The Huntress: Storm

by Sarah Driver

  One of the mystiks grimaces.

  ‘Don’t let him open that book!’ shouts the Skybrarian.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ mocks Crow.

  ‘Why—’ I feel the word shrivel on my lips.

  The mystik flips the book open to a page showing a snarling polar dog. Then he sucks at the picture with his fingertips and mutters a spell, shifting into the dog. The book disappears and I run, pulling Sparrow with me.  The Akhunds have sent their mad dogs after us.

  I twist to shoot an arrow over my shoulder but miss, and it twangs into a tree trunk. I draw another arrow but the dog swipes a paw out under my leg and trips me head over feet until I’m slumped, dizzy, against the foot of a tree.

  Nearby, a giant hand reaches through the evergreens and plucks a screaming mystik from the ground, carrying him up and out through the canopy. But the next beat, there’s a zapping sound and the deafening crash of a giant falling.

  Grandma swirls through the battle, arrows dancing through the dark. One pierces the polar dog and then she’s hauling me to my feet. I let her pull me away from the tree and then dodge as the Spidermaster rides a giant scuttle-spider between the trees, charging the mystiks. Other spiders follow.

  Kestrel thrashes in the ropes she’s been tied in. Egret’s fighting off an attacking eagle, so I run towards Kes, to make sure someone’s defending her. But before I reach her, two mystiks corner me. Toadflax and Hoshi green-chatter webs of branches and pine needles over the mystiks, until they’re smothered by the trees. ‘It’s an ambush! They’re trying to weaken us before their main attack!’ yells Toadflax. ‘Pull back into the trees!’

  Branches swoop down and knock mystiks flying. The fighters on our side hurry towards Toadflax. The branches drop in front of us until we’re cocooned deeper inside the tree cover, leaving our camp abandoned. We’re trapped in a smaller clearing, in the heart of the forest.

  We hold a gasping, straggled war council to try to find a way out of disaster’s jaws.

  Toadflax turns to us. ‘The ambush is over, but they now have control of part of the Forest, and the worst is yet to come. How many fighters have we lost?’

  A leader from each group of fighters does a count. Hoshi speaks to them and reports back. ‘Two Marsh-folk, a draggle-rider, one merwraith and three Tree-Tribe warriors fell,’ she says sadly.

  Sparrow tries to bring them back, but it don’t work. I watch how he stumbles, half asleep on his feet – hair lank and eyes ringed with black circles.

  And that’s when I realise it – anyone we lose in this battle ain’t coming back.

  ‘This is madness,’ says Crow, mouth and nose gruesomely conjoined into an almost-beak. ‘So, what – we just wait here for the next attack, like sitting targets?’

  ‘No,’ I tell them, my mind whirring. ‘There’s someone else we can call on for help.’

  ‘Who?’ croaks a merwraith.

  ‘Axe-Thrower, daughter of the Moonlander – Fangtooth – Chieftain.’

  Grandma scowls. ‘Why would she help us?’

  ‘The Fangtooths were once called the Moonlanders. Their tribe ent what it sometimes seems. And they’re just as strangled by all the bloodshed storms as the rest of us. Plenty of them remember who they really are – Axe included.’

  Grandma stares at me strangely. ‘Much and more happened while I was sea-dreaming, eh, Bones?’ She scrunches her nose. ‘But if you say she’s to be trusted, who am I to say otherwise?’

  ‘You won’t regret it!’ I vow. Then I turn to Hoshi and Toadflax. ‘I need to get a message to Axe.’

  Hoshi gifts me a soft piece of parchment made from dried bark to scratch my runes into.

  Axe-Thrower, please answer this call for help. We are under attack from Skadowan forces, at the Forest of Nightfall. We have captured Stag. The Skadowan are building a soulless army, thousands strong. If we don’t stop them, they will devour everything in their path. Tell your people I know the Moonlands ent just some barren wasteland to be used and chewed up. Their lands are by rights the Moonlands, ancient and proud and singing their stories. Tell them that the girl who freed the slaves – some their own kids – from the stony Chieftains, needs their help. Tell them I’m just a girl of thirteen moons, but I am swollen with fire. The man called Stag stole my ship and killed my grandma and killed the whales in the sea. Then he tore up your lands, planted his own flag, killed and tortured there. Axe, please come. You can defy your grandmother. You’ve got to! You can brew an uprising. They will follow you over that Stony Chieftain.

