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

by Rebecca Levene

  ‘They’re quick,’ she said to Alfreda.

  The smith shrugged. ‘It’s easy to be quick when it’s done this way.’

  ‘We can’t afford to waste the powder or the metal on doing it any other.’

  ‘Aye, I know. But the black powder makes the metal hot – too hot to hold. And that’s if we’re lucky. Maybe it will destroy the javelins and kill your hawks as it does. And even then, what if the enemy don’t come from straight ahead? How fast do you think they can turn those things round?’

  ‘You’re saying the fire javelins are useless? But then why did you make them?’

  ‘I amn’t saying that. I’m saying they have one use – one chance, one flight of those lead balls into the enemy and then it’s over. They’ll be too close by then anyhow if they keep coming, and your hawks will have to flee. But for all those balls don’t fly far, they fly hard and Krishanjit’s people won’t have seen their like before. You saw how it was in the Moon Forest. An enemy charge meeting my fire javelins will be broken, I promise you that.’

  ‘If they don’t use magic against us,’ Cwen said.

  As if in answer there was a loud boom, a little like the noise of the fire javelins, and a moment later a flash of lightning. A storm had blown in while they talked, darkening the sky to the colour of her mood. ‘Away!’ she shouted to her hawks. ‘Get those things covered and the black powder in out of the rain.’ It had begun to come down already, long darts that stung as they hit.

  ‘What’s that?’ Alfreda asked. Her hair was plastered to her head in long, dripping strands and her tongue darted out to lick the water flowing past her lips.

  ‘A fucking great storm,’ Cwen said. ‘Let’s hope the tents survive it.’

  ‘No, that.’ Alfreda pointed up.

  It took Cwen a moment to find it, the black dot far above, growing larger as it hurtled towards them. A bird maybe – but what bird would be in the sky in such weather?

  ‘It’s an owl,’ Alfreda said, long before Cwen could make out any more than the outline of its wings. Then Cwen heard its ululating screech, a thin sound almost lost in the roar of the storm. ‘It’s the red-and-white bird you sent with Sang Ki. He’s found the lost prince.’

  Cwen had thought an army this size on the march would be impressive, but when you were caught in the middle of it, it was just a crowd of smelly, shouting, jostling people, the lashing rain they all walked in and the mud beneath their boots and hooves.

  ‘I don’t see why we couldn’t have waited a day to set off,’ Wingard said. The Moon Forest folk travelled like a clot of weeds in the flowing stream of the Ashane force, the hawks all mounted, Jorlith marching with their spears held high and the churls and thegns trailing after.

  ‘Krishanjit is in Mirror Town now,’ Cwen said. ‘He might suck in his balls and head off if we’re not quick. We don’t want to give him time.’

  But it seemed time was precisely what they would be giving him. By midday, the back of the huge army had only just broken camp, or so the harried messengers riding up and down the straggling line of march informed them. The carrion riders might have done the job better, but the ugly great grey birds were kept on the ground by the storm. Cwen looked at them where they walked beside their armoured riders and thought that if she’d seen one in the Moon Forest, she would have hunted it down as a monster.

  By the end of the day she was soaked through and hungry. She was so tired she could have slept on the muddy ground, but when she saw the Ashane noble approaching, his eyes seeking hers through the crowd of hawks, she sighed and reined her horse round to meet him.

  ‘Cwen the hawk?’ the man asked, though he’d been present when she’d first come to King Nayan. She remembered his smooth, not-to-be-trusted manner.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And you are?’

  ‘I am Lord Puneet of Whitewood, Quartermaster to the Oak Wheel.’ His eyes scanned her forces, and then again as if he was looking for something he couldn’t find. ‘Where are your supply wagons?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘We carry our supplies in our packs.’

  ‘For the whole march?’ If his eyebrows could have crawled off the top of his head, they would have.

  ‘We hawks are hunters – the Jorlith too. We’ll hunt our food.’

  ‘In the desert? I admire your confidence.’

  She ground her teeth. ‘And I suppose you’ve brought enough to feed all of your men for the next year.’

