by Aldrea Alien
The hound’s head snapped up at the insult. Anger, hot and sharp, stamped itself on his face, warring with the hurt in his eyes. With that unwavering stare locked on Dylan, he unsheathed the old alchemist’s dagger. Only then did his gaze drop. He ran a finger across the blade’s flat surface.
Dylan eyed the weapon, the pounding of his heart no longer purely in anger. At least his death would be a quick one. Only the Seven Sisters knew if those in the tower suffered at the hands of their murderers. The Talfaltaners were rumoured to torture any spellster they captured. Although the sheer population of the tower probably kept such acts to a merciful minimum.
Tracker threw the dagger to the ground. The other blades followed, clanging as they hit each other. His sword came out, its point rammed into the earth with a grunt. He crossed the space between them in long, deliberate strides.
Dylan stepped back, unsure what the hound had in mind. Was the man planning to kill him with his bare hands? He searched Tracker’s face for some sign of what to expect. There was nothing. A perfect neutral mask had fallen over the man’s features.
The hound stopped advancing only when there was nowhere for either of them to go. Dylan’s back was hard against the tree trunk and they stood so close that Dylan felt every one of the hound’s shuddering breaths against his chest.
“What—” Dylan’s tongue was paralysed by the feral determination burning in those honey-coloured eyes.
Tracker grabbed the collar of his robe and, before Dylan could attempt a bid for freedom, pulled him down. Their mouths met, the hound’s hot and insistent.
Dylan’s eyes closed against his will. His stomach twisted and knotted upon itself, unsure what to feel.
Any method at his disposal to ensure that you follow him. His guardian’s words floated up.
No. He wasn’t going to be fooled by this again. He scrabbled at the man’s hands, trying to free himself even as his lips parted of their own accord to move against Tracker’s. It was hard, fighting the urge to melt into the hound’s arms, harder than he’d ever imagined.
Nevertheless, he battered against the butterflies fluttering in his chest until they lay crushed.
Tracker released him with keening reluctance. Old grief tightened his features. His eyes glittered in the low light, full as they were with unshed tears. “Killing spellsters without provocation was never what they taught me.”
Those words were all Dylan needed to choke down the pity churning his stomach. “Tell that to the man whose dagger you now possess.”
“He attacked me.”
Don’t believe a word they say. How could he have been so stupid to fall for such an explanation the first time? Because believing had come with the possibility of more sex? “Of course he did. And I’m sure that’s what the others will say of those in the tower. What you’ll say of me.”
A soft, haunted look dulled the honey-coloured depths of the hound’s gaze. “No,” Tracker whispered, laying a trembling hand on Dylan’s chest. “I would never harm you.”
Tears pricked Dylan’s eyes. He couldn’t believe how close he’d been to justifying deserting the army for Dvärghem. “You sure about that? You don’t want to be the ‘bad dog’, do you?” he spat. “Why risk being ‘put down’?”
Anger glossed over the hurt in the hound’s eyes. Tracker grasped Dylan’s robe, clutching the cloth as if was the only thing keeping the man from throttling him. “You should go with them. Let the others head for Wintervale and go with your people.”
Dylan pulled himself free. “So you’ve a reason to hunt me? I don’t think so. I’m leaving for Wintervale, just as you suggested in the first place. But the only reason I’m going there is to ensure you don’t go after them. After all, I’m powerful,” he hissed, turning the hound’s once flattering words on the man. “I believe you also called me so very dangerous.”
Those honey-coloured eyes grew big and beseeching. “You would not trust me to keep my word not to follow you?”
“You’re damn right I wouldn’t.” He resumed marching towards their camp. I thought… He’d almost believed the women. Stupid.
“Going to Wintervale!” Tracker yelled. “Letting them leash you… It is a death sentence! You know it!”
It was—when had it ever been otherwise?—but what choice did he have?
He never should’ve trusted the hound.
