The Priest

by Rowan McAllister

“I wish I could tell you all exactly when we’ll arrive, but the chase can last minutes or hours depending on the intelligence of the Spawn. We will sound the hunting horn when we are coming, so you’ll have a little warning. Please do not stray far from your positions. I know it can be a long and anxious wait, but we will return as swiftly as we can. Be ready.”

  The villagers’ faces ranged from wide-eyed and pale to pinched and sullen, but that wasn’t exactly unusual. He could have wished he’d seen more confidence in him or even a little awe reflected in their eyes, but he couldn’t do much to fix that now.

  “Thram, you’ve obviously been on a Hunt before. I’ll leave them in your capable hands.”

  The man nodded, and Tas turned and strode back up the hill to the waiting horses and riders. Once mounted, he urged the horse around to face them. “Have any of you been on a Hunt before?”

  “Aye,” answered an older woman in coarse wool trousers with a bow and quiver strapped across her back.

  “So the rest of you haven’t, then. All right, Elderwoman…?”

  “Vlon,” she supplied.

  “Elderwoman Vlon will take position on the outside of our little band. Brother Lijen will of course have briefed you before my arrival, but I shall repeat to make sure there are no misunderstandings. The power I exercised in the ravine will have pushed the Spawn farther from the trap. This is an unfortunate side-effect of a necessary act. Tasnerek will now guide me to it, and the rest of you will follow us. When we are close enough for the Spawn to sense the stone’s presence, even without me keying it, the Spawn will run. Our job is to make sure it runs in the direction we want it to. If it tries to break and go in the opposite direction, you all will have to fan out a bit to discourage it, but do not venture too far away from me or it may choose to attack rather than run. Do you understand?” After he received an anxious nod from each of them, Tas continued, “Follow Elderwoman Vlon’s lead and mine. Do not attempt to move in front of either of us. Always stay behind us.” He waited for another nod. “If the gods are smiling on us, we will find it swiftly and not be forced to chase it around in circles all afternoon before we get it headed in the right direction. They like familiar hunting grounds where they know they’ve found food before, so it shouldn’t range far, and it won’t feel Tasnerek until we are quite close. We should be able to catch it by surprise and get it headed in the direction we want. They are mostly simple creatures that don’t understand what’s happening until it’s too late. May Moc grant that is the case today.”

  “Praise be,” the four answered on cue.

  Tas wheeled his mount around and closed his eyes. After a quick breath, he centered himself and listened. The hum from Tasnerek was weak, signaling the Spawn had moved farther away than Tas hoped, but he couldn’t expect everything to be easy. He’d had a Hunt last three days once because the Spawn seemed to know what direction they wanted it to go and always chose the opposite. He’d been exhausted by the time they’d finally chosen a different place for the trap, and he’d had to improvise quickly. He sent another prayer to Moc that this would not be the case today. He didn’t have the power to create a second trap and perform the rite.

  Despite all the strange sensations he’d been receiving from Tasnerek of late, the stone behaved itself. It was as focused on its task as Tas could have possibly wished for. Like a hound on the scent, it pulled him in a straight line toward their quarry. They had to backtrack a few times when that straight line tried to take them through impassable territory, but Tasnerek would not be denied. The stone grew more insistent the closer they got, and Tas settled into the chase with relief. The Hunt felt right. It was the only thing that had felt right in weeks. His duty was clear. His enemy was clear. All the doubts that plagued him about the rest could be set aside, at least for a little while, in pursuit of something noble and unsullied by moral uncertainty.

  Two hours passed before they finally caught up to the beast. Tas could feel it nearby, though they hadn’t spotted it yet. They were in the densely wooded foothills of the Great Barrier Mountains now, and Tas was fairly sure the beast was in the next valley. Before they reached the top of the rise, Tas lifted a hand and pulled his horse to a halt.

  He motioned the others to come closer so he wouldn’t have to shout and alert the beast to their presence.

