you’ve done – at least, not what you’ve done what’s different from what all the rest of your sisters did,’ he added slowly. ‘Being all exactly the same, that’s what you lot aim for, ain’t it? Never standing out, never even having names.’

  She drew herself up, sensing disapproval in his words. ‘We all strive to be as Mizhara wished us. She wished the same for all of us, and that we are alike is a sign that we, imperfect as we are, are obeying her will.’

  ‘And she didn’t want you to have names? Must have been awkward when she was still alive. “Oi, you – come here! Not you, the one with blonde hair. No, the other one with blonde hair.” Can’t have made giving orders easy. And it’s not like you are all the same. You had different dads, right? It took me a while, but now I can tell you apart. I can definitely recognise you.’

  ‘I am failing, then.’ But the thought wasn’t as disturbing as it should have been.

  ‘Maybe I’m just clever. And I can’t keep calling you you. It’s rude.’

  ‘You may call me wife, if you wish it.’

  ‘But I’ve got dozens of wives. How will you know I’m talking to you?’

  She backed away a step, towards the comfort and shade of the birch trees. She was suddenly sure this was a conversation she wasn’t allowed.

  ‘I’m going to call you Drut,’ he said decisively.

  ‘No, no you mustn’t.’

  ‘But it ain’t even a name – it’s just a word in my own language. That’s all right, ain’t it?’

  ‘What does the word mean?’ she asked cautiously.

  ‘My darling,’ he said. ‘The kind of thing a husband says to his wife, at least where I come from.’

  ‘You mustn’t,’ she repeated, backing away again.

  ‘I’ll see you later, Drut,’ he shouted, heedless, as she fled beneath the shadow of the trees.

  Eric found Rii where he’d arranged to meet her, in the lee of a monumental tower of snow, its peak curled into fantastical icy ramparts. Now that his time in Salvation had stretched into weeks, he’d begun to recognise the features of the landscape around it. Much like the Servants, it only seemed the same everywhere until you looked closer.

  Rii had dug beneath the snow, hunching her huge body so that it was hidden from the city. They weren’t exactly meeting in secret, but that didn’t mean they wanted an audience either.

  She shivered as he approached, sending a small storm of flakes floating through the air around her.

  ‘Don’t know what you’re complaining about,’ he said. ‘You’ve got fur.’

  ‘And thou art wearing it, morsel.’

  ‘Yeah, but you grew up round here, didn’t you? You’re used to it.’

  ‘My master provided us warmth, molten rock to heat our home. It is the Servants who disdain comfort in their city of ice.’

  That wasn’t hard to believe. The Servants didn’t seem to understand the concepts of pleasure or fun, but their innocence was useful in a way. They didn’t lie and they didn’t seem to understand that anyone else might.

  ‘Thy wife grows closer to thee?’ Rii asked.

  ‘She’s a peculiar cove. And I wouldn’t want to say for certain she’s falling, but she ain’t cold neither. She’s been coming to see me every day, and none of the others do. Yesterday she tried to give me the choicest cut off the shoulder, saved it for me special. But I got a bit too forward earlier, tried to give her a name. She weren’t too keen on that.’

  Rii gave her painful piping call, which Eric knew meant he’d displeased her. Well she’d have to grin and bear it, wouldn’t she? It was a slender needle she’d asked him to thread.

  ‘Thou must tread with care, morsel. Thy wife is young by the count of her people, but old still compared to thee. She is untutored in those things thou knowest best, but no fool. Have a care not to alert her to thy purpose.’

  ‘I won’t. Only … flirting and winking and flattery’s a game I don’t mind playing. Baiting a hook for her heart just don’t seem right.’

  ‘And was it right of them to bring thee here, so much against thy will? Was it right of them to bed with thee, so much against thy nature?’

  He snatched a glance at her, shocked she’d figured that out.

  ‘That’s true I suppose,’ he admitted.

  ‘Then continue with thy smiles and thy flattery. Win her friendship if not her heart.’

