by Lee Ramsay
The runes seared into the Dushken’s forehead erupted with hellish light. Pulsing with his dying heartbeat, the decagram glyph centered between the black eyebrows bled fire across the sigils above, below, and to either side. Brutish features withered as lips pulled back over broken teeth; bones twisted as the Dushken’s tendons and ligaments writhed, and the joints snapped and cracked like burning tinder.
The ravine plunged into darkness as the runes went dark as suddenly as they had blazed to life. Adrenaline and rage fled and took Tristan’s balance with it. He collapsed in the shallow stream with a splash.
“What the bloody fuck was that?” Rathus’s voice asked from the ravine’s edge
Groush dropped into the water with a tremendous splash. Gripping the young man by the vest, the bull hauled him upright and gave him a violent shake. “You idiot, I said cripple! You may have killed us all.”
Lingering anger surged. Tristan slapped Groush’s hands aside and shoved his face within an inch of Hillffolk’s. The bull bared his fangs with an ominous growl, but he refused to back down as he stared into the Hillffolk’s black eyes.
Brenna pelted them with a handful of thrown stones. “Enough! There are better uses for your time than trying to kill each other. Enough people want us dead – we don’t need to spare them the effort!”
With another rumbling growl, Groush shoved Tristan back a step and turned away. His black eyes swept both sides of the ravine as he climbed out of the water. “Where is Esra?”
“With Nisha,” Rathus said from the ravine’s side, his voice pained and expression pinched. “Nisha went quick, fortunately.”
Tristan glanced at the moon and was surprised to find it had not moved more than the width of his little finger. A handful of minutes had passed since the huntsman’s charge; it seemed much longer. He cataloged his many hurts as he slogged through the frigid water; each scratch, bruise, and scrape bloomed with pain, exacerbated by the chill sinking through his skin. Hot blood trickled from the wound on his shoulder, and his left hand throbbed from plowing into the Dushken’s jaw.
Sudden dizziness caught him, and he found it difficult to focus on what the others said. Blood dribbled across his eye as he wiped his left hand across his forehead. Brow furrowed as his knee splashed into the muck at the stream’s edge, and he sat down heavily. “I think I hit my head.”
Brenna caught him as he listed sideways. He had no idea where she had come from, and though he knew her shoulder lodged itself beneath his arm, he could not feel her touch. Her lips moved, but she made no sense as her hands moved across his face. Blood left a dark stain on her pale skin as he lifted his hand to her cheek, and he blinked at her worried expression. “Your fingers are warm.”
She seized his wrist to drag the glove from his hand. As the leather slid from his fingers, her eyes widened. “Shit.”
Tristan squinted at his hand. Though blood trickled from his split knuckles, his fingers were more worrisome. The tip of his little finger was mashed, as was the ball of his middle finger. Blood streamed from the shattered bones jutting through the skin of his fourth finger. The tip dangled from the middle knuckle by a strip of skin and tendon.
He vaguely recalled struggling to keep the huntsman from tearing his throat out. His fingers must have slipped between the Dushken’s teeth. Bile soured his tongue, and his stomach gave a queasy lurch as some of the shock wore off. “Cut it off.”
“What?”
“Cut it off,” Tristan repeated. His tone caught Groush’s attention as the Hillffolk clambered back down the ravine’s side. “We have to get moving.”
“He’s right; there’s nothing we can do with this,” Groush said through clenched his teeth after glancing at the young man’s injury. He gestured at the corpse bobbing in the water. “The other Dushken will not be far behind this one,”
Tristan’s eyes turned to Groush. “Nisha’s dead?”
The bull nodded. “Rathus was right – she didn’t suffer long. His sword is useless, so he’s taking hers. Esra has your axe.”
“See what the huntsman has that’s usable. I’ll be ready to move in a minute.”
Brenna swallowed as Groush moved past her. “We have to clean the wound, and—”
“No time.” Tristan’s wounded hand shook as he gripped her shoulder with the uninjured one. “I need you to do it, Brenna. I might make a mess of it.”
