The Hallowed Hunt

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  By him, Ingrey realized, blinking, Jokol meant the bear…

  The bear dropped its prize and rose up. And up. And up…Ingrey’s head tilted back, his eyes widening at the snarling jaws, the massive shoulders, the huge, outspreading paws with their wicked ivory-tipped claws, looming high over his head…

  Everything around him slowed, and Ingrey’s perceptions came alight, in the black exultation of his wolf ascending, seemingly pumped from his heart up into his reeling brain. The noise in the court became a distant rumble. His sword in his hand felt weightless; the tip rose, then began to curve away in a glittering back-swing. His mind sketched the plunge of the steel, into the bear’s heart and out again before it could even begin to react, caught as it was in that other, more sluggish stream of time.

  It was then that he felt, more than saw, the faint god light sputtering from the bear like sparks off a cat petted in the winter dark. The light’s beauty confounded him, burning into his eyes. His heightened perceptions reached for it in a desperate grasping after the fading god, and suddenly, his mind was in the bear’s.

  He saw himself, foreshortened: a doubled image of leather-clad man and moving blade, and a vast, dark, dense wolf with glowing silver-tipped fur spewing light in an aureole all around him. As his heart reached after the god light, so the bear’s astounded senses reached toward him, and for an instant, a three-way circle completed itself.

  A laughing Voice murmured in his mind, but not in his ear: “I see my Brother’s pup is in better pelt, now. Good. Pray continue…” Ingrey’s mind seemed to explode with the weight and pressure of that utterance.

  For a moment, the bear’s dazed and wordless memories became his. The recent procession into the Father’s court, with the other animals all about. The distraction of the groom, the stink of his fear, but the reassurance of the familiar one, his smell and his voice, providing a link to calm in this disordered stone world. Voices droning, on and on. A dim comprehension of movement, positioning, yes, there had been food not long ago, when he did this, and let them lead him over there…And then his bear-heart swelled and burst with the overwhelming arrival of the god, followed by the happy certainty of a rocking amble toward the bier. Then confusion and pain; the small man hooked on the end of his chain was pulling back, yanking, punishing him for doing this thing, frustrating his happiness. He lunged forward in an attempt to complete his god-given task. More of these puny creatures ran about getting in his way. A red rage rose in his brain like a tide, and he grabbed that cold odd-smelling lump of meat and lumbered off with it toward the laughing light Who called him, Who was, confusingly, everywhere and yet nowhere…

  The monstrous creature gave a snarl of pain and wrath, towering like a fur avalanche above Ingrey’s head.

  Ingrey seemed to reach deep into his chest, his belly, his bowels, and brought out one word: “Down!” The command flew through the air with the weight of a stone from a catapult.

  His sword tip circled once, then fell in a silver arc to the pavement before his feet. The bear’s snout tracked it, following it down, and down, until the great beast was crouched before Ingrey’s boots, pressing its jaw to the tiles, its paws drawn in close to its head, its massive haunches bunching up behind. The yellow eyes looked up at him in bear-bewilderment, and awe.

  Ingrey glowered around to find the groom-acolyte scrabbling away on hands and knees nearby, white robes bloodied, eyes now more huge on Ingrey than they’d been on the ice bear. The claws had merely grazed his ribs, else he might have been disemboweled. The bear’s rage still boiled up in Ingrey’s brain. Letting his sword fall with a clang, he advanced upon the man. He scooped him up by the front of his robes, jamming him against the plinth of the holy fire. The man was as tall as Ingrey, and broader in the beam, but he seemed to float in Ingrey’s grasp. Ingrey bent him backward over the licking heat. The groom’s flailing feet sought the floor, without success, and his squeaking strained up beyond sound into silence.

  “What did they pay you, to thwart the god’s blessing? Who dared this execration?” Ingrey snarled into the groom’s contorted face. His voice, pitched low and vibrating, snaked all around the stone walls like a rustle of velvet, and back into his own ears like a purr.

  “I—I—I—I’m sorry!” squealed the groom. “Arpan said, Arpan said, it would do no harm…”

  “He lies!” yelped the groom in the Father’s livery, dragging his frightened gray dog on its lead, circling wide around the still-crouching bear.

