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

by Rebecca Levene

  He didn’t know where else to go. Mages from all the great houses of Mirror Town were working the runic defences. Nowhere was safe. But the lethal stones rained down and the streets were littered with their victims, the lucky ones dead and the unlucky screaming at crushed limbs or numb with shock, nursing ragged wounds from flying fragments of the rocks.

  The carrion riders were everywhere. One hovered overhead and Krish darted down a narrow alley where the bird couldn’t fly. When he emerged he found himself back in the vast square of pillars. Only one remained upright. Most people had fled, but he saw a dazed Ashane slave staggering through the rubble – until a carrion bird dived and its claws snatched him into the air.

  It was only when another bird swooped towards him that he understood. They were chasing everyone with Ashane features. They were looking for him. He threw himself desperately to his left, rolling beneath the scant protection of a pottery fountain, tall and delicate and shaped like a bouquet of flowers from the distant plains.

  The carrion bird’s claw lashed out, cutting the flowers and leaving Krish exposed. He drew his knife and rolled to his knees as the carrion rider grinned. The bird reared back, flapping its dingy grey wings. In the moment before it struck, it screamed.

  The bird fell to the ground thrashing and the carrion rider fell with it. Krish saw that he was tied to the saddle with leather straps. He struggled to free himself but the leather held fast and he rolled helplessly against the pavement. He reached for his belt – he was reaching for the sword sheathed there. Krish gasped and darted forward, slicing his own blade across the man’s throat and falling back as the blood spurted out and the bird’s frantically beating wings splashed it all around.

  Finally both bird and man were still and Krish staggered to his feet. Dinesh stood behind them, clutching the haft of the spear he’d used to kill the bird and laughing with horribly incongruous delight. ‘I saved, I saved, I saved you!’ he said.

  But there were more carrion riders, and now they were two Ashane, an even more tempting target. The library of Turnabout lay beyond the square – a place not owned by any one Mirror Town family and perhaps immune from the consequences of their magic. There was no better option and Krish grabbed Dinesh’s arm and ran towards it.

  The square had become a maze, filled with blocks of fallen masonry and the bodies of those trapped beneath. Some of them were still alive. Their cries for help were wrenching but Krish couldn’t spend his own life to offer it. He and Dinesh ran on, towards the one pillar still standing – and then another rock was flung from above and that too was falling.

  It was falling towards them. Krish veered sideways, but bricks were plummeting down as it disintegrated. He ducked out of the reach of one and another hit his arm, a numbing blow that left it hanging limply at his side. Dinesh grabbed his hand, pulling him on. There were seconds of blinding panic and then a great crash only paces behind them, and he knew that the pillar had fallen and they were free of it.

  Turnabout lay ahead, but so did another man. For a single, shocked moment, Krish stared into the battered face of Marvan. Krish’s knife was still in his hand and the other man was dazed and bloody. But then there was a raucous cry above, another carrion mount dived towards them and Krish and Dinesh ran left as Marvan ran right with the carrion mount in pursuit. Krish didn’t turn to see if it caught him. The path to Turnabout was clear and he gasped in a breath and sprinted towards it.

  Alfreda didn’t see what happened to Cwen and her hawks, but she heard the screams and the laughter coming from the trees – the terrible sound of people taking joy in slaughter.

  The Ashane army had resumed its march towards Mirror Town. Perhaps King Nayan thought their numbers were too many to crush with magic. Perhaps he meant to offer support to Cwen’s hawks in their fight against the mages. It seemed he had orders for Alfreda and her five javelins too. She saw a messenger riding towards her but she didn’t wait to hear his words.

  The mammoths were slow to move but relentless once they were in motion. The hawks who’d learned to work her weapons didn’t argue with her decision. They wanted what she wanted with the same urgency – to save Cwen from whatever she was facing.

  A horse would have struggled to pass through the orchards, but these were the largest mammoths in Ashanesland. They lowered their massive heads and butted the trees aside, crushing branches and fruit beneath their feet as they charged. The fire javelins swung between them, the weight of metal knocking aside any saplings left standing. The screams continued but there were fewer of them now, worryingly few. The mammoths lumbered on and then the last trees were knocked aside and their feet found clear ground – and began to sink in it.