  ‘Don’t you worry, I know what I’m doing.’ He thumped a palm against her furry flank. It earned him a glare from her half-blind black eyes and a waft of the mouldy cinnamon scent that accompanied her everywhere. ‘I’m not a boy who goes back on a deal what’s been shook on. When my son comes, I’ll get him from her, and then you’ll fly us out of here.’

  Her flank twitched beneath his hand. ‘That I cannot do.’

  ‘What? Then what’s the point of the whole plan? You were the one what wanted to save the lad.’

  ‘And so I do, but I have been bound to this place by a magic stronger than steel. I may only depart with the Servants’ leave, and why should they give it when I mean to betray them? But do not despair, morsel: there is another way. Mount and I will show thee.’

  Her hair was greasy as he grabbed handfuls of it to pull himself on to the saddle on her back, but he was used to her now. He only gasped a little when her great wings beat downward and she sprang towards the sky.

  Salvation was soon invisible beneath him, just a glitter of ice in this cold land. He huddled deeper in his furs and closed his eyes against the glare, only opening them when his stomach lurched unpleasantly and he knew that Rii was descending. Snow still covered the ground beneath them, but ahead there was a crisp blue expanse that gradually resolved into wave-ruffled water. As she landed, a gaggle of black-and-white flightless birds scattered, honking their displeasure.

  The ice had risen into high cliffs against which the wild waters of the ocean broke. The ocean’s force was so great that he could see great chunks of ice broken off and floating away, each bigger than Rii. But they weren’t the only thing moving on the blue swell. As Rii settled on the cliff edge, he saw ships staggering across the huge waves.

  Rii shrugged her shoulders irritably and he slithered from her back to stand beside her. The cliff was only thirty paces high and the ships ventured so close to the shore it seemed certain they’d be wrecked before they could reach the rough wooden harbour. But as Eric watched, two men leapt down from the ship’s tall side, carrying a rope as thick as their arms between them, and made it fast to the dock as the salt spray of the sea drenched them. They were so near he could see their long white faces and the dark curls of their hair.

  ‘They’re Moon Forest folk,’ he said in surprise. ‘I never knew the folk to take to ships. I never even knew them to leave the forest, except for the Wanderers and us Smiler’s Fair folk. What are they doing all the bloody way out here?’

  ‘These are not thy countrymen.’

  ‘Well, they ain’t Ashane. Could be from the savannah, I suppose, though the shape of their faces don’t look right.’

  ‘They are thy precursors, the race from whom thine own sprang, before thy ancestors travelled to my master’s forest.’

  Eric stared at the men below him in fascination. Every Jorlith and Rhinanish child knew the story of how their peoples had wandered in exile from their old homes before the Hunter had guided them to their new o
ne in exchange for a tithe of their children to fight the moon monsters.

  The sailors had noticed their watchers on the cliff. He saw some stop to stare, and others rushed below deck, but most continued their work and he guessed they must have encountered Rii before.

  ‘The cursed Servants trade with these men and others who travel the waterways,’ she said. ‘Coin will buy their service and passage for thee and thy son.’

  ‘Coin we don’t have,’ Eric pointed out.

  Rii raised her claw and picked open the clasp of her saddlebag with unusual delicacy. ‘Look inside if thou doubtest me, morsel.’

  He started to push her claw aside and then froze with his hand still against its sharp edge. Inside the bag, emeralds and sapphires and diamonds glittered in the sunlight.

  ‘My master studied their making in a darker age of the world. In his wisdom, he fathomed how to form jewel from stone and filled our halls with them for our entertainment.’

  ‘And the Servants don’t know about the gems?’

  ‘They know and use my master’s jewels to buy their food, their furs and their husbands, but there is more hidden in his citadel than could ever be spent or found. The price of thy passage a hundred times over I can supply, but thou must do thy part.’