  The white-clad groom’s eyes focused on Ingrey’s, inches from his face, and he inhaled deeply and screamed, “I confess! Don’t, don’t, don’t…”

  Don’t what? With difficulty, Ingrey straightened, opened his hands, and let the man fall back to his feet. He kept on going down, however, knees crumpling, till he was curled up in a bleeding ball at the base of the plinth, sniveling.

  “Nij, you fool!” screamed the Father’s groom. “Shut up!”

  “I couldn’t help it!” cried the Bastard’s groom, cowering from Ingrey. “His eyes shone silver, and his voice had a terrible weirding on it!”

  “Then you’d best listen, hadn’t you,” said an unsympathetic voice at Ingrey’s elbow.

  Ingrey jerked away to find Learned Lewko, out of breath, exasperation manifest in the set of his teeth, standing looking over the chaotic scene.

  Ingrey inhaled deeply, desperately trying to slow his heart, will time to its normal flow, calm his exacerbated senses. Light, shade, color, sound, all seemed to strike at him like ax blades, and the people all around him burned like fires. It was gradually borne in upon him how many people were staring at him now, mouths agape: some thirty or so mourners, the divine conducting the ceremony, all five groom-acolytes, Prince Jokol and his dumbfounded friend, and now, Learned Lewko. Who was not looking at all dumbfounded.

  I have let my wolf ascend, Ingrey reflected in a dizzied delirium. In front of forty witnesses. In the middle of the main temple court of Easthome.

  At least I seem to have amused the white god…

  “Learned, Learned, help me, mercy…” mumbled the injured groom, crawling to Lewko’s feet and grabbing the hem of his robe. Lewko’s look of exasperation deepened.

  A dozen people now seemed to be arguing at once, accusations and counteraccusations of both bribes and threats, as the mourners fell apart into two camps. An inheritance seemed to be at stake, from the fragments of speech that reached Ingrey’s ears, although the thread of this instantly tangled with other old grudges, slights, and resentments. The hapless divine who had been conducting the funeral ceremony made a few feeble attempts to restore order among his flock while simultaneously threatening discipline upon his grooms, then, thwarted in both tasks, turned instead to an easier target.

  He whirled to Prince Jokol, and pointed a shaking hand at the bear. “Take that thing back,” he snarled. “Get it out of this temple at once! Never return!”

  The towering red-haired man seemed nearly in tears. “But I was promised a divine! I must have one! If I do not bring one back to my island, my beautiful Breiga will not marry me!”

  Ingrey stepped forward, chin up, and put all the authority of Sealmaster Hetwar’s most dangerous sword hand into his voice. And perhaps…something extra. “The Temple of Easthome will give you a missioner in exchange for your silver ingots, Prince. Or perhaps I missed the offer to return them?” He let his eye fall stonily on the harassed divine.

  Learned Lewko, in a tone seeming singularly calm compared to everyone else’s, soothed, “The Temple will make all right, Prince, once we have ironed out this regrettable internal fault. It seems that your fine bear was the victim of an impious machination. For now, will you please take Fafa back to your boat for safekeeping?”

  He added out of the corner of his mouth to Ingrey, “And you, my lord, would oblige me vastly if you would go with them, and see that they both get there without eating any small children on the way.”

  Ingrey melted with relief at the thought of escape. �
��Certainly, Learned.”

  Lewko’s eyelids flicked down; he added, “And take care of that.”

  Ingrey followed his glance. New blood was leaking in a dark trickle down his fingers from beneath the soiled bandage on his right hand. Something half-healed had burst during his manhandling of the guilty groom, presumably. He’d felt nothing.

  He looked up to find himself fixed with a fierce blue stare. Jokol’s eyes narrowed; he bent his head for a low-voiced, rapid exchange with his brown-haired comrade. Then he looked up and favored Lewko with an abrupt nod, which he extended to Ingrey. “Yes. We like this one, eh, Ottovin?” He gave his companion a nudge in the ribs that might have knocked over a lesser man, and marched over to his bear. He picked up the silver chain. “Come, Fafa.”

  The bear whined and shuffled a little, but kept its crouching pose.

  Lewko’s hand griped Ingrey’s shoulder; a nearly soundless breath in his ear said, “Let it up again, Lord Ingrey. I think it is calmer now.”

