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

  ‘You bring me information about young Krishanjit, I gather,’ Sang Ki said. ‘How marvellous. And how very hard to prove its authenticity – unless you mean to produce him in person.’

  ‘I hear you’ve found your father’s killer,’ Marvan replied. ‘The Lady Nethmi of Whitewater.’

  Sang Ki’s expression, which had been amiable, became markedly less so. ‘I thought you were here to impart information, not fish for it.’

  Marvan shrugged as nonchalantly as he could. ‘Like most things, information isn’t free.’

  ‘And you’d like to be told the location of Lady Nethmi in return for yours.’

  ‘That would hardly be a fair exchange. Everyone in the fair knows where Nethmi is. What I want is …’ But he hesitated. Nethmi had killed this man’s father. No doubt he’d found that upsetting.

  ‘You know Nethmi.’ Sang Ki looked momentarily startled, then thoughtful. ‘You met her after she came to the fair.’

  ‘Yes. And we, she and I, we met your misplaced prince.’

  ‘Ah.’ The other man studied him. ‘You love her.’

  Marvan was shocked to realise he was blushing. ‘I don’t wish to see her killed, certainly. If I can help you find Krishanjit of Ashfall, will you let her go?’

  ‘Perhaps you should tell me what you know.’

  ‘We captured the prince.’

  Sang Ki raised a disbelieving eyebrow.

  ‘We didn’t know who he was or that he was sought. We … I’ll be honest with you, friend. We meant to rob him and we captured him to do it. We had him tied up when the fire started and we had to leave him there.’

  ‘Tied up?’

  Marvan nodded.

  ‘Well, that’s a most fascinating if not entirely salutary tale. I don’t wish to appear rude, but I can’t help returning to my earlier point. What evidence do you have?’

  ‘The boy had the strangest eyes I’ve ever seen – moons where the pupils should be.’

  ‘Indeed. Precisely the description I gave all the men who were searching for him. I believe it may even have been drawn up for me on a parchment or two.’

  ‘He grew up in the White Heights, a landborn goatherd who killed his own father, or rather the man he believed to have sired him.’

  Sang Ki’s eyes narrowed. ‘Now that’s an interesting story and not one I’ve heard before.’

  ‘He told me so himself. He probably meant it to impress me.’

  ‘And of course the prophecy said that he would kill his father, without specifying which one.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which you knew.’

  Marvan inclined his head and Sang Ki smiled. ‘It’s a very pretty little narrative and exceptionally neat. I’m not sure how it helps me, even if it is true.’

  ‘What if I told you of a way to tell whether any of these blackened bones you’ve been digging up actually belong to the boy you want?’

  Sang Ki leaned back, fist beneath his many chins. ‘That would certainly be helpful.’

  ‘He had manacles, one on each wrist. We used them to tie him up. The metal should have survived the fire, or left some remnant for you to identify. Tell me that isn’t helpful to you.’

  ‘It is – that information has been tremendously useful in my search, but I’m afraid you weren’t the first to impart it. I’m beginning to think you may be telling the truth, but I’ve heard nothing to indicate that you know whether the boy actually survived the fire.’

  Marvan’s breath shortened and he pressed his nails into his palms hard enough to cut. ‘I’ve told you more of the boy’s history than anyone else. That must be worth something.’

  Sang Ki leaned back, smiling, and of course the bastard saw that he cared too much. ‘Your information certainly has some value.’ He snapped his fingers at one of his men. ‘Give this man five gold wheels and send him on his way.’

  Marvan knew that arguing would be pointless, yet found he couldn’t help himself. ‘And Nethmi?’

  ‘Will remain in the care of the physicians until she’s given birth to the child.’ His shrewd eyes scanned Marvan, clearly wondering if the child was his. Marvan wondered the same thing and didn’t know how he should feel about it. ‘Her worth is far higher than this nugget of news,’ Sang Ki concluded. ‘Now, if you’d brought me Krishanjit himself … But of course you didn’t.’

  Sang Ki found Nethmi in precisely the position he’d left her. She lay on her back, eyes shut and much of her face and body muffled in bandages. Only the slight movement of her chest betrayed that she was still alive.

