The Hunter's Kind: Book II of The Hollow Gods

by Rebecca Levene

  The mage looked so small clasped there, but Krish could see the effort it was costing Dae Hyo to hold her. Her robe was waterlogged and her form entirely motionless. It was impossible to tell if her chest still rose and fell. She seemed like an inanimate thing, jetsam Dae Hyo had dragged from beneath the waves.

  ‘To shore!’ Dae Hyo shouted.

  Now they were opposing the wind, fighting it for every step. It pounded against their chests, trying to force them over, to push them under. Krish held grimly to Dinesh, helping the boy up when he stumbled. It was strange to find himself the stronger one.

  Dae Hyo pushed through the water as if it was air. His massive thighs carried him far more swiftly than Krish could travel, even with Olufemi in his arms, and he’d made it to the weed-strewn sand while Krish and Dinesh were still hip-deep. The instant he was above the tideline, Dae Hyo flung Olufemi to the ground and began pressing brutally on her chest. Krish couldn’t understand what he was doing until the mage suddenly rolled on to her side and coughed a fountain of seawater out on to the shore. She was still retching when Krish reached her.

  ‘She died,’ Dae Hyo said with some satisfaction. ‘But there’s ways to bring them back, if it’s soon enough. The elder mothers taught us that.’

  ‘I wasn’t dead,’ Olufemi croaked, in her usual irascible way. ‘Merely unconscious.’

  ‘Your heart wasn’t beating,’ Dae Hyo insisted.

  ‘The cold slows it.’

  ‘Have it your way. And you’re welcome.’ He turned his back on the mage and began wringing out his clothes as she shucked her sodden robe.

  Her dress beneath was thin cotton, almost transparent now that it was soaked. It showed the outline of her belly, the dark shadow at the juncture of her thighs and the sagging sacks of her breasts. Krish caught himself staring and looked away, his cheeks flaming.

  There seemed little point in trying to dry themselves. The wind had slackened but the rain worsened. It fell in sheets that seemed almost solid. The sky was so grey it might have been night, the sun hidden beneath layers of cloud. The only illumination came with the lightning, blue sheets of it that spread uncannily over the breadth of the ocean. And the tide was still coming in. Tendrils of seawater were already creeping towards the dune where Olufemi sat.

  ‘We need to get away from here,’ Krish said. And then he looked up, away from the sea, and wondered if they’d be able to. There was one small figure, racing through the rice fields towards them. Behind were far more, a line of them at the horizon and closing fast. Krish thought they must be mounted.

  ‘Krish?’ the nearest figure shouted, her voice reedy over the wind, and he realised that it was Ensee. ‘Lord Krish, what are you doing here? This is a terrible place to be!’

  ‘Olufemi!’ he shouted back, pointing at the mage still sitting at their feet.

  Ensee lowered her head to sprint the remaining distance between them. She was gasping when she stopped, her face running with rain and her hair lank with it. ‘I came for her,’ she said. ‘I came to warn her.’

  ‘Warn me of what?’ Olufemi asked, holding out her hand imperiously to Dae Hyo until he helped pull her to her feet.

  ‘My father,’ Ensee said, looking landward, where the line of men had drawn closer. ‘He’ll kill you if he catches you.’

  But Krish didn’t see any way that he wouldn’t catch them. He’d brought a hundred men and spread them out like a net along the shore.

  ‘The boats,’ Olufemi said. ‘They’re our only chance.’

  ‘Can you manage one?’ Dae Hyo asked.

  ‘I can manage it better than a sword in the gut,’ the mage snapped.

  The jetty lay east along the shore, a good distance away. Krish wasn’t sure they could reach it in time, but Olufemi was right: he didn’t see any other hope. They turned towards it and began struggling through the sand.

  Krish kept his eyes on the boats. He didn’t want to see how close Uin had come, though the boats were alarming enough on their own. They were tossed on the waves like leaves on the wind. As he watched, one turned over entirely and another snapped the rope holding it and was dashed and splintered against the wooden walkway.

  ‘Is it safe?’ he yelled. As another boat capsized, the question answered itself.

  ‘Faster, brother,’ Dae Hyo said. He was watching the lizard-riders approaching. Krish gritted his teeth and pushed on as Dae Hyo half-carried Olufemi beside him.

