The Hunter's Kind: Book II of The Hollow Gods

by Rebecca Levene

  He remembered in a moment of terror the burns on the Hunter’s foot from treading on that metal and he found that he could run full tilt after all. But when he fell to his knees beside Drut he saw no charring or blisters or any other wound. And when he took off his mitten and held his mutilated hand in front of her mouth, the soft warmth of her breath brushed it. He pulled her into his arms and sobbed, more relieved than he knew how to feel.

  She didn’t wake, and after a while he calmed himself and looked at the wolves, who were sitting in a patient ring around him. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You saved her life, but you can go now – I don’t need you no more.’

  He thought they might disobey him, that the Hunter might have told them to keep their keen eyes on him. But one by one they turned and loped away, the one that had found Drut for him pausing only to lick her face before running off.

  She wasn’t light with the baby inside her. He felt his back strain as he lifted her and his boots sank deeply into the snow with each step. He’d never have been able to carry her back to Salvation, but that wasn’t where he was going. The entrance to the city below was only fifty paces away and he made himself stagger forward, one step at a time, until he reached it.

  Descending the stairs was easier and when he reached the bottom, he found the worm men waiting for him. A part of him had known he would. Drut had lain on the moon’s metal and not been harmed by it. She’d been drawn to that place. Maybe it was the child inside her or maybe it was some change in her own nature, but she wasn’t purely a creature of the sun any longer. ‘Can you carry her for me?’ he asked, and the worm men reached out their grey, spindly arms and took her.

  It was another very long walk but Eric hardly minded. He felt as light as air. The worm men carried Drut to the end of the tunnel and beyond, through the dark streets of the buried city. They didn’t stop until they came to the room they’d shown him before, the one painted with pictures of a woman who looked like the Hunter. He reckoned that was a good choice: somewhere Drut could feel at home.

  ‘You can leave us here,’ he said to the worm men. ‘And listen, mates, can you keep out of sight? I ain’t saying you ain’t pretty, but you take a bit of getting used to. Better if Drut just sees me when she wakes.’

  They didn’t seem offended by this. Their moon-silver eyes blinked at him and one of them pointed at a doorway near the back of the room he hadn’t noticed before, then all of them slid out, back into the silent streets of their dead city.

  Drut wasn’t showing any signs of waking. Eric took off his furs to make a bed for her, leaving his skin goosepimpled, and then tried the door the worm men had shown him. Behind it he found a room with a bath and a few other odd contraptions. He thought the tall pot with the tube snaking out of it might be meant for pissing in, but the things attached to the wall that looked like a twist of intestines served no purpose he could work out.

  The bath seemed useless too without water to fill it, but when he leaned against one of the metal knobs on its top that he’d taken for ornaments, a jet of water spurted out. There was one on the other side too and, when he cautiously turned it, the water that came out was hot. As steam clouded the room, he found a plug and let the bath fill.

  It was difficult to get Drut out of her clothes, but he knew warmth was what she needed. Her flesh was like marble to his touch. There was none of the black sickness that had taken his fingers after his foray into the snow, but who knew what invisible damage she’d done to herself or to his child.

  Her eyes flickered behind their lids as he lifted her up, and when he eased her into the water she sighed, though her eyes still didn’t open. There was no washcloth or soap in the room, but he tore off a corner of his jacket and used it to wipe down her face and arms. Colour flowed back into her with each brush of the cloth, turning her skin from a sickly yellow white to its natural glowing gold.

  She really was beautiful. She might not have the right equipment to set him aflame, but he could appreciate the smooth perfection of her skin and the elegant line of her bones. If he hadn’t been a molly, he could have lusted after her. If he wasn’t a molly, he’d be lucky to have her – and maybe he still was.

  It was only as he looked up from washing down her feet that he realised her eyes were open. ‘Eric?’ she said. Her voice was whisper-light and when she lifted a hand towards him, its fingers shook.

  He took it in his own and clasped it tightly. ‘You’re all right, Drut. I got you.’

  ‘Am I dead?’

  ‘Course you ain’t. I wasn’t going to let anything happen to you, was I?’