  The mammoths raised their trunks and trumpeted their distress. The Mirror Town forces cried out too, startled by the sudden intervention, and Alfreda saw Cwen at last, waist-deep in the same muck that had trapped her mammoth.

  But the mages had recovered from the shock of their arrival. They raised their weapons and charged. She saw a slim Ashane woman laughing with joy as she cut the head from a hawk only five paces in front of Cwen with a rusty sword, chopping and chopping at the bloody neck until it rolled free.

  There was no time to free the mammoth. Alfreda slid from the beast’s back. Her legs buckled but she forced herself to her feet and turned to the fire javelin. She slashed the ropes tying it to the mammoths and flung herself aside as it fell to the ground.

  Luck was with her. It fell with its nose pointed towards the trapped hawks and the men and women attacking them. Her hand shook as she shoved the canister of metal balls and the charge of black powder down, then poured more powder into the firing hole.

  She couldn’t shout to warn the hawks. She could only hope the mud that trapped them would also save them. She took her flint and struck a spark, backing away as the fire ate the black powder. A man was stalking Cwen, laughing, an axe held high – and in the moment when its blade descended, the fire javelin spat out its charge.

  The noise was deafening. It left a brief shocked silence in its wake. Then the screaming started and Alfreda saw that the fire javelin had done its bloody work, scything through the enemies nearest to the hawks. Those who hadn’t been hit were running, terrified. They were fleeing and leaving the hawks behind.

  ‘Freda!’ Cwen shouted. Her friend had sunk almost to her armpits.

  Alfreda took her knife to the rope that still flapped from the side of the fire javelin, sawing off a long section. She wound one end round her waist and flung the other to Cwen. It fell short, slapping against the mud, and she cursed and threw again.

  This time Cwen managed to catch it. Alfreda gripped the rope, stiffened her shoulders and stepped back. Beside her, the mammoth struggled to free itself, kicking mud into her face. It was succeeding but Alfreda wasn’t. The weight of Cwen was too much: she couldn’t shift her against the ruthless downward sucking of the earth. But the mammoth was strong enough. It was dragging itself out of the mud and Alfreda untied the rope from her waist and knotted it round the mammoth’s leg. The beast snorted hot breath from its trunk but kept pulling. And then all in a rush it was free and Cwen was free with it.

  The hawk lay gasping on the solid ground beside Alfreda, her entire lower body smeared brown with clinging muck. Alfreda didn’t care. She reached down to help Cwen up and then threw her arms round her and held her tightly, too relieved to find any words.

  Eventually, Cwen pushed herself free. ‘Thank you,’ she said, but her face was grim. The mud she’d escaped had swallowed many of her hawks, her friends and lovers. Wine and Wingard were no longer by her side.

  ‘I’ve still six fire javelins,’ Alfreda said. ‘We can take them and save all the rest.’

  ‘You do that,’ Cwen said, clasping her arm before letting her go. ‘I’m going on.’

  ‘On? On where?’

  ‘To Mirror Town. This was the ring of their defence and we’ve broken it. Send word to Nayan he can pass his forces through this gap without fear of th
e mages.’

  ‘Then wait for them,’ Alfreda said. ‘They’ll be here soon.’

  ‘I can’t wait.’ Cwen touched the dark brown blot on her cheek, the rune that marked her as a hawk. ‘I can feel it burning, drawing me on. I can feel him – Krishanjit. Bachur told me it was my job to face him. Look after my hawks for me, Freda. I’m going to kill the moon.’

  42

  Olufemi heard screams behind her. She spun to see two mammoths bursting through the trees, there was a sound louder than thunder, and then something swept through the slaves she’d left behind and tore them into pieces. As she ran desperately on, she smelled the stench of black powder carried on the wind. It must be some dreadful new weapon. And there were more mammoths behind those first two, closing in on each group of slaves around each runic defence and the mage who could power it.