  “We are close,” he said when they were near enough. “It hasn’t sensed Tasnerek yet, but it will soon. We will circle around to the northern end of the valley beyond to keep it from heading deeper into the foothills. Moc’s blessings upon us, it will head directly south and east, back the way we came. But if it does not, I will use some of Tasnerek’s power to guide it in and Elderwoman Vlon will discourage it from her end. All the rest of you need to do is fan out to keep it from trying to cut straight through us.”

  The horses began to shift and snort, picking up on their riders’ anxiety or catching scent of the Spawn, so Tas decided he’d talked enough. Everyone needed to get moving before they thought about it too much and lost their nerve.

  Chapter Twelve

  TAS’S FIRST sight of the Spawn was not a heartening one. The thing was taller than a horse and four times as broad.

  Of course it would have to be one of the largest I’ve ever faced when I’m running at half my usual reserve, he groaned inwardly.

  “The gods never promised to make it easy.” One of Tas’s first instructors’ words rang in his head.

  The Spawn had once been a boar. Its shape was still more or less the same, even if it had grown significantly. Patches of matted fur and flesh hung in ragged festoons along its flanks, like ceremonial saddle skirting on a horse. Deep gashes ran the length of its entire body where the flesh had been unable to accommodate its rapid growth, and bone and corrupted tissue could be seen through the gaps. Huge tusks dripped a sickly yellow-green ichor onto the ground beneath its massive hooves.

  Tas knew the moment the others spotted it, because a collective gasp echoed behind him. He didn’t bother to look over his shoulder. The fear was always the same and not unjustified. The villagers had no holy relic around their necks. They only had their horses and the weapons they’d brought with them from home. They were farmers and shepherds mostly, not soldiers.

  “Get ready,” Tas murmured.

  The Spawn reared up when it sensed Tasnerek. Its ugly head swung in their direction, revealing the enormity of the tusks that curled from the corners of its mouth and a pair of glowing red eyes that undeniably marked it as Spawn, in case anyone could have possibly missed the rest of it.

  At first the thing simply stared at them, as if deciding whether it should attack or not. Tas couldn’t have that, so he hummed a few notes, keying Tasnerek so it glowed. That was enough. The Spawn let out a squealing grunt, turned, and ran. The beast’s size meant it could outrun the horses, at least to start. But the Spawn hadn’t chosen to possess an animal known for its endurance. Despite the preternatural strength and power of the Spawn, as long as the Hunt was smart, they’d be able to run it down eventually. Tas let the thing tire itself out bit by bit, by allowing it to put a significant distance between them before slowly closing the gap again. It meant they had to cover more ground to push the thing back in the direction they wanted, but they wouldn’t exhaust the horses as quickly or risk an injury on uneven ground.

  Luckily for all of them, this Spawn wasn’t as clever as the one from Tas’s infamous three-day Hunt, and within a couple of hours, Tas began to see landmarks he recognized.

  “Elderwoman Vlon.”

  “Brother?”

  “I believe we’re nearly back to the trap, correct?”

  “Yes, Brother,” she replied with the first smile Tas had seen from any of them all day.

  “Good. It’s time for the final push.” He turned to one of the other riders he hadn’t bothered to learn the name of. “Make the horn ready. As soon as we have the Spawn in our sights again, we charge and you sound the horn continuously until we reach the ravine. I’ll do all I can to ke
ep it on the path we’ve chosen, and you stay fanned out behind me to do the same. As soon as you reach the others, dismount as quickly as possible, grab a shield, and form the line.” Tas turned to one of the other riders, the youngest and most nervous-looking of the bunch. “You take the horses out of the ravine, tie them in the clearing with the others, and come back as soon as you can.”

  “Yes, Brother.”

  The young man’s voice cracked on his reply, but Tas ignored it. They couldn’t lose momentum by wasting more time with speeches. He aimed his mount’s head in the direction Tasnerek was pulling him and urged it into a trot. The time for clever maneuvers was over. Now they had to use speed and as much noise as possible to panic the thing into running blindly into their trap.

