The Hunter's Rede

by F. T. McKinstry

  Whatever the Faerins’ business here, it was no concern of his. He never had much use for politics, and he didn’t plan to stay here long. There was no need; he had enough Tarthian royal coin to settle wherever he pleased. In Tarth, only the nobility passed these coins, pure gold with a picture of a crocodile carved roughly, as if in the mud, on one side. Everyone else used wood and bone. His former employers had paid him in royal coin, of course, being what he was to them. But it was only gold, and it would melt down easily enough.

  He climbed the street, his heart thumping rapidly. He had lost his endurance for hills, having been so long in the flatlands. A broken stone caused the leather in his left boot to slide from the small tack that held it to the sole. His otter-brown hair hung in braids that looked more like seasoned rope, and his clothes had been long soaked by rain and brine, dried by merciless sun and wrung through with blood and every other dark, unpleasant essence defecated by war, leaving him with a sincere desire for something clean. Something that smelled like the north.

  Stifling a yawn, he slowed at the top of a rise and paused to look behind him at the Bay of Maerth, cloaked in gray and stippled with whitecaps. The docks below cluttered together like a broken smile in the narrow strip of rocky land between the cliffs that overlooked the sea. The street before him rose into a steep series of switchbacks that snaked up towards the city through a wooded escarpment tumbled with boulders, waterfalls and houses. Called the City of Hallow Rivers, Os stood on a high, riven peninsula bordered by a triangle of three great rivers: Hallowolf, the northeast branch of the Wolf River flowing down from the north; Hallowfell, the northwest branch of the Wolf; and Hallowstrike, flowing east from the Strike River to the west. Os was a brisk whirlwind of art and commerce that moved in and out of the assorted establishments most ports were home to, scattered over the craggy landscape like flotsam left by a storm tide.

  He reached the wide street that led into the city. The mist-draped shoulders of the Ostarin Mountains rose up in the north. As he moved through the gorge of the busy way, he focused on his cloaking spell to appear indistinct, just another sailor, merchant or peasant to anyone not looking close. He knew a different word that would render him invisible by blending him with the surroundings, but he had to be still to use that one.

  The crowd began to thicken and slow around him, just ahead of what looked like a blockade set up beneath the city gates. The sea-weathered stone in the peak of the arch contained the standard for the Os City Guard: an ornate carving of the three-river triangle with a seagull flying up in the center and a sword and arrow crossed over it. Faerin pennons hung from the heights of the portcullis. Men-at-arms with double elm leaves on their helmets, mounted and heavily equipped, lined up along the walls. Archers moved in the towers on either side of the gate. They were leaving nothing to chance, here.

  The murmuring crowd shifted this way and that, restless and uncertain beneath the shadow of the Faerin presence at the Gates of Os. Preparing to be searched, they gathered their belongings and threw back their cloaks. Parents hushed their children, and many of the women had scarves or hoods hiding their faces. Ahead, two men turned around and moved back through the crowd; as they passed him, Lorth sensed weapons and the telltale trappings of mercenaries.

  Everyone here had something to hide. It reeked of domination and sedition, like a strong, beautiful animal in a cage waiting for a chance to flee. Another crowd poured out from the city side. As they mingled with the ones who sought entry, they wore expressions ranging from apathy, condescension to pity.

  The hunter drew a deep breath and moved ahead, focusing on the affairs at the gate. Then he realized why the mercenaries had returned to the docks: The Faerins were searching everyone entering the city for weapons and disarming and questioning anyone who carried one.

  Lorth became acutely conscious of his sword, given to him in Eusiron by a blademaster named Efar, who was said to be beloved of the god after whom the palace was named. Lorth’s bow, Icaros had given him as a parting gift when Lorth had gone to Os as a younger man, to learn the arts of hunting in the Undersides, a tangled network of alleys, caverns and slums in the lower reaches of the city. Icaros had winked as Lorth took the gift. He had never missed a shot with it. His longknife, he acquired in the Undersides from a blademonger with two broken teeth and a scythe-shaped scar on his arm. Its sentimental value aside, Lorth could live without the knife. But his sword and bow, he would keep. He had passed through worse situations than this undetected.