  All those jewels could buy more than just his passage. He imagined taking a few diamonds back with him, many a ruby or an emerald or two. He’d only have to spend one diamond to build a shipfort grander than Lahiru’s to float on the lake beside his, and an emerald for the mammoths to pull it. Lahiru’s wife might not like it, but another diamond would pay for men to guard him and then let her try to hold a knife to his throat again. He’d come to Lahiru as an equal and they could start over.

  If messing a little with his wife’s heart was the price for that, well … Rii was right. He hadn’t asked to be brought here and he didn’t like what they made him do now he was here. If he figured out a way of escaping it, who could blame him?

  4

  In the twilight, the humped forms of the dead moon monsters were hard to see, and Cwen slowed as she approached them. The local merchants had eyed the hawks askance as they sliced the choicest cuts from the grotesque corpses, but they hadn’t dared to speak with the Lion of the Forest herself, who was overseeing the work. Afterwards, the Hunter had ordered the gawping merchants to bury the remains.

  Cwen passed one half-dug pit now. The work proceeded slowly; the refugees from the Spiral had friends and family to put to rest before they attended to their killers. Hawks had died too, but they wouldn’t be buried here; their bodies would be taken back to the forest when the Hunt returned. Cwen was beginning to wonder when that would be. Her mistress hadn’t said, but days had passed and no more monsters had emerged from the trees. Cwen didn’t understand why they were lingering here.

  Their mounts didn’t seem to understand it either. They were restless, and grew more so with each day that passed. As she neared the paddock they whickered or hooted or bayed, depending on their type. Some growled and snarled, an aggressive sound that should have been trained out of them in the years of their captivity.

  Her own trotted nearer as she approached, his clawed feet digging deep divots out of the grass. She removed her hawk mask and clucked in greeting but he didn’t hiss back his usual reply. His long, forked tongue lolled from his mouth, a froth of saliva around it. Beneath the rune brand on his forehead, his eyes looked as wild as the day she’d first captured him. They flickered over her without a hint of recognition and then fixed themselves beyond her to glare at the setting sun.

  She frowned. The tame monsters were protected from the sun’s power by the Hunter’s mark, but none of them had ever learned to love it and they hid from it when they could.

  ‘Osgar,’ she whispered. ‘What’s wrong?’

  She’d been forbidden to name him, but she was too weak to feel nothing for the beast who’d carried her into a hundred fights and still bore the long red scar along his jaw where he’d risked his own life to save hers from a monster that might have been his sister. She thought the Hunter would forgive this one small disobedience in eighteen years of loyal service.

  ‘Osgar,’ she said again and he shuddered all over as something seemed to drain out of him, then turned to butt his scaled head against her chest. She rubbed him behind the green and yellow whorls of his ears where he was most sensitive, and he sighed in pleasure. Why shouldn’t she name him, when he showed her such love? He didn’t flinch away from her touch as the Moon Forest folk of the Spiral did. She’d spent so long with the Hunt, she’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be so shunned.

  ‘He senses his master’s presence,’ the Hunter’s voice said close behind her. ‘They all do.’

  Cwen couldn’t repress a guilty start, but when she turned there was no sign of reproach in the goddess’s expression. But then, her face had always been hard to read beneath its scars and its soft, inhuman glow. ‘They did well enough, though,’ Cwen said. ‘They’re just a little restless, that’s all.’

  ‘Now they are restless. Soon they will be unmanageable. My mark has Mizhara’s virtue in it but Mizhara is gone and Yron has returned. His hold over the children of those he created cannot be broken.’

  Cwen looked across the paddock at the hundred and more beasts the Hunt had brought with them. She knew them all. Those four sharp horns marked Godric’s mount, and that high, arched back carried Mildburg on their hunts. Cwen had helped her clutch-mate capture the creature and her finger was still crooked from where he’d snapped it in his jaws. Now he licked her hands if she stroked him. Or he had, before the moon rose.

  ‘It is time,’ Bachur said gently, resting a hand against the wolf that sat at her feet.

  ‘Time for what?’