  As soon as he spotted the Spawn resting in a clearing, the horn sounded behind him. The Spawn lifted its head and produced another squealing cry that hurt his ears and made the horses rear and let out squeals of their own. Tas’s horse was from the stables at the Keep, so the animal had been on Hunts before and didn’t slow its charge. Tas keyed Tasnerek to get the Spawn just a little more panicked as he crashed through the woods after it. For one moment, he feared the Spawn would cut back toward the foothills, but Elderwoman Vlon galloped in that direction, shrieking a sort of battle cry and forcing the fleeing Spawn to veer to avoid her.

  When the thing cut in the opposite direction, Tas swore before he sang to Tasnerek, toppling a tree in the Spawn’s path and forcing it where they needed it to go. He couldn’t afford to do that again.

  “Come on. Come on,” he chanted, urging his mount to go faster.

  At last, the Spawn reached the slope down to the ravine, and the gods be praised, it chose the path most open to it. The horn sounded behind him as Tas rode after the creature and straight through the narrow he’d created. He dismounted immediately and gave his horse’s rump a smack to get it moving toward the waiting villagers. He could hear the men and women hurrying in behind him and the thud of the wooden shields, but he didn’t take his eyes off the Spawn. It didn’t take the creature long to reach the pile of debris Tas had made at the far end of the ravine.

  When it realized it was trapped, it let out another of those ear-splitting squeals and swung to face them. While it stood, with its corrupted flanks heaving, staring at them, Tas took a few precious moments to turn his attention to the shield wall behind him and sang the Hymn of Wood and Leaf. The planks of the individual shields melded into one continuous wall along their edges, blending into each other and leaving no gap between them for light to show through. The villagers shoved their spears through the holes in the shields one by one, as they’d been taught. To Tas, the formation always ended up looking like some immense thorny vine had grown out of the ground, but he didn’t take any time to admire his handiwork.

  Without pausing for breath, he changed to the Hymn of Cleansing and Unmaking. Tasnerek glowed with a fiery light and burned against his chest as the first notes of the song left his throat. The stone always seemed almost joyful during this part of the Hunt, at its most alive. This was the sacred stone’s purpose for being. This was why the gods had gifted the thirty-six stones to Harot, and despite the horror facing him and screaming its defiance, rage, and pain, Tas was more at peace than he’d been in weeks.

  He sang, and the stone flared as the corruption slowly peeled away from the poor creature it had possessed. Tas always envisioned it as a kind of black tar clinging to the flesh. The cleansing killed the animal in the process of removing the corruption, but Tas always hoped it let the poor creature find peace in the end.

  The Spawn screamed again and reared, slashing the air with its tusks, but Tas continued his song. Some sort of disturbance caught his ear from the line at his back, but he couldn’t spare a moment to worry about it.

  The Spawn feigned a charge to the right, but Tas stood his ground and sent a scatter of rocks and debris pelting down on the thing to keep it where it was. He could feel Tasnerek running out of energy reserves, but he thought he’d have enough. The monster shook and staggered as Tas sang. It wouldn’t be long now.

  Unfortunately, he couldn’t tell the Twelve behind him that. They had no idea how close Tas was, so when the Spawn decided to feign another charge, someone screamed and a spear went sailing over Tas’s head. The shot was a good one. The spear thudded into the Spawn’s massive shoulder, right at the base of its neck. But that created a visual break in the “wall” and enraged the creature into one last real charge.

  Up until that point, Tas had been funneling the energy from Tasnerek in a steady stream, with the hymn as its guiding force. When the thing charged the wall, he had no choice but to throw everything he had at it. Instead of dodging to the side, he ran for the Spawn. He raised his voice until he was shouting the hymn and grabbed for the thing’s flesh as it thundered past. His song and physical contact with the Spawn damaged it. He tore another substantial chunk of the corruption away from what was left of the living flesh, literally and figuratively, and knocked it off-balance. The scream the thing let out as it tumbled to the ground would probably leave Tas’s ears ringing for days, if he lived that long.

  Momentum carried the massive body through the wall. Wood splintered and flew. Men and women screamed and scrambled out of the way. At least one of the Twelve was injured, but Tas couldn’t stop to check, because his last-ditch effort hadn’t been enough. As he scrambled to his feet, the Spawn did the same.

  “To the seven hells!” he swore.

