by Darius Hinks
‘You will not have me,’ he growled under his breath, bounding up into the branches of an alder tree. It was rotten with plague and collapsed beneath his weight, but Finavar vaulted free of its diseased embrace and landed in a more secure perch. Without waiting to see how close his pursuers were, he leapt on, crossing dozens of treetops in seconds and climbing higher with each jump.
The sound of approaching hooves told him he was far from safe, but with every jump, Finavar felt more certain that he was not destined to die; not yet. Rather than growing weary, his muscles became more energised as he ran. There was an invigorating heat spreading from his chest, pulsing out through his limbs.
He started to laugh. Despite their magic, the riders were falling behind.
Finavar slipped easily through the forest, as though gravity had relinquished its hold on him and, as he ran, he realised that the wonderful heat he could feel was pulsing from the bark-like plates across his torso. The energy of the Wildwood spirits was growing, filling his body with power. The murmurs he had heard in the Wildwood began rolling around his head again. The language was still meaningless but the sound filled him with righteous rage.
Finavar felt so alive that his laughter became a delirious howl. Everything combined in one dizzying rush – the thrill of his new-found strength, the ease of his escape and the voices in his head. He was so elated that when a third rider charged into view up ahead of him, he decided that flight was no longer enough.
‘Do you want me?’ he howled, diving through the branches at the rider and drawing back his swords to strike.
The rider faltered, reining in his stag in surprise. It was clear that he had not been expecting to become prey.
Finavar’s swords flashed as he crashed into the rider and bowled him from the back of stag.
The pair of them tumbled and rolled through the mud, ending up sprawled across the blubbery roots of a diseased tree.
Despite the unexpected nature of Finavar’s attack, the rider had managed to block his sword strikes with his spear. The weapon had been sliced in half as a result though and, as the horned rider clambered to his feet, he drew a long, wooden knife.
Finavar was faster. Still grinning, he vaulted the rotten pulp and smashed the hilts of his swords into the rider’s helmeted face.
The horned rider was huge – at least two feet taller than Finavar – but the ferocity of Finavar’s attack sent him reeling backwards through the fumes and spores.
The stag lowered its antlers and charged, but Finavar was already gone.
He had sprinted down another path, following the route of a yellow, fungus-crowded river.
His rage at the riders was growing all the time, but he had glimpsed something that reminded him of his true purpose – Mormo and Mauro. His rodent scouts were still with him, leading the way along the riverbank, so he hurried after them before the other riders could delay him any further.
Finavar heard stag hooves behind him, but he paid them no heed, sprinting in the direction of the polecats. The river gurgled and spat as he ran alongside it and he glimpsed huge, segmented serpents, rolling beneath its surface.
The polecats scampered up an incline, slipping easily through the strangled mess of dead roots and dazzling fungus.
Finavar leapt across the bubbling river and ran after them.
Then he was lying on his back in the mud, staring at the branches overhead.
For a moment, Finavar was unable to understand what had happened. He looked, uncomprehending, at the mesh of branches, then he noticed that the forest had turned red: his eyes were full of blood.
He tried to stand but could only manage to sit up. The world swam around him in sickening waves and pain exploded across his face.
He reached up to touch his jaw and felt a ragged mess of warm, torn flesh.
Then he saw a rider, watching him in silence from a few feet away. He was masked, like the others, but there was something infuriatingly arrogant about the way he casually rode closer, wiping Finavar’s blood from the shaft of his spear.
‘Do not be afraid,’ said the rider. His voice was coarse and bestial, but strangely deferential and, as he removed his helmet, Finavar saw that the light had vanished from the rider’s eyes, leaving two sombre black orbs.
Finavar could still feel a furious sentience, rushing through his head and, without a thought, he hurled one of his swords at the rider.
The movement was so fast that the rider had no chance to dodge the blade.
The sword sliced through the side of his throat, throwing him from his mount and sending him rolling back down the slope.
Finavar wiped the blood from his face and climbed to his feet, using his remaining sword as a crutch. ‘I wasn’t afraid.’
