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

by Rebecca Levene

  Krishanjit was also watching the man on the pillar. When he looked away, his gaze sought the burnt woman rather than Sang Ki. ‘That’s Marvan of Fell’s End. But you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Marvan of the Drovers?’ the burnt woman asked. ‘What’s he doing here?’

  Krishanjit’s smile was twisted. ‘He was following me. But if you mean what is he doing stuck on top of a pillar, I didn’t want to leave him free – not after he tried to kill me. Him and you together.’

  ‘I don’t know who you think I am,’ the burnt woman said, ‘but I’ve never met you before. I’ve never tried to kill anyone.’

  ‘I’m afraid you won’t get any other answer out of her,’ Sang Ki said. ‘She claims to be Mahvesh, formerly of the company of Fine Fellows.’

  ‘And is she?’ Krishanjit looked at him at last.

  ‘I think,’ Sang Ki said carefully, ‘that the Nethmi who killed my father and tried to kill you died in the conflagration that consumed Smiler’s Fair.’

  After a moment Krish nodded, either accepting Sang Ki’s answer or resigned to the lack of one. ‘And you’re Sang Ki of Winter’s Hammer.’

  Now Sang Ki did bow. ‘I have that honour.’

  ‘Your mother wanted to give you another name – she says it’s your true name among your true people. But you wouldn’t accept it.’

  ‘I have no need of a new name. Sang Ki has done me perfectly well so far.’

  ‘She said you wouldn’t accept me, either.’

  And here it was. Sang Ki realised that he was afraid, terrified even. He had been from the moment this thin young man approached him. ‘I would hardly put it that way. I accept that you are the moon reborn.’

  ‘But you don’t accept that I’m your god.’

  ‘I … accept that you are my people’s god.’

  ‘It’s all right.’ Sang Ki could see the lines of tension in Krishanjit’s face and the tired bruises beneath his eyes. He looked entirely mortal. ‘I’m not going to hurt you – you’ve never done anything to me and anyway, your mother wouldn’t like it. I just want to understand. Would fighting by my side be so bad? Or do you just think I’m going to lose?’

  That wasn’t a question it would be politic to answer. ‘I’ve met some of your followers,’ Sang Ki told him instead. ‘The Brotherband.’

  Krishanjit’s face twisted in what looked like anger, or perhaps pain. ‘I didn’t want the Brotherband to do the things they did. I didn’t ask them to follow me.’

  He sounded sincere, but Sang Ki had met many plausible liars among the nobility of Ashanesland, and the moon was said to be the god of deception. ‘Well, the Brotherband are no more, as I’m sure you know, so the point is moot.’

  ‘Yes, the Brotherband are gone, and I’ve got your people instead. Are they any better?’

  Sang Ki thought again of Little Cousin’s face, his blood. But that wasn’t all his mother was. There were a thousand memories of childhood: when she’d comforted him after a fall or chosen treats for him from the kitchen; when she’d loved him, at least a little. The Brotherband had seemed to know only hate. ‘My people are like any other,’ he told Krishanjit. ‘Composed of good and bad – I suppose that’s the purpose of leaders, to encourage one impulse or the other within them. So the question isn’t whether they’re worthy to follow you, but whether you’re worthy to be followed.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ the burnt woman said, her rough, wounded voice startling them both. ‘The leader and the follower are both responsible, aren’t they? Him for what he commands and them for choosing to follow it. Everyone has a choice.’

  Krishanjit nodded jerkily. ‘Yes. I think that’s right. But you’d both better make your choice soon. My da’s army will be here within weeks, and your people will be fighting for me. So you’d better hope we win. Because if we don’t, the son of a traitor won’t get a welcome with the Ashane.’

  ‘Here within weeks?’ Sang Ki said, looking up at the sky. Dark against the pale blue, he could see the outlines of birds: tiny at first, but falling lower, and as they fell he could see how large they truly were. ‘I don’t think we’ve got weeks.’

  Krishanjit frowned, and then he followed Sang Ki’s gaze to the sky. ‘Carrion mounts! But they can’t be here – your ma said it would take them two months to make the journey!’