  As he moved ahead, the people parted. Between the brown cloaks of the Faerins stood a man clad in deep wine red. He had graying hair and an air of authority to which the Faerins appeared to concede. When he turned, Lorth glimpsed an emblem on the back of his cloak containing a tree, an eagle—and an eye.

  A wizard. This complicated things. Lorth worked to recall what Icaros had told him about the Keepers of the Eye. They were trained in hierarchical patterns. Each order had a symbol associated with it: a kind of bird, a tree, and a color. A simple scheme concealing a vast forest of complexity. For some reason, Icaros had never bothered to relate specifics about the orders, what they knew or did with the things they knew. It hadn’t mattered to him.

  Burgundy. Eagle. Lorth wasn’t sure where in the hierarchy that fell, but he assumed the wizard must be high up, to be here doing this.

  Someone shouted behind him. The crowd pressed together on the edges of the street to allow a mounted company through. Lorth recognized their stone-gray leggings, white tunics and black cloaks trimmed with deep blue, the color of the sapphire Waeltower of Eusiron. They carried a pennon bearing the Eusiron standard, a woven circle with a wolf in the center, a river beneath and mountains above crowned by the midwinter constellation of Laerstroc, which Icaros had once described as the celestial home of the god who had built the palace. They were tall and grim, their hair braided and bound in black leather, and they wore swords, longbows, and quivers edged in tarnished silver. Two of them were women.

  Lorth considered hailing them. But to do that, he would have to reveal himself and risk exposure to the Faerins—or worse, the wizard. Unfortunately, he had been too long away from Eusiron. No one would know him now, and these warriors wouldn’t believe he had received a message from their mistress. Given his appearance, they would think he only sought to get through the gate like the rest of this rabble.

  He watched them approach the gate, to see how the Faerins would deal with them. He couldn’t picture the Northmen giving up their weapons. But it never came to that; the Faerins stepped back and let them pass. The wizard spoke briefly with the Eusiron captain. Lorth studied the Faerins’ faces: reluctant, wary, arrogant and defiant. Evidently, their business here didn’t extend to Ostarin. Perhaps they knew better than to challenge Eusiron, which was protected by high narrow passes and enchantments and defended by men and women born of generations of warriors bred to do just that. Like the Keepers of the Eye, Eusiron kept to its own.

  Useful to know, but it didn’t help Lorth now. He watched through the yearning crowd as the warriors’ horses stepped restlessly about, passed through in a heavy clatter and then thundered up the road, out of sight.

  Lorth heard the sharp, short commands of the Faerin soldiers now, as if they sought to reassert their power in the wake of the Eusirons, over whom they had no authority.

  As he moved towards the gate, Lorth wondered how he might negotiate this. His sloppy, cavalier use of wizardry broke the rules, and he knew it. It had been a long time since he had tried his skills on a Keeper of the Eye, and even then, he never faced one this high up. Icaros had told him things—scant things, in his offhand, cryptic way—but Lorth didn’t know how much of it applied here. Would this Keeper see through his cloaking spell like a cat? Would he see Lorth’s weapons but not him—or the other way round?

  If the wizard exposed him, he’d be held accountable for more than his weapons. While it wasn’t a crime to use magic, the Keepers of the Eye governed such things. It fell under the
ir jurisdiction, and they were able to see the patterns, even from a distance. Lorth had gained their attention before, in this city, and he didn’t want it now—especially at a blockade.

  A man and a woman approached the Faerins in front of him. The soldiers questioned their business in the city, and rifled through the woman’s basket. The one in command wore a crisp gray tunic showing the Faerin standard, a brown cloak trimmed in green and a helmet with a triple elm-leaf pattern. A lieutenant. He flipped the hood from the woman’s face, muttered something, and waved her through. Another found a knife in the man’s boot and confiscated it. Lorth heard the blade hit a pile of weapons in a nearby wagon.

  He drew a ragged scarf from a pocket in his cloak and wrapped it around his neck to hide the scar.

  I am unseen.

  A woman pushed in front of him, brushing his cloak as she drove a pair of goats to the gate. She smelled of apples and tobacco. The animals sensed him and jerked on their leads with reedy bleats. The woman growled a curse at them and glanced at Lorth, eyeing him strangely.

