Ghost in the Hunt

by Moeller, Jonathan

  But then it was done, and she was whole again. The Voice always hungered, but the expenditure of power had inflamed its appetite, and the nagataaru screamed for pain, for sustenance, to gorge itself on the sweet agony of mortal souls.

  Kalgri would be happy to oblige.

  She got to her feet and saw four Immortals approaching her. A ghostly blue glow shone deep in their skull-masked helmets, and the barely-dressed dancing girls stared at them with fear. The Immortals hesitated when they saw Kalgri stand.

  She could not blame them for that. Very few people survived a fall from such a height.

  “The Red Huntress,” muttered one of the Immortals.

  “Bah,” said a second, his black armor edged with purple as an indicator of rank. “She is merely a fool in a costume. Take her prisoner, and we shall enjoy ourselves with her for weeks.”

  The first Immortal stepped forward.

  Behind her mask, Kalgri smiled, the Voice’s rage thundering through her like a storm and filling her limbs with power.

  The Immortal reached for her.

  Kalgri caught his wrist with her right hand, yanked, and ripped the arm from its socket. Blood fountained from the ruined stump of his shoulder, spattering across the nearby Immortals. The unfortunate man just had time to scream before Kalgri swung his armored arm like a club, crushing his skull-masked helmet and collapsing his skull like a melon.

  The Voice howled with delight.

  The corpse had not yet fallen to the ground when Kalgri killed another with the severed arm, collapsing his cuirass and reducing his heart to quivering pulp. The remaining two Immortals started to draw their swords, but Kalgri was quicker. She drew her swords from her belt and struck with the speed of the Voice. Her left-hand blade drove through an Immortal’s eye socket and sank into the brain. Her right took the remaining Immortal in the armpit as he lifted his scimitar to strike, piercing his lungs and heart, and both men collapsed dead to the ground.

  The Voice gorged itself on their dying torment, and Kalgri felt the strength flow through her.

  Utter silence fell over the courtyard, every eye turned toward her.

  Kalgri lifted her swords and strode toward Caina Amalas.

  ###

  Caina had seen many strange and terrible things in her time. The Immortals had been chief among them, their strength and speed and rage augmented with alchemical elixirs.

  But she had never seen anyone rip off an Immortal’s arm and beat him to death with it.

  Erghulan frowned. “That’s…that’s not possible…”

  The woman he had called the Red Huntress strolled forward, her long cloak streaming behind her, swords in either hand, their blades beaded with the blood of the Immortals. Beneath the cloak she wore close-fitting armor of crimson leather, reinforced with plates of red steel on the gauntlets and boots and forearms. Within the cowl of her cloak she wore a steel mask with a face of inhuman beauty, calm and serene. Her entire costume looked as if it had been dipped in fresh blood.

  Caina would have found it ridiculous, had she not just seen the Huntress kill four Immortals in as many heartbeats.

  Then she glimpsed the Red Huntress’s eyes.

  The mask concealed the red-clad woman’s eyes, but Caina saw flickering shadows and purple flame through the eyeholes. The eyes of Ricimer’s corpse had burned with those strange shadows and purple flames, as had the corpse of Tarqaz in Callatas’s Maze.

  The Red Huntress had a nagataaru inside of her head. Ricimer and Tarqaz had both been dead when their nagataaru had taken control. The Red Huntress was still alive. Caina did not know how much more power a nagataaru could wield through a living host, and she did not want to find out.

  She grabbed Claudia’s sleeve.

  “We have to get out of here, now,” whispered Caina. “Look at her eyes. There’s a nagataaru inside of her, one of the spirits I warned you about. If we try to fight it we’ll all be slaughtered. Tell Martin. Tell him to go now.”

  Claudia hesitated. “She’s just one woman, even with sorcerous enhancement. There are hundreds of Immortals here. Surely she cannot kill them all herself. If our Imperial Guards kill the assassin, the Grand Wazir will owe as a favor.”

  The Red Huntress continued her slow, steady walk, moving with the calm grace of a lioness stalking her prey. She was headed right towards Caina. Was the Huntress the creature that Sulaman had warned her against? Then Caina realized that Martin stood behind her. The Red Huntress was coming for him, and would simply kill anyone who stood in her path.