Lips pursed, she drew her dagger from her belt and laid his hand on her thigh; her fingers were oddly warm against his skin as the blade pressed against the underside of the middle knuckle. He braced himself, right hand digging into the rocky streambed, and turned his head away. Teeth clenched and eyes squeezed shut, the young man gave a short nod to indicate he was ready.
Pain lanced through his hand as the knife scraped broken bone. Vomit surged in his throat as Brenna angled the blade and worked the edge between the knucklebones, severing the tendons and ligaments. The ruined half of his finger splashed into the water and vanished.
Chapter 54
Hand held awkwardly in front of him and blood running down the back of his wrist, Tristan trailed Brenna. Dozens of smaller hurts throbbed and ached, but they were minor compared to the pain in his finger that caused him to retch every few minutes. Esra sobbed as she walked behind him; he ached for her in a detached way. Perhaps it was shock, but Nisha’s death seemed unreal despite the clear memory of her arm falling to the ground. He regretted that they were unable to do more than leave her for scavengers.
They stopped once in the course of the night, long enough for Brenna to cram a glove taken from the Dushken’s body onto his hand. The ring finger stuck out strangely, the leather dimpled and overstuffed. Whatever was in it pressed against the jagged ends of the shattered knuckle, sending fiery pain arcing through his nerves. He was forced to sit on a rock, head between his knees lest he faint.
“That should slow the bleeding,” Brenna said, gripping his wrist in her right hand and jerking down on the glove. A fresh wave of agony washed through his hand. His hearing grew muffled as he struggled to keep from blacking out. He was aware of Rathus kneeling beside him, knotting a strip of cloth tight around the glove’s wrist.
“What is it?”
“Bloodmoss.”
“What is that?”
Brenna squatted behind him to inspect the gash on his shoulder. He flinched under her touch. “Exactly what it sounds like. What do Ravvosi women use for their moonblood?”
“Wool.”
“We don’t have any of that – none clean enough to use as a bandage. Fortunately, I found the bloodmoss not long after we left Feinthresh.” She prodded the cut, causing him to squirm. “The best thing for this is to let it bleed. It needs to be washed and stitched, but I don’t have the light for it.”
“Or the time,” Groush said. “We have to move.”
Rathus frowned. “We need to rest. For the gods’ sakes, man, we’ve been running the whole day, and now you’ll have us run most of the night?”
The Hillffolk threw the Dushken’s coat on the ground in front of Tristan. “No time. The others will be coming. We had better hope we find a place we can defend when they come. They’ll be harder to kill now.”
Rallying from a wave of nausea, Tristan laid his good hand on Brenna’s shoulder and levered himself to his feet. “I think it’s time you explain that.”
Groush thrust his finger at the coat and strode into the woods. “Put that on, and walk. We can talk while we go.”
“Forthcoming, isn’t he?” Rathus muttered, just loud enough for Tristan to hear.
He ignored the bard as Brenna helped slide his injured hand through the coat’s sleeve. He felt himself grow slightly warmer as the fleece lining trapped his body heat, despite its wetness and the cut in the right shoulder. When he realized Groush had donned the Dushken’s brigandine, he assessed what the others carried. Brenna had discarded her empty scabbard but still had the belt wrapped around her slender waist and carried Nisha’s satchel slung across her body. Her sword
was now in the sheath at Rathus’s side.
His hand dropped to his belt. His hatchet hung in its loop, the edge wrapped in a cloth to keep him from cutting his arm while he walked.
“We have what we could salvage,” Brenna said as Esra brushed past them.
Nodding, Tristan followed Hillffolk. He kept his injured hand against his chest, finding it hurt less to carry it that way. “Groush?”
The bull turned his head with a grunt. “You saw the runes on the Dushken’s forehead?”
“Hard to miss them,” Rathus said.
“They’re not tribal marks. Don’t know how they work, but they unite the hunting packs. Four huntsmen to a pack, always, no more. With the runes, they grow stronger and faster,” the Hillffolk explained. He glanced at Rathus. “You wondered how the one Tristan killed could howl and still run fast enough to catch us?”
“You’re saying the runes did that?”
“Yes, and no.”
