Hand of the Hunter: Chosen of Nendawen, Book II

by Mark Sehestedt

“Lendri,” said Gleed.

  At the sound of his name, the wolf’s head lifted off the floor and looked at them.

  “He’s—” the words caught in her raw throat.

  “A wolf,” said Gleed.

  “Dead,” said Hweilan. “Look, Gleed! He isn’t breathing.”

  The old goblin studied the wolf a long time, then said something she didn’t understand.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  Gleed spoke louder this time. “Ren kucheh.”

  Vil Adanrath words. They meant living dead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  THE NEXT DAY, HWEILAN STOOD BEFORE THE FALLS. She had scrubbed the previous day’s dirt and blood from her body, bound her hair in a tight braid with long strips of leather, and dressed in new clothes that Gleed told her Kesh Naan had made with her own hands. The clothes fitted close enough that Hweilan wouldn’t snag them on branches and thorns, but they flowed over her skin, smooth as silk, so that she didn’t feel in any way constrained. The red blade of Nendawen rested in a plain leather sheath at her hip, and Menduarthis’s knife was tucked into one of the boots she had worn throughout her stay in the Feywild. The bone mask in which Ashiin’s spirit rested rode on her other hip, in a special harness Gleed had made. She had a few supplies in the pouches on her belt and a pack on her back, nestled next to a quiver stuffed with new arrows. The bow she held in her hand.

  Gleed stood beside her. “You still lack one thing, I am thinking,” he said, “and I must confess I’m most surprised you haven’t asked for it in all this time.”

  Hweilan looked down at the old goblin, and now that the time had come for farewells, she was surprised at the sudden affection she felt for him.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  Gleed reached into his robes and pulled out a curved bit of antler bound to a leather thong.

  “My kishkoman,” she said. Seeing it, memories flooded her mind—of her mother mostly—and Hweilan found herself fighting back tears as she took the whistle knife from Gleed.

  “You have become something great,” said Gleed, “but that doesn’t mean you should forget where you came from.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and surprised them both by kneeling and giving the old goblin a hug.

  Gleed’s ruddy skin took on a rich brown tone, and Hweilan realized the old toad was blushing. “You know the way out,” he said, and pointed to the falls. “The portal works both ways. If you ever need a rest from hunting demons, come see your old teacher. We’ll share a special drink beside my fire.”

  She laughed. “Your special drinks tend to end with me waking naked in the woods.”

  He smiled up at her, trying for mischief, but still looking sad.

  “I will come back,” she said. “If I can.”

  Gleed swatted in her direction, as if shooing a fly. “Get gone, you. You have work to do.”

  Hweilan turned and shouted, “Uncle! Come!”

  “Why in the Nine Hells are you calling him Uncle?” said Gleed.

  “He is my uncle, of a sorts,” said Hweilan. “Brother of a distant grandmother, and blood brother to my distant grandfather.”

  “His name is Lendri.”

  Hweilan knew from the venom visions of the nature of the Vil Adanrath, and she knew that Lendri, like all his people, could take on the form of a wolf. Why he had returned from the dead as one, neither she nor Gleed were sure. But Hweilan suspected it was by choice. And until he decided to walk on two legs again and talk to her, she would not call him by his rightful name.

  “He can’t tell you the name, you know,” said Gleed. “Not while he’s … like that.”

  “True.” Still no sign of him, so she called again, louder this time, then turned back to Gleed. “Why do you think he wouldn’t tell my grandfather’s name?”

  Gleed shrugged. “Elves and goblins don’t exactly have a loving history. He doesn’t know me. He has no reason to trust me. Can’t say I blame him.”

  She looked down at her old teacher. “You really think my mother’s father can help me, when … if the time comes?”

  “I think the same thing I thought the last time you asked me: There’s something in you from somewhere else. Something the Master had not even suspected. If the time comes when you need to find out about that something else, your mother’s father seems the most reasonable place to start, yes?”

  Hweilan looked away, searching the nearby woods for any sign of the wolf. “If he’ll tell me.”