  “You haven’t seen the nagataaru in action,” said Caina, remembering the raw strength the possessed corpses of Ricimer and Tarqaz had shown. “I have. If we stay here we are going to die. We have to get out of here now.”

  Claudia frowned, but nodded. “You’re right. We…”

  Suddenly the paralysis upon the others seemed to break.

  “Immortals!” roared Erghulan, drawing his scimitar and pointing it at the Red Huntress. “Rid me of this intruder! Slay her in the name of the Padishah!”

  “Imperial Guards!” said Martin. “Kill the assassin!”

  “No!” said Claudia, but the shout of the Guards and the roar of the Immortals drowned out her words.

  Cassander backed away, beckoning for his Adamant Guards to follow him. The Umbarian magus’s expression was keen with anticipation. Like a man watching a gladiatorial game, eager to enjoy the impending carnage.

  The Imperial Guards snatched the javelins from their backs, drew back their arms, and flung the weapons at the Huntress. A storm of razor-edged steel flew at the red-clad woman. The barrage should have torn her to bloody pulp, should have left a ragged corpse upon the ground. Instead the Huntress spun in a crimson blur, her twin swords flashing around her like a vortex of steel. She dodged, blocked, and parried every last one of the javelins.

  “Impossible,” said Erghulan. “Take her!” The Immortals charged, drawing their scimitars and chain whips.

  The Red Huntress leapt into the air, her cloak billowing around her like bloody wings, and fell like a thunderbolt among the black-armored Immortals.

  The killing began in earnest then.

  She ripped through the Immortals like a storm, her swords flashing and stabbing with inhuman accuracy. The heavy armor of the Immortals could deflect most sword strikes, but the Huntress’s blades found the gaps in their armor. She left a trail of dead and dying Immortals in her wake, the blood pooling across the ground.

  Martin shouted commands, and the Imperial Guards encircled the melee as the Immortals perished, forming an interlocking ring of shields around the Huntress. She looked back and forth as the ring closed around her, blood dripping down her serene mask. A score of Imperial Guards stood around the Huntress, shields raised, swords drawn back to strike.

  “If she jumps,” hissed Caina, “hit her with a spell again. Knock her down so the Immortals and the Guards can strike. The only way we can kill her is to take off the head and dismember the corpse.” Claudia managed a sharp nod, her eyes fixed on the Huntress.

  “Surrender!” boomed Tylas. “Surrender, and face justice for your murders.”

  The Red Huntress looked back and forth. Even with her inhuman strength, her slender blades could not penetrate the Guards’ shields. If she tried to jump over them, she would be vulnerable to attack from below. She lifted her swords, shook the blood from the blades, and slid the weapons into their scabbards.

  Caina blinked in surprise. She was surrendering?

  The Huntress lifted her right hand, and darkness swirled and blurred around her fingers, hardening into a sword of shadows lined with purple flame. Caina had seen such a sword before. The nagataaru inhabiting Tarqaz had created such a sword, and the weapon had cut through steel like soft butter.

  “Claudia,” said Caina. “Hit her now, cast…”

  The Huntress leapt forward, the sword of the nagataaru a blur of darkness and flame in her hand. Her first stroke cut through a shield and the body of the Guard ho
lding it, and both shield and Guard collapsed in a spray of torn steel and ripped flesh. The Huntress struck once, twice, three times, and the ring of Guards collapsed into sudden chaos. The survivors tried to close around her, but the Huntress dismissed the sword and sprang into the air, soaring over the collapsed ring to land on the other side.

  The Huntress’s scimitars whistled from their sheaths and she went into a mad, furious dance, killing and maiming Immortals and Imperial Guards with every step and every motion. Caina had never seen such a terribly effective fighter. Kylon of House Kardamnos had come close when drawing upon the full power of his sorcery, but Caina suspected even he could not have stood against the Huntress’s wrath.

  In a horrifying, terrible way, her skill and prowess was almost beautiful. Yet it was a beauty Caina wanted to escape.