  The birds were lower now, low enough that Sang Ki could see the glint of metal armour across their chests and hear their harsh screams, unlike any sound his Laali had ever made – a battle cry.

  ‘My mother was wrong,’ Sang Ki said as missiles began to fall, flung by the unseen riders. The first landed at the far side of the square, just a small puff of dust that looked no more menacing than a raindrop. And then another landed on top of the tallest pillar, and the whole structure cracked.

  Another rock was thrown, and another: black dots swelling into spheres in the sky. Sang Ki didn’t wait to see them fall. He grabbed the burnt woman’s hand and fled in terror towards the nearest building.

  41

  The dusty tranquillity of Mirror Town shattered like the jagged fragments of glass that littered its streets. Krish spent a moment feeling nothing but shock. This couldn’t be happening now. It couldn’t – he wasn’t ready.

  But it was, and an animal instinct for self-preservation sent him running as rocks fell from the sky all around. One struck the paving a pace in front of him, sending shards of stone to score his cheek as he dodged left and past and ran on.

  He could hear screams, not all of them from the square. The carrion riders must be attacking the whole of the town. Perhaps soldiers had already entered on foot as the birds attacked from the air. Krish felt again all the terror of those cold, hopeless weeks as the carrion mounts pursued him through the mountains of his home.

  When he reached the edge of the square he found himself in a crush of people. Some were pouring out of the mansions to find the cause of the noise; others who knew what it was were trying to push their way inside. He shoved his shoulder between two old women and forced himself through, as mindless as anyone else in his panic.

  A hand grabbed his arm. He tried to shake it off, but it only clung on harder. And when Olufemi’s voice said, ‘Krishanjit! Krish!’ he came back to himself.

  ‘We have to get out of here!’ he said. They’d reached the portico of the mansion and he heard the crash as a rock landed above and was stopped by the solid marble of the building. But his instinct was still to flee.

  ‘Where should we go?’ The old woman’s eyes were pleading and he realised she expected him to lead.

  What did he know about leadership? ‘Are the Ashane here?’ he asked. ‘Are they in Mirror Town?’

  Another mage answered him, a tall man stooped with age. ‘There’s been no word from the watch. Why didn’t the guards warn us?’

  Yes, that was the right question. Though Krish hadn’t thought the attack would come for weeks, he’d set a guard already. They would have reported if the army had come into view. The birds must be ahead of the main force. There was still time.

  ‘Get the mages you taught the runes,’ he said to Olufemi. ‘I’ll find the slaves, the marked ones, the ones with weapons. We’ll go to the defences.’

  ‘What about the birds? They’ll kill us!’ Olufemi’s face was stark with fear.

  Krish felt it too, but he couldn’t let it overcome him. He’d brought the Ashane here – he’d summoned this destruction. He grabbed a man as he fled past and shook him until his eyes focused on Krish. ‘Get everyone,’ Krish told him. ‘Fetch shields, tables, anything we can hold above us to protect against the rocks. Go! I command you!’

  When Mirror Town appeared on the horizon at last, Alfreda felt an icy shock of fear she hadn’t expected. Cwen had asked her to stay at the rear with Jinn and the supply wagons, but she’d refused. She’d thought she was ready for battle, that death held no more fear for her. She was a fool. Her life held more value than she’d realised until she prepared to recklessly risk it.

/>   The carrion mounts had flown ahead. She could see them above the brightly coloured buildings of the city, circling as they dropped their missiles. King Nayan hoped they’d drive out whatever army Mirror Town had, force them into battle on a ground and at a time of his choosing. Their own force was drawn up in good order – far better than she could have imagined when this long march began.

  The Jorlith took the front rank, their long spears a defence against any mounted charge, while the Ashane horse and mammoth riders clustered on the wings. Hawks stood with longbows ready while grim ranks of sword-armed shipborn troops held the middle ground. The Seonu hefted their axes to defend the army’s rear.

  The fire javelins were poised for action. She’d devised a sling to hold each one between two mammoths, ready to be moved, emplaced and used with speed. But there was no one to use the weapon against. As their army marched towards Mirror Town through the withered cornfields, there was no sign of any opposition at all.

