Forsaken Hunters_Book Zero of The Age of Dawn_A Prequel

by Everet Martins

  Brenna produced a telescoping eyeglass, the metal whispering as she drew it open. She switched her gaze from the glass and to the bounty in her hand a few times, each time giving a confirming nod. “This seems to be the right target,” Brenna whispered, fearful of their voices carrying on the open air.

  Lillian drew on the Dragon, eyes flickering with bonfires.

  Brenna lifted the eyeglass, brows wrinkled and the other eye shut. “Careful of the youth.”

  “He’s with his father,” Lillian growled, releasing the Dragon. “He’ll be helpless. Think it’s plain to see he doesn’t have a mother.” She twisted onto her side to peer at Brenna.

  “Kill him. He deserves what’s coming,” Brenna said flatly, staring at the pair.

  Lillian shook her head, breeze sweeping tangled hair over her eyes. “No. Let’s find another mark.” She started to rise when Brenna’s strong hand forced her down, producing a grunt from her chest.

  “Look.” Brenna handed her the bounty. “Go on, read it.”

  Lillian regarded her warily, then back at the bounty, snapping it open. “Nyoko Nanxe, the burner. Wanted for the indiscriminate slaughter of three slave gangs and their taskmasters. Employed detonations that produce fiery payloads. Ten thousand marks…” Lillian trailed off, handing it back.

  “I’m not angry with you. I understand you may not have a lot of trust in me, but do know I am careful of which bounties I accept.”

  A sigh slipped through Lillian’s pursed lips.

  “That is over thirty men, enslaved men. Dead by his hands,” Brenna said in a low voice. She paused for a moment. “Kill him, and avoid the youth.”

  “I know,” Lillian hissed, giving her a friendly elbow. She narrowed her eyes and steadied her breath. An arrow of flames sprung to life just over their heads, crackling and hissing. Lillian closed her eyes, harnessing all of her focus and attention, pressing it into the arrow. She opened them, eyes wide, and the arrow streaked for her target, leaving a trail of black smoke in its wake. The arrow passed through the Tigerian’s neck without a sound, vanishing into a puff of smoke as Lillian released the Dragon.

  The youth was pushing the plow ahead of the adult and continued pushing for a few seconds after the older Tigerian had slumped over. He growled in frustration, stopped, and turned to face the adult. A hand went to his mouth as he screeched in terror. Even at this distance, Lillian could see the red bubbling from the smoking hole in his neck.

  “Nicely done,” Brenna said with an appreciative nod.

  Lillian frowned down at the yowling child, the Tougere staring blankly back at the disturbance. Brenna was right, Nyoko got what he earned. Lillian didn’t like the idea of making new potential enemies. However you only made enemies if you were detected. They crawled backward over the edge of the hilltop and waited for the youth to flee for help before recovering Nyoko’s corpse.

  Killing wicked Tigerians brought a full smile to her eyes. She thought she now understood where Brenna’s unbridled enthusiasm arose. She started to hand the bounty back to Brenna, who raised her hand. “You should keep your first bounty for good luck.”

  Lillian grinned, tucking it into a hip pouch.

  Brenna nodded at her. “I know this is dark work, darker than I’d ever wanted. But sometimes the light can only be reached after crawling through the mud.”

  Ten targets made of stacked rocks as tall as Tigerians were set out on the scrubland. Behind them was a trackless stretch of shimmering earth and blurring shrubs. The nearest target was ten feet away, the farthest over one hundred and fifty. The wind lashed at the earth, ripping veils of sand across the landscape. The sun was low and the air cool, the last of the night’s dew vaporizing in the morning light.

  Lillian stood before the targets, narrowed her eyes, and widened her legs. She needed more practice. She gazed over her shoulder to find Brenna watching her. Brenna gave an enthusiastic bob of her eyebrows, one leg raised on a rock as she leaned onto her knee.

  Lillian gripped the Dragon in her mind. It was like flexing a favorite limb. A great urge for violence waved out from her heart and into her hands, sprouting to life with halos of fire. She dropped into a low fighting stance, punching, and blasting the first target with a cone of fire. The stacked rocks became a cloud of sparks and smoke. A sulfurous stink raked her sinuses and made her sway with dizziness. The rocks became balls of dripping stone, congealing into a blob of magma. A great wind washed away the majority of the odor, and she regained her footing.

