Hand of the Hunter: Chosen of Nendawen, Book II (4 page)

“Holy gods,” said Jaden, then turned on his hands and knees and was violently sick.

Hweilan smashed the dead man’s skull twice more then tossed the rock aside.

“What are you doing?” said Mandan, more curious than horrified.

“Retrieving my arrow,” she said. “Can’t cut through bone, so I have to break it out. A good arrow is hard to make, so I’d much rather break a dead man’s skull than my arrow.”

She pulled the arrow out of the broken wreck of the dead Nar’s head and proceeded to clean it on his clothes. Once satisfied, she slid it back into the quiver on her back, then walked over to the corpse holding her arrow in his chest. She looked down, and Darric heard her murmur, “Damn. Going to ruin the fletching.”

She kneeled, turned the corpse on its side and grasped the haft of the arrow where it was protruding from the Nar’s back. Holding it in a firm grip, she twisted and pulled, dragging the fletching through the chest cavity. It emerged bloody and featherless.

“I don’t know anyone named Darric,” she said as she used the dead man’s clothes to clean the arrow.

“If you are Hweilan of Highwatch,” Darric said, “daughter of Ardan and Merah, granddaughter of Vandalar, High Warden, then you do know me.”

She looked at him. When he’d first seen those eyes, he’d seen a feral glee in them. There was no glee now. Just pure ferocity. More like an animal’s eyes than a woman’s. Darric could not look away. His mouth opened and shut once, then again, but he could not think of a thing to say.

“Tell me how you know those names,” she said.

Silence held them for a long time, the only sound that of the fire.

Mandan spoke up at last, “Forgive my brother’s lack of eloquence. He is indeed Darric, heir of Duke Vittamar of Soravia, and he has come—”

“We heard of Highwatch.” Darric found his voice at last. He gave Valsun and Mandan a sharp look, hoping they saw it and divined its meaning. “That it had fallen. To Nar. No one believed it, of course. But when our messenger hawks did not return … we came to find the truth for ourselves, and offer what aid we could.”

Mandan smirked and said, “
He
came to find you.”

“Be silent, Brother!”

Hweilan looked at Mandan. And Darric saw it—her nostrils widened as she scented the air, and then her eyes narrowed ever so slightly. She studied Mandan a moment, then looked back at Darric. He could see her considering, and he thought—

She knows. I don’t know how, but she knows. I’d bet my inheritance on it.

“Brother?” she said at last and looked at Darric.

Mandan tensed and raised his club. A moment later, Darric saw why.

The wolf padded out of the darkness, silent as a ghost. In the dim torchlight, Darric could not tell if it was white or a very pale gray, but he was quite certain that the dark wetness staining its muzzle almost up to its eyes was blood.

“Beware!” said Mandan. He ran forward, grabbed Hweilan, and tried to pull her behind him.

Instead, the woman twisted in his grasp, used Mandan’s own weight and momentum against him, and the much-bigger man found himself flat on his back, looking up at the woman and the wolf, who stood calmly beside her, licking the blood from his muzzle.

“Darric of Soravia,” said the woman, and she looked around at the others, “and company, meet Uncle.”

Darric could take no more, so he said, “Hweilan, what in the Hells happened to you?”

T
HE
F
EYWILD

C
HAPTER
TWO

O
H, NO
.”

The small figure scrambled and slid down the slope. The dark did not bother him, and the thick canopy of the forest held back the worst of the rain. But the runoff flowing down the hill made footing treacherous and swelled the already swift valley stream well past its banks.

The body lay half in the stream—her legs on the bank, her hips and everything above them all the way in the water. The current undulated her hair, and her left hand bobbed and waved in the current. At least she was on her back, her face just out of the water. That was some small mercy. But her eyes …

Her eyes were open to the storm. Sightless. Water dripping off the branches rained down on her, some of it right into her empty gaze, and she didn’t blink. Didn’t even flinch.

“Dead,” he said as he dropped his staff in the mud and jumped into the water. “Still the bells and sod the Hells. Oh, gods she’s dead and he’ll kill-me-kill-me-kill-me.”

He dropped to his knees, lifted her head out of the water, and cradled it in his lap. She was shivering.

All breath left him in one long hiss. Alive! She was alive!

He patted her cheek, softly at first, then once with a hard smack. Nothing. He shook her. “Hey! Hey, girl!”

