Read Trinity Rising: Book Two of the Wild Hunt (Wild Hunt Trilogy 2) Online
Authors: Elspeth Cooper
‘Anyway,’ said the other. A raw-boned, rather angular creature, she had weathered skin and coarse black hair cut in a practical crop. Without any apparent effort, she hauled Teia’s heavy saddlebags closer. ‘Your bits of things are here. Baer said to take the provisions for the group. I’m sorry.’
Both women looked apologetic. Now that Teia’s vision was clearing she could see how pinched and tired their faces were. Perhaps that explained the others’ indifference: they were too beaten down to manage a thought for anyone but themselves.
‘That’s all right, I understand. When there’s little enough to go around, everyone should share. But where is Finn, my horse? Please.’
‘Over there.’ The woman pointed. Teia glimpsed a broad dun back in the shadows beyond a couple of scrubby ponies.
Teia felt suddenly weak with relief. She would never have forgiven herself if any harm had come to him, especially after he’d tried to save her. ‘Can you tell me what happened? And what are your names?’
The younger of the two women smiled shyly. ‘I’m Lenna. That’s Neve.’ She turned her head towards the older woman and the firelight gleamed on a poorly healed scar on her cheek, still angry and new. ‘Baer was leading the hunters back to camp when he found tracks in the snow. A bit further on, he saw a horse standing over someone on the ground, and it were you. You’d hit your head on a rock. Half-hour more and you’d both have died out there, he reckons.’
The other woman, Gerna, had mentioned this man Baer. ‘Is he your leader? Your chief?’
‘We don’t have no chief,’ said Neve. ‘We don’t have no clan.’ Her lips thinned, then her face softened a bit, the tight lines easing. ‘But yes, my man’s the closest to a leader we’ve got.’
‘Lost Ones.’ Teia felt dizzy again.
‘Aye, right enough.’ Neve said it with a brisk pride that dared Teia to make mock of her. ‘What are you doing out here in the cold, getting so near your time?’
Teia touched the bandage again. ‘I questioned the Speaker to her face. I stood against her, before the entire clan.’
‘And she sent you away.’ Neve nodded, as if that was all they needed to know about how Teia had ended up there. ‘I’ll find you something hot to eat.’
She pushed herself to her feet and wove through the others to the fire, sparing a scornful glance for someone on the way, probably the luckless Gerna.
Lenna moved closer and Teia saw she also was pregnant, the size of her belly unmistakable even through layers of bulky clothing. Her age was more apparent, too: about the same as Teia’s.
‘Don’t you have no man to care for you?’ Lenna asked softly. ‘No family?’
‘No. I dishonoured my family when I left. I’m no longer welcome amongst the Crainnh.’
Lenna lowered her eyes. ‘We don’t speak our clan names here. Baer says it’s better to leave it all behind, make new lives, not mourn what we’ve lost.’
‘Baer sounds wise,’ said Teia. ‘Is he here?’
‘Outside, making sure no one followed you. We’ve little enough without folk trying to take it from us.’
She rubbed absently at the edge of the scar on her cheek and Teia guessed she’d earned it when someone had tried to rob her of whatever possessions she had. Other Lost Ones, most likely. ‘Does that hurt?’ she asked.
Abashed, Lenna snatched her hand to her lap and ducked her head, so that her dark hair hid the mark. ‘Sometimes. A bit.’
‘Let me see.’
Without thinking Teia spun a light and reached to turn Lenna’s face towards it, but the girl blinked and scrambled backwards on her rump, eyes popping like a field mouse’s.
‘You didn’t say you was no Speaker!’
‘I’m only an apprentice.’ Teia held out her hand. ‘I won’t hurt you, Lenna. It’s just a light.’
The girl was not convinced and shrank back further, hugging her unborn child protectively.
‘I only want to help – look, I have a salve . . .’ She opened her saddlebag and began rooting for her simples, but Lenna shook her head, darting fearful glances at the little globe. Teia let it go and closed her bags again. Whatever trust she’d begun to forge with the girl had been shattered – the wide-eyed stare said she expected Teia to transform into a monster at any moment.
A tense, silent minute later Neve returned with some soup – thin and not particularly good, but it was hot – and Teia felt better for eating it. Strengthened, she made her way unsteadily across the cave to check on Finn.