  “I see no reason why he shouldn’t tell you.”

  “When I asked him, he looked frightened.”

  Gleed thought on this awhile, then said, “We were walking the ghost path, Hweilan. Things there are not always what they seem.”

  Hweilan shrugged, conceding the point, but she was not so certain in her own mind. At the mention of her mother’s father, Lendri had looked truly terrified, and she didn’t think there was any mistaking that emotion in any world.

  “Uncle!” she called again, loud as she could. Still nothing. She put the kishkoman to her lips. It had been so long since she’d last done this. It felt good to be doing it again. Even after all that had happened and after all she had become, this filled her with simple, honest pleasure.

  She blew the whistle as hard as she could—so hard that a sharp pain filled her own ears. Gleed didn’t even wince, she noticed.

  From the woods came a howl. Less than half a mile away, she guessed.

  “He’s coming,” she said.

  Gleed actually bowed to her then, and there was no mockery in it. “The Blessing of the Forest Father, the Master of the Hunt, and all your ancestors be upon you, Hand of the Hunter.”

  Hweilan took out the drum and beat the rhythm to open the portal between worlds. It glimmered to life just as the wolf rejoined her, fresh blood staining his muzzle. Together, they stepped through the falls and left the Feywild.

  PART THREE

  THE GIANTSPIRES

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  DARRIC OF SORAVIA,” SAID THE WOMAN, AND SHE looked around at the others, “and company, meet Uncle.”

  Darric could take no more, so he said, “Hweilan, what in the Hells happened to you?”

  Hweilan looked at him a long moment but gave no answer. Mandan was eyeing the wolf more warily than the woman standing over him with a knife in hand.

  And so it was Jaden who brought the main point home. He wiped the back of his sleeve across his mouth, looked to Darric, and said, “So what now?”

  Darric opened his mouth to reply, and only then realized he had no idea. Most of their company lay dead, their horses fled, and they were a day away from—

  “Highwatch,” Valsun said to the woman. “It is fallen then?”

  “Yes,” said Hweilan, and the acid was plain in her voice. She said something to the wolf in a language Darric didn’t recognize. The beast gave her a look that he found unnervingly human, then bounded back into the dark. She stepped over Mandan and went after the last Nar corpse holding one of her arrows. “Gather what you want,” she said. “The Creel scattered. Doubtful they’ll come back, but there are worse things in these mountains than Creel, and your idiot wizard lit a beacon for anything within ten miles.”

  Hureleth …

  Darric had to close his eyes and swallow very carefully to keep his emotions in check. Too much was happening too fast for him to think clearly. But remembering the wizard’s fate brought one practical concern to the forefront of his mind.

  “We must tend the dead.”

  Hweilan crouched at the very edge of the torchlight, her back to him. Darric could not see what she was doing, but the sound of tearing cloth was quickly followed by the sound of steel cutting through flesh and bone.

  “How?” she said without turning. “You plan to dig graves into the rock? It’ll take you a day to gather enough wood for pyres. You could spend the rest of the night gathering stones for cairns, but if you do that, gather enough for yourselves as well. You’ll have company
long before dawn.”

  “You suggest we leave our comrades for wolves and ravens?” said Valsun, who had finally found his feet again.

  The woman shrugged as she came back to them. “Wolves and ravens have to eat too. Better that than—Do not touch that!”

  Darric’s hand froze less than an inch from the arrow that protruded from the chest of the body next to him. The body lay as lifeless as the stones beside it, but something about the arrow had caught his attention and refused to let it go. Although it appeared only as black wood when he looked at it directly, when he looked away he thought he could see tiny flickers of green flame trickling along its sides. It was a lovely thing, and Darric had long admired a well-crafted weapon. The whorls and sharp thorns of the runes … they had an odd look to them. Almost like claws. Still, they had an alluring beauty to them, and before he knew what he was doing he’d pulled off his glove with his teeth and was reaching out, his skin needing to feel the smooth shaft of wood.