The camp was quiet as he broke through the undergrowth to their little clearing. All three women lingered near the tents. Marin sat right by the fire, tending to the flames, whilst the other two looked to be ready to venture off somewhere.
Dylan slowed. How much had they heard? All of it? Gods. That was all he needed, for more people getting involved in this. At least it wouldn’t be for much longer, even if it was going to be a rough week.
He stalked past them all, glaring at Marin as she threw another of the dry branches on the fire. “I’d be sparse with that wood. If you want more, then you’ll be fetching it yourself.”
“Dylan.” Katarina took a step towards him, halting as he turned his glare on her. “Tracker said you might not be back.”
“Did he?” Dylan snarled, shooting the hound a poisonous look. The man lingered near the edge of their camp, cradling his assortment of weapons in one arm and slowly sheathing them.
“You look dreadful,” the hedgewitch pressed. “What happened?”
“Why don’t you ask him?” He indicated the hound with the thrust of his chin.
Tracker’s shoulders sagged as he finally slid his sword back into its sheath. “I may have neglected to inform our dear spellster of a few facts that—”
“You lied to me,” Dylan growled. He paced the gap between the tents, unable to remain still for long. His fingers flexed, balling and unclenching. Sparks flickered at the tips of his fingers, heat raged around his body whilst the palms of his hands were almost numb from the cold. He struggled to dampen the magic. It had never become this unmanageable before. “I threatened my friends to keep you safe.” Dylan jabbed a finger towards the man and the hound flinched. “I should’ve let her kill you!” He could do it now. Return to his friends and—
He cringed from the thought. His gaze slid to the others. If he killed a hound, even whilst defending himself, the penalty was death. It would only take one person to let slip he’d been with them to set the other hounds on his trail, then they’d never stop hunting him. To keep that from happening, he would have to ensure there was no one left to tell anyone and he wasn’t about to go down that dark road.
“You…” Tracker wrapped his arms around himself. “You are speaking out of anger. You do not actually mean that.”
“Don’t tell me what I mean,” Dylan snarled, the words coming out coarser than expected because the damn man was right. Even knowing he’d been lied to and manipulated, he didn’t have it in him to hurt anyone. He certainly didn’t want Tracker dead.
There was a flash of pink between Tracker’s lips as the man wet them. “I know you are upset I chose to keep secret information you may have found—”
“Distasteful?” he snapped. “The sort that might make me not want to sleep with you? Like maybe deciding to not reveal how the hounds were, in part, responsible for the slaughter of everyone we found the tower?”
“Oh, Dylan,” Katarina breathed. She shot Tracker a glare. “How could you?”
Still sitting by the campfire, Marin gave a deep whistle and shook her head. “That’s pretty low.”
“That is not what happened!” the hound roared. Taking a deep breath, the man visibly sought to control himself. He stared at the ground and continued, speaking in a rush as if afraid the four of them might interrupt at any moment, “Yes, I admit I learnt of what had transpired in the tower from the Talfaltaner we captured and that, when our dear spellster asked me what the man divulged, I chose not to tell him the full extent of what happened.” His brow creased as he lifted his gaze to Dylan. “But it was not for the reason you think. And yes, I gained confirmation of the ma
n’s words from Fetcher when we were at Whitemeadow, but I—”
“You lied!” Dylan screamed back, unable to listen for another second. “Not only did you choose to omit important information from me, you lied about it.”
With his shoulders hunching, Tracker slowly nodded. “I did,” he whispered. “But you did not need to know.”
“I should’ve known not to believe you,” Dylan muttered. He certainly shouldn’t have taken a promise after sex seriously. Sure, the hound likely had every intention of keeping his word to help Dylan hunt down those responsible for the attack… right up until their captive Talfaltaner had told him the truth. He wasn’t going to attack his fellow hounds.
Tracker took a step towards him, one hand raised in supplication. “Dylan…”
He shook his head and increased the distance between them, warning the hound to stay put with a single upraised forefinger. “What makes you think you’ve the right to decide what I should and shouldn’t know?”