  He smiled. ‘Half a pound of peas, a pound of meat and a pound and a half of bread for each man every day. We don’t have enough to feed us for a year, of course, but our supply line is secure through the Blade Pass and my son-by-vow persuaded the River Ahn to bring us what more we need. Lahiru may not be much of a man but he could charm a crow into song. We’ve enough food to feed us all for the length of the campaign.’

  ‘Truly?’ she asked, too surprised to stay angry.

  ‘Indeed. My brother commanded the campaign that pacified those Seonu savages who now travel among us.’ His eyes cut sideways, to where the thousand of Sang Ki’s people were making camp away from the bulk of the Ashane force. ‘My brother was a great military leader, of course, but who do you think kept his army supplied in those cold mountains? They might have lost some men without his tactical genius, but they would have lost them all without my food. Well, don’t worry. We have enough to spare you some – should your hunting not prove as fruitful as you anticipate.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, almost sincerely. If truth were told, she had begun to worry about feeding the helpless thegns and churls.

  He inclined his head graciously. ‘And now, if you will – King Nayan desires your presence.’

  The King’s tent had been set up in the centre of the camp, as neat as the first day Cwen saw it, as if they’d travelled nowhere at all. With Puneet by her side, she was allowed to stride straight through the guards to the inner, silk-walled room where Nayan sat hunched over a map with sour Lord Nalin beside him.

  The King’s brow was furrowed as she entered but his expression lightened when he saw her.

  ‘I’ve brought you your hunter, my liege,’ Puneet said.

  ‘Thank you,’ Nayan replied. ‘You may leave us now.’

  Puneet clearly didn’t like that, nor Nalin either when Nayan added ‘You too’, but neither man disobeyed his King. Cwen was soon left alone with him, standing awkwardly at the opposite side of the large map. She looked down at it, though she’d memorised every line by now.

  ‘An unimpressive day for us,’ Nayan said.

  She shrugged. ‘We’ll get better.’

  ‘Maybe. Our progress from Ashanesland was little faster. It’s the landborn levies: no discipline, no training and no mounts. And none of them wish to be here – they’re less interested in serving the Oak Wheel than in tilling their soil.’

  ‘Then why did you bring them?’

  He laughed, abrupt and startled. ‘I’d have a tenth of the army without them.’

  ‘The tenth that can fight. I know you Ashane do things differently, but I’d never got into a hunt with a hawk who wasn’t willing. Fuck, I remember one time—’ She snapped her mouth shut, suddenly realising just who she was talking to.

  ‘No,’ Nayan said, ‘go on. And sit, for the love of the Five.’

  She settled uneasily into the chair Nalin had vacated. It was still a little warm from his arse.

  ‘Well? What about this hunt of yours?’ Nayan asked.

  ‘It was meant to be training for the greenest hawks. We went after a little beast, not much bigger than a boar but with fangs like a snake’s. Only what we didn’t realise was that was just a baby and its mother was waiting nearby. She was as big as a house, and dripping poison so strong it smoked when it hit the ground.

  ‘A clutch of grown hawks could have taken her. Even those green hawks could have taken her. Except that one of them, this boy called Aesc no taller than my armpit, he panicked. Screamed and ran off. And as soon as he showed his fear, the others a
ll realised they were terrified too. They turned tail and ran and left me with a spear and a beast that could have taken my head in one bite.’

  She pulled aside the collar of her shirt, showing the beginning of the long, puckered scar that ran from her neck to the top of her right breast. ‘I took her in the end but she left me with this and a fever that nearly killed me.’

  Nayan tapped his fingers thoughtfully against the map. ‘You think my landborn levies will panic and run?’

  She shrugged. ‘I say nothing about your men. But for me, I’d never again fight beside an unwilling hunter. I want to know I’ve got my back to something solid.’

  The march went on, two more days of dragging progress through mud that only grew deeper as the rain fell without cease. And then disease began to appear, as of course it would, and men started to fall as they marched. It seemed to be only the bloody flux, which came from living in such mud and filth, but Cwen could see in all the faces around her what they feared it could turn into: carrion fever.