  But Hweilan’s words broke the spell. Startled and feeling strangely ashamed, like a boy caught at some mischief, he looked up at her. “What?”

  She kneeled beside Darric and grabbed his arm, which he suddenly realized he still hadn’t lowered. She pulled it away. “Touch that with naked skin and I’ll be putting an arrow in you next.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Move back,” she said.

  He did, and she settled in next to the corpse. She studied it—no, she was studying the arrow, he saw, almost like a scribe struggling over some difficult passage in an old tome.

  Valsun walked over, Mandan looming behind him.

  “What’s she doing?” Jaden called, who was still standing well back.

  “Be silent,” Hweilan said. “All of you.”

  She reached behind her head and pulled off the bone mask. There, in the dying light of the torches, Darric got his first good look at the woman he had risked his life to find. Although he hadn’t seen her in almost ten years, he recognized the features. The fine cheekbones and slight cant to the eyes made him believe those who said her mother had elf blood. But she had the strong nose and chin of her father’s family. A dark paint stained her eyelids, and she had symbols on her cheeks and forehead very much like those on the arrow. A young woman’s face, but the look in her eyes held no more youth. They had seen too much. There was pain and hurt there, but something else as well. Anger and determination, yes, but beyond all that was a look that Darric had only seen in triumphant predators and religious zealots.

  She drew a knife from her belt, and in the light of the fires, Darric could have sworn the blade was red. Using it ever so carefully so as not to damage her arrow, Hweilan dug into the chest of the corpse.

  Unable to hold it any longer, Darric turned to the side and became very noisily sick.

  The hobgoblins were already busily looting the dead when their leader came into the camp. Even though he stood a head taller than any of the others, his movements alone showed he wasn’t one of them. His form was too lithe, his movements too graceful.

  Whoever had done the killing hadn’t been gone long. The fire in the tree had burned itself out, but the thicker branches were still glowing with heat in the breeze, and its acrid smoke filled the little valley. It definitely had not been another goblin clan though. He knew that for certain. Goblins would have never left so many weapons, armor, clothes, and fresh meat.

  “Here!” his second called.

  They had seen the blazing tree from miles off, and they’d come in ready, in full armor, weapons drawn. But they were too late.

  “What have you found?”

  The leader used the common speech because, of all the languages he knew, he could not wrap his tongue around the foul goblin speech. Still, he had to admit the creatures had their uses. He’d seldom met fiercer fighters, and they knew this country better than he did.

  His second pointed at the corpse at his feet. It wore no armor, but layers upon layers of clothes. Well-made boots that had obviously seen long use. The pale hands—bare, despite the cold—made the leader suspect this fellow had been a wizard of some sort. He’d needed the bare hands to work his spells—and those scars and missing digits showed he’d had more than his fair share of mishaps.

  “The Ujaiyen?” his second asked.

  “No,” he answered. “Ujaiyen wouldn’t have needed two arrows to take him down. And they certainly wouldn’t have hacked at him afterward. This looks like locals.”

  “Out of Highwatch then.”

  “So it would seem.”

  The leader kneeled beside his second for a closer look. “I see now why this one has so many clothes,” he said. “He needs them to hold all his pockets.”

  The man had dozens, all filled. Some with typical oddments—needles and thread, bits of food, a small pouch of very pungent tea, some coin. But the others revealed what, if not who, this fellow had been. An oilskin pouch filled with pasty pellets that smelled as if they’d come out of the north end of a southbound bat. Various powders and herbs. Tiny jewels of various cut. And at least a dozen tiny scrolls bound in assorted colors of thread.

  “Wizard?” said the hobgoblin.

  “Either that or he just robbed one.”

  His second chuckled. Another thing he liked about hobgoblins. They had a sense of humor. A pleasant change from where he’d come from.

  He rolled the corpse over but didn’t find anything else. He stood and began scanning the nearby ground.

  “What?” said his second.

  “This!” he said and kneeled beside a boulder. The object he’d seen had rolled into the dust and grit where it still lay. “Foolish for them to leave this lying about.”