  “I…” Ingrey stepped nearer to the bear, and scooped up and resheathed his sword. The bear shuffled about some more, pressed its black nose to Ingrey’s boots, and stared up at him piteously. Ingrey swallowed, and tried in a cracked voice: “Up.”

  Nothing happened. The bear whimpered.

  He reached down into a deep, deep well within himself, and brought up the word again; but a word given weight, a growling song that made his own bones vibrate. “Up.”

  The great animal seemed to unfold. It lumbered to its master then, and Jokol dropped to his knees and petted the huge beast, big hands ruffling the thick fur of its neck, murmuring soothing endearments in a tongue Ingrey’s ear could not translate. The ice bear rubbed its head on the prince’s embroidered tunic, smearing it with bear spit and white hairs.

  “Come, my good friend, Fafa’s friend!” said Jokol, standing up and giving Ingrey an expansive wave of his hand. “Come share a bowl with me.” He gave the silver chain a shake. His glance swept over the mob arguing in the court, and he gave a sniff of disdain and turned toward the outer doors. Ottovin, his face screwed up, followed loyally after. Ingrey hurried to catch up, keeping Jokol between himself and the bear.

  The short, strange parade exited the temple, leaving Learned Lewko to manage the babble and wailing left in their wake. Ingrey heard his crisp voice, addressed to the still-yammering groom and anyone else within earshot, “…then it must have been a trick of the light.” At Ingrey’s last glance over his shoulder, Lewko’s eyes met his, and his lips formed the word Tomorrow. Ingrey found it an un-reassuring but credible promise.

  His eyes shone silver, and his voice had a terrible weirding on it… Familiar pain crept over Ingrey, and he realized he had done some most unpleasant things to his still-healing back, as well as to his hand. But the ringing in his ears was new, as was the thick tightening in his raw throat.

  His memory returned unbidden to his old torments at Birchgrove. Of his head shoved under the Birchbeck, his lungs pulsing with red pain. Not even screams had been possible in that breathless cold. Of all his trials, that had proved the most effective, and his excited handlers had repeated it often, until his lucidity locked in. The strength of his silence, appallingly grim in a barely-boy, had been forged and quenched in that icy stream: stronger than his tormentors by far, stronger than fear of death.

  He shook off the disquieting recollection and attended to guiding the island men back to the docks below Kingstown through the least crowded streets he could find. Lewko’s concerns seemed less a joke when they picked up a tail of excited children, all pointing and chirping at the bear. Jokol grinned at them. Ingrey scowled and waved them off. His intensified senses seemed to be quieting, his heart slowing at last. Jokol and Ottovin spoke to each other in their own dialect, with frequent glances in Ingrey’s direction.

  Jokol dropped back beside Ingrey. “I thank you for helping poor Fafa, Lord, Lord Ingriry. Ingorry?”

  “Ingrey.”

  Jokol grimaced apologetically. “I fear I am a very stupid man in your talk. Well, my mouth will get better.”

  “You speak Wealdean well,” said Ingrey diplomatically. “My Darthacan is hardly more fluent, and I do not speak your tongue at all.”

  “Ah, Darthacan.” Jokol shrugged. “That is a hard talk.” His blue gaze narrowed. “Do you write?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is good. I cannot.” The big man sighed mournfully. “All feathers break in these.” He held out one thick hand for Ingrey’s inspection; Ingrey nodded in an attempt at sympathy. He did not doubt Jokol’s assertion in the least.

  At the ice bear’s ambling pace, they came at length to the gate in the Kingstown walls that led out to the cut-stone embankment and wooden wharves. A grove of masts and spars made a black tangle against the luminous evening sky. The working riverboats were flat and crude, for the most part, but scattered among them were a few seagoing vessels of light draft, up from the mouth of the Stork. Above Easthome no such ships went, for the rising hills created impassable rapids, although timber and other goods, on rafts or in barrels, were routinely floated down them whenever the water rose high enough.

  Jokol’s ship, tied up alongside one outthrusting jetty, proved altogether a different breed. It was easily forty feet long, curved out in the middle as gracefully as a woman’s hips, narrowing on each end to where matching prows curled up, artfully carved with entwined rows of sea birds. It had a single mast, and a single deck; its passengers must presumably suffer the elements when it sailed, although at the moment, a large tent was arranged along the back half.