  That evening, King Nayan came to see her himself. His whole retinue rode into the midst of the hawks and his shipborn men, armoured and severe, pushed Cwen’s people back to make room for him.

  ‘I’d be gutting our forces,’ he said to her without preamble. ‘As we stand, we’ll strike fear into the mages with our mere numbers. I’ve had reports of Mirror Town – they can’t muster above five thousand fighting men, and most of those slaves.’

  ‘The longer we take, the longer Krishanjit will have to ready his forces,’ Cwen said.

  ‘But not to expand them. He can’t grow new men out of the sand.’

  ‘Maybe not, but he can train them. And the mages have their magic.’

  Nayan’s smile twisted. ‘So a hundred thousand men or only a hundred, you don’t think we can stand against them.’

  Cwen shrugged. ‘I say we’ll be facing things no one among us has ever faced before. Better to do it with those who might be more than wheat before a scythe.’

  It took a whole day to separate out the grain from the chaff. But the next morning they rode from the camp in good order, a force of barely eight thousand, but every one of those armed with metal and half on some form of mount: mammoth or carrion bird or horse.

  Cwen had chosen in the end to leave her churls and most of the thegns behind. She’d given them leave to return to the Moon Forest but she didn’t know if they’d ever see its trees again. The army had left all the sick behind – and hopefully the sickness with them – and they’d taken the bulk of the supplies onward to see them through the desert. It was a hard choice and Cwen was glad that Nayan had been the one to make it. She couldn’t look her own folk in the eye as she left them to their uncertain fate.

  That night Nayan summoned her again. He and his lords talked about strategy and looked at their maps of Mirror Town and the desert all around, but the truth was there was little they could plan until they knew what they faced. When the others left, Nayan asked her to remain.

  ‘I summoned an idolator from the Moon Forest,’ he told her, ‘when I heard the prophecies about my unborn son. It was said the folk of the forest knew more about the moon god than we Ashane.’ He caught her expression and sighed. ‘It wasn’t just my own death they prophesied, you know. They told me his coming would tear the world apart.’

  She nodded cautiously. Was he trying to justify himself to her? She didn’t see why a king should care what a hawk thought. ‘The Hunter told me the same,’ she said. ‘And on the journey here, Sang Ki – the leader of the Seonu – he saw the ruins of a place destroyed in the last war.’

  ‘I could have stopped all that. Babies are stillborn all the time. We could have buried him as parents do and had another. But …’ He shook his head, an ageing man in distress. Then his expression tightened and he was once again a king. ‘I failed then, but I won’t fail again.’

  They spoke every night after that, on a journey that was now far swifter. Cwen liked the King despite herself, and more than that: she was coming to trust him. He and his generals came from a nation that enjoyed battle. The Ashane had been humiliatingly defeated in the Fool’s War against the Eternal Empire, but they’d won far more often than they’d lost. She could see why. Even without the landborn levies, they were a formidable force. Her own hawks drilled with them daily, the faster progress leaving time to spare in the evenings. And if her hawks were perhaps better fighters, the Ashane were certainly better soldiers.

  A little more than a week after they’d set out, when she’d begun to think of them all as an army and not just an unhappy merging of mismatched forces, they reached the borders of the desert. The maps told them so; and the grasslands of the plains flowed upward to a series of hills shaped like waves that broke against the Silent Sands. But when they reached the crest of the last hill, what lay before them wasn’t sand at all.

  From horizon to horizon, the desert was blooming. The rains that had brought mud and illness to their army had given life to the Silent Sands. Cwen stared in wonder at the lush abundance of what should have been a wasteland. Forage would be no problem here; perhaps her hawks would be able to hunt their food as they’d planned.

  Wine and Wingard rode to either side of her, more comfortable on horses than they’d been when the slaughter of their own mounts first drove them into the saddle. Her hawks and the Jorlith were ranked behind her, a neat block within the Ashane army. She’d promised Bachur that she’d fight this battle, but she hadn’t known it would be this battle fought in this way.