  The tent stank of urine, burnt flesh and unguent, though Min Soo had left the flaps open to air it out. Sang Ki shooed the physician through them and then took his place on the bedside stall. It creaked beneath his weight and Nethmi winced, as if even the vibration of his movement caused her pain. For a moment, looking at the cracked and weeping flesh around her bandages, he wondered if she’d been punished enough. But how could she have been, when she was still here and his father wasn’t?

  ‘I’ve just made the acquaintance of a friend of yours,’ he told her closed eyes. ‘A close friend, I think, although I may have been misreading the situation, in which case I can only beg your forgiveness for my crass assumptions. But he seemed willing to do a great deal to free you.’

  He paused, looking down at her. He’d forgotten quite how small she was, a pitiful huddled shape beneath the sheets.

  ‘It’s curious to think that you might inspire that sort of loyalty,’ he said at last. ‘You were such a … cool woman. Cold, really. Just what did this Marvan see in you? But then, I asked the same question about my parents. You’re quite like my mother. I hadn’t considered that before.’

  He looked around the tent. Min Soo had insisted he be allowed to bring his other patients with him to the Ashane encampment, but they’d died one by one. Now only their beds remained, and Nethmi. She clung tenaciously to life in a way that didn’t entirely surprise Sang Ki. He’d never questioned the strength of her character, only its content.

  ‘I wonder if he brings our lost prince to me whether I will let you go. I suspect that I might, but it would pain me. You’ve taught me just how much hate I’m capable of and I suppose I’m grateful for the lesson.’

  Nethmi shifted and her mouth worked. ‘Water,’ she rasped. Her bandaged hand rose an inch from the bed before falling weakly back again.

  He found that his cruelty couldn’t match his anger and filled a glass before trickling the liquid over her cracked lips.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

  ‘You’re quite welcome, Nethmi.’

  He knew his smile was in his voice. He was looking forward to the moment when she realised her rescuer was also the man who would hang her. But when her eyes opened to bloodshot slits, her expression didn’t change.

  ‘Who’s Nethmi?’ she asked.

  He sat back, startled. ‘Come now, let’s not play this game. A terrible trauma, a lost memory. It’s the sort of stuff the King’s Men performed in their cheaper melodramas, before the mage burned their fair down around them. I know full well that you’re Nethmi, so your ignorance of your own identity – even if it’s real – can’t save you.’

  She whimpered as she rolled over in the bed to face him, holding herself up on trembling arms. ‘But I haven’t forgotten who I am, sir. I’m Mahvesh of the Fine Fellows. I’ve never heard of any Nethmi.’

  8

  Their wagon was a sorry mess of hastily nailed-together planks and patchwork canvas, which rattled alarmingly as Edred pulled it over the ruts and potholes of the track. Ahead Alfreda could see the village high in the trees and the clearing where the corn crop was just beginning to venture above ground. They approached Deep Holt like ragged and destitute fugitives from some terrible battle.

  ‘We could—’ Alfreda said.

  ‘We’re not stopping,’ Algar insisted. ‘It’s fine, Freda – they want to buy our wares, not admire our transport.’

  ‘Wares’ meant the
fire javelin, all he’d been able to speak of since they’d proved its worth with the moon beast. It was rebuilt now, bigger and better, and Deep Holt was the first place he’d have a chance to show it off. Of course he couldn’t wait.

  Edred clopped a few paces closer and then Algar jumped down and tossed the reins to Alfreda before swaggering up to the gathered villagers. A Jorlith girl with yellow pigtails blushed at something he said and another scowled until he turned his smile on her. The boys looked on, envious, but Algar charmed them too.

  Alfreda’s stomach dropped as she saw one of the older men head towards the wagon. She turned her face away and dismounted, fussing with Edred’s tack and hoping the man would take the hint.

  ‘Alfreda Sonyasdochter, am I right?’ the man said. ‘I remember you and your brother when you barely reached your parents’ knees. You used to carry water to cool the metal. Now it seems you work the forge yourself.’ His eyes scanned her body, noting the disproportionate muscles of her right arm and the breadth of her shoulders.