He looked happy enough; he’d been rubbed down properly after his soaking in the river and his saddle blanket was still spread out over a rock near the fire to dry. Teia stroked his nose, and apologised again for not trusting him. Looking back to where she’d left her bags she saw Lenna whispering with Neve, and guessed they were talking about her and the light she’d made. She tried to ignore the occasional stares from the younger woman that slid her way like knives.
Over by the horses the firelight was in her favour and she could see the Lost Ones more clearly: men and women old before their time, faces hardened and closed. They were frightened, she realised, all of them: frightened of starving, frightened of being alone, or being robbed by others like themselves who perhaps had even less than they did. She and Lenna appeared to be the youngest. There were no children – exile was a hard place to raise a child. She touched her swollen belly briefly. Soon there would be two.
Someone whistled sharply and an answering trill came from outside. Three figures trooped in from the cold, kicking snow from their buskins and shrugging off bows and quivers. One was a gangling boy of maybe fourteen summers, hiding his youth under a fuzzy, uneven beard. After him came a lad no more than five or six years older, with the broad face and sturdy, close-coupled build of a prize ram, crowned with shaggy brown curls well in need of shearing. He went straight across the cave to Lenna, who scurried into his arms.
The third man was past his prime but still hard of face and limb, with a sinewy toughness like sun-dried meat. Sharp eyes flicked around the cave and found Teia standing by the horses. He strode over, shaking snow from a long iron-grey braid.
‘You must be Baer,’ she said.
‘That I am.’ He rested his bow on his shoulder and assessed her from bandaged head to burgeoning belly, gaze lingering on her cheek and the absence of a wedding tattoo. ‘I suggest you go home, girl. This is no life, no matter what you’re running from.’
‘I’m not running.’ He snorted and Teia bristled. ‘I’m travelling. South through the mountains.’
‘In winter? And had you thought about how you’d keep yourself when your stores ran out?’
‘I have my own bow. I can hunt as well as any man,’ she said hotly.
‘With that belly?’ Baer barked a laugh. ‘Aye, after you’ve pupped, mebbe! Swallow your pride and go back to your mother, girl. For your babe’s sake, if not for your own.’
Angry now, Teia straightened up and stood as tall as she could. ‘I can take care of myself. I’ll be gone at first light, then I’ll trouble you no longer.’
She pushed past him, heading back towards her bags. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Lenna with her man, heads together, the girl’s hands talking as eloquently as any words. They both fell silent and stared as she passed.
How dare he presume to judge her? How
dare
he! He knew nothing about her, nothing about what she’d seen.
Kneeling, she emptied her saddlebags to see what else she might have lost when her provisions were taken, but everything appeared to be there, if hopelessly disordered. Anger sour in her stomach and her head still pounding, she began folding the spare clothes and her blankets and jamming them back into the bags. After a few minutes she heard footsteps approaching, but didn’t look up.
‘You’ve got a spark about you, girl,’ said Baer from behind her. She ignored him, starting on the other bag. ‘Not many who find us are so proud.’
‘My pride is about all I’ve got left,’ she snapped. ‘Give me my provisions back. I’ve a long way to go.’
‘You’re not going anywhere. It’s the middle of winter.’
She flung her sealskin jerkin to the ground and stood up to round on him. ‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ She was shouting, but she couldn’t seem to bring her voice down, even as the rest of the group’s stares sharpened with hostility. ‘I have to do this, Baer. I’m cold and I’m tired and I’ve no idea how far I have to go but I
have
to do this, and Macha as my witness, you’ll not stop me. Now, will you return my provisions or do I have to steal them as I leave?’
He stared at her, face carved from granite, then lashed out with the flat of his hand. In a blink Teia had reached for the restless magic inside her and Baer’s palm rebounded off something invisible but very solid. For all he tried hard to hide it, she saw him wince.
‘So it’s true,’ he said, rubbing his hands together.
‘So what’s true?’ She let her weave unravel and knelt down again to continue packing her bags.
‘That you have powers. Lenna told Isaak you made a light out of plain air, right in front of her.’
‘I wanted to see her face more clearly. I thought I could do something to heal her wound.’
‘You know healing?’
‘A little. Herbs that harm, herbs that cure.’
He grunted. ‘None of the other bands has a Speaker.’
‘I’m only an apprentice. Besides, I’m not staying.’
