by Kaelyn Ross
Claws flashed by her cheek and shredded the shoulder of her doeskin shirt. Several more fiery stripes took root there, but she barely felt them. Kestrel spread her shaking legs for balance, and thrust her hand against the soft fur of creature’s neck. At the same time, she buried her knife in the beast’s flank. It twisted and screamed, its pistoning back legs driving its weight against her. She stabbed again, and in answer, the beast raked its claws across her hip.
The breath she had wanted finally came, but just as quickly burst out of her in an agonized cry. She made one more frantic stab, but the blade skittered across the beast’s ribs. Her counterattack was enough to break their lumbering embrace.
Kestrel reeled backward, her eyes fixed on the beast crouched off to one side, its jaws spread to reveal teeth that gleamed like weathered gold. When the beast took a cautious step backward, as if reconsidering its prey, she did the only thing that might change its mind. She ran.
CHAPTER THREE
Kestrel sprinted a hundred strides farther into the meadow, before accepting that she could go no farther at that pace if she wanted a chance of winning the coming fight.
She spun and walked backwards, expecting to see the beast explode out of the high grass and race toward her, but it was gone. The bite of her knife had given it something to think about, to be sure, but there had been fury and hate lighting its eyes, and she knew it would not give up.
Hesitantly, she touched her savaged shoulder. Her fingers came away greasy with blood. Further searching revealed four bloody tears in the hip of her snug trousers, and another raw foursome along her calf—the blood from that wound had soaked her boot. Trousers could be mended, but the rips in her flesh were another matter. She was bleeding heavily, and already felt lightheaded. Even if she managed to staunch the flow, such wounds were prone to flesh-rot, even under the best circumstances. But these were hardly the best circumstances. She was a long way from home, where her mother kept a cupboard stocked with healing herbs and tonics. Gathering those same herbs anytime soon was unlikely, and to brew tonics, which took a mind more skilled in those arts than hers, was out of the question.
Kestrel cast a longing glance at the pond off to one side, but resisted the urge to go cleanse her injuries. There would be time for that later. Maybe.
Seeing no reason to go any farther, Kestrel halted, knife steady in her hand, but swaying on her feet. There was still no sign of the beast. Wind shrieked down off the mountain slopes, now carrying with it occasional spatters of rain. Black-bellied clouds, crawling with tentacles of blue-white fire, pushed over the peaks.
She did not want to die here. I cannot fail. I cannot!
With that desperate thought blaring in her mind, she spun in a tight circle, searching, knife held low to stab an enemy that remained hidden ... or gone.
Do I chase after it, run it down and force it to fight?
The idea took root while she gazed toward the edge of the forest. Whatever decision she might have come to was stolen away when the beast oozed like smoke from a cluster of saplings growing together thick as dog hair. Blood flecked its muzzle, and more flowed from its billowing ribs. As it drew nearer, she heard the deep, wet gurgle of its breathing. She had wounded it terribly, perhaps mortally, but it was far from dead.
And neither am I, she thought, ignoring the queasy faintness she felt from her blood loss.
The beast came closer, taking its time, an eerie, hateful light smoldering deep in its golden eyes. Its black-tipped tail lashed back and forth, indifferent to the storm’s powerful gusts.
A tickle of uncertainty pebbled Kestrel’s skin in gooseflesh. She had chosen to fight this animal for its lethal tenacity, and she had enticed it further with blood. Perhaps she should have stuck to the tactics of the bird of her namesake, and set an ambush?
She shook her head, refusing to second-guess herself. It was too late for that, and far too late to turn back.
The beast padded closer, muscles bunching in its powerful haunches. Lightning flashed, and its eyes seemed to catch fire for a moment, before going a dark gold again.
Then the creature stopped no more than ten feet away. There was cunning in its stare. Too much cunning.
“What are you waiting for?” Kestrel demanded, her voice shrill.
Its shoulders rippled as it fell into a crouch.
Kestrel mimicked the creature’s stance, bending her knees, spreading her feet and arms. She slashed her knife between them.