  ‘Why not?’ She stared at him, puzzled and a little blurry, like a woman who’d just woken from a long sleep.

  He looked into her sun-gold eyes and knew that this answer mattered; that if he said the wrong thing, one day soon she’d be walking right back into the snow. And he saw that she’d know if he lied. All those weeks he’d spent courting her, he’d thought he was the one in control, doing what he wanted and getting what he wanted, but that sort of thing never went one way. As he was learning her likes and dislikes, all the things he might do to please and win her, she’d been learning the same things about him.

  ‘Because I love you, you silly girl,’ he said, and knew that it was true. It might not be the love he’d felt for Lahiru; there wasn’t any passion in it, but there was tenderness and a fondness that had made his heart ache when he’d thought he might lose her.

  She was crying, though he thought they were happy tears. He wiped them away with his fingers and kissed her on her lips.

  ‘Where are we?’ she asked as he leaned back.

  ‘We’re in the city beneath. I brought you in from the ice. You can’t go back to Salvation, but I can take care of you here. There’s water and it’s warm enough. I can pinch food for you until the baby comes and then we’ll go away together, just you and me.’

  It wasn’t the future he’d wanted for himself, but it was better than the present and he thought he could make something of it. If he had a few men on the side what would it matter, as long as he cared for her and his child?

  ‘Leave Salvation?’ There was more wonder than dread in her voice. When he nodded, she smiled and said, ‘I’ll go anywhere as long as it’s with you.’

  He reached his arm round her to hug her to his chest. He thought of telling her what her baby would be, but it didn’t seem like the time. They had weeks yet for him to break it to her gently. ‘I’m gonna take good care of you,’ he told her. ‘We’re going to be all right together, you and me. I promise.’

  31

  The New Misa had run broad and sluggish and brown when they first set sail. Sang Ki looked at the water beneath the ship’s bow, so lively it was more white than blue, and wished it had stayed that way.

  ‘Don’t worry, fat man, my ships can take it,’ Little Cousin said. The man’s eyes – always bright, always in motion – darted between him and the water.

  ‘Perhaps the ships can. My stomach is faring somewhat less well.’ He’d vomited with wearying regularity since their army’s embarkation onto the Ahn trader’s fleet. The nausea distracted him from the ceaseless pain in his back, though it was hardly much consolation. He understood the logic of using this method to bridge the distance between his and Cwen’s forces and King Nayan’s own, but he didn’t much enjoy the reality of it.

  ‘I can slow down,’ Little Cousin said, ‘but it’s you who told me the journey was urgent.’

  ‘And so it is.’ Sang Ki turned from the rail to study the other man. It struck him anew, as it did every time, how very short Little Cousin was. He couldn’t have topped five feet. ‘We carry a message for the King of Ashanesland. Kings, on the whole, don’t like to be kept waiting.’

  ‘And you’re quite sure you’ll find him here, this Ashane monarch, travelling our plains?’

  ‘Following the New Misa from its roots in the mountains to its spreading branches in Rah lands. So I’ve been told by the man who summoned him there.’
>
  ‘Well, good then,’ Little Cousin said. ‘And even if your voyage never finds him, it’s brought us into each other’s company, not so? So the time hasn’t been wasted.’

  Sang Ki was surprised to find himself in agreement. The captain of the Misa’s Master had often kept him company below decks in the first and more nauseating days of the journey, when the ship was lurching on the tides of the river’s estuary and he thought that he might never eat again. On the other hand, after the one time he’d thrown up on her boots, Cwen had stayed on her own ship.

  Little Cousin hadn’t seemed to mind. He’d brought Sang Ki history books, from a collection that wouldn’t have disgraced an Ashane shiplord. It was strange to find a fellow enthusiast so far from home and in so odd a shape. The fables said Jaspal the Raven had sometimes taken human form. Sang Ki thought he must have looked much like Little Cousin: small, neat and dark-haired, mind and body constantly in motion, face round and eyes alert.