  Finally, groups of people began to emerge from the city. Alfreda could see the glint of metal, but nothing else about them seemed martial. They travelled in clumps rather than ranks, separating as soon as they’d left the streets for the surrounding fields.

  Carrion mounts followed them, dark silhouettes against the sky. Rocks dropped and dust clouds sprouted where they landed. Some fell short of their targets and then Alfreda heard the deep clang as they landed on top of whatever shield the Mirror Town forces must be holding above themselves. In every other way they seemed utterly vulnerable.

  The Ashane King seemed to think so too. He sat on a stallion in the middle of his men, his banner snapping above him and his lords all around. He gestured, a messenger trotted away and a moment later a large group rode from the Ashane flank towards the nearest cluster of Mirror Town people. Their hooves pounded the hard earth, the tempo increasing as they sped up to a gallop.

  White and brown and black faces turned towards the mounted troops and there were distant yells of alarm. But the Mirror Town forces didn’t retreat. They didn’t even form a line to defend themselves and the mounted troops thundered on, sabres raised to slash.

  And then there was no boom, no flash, no sign that black powder had been ignited – but suddenly every Ashane rider was on fire. Their cries were shrill, the tortured screams of the horses louder as they too caught light. The charge fell apart into a panicked mass of burning men and beasts and the terrible smell of scorched flesh washed back to the army.

  There was panic in the army too. Alfreda could sense it, like another sickening stench in the air. They’d all spoken of the mages’ power and tried to plan for it, but none of them had quite believed it could be real. None of them but Cwen. She was gathering her hawks around her, detaching them from the army.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Alfreda shouted.

  ‘What Bachur commanded me,’ the hawk said grimly as she and her people ran towards the Mirror Town mages and whatever awful magics they had ready.

  If ever there was a time to get drunk, it was now. Rocks fell from the sky, paving stones cracked and flesh tore where they struck while the mages ran around screaming, as useless as goats in armour. Dae Hyo took another swig from the bottle, and found he was sucking nothing but air. He’d drunk it dry and he felt nothing. There wasn’t the slightest blurring of his vision, the faintest happiness. There was only this horrible, unrelenting clarity.

  Fuck Olufemi and fuck Krish. Bad enough they’d denied him the pleasure of bliss, but it seemed they’d denied him all other escapes too. He scratched at the still-bleeding tattoo on his chest, but the black ink remained sunk into his skin and the pain was sharp enough to stop him.

  He didn’t want to see so clearly. He’d spent years making sure he couldn’t. And suddenly his traitorous mind was showing him everything. It showed him that he’d given nearly a decade of his life to drinking and fighting and fooling himself that he was plotting a revenge he’d never take. That he never could take. He saw that he’d have died with a blade in his gut somewhere on the plains if he hadn’t met Krish. That Krish had saved him.

  And he saw that Krish would never be Dae. That the Dae were bones and could never be brought back. It showed him what kind of person his brother was: a person who could do, who had done terrible things and would do more.

  And most of all he saw himself: the awful, dark hole in the centre of him that nothing could ever fill, not drink and not Krish. He saw his own guilt. Because where was he, on the day his people died? And he saw too that it wasn’t his fault. If he’d been there, all he could have done was die beside them. But wasn’t that what he’d been meant to do? Why had he lived when all these others had died?

  So many questions. The drink hadn’t answered them, but it had allowed him to stop asking them.

  He looked at the sky through the bottle. The glass distorted the blue, softening it. It wasn’t the same as the softness alcohol brought and he threw it away. In the moment it shattered he heard something else, a whoosh like flame and distant, desperate cries. Almost at the same instant, screams began all around him.

  He reached for his weapons and realised that he’d brought none. The army had come and he was without even an axe. But there were no enemies here, only mages. All of them clutched at their faces, though they weren’t injured as far as he could see. Then one of them took his hands away and Dae Hyo saw what lay beneath: a milky blank nothing where his eyes had been. There were a dozen or more all the same, all suddenly blind and screaming in panic.

  This was Olufemi’s work. Her magic had done this, the power Krish had commanded her to use.