  Her headlong flight took her through the next circle of defences. It should have formed a second unbreakable ring round the town if the first was breached. But she’d found half the defences broken by time or carelessness and she’d been able to refashion the runes on less than a quarter of those that remained. She’d hoped – she’d foolishly assumed – that the shock of the runes’ power would drive the attackers away.

  There was no choice but to keep trying. If the Ashane came into Mirror Town itself, all was lost. She heard a raucous cry above and a carrion mount dived towards her. There was nowhere to run, but as she shrank away another group of slaves flung themselves around her, shields and pikes held high.

  Sheltered by them, she ran to the nearest rune she’d re-inscribed. The sculpture was a horrible thing, a model of a cockroach as big as a man. She’d been able to understand nothing of its meaning. She’d hoped not to have to use it, but what choice did she have? Galloping towards her were two more huge mammoths and whatever deadly weapon they carried between them.

  They’d be on her in moments and she barely even remembered the shape of this rune. But she’d scrawled it on the head of the sculpture and she’d been training all her life to do this. This was what her life had been for.

  The mammoth was very near. The ground shook to the pounding of its massive feet over the cornfield. Olufemi closed her eyes to banish the sight and tried to close her ears to it. Her mind must be empty, a blank with nothing in it but the rune. She let her thoughts trickle away, like water through her fingers, until only that one shape was left.

  Triumph tried to wriggle its way in, but she couldn’t allow that either. She must see and feel and hear nothing but this. She pictured the rune and she called Yron’s power into it. There was resistance, a barrier as strong as an iron door. Everything in her wanted to push against it, to break through the door, but the strength lay in letting go. She opened her mind and released the image of the door. There was nothing inside her but the rune, and the magic flooded through her and out of her, a thrill more powerful than any drug or climax.

  She felt the moment when it loosed from her and was gone. When the screaming began, she opened her eyes. The nearest slave staggered towards her and she recoiled in horror. His face had been destroyed. There were mandibles where his jaws should be and split and bleeding flesh around the faceted eyes bulging from his forehead.

  Two slaves stood staring in mute horror at arms that were encased in a chitinous black carapace. Others tore at their own clothes to expose the twisted bodies beneath: eight spider legs sprouting from a pink chest; the stumps of wings torn off by the desperate slave’s hand; a five-foot beesting emerging from the shattered remains of a penis.

  And the mammoths were still coming. There’d be no stopping them now. Olufemi turned her back on the horror and ran.

  The hawks around Alfreda cheered when they saw some of the Mirror Town forces turn and flee at their approach. But their cheers died when they saw what had truly driven them away, the deformed corpses lying all around.

  ‘What … what is that? What did that?’ a fair-haired hawk asked.

  ‘It’s the moon’s evil,’ another replied, spitting on the corpse of a thing half-man, half-roach. ‘It kills even his followers.’

  The way was clear now. Alfreda could see no more mages between them and the streets of Mirror Town. She turned her head at shouts behind her, afraid the mages had sprung a trap, but it was only a force of Seonu sprinting towards them.

  ‘Hold up!’ the lead warrior shouted. ‘We’ll add our axes to yours.’

  Alfreda felt a little of her tension unknot. The hawks she had with her were so few and there looked to be a hundred Seonu. With them and her fire javelin to send the enemy running, the battle could be won.

  ‘Where have you been while we’ve been having all this fun?’ the blond hawk asked, almost succeeding in sounding light-hearted.

  ‘We’ve been waiting for the right moment,’ the lead Seonu said. The tribesmen were among them now, mingling with the hawks and all around the mammoths. Their weapons were drawn and their eyes bright. Alfreda felt a flash of unease she couldn’t understand. Her mammoth felt it too, edging sideways away from the newcomers.

  ‘And what moment would that be?’ the hawk asked. ‘When all the fighting was done?’

  ‘When you were separated,’ the Seonu leader said, and then shouted a sentence in a language she didn’t know. She understood only one word: ‘Yron’.

