‘You attention-seeking little shit,’ Luw laughed, relief kicking back the pain. The hound rolled its eyes at him, something of self-pity in them. He gave Bann’s face a gentle shove and grunted, agony lancing through his chest. That kick had done some damage. ‘Are you hurt, boy?’
Bann gave a whine, buried his face into the leafmould.
‘Me too.’ A squelching, sloughing sound plucked his attention. Luw found himself staring at the elk’s corpse, its last layers of flesh peeling and putrefying, the black bones beneath exposed. ‘Me too…’ He sighed.
Such a waste. That fucking fool Náith had no idea the tragedy he’d just wrought. That noble elk’s Earthblood would have sustained the forests of Luah Fáil, given them new life in the face of Aodhamar’s constant ravaging to feed the furnaces and forges of his wars. Its hide could have been fashioned into an armour strong enough to stop any blade, and its bones could have been honed to the sharpest, most unyielding edge. Had the Hunter’s Rites been followed, that was. Now, it was gone. The Heartoak alone would not be enough, its strength was all but spent.
Your sacrifice should have kept these woods safe, Luw lamented, watching as the last shreds of the elk’s fur swelled, festered and were devoured by mould. The bones they clung to cracked, splintered like charred wood and crumbled, drifting upon the breeze like cold ashes. Luw’s eyes followed a streamer of it, filtering away across the Glade into the tangled mass of the forest. He thought of chasing it, leaving spear and bow behind and just following wherever that current deigned to take him, and found himself staring at the forest canopy as the last of it slipped away between those lofty boughs.
It will all wither, before long.
The thought seemed all the more sorrowful, knowing that it could have been stopped, had that boorish prick just stayed his hand. There was nothing that could be done, now. The King of Elk was dead, and the forests and woods of Luah Fáil would recede, until even the memories of their verdant beauty were gone.
At least you’ll see your mate again, old boy.
Luw sighed, reclined against the rotting tree and tried to detach himself from the pain in his chest. Bann whined, struggled onto his massive paws and curled up beside him, tongue rasping the sweat from his face. Luw pulled the wolfgazer close. ‘We’ve still got each other, eh?’ Bann licked his ear.
Forcing himself to his feet, Luw checked the height of the sun. ‘Come on, boy,’ he said, picking up his spear. ‘Let’s see if she’ll patch us up.’
Chapter 4
Healing in Smoke
Síle. Never was there a woman more beautiful, more tender than she. Eyes of cut obsidian, hair of spun shadow, her skin the majestic grey of summer storms that beat iron waves against the cliffs. The curve of body, bosom and smile as one in a harmony that nature rarely crafted and only bards could describe. Her presence was a song that could sweeten the air of even Aodhamar’s dankest prisons, a melody that scoured away misery and sorrow and left only the warmth of her embrace.
She was tending to her garden as Luw and Bann reached the forest’s edge. Luw shushed Bann before he barked for her attention – though the hound’s tail still wagged furiously – and took a moment to watch her.
She was kneeling before a patch of huge, red flowers, a halo of flittering butterflies circling her dark crown. Something in the depths of those blooms glowed, casting a golden light upon her lovely face that made her eyes burn like suns. She worked some spell of hers upon them. The Earthbond in her blood let Síle nurture bloom, branch, and field, made things grow hearty and happy in places where they should have shrivelled and died. The forest thought well of her, Luw knew, in its slow, sleepy way. A welcome neighbour. Her Earthbond was something akin to his own, a power born from the Earthblood, though the forest ran deeper and more eternal than the fleeting things of her garden. It was… pleasant to watch how she cared for the things of the earth. Inspiring, even. Hope was a rare and welcome thing, these days.
‘Come on.’ Luw slipped about the tree. He dropped quietly over the root-knotted ridge at the forest’s edge, thinking to sneak through the garden’s many rows and surprise her, and palmed his face. ‘Bann!’
The wolfgazer streaked past Luw and cut a straight path to Síle, demolishing agonisingly-neat flower beds and leaving a trail of tattered foliage drifting behind him. She turned as the hound leapt, and Bann’s massive paws shoved her down into the flowers, whimpering as he lapped at her laughing face, tail stirring a furious wind in the summer air.