Lightning flickered overhead, but only nail-thin shafts of light made it through the thick canopy of trees. Thunder washed over the valley, shaking the stones in the river. The rain, an endless rattle on the leaves, became a torrent, a roar. The swell of the river quickened. She’d be underwater soon.

He scrambled out of the stream. The girl was wearing fur-lined boots, suitable for a much colder place than this. Braided leather laces bound them up to her knees. He worked his fingers under the laces, planted both feet in the ground, and pulled. She moved, perhaps an inch. Then two more. A relieved smile creased his face.

Then both his feet skidded out from under him and he went down, mud and water slipping into his clothes.

He sat up, spat water and grit, and let loose with a long litany of curses.

Water was coming right off the hillside into the stream, and his fall had opened a nice little rivulet so that water was flowing over the girl. He leaped back into the stream and lifted her head out of the water. She made a choking noise then coughed. He looked at her, saw her eyes blink once—knew that in the darkness there was no way she could see a damned thing—and had time to say, “Are y—?”

The girl screamed and surged upward—

The horror had not passed. But it had retreated. No longer ripping and tearing through her mind, it had pulled back to—

Watch. Watch and wait. For now
.

She fought to get back to light and breath and sound. But the darkness would not let her. More than the absence of light. This darkness had weight. Presence. And worst of all, a will
.

“
… he’ll kill-me-kill-me-kill …”

A small voice. Not weak, but far away, as if she lay at the bottom of a well, listening to voices far above
.

“
Hey! Hey, girl!”

Something broke through the darkness. Not pain exactly. A jarring sensation. It seemed that she lay still, but the world shifted around her
.

Cold. A wet cold was the first sensation to break through. Water, flooding in, choking her. She drew in breath to scream, and the water poured down her throat
.

All her senses snapped back, and the darkness disintegrated like the bursting of a bubble
.

Night. Dark, yes, but not that other presence that had tried to consume her. This darkness held no weight. An incessant roar filled the air. Rain. Storm. And all around her—washing over her—water, water, and more water. All the world had become a cold, lightless wet.

But a little of the darkness before her had a solidness to it. Then it spoke.

“Are y—?”

Instinctively, she screamed and lashed out. Her arm came around, and the back of one fist connected with flesh and bone. The figure fell back and the river swallowed it.

She ran. Her clothes were sodden, heavy, and they pulled at her. Her boot slipped in the mud, she went down in a splash, then came up again. She made it perhaps half-a-dozen steps, but then her boots sank into the muck. Momentum carried her upper half forward, and when her hands thrust out to break her fall, they too sank up to her wrists. She pulled, but the ground pulled back, yanking her until she was up to her elbows in mud.

She screamed, and only then did she realize she could see. Green light lit the wood around her. Where—?

The ground heaved, encasing her up to her chest, lifting her, and turning her around. For a moment, she thought she’d been caught in a mudslide brought on by the storm, but then she saw the figure standing at the water’s edge.

Only a little over half her height had he been standing upright, he was made smaller still by his hunched posture. His right hand held a staff longer than he was tall. It twinkled with tiny lights in a hundred shades of green—sparks cast by dozens upon dozens of tiny amulets, coins, bits of chain,
and random scraps of metal that tinkled with even the slightest movement. He held his other hand beside his face, and she could see his fingers working in intricate patterns. More light shone from there. Patterns—runes, most sharp edged—decorated his skin, and each of them blazed with an emerald fire.

She screamed.

The mud encasing her surged forward in a wave, then stopped and settled so that she was only a few feet from the small person.

“Be silent,” he said.

The mud pressed on her. She couldn’t move her arms, and the weight of it made breathing an effort.

“My name is Gleed,” said the figure. “I just saved your life. The Master has sent you to me. Your name is Meyla. It means ‘little girl’ in my mother’s tongue, for that is what you are—an ignorant little girl—until I say differently. Until you
prove
differently. Understand, Meyla?”

Rain and grit was streaming into her eyes, but she could not wipe them away.

“My name … is Hweilan.”

His eyes widened and he took in a sharp breath. She had never seen a creature like this before. Small as a five-year-old child and scrawny as an old man. But even a fool could see he was shocked. Stunned.

“What did you say?” he said.

“My name”—she fought to get enough breath into her lungs—“Huh-Hweilan!”

He blinked twice, and the fingers of his left hand stopped their intricate motions. The lights decorating his skin and staff dimmed, but they did not go out. She felt the mud around her loosen, and a great deal of it sloughed off into the river, washing over the little creature’s feet. Then his eyes narrowed, part suspicion and part curiosity.