Hand of the Hunter: Chosen of Nendawen, Book II (35 page)

His second stood and watched the rest of the troop work. They were almost done. He looked to his leader and said, “By their clothes, most of the dead came from west of the mountains. But there’s a few dead Nar.” His voice took on a brittle tone—“And the other.”

“Ah, yes,” he said. “To that.”

He walked over and looked down at the corpse. Unlike many of the others, it had not been savaged by weapons or the jaws of some large animal. One gaping wound in the chest. It was obvious what had killed him. A very well-aimed arrow, which the archer had then used a knife to retrieve.

“The same as the others, yes?” said his second.

“The third in two tendays.” He scratched at his cheek, considering. “We’ve been trying to find a way to kill
these damned things for months, our only reward many dead hobgoblins.”

His second grunted his agreement, then said, “Something is hunting Highwatch’s monsters.”

“And doing a damned fine job,” he said. “So far at least.”

“Who?”

“That is the question of the hour, is it not?”

He left the corpse and walked around. Not far away, two hobgoblins were looting the corpse of a Nar. Another one of the damned Creel that he had come to hate so much. He’d learned enough in the past months to recognize the distinctive cut of their clothes and the unique stitch of their boots.

“Another arrow kill?” he asked.

“Yuh,” said one of the hobgoblins, and pointed at the wound. “And bless my bones, I hope I never run into the archer. Thing went all the way through a rib and out the back again. Whatever bow loosed that arrow …”

“Stop! Do
not
move!”

The hobgoblins froze and those nearby did as well, turning to see what the matter was.

The leader kneeled beside the nearest hobgoblin. Only a few inches from his right foot, in the muck of frozen blood and dirt …

He picked it up.

“What is it?” his second asked.

“Feathers,” he said. He turned it in his fingers, examining it. “Fletching from an arrow. Our archer retrieved his arrow but couldn’t save the fletching.”

He twirled the fingers of his free hand, and a slight current of air wafted through the feathers and brought the scent to his nostrils. Closing his eyes, he inhaled deeply.

There
.

Mostly it was what he’d expected. Dirt. Blood. The scent of the bird itself—a raven most likely. The glue that had been used to fix it to the arrow shaft. But
there!
Ever so
faint—so faint that even he almost missed it. But there was no mistaking it.

It brought him such delight that he laughed aloud.

“What?” his second asked. “What is it?”

Menduarthis stood. “I misspoke. Our archer retrieved
her
arrow.”

“Her?”

“My little flower. She’s back.”

C
HAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT

G
ET UP.
” T
HE WORDS CAME TO
D
ARRIC FROM A
great distance. Whispered words, but spoken close and with great urgency. Mandan’s voice. He ignored them and tried to grab on to the departing dream. “Darric, get up. You need to see this.”

Darric forced his eyes to open. Mandan loomed over him, only inches away. Seeing his brother’s eyes open at last, Mandan moved away.

“It’s light,” said Darric, sitting up.

Darric got his first good look at their campsite. Hweilan had led them there the night before, dawn only a pale promise in the east. She’d taken them ever higher into the mountains by paths that would’ve made a goat’s nerves raw. In the dark, their only light that of the stars and the waning moon, Darric didn’t know how they’d made it. Jaden had actually begun sobbing and refused to go on at one point, but Hweilan told the man that if he fell behind he was on his own. And she’d moved on. Jaden’s sobs hadn’t stopped after that, but he’d kept up.

She led them to a small valley formed in times past when snow actually thawed in summer, the runoff carving a shallow crevice in the side of the mountain. Snow hadn’t melted there in almost a hundred years, but still the valley was choked with scraggly pines whose roots burrowed through
the stone. One ancient giant had fallen over, the main body of the trunk long since gone to rot, but its iron-hard roots had formed a sort of canopy over the crater left by its fall. Years of other branches falling had formed a roof of sorts. It kept the worst of the wind off them and would shield most of the light from the small fire Hweilan had allowed them.

Every man among them had collapsed from exhaustion. Valsun and Jaden had been snoring even before Hweilan had the fire going, and they were still sleeping. As for Hweilan … no sign of her or the wolf.

“How long did I sleep?” Darric asked Mandan.

“All the night and most of the morning.”

“Midday already?”

“Just past.” Mandan’s voice was strangely flat. Not angry exactly, but it had a solemnity to it that Darric recognized. Something was bothering Mandan. Something serious.

“What is it?” Darric asked.

Mandan growled deep in his throat. “Follow me.”

With that he rose to a crouch—the deadfall ceiling was far too low for him to stand to his full height—and crawled out of the pit. Darric secured his cloak and followed.

Cold hit his face and bit into his lungs, waking him instantly. Damara had bitterly cold winters, but
nothing
like this. Since entering the Giantspires, he’d slowly acclimated to the cold. But they’d been for the most part in valleys or the fissures between the mountains where their guides had led them. They were much higher now. Thin as the air was, it seemed to make it only all the easier for the cold to pierce. Down in the passes, morning cold cut like a knife. Up here, Darric felt like he was breathing in a fume of needles.

“Where is … she?” Darric couldn’t bring himself to say her name.

“Shh,” Mandan said. “That’s what you need to see.”

He led Darric to the edge of the valley where the trees hugged the broken wall of the mountainside. And then they climbed again, over boulders and through fissures in
the mountain formed by eons of ice and wind. They were almost at the height of the pines when the ground leveled out somewhat, and Darric saw that it was not really mountainside at all, but a sort of saddle of rock that dropped away again on the other side.