  Only Ensee wasn’t struggling. She ran ahead on the sand, her footsteps as light as a bird’s, saying, ‘Hurry. Oh, please, hurry.’

  By the time they reached the boats only two remained whole and Uin’s men were within bowshot. As they sprinted towards the jetty, arrows thunked into the sandy shore, throwing up fountains of spray, and stuck quivering in the wooden planks of the boats.

  The further boat was bigger and clearly better built, but they’d be dead before they reached it. The nearer had only one sail and planks that were warped and stained. In wordless consent they all threw themselves over its side and into the cramped interior.

  Someone else was already there. Half-blinded by salt spray and his own panicked sweat, Krish saw only the blurred outline of a man, his hands at work on the knotted ropes holding the boat to the jetty. Dae Hyo huffed and pulled out his sword, clearly meaning to cut through them, but the man shouted, ‘No! We’ll need them!’ just as an arrow struck the deck only an inch from his fingers. Shocked, he stared at it for a moment, then went back to his frantic unknotting.

  Krish chose another knot and started picking at it. Salt had crusted over the rope and bound it into something solid, but fear gave him strength. He could hear the voices of Uin’s men, urging each other to close the distance and finish them off. Finally, the knot came free and the tension in the rope released, pulling it through his hands so rapidly it burned and he cried out and dropped it.

  ‘Don’t let it go!’ the man shouted at him, and he grabbed for it, catching the very end before it could fall into the sea and hauling it in. The others had chosen their own ropes to work on and now the boat was free. It bounced on the swell with a sickening back-to-front and side-to-side motion. The man was at the sail, doing something Krish couldn’t fathom that was somehow raising it up the tall pole in the boat’s centre.

  A few more inches and the wind caught it, pulling the cloth taut and dragging the boat forward, away from the shore. The man was still busy at the ropes, pulling some, tying off others. The sail moved, lowered. The boat began to run a little more smoothly – until another rope untied itself, flapping loose, and they’d lost all their forward motion.

  The wind, which had become their tool, was once again their enemy. The boat bucked like a frightened horse. Arrows rained down and Krish heard a sound he thought might be the lizard mounts wading out into the waves.

  ‘Grab that line and bring it here!’ the man shouted at Krish.

  Krish looked at him to see which rope he meant and, in the instant their eyes met, he knew him. It was Marvan.

  ‘Do it or we’ll all die!’ Marvan shouted. The boat shook, the arrows fell and Krish knew he’d be a fool not to obey him. He grabbed the rope, gritting his teeth as he held it against the might of the wind.

  ‘Tie it there,’ Marvan instructed, pointing to a knob of wood on one of the boat’s flanks. ‘Wind it twice round and then pull and hold. I might need you to release it later.’

  Krish did as he asked and Marvan continued snapping out instructions. Ensee obeyed them quickly and competently, Dae Hyo and Dinesh looking to Krish and waiting for his nod before they did the same. The sails shifted again and the boat steadied, still plunging up and down the huge waves yet holding a recognisable course, away from the shore. Flights of arrows darkened the sky behind them but they fell into the waves, and the shouts of the pursuing men grew angry and despairing before they were lost in the wind entirely.

  Krish smiled in triumph, then gasped as the wind rose again with startling unpredictability. The rope in his hand pul
led tight, the boat jolted and he wrapped his hand round it, leaned back and thought only about the present moment.

  The whole day passed that way. It was hard to tell the hours apart, all filled with rain and salt spray, the caprices of the wind and Marvan’s firm, shouted orders. The sun set, leaving them in a lonely, moonlit darkness. The wind finally calmed and the boat could run smoothly over the waves without constant tending.

  Krish tied off the final rope the way Marvan instructed him and collapsed to the boards beneath, more exhausted than he’d ever been. Dinesh and Ensee did the same, settling down amidst the clutter of ropes and fishing pots and nets, but when Dae Hyo had finished his task he drew his sword and turned to Marvan.

  ‘I tell you what,’ he said, ‘we’ve unfinished business with you.’

  Marvan didn’t reach for the twin tridents hanging from his own belt. ‘You can kill me if you like, friend, but who’ll sail your boat?’