  Brenna let out a hacking cough. “Please do wait for the wind to change next time.”

  “Right, sorry,” Lilian threw over her shoulder.

  The next two targets, about twenty feet out, were severed into vertical halves with discs of fire. The stones slid apart and crumpled to the ground, each cut perfectly smooth down the center. A few were geodes, glinting with pinks and bright shades of aqua. The next pair of targets were thrown into the air from plumes of fire dragged out from under the earth, vaulting the stones in every direction. A few pebbles skittered across the ground and over her boots, one pinging from Brenna’s armor.

  Fire emerged from her every pore, body encased in a thin aura of lapping flames as she drew more on the Dragon. All sound faded, vision narrowed with only the targets remaining. She hurled a pair of arcing fireballs. They soared like meteors with long tails of crackling fire. They crashed down with precision as she imagined where her enemy’s heads might be. A pair of explosions split the air, raining down with burning and melting stone fragments.

  Fire was her tool. It was her hammer, her saw, and her needle. There were other elements to the Dragon’s gift such as the ability to harness the wind, the stone itself, and even to call lightning, but she always found the spectacle of fire far more satisfying.

  A swarm of twenty flaming darts emerged in the sky above the next targets, mere insects at this distance. She raked her clawed hands at the air. They pelted the earth about the next two targets, filling them with burning punctures, and clouding the air with dust.

  She roared, voice taking on an echoing power. Lillian thought of her times working the long grasses on an unknown plantation, blisters pierced and weeping blood. She thought of what they did to her in the shed, how they used her for their carnal pleasures. She slashed her arms down as if chopping at an angle with a scythe. In the vacant distance, a scythe of flames at least three times as large as a human operated scythe mirrored her action. Its blade chopped into the last target, splitting in diagonally and spitting up a gout of fire as the tip struck the ground.

  She opened her eyes. Her fiery scythe rested in the earth, smoking on the stones. Sweat streamed down her temples and pattered from the tip of her narrow chin. Her skin was coated in fire, her hands smoldering halos. The fabric of her dress fluttered on her heated air, tendrils rising up like a beast’s feathers.

  She let it all go. Every ounce of the Dragon surging in her veins leeched from her like water from the shoreline at the ominous start of a tsunami. She gently lowered herself to her bottom, leaning back on her elbows for support. She gulped down quick breaths of the cooling air. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back. Stones scraped from behind. When she opened them, she saw Brenna standing over her, giving her a series of grinning nods. “You’re far more useful than you first appear.”

  The day was iron gray with a greasy sheet of clouds covering the sky. The Phantoms, a Tigerian gang wanted for robbing merchants, swayed on the backs of plodding Tougeres. They traveled in a tight knot on a narrow stretch of road, each side shrouded in a dense section of broad-leafed trees. There were six of them by Lillian’s count, the same number the bounty demanded. It seemed the informant they’d paid in the barroom hadn’t lied about their travel pattern.

  Lillian waited on one side in the cover of leaves, dressed in midnight blues. Across from her was Brenna, holding a short bow in one hand and an arrow in the other. She grimaced against another arrow wedged across her teeth, tonguing its shaft. A dozen more
were set to stand in the dirt, waiting to rain death. They watched the Tigerians pass, exposing their backs. Then Brenna gave the nod.

  They stepped out in unison, in murderous silence. A leaf crunched, and a stick snapped. Lillian hurled balls of hissing fire while Brenna launched a flurry of whispering arrows into their unsuspecting hides. The silence was shattered with screams from both Tougere and Tigerian alike.

  Two of the Tougeres wildly bucked, throwing their dying and burning riders from their backs. The others swept around, falling limp from their saddles before they had a chance to lay eyes on the women. It was all too easy and over in a span of seconds. They purposefully left a few unburned such that they could be identified for the reward. Brenna’s, and now Lillian’s, reputations preceded them, offering them full payment for bounties despite only delivering a fraction of the corpses.