  He scrambled over what was left of the wall, grabbing a loose spear on his way. While the Spawn trotted unsteadily away, Tas ran for his horse. The villagers would have to take care of their own wounded. Tas couldn’t give the Spawn a chance to put itself back together.

  When he rode past the Twelve, he yelled, “Get the wounded back to the village. I’ll finish this on my own.”

  A strange numbness washed over him as he galloped. His heart pounded and his breath came in pants, but it was all distant somehow. He couldn’t find much desire to rail against fate or the gods. He’d tried to salvage the situation and failed. There was nothing left but to complete that task by any means necessary. Girik’s face swam in his memory for a moment, and Tas experienced a sharp pang of regret, but for what, he couldn’t have said.

  Wounded as it was, Tas easily caught up to the Spawn in a clearing a mile or so away from the ravine. He dismounted and gave his horse a light tap on the rump to get it moving. Hopefully, if this was indeed Tas’s final act, it would find its way back to the village to be taken care of.

  The villagers might come looking for him eventually, but he wasn’t sure how long it would take them to gather their courage, even if Brother Saldus actually decided to push them to it. Tas couldn’t be sure, but he had a feeling Brother Saldus might have sent him out knowing full well Tas was underprepared, perhaps hoping to kill two birds with one stone, but maybe that was just Tas’s paranoia talking.

  “It’s time to end this,” Tas panted as he slowly crossed the clearing.

  Ichor dripped from where the spear still penetrated the thing’s flesh as it glared at him with glowing red eyes.

  Tas set his spear down and continued his approach. The spear had been mostly to make sure the Spawn didn’t run again, but from the looks of it, the creature wasn’t going anywhere, and Tas didn’t want to goad it into trying.

  “Don’t you want peace? I’m sure you’re tired. I can take all this pain away. All you have to do is let go.” He was pretty sure the words meant nothing to the creature, but perhaps the tone of his voice helped to calm it.

  He stared at the thing for a little while, feeling nothing but a bit of pity and sadness. “It’s time for a little peace for both of us.”

  He took Tasnerek from around his neck, held the crystal out like it was a dagger, and began the Hymn of Cleansing and Unmaking again, but instead of just directing the flow of energy from the stone, he opened a channel inside himself to feed his own life into it.

  T
he first thing the Thirty-Six taught its newly chosen members was how to avoid allowing the stone to “steal” energy from them, but they were also eventually taught that such a thing could be done as a last resort. Tas wouldn’t be the first to do it, nor probably the last.

  This is it.

  He moved closer, and the Spawn jerked as the hymn’s energy hit it once more. He could feel his life force draining away as he struggled to continue to remain upright.

  He lifted his arm and gazed at the flames branded into his wrist with pride as well as sadness.

  At least I know the flames of the Brotherhood will remain bright, and Tasnerek will choose another when I’m gone.

  “No, I won’t.”

  The alien, all-too-solid voice in Tas’s head startled him enough that his song faltered and he dropped Tasnerek. The Spawn chose that moment to leap up and charge. Apparently it hadn’t been as near death as Tas had assumed.

  Seven hells.

  He bent to pick up Tasnerek, but knew it would be too late. He cringed in anticipation of being gored by one of the Spawn’s enormous tusks, or at the least trampled into the ground, but two light-colored streaks came out of the woods to his left and crashed into the side of the beast, knocking it off course. Tas grabbed the stone and took two steps in the direction the bodies tumbled, but his vision blurred, the world tilted sideways, and the last thing he heard before darkness swamped him was a gruff male voice hissing, “Son of a blighted cow!”

  Chapter Thirteen

  WITH HIS good hand, Girik grabbed a few more branches from the meager stack he’d been able to collect and threw them on the fire. That used up about all the energy he had left, and he scooted back to the pile of old straw and crawled beneath the edge of Tas’s robe to share what warmth he could. Tas still hadn’t woken up, and Girik was beginning to get really worried.

  Keeping his damaged arm clamped to his side, he gritted his teeth against the pain and scooted closer. “Come on, Tas. Open your eyes. Tell me you’re all right.”