  So did the soldiers ahead of her. The wizard looked the other way.

  “Let me through,” the woman growled, losing her interest in Lorth. As the soldiers returned their attention to her, Lorth dropped his spell. A knot grew in his solar plexus as the silvery shield slid into the earth.

  He stepped up for inspection, gazing ahead at the goats as they trotted with natural agitation into the street. He sniffed the air and wondered if the creatures had cursed or saved him. The burgundy-cloaked Keeper stood a short distance away, his gaze sweeping over the crowd, the Faerins and the overcast sky. He spoke to a well-dressed man leaving the city. Lorth wondered if he could have passed through under his cloaking spell with the Keeper none the wiser. Too late now.

  “Disarm and state your business,” the Faerin lieutenant said coldly. Lorth turned and looked into the man’s eyes, dark greenish brown and hard with challenge. Under the hunter’s gaze, the warrior took a short step back. “Disarm!” he repeated with a new, threatened edge in his voice. The metallic chorus of a half dozen blades echoed against the high arch above.

  As Lorth reached for his sword strap, the Rede whispered, The sun casts shadows. He undid the strap and lowered the scabbard, and no shabby one at that, for all its travels: made of rich, dark leather, it had delicate silver insets in the shapes of woven trees. A Faerin with black hair and the eyes of a Tarthian snatched it roughly from his hand.

  “State your intention,” the lieutenant demanded.

  “My business is in the north,” Lorth replied, noting that the half-Tarthian soldier who held his blade didn’t throw it onto the cart. Instead, he slid it a few inches from the ornate sheath and studied the symbols on the shoulder. As he returned the blade slowly to its place, he looked up at Lorth as if he knew a scandalous secret. But he knew nothing. A blademaster with the skill of gods had put those markings there.

  “Where in the north?” the lieutenant inquired with a weary exhale.

  “Eusiron.”

  Several of them rumbled with laughter. Someone said, “Sure. Don’t they all say that.”

  “Take it off,” the lieutenant said, gesturing to the bow at Lorth’s side. “And the quiver.”

  “Hold,” said another voice, and by its tone and resonance, Lorth knew the Keeper had noticed him. The wizard stepped through the Faerin guard with the natural confidence that comes with power. He held out his hand. “Give me the bow.”

  Lorth set his gaze on the wall above, covered with some sort of creeping vine with only a few living leaves on it. He shrugged Icaros’s gift from his shoulder, followed by a quiver full of arrows tipped with Tarthian poison. As the wizard took the bow and studied it, his expression glowed with astonished wonder—and then grew cold with suspicion. His blue gaze settled on Lorth with a new kind of interest. “Where did you get this?”

  “I bought it from a merchant in this city, some eight years ago.”

  The wizard cleared his throat as he moved his fingers over the recurved edge. “Impossible.” Then he looked Lorth up and down, and the hunter felt the wizard’s mind like a hot, clear wind sweeping through the structures of his energy. He resisted an instinctual urge to shield himself.

  “Why?” Lorth asked with feigned innocence, thinking to break the man’s concentration.

  The wizard took the quiver from his hand, and turned to the Faerin lieutenant. “He wears a knife. Remove it and take him to the Darkstar Osprey in the High Keep.”

  Someone whistled softly. An arch smile curled on the lieutenant’s lips as if he were impressed by his prisoner’s merit, to be delivered to the High Keep. He turned and gave the orders. The soldier who held Lorth’s sword stepped forward and raised his brow, claiming what he assumed would be his next prize. Lorth reached down and loosened the strap holding his longknife to his thigh, and handed it over. As they hustled him into the street, four warriors on foot and two mounted on either side, he caught the Keeper’s gaze and thought, Confidence escapes notice. But the Shade of Fault gave no answers for how to avoid an interrogation by the Eye.

  Chapter 2

  Shade of Belonging: I have no place.

  Rain began to fall, a cold, patient rain from low clouds that hung like the folds of a cloak over the City of Hallow Rivers. The air grew raw as it wrestled the damp murk muscling in from the southern seas.