Tristan stepped on a loose stone as they moved under unburned pines, the moon disappearing behind thick bunches of needles. He would have fallen, but Brenna steadied him with a hand on his elbow. He ignored a fresh wave of nausea as pain radiated through his mangled hand.
Groush ducked a low-hanging bough. “Dushken are sick, in a way. They are bonded. Kill one, and the others grow stronger as they absorb the strength of the dead. They heal faster, hunt better. Best to cripple them and run.”
Rathus snorted. “That sounds like magic—"
“It is.” Brenna pushed her hands into her coat pockets and met the bard’s skeptical frown with a level gaze. “It’s the foundation of Anahar’s Houses and castes. Ankara was trying to breed the gifts into us; we all know it and pray we show no sign of magic. It’s also part of why Ankara hates orphans. It means a weak line, and she doesn’t want it polluting other bloodlines.”
“All the Great Houses, and most of the Lesser, have been bred for it,” Esra added. “Can you imagine what a gifted bloodline among the commoners would mean for the higher castes?”
“Arranged marriages. Sanctioned pregnancies,” Tristan said, beginning to understand.
Brenna nodded. “The former is not that different from the way nobility marries in other countries, but here, it’s bloodline – not wealth – which dictates everything, and the crown arranges it all.”
An image came to his mind as silence fell between them. Sathra stood naked before him, breasts swollen and her belly rounded with pregnancy. “As much as I enjoy you, I would never sully my bloodline with your seed,” Ankara had said...but Sathra was kinswoman to the grand duchess.
She arranged for the pregnancy, but to what end?
Tristan pushed the thought away. “Gwistain said the Dushken were once Hillffolk, and that Ankara was responsible for changing them into what they are. She didn’t just breed them for traits she wanted, did she?”
A stray shaft of silvery moonlight filtering through the trees lit Groush’s bearded face as he tapped his forehead with his middle finger. “She changed them, made them more animal. Less like us.”
“So, if three die—” Rathus began.
“—the last becomes three times stronger, his senses augmented,” Brenna said, her voice grim.
“When one survives, a new hunting pack is formed and receives its own rune,” Groush added. He glanced at Tristan, irritation and respect on his hairy face. “Luck is with you. That one was in his sixth pack.”
Tristan’s mind conjured the complex tree of brands across Urzgeth’s forehead, temples, and cheeks. He remembered all too well the strength in the elder Dushken’s arms and realized the graybeard could have snapped him like a rotted branch. “Let’s hope the others are no stronger than he was.”
IT WAS WELL AFTER THE middle of the night when Tristan’s strength gave out, though the others were not in much better condition. Esra had been limping for hours on feet blistered by ill-fitting boots, but she wrapped herself in her cloak and trudged beside Rathus without complaint. Brenna kept pace beside Tristan, shooting him worried looks whenever he grew unsteady or failed to duck beneath a branch. Her resilience surprised him, though she, too, stumbled with exhaustion. Rathus, by far the healthiest of them, moved with his shoulders rounded and eyes fixed on the ground.
Groush alone appeared inexhaustible, avoiding obstacles in the darkness with a surefooted stride. He stopped from time to time to wait for them, a worried frown on his lips. When the young man collapsed after taking a bad step, the bull admitted they had gone as far as they could. Hooking his hand under Tristan’s arm, he helped Brenna stand him upright. “Can you go a bit longer? Listen. You can hear a river nearby. I’ll feel better with water to my back rather than an open forest. We can rest there.”
Few night birds or insects disturbed the silence of the pines and the towering redwoods, and the boughs whispered under the touch of a westward breeze. He heard rushing water when it stilled and staggered after the Hillffolk with an exhausted nod.
The moon ceded the night to a milky smear of blue-white stars by the time they reached the river. Deep and fast, the water had long been at work on the mountains, cutting the valley walls into sharp angles before plunging over a cliff. With winter gripping the higher peaks, the flow had dwindled and left broad stretches of stony banks open to the sky.
“We covered more ground than I thought,” Brenna said as she glanced at their surroundings. “We’re near the headwaters of the River Ernhesh.”