  ‘I can manage well enough,’ Dae Hyo said, stepping forward and then staggering as the boat rocked unexpectedly.

  ‘In that case, be my guest.’ Marvan spread his arms as if inviting the blade into his chest. His own legs were braced with relaxed ease and he stood comfortably upright while Dae Hyo staggered again and dropped his sword. ‘I should mention,’ he added, ‘that I grew up sailing boats such as this. If you mean to make a long voyage – where do you mean to go?’

  The question was directed at Krish. Dae Hyo looked at him uncertainly as he stooped to pick up his weapon.

  ‘He’s right, we can’t kill him yet,’ Krish said and Dae Hyo reluctantly sheathed the sword.

  Marvan showed no sign of relief. He just smiled and nodded. ‘So what course shall I set?’

  ‘I need to go back,’ Ensee said. ‘You can put ashore further south, where there aren’t many people, and I’ll make my own way home.’

  ‘You can’t,’ Krish said. ‘Your father—’

  ‘Won’t hurt me. He doesn’t even know I’m part of this. He thinks I’m at home with my mother.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I have to. I helped to start this war. I can’t run away from it.’

  She looked at Krish intensely, and he knew what she was thinking. He thought it too. He’d also been responsible for the bloodshed that had torn the Rah people apart. But she hadn’t said that her side would win. And even if they did, what remained for him there? Only to wait helplessly for the arrival of his father’s army.

  He’d seen Uin’s maps, the ones he’d used to plan the war he wanted. There was one place this boat could take him where he didn’t think his enemies would follow. ‘We’ll put you ashore if you want,’ he told Ensee, and looked away from her wounded expression. ‘But we’re sailing south – to Mirror Town.’

  22

  Laali’s corpse was rotting by the time Sang Ki found men willing to help him carry her away. There were no people to spare from the battle preparations, Cwen had told him with one of her fierce smiles. But the stink of the carrion mount had probably become too much for the people living above it, and so a group of grumbling churls were sent with a blanket to carry her corpse away. They wrinkled their noses as they rolled her on to it and a shower of maggots fell out of her.

  ‘Just chuck it in the trees, aye?’ one of the churls said.

  ‘I’ve found a spot,’ Sang Ki told him, struggling to keep his voice pleasant. ‘We’ll take her there and bury her.’

  The looks he got were daggers, but they lifted her up and followed where he led without complaint. He’d found the place the first day he’d been able to rise from his sickbed: a small wild patch between neat fields, it was filled with late-blooming bluebells. He’d imagined their seeds drifting down from the gardens of Ivarholme above, and the image had made him smile. It was a tranquil place where Laali could lie in peace.

  It was also far enough away that the churls were sweaty and complaining by the time they reached it. ‘This will do,’ he said, and they dropped the body straight on the ground. Feathers fell out all around it and the smell worsened.

  ‘A shallow grave will suffice,’ Sang Ki said but they just laughed at him and dropped their spades beside her body.

  ‘Dig it yourself then,’ one of them said. ‘We’ve more important work to do. Or haven’t you heard there’s a war coming?’

  They walked away and there was nothing he could do to stop them. His back spasmed when he bent. His whole body was agony when he did nothing at all with it and mottled all over with bruises. The Jorlith medics told him he’d done damage to his insides that only time could repair, if it chose to. The soil at least was loose and he wouldn’t just let Laali rot away. Perhaps burying her would stop her death nagging at him so. He couldn’t bear to look at her decayed form as he dug.

  And dug and dug as the spasms in his back worsened, to the point where he feared he was making the damage far worse, and yet the hole seemed to get no bigger. After less than an hour he was running with sweat and had made a grave only deep enough for a dog.

  He heard the footsteps behind him and hoped it was the churls returning, having relented their callousness. But it was a woman’s voice that said, ‘You’d do better to burn her. A pyre.’

  At first he couldn’t think why he knew her, only that he did, and that the memory was an awful one. Then all at once he knew: the preacher boy and his sickly mother, the pair who’d disappeared with Nethmi after they’d murdered his father.