  When she didn’t reply, he added, ‘Well, anyhow, there’s plenty of work for you here. The last time we saw a smith was when Wencis and his brood came by two full years past. There’s horses need shod and blades to forge if you’re after a day’s labour, and much more if you’ve a mind to stay longer.’

  He stared at her, and this time he was waiting for an answer. Alfreda’s heart sped and her mouth dried. It was always this way when they were around other folk, ever since she’d been a bairn. Her mind just wouldn’t keep quiet, showing her all the ways speaking could go wrong. What if she offended the churl? What if she made him laugh at her? What if she said something so stupid the whole village gathered round to laugh?

  The man frowned at her, half angry at her rudeness, half puzzled by her lack of response. She knew she had to say something and opened her mouth to do it, but the words evaporated and left only a dry croak behind.

  And now he was looking at her with pity. She felt a blush heat her cheeks and any words left leaked from her mind like water. Then a warm arm was slung round her waist, and she looked gratefully at her brother’s smiling face.

  ‘Freda’s slow with her speech but fast with her fingers and the best smith this side of the mountains,’ he said. ‘Anything you need doing she’ll do, and do it well.’

  The churl turned to him, plainly relieved. ‘Well then, be welcome. Your parents, may they have good rest, always gave fine service to us.’

  ‘And so will we.’ Algar grinned as he led the churl back to the other villagers. ‘Bring us your metal and we’ll shape it with fire. And if you care to come by later, we may have a little surprise. Our very latest invention, a weapon more powerful than any made before, and you’ll be the first to see it.’

  The charcoal at the heart of Alfreda’s forge was cherry red when Algar returned with a flower in his curly hair. The petals were desiccated and a few had scattered over his scalp like snow. She wondered which of the village girls had placed it there.

  ‘They’ve had three children born with the hawk mark this year and two more lost to Janggok raiders,’ he said. ‘And now some crazy person is putting armour on the moon beasts to make them even harder to kill. If anyone should want our advanced fire javelin, it’s these folk.’

  ‘But Gar, they’re goddess-loving folk in these distant places, you know that. And you know how the Great Moot in Aethelgas reacted when you first spoke the idea. We need to go gentle with it.’

  ‘But we’re right, Freda, and those dimwits in Aethelgas and Ivarholme are wrong. Besides, last time we had no proof of the device. Now we’ve seen what it can do. One demonstration and the richest thegns and wergeld-wealthy Jorlith will be outbidding each other to own it. We just need to show them.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said, meaning no, but he smiled at her as if it meant yes, and by the time he’d finished wheedling perhaps it would. ‘Help me with the smithing now. I’ve a last few hoops to bind around the metal, or we’ll have no javelin at all to show them. And the sooner this is done, the sooner you can go back to giving the eye to anyone in a skirt.’

  ‘Can I help it if the world is full of beautiful women?’

  She shook her head as he took up the bellows and began blowing on the coals through the tuyere, sending the glow from cherry through daffodil and finally to a pure, bright white. He flinched away from the heat of it, but Alfreda leaned forward, mesmerised as always by its intensity and astonishing power, to melt what nature meant to be solid.

  Sparks flew from the forge and she felt them catch and burn in her skin, but she didn’t flinch. She had scars enough already, white flecks like freckles all over her cheeks and arms. Algar hated the fire and what it could do to his handsome face. When he’d been only five, and their parents dying of the carrion fever, their father had urged Alfreda to teach Algar the craft she was already mastering. She didn’t have the heart, though, to make him do something for which he was so ill-suited. Let him keep his unmarked skin and she’d do the work for the both of them.

  It was different for her. People were hard, but this was easy. Metal responded the same every time and just the way you expected: strike it hard enough and it bent, heat it and it softened. Metal did what you wanted and never asked anything in return.

  ‘Come on, Freda,’ Algar said. ‘Stop dreaming and get working. I’m starting to fry.’

  The concept was simple enough, making strong in metal what had been weak in wood. But metal was costly; she’d already melted down half their knives and one of her precious hammers to make this and even so she couldn’t make it very long, yet length was needed if she wanted accuracy. Her only hope was to fashion it as round and smooth as possible. Except there was no way she could shape a tube that perfectly round, even with her smallest hammer – not if she wanted to leave its centre hollow. So clever Algar had come up with another way.