  The ship looked big enough on the river, but to Ingrey’s mind it seemed insanely small for the open seas. It looked even smaller when the bear slouched aboard, snuffling, and flopped down amidships in what was evidently its accustomed place with a great, exhausted sigh. The boat rocked, then settled again, as Jokol snapped the chain to a hook on the mast. Ottovin, with an anxious smile, gestured Ingrey up the wobbly board that served as a gangplank and thumped down to the deck after him. In the twilight, the glow from the lamps set within the tent seemed welcoming, and Ingrey was reminded of the little wooden boats bearing candles that he and his father had released into the Birchbeck for the Son’s Day ceremonies, in happier times, before wolves had eaten their world.

  A crew of perhaps two dozen welcomed their prince back gladly, and the bear, if less gladly, at least familiarly. They were all strong-looking men, though none so tall as their leader: most as young, but a few grizzled. Some kept their hair in similar horsetails, some braided, and one had a shaved head, though judging from his pale and mottled scalp, that might have been in some desperate recent attempt to combat an infestation of vermin. None was ill clothed, and, taking a swift count of the weapons neatly stored along the vessel’s sides with the shipped oars, none ill armed. Retainers, warriors, sailors, rowers? All men here did all work, Ingrey suspected; there could be no room for purposeless distinctions on this boat when the seas rose high.

  The bear delivered, Ingrey considered escape, but as Hetwar’s man he supposed he’d better accept Prince Jokol’s bowl first, lest he give some offense that might reflect on the sealmaster. He trusted the ritual would be brief. Jokol waved Ingrey into his tent, which made a spacious enough hall. The fabric was wool, made waterproof with fat; Ingrey decided his nose would grow used to its odor soon. Two trestle tables with benches were set up within, and another bench at the side to which his host led Ingrey. Jokol and Ottovin plunked down on either side of him; the other men bustled about, efficiently setting out utensils and food.

  A blond young man with a quite valiant reddish ring-beard standing out like a halo around his chin bowed before the three of them and distributed, indeed, wooden bowls. Another man followed with a jug, from which he poured an opaque liquid, first to the guest, then to the prince, then to Ottovin. Wavering vapors arose from the sloshing brew. Ottovin, whose Wealdean was more broken than Jokol’s, gave Ingrey to understand, with various baffling gestures,
that it was brewed from mare’s milk, or possibly blood. Or possibly urine, Ingrey reflected after his first taste. If that noise had been meant as a whinny, horses had something to do with it, anyway. He would choke down this one drink for courtesy, then take his leave, Ingrey decided. He could plead his duty to Hetwar and extract himself tactfully.

  Beyond the far end of the tent, through an open flap, a brazier and temporary kitchen were set up, and a smell of grilling meat made Ingrey’s mouth abruptly water. “We will eat much soon,” Jokol assured him, with the smile of a host anxious to please.

  Ingrey would have to eat sometime, to be sure; and drinking this pungent brew on an empty stomach seemed a dangerous indulgence just before an interview with the sealmaster. He nodded. Jokol slapped him on the back and grinned.

  Jokol’s grin faded as his eye fell on Ingrey’s gory right hand. The prince caught a comrade by the sleeve, and gave a low-voiced order. In a few minutes, one of the older men appeared, laden with a basin, cloths, and a bundle. He evicted Ottovin from the bench and signed Ingrey to give over his wounded hand. As the grubby bandage came off, the man winced at the new rupture and the aging, dark purple bruises. Ottovin, leaning over to watch, gave a short whistle, and said something that made Jokol bark a laugh. Jokol kindly held the drinking bowl to Ingrey’s lips again before the grizzled fellow stabbed and sewed the flesh once more. When the fellow had finished, wrapped the hand, gathered his gear, ducked his head, and gone off again, Ingrey resisted the strong desire to put his head down between his knees for sheer dizziness. It was plain he was not going anywhere just yet.

  As promised, the food was both soon and much. It happily included no dried fish, stony journey-bread, or other repellent sea rations, but rather appeared to have been gathered fresh from the town markets. Cooks in the noble houses of Easthome might prepare more delicate feasts, but it was all good, far beyond the camp fare Ingrey had been expecting. Ingrey, giving it the attention it deserved, failed to fend off the fellow intent on refilling his bowl whenever the fluid level dropped below half.