  The green of the desert seemed welcoming, as if it was accommodating itself to their needs. But the greenery was the product of the same relentless rain that had bogged down the bulk of their army and led to them abandoning nine-tenths of their fighting strength. She distrusted its welcome. There were plants that grew in the Moon Forest, bright and beautiful, that held a sticky poison in their hearts for any insects drawn to them.

  But Mirror Town lay ahead and her duty with it. She nodded to her hawks, then shook her reins and led them onward.

  39

  Eric spent the first day of the flight in terror, expecting pursuit at any moment. Every bird in the sky was the Servants come for him and the baby cried and cried as if he felt that fear too. It was only when they landed on a lonely stub of rock in the heart of the ocean and Rii said, ‘Thy son hungers,’ that Eric realised what the real problem was. And what kind of father was he, to have forgotten that?

  ‘I ain’t got breasts and I ain’t got milk,’ Eric pointed out. He eyed Rii’s teats, drooping from her matted fur. You could milk a cow and a sheep and a goat, and he’d even heard that you could milk a deer, if you felt the need.

  ‘It is not milk he craves,’ Rii said. ‘It is blood thy son desires.’

  ‘Blood?’ Eric looked down at his boy’s face, grey like the worm man he was, but as chubby-cheeked and soft as any baby born of woman.

  ‘Blood thou hast, hast thou not?’

  True enough, but he generally liked to keep it on the inside of him.

  ‘Give me thy hand, morsel.’ She hissed impatiently at his hesitation. His fingers trembled when he finally held them out to her and he had to fight not to snatch them back as she lowered her massive fangs towards him.

  ‘It ain’t going to hurt, is it?’

  ‘Dost thou think a mother’s breast gives no pain when it gives milk?’ Rii didn’t give him time to reply, only slashed her fang along the tender skin of his wrist. He gaped at it as the blood welled. A droplet fell onto his son’s lips and a little pink tongue darted out to lick it up. Silver eyes opened to gaze unfocused at Eric’s face and he lowered his wrist until his baby could latch his mouth on to it and suck.

  It did hurt, worse than the cut itself. The babe sucked like he was starving for it. Eric gritted his teeth and let the tears leak from his eyes as his boy drank. When the babe was done, he fell away from Eric’s wrist with a contented sigh and tiny red bubbles frothing from his mouth.

  ‘Come,’ Rii said. �
�Our journey has only just begun.’

  They flew for hours, and the next time his son cried, Eric tore open the cut on his wrist with his own teeth. By the third day the pain of it was less and the pleasure more: he was giving life to the life he’d made.

  On the fifth day they left behind the crawling sea with its flyspeck islands and flew to the coast. It was a green blur far beneath and then a clearer view of tall, tall trees, some with ice-white trunks and others the gnarled old limbs of giant oaks.

  ‘It’s the Moon Forest,’ Eric said, shocked, but the wind snatched his words before Rii could reply to them. Her flight followed the ragged line of the coast, and mile after mile of trees passed beneath them. Then finally there was a paler green below, a great half-moon like a bite taken out of the forest. Rii’s wings dipped down and she flew them towards its border with the sea. As they drew closer Eric saw the rocks that made up that margin twisted into high improbable shapes along the cliffs and scattered broken on the golden sand. Rii landed with her feet in the frothing water of the sea, where a cave-mouth gaped in front of them.

  Eric’s legs wobbled as he dismounted. ‘Our stop for the night?’ he asked. A cave would be nice, a bit of shelter and maybe even warmth if he could find wood to burn. His old ice-walled room in Salvation had started to seem cosy after nights spent wet and shivering under furs, his son clutched to his naked chest to share his body’s meagre warmth.

  Rii didn’t answer and when he turned to look at her he saw the most peculiar expression on her leathery face. He’d learned to read her over the months, but he couldn’t read this. He might almost have thought her melancholy, except that she’d never been one for such halfway emotions. It was all rage or disdain with her. Or – in the destruction of Salvation – a simple, savage joy.