  Mouse

  I tie the message to Thaw’s outstretched foot and check she’s heart-certain she wants to make the journey. I’m filled with terror that she’ll be shot down, but she screeches a battle-cry.  ThawhelpThawhelp! Thaw stay hidden over solid-cloud.

  Alright. Stay heart-strong, brave girl. Safe roving!

  After my hawk has disappeared through a parting in the Forest canopy, I mill around the cramped clearing, my gut twisted into knots. But it’s not just Thaw that’s gifting me bellyache. It’s wondering what we’re gonna do if the Moonlanders don’t answer my call.

  When my hawk returns a day later, the full attack from Nightfall ent come. Thaw says she dropped the message at Axe’s feet. I can hardly keep still, so put my restlessness into trying to help folk recover from the ambush.

  Time drags by.

  I find Grandma helping the wounded, washing wounds and binding them with poultices of tree-blood. ‘Good stuff,’ she says, sniffing it. ‘I traded for this whenever I could.’

  ‘What can I do, Grandma?’

  She glances up at me. ‘Use your best weapon, dear-heart. Your voice. These folk want rallying again. Their battle-spirits were dented in that attack – and the spirits of the chatterers were already smashed by the Wilder-King.’

  I find them cowering at the edge of the clearing, in a black-cloaked tangle. Must be three dozen of them – more than I ever knew existed.

  ‘You ent mad,’ I tell them. ‘Beast-chatter don’t have to be a sickness, it can be a strength.’ One of them, a woman of Vole’s age with filth-streaked light brown hair, stares up at me. I get to her level and touch her arm. She shrinks back.

  ‘This is what happens when chatterers grow up getting told they’re mad,’ says Da, appearing at my side. ‘They don’t learn how to cope with the endless noise of it, and they end up believing there’s something wrong with them.’

  ‘Well, there ent,’ I hiss, tears blurring my sight. ‘I’m a chatterer, too. I grew up knowing it made me different, but that being different weren’t no bad thing. Everyone has special things about them that can be used as strengths. We can chatter all the terrodyls out of the Skadowan’s control!’

  A man pulls away from the group and stands, shivering. ‘You – a chatterer?’

  ‘Aye. Watch.’ I chatter out for Ettler, and the little squidge huffs and puffs over to me, before dropping to land on my outstretched palm.

  ‘How do you live with the noise?’ asks a young girl.

  I think. ‘Lately I’ve been feeling like the chatter’s been changing. Like it’s been sending me mad. But I reckon it’s cos the world’s in chaos. And at the root of it the chatter just shows our deep bond with nature – a power we can use for good.’

  The girl scurries forward and jumps up, wrapping her arms around my waist. ‘So I’m going to be alright? she says.

  ‘Aye, you’ll be fine,’ I tell her, resting my chin on the top of her head and watching the others. Some look hopeful. Some don’t look sure. I just have to pray they’ll believe me in time.

  I watch as Ettler grunts his way back towards Egret and Kestrel. ‘Will you help me?’ I ask the chatterers. ‘I believe in you. You should never have been locked up in the Wilder-King’s iceberg just for being different.’ Or cos the Skadowan was hunting for me.

  One by one, each with more certainty than the last, they vow to help us.

  I grow aware of a presence behind me. I turn. Hundreds of our fighters are watchin
g, curiosity brightening their faces.

  I stare around me, at faces known and unknown. There’s Da, and Pike, Frog, Crow and Bear, Grandma and the merwraiths we raised, Yapok, and the Skybrarian. Leopard watches me proudly, with Lunda and Pangolin and Pika and other draggle-riders I’ve glimpsed before in passing. Old One and Sparrow kneel at the foot of a tree gathering tree-blood to help heal the wounded.

  There’s many, many more, to boot – folk of the mountains, folk of the marshes, folk of the east, south, west and north, united here, steeling their blood for the biggest battle of their lives. Their eyes are on me.

  I thump my chest. I pull down my scarf, exposing my scar. ‘I’ve been branded, scarred, hunted, imprisoned.’ Leo looks away. Stag don’t. ‘I’ve faced down murderous false-captains and raging Chieftains and the mystiks that almost killed my kin. I’ve come too far and lost too much to lose the fight now, and I know you all have too! Who’s ready to fight?’

  The cheer almost knocks me backwards.