  The ship, he had to admit, wasn’t a bad boat. Uin had recommended this as the fastest way to reach King Nayan, once Sang Ki had dragged the man away from Cwen’s torturer. The dragging had been a little drama he’d arranged with Cwen herself, but the Rah man didn’t know it and he’d been most forthcoming with information on how to locate the Ashane king to the man he believed had rescued him. Besides, now Uin could tell Nayan the location of his son he clearly thought he had something to bargain with. He was probably right. Uin thought the Ashane king would lend him troops to win back his land and that might even be true as well. Nayan would be very grateful indeed to the person who helped him locate his son. Sang Ki was relying on it.

  And so here he was, enduring the discomforts of a journey that sometimes felt endless. At least he was making it in the greatest comfort circumstances allowed and in the best company. The Water Ahn ran all the trade along the great river, and Little Cousin was the foremost among the tribe’s merchant captains, while the Misa’s Master was the foremost among his ships.

  The wind was in the wrong quarter and its sails were furled, but the great banks of oars still pulled it through the water at an impressive pace. The men stood two to an oar, sweating and singing as they pulled. Sang Ki found the songs tuneless yet oddly soothing. Elsewhere, women worked the decks and climbed in the nest of wood and lines above. The nearest sat cross-legged at his feet, coiling ropes into neat piles. His eye was drawn to her skirts, where embroidered snowflakes sparkled.

  ‘Ho there, Songbird – you have an admirer,’ Little Cousin said, good-humoured despite the fact the woman was his wife. Most of them seemed to be. The man claimed to have thirty-four.

  ‘Your lady is admirable, to be sure, but it was her clothing that caught my eye. That’s a Chung design, is it not?’

  The woman shifted so her broad back was to Sang Ki and her face hidden.

  ‘I apologise,’ he said, ‘if the question was improper.’

  Little Cousin watched her, his expression grave, but he was smiling again when he turned back to Sang Ki. ‘There are no bad questions, only bad answers, not so? The clothes are Chung, you’re right, and so is she. All of my wives are and a good dozen in my crew.’

  Sang Ki studied the men labouring at the oars, but the people of the tribes looked much of a muchness without their clothes or accents or customs to distinguish them. ‘The Brotherband …’ he said cautiously, and saw the woman’s back stiffen.

  ‘The Brotherband aren’t the Chung, any more than the decay in a rotten apple is the apple itself. Not all the tribe followed Chung Yong, how could you think it? No rule is absolute, as history teaches. Did the reign of the despotic Carrion Kings not end? And that bloody-handed bastard Yong didn’t leave my wives much choice. Knife women have no place in the Brotherband.’

  ‘Knife women?’ Sang Ki looked down at Songbird, then across the deck. He supposed it was possible. They seemed pretty and ugly in the same proportion as any group might, but perhaps they were a little taller than the average; every single one of them towered over her husband. ‘So you took them in when their own people cast them out.’

  ‘Or they took me on, I’m sure that’s what they’d tell you, those that made it out alive. It was a brutal time. The New Misa ran red with blood that year, and all my ships carried as many swords as oars. But I like women. Who doesn’t? If a man can afford a hundred wives he’ll have them, every man on the plains, don’t tell me it isn’t true.’

  Sang Ki strongly suspected it wasn’t, but thought it best not to say so. ‘Are all your wives knife women then?’

  Little Cousin frowned at him, looking for the first time a little offended. Then he clapped Sang Ki on his belly, laughing as it wobbled. ‘Ah, you Seonu have your own ways, but a woman’s a woman no matter what she’s born with down below and I’ve married myself some of the finest. My first wife was different, of course. She bore us twelve children, nine still living. She’s gone too, died in the fighting when the Brotherband first formed, but I’ve found thirty-three good mothers to raise her daughters and sons. The oldest captain their own ships now, carrying the rest of your army. Only three underfoot on the Misa’s Master these days.’ His eyes suddenly snapped away, sharpening. ‘Ho there, Horsehide – there’s mudflats up ahead, are you blind? Steer left. Left!’

  He dashed to the wheel, leaving Sang Ki to sweep his eyes over the ship. The burnt woman had emerged from below decks. She leaned against the rail, watching him, her face unreadable beneath its mask of scars. All around her, the Chung men and women worked.