The sound of snapping branches alerted him to the arrival of other riders. They had dismounted and, as they approached from several directions, clutching their spears, Finavar saw that there were now six of them.
He looked back at the one he had wounded and saw that he was standing again, clutching his neck, but looking at him in the same oddly respectful way.
‘My leaf-liege,’ said the rider, his voice a low growl. ‘You do not remember me. I am Atolmis the Hunter. My blood is your sap. My bones are your roots.’
The words hit Finavar with more force than any blow the rider could have laid on him. Leaf-liege. He understood immediately. Everything slipped into focus. It was as though this moment had been in his thoughts his whole life. The riders had not come to punish him; they had come to anoint him.
Finavar was stunned. Could it be? Could he really be the very thing he despised? Despite his disgust, it made horrible sense. The feelings of power and destiny that had driven him to this point. The sense that he–
Finavar’s thoughts were interrupted by arms, grabbing him roughly from behind. He struggled, but it was no use. The riders had already bound him. They dragged him through the mud and lashed him to a tree and, as the other riders approached, Finavar wondered if he had been right the first time. As the priests of Kurnous crowded round him, he saw that they were all clutching wooden staves.
‘You can’t do this,’ he gasped, his mouth full of blood.
Atolmis’s jaw opened to reveal long, yellow teeth.
‘Orion,’ he growled, drawing back his wooden stake to plunge it into Finavar’s chest. ‘I have come to make you immortal.’
The voices in Finavar’s head reached a crescendo and combined with the heat blazing in his chest. He wrenched his hand free in an explosion of vines and snatched the stake from Atolmis’s grip.
The priest’s face filled with horror and he tried to grab the weapon back, but Finavar wrenched his other hand free and latched it around Atolmis’s throat.
The huge priest attempted to free himself, then froze as he saw something even more shocking. The ridged bark encasing Finavar’s chest had sprouted a forest of flame-like tendrils. Finavar and the riders watched in amazement as the tendrils lashed themselves around Atolmis’s wrists and began to cut, razor-like into his flesh.
Atolmis grunted in surprise and struggled to free himself. He looked at the other riders in confusion, but they simply shook their heads and backed away. None of them had ever seen anything like this before.
The heat in Finavar’s chest blossomed up into his mind, filling his thoughts with a final, incredible truth. He saw countless lifetimes spreading out behind him and before him. It was true: he was Orion. His horror faded, replaced by an overwhelming sense of destiny.
He looked at Atolmis again and recognised the face of his oldest friend. He hauled the shocked priest back towards him.
Atolmis was too stunned to react as Orion reached into his cloak and drew out the treasure he knew would be waiting there – an oak apple.
His actions were no longer his own but the actions of a god. He used the stave to tear open his own chest with a brittle crack. Then he jammed the oak apple deep between his ribs and let Kurnous consume him.
Power and history flooded his mind.
He savoured it, revelling in the act of becoming himself. Then he waved for the priests to approach. His mouth was full of hot blood but his meaning was clear: Begin.
They looked back at him in amazement and seemed unable to move. This was not how the rite was meant to proceed.
Then Atolmis gave a hesitant nod and they hurried forward.
As they began to carve their new king, Orion kept his eyes locked on Atolmis. The priest was still clutching his neck but he managed to nod his head in a bow. When Atolmis looked up again, the being that was Finavar was no more.
As the bond between them grew, Orion saw his servant was afraid. He gripped Atolmis’s shoulder tighter, sensing without the need for speech, what troubled him. Atolmis thought the battle for their home was already lost.
‘Not while there is a single green leaf,’ he said quietly.
Atolmis closed his eyes for a moment; when he opened them again, the fear was gone.
The rituals were abandoned. In the span of one missing season, the old rites had become meaningless. In every previous year, the priests had carried the Chosen of Kurnous on a litter, dressed for spring in a mantle of blood and magic. This year, he strode proudly ahead of them through the trees, trailing skin and muscle like a regal gown. The branches formed a ceremonial arch, forcing back disease and mutation to grant him passage back towards the heart of the forest.