  The hawks didn’t even have time to scream. The Seonu axes swung and the hawks fell where they stood. Only one of them managed a blow in return, a slash across the arm of the Seonu warrior who attacked him. A tribeswoman put her knife in his back, and the Seonu all turned their eyes on Alfreda.

  The mammoth saved her. While she sat frozen with shock, the beast trumpeted its rage and galloped away from the sudden and unexpected violence towards the safety of the massed Ashane force.

  Mirror Town was in chaos. Cwen had expected opposition. She thought she’d have to fight to reach Yron’s heir. But once she was among the buildings and running down the broad streets, not one of the frantically milling people spared her a glance.

  There were Moon Forest folk here already. She saw some sitting in doorways, glaze-eyed, and others armed and running who knew where. They must be slaves, and she was being taken for one of them.

  She began to believe this could really be done. She was no longer sure of anything, except that she was Bachur’s, and this was what Bachur had commanded. Krishanjit was like an itch inside her head drawing her on. She could feel exactly where he was, ahead and to her left, and the itch grew and burned as she drew closer. From the day of her twelfth birthfeast, she’d known this was what was expected of her. This was the moment she’d been meant for all her life.

  The feeling pulled her onward, towards one of the largest structures in this city of monumental houses unnaturally rooted in the ground. Its bright white marble seemed little damaged and its door was open and unguarded. It sat there, a series of rooms balanced on huge stone turnstiles, and dared her to enter.

  The thought of stepping out of the light of the sun into that darkness unnerved her. She touched the rune on her cheek, but it felt just like ordinary skin. It didn’t matter; she knew its shape as well as she knew herself. She was the beloved of Bachur.

  Inside, the building was full of books. There were none among the hawks, but her father had collected them. He’d set aside an entire room in their mansion for his library. She hadn’t thought about that place in eighteen years. As a small child she’d liked to sneak in to hide beneath the desk, surrounded by words she’d never been taught to read. Her father’s hounds had liked it too. They’d lie curled up together, waiting for the moment when her father would find them and shout and drive them all out.

  She felt a prickling between her shoulder blades, the animal sense of being watched. But when she spun, spear ready, she saw no one. Maybe it was Bachur she could sense, watching over her in these moments. The thought comforted her as she entered the centremost chamber.

  Yron’s heir was there. She’d known he would be. He looked exactly like
the drawings Sang Ki had showed her, an ordinary young man with shadowed eyes. Another Ashane boy stood by his side, holding a spear of his own, but he was weak and thin and he held it too limply with the wrong grip. He’d be no match for her.

  Perhaps Krishanjit might have been, but he only wielded a knife and she knew that she could take him. His eyes widened when he saw her and his throat bobbed as he swallowed.

  It was such a youthful face. She hadn’t expected that. Although she’d known he was born on the day she was made a hawk, she’d never thought about how young that made him. Some of the Brotherband warriors she’d killed had been younger than him, but their faces had been hard. His was almost innocent. It was a boy’s face, not a man’s.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You have to die. I have to kill you.’

  He looked like he might say something. And then his eyes, which had been fixed on hers, flicked behind her.

  She spun, twisting her spear to parry the blow she sensed coming, and the blade of the axe that was meant for her neck struck her shoulder, severing skin and flesh and bone. She screamed as the axe was wrenched free and then the blade fell again and she had a terrible disorienting moment when her view tilted and she thought that she was falling. But her body wasn’t falling: it was her eyes, her head. She thought she saw Bachur’s face, smiling at her. And then she saw nothing.

  Krish stared at Dae Hyo as he stood above the body of the dead woman, his axe dripping with her blood and a spray of it all around the room from her half-severed neck. Krish couldn’t tear his gaze away from her face. Her expression seemed shocked, as if it had never occurred to her that this might end in her death. Her white skin belonged in the Moon Forest and Krish thought suddenly of the things he didn’t know, of what had brought her such a very long way to kill him. All those questions her death would leave unanswered and her long voyage ended here, on a cold marble floor in Mirror Town.