The hound halted near the fire. The desire in the man to bridge the remaining space between them vibrated through the very air. “It is my duty to protect you. How was I supposed to do that if you thought you could not trust me?”
His duty. That’s all Dylan had ever been. “Well, maybe someone should tell the rest of your pack what their duty is, because it looks like they were far more interested in slaughtering my kind.”
Authril gently touched his shoulder, following him in his pacing. She eyed the hound with a sort of disgusted smugness, as if she’d been waiting for him to slip up. “How did you find out?” she asked Dylan. “What friends could’ve killed Track?”
He jerked his chin at the forest behind the hound. “A few spellsters escaped the attack.” A culling, that’s what it had been. Rid Demarn of spellsters and those who served them. No better than Obuzan’s twisted magic hunt.
The hedgewitch clasped his arm, halting him. “Others are alive? That’s good news. Isn’t it?”
Dylan nodded. He’d prayed to the gods that someone had managed to avoid the attack, but he hadn’t expected the price. Although he could barely believe it to be true. “One of them, an old friend, found us when we were collecting wood. They said the tower was attacked by people who were unaffected by their magic.” No one had mentioned how many.
What had Tracker said about their numbers? No more than a hundred? That many, even with them all trained to take out desperate spellsters, wouldn’t have been enough to fully destroy the tower. But there’d also been the Talfaltaners. How many of them? Enough. That was all he could be certain of. They would’ve hit the tower like lightning striking a tree.
“Please,” Tracker said. “If you would just allow me to explain. I—”
“You were content to let your toy march itself all the way to Wintervale without a qualm.” All that talk about leaving? That had been nothing more than a test of his loyalty to the crown, to the people who would see him leashed again. One he would’ve failed if Nestria hadn’t spotted them.
“No.” The hound stepped forward, catching himself and rocking back. “I… You are not—” Anguish twisted his face and he resumed striding closer. “That is not how I see you.”
“So I’m not even a thing to you?” Dylan increased the distance between them as fast as Tracker tried to close it. His guardian was right. He’d been far too gullible to believe the man. “I thought I could trust you.” Tears blurred his vision. Dylan blinked them back and, whirling about, stormed off into the bush. It wasn’t ideal, but he wasn’t about to give the hound the satisfaction of seeing him cry.
“Dylan, please. Wait. I—”
He fled, tearing through the dark forest undergrowth without a care as to his direction. As long as he couldn’t hear Tracker, he couldn’t be swayed by the man, couldn’t fall into the same trap of belief.
A scream punctured the air.
Dylan halted. There was no mistaking the hound’s voice or the pain and anger behind the cry. Had they been attacked?
Wiping the tears from his eyes, he peered through the shadows in what he hoped was the direction of the camp. There was no sign of their campfire.
Should he go back? Tracker sounded injured. He might need—
No. Squaring his shoulders, Dylan pressed deeper into the forest. He didn’t care. Not even if the hound was dying. He simply didn’t. He couldn’t.
The anger slowly drained from him as he walked, leaving him wretched and exhausted. He stumbled to the base of a tree, leaning against the trunk and sliding down the rough bark until he sat between the roots. Warm wetness ran down his cheeks. Not tears. At least, that was what he tried to convince himself of. His chest… It shouldn’t have felt like someone had crushed his ribs.
He buried his face in his hands. A bit of fun. That was all the man was, all he had been to Tracker. Losing it shouldn’t feel like a piece of him had been ripped from his soul.
The loud snaps of twigs quickly stifled his sobs. Was that an animal? Or something a little more sinister? Dylan considered throwing up a shield, forsaking the idea in favour of conserving what strength he had left.
“Dylan?” Katarina’s gentle enquiry reached him over the softer rustle of leaves and moss that grew around the tree’s base. Flickering light peeked in through the gaps between his fingers. Then there was the close presence of the hedgewitch.
He dared to peer out from behind his hands. The woman sat next to him, staring out into the forest. She held a small torch aloft. Just how long had she been following him?