With a growling hiss, the beast laid its ears flat against its skull. Kestrel tried her own growl, but it sounded more like a whimper.
The beast’s tongue, streaked with blood, lolled through the ragged gate formed by its teeth. No matter how insane it sounded, Kestrel thought sure the creature was laughing at her. That made her more afraid, but also angry.
“I will not die today!” Kestrel cried, and charged ahead at the same instant the beast leaped.
They met in a squalling tangle, her knife slashing, and its claws tearing. Rending red agony ripped across her belly. Screaming, she sank the blade into the creature’s flank, once and again. Dirty yellow teeth snapped together an inch from her nose, then yawned wide again for a bite that would pierce her skull.
Kestrel reared back, and the beast’s greater weight put her off balance. As she fell, she lashed out. The blade sank to the hilt. She clung to the knife’s handle, letting her weight drag the sharp edge downward, tearing open the creature’s side, ripping a great bloody gash in its belly. It yowled and twisted away, leaving her behind.
Kestrel sprawled on her back, stupid with weakness and terror, lines of fire spreading from her newest wounds. More than any presence of mind, instinct commanded her to roll to her side.
The beast was circling, trailing its entrails behind it. It favored one foreleg, and was dragging the opposite rear leg. Yet its golden eyes still burned with killing hate.
Kestrel could not breathe, and her limbs trembled. Blood ran into one eye, turning half the world red.
Get up! she ordered herself. Get up and fight! For your Ancestors, and for the House of the Red Hand, get up!
The beast circled closer, its movements shaky. A ceaseless growl rumbled from its throat, a sound of rage and fear, something she fully understood.
The beast charged, and to Kestrel’s eyes, it seemed to be moving as if through cold honey. She surged to her feet. Just before they clashed again, she tripped over a stone, and barely missed having a claw-tipped paw tear off her head.
Stumbling forward, she rammed her blade deep into the center of the beast’s chest. There was a breathless quality to its pained scream.
They fell together and rolled. Kestrel drew out her knife and plunged it again, and once more. The creature spit and snarled, its body shuddering. Twisting hard, she came up on top, blade poised to strike, but not falling.
The beast, her Kill, was dead.
CHAPTER FOUR
Caught in a haze of pain, Kestrel stared down at the beast. Death had softened its fury, stolen its murderous intent. It was no longer a monster that stalked nightmares, but a lion. In death, she could appreciate the grace and majesty she had stolen from it. The elation she had always dreamed she would feel at this moment was nowhere to be found. In its place, she felt pity, even regret.
“You fought fair and well,” she murmured, running her fingers through its fur. “Today you made me a warrior of my tribe. I thank you for your sacrifice … and I’m sorry I made you pay it.”
Bowing her head, she let silent tears flow. They were a meager payment for the life she had taken, but she had nothing else to give.
When the first drops of rain began to fall, she wiped her eyes and explored the lacerations on her belly. The new wounds were not deep, but they needed tending.
Using her knife she cut the sleeves off her shirt. The shredded doeskin rags made poor bandages, but they would serve. After making several long strips, she bound the wounds. With that done, she turned back to the lion.
While her injurie
s were more than enough to prove she had been in a fight, to stand before her people at the Bone Tree ceremony, where she would formally become a Red Hand, she needed the lion’s head and hide to prove what she had fought. But for now, she was still a hunter, so she would make a pack from the lion’s hide to carry its meat.
Weak as she was, the thought of carrying such a burden made her legs shake, but all within her tribe despised weakness as much as she did, so she set to work.
She had skinned her first deer when six years old, and now, ten years later, she had much more experience. Using sure strokes, she quickly parted the lion’s skin from its belly to its neck, then began alternately cutting and peeling the hide off its body like a coat. She laid the hide fur-side down, rolling the carcass as she worked, careful to keep it out of the dirt. Normally she would have used a ground cloth, but when a Potential set out for the Kill, they carried only their clothes and the weapon of their choosing.