  Crow sucks in his lower lip, watching me with sparkling eyes, and I feel a flush prickle up my neck.

  A voice echoes from outside the clearing. It belongs to Akhund Olm. ‘Rebels! Show yourselves now, and fight! Or our army will drag you out and crush your forest!’

  I leap upright. ‘Everyone, to your weapons! The battle’s right here, right now !’

  Jaw set and cheeks burning, Toadflax gifts us all one last look of fierceness. Then she nods. The fighters form up in ranks, clutching weapons. Toadflax chatters to the trees, until they unlace their branches, revealing us.

  Beyond our hiding place lies a mess of felled trees and dead mystiks, as well as a wounded giant. But beyond the mayhem is a sight that slaps a sickly wave of dread through me.

  The Skadowan’s army is a wall of armour. Thousands of elixirated soldiers, formed up in lines and clutching weapons. Some are bears, some are youngsters, some are full-growns. All have the same emptiness about them. On the walls of the outer city, robed Akhunds and mystiks stand, Olm in the centre. As one, they snap their fingers. And the soulless army advances on us.

  Bears march through the darkness. More and more of them come, cloaked and helmed and swathed in armour. Teeth flashing.

  Between the territories of Nightfall, the battle crashes together.

  ‘These soldiers don’t know they’re soldiers,’ I yell to remind everyone. We vowed to capture them where we could and only harm them if we had no choice.

  The merwraiths bend and slash, leap and hack, faces grey and eyes blazing. Marsh-folk charge, wielding shimmering fish-spears. Spiders stab enemy soldiers and wrap them in cocoons of silk. The giants stomp towards the enemy lines, crushing soldiers underfoot or sweeping them into the distance with their fists. But more and more and more advance.

  The Tree-Tribes whisper bear-powers out of the bones they’ve etched with bear stories. Then they’re loping on all fours, slashing with sharp claws.

  My arrows fly as I whirl in a circle, fingers swift, bowstring twanging. A mystik swipes out, hitting me with lightning that crashes pain into my head.

  Hands grab me, pulling me out of the way. Then a voice somewhere to my right bellows in fright. ‘Terrodyls!’

  They swoop over the tops of the trees, shrieking. On the edge of the battle, me and the group of chatterers band together and work to sever the terrodyls from the Skadowan’s grip. But I feel the threads of Stag’s mind, too, tendrils he sends slithering out of him, snapping like the pink threads of flesh that tether loose teeth.

  ‘Stop!’ I scream at him. He ignores me, still trying to help the Skadowan. So I send an arrow slamming into his shoulder and the chatter flies from his mouth as he screams in pain.

  Soon we’re surrounded by a thicket of terrodyls. The chatterers and me push them back, sweat trickling down our faces, but one breaks free and then out of the blackness swoops low, jaw clamping onto a screaming Tree-Tribesman. He’s lifted up, legs waggling, and carried away.

  Toadflax trembles with fear and fury. She green-chatters to one of the trees until it rips its roots from the ground and stalks towards the assembled mystiks, flinging them aside with long, sweeping branches.

  Chatterers cower, terrorised mouths and eyes agape. I throw up my hands, chattering so desperately I can almost feel my words slipping over my lips, like warm blood.

  I will help you claim your rightful freedom! I splurt, lips cracking open with the force.  But you have to help me first!

  A huge, ancient-looking terrodyl drops in the sky until her eyes burn into mine. Her breath steams hot into my body, stinking but thawing my bones. Powerful enough to send me sprawling backwards, pain slamming up my wrists.

  Dareorderancient? she demands, sniffing my fright deep into her lungs and grinning at what she tastes.

  I’m not ordering you, I plead.  But they are, and you don’t have to do what they say any more. They kill terrodyls just to use the blood as a weapon. I hate them for it! We just want you to fly far away from here. Far away from the Skadowan!

  She roars. I ball my fists, feel the slime underneath my nails. Feel the fury of the smothered moon.

  When she don’t back off, I try reaching out like I did at Castle Whalesbane, pushing forcefully with my beast-chatter. But when I push the beast too far, the taste of blood plummets into my chest and I feel a painful tearing in my lungs. Then I spit a glob of foamy blood into the snow. ‘No!’ I won’t be like him. I won’t show the beasts disrespect and try to control them.