Atolmis and the other riders stared in wonder. None of them could recall such a wrathful, defiant offering. He had already grown in stature, without the blessing of the equinox. It was as though Kurnous was impatient to begin. Vines and shoots were already winding, snake-like under the skin of the nascent Orion.
They reached their destination quicker than they expected – a perfect circle of water, hidden deep in a grove of linden trees. It should have been a beautiful scene but the linden trees were dead – collapsed under the weight of blight, leaving a mound of corpse-like heaps. The rotten bark was buzzing with flies and crawling with grubs. The pond itself was brackish and unwelcoming and choked with weeds, but the Consort-King strode towards it with no sign of doubt.
Atolmis called out a warning, unnerved by the unwholesome appearance of the pool, but his lord paid him no heed, wading powerfully through the water and plunging into its murky depths.
Orion sank through the blood-warm darkness. He kicked his legs, diving deeper and, as he swam, the murmuring in his head grew louder. The weight of the water pressed against his skull and his lungs began to burn, but his thoughts were only for the voices. With every stroke, they became louder and more determined. The language was becoming clearer. It was a deep, rolling poetry, burning with outrage. Orion sensed that a powerful sentience was speaking, not just to him, but through him. He was the conduit for incredible wrath. Every trial he had endured had tempered him into the perfect weapon – the loss of his home, the death of Jokleel, even his months of starvation and the shredding of his flesh – everything had prepared him for his fate.
Outrage burst from Orion’s lungs in a single, ragged howl as he broke from the surface of the pool.
For a moment he remained in the mud with his eyes closed, roaring, his head thrown back. Then he climbed to the shallows and strode towards the water’s edge.
The sound of hooves and wings alerted him to the fact that he was not alone and he opened his eyes.
There was a blur of grey as something flew towards him.
Orion just had time to raise his arms before a snarling, thrashing shape slammed into him.
He toppled back into the water, teeth slicing through his forearms. He felt a brief flash of fear but it was quickly washed away by the furious voices in his head. He leapt to his feet and looked around.
He was back in the clearing, but it had changed. The linden trees were alive. Their grey-brown bark was free of disease and their branches were laden with small, lime-green leaves. His heart swelled at the sight of an untainted forest, but he had little time to admire the view. Shapes were hurtling towards him from every direction – bestial shadows, glimmering and shifting as they moved. Their diaphanous flesh did not make them any less fearsome. Orion glimpsed talons as long as his arm and vast, leathery wings. It was a brutal carnival of claws and teeth.
Orion cursed as another one crashed into his stomach, doubling him over in pain. He backed away and, for a moment, he saw his attacker clearly. It was a wolf, almost as tall as he was, its pure, white fur bristling with hate and its muzzle crimson with blood. Orion stepped back into the water, attempting to buy himself a few seconds to get his bearings. He had only taken a few steps when the other creatures tore into him.
Orion fell back under a torrent of grasping claws and pounding wings.
For a second his head was forced beneath the water. The voices in his head swelled to such a pitch that they drowned out the snorts and growls of his attackers. Along with the voices, Orion felt another flash of heat in his chest.
He exploded from the pool, shrugging off the animal spirits as easily as the water and landing punches on those that were nearest.
The wolf was thrashing in the water a few feet away and Orion grabbed it by the throat.
It howled as he lifted it, then vanished, leaving him to stagger, unbalanced, through the shallows.
Shapes were whirling around him, screeching and roaring, but Orion ignored them and charged up onto the grass beneath the circle of linden trees.
The spirits backed away, still snarling, preparing for another attack and Orion peered into the shifting gloom, trying to see them more clearly. Anger gave him focus as he glared at each of them in turn. They were familiar, animal shapes, but they were large – far larger than natural beasts and they shone with an inner fire. Orion’s head was a spiral of newly acquired memories and, though he had never seen these beings before, he knew they had been with him since the dawn of the forest.