  Lillian dismissed the Dragon and fire from her hands, giving Brenna a laughing smile as she sank down to rest. Brenna returned the gesture, bending down to collect her arrows.

  They reached the solitary Arbiter’s station by mid-afternoon the next day. The air was clear and crisp, the sky a crystalline dome. The land was slowly changing. The trees were growing taller and narrower, their leaves thick and broad to catch the sun. The earth itself had spots of moisture where the wind didn’t kick up sand, but only ruffled the nearby foliage. Lillian had almost grown used to the constant feeling of sand rubbing between her molars, breasts, and cracks.

  Mugos stepped out from his hut to greet them, ears twiddling as he waved his fuzzy hand. Behind him was a pond ringed in verdant grasses. His hut was made of stacked logs, the seams mortared with clay and Tougere fur. A thin stream of smoke wound from a chimney made of fieldstones.

  He was a muscular Tigerian who lived off the land and wore fringed leathers made from Tougere hides. Swaying from the overhang of his roof were at least twenty corpses of small game he caught in his traps. He would bleed them out, skin them, salt them, then turn them into cured meats in the sun.

  Lillian tipped a broad-brimmed hat she recently purchased, and Brenna gave a hearty wave back at Mugos. The first time they met was to claim the bounty reward for Nyoko Nanxe, the burner.

  “Masa, Brenna. How do you fair? Got more, have you? Who do you have there?” Mugos asked in rough Common.

  Lillian peered back at the other three horses ushered along by both Stanley and Kalli, bearing the corpses of the Phantoms. The additional horses had been necessary, and they’d purchased the trio at a village called Ayrith to take some of the dead weight from Stanley and Kalli.

  “Got the Phantoms,” Lillian grinned, producing the bounty from her leather pouch.

  “The who?” Mugos snatched the bounty from her fingers, examining it with his golden feline eyes. “You two are going to empty all my gem stores,” he said with a shake of his head. “Sure the Empire will be pleased. I’ll have to send for the bankers in Ashrath to refill my safe.”

  Lillian shrugged. “Have to eat somehow.”

  Mugos scoffed. “Think you two are doing better than just eating, given your fancy clothing and even fancier gear.”

  Brenna chuckled, dragging the ponies toward the cottage bearing the corpses of the Phantoms.

  “Care for palaver? Gets lonely out here, and I’ve got some wonderful elixir.” Mugos swiveled his gaze between the women.

  Brenna beamed. “That would be most pleasing.”

  “Wonderful.” Lillian nodded. “It would be nice to get out of the sun.”

  Six

  Leads

  Whitewell was the first proper town Lillian had seen since her arrival in Tigeria. There were about a thousand denizens living in hovels that fanned out from a central artery where the majority of commerce was conducted. The main road sloped down into a valley and out the other side. Why anyone would choose this mud pit as an ideal spot for wooden buildings was beyond her comprehension. Given the building’s walls were all but painted in clods of mud, it seemed it was a staple of Whitewell.

  Deep ruts carved by wagon wheels were filled to the brim with water. Prints from boots, paws, and hooves made sucking sounds as the mud tried to drag them down. A few lamps had yet to be put out from last night, dimmed through a haze of mist.

  Lillian sneered at a Tigerian slaver leading a gang of slaves through the squelching mud. He missed the expression, eyes affixed on the road ahead. Their sunburned torsos were smeared in layer upon layer of mud and sand, some dried and cracking and others new and wet.

  It wasn’t the sight of slaves that made her want to incinerate the Tigerian, but that awful sound of tinkling chains. It ground at her essence. She was tempted to throw it all away. She would give up her freedom, her everything, just to end the noise.

  An enslaved woman had a grievous wound on her thigh, undressed and colored in dark hues. Her eyes were constantly rolling while mouthing meaningless words. Lillian could smell the rot from her wound from a few feet away. It wouldn’t be long until she met the Shadow Realm’s embrace. Lillian embraced the Dragon, just enough to send an arrow of fire through the slaver’s neck but not so much that it would illuminate her eyes.