  ‘They must die, before they leave our service for their master’s. We must kill them before they turn and kill us.’

  Cwen bowed her head to hide her stricken expression. ‘But eldest, they still obey us.’

  ‘Do they?’ Bachur’s golden gaze swept the field, where the mounts stamped and shuffled when once they would have drifted into sleep. Cwen saw that the moon was already in the sky, and that the beasts were moving to face it, eyes glittering in the growing darkness. But when she held out her hand to Osgar, he nuzzled it.

  ‘He knows me.’ Cwen swallowed and made herself meet the goddess’s bright gaze, never a comfortable thing. ‘I’ll kill him the moment he turns, I swear it.’

  Bachur smiled and nodded. ‘My trust in you is complete.’ She turned her own eyes to the moon and stared at it for a long moment, until the reflected silver seemed to swallow the gold of her pupils. Then she sighed and turned back to Cwen. ‘Come now, there is a boy we must question and I want you there.’

  ‘A boy?’

  ‘One whose journey has been the opposite to that of these creatures. Come.’

  The Hunter led Cwen to her own tent. The inside smelled of the forest, as anywhere around the Hunter had a tendency to do. Two of her wolves lay curled asleep in one corner and the goddess stooped to caress them as she passed.

  The boy was in the area set aside for eating, squatting on a pile of cushions. He was tearing into a haunch of meat as they entered, the fat smeared across his chin and lips. Cwen wondered if telling him that the joint came from one of the dead moon beasts would diminish his appetite.

  He looked up as they both entered, scrambled to his feet and then bowed low, which struck Cwen as a waste of effort, but Bachur smiled and raised him with a hand beneath his chin. She looked into his eyes for a long moment and he met hers with obvious difficulty. His, Cwen saw, were a startling grass green. His gaze lingered on the four long scars marking the Hunter’s cheek, as everyone’s did.

  ‘I’m sorry it’s taken so long to come to you,’ the boy said. ‘I meant to come sooner, but my mother’s not been well.’

  ‘And now?’ Bachur gestured the boy to sit and sank cross-legged on to the cushions opposite him.

  Cwen remained standi
ng and watchful, hidden behind her mask. She knew what her role was meant to be: the drawn knife, always sharp and ready.

  ‘My mamma’s better,’ the boy said, ‘and my news can’t wait. The moon’s returned.’

  ‘We know that,’ Cwen said. ‘That’s why we’re here.’

  ‘What is your name, child?’ Bachur asked.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ He seemed shaken by his own forgetfulness, his confidence slipping for a moment to show the youth it hid. He couldn’t have seen more than twelve summers. ‘I’m Jinn, the son of Vordanna. We’re Worshippers of Smiler’s Fair.’

  ‘And the god you worshipped was Yron,’ the Hunter said. The boy looked shocked but he didn’t deny it and she nodded. ‘Some from the Spiral have heard you preach. They warned me of you, but I saw your face on the day the Hunt rode and heard your words and I knew you were not my enemy.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Jinn said fiercely. ‘I ain’t your enemy and I mean to be your friend. Power grows from knowledge, ain’t that what they say? And I know a thing or two about the moon.’

  ‘I would expect no less of one who once served him. But you must tell me why you serve him no longer.’

  The boy dropped his gaze, watching his own hands work in his lap. ‘He let me down, that’s the long and short of it. I spent my whole cursed life in spreading the word about him, and what happened when he came back? Not a word, not a hint even, nothing to let me know of it. My mamma, she told me I had the moon’s power, but that’s a lie. She used me to earn coin and I don’t know why else, but it wasn’t for my benefit, that’s as sure as frost in winter.

  ‘And then my mamma got sick, and he didn’t help her either despite all she’d done for him. But you did. You saved her, or leastways you saved everyone including her and me. So if I’m gonna give my loyalty to any god, and serving gods is all I know, I’d rather it was you.’

  ‘Well, fuck,’ Cwen said. ‘That’s a good answer.’

  He smiled a little uncertainly at her masked face.