  “Go!” shouted Caina, pushing Claudia towards Martin as the Huntress carved her way through the scattered Immortals and Imperial Guards. “Go, damn it! If we stay here we are dead! Tylas!” The centurion stumbled away from the press as the Imperial Guards and the Immortals fell back. “Tylas! We have to get out of here!”

  Tylas nodded, his plumed helm speckled with blood, and looked at Martin.

  Martin shot a glance around the Court of the Fountain. The Grand Wazir’s banquet had dissolved into chaos. The dancers ran screaming for the doors to the palace proper, followed by the slaves and the other guests. Likely Erghulan had fled back to the interior of the Golden Palace the minute the Huntress’s power had become apparent.

  “Withdraw!” said Martin. “Centurion, get us out of here!”

  “Imperial Guard!” roared Tylas in his centurion’s voice. “To the Lord Ambassador! To the Lord Ambassador!”

  The Guards fell back from the melee, forming up around Martin, Claudia, and Caina.

  “The gate is blocked, my lord,” said Tylas. “We can’t get past that devil to reach it.”

  Caina took another look around the courtyard. The Red Huntress had battled her way around the fountain, driving the remaining Immortals before her like chaff before a wind. If they tried to break for the gate, she could attack and kill Lord Martin with ease.

  “Would the Umbarians aid us?” said Tylas.

  “Unlikely,” said Martin. “That villain Cassander has done nothing, and stood watching the carnage the whole time. Likely he hired this Red Huntress and brought her down upon our heads.”

  Caina nodded. The only option before them…

  “Fall back to the Golden Palace proper,” said Martin. “We are the Grand Wazir’s guests. Let him protect us.”

  “Very good, my lord,” said Tylas. “Imperial Guards! Fall…”

  A crimson shadow shot overhead, and the Red Huntress landed in their midst.

  Two Imperial Guards fell dead before anyone could react, the Huntress’s swords ripping across their throats. Caina flung a knife, and the blade sank into the Huntress’s left shoulder. Both the Guards and the Immortals had landed hits, but the bronze-colored skin beneath the tears in the close-fitting leather was smooth and unmarked. The Red Huntress was able to regenerate her wounds.

  The assassin danced around the attacks of the Imperial Guards, plucking the knife from her shoulder as she did so. The serene mask turned in Caina’s direction, and she felt the sudden weight of the shadow-wreathed eyes behind the mask.

  The Huntress flung Caina’s own knife back at her. Caina threw herself to the side and barely avoided having the knife sink into her throat. The violence of her dodge caused her boots to tangle in the hem of her white robe, and she lost her balance and fell upon her side.

  She rolled onto her back as the Huntress landed next to her, a sleek nightmare wrought of blood-soaked leather. Caina started to rise, and the Huntress’s boot slammed into her chest, driving her back to the ground. The sheer power of the impact ripped the breath from Caina’s lungs, and for a moment she could not move, could not even breathe.

  In that moment the Huntress extended her hand and summoned her immaterial sword of shadow and purple flame, driving the point down towards Caina’s heart.

  Caina had failed.

  There would be no one to stop the Apotheosis, no one to protect Martin and Claudia. She hoped Corvalis could forgive her for failing to protect his sister.

  The sword plunged toward her chest, and Caina just had time to wonder why the Huntress had killed her before finishing off Martin.

  The blade touched her chest, and vanished without breaking her robe or her skin. The Huntress staggered, losing her balance, and Caina felt a pulse of searing heat against her left arm.

  The pyrikon. She had forgotten about it.

  And it had dispelled the sword of the nagataaru.

  Caina started to sit up, but the Huntress’s kick slammed against the side of her head. The blow knocked her to the ground, and she heard the steely rasp as the Huntress drew one of her swords.

  The pyrikon had shielded her from the sword of the nagataaru, but it would do nothing against a blade of normal steel.

  ###

  The Red Huntress stooped over Caina for the kill, and Claudia drew on all her sorcerous power.

  Hitting the assassin with a psychokinetic burst had been useless. The woman had survived a fall and butchered her way through dozens of Immortals and Imperial Guards. If so many veteran warriors could do nothing against the Red Huntress, then Claudia had no spells that could harm the assassin.

  Save, perhaps, for one.