  Lorth shuffled along the steep, busy way into Os, tightly flanked by his Faerin escort. The streets ran thick with men-at-arms, foot soldiers and archers, standing on corners or hanging around on terraces or in doorways. As he studied his situation, the hunter focused on the rope around his hands. His captors had moved him out of the Keeper’s sight before binding him. The half-Tarthian who took his blades had put them away quickly.

  Heavy presence, secrets, subversion. If this didn’t reflect an uneasy takeover, Lorth hadn’t seen one. Fiorloc must have unleashed an army thousands strong to accomplish this. To feed, equip and amuse them all, he obviously planned to stay. Fortunately, Lorth knew every crack and alley of Os, having haunted it as an assassin for the better part of his adulthood. These men, given the arrogant veneer slapped over their uncertainty, hadn’t been here long enough to match him.

  He breathed a vague word into the fibrous knot on his wrists and felt it loosen. He looked past the rump of the nearest Faerin horse and spotted a curve in the street with a tumbled stone wall on the far side. Beyond that stood a stable that wasn’t there seven years before. As they rounded the corner, Lorth relaxed and projected his mind around the sun-strong heart of the horse on his right, a sturdy, grayish-white mare spotted with black. Then he spoke a word.

  The soldiers surrounding him turned and stared. One of them told him to shut up.

  The Shade of Alarm breathed, No chance to fear. The mounted warrior shouted as the mare danced to the side, and then reared up, unseating him. As the Faerin hit the ground, Lorth whirled around and kicked the sword from the man’s hand behind him. The horse bolted into the street in a storm of hoofbeats before anyone could bring her to hand.

  Shouts rang out as Faerins came from the street to join in. Townsfolk gathered around, waving their fists with cries and cheers.

  With a tight punch, Lorth knocked out another warrior and snatched up the man’s blade. Now armed, he killed two more before they realized what they faced.

  I am swift.

  The half-Tarthian had edged from the fray. Lorth spoke two words to the second horse which, as the first, dumped its rider and then killed another with a kick that sounded like a cracking branch. In that moment of distraction, Lorth reached the black-haired warrior and bloodily divested him of his prizes. Then he ran.

  Many Faerins joined the chase. Lorth threw his blade strap over his shoulder, clutched his knife and leapt the wall. He dashed around the stable and into a small field of birch saplings that grew behind it. He moved like a fox through the brush, heading for the dark opening of an alley between two stone buildings on the edge of the g
lade. Shouts tore the air behind him as he entered the cold stone shadows.

  He turned and faced the opening. Men moved around behind the stable, hacking at the brush with their swords. Lorth raised his arms. Earth and sky merged in a spiraling sigh, an uneasy tension between them as they formed a web of darkness, space within the spaces, filled with the hunter’s will. He strode down the alley, pausing to strap his knife back on his thigh and secure his sword. He glanced at the opening behind him as the Faerins discovered it. They slammed their bodies, fists and blades into the invisible wall, barking with pain as it bit into them. They would find a way around it. But the hunter would be long hidden by then.

  As he reached the far end of the alley, he uttered his cloaking spell, drew his hood over his face and stepped into the rain. He headed for a narrow way that led to the southeastern side of town, the gateway to the Undersides. A short time later, he moved through a tangle of winding streets, passages, stairwells and tunnels, the details of which only the oldest and shadiest of its denizens knew. Few Faerin warriors walked these streets. He felt the comfortable weight of his blade as he turned into an alley with steep steps cut into the stone. His thighs burned as he went up.

  At the top, he saw a familiar tavern sign: the Sea Serpent. The sign was carved into the shape of a coiling loerfalos, an enormous dragon-like sea creature said to be immortal. To the right of the tavern crouched a door in a deep, granite alcove. Though unassuming and plain, every cutthroat in the city knew it. Lorth entered and descended a perilously steep, narrow stairwell. He had to duck to avoid striking his head on the rafters. He smelled urine and heard brutish laughter from the tavern above. He breathed a word and drew a field of energy around his body that felt like a roaming eye. Thus armed, he took the last three steps and entered the dank antechamber of the Hunter’s Sanctuary.