Luw slowed, cringing at the destruction in the furry idiot’s wake, a drifting petal tickling his nose. ‘Bann! Here! Now!’ Bann whined, climbed off Síle and returned with tail between legs. Luw gave the mutt a glare and went to her. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Síle laughed. She stood, brushing off grass and muddy paw-streaks the size of her head. ‘He’s such a good boy. Aren’t you?’ She gave Bann’s neck a scratch, the hound shoulder-height with her. His tail thumped the ground, tongue lolling. She straightened, one of those smiles of hers setting Luw’s heart a-quivering. She stepped close enough for the warmth of her skin to prickle against his own, her smile fading as she took in the state of his face. ‘You’re hurt. Both of you,’ she said. Bann’s head hung low, hungry for her sympathy. He lifted a paw as if it were wounded and whined.
‘It’s nothing,’ Luw lied, giving the hound a reproachful look. Síle made an unconvinced noise, her thumbs probing gently about his broken nose. A faint, yet hungry look awoke behind those dark eyes of hers as she opened his jerkin, her fingers tracing the bruise. They trailed off, following the angles of wiry muscle wound tight about Luw’s torso.
‘Have you been fighting?’
‘Some,’ Luw said.
Síle lifted her eyes from the bruise, cupped his face. ‘Come inside, I’ll see what I can do for you.’ A frail smile twitched her mouth. ‘It is good to see you again, root of my soul.’ Her fingers brushed the point of Luw’s chin before she stepped away, gliding up the path to her home, a hand beckoning him to follow. Bann was already at her side, tail wagging up a storm. Luw limped after them, the pain no match for the sudden lust that gripped him.
The scent of crushed herbs filled Síle’s bed chamber. Luw’s antlers clacked upon the wall as he reclined upon her furs, listening to the scrape of mortar and pestle. He breathed deep, inhaled the medicine-stink of sparrawort, bloodthistle and brinthorn. A perfume lingered beneath it all. Herbs used for cooking. Brisbold, redspice, capsath.
And something else…
What was it? He’d smelled it before, and not so long ago. Síle threw a handful of dry leaves onto a smouldering censer as he sat up, sniffing the air like a hound. Bann cracked a judgemental eye, sleepy from whatever concoction Síle had given him. The scent faded, smothered by the musk of whatever else was now burning. Thick smoke made Luw’s head spin, made the room grow fuzzy. Light and shadow bled into one another, playing queer patterns across the thatch above.
A trick of the smoke, maybe, Luw thought, lying back.
Síle came to him some moments later, a sharp-tinged medicinal-reek spilling from the mortar she held. ‘To help you heal, and ease your pain,’ she said, spreading pale, stinking paste across the bruise on Luw’s chest. ‘I can’t have you lying fit for nothing in my bed.’
There was a fleeting moment where her face hung over Luw, the shadow of a smile lingering, and then she was atop him – her mouth upon his, her autumn-coloured dress hitched over her hips. Her tongue raked the back of Luw’s small, sharp teeth, a hand reaching between his legs.
It seemed almost a dream when Luw awoke with the young day’s sun spilling across his aching chest. Some lucid fantasy birthed by days spent longing. Yet there she was, nestled beneath his arm, naked and sweeter than dawn filtering golden through the forest canopy. Síle stirred as Luw’s gaze lingered on her, a smile breaking beneath the veil of hair across her face.
‘I have missed you, root of my soul,’ she murmured, a finger slipping sleepily d
own his sharp nose.
‘It has been too long,’ said Luw, clasping her hand over his heart. And that it had. Far, far too long. Síle nodded against his side, stifling a yawn. He drew a satisfied breath. His chest felt stiff, stuffed with broken glass, yet wholly better than it had been yesterday. The bruise had taken on an astonishing mottling of green, yellow, and purple, far too aged for how fresh the wound was.
‘Your craft never fails to amaze me,’ Luw said, watching how Bann slept soundly at her feet. The old hound had never looked so comfortable. Síle’s tatty head rose from his side.
‘And you never fail to please me, dear-soul.’ She kissed his cheek, turned away and stretched, her back arching like a woodcat’s. Luw tried not to watch but found he could do nothing else. She caught him looking and gifted him a smile, teeth teasing her bottom lip, slipping away from his questing hand and off the bed.