She carefully cut off the lion’s head and set it aside. Stray hairs clung to her bloody hands and the knife blade so thickly that even the drumming rain could not clean off the mess. There was no helping it. She would not have a chance to bathe for a while.
Kestrel placed a knife between the hollow of the lion’s flank and the swell of its haunch, and prepared to make the first cut into its meat.
A flicker of movement drew her eyes.
Barely turning her head, she looked to the rocky slopes rising high above the meadow, and saw a group of men picking their way down the slope. She held still, not wanting to catch their attention, as they had caught hers.
The rain began falling harder, blanketing the world in a gray shroud. Lightning flared sporadically. Thunder rolled. Through the stuttering, murky haze, she counted at least eight figures dressed in leather and fur. A few held bows, the rest carried spears. Like her, they would also have long knives. But who are they? she wondered, her sight hampered by the pounding rain.
Kestrel held no hope that the newcomers were people she knew—if there was an observer about, they would never show themselves. That left members of another tribe. And, as they were obviously willing to break their treaty by encroaching on the hunting grounds of her people, that marked them as enemies.
Tall Ones? An icy prickle snaked its way down her spine. She tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry. The Tall Ones lived far to the north. Kestrel had never seen one, and did not know anyone who had, but she had heard the stories of those vile folk, they who were given to strange rituals that lit the night sky behind the walls of their village for miles around. As far as she knew, no Tall One had ever ventured so far from their territory, and no one dared attack them, for fear of having their souls stolen, or worse.
So if not the Tall Ones, then she was looking at either Stone Dogs or Black Ears. Both tribes were great enemies of her people, and it appeared that one tribe or the other had sent out a raiding party. It was just a matter of time before they saw her. Only the forest offered any protection and hope of escape.
Kestrel cast about, her heart thudding as hard as it had when she faced the lion. She was tempted to leave behind its skin and head, but if she failed to return to the village with proof of the Kill, then all she had gone through would have been for nothing. Not only that, without proof, she would be sent into the Dead Lands. The meat, however, would have to remain behind. There was no time to butcher the carcass, and there was no chance she could escape while carrying a burden that weighed at least half as much as she did.
“I’m sorry,” she said again to the lion, bundling the beast’s head into its hide.
Still on her knees, she waited until another flash of lightning ripped across the sky, hoping the flare would momentarily blind her enemies. When the thunder rolled over her, she lurched to her feet and made for the woods as fast as her feet would carry her.
She had not crossed half the distance when a chorus of shouts rose far behind her.
Kestrel did not bother looking over her shoulder. There was no doubt her enemies were coming. Sucking wind, she quickened her pace through the tall meadow grass, her feet slipping in fresh mud. The forest seemed to recede from her. She ducked her head and ran faster. Reaching the thick cover of trees was her only hope.
Kestrel flinched when an arrow whistled past her ear and stabbed into the ground twenty strides ahead, but she did not slow. Crashing through a bush, her feet became tangled, and the bundle almost flew from her grasp. Stumbling, gasping, willing her feet and legs to stay strong, she righted herself and raced on.
The forest was fifty strides away … now forty … now thirty.
Another arrow tugged at her flapping braid. She barely noticed. The tree line was now no more than ten strides away. More arrows shrieked past her. One cut a tiny, burning notch out of her earlobe.
The forest was so close now.
Ten feet … five feet.
Kestrel had no chance to veer away from the tall, shadowed figure of a man who stepped out from behind the nearest tree. He raised something in his hand, she heard a sharp popping sound, felt a piercing sting in her shoulder. Running at full speed, she bowled him over, took a few more graceless, lurching strides, and flipped over a fallen log.
From somewhere behind her, she heard a groggy curse, but could not see the man she had knocked aside. Better if their collision had broken his neck. That it had not meant she had one more enemy to deal with. Nine against one.
Strangling a cry of frustration, she snatched up her bundle and ran deeper into the forest.
CHAPTER FIVE
Rain dripped from above, but the thickly twined pine boughs kept off most of the deluge and served as a windbreak. Their tight weave also blocked out most of the weak gray daylight, making it harder to see.