‘I am your king,’ he roared, shedding the last vestiges of his doubt. The voices in his head spilled out through his mouth. ‘You may not taste my blood.’ The heat in his chest grew. ‘I am here to save your home.’
The creatures flickered, ghost-like in the shadows, but he saw enough to know that he had shocked them. They had not expected such defiance.
The wolf howled and threw itself at him again. Its lips curled back from long, gleaming incisors as it flashed across the clearing.
Orion’s flesh was faster than thought. He batted the animal away before he had even registered the attack.
The wolf skulked away, growling and limping as the other spirits backed away into the shadows, gathering beneath a wide, circular embankment.
‘How dare you speak of our home,’ hissed a sibilant voice.
Orion saw a hooded, stooped figure, hiding in the darkness at the foot of the embankment. He felt a wave of revulsion as he recognised the warden of the forest’s darkest paths.
‘I speak of whatever I choose to, Wrach,’ he said, keeping his tone low and controlled.
The hooded figure edged forwards and replied in a furious whisper. ‘No doubt you do, murderer.’
The wolf limped back into view, glaring at Orion and repeated the accusation in a cold, regal voice. ‘Murderer.’
Orion shook his head. He was about to demand an explanation when he realised who was missing from the gathering. There should have been a proud white stag waiting to greet him: Sativus, the Spirit King of the beasts. He felt a rush of shame as he sensed that Sativus’s absence might be his fault. He peered back through the endless reflections of his past and saw that, in a previous guise, he had battled with the ancient spirit. His memories were vague and fluid. He could not remember any details – only that he had fought and the struggle had ended with Sativus dead. He sensed another powerful being was involved but then one of the beasts snorted and Finavar’s memories slipped away from him.
‘He had already fallen.’ Orion frowned, still shaking his head, scouring his memory. ‘It was the plague. Before I found him, the plague had already ruined his mind.�
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The raised area behind the animals suddenly moved and Orion saw his mistake. What he had taken for an embankment was actually a vast serpent. It uncoiled its huge, scaled mass and slid across the ground towards him, raising its low, diamond-shaped head as it approached. The serpent’s skull was crowned by a pair of bleached, spiralling ram’s horns and its eyes were two empty sockets.
‘And who unleashed the plague on us, Orion?’ asked the snake, lifting its head way above the treetops as it looked down at him. Its voice sounded like rainwater, drumming across a forest canopy, but the words were sharp with rage.
Orion felt a brief moment of doubt. What had he done? What shame had attached itself to him as he swam through the pool? Then he remembered the voices in his head. The words were bewildering, but there was defiance in their tone. He knew he could not be to blame for all that had befallen the forest.
He glared at the serpent. ‘The name of our betrayer is Ordaana. I will hunt her to the end of the world if I have to, but she will pay for what she has done. And when she is dead, I will banish whatever forsaken worm she has smuggled into my forest.’
The snake hesitated, surprised by Orion’s defiant tone.
The other beasts edged out from the shadows, eyeing him closely. Orion saw that behind their snarling, ferocious expressions, there was a deeper emotion. They were afraid.
A bristling, slavering boar thudded across the grass. ‘Your hunting days are over,’ it said. It did not move its lips but spoke directly into Orion’s mind, mingling its voice with all the others that were bouncing around his skull.
Orion was so buoyed by the voices in his mind that he felt as though he could have flown across the clearing and torn the boar’s head from its body, but he managed to keep his voice low as he replied. ‘I will hunt and you will hunt with me. All of you will. When spring comes and the Wild Hunt–’
‘There will be no spring, Orion,’ hissed the Wrach from the shadows. The spirit’s voice was a poisonous mixture of spite and panic. ‘Don’t you understand?’
For the first time since the Wildwood, the voices in his head fell silent. He would not be deterred though and jabbed a finger at the hooded spirit. ‘You will all hunt with me. It can be in the snow for all I care, but we will ride together and we will make the forest whole.’