  The wizard’s orb. Dull as the dust in which it lay. But it flickered, just a little, deep in its heart, when the leader picked it up and stashed it inside his coat.

  His second stood and watched the rest of the troop work. They were almost done. He looked to his leader and said, “By their clothes, most of the dead came from west of the mountains. But there’s a few dead Nar.” His voice took on a brittle tone—“And the other.”

  “Ah, yes,” he said. “To that.”

  He walked over and looked down at the corpse. Unlike many of the others, it had not been savaged by weapons or the jaws of some large animal. One gaping wound in the chest. It was obvious what had killed him. A very well-aimed arrow, which the archer had then used a knife to retrieve.

  “The same as the others, yes?” said his second.

  “The third in two tendays.” He scratched at his cheek, considering. “We’ve been trying to find a way to kill these damned things for months, our only reward many dead hobgoblins.”

  His second grunted his agreement, then said, “Something is hunting Highwatch’s monsters.”

  “And doing a damned fine job,” he said. “So far at least.”

  “Who?”

  “That is the question of the hour, is it not?”

  He left the corpse and walked around. Not far away, two hobgoblins were looting the corpse of a Nar. Another one of the damned Creel that he had come to hate so much. He’d learned enough in the past months to recognize the distinctive cut of their clothes and the unique stitch of their boots.

  “Another arrow kill?” he asked.

  “Yuh,” said one of the hobgoblins, and pointed at the wound. “And bless my bones, I hope I never run into the archer. Thing went all the way through a rib and out the back again. Whatever bow loosed that arrow …”

  “Stop! Do not move!”

  The hobgoblins froze and those nearby did as well, turning to see what the matter was.

  The leader kneeled beside the nearest hobgoblin. Only a few inches from his right foot, in the muck of frozen blood and dirt …

  He picked it up.

  “What is it?” his second asked.

  “Feathers,” he said. He turned it in his fingers, examining it. “Fletching from an arrow. Our archer retrieved his arrow but couldn’t save the
fletching.”

  He twirled the fingers of his free hand, and a slight current of air wafted through the feathers and brought the scent to his nostrils. Closing his eyes, he inhaled deeply.

  There.

  Mostly it was what he’d expected. Dirt. Blood. The scent of the bird itself—a raven most likely. The glue that had been used to fix it to the arrow shaft. But there! Ever so faint—so faint that even he almost missed it. But there was no mistaking it.

  It brought him such delight that he laughed aloud.

  “What?” his second asked. “What is it?”

  Menduarthis stood. “I misspoke. Our archer retrieved her arrow.”

  “Her?”

  “My little flower. She’s back.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  GET UP.” THE WORDS CAME TO DARRIC FROM A great distance. Whispered words, but spoken close and with great urgency. Mandan’s voice. He ignored them and tried to grab on to the departing dream. “Darric, get up. You need to see this.”

  Darric forced his eyes to open. Mandan loomed over him, only inches away. Seeing his brother’s eyes open at last, Mandan moved away.

  “It’s light,” said Darric, sitting up.

  Darric got his first good look at their campsite. Hweilan had led them there the night before, dawn only a pale promise in the east. She’d taken them ever higher into the mountains by paths that would’ve made a goat’s nerves raw. In the dark, their only light that of the stars and the waning moon, Darric didn’t know how they’d made it. Jaden had actually begun sobbing and refused to go on at one point, but Hweilan told the man that if he fell behind he was on his own. And she’d moved on. Jaden’s sobs hadn’t stopped after that, but he’d kept up.

  She led them to a small valley formed in times past when snow actually thawed in summer, the runoff carving a shallow crevice in the side of the mountain. Snow hadn’t melted there in almost a hundred years, but still the valley was choked with scraggly pines whose roots burrowed through the stone. One ancient giant had fallen over, the main body of the trunk long since gone to rot, but its iron-hard roots had formed a sort of canopy over the crater left by its fall. Years of other branches falling had formed a roof of sorts. It kept the worst of the wind off them and would shield most of the light from the small fire Hweilan had allowed them.