Anthoun’s voice droned in Tristan’s memory as he glanced up at the snowcapped peaks – a lesson that he ignored in favor of daydreams. He struggled to remember what the sage had told him as he looked around at the valley’s walls. Glaciers carved bowl-shaped valleys through the mountains dividing Western Celerus from the rest of the continent, where rivers cut steep-sided valleys such as the one they stood in. “The Ernhesh Glacier. I always dreamed of seeing it.”
“It’s a lot of ice.” She led him from the riverbank toward the trees and pushed him toward a fallen pine. “Sit down. I need to see if the moss in your glove needs changing.”
He sagged onto the trunk. Rathus was already wrapped in his cloak, snoring with his head pillowed on one of the packs. Esra had done the same, curled on her side and shivering with the cold. He hissed as Brenna undid the knot in the fabric tied around his hand and pulled on the glove. Something tore in the skin as she eased the leather off his hand.
“Can we risk a fire? Even a small one?” the young woman asked as the bull stepped from the deeper shadows beneath the trees, lacing his britches.
“Best not.” Groush shifted the sword at his waist as he settled his back against a tree and thrust his bearded chin toward Tristan’s hand. “You alright?”
The young man snorted. “I’ve spent the last year being beaten, cut, drained of blood, and stitched back together. I’ve been drugged and raped by a thousand-year-old woman and by another a few years my senior. I’ve been hunted through a maze, and forced to watch others die because I lost a game played against someone who knew all the moves. This is nothing exciting.”
“Not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant. I need a little rest, and then I’ll be able to run some more. How are you holding up better than the rest of us?”
The Hillffolk wrapped himself in his cloak and leaned his head against a tree. “It amused the Dushken to fight me. Ever see a bear-baiting? When I fought, I ate.”
Tristan fell silent as Brenna examined his hand. White bone shards sticking from his bitten finger’s knuckle glittered in the weak starlight. The tips of his little and middle fingers were swollen, the fingernails blackening. “What do we do now?”
“We follow the river through the mountains. It’s steep and rocky. Maybe we’ll get lucky, and they’ll lose our scent if we hide our trail.” The Hillffolk’s black eyes glittered in the dark. “Rest. We move again at dawn. Even Dushken need sleep.”
“What about you?” Brenna asked as she finished packing the glove's finger with fre
sh blood moss from her satchel. “You have been awake as long as us.”
“Easy run for me, not so easy for them; they’ve had to cover a lot of miles catch us. The Dushken will not find us tonight.” He settled into a more comfortable position against the tree. “Let’s go downriver a bit, and I will sleep then.”
Chapter 55
Maple trees’ three-bladed leaves created a comfortable shade, sparing him from summer’s heat. A warm breeze stirred his linen shirt, ruffling his hair as he wandered the grove and trailed his fingers trailing along Dorishad’s low, mossy wall. Summer grass was soft beneath his bare feet, and the long blades tickled his ankles.
Jayna laughed up ahead. Tristan’s heart surged, his eyes searching for her even as his mind shied away.
There she was – hiding behind the pale, flaking trunk of one of the larger trees, her rich brown eyes alight with merriment. Her unbound hair fell around her shoulders in lustrous waves, streaked with gold after weeks of sunlight; her cheeks dimpled as she smiled, her crooked front tooth flashing. Her shift’s unlaced neck rode low across her breasts and exposed her sun-browned shoulders, though her embroidered bodice’s straps preserved her decency as she lifted her skirts and ran.
He knew it to be a dream and did not care. The world moved with surreal slowness as he gave chase. He had always fantasized about such a day but never pursued it.
His sleeping mind tried to wake while he struggled to remain asleep. Here, exhaustion did not drag his every step. For a few moments, he avoided the sight of Sathra’s face in place of Jayna’s and forgot the noblewoman’s pregnant belly. There was no pain from his wounded hand or the persistent ache of bones with not enough meat on them.
“Tristan?” Jayna said, losing her smile as she turned with dreamy slowness. With each recalled thought, the dream slowed. The diffused green of the broadleaves became the sun-dappled sharpness of morning sunlight cutting through pines. Soft grass changed to the sting of burst blisters on toes and heels.