She was ever a tantalising, seductive creature, Síle. Enigmatic in her ways, enchanting in the care she paid to the things of the earth. Irresistible when it came to matters of flesh. She let him watch her dress, made something of a show of it, every strip of clothing she donned seeming to reveal some part of her body, before button and lace were fastened and modesty wreathed about her once more. Luw sat up, turned away before he pounced on her like a jackhorn mounting a bashful mate. She tittered softly behind him.
Movement caught Luw’s eye, beyond the window at her bedside, and he found himself smiling. One of the runecharms he’d made for her, before he’d left to hunt the King of Elk. It spun gently in the breeze upon its twine of berbos hair, bone and pebble clacking. It formed a small, angular Nuankin rune, common in the courts and archives of Aodhamar. Rónne. It meant love. Desire. Commitment. Something akin to them, anyway, from what he’d gleaned of their use. It was touching, to see that she’d kept such a rough trinket made by his unskilled hands.
Síle’s arms slipped about him, a gentle kiss gracing the muscle of his neck. ‘How did you fare in your hunt for the King of Elk?’
Luw’s mood darkened as if a shadow had flung itself across the sun. The bruise on his chest itched abominably. ‘Poorly,’ he muttered, scratching gingerly at it.
‘How disappointing for you,’ Síle breathed. ‘Never you worry. Your time with him will come.’ She kissed his cheek, a strand of dark hair catching upon his antler.
‘It won’t. The King of Elk is dead,’ Luw spat. He could feel her frown against his cheek.
‘But… how?’
‘That fat idiot, Náith. He sprung an ambush as I tracked it down and butchered it. Now it’s Earthblood is gone, sucked back into the earth, and the forests will die.’
Did she tense then, when he mentioned Náith? Just a little?
‘What an awful waste,’ Síle chimed before he could carry on with that thought, just a touch too eager for comfort. Her hand drifted down his chest, fingertips dancing over his wound. ‘Is that how you came by such hurts?’
Luw hesitated, her shift in tone chafing like a wayward grain of sand. He nodded stiffly. Síle tensed for a heartbeat before she moulded herself on his back again. She pulled him tight against her. ‘It is foolish to fight one such as him. He was Aodhamar’s Champion. We should both be glad you didn’t earn yourself worse, my heart.’
‘Náith earned himself some scars before we were done,’ Luw countered, teeth grinding. For a moment, the way her nails had tugged at his flesh, he had thought she’d been about to initiate another bout of frolicking. She was ever a strange one, though. Stranger, of late. She was over-interested in violence, too keen to silence him with her body. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d sang for him, as once she had.
Luw’s temper was suddenly short as he thought upon it, the hair on neck and back bristling like a prodded beast’s mane. Bann’s head lifted from his paws as that anger charged the air. Síle pulled back from him slightly, just enough to tug at the fronds of rejection and send his hand questing. He took her hand in his before it could escape, kissed it and pulled it to his face.
Luw coughed then, a layer of bloody shite shifting from his lungs. He swallowed it discretely with a grimace. It tasted of the smoke that had filled the room the night before. He breathed relief, aching nose clear at last, drinking the scent of Síle’s skin. Earth, growth, green things. And… something else. He’d smelled it last night. Something he knew.
The scent scraped at memory. Stone. Blood. Sweat and salt.
Náith.
Luw leapt to his feet with a hiss, rounded on Síle, sharp teeth bared. ‘You’ve got his stink on you!’ Bann leapt up, started barking aimlessly at the noise. A brief flash of anger crossed her face before Síle’s head tilted.
‘Whose stink?’
‘That bastard, Náith!’ Luw roared. He breathed deep, sucked down every scent that lingered in the room as Síle watched him calmly. He could smell it now. The lout’s reek was everywhere, on everything. He could smell his acid sweat mingled with hers, the pollen-reek of the prick’s seed. He could practically smell them fucking.
Luw shuddered, pointed his accusation at Síle’s furs. ‘He was with you in this bed. You let him rut on you, like an oinking swine.’
Síle’s head straightened, eyes hardening. ‘And so what if I did?’
Luw’s rebuke died before his tongue began to shape it. What was this woman to him? She let him enjoy her body on occasion, offered him comfort, medicine, food. Yet… Luw could not find the stomach to voice a claim upon her, as much as he wanted to.