‘Your gifts would be very valuable to us.’
‘And what would you do with them, eh? Make war on the others? No.’ She shook her head and immediately regretted it when the pain made her queasy. She pressed her hand to her stomach: Neve’s soup was not sitting well.
Baer hunkered down nearby. ‘You could help keep us safe.’
Teia fastened the last buckle and sat back on her heels. One side of Baer’s face was in shadow, the other carved into hard lines by the firelight.
‘There is something I have to do,’ she said tiredly. ‘The fate of my clan rests on it – maybe of all the clans. I have the foretelling, Baer. I have seen it.’
‘Seen what?’
‘Slaughter. Bloodshed. The Wild Hunt riding loose across the plains.’ She pushed her saddlebags away, suddenly too exhausted to mistrust him. Even the Lost Ones deserved a warning.
‘Let the clans deal with it. If they have brought this doom down upon themselves, it’s no concern of ours. They made that clear when they sent each of us into exile.’
‘No, Baer, listen to me. It will be a disaster. No clan is safe, no people are safe – not even exiles. If you have any care for these folk, lead them south through the mountains. Get as far away as possible.’
His lips twisted. ‘Into the Empire.’
‘Their iron men withstood the Hunt once before. They can do it again.’
‘You are sure of what you saw? The Hunt . . .’ Baer shook his head, disbelieving. ‘The Hunt is a campfire story to frighten children. If you stay amongst the Lost Ones you’ll learn there is worse to fear than bogles and hobgoblins. Like your fellow man.’ He turned and spat. ‘Ten years,’ he said bitterly. ‘Ten long winters skulking in these hills like a jackal, unable to ride the plains of my ancestors. Now you suggest I run to the Empire because the Hunt is coming? You ask too much, girl.’ He levered himself to his feet.
Ytha had belittled her, called her
child
too many times to stand for it from a man who knew nothing about her. Her head aching and her patience about at an end, Teia stood and advanced on Baer, so close that he took a half-step back out of sheer surprise.
‘My name,’ she said, ‘is Teia. And yes, I am sure of what I saw. I witnessed the summoning. I saw Maegern appear in the fire and I heard Her speak. Ytha, Speaker of the Crainnh, means to summon the Hunt and use it to reclaim the lands lost by Gwlach, but she’ll never bend the Raven to her will. Once She’s free, Maegern will bow to no one. This I have seen.’
With both hands she dragged open the layers of clothes at her neck. The claw-marks had barely faded, blue as tattoos across the upper slopes of her breasts. Baer’s stone-black eyes widened.
‘Her Hound marked me, Baer. I speak truth. Make of it what you will.’
Then she strode past him, out towards the cave-mouth. Her head was pounding so fiercely she could scarcely see straight. The firelight was too bright and the shadows too velvety-dark to make out the faces that turned towards her as she passed through a sea of whispers that ebbed and flowed around her.
Sourness climbed her throat. She swallowed it down but that wasn’t enough. Falling to her knees in the blown snow at the entrance to the cave, she vomited up the soup she’d eaten in a stinging, stinking gush. The child squirmed.
Oh, Macha, make me a stone
, she prayed.
Make me a stone that cannot feel, that cannot weep
.
She shut her eyes, but images from her foretelling stalked across her vision, stark and bloody as ever. The night wind touched her face with frigid fingers and sighed away into the dark. Bitter saliva flooded her mouth. Stomach cramping violently, she bent over to vomit again and as she retched she felt a hand on her back, another scooping her hair out of the way.
‘There, lass.’ Neve’s voice, gruffly soothing. ‘There now.’
A cup of water was offered and Teia groped for it to rinse out her mouth. Neve wrapped a blanket around her shoulders; she let the older woman lead her back into the camp and lie her down, wipe her face with a damp washcloth as she clutched the blanket under her chin and shivered as if she had the killing ague. She was cold, so cold. She pulled her knees up as close to her chest as she could and closed her eyes against the sick throbbing in her head.
Why had she tried to convince Baer? She could have stolen back her provisions and left with the dawn. There was no time to waste. Ytha wouldn’t be sitting idle, she could be sure of that, not with two Hounds at her heels and the scent of victory in her nostrils.
Teia let her head fall forwards, burying her face in the blanket. Macha’s ears, why had she ever thought this would work?