  Olufemi had never meant to find herself in battle. All her dreams of reawakening the runes had never been meant to lead to this. The slaves pressed close, shielding her with their bodies and her head with the thick wooden board they held above. The ugly croaks of the carrion mounts sounded from on high and she heard the thud of rocks hitting sand and then dull ringing as one struck the board itself.

  Two slaves fell to their knees and it seemed they’d all topple, that she’d be crushed into the sand beneath the board meant to shield them. But others braced themselves. They held their feet and shuffled forward, towards the orchard and the runic defence.

  Twenty more paces and they were sheltered from the carrion birds beneath the trees. The slaves formed a ring round her, some with spears or swords and some just with sticks, pointing them outwards. She stumbled towards the device, her new rune daubed on it in fresh paint. Soften, that was its meaning, though she still had no idea what it was meant to accomplish – or if her new design would work at all.

  But she mustn’t think about that. Worry would stop her working the rune. And she knew she’d got at least something right. She’d seen the bloom of fire where a young Bakari cousin had worked another of the runic defences.

  Their enemies were almost here. She saw flashes of their clothing through the trees and heard voices both male and female. Perhaps these were the Moon Forest hawks Vordanna said had come to hunt Krish down. But Olufemi shouldn’t be thinking about that either. She had to concentrate on the rune.

  She sat cross-legged beside the device as all the books advised. The complex curves of it filled her vision, but when she shut her eyes all she could hear was the shouts of the hawks and the chatter of the slaves. The rune slipped away from her like water through her fingers. It was no good. She couldn’t do it. Now, when it mattered most, she proved that she was no mage at all.

  Her breath was coming in desperate, panicked gasps. She tried to slow it. She clenched her fist, relaxed it and tried to think only of the one thing that could save them.

  Cwen had Wine and Wingard beside her, her hawks all around and terror freezing her mind. She’d never thought herself a coward. She’d taken down monsters that would make Jorlith spear-leaders shit their britches and never broken a sweat. But the fear of battle seemed to grow worse with each one she fought. Now she knew what could happen, how easily an arrow could find flesh, how wounds could fest
er, what hate looked like in the face of the enemy. If she’d known then what she knew now, she might never have obeyed Bachur’s command.

  But this had to be done. The mages were fighting with the moon’s magic and her hawks alone had faced the moon’s forces before. It was her duty to fight them. That drove her on, that and the thought of what would happen to her people if she abandoned them.

  She hived off clutches of hawks to attack each group of mages. Her own target lay ahead, fewer than a score of them, but she’d already seen the lethal work their magic could do. The mages fled into an orchard and she and her hawks ran after them, the smell of the fruit sickeningly sweet as they crushed it beneath their boots. At any moment she expected the air to turn to fire, her flesh to burn and the agony to start, but the flames never came.

  Then the enemy were right in front of her: a ring of blades guarding something in their middle. She stopped her headlong rush and raised her spear. For the first time she could see who she faced and her heart lifted. These weren’t hardened warriors. Some of them were older than her grandmother, others young enough to be her child, and none held their weapons like they knew how to use them.

  Her hawks gave the ululating call of the Hunt and charged. The distance narrowed to fifty paces, then twenty, and now there was fear on the faces of their enemies. Ten paces more and suddenly Cwen was sinking. She tried to lift her leg, to move forward another step, but something had happened to the ground. Baked earth had turned to quicksand, thick and sucking and pulling her down.

  Her people shouted in confusion. All of them were trapped. Her spear was useless, the butt deeply buried. She tried to reach down to draw her blade, but the sand grabbed her arms and wouldn’t let go. She was sinking and every flailing, desperate movement she made only drew her deeper.

  She could see the Mirror Town fighters watching, as shocked as her hawks. Then their shock passed. They laughed, wild and terrifying, clutched their weapons and charged.

  Krish was fleeing towards the ruins of the Etze mansion when the ground fell away beneath it with a sound like the world ending. One moment he stood beside shattered masonry and the next a black hole in the ground. Its lip began to crumble and he turned and ran back, speeding when he saw long fissures zigzagging out from the pit that had consumed Olufemi’s home. She must have worked her magic and her family’s home had paid the price. He wondered what the cost would be of the next magic she tried – if Mirror Town itself could survive it.