  As he’d hunted the Brotherband it had been easy to think of them as beasts. Here, among their sisters and brothers, he was reminded that they had been men, and his actions had killed them. The river sang as it danced beneath the ship, rushing them onward, faster than he liked.

  His presence had brought fire to Smiler’s Fair and slaughter to the Moon Forest. He’d never been much of a traveller, but he’d always wanted to visit Mirror Town, where so much know-ledge and history lived. Now he would, but it wouldn’t be to read. When he told his tale to King Nayan, the Ashane army would be turned south, into the Silent Sands. They’d march through the desert and bring war to another people, and Sang Ki wasn’t certain how much he should feel responsible for it.

  The next morning, he woke to a quieter ship. It was the first time his stomach had begun the day without emptying its contents. He waited for his breakfast to arrive in the cramped cabin he shared with his mother, savouring the return of his appetite; he’d almost forgotten that food was something he enjoyed.

  He’d barely taken a bite of the fried fish when Little Cousin’s round face peered through his doorway.

  His mother frowned – she seemed to find the Ahn man’s garrulousness offensive – so Sang Ki smiled for both of them.

  ‘You’re feeling better,’ Little Cousin said.

  ‘Your boat is better behaved today.’

  ‘Misa’s Master is always obedient – it’s the water that’s not under my command. But it’s smooth here and the wind’s brisk; we’ll be at the lake within the hour.’ He said it as if he thought Sang Ki should know what he meant. No doubt his expression conveyed that he didn’t, because the other man added, ‘Mideulle Lake.’

  ‘Miduelle Lake.’ The name was familiar. Sang Ki snapped his fingers as recollection came. ‘Miduelle Lake, of course: the watery grave of the Lost City. The home of the losers in the great war that emptied these lands before our peoples came to them. Victims of a goddess’s wrath, or so the legends tell us.’

  ‘Exactly so! But not so lost a place as it once was. No, not quite so lost.’ Little Cousin grinned, a man with a secret.

  ‘You’ve entered the city? Have you emptied the lake?’

  The trader’s smile widened and he left without replying.

  Sang Ki followed, unable to resist. The Lost City was that most precious thing, a remnant of the mysterious civilisation that had inhabited this continent before the Ashane came to it, and been destroyed in the war between the sun and the moon
. The last war between them.

  Little Cousin was waiting for him at the prow of the ship as it clove the river into white peaks. The lake was already in sight, huge and dark-watered. Water lilies fringed its shores but their leaves were withered and their flowers drooping. Birds hovered over the beach that slipped past on the ship’s left side as it entered the lake proper, but none ventured over the water itself. They travelled in an eerie silence and through an improbable scent of burning that brought back unpleasant memories of the demise of Smiler’s Fair.

  ‘Look down,’ Little Cousin said.

  From afar, the water had seemed murky; from above it was almost transparent and the city startlingly clear below its surface. It had been drowned centuries past but neither water nor time seemed to have eroded it. The ship dropped its anchor above some drowned hill. Twisted spires thrust up from domes only a score of feet below and beyond them other shapes marched down into darkness. It was impossible to tell how far the rest of the city stretched. Something about the place unsettled Sang Ki and he soon realised why: there were no right angles here, not a single square or rectangle. His mother, who had spent her girlhood in round hide tents, might have found the place familiar. To the child of a shipfort it seemed all wrong.

  ‘This is quite astonishing,’ Sang Ki said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Oh, this any traveller can see. For this I wouldn’t have woken you.’

  ‘There’s more?’

  ‘Of course, and we’ll be the first to see it – the very first. What do you say to that now?’

  ‘I say I’ve a body more suited to floating than diving, if that’s what you had in mind.’

  ‘Ha! Well, you won’t need to worry about that. It won’t be you who’s doing the diving, fat man. Come. See!’

  The Ahn’s excitement was so palpable his body seemed to quiver with it. Sang Ki followed him back from the bow of the ship, experiencing a jittery sensation that might have been excitement too, but was more probably trepidation. He trusted Little Cousin as much as one could trust a near stranger, but he didn’t quite trust his smile.