Each shambling step Kestrel took left her weaker, and her panting breaths failed to fill her lungs. Dark spots haunted her vision, and more than once she found herself listing to the side, an instant from falling over. Terror twisted like a snake inside her. She could not go on much longer without rest. All the blood she had lost after battling the lion had left her weak, and she was getting weaker by the minute.
If I stop, the Stone Dogs, or the Black Ears, or whoever they are, will take me prisoner. The thought sent a shudder through her.
Her people abhorred taking prisoners, but her mentor, One-Ear Tom, often told of the horrendous treatment Stone Dogs and Black Ears inflicted upon their captives—most did not survive more than a few days. Those who did, and managed to escape, were never the same.
Another shudder rippled her body when she thought of Old Regar’s weeping eye socket, and the crisscrossing scars lining his face. A raiding party of Black Ears had caught him when he had been Young Regar, a promising Red Hand. They had done things to him that no one talked about, and those torments had turned him from a strong warrior into a fearful man who screamed and wet himself at the sight of fire or blades.
Not wanting to turn out like Old Regar, Kestrel forced herself to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
A brief flurry of shouts filtered through the forest behind her. They sounded distant, eager, angry. She concentrated on her path.
In order to keep within the forest, she needed to stay on the north side of the ridgeline she had climbed earlier, which lay somewhere off to her right. She picked out the weathered gray hulk of a dead snag off to her left. It stood out like a ghost amid the living trees, and keeping it in sight was easy. Better yet, she was now moving downhill.
She kept going until the shouts faded to nothing. After plunging through a wide huckleberry patch, Kestrel risked pausing long enough to catch her breath. It was not enough to ease the weakness in her legs, or to clear the gauzy blotches of darkness pressing in at the edges of her vision, so she sat down and scooted up under a nest of tangled roots jutting off the stump of a fallen tree. Resting was dangerous, but for now, she could go no farther.
Craning her neck, she glanced back the way she had come. The forest was alive with motio
n, but as far as she could tell, it was only tree branches rustling in the wind. Not trusting her eyes, she cocked her head and opened her mouth slightly, a posture that often helped her to hear better. The only noise was the deep, hollow whooshing and rattle of the storm blowing through the forest, and the crazed drumming of rain. Did they lose my trail, or give up?
The apparent good fortune made her uneasy. She had not run all that far, and not very fast at that. There was no way her enemies had given up. And if they had lost her trail, they would find it again soon enough.
She knew she needed to get up, but hidden as she was within the tree roots felt safer than running blindly through the forest. Just a few more moments, then I’ll go.
Breathing easier now, Kestrel let her head droop, and felt something sharp jab her chin. With a curious frown, she felt around and found something stuck in her shoulder. She pulled the object free with a hiss, and held up a shining metal tube with a stubby spike on one end, and springing fins on the other, like the fletching of an arrow. A dart? How—
The thought cut off when she remembered the man she had run over at the edge of the forest, and the popping sound she had heard when he pointed his weapon at her. She tossed the dart away with a scornful curse. If her enemies thought a child’s toy could stop her, they were sorely mistaken.
Kestrel looked off in the direction she needed to go. If she kept going downhill, there was a creek in the bottom of the ravine that ran for perhaps ten miles, maybe a little a farther, before feeding the river that flowed near her village. If her enemies followed her that far, she could always jump into the river and let it carry her most of the way home. Swimming would be hard while holding onto her bundle, but that was better than running and hiding in the mountains. The way she felt right now, her body so heavy, there would be no running at all….
Her eyes flared open at a crash of thunder. She gazed about, stunned to see that the puny light of day had grown darker than ever. She lifted her hand to wipe her face, and froze. Despite the cover the gnarled roots provided, she was soaked to the skin, as was the lion skin nestled in her lap. The only thing warm on her was the blood seeping from under her makeshift bandages. There was an ache in her knees, and her feet were all pins and needles. She had blacked out. One moment she had been awake, just resting a moment, and the next she had drifted away.