  I pull my chatter into myself and the terrodyl shakes free. I rack my brains. I’ve got to help the beasts understand that the Skadowan ent to be trusted, despite all the food and castles they’ve given them.

  I chatter to the terrodyl.  I’ll do all in my power to stop the bad-blubbers, and free you and your kin!

  But then the Skadowan forces shoot the beast down, scarring the forest with a raging river of black slime. Fighters shriek, flesh being eaten by sizzling black blood.

  ‘Chatterers!’ I scream. ‘They’ve done it now! Come on – this is your fight! You can own it!’

  They press forward, skin and bones, black, tattered cloaks snapping in the wind. They conjoin their chatter and raise it up, up, up and back, against the terrodyls, making them halt in the air and begin to turn.

  I join my chatter to theirs, dimly aware of the battle swirling around me. The next time the Skadowan shoot a terrodyl, we get it turned around and wheeling towards the city where it crashes into one of the white towers, crumbling it to the ground with a shattering crash.

  ‘Keep going!’ I tell the chatterers, and we push the terrodyls back beyond the north of the forest.

  But I know none of what we’re doing is nearly enough against the ranks of wreckers and slavers, so-called mystiks and the elixirated soldiers that stream endlessly into the forest.

  Axe, where are you?

  Terrodyls dodge storms as they’re flung at us. A draggle and her rider charge at them but one catches the orange-furred beast with the edge of a wing and the draggle crashes.

  Gods. We’ve already lost. How long can this go on?

  Crow hurries past, wielding his sword. ‘Mouse, watch out!’ he hisses.

  I whirl, nocking an arrow to my bow, but a blank-faced girl knocks me flying. Kin-Keeper is flung from my hands. My fingertips brush it but the girl kicks it away, standing over me.

  Suddenly there’s a streaking blur of feathers and Thaw swoops out of the sky, claws and beak attacking the elixirated girl that was about to press a blade to my throat.

  Thaw!

  She wheels back to me, landing near my feet.  Two-legs home girl ThawbringThawbringThawbring!

  My breath catches.  Where?

  Before she can reply, Moonlanders push through the trees into the clearing, led by Axe-Thrower. They circle bolas made of sinew and runestones in the air, chanting battle songs. I whoop, tears streaming. Axe hauls me to my feet and wraps an arm around me. Seeing the Tribeswoman’s fierce, sleek face again gif
ts me sorely-needed heart-strength.

  ‘My people are remembering who they are, and soon everyone in Trianukka will know. And it’s thanks to you. If we perish in this fight, at least we’ll have died standing true to our ancestors.’ Then she and her tribe launch into battle.

  The battle swells to a peak. The mystiks are brewing great storms. Tendrils of lightning wrap around the giant’s ankles, bringing them lurching heart-stoppingly to the ground.

  And however many of the elixirated army fall, there are countless more that march to replace them. The Akhunds must be elixirating more and more, leaving the fighting to the soulless. I realise Olm has disappeared from his position on the city walls, no doubt to oversee the thieving of souls.

  Then a scream pierces my heart.

  It sounded like Egret. I’m running, searching – then I watch as Egret uses her bodyweight to shove Kestrel sideways, away from one of the mystiks.

  Kestrel scrambles onto hands and knees. How did she escape the ropes we tied her in? She’s meant to be staying out of harm’s way!

  The mystik’s blade misses Kestrel and pierces Egret’s belly.

  She stumbles, shock carving open her mouth.

  I know I’m screaming, but my voice is muffled, like I’m underwater.

  The Akhund stands over Egret, his long, tapering fingernails toying with the handle of the blade stuck into her.

  ‘Get away from her!’ I bellow, thumping an arrow into his back. He falls and I kick him away from my friend.

  Kestrel sinks to her knees, hands covering her mouth, whole body shaking. ‘Egret!’ she screams, pressing her hands to the wound in her love’s belly.

  But the runesmith’s spirit has slipped away, and her eyes are glassy.

  I gently pull Kestrel away from the dead runesmith. Leo comes to help me, sobbing with her daughter. Together we lift Egret’s body and step backwards, away from the battle.

  Grandma and the wraiths cover us as we blend into the trees.

  Kestrel curls into a ball at the foot of a tree, great, beastlike moans shuddering up and out of her throat. I go to her. ‘Oh, Mouse!’ she whispers, pressing shaky fingers against her mouth. ‘What have I done?’