  She looked far healthier now. Her brown hair was glossy and if her cheeks were sunken beneath her high cheekbones, at least they weren’t flushed with fever. He stared at her, at a loss for what to do or say. Why was she here? Why, of all things, was she speaking to him?

  ‘Here,’ she said, when the silence had stretched quite thin. ‘Let me.’

  She began collecting fallen branches from the nearby trees, dragging them towards Laali’s corpse. If the smell or the maggots bothered her, she didn’t show it.

  He watched her work until he’d put his mind back in better order. Now that the illness had left her he could see that she was a very beautiful woman, and not much older than him. ‘I’m surprised to find you here,’ he said eventually.

  ‘Oh. Have we met before?’ She turned to look at him over her shoulder.

  ‘You came to Winter’s Hammer,’ he said carefully, ‘with your son.’

  She’d resumed her pyre-making, as if she didn’t believe their current conversation to be of much moment. ‘I wasn’t well then. Jinn tells me we were captured. Men snatched us from Smiler’s Fair, I remember that. Afterwards …’ she shrugged.

  ‘My father’s men captured you,’ he said stiffly.

  ‘Did they?’ Her intonation was curiously flat. ‘Jinn didn’t say. I know we got away.’

  ‘By killing my father.’

  She turned, a branch still in her hands, its shadow across her face. ‘My little boy killed your father?’

  She sounded so horrified that he found himself saying, ‘He probably didn’t do it in person. There was another woman with you, Nethmi of Whitewater. I strongly suspect her of being the culprit.’

  ‘An Ashane?’

  He nodded.

  ‘I remember her, perhaps. A small woman. So small, and not happy. My Jinn spoke to her and then she left us. Yes, she left us on the great plains.’ Her face glowed; she was clearly delighted to have remembered.

  Sang Ki felt the last of his anger leaving him. It was very easy to believe she’d had no part in his father’s death. It was possible her son was innocent too. Probable, even. The blame lay with Nethmi, as his heart had known all along.

  The woman returned to piling branches round poor Laali’s corpse. He joined her, hunting further afield now that the nearby ground was bare.

  When they both bent over the same branch together, he asked, ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Helping you.’

  ‘No, in the Moon Forest,’ he explained patiently. ‘Your boy preached the moon’s message, but these are the sun’s
people.’

  She picked the branch up before he could and carried it to Laali.

  He limped after, grunting as the too-fast motion twisted his back. She could move quickly when she chose. ‘Will you not answer me?’

  She dropped the branch and her head. ‘It was Jinn’s choice.’

  ‘And you always do as your young son says?’

  ‘I was … unwell. When I woke we were here.’

  ‘And why did Jinn bring you here, among your enemies?’

  She shrugged and turned to look at Laali. The decaying, maggot-ridden bird wasn’t a pretty sight, but she stared at it a long time. ‘It was my woman, Olufemi, who taught him the moon’s ways. Before he was born she told me that’s what he was meant to do.’

  ‘Olufemi? That’s a mage’s name, if I don’t mistake my etymology, and I seldom do.’ He remembered the woman he’d met as he’d hunted for Krishanjit in Smiler’s Fair, the one who’d been responsible for burning the whole place down.

  ‘A mage, yes, a mage of Mirror Town. I went to her when I came to Smiler’s Fair. I was dying, and she made me better, and she made it so my son wouldn’t suffer the same illness. That was when she told me he’d be the moon’s. The first word he ever said was “Yron”.’ She laughed. ‘Olufemi was so pleased. I don’t know why he came here. He doesn’t talk about the moon any more. When I ask him he just smiles and tells me there’s no need to worry.’ She looked at Sang Ki, as if she expected him to offer her some kind of explanation.

  ‘There comes an age when children must go their own way,’ he tried.

  The woman nodded, then looked back at Laali. ‘Olufemi told me carrion mounts were the moon’s once. She said he made far more of the world than we know.’

  Laali no longer looked like she belonged to any god. They probably had enough branches now to burn what was left of her. She was held in a lattice of wood, brown leaves and grubby grey feathers poking out at intervals. He hadn’t brought kindling, though. He turned to the woman, thinking to ask her if she had, when the first bell rang, loud and clanging and desperate. A moment later it was joined by a second, then a third, and then so many they were all just one clamorous noise.