She raised her chin at the silence, all too aware she’d won the exchange. Luw snarled, looked away. Long, grey legs slipped from the bed, brought her gliding before him. ‘I am no man’s, Luw. Not yours. Not Náith’s. I do as I will, as it pleases me, and I will suffer no chains.’ Her eyes were slits. ‘Have I not been kind to you?’
She had. For some reason it only made a childish, petulant anger rise in Luw’s breast. ‘Why him?’ he snapped. ‘Why take such a coarse braggard to your bed so he can name you another conquest?’
Síle’s tongue was still for a heartbeat. ‘Because I wanted to.’
Luw turned away with a hiss, antlers rustling the bunches of dried herbs strewn along the rafters. ‘Is that all?’
‘That,’ Síle said, ‘and he is everything you are not.’
The cold knife of her words burned between Luw’s ribs, its chill spreading through him like a disease. He regarded her over his shoulder, awaiting, but not wanting, her explanation. ‘Rough,’ Síle said, ‘ignorant. Selfish. Powerful. A taker.’
Luw’s tongue dragged across dry teeth. ‘And that is what you want, is it?’
‘Sometimes.’ Síle’s smile was cruel, the last dregs of her warmth draining away. Luw’s lip curled, his gaze turned to his bare feet. Bann gave a short bark behind them, upset by the atmosphere.
‘Why did you lie to me, my heartflower?’ Luw muttered, an abhorrent stinging touching the corners of his eyes.
‘Lie?’ Síle’s laugh thrust another cold knife through him, something about its sharpness making him feel small as he stood naked before her. A child scolded for soiling the bath. ‘Of what did I lie?’ She strode around him, hands on hips, looked him in the eye. ‘I have never claimed to be yours, or you mine. I have never said I did not want another, or I would not be with another if I chose. I said I would be here when you had time for me. And have I not?’
It was true, no matter the vagueness of its crafting. Luw found he could not look at her, only the rushes trampled beneath their feet. ‘Root of my soul,’ he muttered, the endearment suddenly shallow as a summer pond. Síle laughed again, a long finger tilting his face toward her.
‘And that you are,’ she said, drawing him close by the chin. ‘But I tire easily of pouty, sulking children.’ She left him and went to fuss with the things at her dressing table, her condescension scalding as a barbed whip.
Luw shrank down, found himself sitting upon the edge of the bed, cringing about his own nakedness. He felt… stripped, as i
f every layer of him was pulled back like rind, the soft flesh of him exposed to Síle’s scorn. Bann came and rest his head atop his knee, whining gently.
The clack of the rónne rune outside the window caught Luw’s eye again, his forest home swaying beyond it. He wasn’t worthy of such a home. The memory of Náith striking off the King of Elk’s head came filtering back through the misery. I am not worthy to even be called a Hunter. Síle started humming an old tune to herself behind him, brush whisking through her hair. So much had been taken from him in a day.
I am not worthy of anything.
The forest shuddered as if in anger, a sudden gale sweeping over the land. Luw dressed in silence, picked up his things and left Síle’s home without a farewell, Bann following morosely at his heel.
Chapter 5
The Enkindled King
‘Your life mustn’t be worth much to you, if you’re stupid enough to disturb my dinner.’ Náith didn’t bother to look up from his spoon. The runner twitched in the corner of his eye, a fawn ready to bolt back through the hills he’d come trotting through. ‘Go on then.’ He took a bite of stew. ‘Speak! Before I throw you in the pot.’ He rapped his ladle against the rim of said pot to illustrate the point, gravy splattering the runner’s boots. The lad took a step back, tried to puff out his chest, and fearfully cleared his throat.
‘His Enkindled Majesty, Aodhamar – King of Ardas Machad – demands your presence at his court in Crath Crógadh immediately!’
Silence stretched around the sound of Náith’s munching. The runner shifted, coughed as though about to repeat himself. ‘You really don’t think much of your life, do you,’ Náith snarled, shovelling stew into his mouth. He stood, shoulders cracking as he flexed. The runner gave a start, flinched back from him and made a choking noise. Náith ran his eyes up and down the little weed. ‘And Aodhamar doesn’t think much of me these days, if he’s sending skinny rats like you to summon me to court.’
Horns of the Hunter: Tales of Luah Fáil Book 1 Page 3