“I heard Track scream,” Dylan managed around the lump in his throat. “Is he injured?”
Katarina grimaced. “A little emotionally, perhaps.”
He gnawed on the inside of his cheek, biting hard enough to draw blood. His magic tingled, repairing the damage. How he wished it worked as easily on the pain in his chest.
The hedgewitch shuffled closer, settling on a raised tree root. “I’d a friend,” she said, her voice barely louder than a whisper. “A very dear friend who I shared many close feelings with. We spent months alone exploring distant sites. Sometimes, we’d spend all night cataloguing various items of interest.”
Dylan plucked a stick from the ground and stabbed at the leaves, waiting for the woman to get to the point. Insects scattered from beneath their cover.
A wood-burrowing hopper, about as long as his middle finger and as thick as his thumb, crawled out from beneath a piece of rotting wood. Her gold and dark brown striped body glittered in the torchlight. A sacred being to dwarves.
Eyeing Katarina, he tucked his stick underneath the insect, the spiky legs flailing as he lifted it over the tree’s roots to set it beyond his reach before he returned to wreak further unmerciful havoc on the ground at his feet.
“One day,” Katarina continued, “I woke up and everything—all our gear, the research… her—was gone. I almost died on my return to Dvärghem. What should’ve taken me weeks, took months. The paths were treacherous. I’d no food, no shelter. When I reached Tovehalvön, I learnt she’d risked my life and stolen my means to survive all to take full credit for our findings.”
“I don’t see how—”
She laid a hand on his arm. “I know what it’s like to feel betrayed, Dylan.”
Dylan wiped a cheek dry with his sleeve and ground the stick into the dirt. “It’s not the same.”
“Is it not?” Those warm hazel eyes bored into him, seeking something. “I loved her. I would routinely put my life in her hands, just as she did with hers in mine.”
He tried to swallow the lump in his throat. “I trusted him.” He’d even begun to consider the possibility that he…
Dylan took a deep, shuddering breath. It was best not to think on what he might’ve felt. It was all lies.
Katarina’s fingers gently squeezed his forearm. “That’s the thing about betrayal, it never comes from someone you’d consider as your enemy. I found it quite a bittersweet feeling.”
He closed his eyes and let the stick da
ngle limply from his fingers. The one time he allowed himself to let go, to believe that something other than darkness and pain could come from loving another. Only to be shown he’d been right all along. “What did you do about your friend?”
“I did the only thing I could. I put her out my life as much as I was able. The Coven no longer has us taking expedition work together.”
Dylan whipped his head around. “They still let her go after what she did? What about your research? All that work for no credit?”
She leant back against the tree trunk, waving aside his words as if they were gnats. “Credit isn’t why a hedgewitch does their job. Discovering our artefacts benefits all dvärgar, not just those who discover them. When she betrayed me, she shamed herself and tarnished the good name of hedgewitches everywhere. But she is still good at excavation. It would be a waste of her talents to have her doing anything else.”
“I don’t believe I’ve ever asked what you were looking for before you found me, have I?”
Katarina shook her head. “Do you remember the ruin you were in?”
Dylan nodded. He was pretty sure that perfect square of large grey slabs of stone would be etched in his memory forever. “Some sort of temple?”
“No. The old scriptures are vague on why the ancients did it, but such structures were used to mark off areas where a tree had been burnt and the ground salted. The trees were dangerous in some way.” She shrugged. “It’s probably linked to the old magics we are rumoured to have once possessed.”
“Will you return to it?” He didn’t know how much of the inscription on the outer wall had survived the ambush. Hadn’t really been in the right state of mind to check. Either way, she wouldn’t have studied everything before he’d woken.
Katarina shrugged. “Not me, perhaps. But the Coven will likely send another.” She gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze. “We should head back.”
Dylan nodded. Whilst distancing himself from the others had allowed him to calm down, he couldn’t spend the night out here.
“If you don’t feel up to sharing a tent with him, we can return to Riverton in the morning and procure another.”