  Brenna must’ve read something in her, reaching over and giving her bicep a hard squeeze. Lillian’s breath caught. She mastered herself then gave her a sharp nod, releasing her grip on the Dragon. She had to control herself. She couldn’t save them all. Nothing could. Lillian forced her shoulders to relax with a long exhalation. She rocked easily on the back of Kalli and gave the chained men and women a pitying smile as the last of their gang passed.

  They stabled their mounts and went their separate ways for a time to renew their supply of sundries, agreeing to meet an hour or so later in a tavern.

  “Welcome to The Gap,” a human barmaid called, not bothering to look up at her. She wiped down a glass from behind the counter with a greasy cloth, blurring it with fat streaks. She wore a dress once black, now a faded gray with a few tears and mismatched patches, buttoned down to show the bones between her flat chest. Lillian thought she might’ve been beautiful once, but that day had long passed. She must’ve been a free woman, but how had she earned such a distinguished position?

  Lillian gave her a wave and a smile, then looked for Brenna. She wasn’t difficult to find, being the only other patron. She was seated before a bay window at the front, where it seemed she always liked to sit. Lillian preferred sitting in the rear with her back to the wall in taverns. It was a far more defensible position.

  “Hey,” Lillian said, pulling out a rickety chair to join Brenna at the opposite side of the table. Tigerians trudged past the window marching to and fro, expressions slack with the doldrums of the day.

  “I came upon something I think you’ll be pleased to see. A lead from one of my sources.” Brenna slid her elbows on the table, leaning conspiratorially toward her. She pushed a half-consumed glass of whiskey aside and lifted a book out from under her thigh. She flipped it open to a dog-eared page and dropped her voice to a whisper. “If you were wondering how I found you… I have a source who sells me a consolidated account of every slave transaction.” She jabbed her bladed finger into a spot on the page. “And if you look here, you’ll see a peculiar name that caught my attention.”

  Lillian furrowed her brow at the rows upon rows of entries, each noted with a date, sales price, names of the sellers and purchasers, and names of the slaves. Baylan Spear. Her eyes went wide, throat dry as glass. Everything else around his name fell away. “He’s still alive,” she breathed. Twin tears spilled from the corners of her eyes, falling onto the parchment. “Sorry, dust got in my eyes,” she muttered, wiping away the tears with a sniff.

  Brenna gave her a warm smile and sat back straight in her chair, producing a long creak from the wood. She set her hands on the table’s edge, hands forming fists. “We need to formulate a plan for his rescue. Helgar Sorad.” Brenna pointed at the name of Baylan’s new owner in the book. “Do you know who this Tigerian is? He is the owner of the Oakmourn Plantation,
the biggest producer of corn, sugarcane, and other crops in the whole of the realm.”

  Lillian shook her head, desperation clawing at her guts. “Shit! Of course I know who he is. Every slave does. Has more slaves than anyone else, and a reputation for being a cruel bastard.”

  “Unfortunately, the very same bastard is holding your lover.” Brenna peered at the barkeep, pointedly minding her wares and pretending not to listen.

  Lillian sighed, giving a few nods, and staring down at the row with his entry.

  “And that is the cretin who owns him…” Brenna gestured. “It will be hard to find him in the field. We have to hope we can find him working in an unusual capacity.”

  “No. He’s intelligent, highly intelligent. Doubtful he’d be working the fields. Likely working the accounts, maybe tending the library, perhaps teaching Helgar’s brood, if he has any. No, he’d find a way to skirt from manual labor, not that he doesn’t have the fortitude for it,” she said with a slight smile, remembering his dislike for laborious physical tasks. “So we do what we did before. We offer to buy him?”

  Brenna blew out her cheeks. “We could try, but I have a different idea. If what you say is true… suppose you want to buy an especially swift horse, and you knock on the horse breeder’s door. You offer to buy his best horse, and he says no. I—”

  “Then you burn the breeder, take the horse,” Lillian interrupted.

  Brenna inclined her head. “You could, but then you would be on the run. Every bounty hunter from Tigeria to Zoria would be searching every nook of the realm for your head. Especially if the bounty was high enough. We need him with a signed bill of sale, a proper purchase for the books. A clean purchase.”