Behind a boulder near the far edge Mandan crouched, turned to Darric, and put a single finger to his lips. Darric kneeled beside him, and they peeked over the rock into the next valley. It was much shallower and wider than the one in which they’d camped. It had once held trees, but every one had been laid flat—probably by an avalanche. Most still lay there, like a fallen army of statues. The dead trees filled the entire valley for miles down the mountainside—except for one spot, right below them. There, a great wedge of rock, large as a farmhouse, thrust upward, and it was easy to see how the river of snow and ice had passed around it, leaving a little island of bare earth, open to the sky. In the very midst of that bare patch, Darric could just make out a circle, drawn in some dark soil, or perhaps a scattering of ash.

“I’m so glad you woke me for this,” said Darric. “Truly I have never seen such a circle.” He put a smile on his face as he said it, trying to soften the sarcasm and stir Mandan’s sense of humor.

But Mandan only scowled. “She was here! I swear it. Her and the wolf, and she—”

A raven cawed, so loud and so close that both Darric and Mandan jumped. The bird—without a doubt the largest raven Darric had ever seen—sat on the nearest boulder to their right, just upslope. It glared at them, completely without fear, then flapped its wings and let out a long croak.

Had it been there the whole time? Darric couldn’t remember. Surely they would have heard such a large creature landing. But how could they have missed—?

And then Darric saw beyond the bird. The saddle of the mountain continued upward until it hit the mountainside proper, no more than twenty feet from where they hid. But
there at the foot of the cliff the rock split in a fissure. Not huge, but big enough for someone to fit in. And someone had.

Darric saw the eyes first, bright and fierce, then the glow of skin, and Hweilan emerged a moment later.

Her bone mask was gone, but paint still adorned much of her face and the rest of her skin. So much skin—
far
more than modesty allowed even in the most decadent Damaran court. She still wore the same close-fitting trousers and high boots from the night before, but above that was only a strip of cloth tied around her neck, covering her breasts, and then bound around her back. It left her entire midriff and arms exposed. Darric saw that more of the strange symbols adorned her—most with blue ink, but he saw that some were scars—and she was drenched in sweat. So much so that it steamed off her in the cold. How—?

She walked toward them. The raven hopped halfway around, gave her a baleful look, then flew off.

Hweilan almost made it to them before her knees gave out, and she leaned heavily against the rock before sliding to the ground. Darric saw that she had a fresh bandage around her right hand. Blood and some greener substance had soaked through on her palm.

“Are you hurt?” said Darric.

She took a moment to catch her breath, then glared at them both. “I’ve never liked spies.”

Darric and Mandan exchanged a glance.

“We—”

“Have all the stealth of a swiftstag herd. I heard your friend up here awhile ago. Now here you both are. Why?”

Darric opened his mouth to speak, but Mandan beat him to it.

“Something woke me. The others were still asleep—except you. No sign of you. I thought … well, I went to look, and I saw …” His voice had had an apologetic tone to it, but suddenly it hardened. “I saw what you were doing. What you did.”

Hweilan said nothing, but her gaze did not soften.

“She was dancing in the circle,” Mandan continued. “Dancing around something—an arrow, I think—and chanting. Like some damned witch.” He pointed at her hand. “I
saw
her slice open her own hand, making some cursed bloodpact with who knows what. And then … in all those fallen trees, under all the branches and shadows, I … I thought I saw …”

“What?” Darric asked.

“Yes,” said Hweilan. Her eyes had narrowed. There was still ferocity there, but something else as well. Curiosity. “Tell us what you saw.”

“
Thought
I saw,” said Mandan. “Shapes. But I … I don’t know. But then she”—he pointed at Hweilan—“fell on her knees in front of the arrow and I
know
I saw a flash of light—
green
, damn it all!—and I thought I heard …” He swallowed hard and clutched at his chest. Darric knew what lay there under all his layers of clothes—a silver medallion in the form of a gauntlet, holy symbol of Torm the Loyal Fury. “No. I
know
I heard a scream. But not from her, and not from the direction of our camp. And … by the True Resurrection not by anything I’ve ever heard in this world. It …”

A shudder shook him, so violently that Darric heard the mail rattle under his coat.

Darric looked to Hweilan. She’d caught her breath and managed to sit up without leaning against the stone. But she still sat watching Mandan warily, like a hound who has happened upon a strange, new scent.

“Do you deny this?” Darric asked her.

Her eyes shifted to him, but she didn’t otherwise move. “I don’t know what he did or didn’t see or what he did or didn’t hear.” No hint of apology in her tone.

“You know what he asks,” said Mandan. “The circle, the black arrow, the chanting, all those etchings on your skin, and that … that scream. What witchcraft is this?”

But Hweilan chuckled. “Witchcraft?”

“Answer me,” said Mandan.

“I don’t answer to you.”

Darric could see his brother getting very riled. His thick hair was beginning to stand on end, and even in the cold his skin was flushed. He put a hand on Mandan’s shoulder, “Brother, we—”

“No!” Mandan turned his gaze on Darric, who flinched back. “No I
will
have an answer from her. You told us we were coming to aid any who survived from Highwatch and to find out what happened. But I’ve known all along it was her you were really after. And damn it all,
Brother
, we find her as some sort of savage demonbinder calling upon gods-know-what foul powers. It’s her soul needs saving!”

Darric held Mandan’s gaze a long time, searching for a retort. But he had none. So he looked to Hweilan. “Do you deny his words?”

She sighed and her shoulders slumped. Darric could see she was trembling. Had she slept at all during the night?

“We’ll talk,” she said. “But back by the fire. The rite always makes my blood run hot, but now …” She shivered. “And besides, I’m famished.”