  Caina had claimed that a nagataaru possessed the Huntress. Claudia knew more about the spirits of the netherworld than she would like. When she had first fled from her father, she had studied wards against elemental spirits, lest Ranarius capture her and turn her to stone. Ranarius had turned her to stone anyway, and Claudia had been trapped until Corvalis and Caina had rescued her. Yet Claudia had continued improving her warding spells, and had been able to banish a lesser earth elemental during the fighting at Caer Magia.

  Perhaps she could banish the spirit from the Red Huntress. Driving an elemental spirit from a body wrought of earth and stone had been one thing. Expelling a spirit from a living human body would be much harder.

  But Claudia could think of nothing else to do.

  She flung out her hands as the Huntress raised her sword, and a blue spark burst from her fingers and struck the red-armored assassin.

  The results were immediate. The Huntress reeled back with a startled scream, blue sparks shooting from her limbs. Claudia strained, all her mind and power striving against the dark spirit within the Huntress. For all their power, elemental spirits rarely took an interest in mortals, and only came to the mortal world when compelled. They were easy to banish because they wanted to be banished.

  But the thing inside of the Huntress’s head, the spirit Caina had called a nagataaru, was far more interested in mortals. As Claudia strained to banish the spirit, a mental link formed along the conduit of the spell, and she caught glimpses of both the Huntress’s mind and the nagataaru’s thoughts. Both minds were dark and drenched with blood, with generations of blood and torment, and took delight in the suffering of their victims. The Huntress had left countless victims in her wake.

  The impressions flickering through the mental link shocked Claudia. She had never encountered such a depraved mind. Even the most powerful enemies she had faced, the Moroaica and the priest Rhames and her father, had been trying to create something, even if their visions had been twisted.

  The Red Huntress and the nagataaru within her only wanted to kill, to gorge themselves upon the suffering of their victims.

  Claudia rallied, pushing all her strength and will at the murderous spirit.

  But the nagataaru held fast, and the Huntress went berserk.

  ###

  Kalgri roared in fury, calling the immaterial sword of the Voice’s power to her hands, and hacked her way through the remaining Immortals as the mob fled to the gates of the palace. Power flowed into her from the pain and fear of her victims, but it was not enough, no
t nearly enough.

  The Voice shrieked its fury inside of her skull.

  The damned sorceress had threatened her connection with the Voice. Kalgri had fought and killed hundreds of sorcerers over the years, but none of them had ever tried to banish the Voice to the netherworld.

  It enraged her.

  She would kill the Balarigar. She would kill the sorceress. Then she would kill the Lord Ambassador and the Grand Wazir and anyone else who stood in her way. Callatas would object if she butchered her way through the Golden Palace, but she was too angry to care.

  Kalgri regained control of herself, a ring of dead Immortals and Imperial Guards around her, and turned back to the Balarigar, intending to finish her off.

  But Caina Amalas had vanished.

  ###

  Caina rolled to her feet and ran to Claudia’s side as the Huntress screamed and slew. Claudia stared at the assassin, her green eyes wide, a sheen of sweat standing on her forehead.

  “What did you do?” said Caina.

  “I tried to banish it,” said Claudia. “The nagataaru. I couldn’t. Gods! It’s so strong. I thought the elementals Ranarius conjured were bad, but…”

  “Where’s Martin?” said Caina.

  “I…I don’t know,” said Claudia, horror coming over her face. “The weight of the mob forced us apart. He must be inside the Palace now. He must…”

  “We have to get in there,” said Caina. “The Imperial Guards will have taken Martin inside. Likely over his protests. We have to follow him. If we stay out here we’re going to die.”

  Claudia nodded. “Go!”

  Caina turned and ran for the gates of the palace, Claudia following.

  Chapter 9 - Masks

  Caina ran through the gates and into a towering entrance hall, crystal skylights gleaming overhead, the floor covered in an elaborate mosaic showing the glories of past Padishahs. Tall statues stood in niches, showing Padishahs and emirs in armor and spiked helms, stone weapons at the ready. A steady stream of slaves and minor nobles sprinted down the hall, vanishing into side doors or making for another courtyard in the distance.