  A drop of her sweat fell and sizzled into steam on the anvil. She’d prepared the rods already, made them as thin and smooth as she could and welded them together, but that alone wouldn’t be strong enough to resist the explosive power of the black powder. It had driven that spear right through the moon beast’s neck. It would certainly be enough to break this flimsy contraption apart.

  The bands she’d fashioned lay on the anvil, based on the sort a cooper might use. She picked up the first, using the fire to soften it so that she could bend it round the ring of rods and hold them in place even against the explosion of the powder. Or at least so she hoped.

  ‘It’s looking good,’ Algar said. ‘I think this is going to work.’

  She nodded, not lifting her attention from her work. She’d begun to share his enthusiasm, though. It was always this way when they made something new together. As the glow of the metal cooled from white to cherry and through to just the right shade of dark red, there was nothing to do but plunge it into the slack tub to quench it and hope that she’d made it right.

  When they’d completed the device, the sun was close to its zenith and they settled onto a blanket as they ate the last of their cheese between slices of warm, fresh-baked village bread.

  Algar leaned back on his elbows and looked up at the flat blue sky. ‘It’s the moon dark tonight, did you know? We can’t miss the dance; they say the Deep Holt folk go crazy for the death of the moon.’

  She smiled despite herself. ‘Do they?’

  ‘They do. There’ll be mulled wine, and those little spiced cakes you can only get around here. The ones they make from the pods that grow on the featherfern trees.’

  ‘Mum liked those cakes. Dad never wanted to stop between the Spiral and Greenstowe, but he used to because he knew Mum loved the featherfern cakes.’

  The happy lines of his face dropped momentarily downward. ‘Did she? I don’t remember.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She ran a soothing hand through his curls. ‘It was a long time ago. But the cakes are good.’

  As quick as mercury, his mood shifted again and he grinned at her. ‘And
the company too. Why don’t you join in tonight, Freda? I’ve seen the boys looking at you.’

  ‘Aye, looking at my muscles and envying them.’

  ‘And your pretty face and envying me for getting to see it every day.’

  ‘If you say so. You go, Gar. My anvil needs oiling and now we’ve stopped I want to give Edred a good brushing. Have you seen how shaggy he’s looking? Just try not to break too many hearts.’

  He smiled and crunched into a withered apple as a shadow fell over them. Alfreda twisted to face the newcomer. She hadn’t heard his approach, silent as a wolf, and when she looked up she saw why. He was Jorlith: tall, muscular, golden-haired and grim-faced. There was gold round his neck and wrists, a man who’d killed enough to make himself wealthy from the wergeld.

  ‘You’re the smiths that Harold told me of?’ he asked.

  Algar rose and bowed smoothly. ‘We are, sir. And he told you about our new weapon, I think – or do I guess wrong?’

  Even the warrior’s smile was grim. ‘You don’t. I’m Skuld Thrainson, spear-leader of Deep Holt.’

  Algar bowed again, lower. ‘Honoured. And you’ll be wanting a demonstration, I think. That can be arranged.’

  Alfreda clenched her fist. They hadn’t tested the device yet; what if it didn’t work? But she couldn’t say anything and Algar wouldn’t be stopped. He went into the wagon to fetch out the advanced fire javelin, leaving it wrapped in cloth all the better to intrigue the audience – and they had one now. A handful of Jorlith had come to watch, with a scattering of churls behind, standing on their tiptoes to see above the lanky warriors.

  Algar was in his element. He took his time over unwrapping the fire javelin, enjoying drawing out the anticipation. But when the material was folded back and the rough metal tube revealed, Skuld frowned and there was a collective murmur of disappointment from the crowd.

  ‘It’s not a weapon,’ Skuld said.

  ‘It is a weapon.’ Algar lifted it up and braced the bottom of the barrel against the wooden stand Alfreda had built for it. ‘It’s an advanced fire javelin. I’ve already used it to kill a Moon Forest monster ten times my height and a hundred times as ugly. A beast armoured in metal. Isn’t that true, Alfreda?’